The bed felt ridiculously good, but the hand shaking him awake only annoyed him. "What?" he mumbled drowsily.

"I told you I'd wake you for dinner."

Ah, yes. Lex. He remembered. He turned over to face Lex and yawned. "Now?"

"Yes, now."

Clark groaned and stretched a little as he sat up. Once he was up, Lex handed him some clothes. Blue button-up jeans were something he'd probably never see again, but these black pant were nice; kind stretchy, pretty soft, all around good. Clark took them and was a little shocked to see boxers with them. Underwear was a luxury.

He headed to the bathroom, knowing that Lex would wait for him in his room. When he immerged with the clothes on he wasn't disappointed, but the smirk on Lex's face told him all too well that Lex knew how much he was enjoying having nice clothes again.

"How long has it been since you've eaten something decent?" Lex asked slowly.

"Define decent."

"Something that wasn't bought at a grocery store, or, more likely, stolen. Basically something that someone else cooked for you, because I know what you're cooking is like."

Clark looked at him blankly, purposely ignoring the jab at his cooking. "Frankly, Lex, I don't think I've had anything you'd consider decent since this whole thing started. Canned foods have become a delicacy over the past year."

Lex shook his head. "You were letting yourself starve?"

"I wasn't starving. With my abilities I could steal from the grocery stores."

"But you could only steal the unguarded thing because even with your speed you'd be caught if you went for anything guarded," he said knowingly.

Clark shrugged. "More or less, yeah."

Lex groaned and headed towards the door, motioning for Clark to follow. Clark did so willingly because, whether he wanted to tell Lex or not, he really was hungry and had been for a very long time.

Lex's new mansion was nice, but Clark liked the castle better. This new one-it just didn't seem like Lex. He was relieved when they reached the kitchen.

Lex motioned to the table and Clark plopped down. "Normally, I'd let you have filet min yon, but it'd be too rich for you at the currant time."

Clark thought the soup that was put down in front of him would be just fine. He really had to work to not just tip back the bowl and drink it. Lex watched him with an amused expression on his face. "But apparently this is fancy stuff for you."

Clark felt anger boil slightly in the pit of his stomach. "Look, Lex, I get that you didn't like my decision to refuse to fall into this life, but could you really just stop reminding me about what you've had and I haven't?"

There was something that might have been akin to remorse on Lex's face, but it was gone too quickly for Clark to decide if it had really been there at all. "I don't want to see you killed, is all."

Clark finished his soup and stood up. "What is it with you! I'm not going to get killed! I can take care of myself, Lex."

Lex stood up as well. "Can you?" he asked, his brows furrowing slightly. "Can you really? Because if you can I'd really like to know why I found you lying on the ground in a marketplace."

Clark narrowed his eyes. "Because I stayed to protect my friends. I could have gotten away."

Lex's eyes blazed with fury. "Don't you ever insinuate that I wouldn't do the same."

Clark squared his shoulders, sensing the coming fight. It was like when the air changed before the storm and there were enough proverbial storm clouds in that room right then to tell anyone to take shelter. "I never did. Guilty conscience, Lex?"

Apparently that had been enough, because Lex turned around and stormed out of the kitchen. Clark was quite alright with that until he tried to leave as well and found that Lex had locked him in. "Bastard! Let me out!" he yelled.

No one answered. Finally, in a huff, he sat down in a chair to wait. Lex was obviously up to something, and apparently he'd just have to wait for his return to find out what it was.

------------------------------

It was three hours before Lex came back. Clark rummaged around and found some more food in the time being, although he was careful about what he ate, because, as much as he hated to admit it, Lex was right about not wanting to make himself sick.

When the door opened and Lex came back in Clark hissed, "Don't ever do that again."

"Shut up." Lex voice was cold and cruel. It was a voice Clark had almost never heard in Smallville. "I don't want to hear it."

Clark simply glared as Lex stood before him. He was unprepared for the folder that was thrown down onto the table before him. "What's this?" Clark asked suspiciously.

"You think you don't need help? You think you can handle anything? Take a look in that folder, then."

Clark narrowed his eyes and cautiously pulled the folder towards himself. Very slowly he opened the cover to it. He was shaken by what he saw.

Pictures

Pictures of people in situations worse than even he'd seen-and he'd seen pretty bad. He turned away, felling sick. They took pleasure in what they did. They documented it. He forced himself to look back. There were records of Chicago there. There were records of the dead. Automatically his eyes scanned to the section on the "L's".

Lois's name was there. He pushed the paper aside and saw a picture of the rachla watching as humans were lined up against a wall and systematically annihilated.

His Dad was one of the people in the picture.

His throat closed immediately. Lex had obviously done that on purpose. Clark knew why he'd done it; known that he was only trying to show where pride would get Clark, where thinking he didn't need help would get him. But, damn it, it hurt. Seeing that picture hurt.

He pushed it aside to the last picture, which depicted the scene after the shooting had taken place. The bodies-his father's body- lay strewn haphazardly on the ground, blood everywhere, and the rachla was standing there smiling. Clark swallowed and then promptly vomited on the floor.

Lex's shoes come into view, but he didn't look up from the floor. He didn't want to see Lex's face.

"That's where pride gets you, Clark," he says softly, and Clark could hear the sympathy under the firmness. He thought he might be fifteen again, and Lex was back to teaching him lessons.

"He-I-" he stuttered, standing up.

"Shhh."

Lex putting an arm around him and helping him up really wasn't what he expected. It wasn't exactly unwanted, because he wasn't sure he could stand anymore, but, really, what he wanted was an escape from himself and what he'd just seen.

"You're going to let me help you, Clark, because I won't see you end up like that."

