Sorry this took so long guys. Here ya go!

"Dare to be true; nothing can need a lie;

A fault which needs it most, grows two thereby."

-George Herbert

Chapter 3 - Clark

I hadn't gone over there to argue. Far from it. Really, I didn't know why I had gone. I don't know what I thought I was going to do.

Well, yes, I did know. I was going to do nothing. I always did nothing.

He didn't know how much I had just wanted to tell him right then. To just scream it from the rooftop.

I wished there was some way to explain to him why I couldn't tell him without telling himeverything. There was no way to inform him that this wasn't your average secret. That Iwas the reason things were so crazy in Smallville, the reason Lana's parents were gone, the reason he was teased throughout his adolescent years.

He'd hate me. And I wasn't ready for that.

And after our fight (if one could call it that-perhaps mini-fight was more proper a term), when I simply spent the afternoon with Lex, it was uneasy for once. And it was becoming much clearer to me that I wasn't ready for a lot of things. Maybe even if the I was suddenly possessed of overwhelming courage, it wasn't the right time to tell him how I felt.

"Clark?"

I jerked slightly, startled by the sudden noise, nearly knocking my telescope into a 180. I turned toward the owner of the voice.

Chloe stepped up beside me at the window and her eyes darted curiously between me and my current activity. "You know Lana hasn't lived there in a while?"

I smirked at her. "Believe it or not, I was actually looking at the stars," I said, returning my eye to the lense. "You wanna see something cool?"

She smiled. "Always."

"Kay, lean down here." I straightened up and directed her to where I had been leaning.

"Wow," she said after a moment, her voice somewhat muffled by her now bent position. "What is that?"

"The globular clusters in the LMC," I supplied, watching the sky, and then her. She glanced up at me skeptically.

"It's a dwarf galaxy," I elucidated. "Kind of a cloud."

She grinned and shook her head. "You still surprise me sometimes, Kent."

I chuckled a little and crossed the floor to fall back on the sofa. "So what's up?"

She sat down on the low table across from me and reached into her shoulder bag, triumphantly extracting a manilla folder from it. "Ta da! This week's Torch."

I laughed again at her enthusiasm. I swear, the girl was born to be a journalist. I'd bet money she'd be the senior editor of the Daily Planet before she hit thirty. "I don't suppose this is you surprising me with a finished copy that just needs to be printed?"

"No way you're getting out of it that easy." She shoved the file in my face. "You're not even writing this week, the least you could do is the layout. And then I'll copy them tomorrow."

"Fine," I agreed, opening it to find the front page carefully laid out on top. The head story was one thing she would never entrust me with choosing. As I skimmed it, my smile faded. "What's this?"

She leaned over me to glance at it upside down. "Oh yeah, that. Perfect front page material. And not just for us. All the major papers around here will be printing it."

"Why didn't you tell me about this?" I demanded.

Her forehead crinkled a little in confusion. "I figured you knew. Didn't Lex tell you?"

"No," I replied, my jaw clenching. "He certainly didn't."

I ignored the protests of the maid who had been following me since I had passed her in the parlor, blazing down the hallways I knew so well in the direction of Lex's study. I was accustomed to entering without permission, but never had I done it when one of the staff had expressly advised me against it. But I was too angry to listen now. She'd get over it.

"Mr. Kent, Mr. Luthor specifically instructed me that he did not want to be disturbed!" she insisted, tottering after me and huffing slightly as she attempted to keep up with my longer, more determined strides.

When I reached the door of the study, I half expected her to shove herself between it and me before I could turn the knob and act as a corporeal barrier. She did not do this however, allowing me finally to continue on my way with a submissive and somewhat exasperated look. She waved her dust rag at me in annoyance and turned back the way we had come. I watched her for a moment, then entered without knocking.

Before me sat Lex at his desk, and in front of him, seated in leather chairs were three men, all dressed in expensive suits, and two with briefcases resting on the floor beside them. All turned to stare at me when I barged in and the smile on Lex's face faded when he saw my expression.

"Uh, Clark, this really isn't a good time," he told me, casting a pointed look at his three guests.

"I need to talk to you," I demanded, ignoring the way the three men were glancing back and forth between the two of us.

A somewhat uneasy smile crossed his features that quickly turned to feigned amusement when directed at the others. "You'll have to excuse my friend, something seems to have upset-"

I stepped forward and dropped the newspaper Chloe had left in my custody the night before down on his desk. It landed with a plop on the papers and files that already littered it and the comment died on his lips. After a few seconds, he sighed and lifted his head. "Gentlemen," he began, "will you excuse us please?"

