I got a review asking me if I ever mentioned what happened to Martha. First of all, thanks for reviewing! I believe that I answered what happened to Martha in the chapter previous to this one:
"He'd needed all of the people who stuck by him during the war. His parents had been with him at first, and he remembered when his father had disappeared. They hadn't known if he'd been dead or not, at least not for sure—but his mother had known. Maybe there was a connection after being married that long. Clark would never know, but his mother had wasted away before his eyes, finally dieing."
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"Nice job, by the way," Clark complimented Lex seriously as they walked into the court room.
"What do you mean?" Lex asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Facing down Lana like you did. I mean, after the guards dropped, you basically told her that her race was run." The look on Lex's face was worth having to talk about what he'd seen, Clark decided.
"How did you know about that? You were unconscious in the lab."
"My body was," he explained. "But it seems that my mind wasn't. I watched the whole thing."
It would be something that was stuck in his mind until he died. Lex was, besides his father, probably one of the strongest people he'd ever known. To see him so obviously about to be condemned to die had been almost as painful as seeing the pictures of his father's death. Almost—because nothing would ever be worse than that.
"You saw that whole thing?" Lex asked, his voice going soft, and Clark wondered if he should be worried.
"Yeah. I—I wanted to know what was happening. And I just sort of followed the gas here."
Lex sighed and shook his head slightly. "It's fine," he said after a moment, though it was obvious that he was still less than happy about it. "Anyway, back to Lana."
Clark knew a blatant change of the subject when he saw it, but he didn't want to pursue the subject any further either, so he didn't call Lex on it.
"She's obviously not here," Clark noted, his eyes sweeping the room.
"That's fairly obvious," Lex replied with a smirk.
Lex always had a way of making Clark feel younger and older at the same time. Comments like that most definitely made him feel younger.
"Any idea where she might have gone?" Clark inquired. Because, really, Denver was too big to simply search. Even for Clark, that might have been a bit of an absurd undertaking.
"Actually, yes," he answered. "I suspect that she'll have gone back to her lover's mansion in an attempt to salvage anything from his failure. She'll want anything that can possibly save her."
Clark nodded his head in agreement, though he really had no idea if Lex was correct. Lex's hunches and suspicions were usually right, though, so he thought he'd go along with it. It wasn't like they had any better leads.
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Clark had to admit that he absolutely adored Lex's car. It was certainly a step up from that cattle truck that he'd ridden in after he'd been captured. He could still vividly remember the smells. The urine, the vomit, the iron tang of blood: These things haunted him, and that haunting most likely never would subside.
Most of all he remembered the smell of death.
And that was much the same in the whole city now. Clark tried to force himself not to look at the alien bodies littering the street as if they were just old garbage that had been swept there by the wind. Why had any of this happened to him?
Lex seemed so calm about everything. Clark didn't know how he was, though. But then again, Lex always had been so much less swayed by his emotions than Clark was swayed by his. Clark had feelings and acted on them, whereas Lex had feelings and examined them.
"We're here, Clark," Lex told him from the driver's seat.
Clark immediately snapped back to the attention he hadn't known that he'd lost. Had he really drifted off again? Apparently so, because Lex was looking at him with something akin to sympathy.
"Oh, ok," he replied. His limbs might have been in perfect working order again, but it was still a chore to climb from the car, if for no other reason then because of what he might find in the house outside it.
What a house it was, too. It was like Lex's, only Clark had never spent much time outside Lex's house. He supposed that Lex's house was just as good, but, then again, he'd never know. "She's here," Lex said softly from beside him, one of his hands falling on Clark's arm as if he were afraid he'd bolt.
Clark was glad for it, because he wasn't so sure that he wouldn't.
"How do you know?" he asked, his mouth suddenly dry.
"Her car—it's in the driveway."
Clark realized that Lana knew she was finished. She wasn't even bothering to try to conceal the location of where she was hiding. Instead, she'd simply parked her car out front like she was waiting. It was a devil-be-damned attitude, and Clark didn't think it suited her. Apparently, though, if she was going to go out, she was going to do it with her head up.
Clark felt Lex's hand on his arm, guiding him towards the front door. It was a welcome presence still, because Clark thought he might have ended up in the fish pond by mistake if it wasn't there.
The front doors were very ominous with their dark wood, and Clark hoped they weren't a precursor of what he'd have to face inside. The entrance hall wasn't much better, but that might just have been his nervous attitude.
"Clark," Lex's voice called, jolting him out of his once-again absent-minded state. "Scan the house for her, please."
Clark did so, and saw her in a back bedroom, out on the balcony. She appeared to be drinking.
"She's upstairs, third bedroom to the right," he revealed, and Lex immediately began pulling him towards the stairs.
"Those who follow us shall be given their lives; those who do not shall have theirs taken and shall be reduced to animals."
Clark remembered the words of the alien's speeches. It had always been the same: There had been the promise of glory to those who followed, and the promise of terror and terrible treatment for those who didn't.
And for nearly five years it had been that way.
It was going to end that night.
Clark found it amazing that when you didn't want to be somewhere you seemed to get there faster. Going to the room Lana was in was no exception.
"Are you ready for this?" Lex asked seriously as his hand went to the door.
