III.
Her coffee was cold, and her mascara was running. This was, consulting the growing list in her PDA, the eighth time this month he had stood her up.
Lana didn't need this. She had homework, and meetings, and anything better to do than sit and wait for her truant boyfriend. She angrily wiped at the make-up streaking her cheeks before sending Clark a message she knew she'd regret. Scratch that. She wasn't going to regret it, not this time.
And as it had six out of the seven other times, the chair across from her scraped backwards, and he sat down.
"Again?" Lex asked. She nodded, afraid that, if she opened her mouth right now, nothing would come out but vitriol. "You don't deserve this."
"You know what?" she said, smiling to keep the tears from coming. "I don't. I didn't deserve it any of the other times, either." Her voice became bitter. "He thinks he has to be everything to everyone except me."
Now her tears flowed freely. Before she could wipe them away, Lex was there with his handkerchief. The feeling of warm fingers through soft silk calmed her; her tears stopped.
"You deserve so much better," he told her in a soft whisper.
This conversation was growing commonplace. She realized Lex was leading her, but she didn't care. Lex was there. Lex, for all his busy schedule, was always there for her. Lex was…
"Let's get out of here," Lex said, standing up and holding out a hand to her. She took it and stood, and, unexpectedly, Lex pulled her into a warm hug. And more unexpectedly, she found herself clinging to him desperately.
"Help me, Lex," she said in his ear. He whispered something soothing and unintelligible and pulled her closer.
Paris, months later, in a little café in Montmartre near Sacré Coeur. It was loud and full of too many people speaking too much English, but she loved it anyway.
"Everyone I have ever loved has left me," he told her, "except you." Lex took a box out of his pocket and held it to her with both hands, as if presenting an offering. "I want you to be my wife." He opened it. "I want you stay with me forever."
Lana breathed in. Her heart stopped, and the world swirled down to just the two of them. This wasn't what she had been expecting from her life, though she didn't know exactly what it was that she had been expecting. This would be a new beginning, a step away from everything she'd ever been, with someone that she wasn't always sure she knew. Lex could be so dark, so unpredictable; but there was so much good in him, drawing Lana in more and more. Could she take it all, the darkness and the light? Could she do this?
Lana breathed out. "Yes."
And as Lana packs her bags to go to back to Smallville on the pretext of a business trip, the beginning is all she can think about. She can't yet think of it as a mistake, nor can she consider that this might be the end. She loads her things into one of the cars and gets in, waving away Lex's driver. The radio is set to the classical station. It grates her nerves; everything just seems to sound like Mozart. She switches it off.
She gets to the Talon in the early afternoon. Martha, probably the last person left in Smallville who understands, gives her a warm hug and the key to her old apartment, recently left vacant. Lana lays herself down on the bed, and it's not until then that the tears start to come.