"Were-were you t-there?" Words felt foreign on his tongue, and he couldn't seem to get them out. Maybe he really didn't want to, but he knew that he had to know this.

"Yes." Lex wasn't beating around the bush. "Yes, I was. I tried to help your father when he was in a political prison. He refused my help, rebuffed my best attempts to save him, and instead he tried to escape with the other prisoners you saw. By the time I found out what had happened the execution was already set and the prisoners were already lined up. I couldn't do anything."

Clark's stomach rolled again. That was his father, the strongest man he knew. "He-He's dead."

"Yes," Lex murmured, pulling him back into the chair he'd just left, seeming to think better of moving him. "Did you think he was still alive?"

"I-he was so strong-I didn't think-"

"I shouldn't have showed you that," Lex said suddenly, and Clark could hear the regret in his voice. "I wanted you to understand, though."

"I knew Lois was dead. I was in Chicago."

Lex laughed and sat across from him. "I know. You did a damn good job there."

He hadn't expected praise for that and certainly not praise from Lex. "What?"

"You think I didn't know who planted those bombs? No one else had the skills. You're just lucky you didn't get caught."

"I don't like to think of it as luck."

That elicited another laugh from Lex. "Please, I was able to get close enough to shoot you. You're lucky to be alive."

"No one else would have known my patterns well enough," he mumbled, the picture of his dad still flashing behind his eyes. But Clark had lived in a world that had presented him with gruesome sights everyday for five years. He'd learned to push things to the back shelf of his mind-those who didn't learn went insane.

Lex looked at him knowingly. "I still don't know how you all got out of the city."

"We didn't," he whispered. "Lois died."

Lex nodded. "I know. A bullet picked her off. She had the best military training of any one of you and yet she still left herself unprotected."

"She was trying to save...Lana," he remembered.

"You think I don't know that?"

Clark shrugged. "How would you?"

"Because I watched it happen. I watched Lois covering Lana as they both ran and I watch Lana take a bullet to the leg. If Lois had kept going she'd have probably made it to safety, but she stopped to keep them away from Lana. She got a bullet to her chest and then suddenly she and Lana disappeared. Lois's body was found a short ways away."

Clark was sure he looked stricken. "I-she was dead. I tried-I did CPR, but she took a bullet. I couldn't do anything."

"She died saving a friend."

"Who betrayed us all."

Lex looked at him sadly. "The city burned and the empire took a great hit. I bet if you ever thought I'd be proved wrong it was on that day."

Clark shook his head. "I was too busy mourning over Lois. Chloe was...distraught."

"Your side won't win."

"Is that why you wouldn't join it?"

"I won't fight for a loosing cause, not matter how much I believe in it. I'd prefer to join the winning one and get power to make things how I want them from there-or double cross the winning cause."

"That's cowardly."

He tried to jerk away when Lex grabbed the sides of his head, his fingers curling into his hair. "Put. Your. Pride. Aside," he growled before roughly letting Clark go.

Clark sat back. "What is it that you want from me?"

"I don't want anything from you." Lex was serious too when he said that. "I just don't want to see everyone that I ever did or still do care about dead."

"Don't be melodramatic."

"I'm not. Everyone I care about seems to die."

Clark gave him a skeptical look. Lex's mother, he knew, but other than that...

"My mother, Pamela, my father-"

"You hated your father," Clark noted.

"But he was my father, and as much as I hated myself for it I loved him."

Clark nodded slowly. "Yeah..."

"Who's your real father, Clark? Where is he?"

"He's dead."

Lex's lips curved into a small smile. "You're avoiding my first question."

"I thought you knew everything about me. How did you even find out about me anyway?"

Lex's smiled grew. "I got those seven weeks back shortly after you told me that my father killed his parents. That apparently triggered the memories."

Clark swallowed heavily. Well, that explained how Lex knew he wasn't human. Maybe he'd better be careful about just what he said.

"So perhaps you should be more careful when you insinuate that I wouldn't stay to protect my friends."

Clark felt like his lungs were in a vice. "Impaled upon your own sword," were the only words that came to mind. "I was sixteen. You were yelling at the top of your voice that I tossed a car."

"I was drugged. But I understand, Clark. You don't see me holding it against you."

"Your benevolence is insipireing." He'd intended for it to be more biteing than it came out.

"Now, my first question, Clark. Who was your father?"

Clark sighed heavily. "His name was Jor-el, and he was from the planet Krypton. They sent be away because it was being destroyed." He paused and looked carefully at Lex. "What is it that you're after, Lex? What do you think you can change?"

Lex laughed softly. After a moment of silence he replied steadily, "I'm after the ability to survive; to protect myself; and, when the time's right, to help stop the madness that this world's fallen into."

"So you're part of your own personal rebellion?" he asked, the idea turning over in his head. Lex always had possessed a way of taking ideas of normal people and making them so much bigger and better; grander.

Lex grinned slightly. "You might say that."

"What are you doing?"

"It's better if you don't know," he told him seriously.

Clark sighed deeply. Lex was so darn secretive. "Alright, then tell me about Chloe and the others."

"I'll find them." He looked so serious when he said those words that Clark couldn't help but believe him. Confidence seemed to radiate from Lex, and, really, Clark had never met anyone as self-assure as Lex.

"How?"

"I know where you were captured. All I've got to do is request that the people in that party are given to me." A malicious grin spread over his lips. "You'd be surprised how much sway I hold in matters like these."

Clark sighed and leaned back in his chair. "You know, Lex, I really don't think I would be surprised. You got a way of holding sway in just about everything that you decided you want to influence."

Lex's grin grew and became more pure. "Come with me," he told Clark as he got up and headed for the door.