Shooting confused looks to each of the others, they all rose to their feet, gathered their effects and started toward the door. Lex came out from behind his desk to walk them. "Call my secretary in the morning; we'll arrange this for another time next week," he said to the eldest of the three, clapping him on the shoulder and guiding him into the hallway by his grip. He closed the door behind them, stood still for a short time, then turned back to me.

"That was important," he said, gesturing after them.

"So's this," I insisted. "Were you planning on telling me?"

"I didn't want you to get how you get."

"'How I get'? Lex," I picked the paper back up and waved it a bit for emphasis, "This land stops just short of our farm!"

"Which is fair game," he explained, as if this justified it. He slipped his hands casually into his pockets. "I don't understand why you're so upset about this."

"It seems like Luthor and LexCorp are buying up more and more of Smallville. I just wonder where it's gonna be in five years."

"I wouldn't ask your father to sell, Clark." He walked past me back to his desk.

"Well, what happens when he has no choice? When a second factory pollutes more of the water? When it brings in other corporations that will force him to sell?"

"Clark, calm down," he persisted, sitting. "It's only a ten mile stretch. Do you realize how many jobs this will create? Really, you're making too big a deal of this."

"It is a big deal!" I knew I was getting a little too worked up, and though I promised myself I wouldn't, I was beyond being polite about this. "But I suppose that's hard to understand if you've never actually had a home."

I regretted the words the instant they left my mouth, but I didn't let it show. If I backed down now, I would lose. And he already wasn't taking me seriously. It took him a while to answer me and all he did during the gap in the speech was gaze at me. I shifted uneasily.

"Smallville is my home now, Clark," he told me calmly. "But it's the people in it that make that so, not the land I own. What makes it your home?"

I stood there. A part of me wanted to say that he was a big part of it. Especially since he was implying the same towards me. But I only got out, "My family."

"And I won't be buying them anytime soon," he quipped. "So worry about them and not their property."

"I don't just-" I cut myself off before I could go any further with that. I couldn't simply blurt out that it wasn't only our farm I worried about. It was more scrutiny on our land, the meteor rocks that would have to be cleared from the construction site... me. And I knew my parents would not be pleased about that. I didn't want them worrying. I would have liked to be able to do my chores without looking over my shoulder all the time to ensure that some random factory worker wasn't witnessing any display or my strength or speed.

"Hey," Lex waved a hand before my face and my eyes focused on him. "Relax, okay? Things won't change half as much as you think they will--I promise."

"We'll just have to be a little more careful, that's all," Mom said, obviously attempting to soothe my pacing father.

"I swear, that family's never gonna change," he practically growled, "And it was extremely bad judgment on our part to think that they would."

"Dad-"

My mother shot me a look and I quieted, allowing her to handle him. "It's never bad to give people the benefit of the doubt, Jonathan. I think it's better to err on the side of kindness than suspicion."

"Lex isn't his father," I broke in. I felt as though I had already said that a thousand times. And I probably had. "I was angry too, but he's right. It's just ten miles, and it'll be worth the jobs-"

"Son, don't you realize what he's doing?" he demanded, rounding on me. "I realize the boy isn't his father, but that just means he operates differently, not that his motives are any more noble. At least Lionel is up front about his intentions."

"You think Lex wants the farm?" Mom asked, her tone implying that such an idea was somewhat ridiculous. I was glad she was on my side.

"No, I don't think he wants the farm. I think he wants Smallville."

Mom rolled her eyes. "Jonathan, I think that's a pretty farfetched conspiracy theory. Lex has been nothing but gracious towards us and the town-"

"Until now," Dad interrupted.

"We have no reason to believe that Lex wants anything more than to create more positions for some of the out-of-work factory employees."

"Oh, we sure as hell do." He finally plopped down in the arm chair across from me and mom, but even then he leaned forward impatiently as he spoke. "With all of the property Smallville farmland can give him, Lex would be well on his way to buying up dear old dad." He sat back. "And you both know it."

Neither of us responded to that. I think I was waiting for mom to think up a way to refute him. But either she was waiting for me to do the same, or like me, she couldn't think of one. Because she didn't say anything.

Okay, I did my part, now you guys do yours. C'mon, click the little button beside the blue box. You know you wanna...