Clark only stared at him, aware that his face was blank. "No, but I never will be. Let's go."
Lex understood and knew that waiting would only make it harder. For all of his faults, Lex understood what made Clark tick. He may have not had the same reasoning, but he understood just the same. Sometimes that was a curse, but here Clark didn't think he'd have been able to handle it if Lex hadn't known what he was thinking.
They pushed the door open together and strode into the room. Blood was everywhere, and Clark had felt sick as he remembered his ride to the camp where he'd been branded. The smell: it was the same. It was that iron tang that seemed to be so strong that you could taste it in the air.
It scared him to death.
"My gosh," he breathed softly. "Lex, what did she do."
Lex either didn't hear him or didn't respond, because he was on his way to the French doors to the balcony and was already swinging them open when Clark spoke. Though Lex's back was to him, Clark saw him go ridged. "Lana," he announced softly, his voice low.
"Lex," came the soft reply. Clark was shocked at how much contempt and bitterness it held.
"Why did you do it?" Clark heard him ask.
Lana's bitter laugh met his ears, and it wasn't a nice sound at all. It was actually frightening to Clark, probably more so than it should of have been, actually.
"Because Clark won't let you kill me, and I won't live in a world where I'm under your control. I will not have worked this hard just to loose it all."
"You've already lost it all," he countered, his voice still low and almost pitying. Clark wasn't sure why, so he moved closer to the doors. Lex's outstretched hand on his chest stopped him.
"No," he heard Lana disagree, though he still couldn't see her. "I still have the power to take my own life." The cynical laughter that followed after was enough to make Clark's blood run cold.
Clark felt his heart plummet at her words, and he pushed through Lex's hand, needing to see what she'd done. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.
She sat, or was more correctly sprawled, against the railing of the balcony. There was blood gushing from each wrist and Clark suddenly realized, to his horror, whose blood was in the bedroom. She'd refused to give up, and she'd exercised the only power she'd had left.
The power to take her own life.
She wasn't going to let her life be controlled by Lex and Clark, and she'd been right in thinking that Clark wouldn't let Lex kill her. To her, death had been better.
"Lana, why?" he choked out, emotion hitting him like a tidal wave.
In that moment all that he could see was the beautiful girl that he'd been in love with in Smallville. He could only see the girl next door, the homecoming queen, and who he'd danced with at the prom. As he stood there looking at her she once again became the fairy princess that he'd been in love with so long ago.
The only things he could see were the things she no longer was.
"Why?" he repeated.
She didn't look angry, at least not at him. "I'm so sorry, Clark," she whispered. "For everything that I've done to you. I—I just got caught up in the power I could have, and I knew that you had the means to take it away from me in the blink of an eye. I guess I just lost it after that."
Clark slowly moved forward, though his legs felt like lead. "It didn't have to be like this," he told her, sadness in every part of his body and voice.
"It did, Clark. Once I made the decision to betray you—to betray Pete and Chloe—it had to become like this. One of us had to loose."
Clark could see her skin paling more by every passing minute. Not sure what else to do, he came forward and took her wrists in his hand, applying pressure. "We'll get you help, Lana," he whispered.
"No, Clark," she said with a sad smile. "There's nothing you can do now."
"Lana, no, you can't-"
"You and Pete were so much more than I deserved," she told him, her voice weakening. Clark felt sick as he looked at her wan visage. The dark hair that fell around her face worsened the look. "I never loved Pete, though."
"W-what?" Clark stuttered, unable to believe that. They'd been together for three years. Lana had been everything to Pete, and Clark thought that it had gone both ways. It shouldn't have been possible that it wasn't true. There were so few good things in the war, and Clark had imagined that love had been one of those good things. He didn't want to let that go.
"Maybe that was why I did all of this," she muttered so softly that Clark had to bend in to hear it.
"Why?" Clark replied, his confusion multiplying.
"I loved you, Clark. Still do. I screwed up, but I thought some day you'd leave Chloe. I know that won't happen. Maybe that was why I tried to kill you."
Clark felt his insides roll. Was everything directly related to him? And Lana had been the one who had broken up with him!
"So you tried to kill me?" he asked incredulously, but still with hurt dripping from every word.
"'m sorry, Clark. I do love you. I wish things had been s-so different," she murmured as her eyes slipped closed.
There was blood all over. Clark could feel it on his clothes and hands, and it just served as a blatant reminder of what was happening. "Lana!" he choked out.
He felt Lex's hands on his shoulder, but he just couldn't make himself let go of Lana. He could still feel a slight throb of the blood under his fingers and he was so sure that if he just held on, if he just kept pressure on the wound that somehow she'd miraculously be alright.
"Clark, let go," he heard Lex say, but it sounded as if they were in different rooms. All that Clark could see was Lana before him, frighteningly pale skin accentuated by the blood on it. It was his fault she was dead. Everything was his fault.
"Clark!" Lex seemed to have given up of snapping him out of whatever state he was in and instead began to try to pry his hands off of Lana. Clark was so trained to only use human strength that it actually worked.
Clark let out a small muffled cry as he tried to pull his wrists, which were now in Lex's grip, away from Lex and reach back out for Lana. "Stop it, Clark. She's dead."
"She's not!" he yelled. "I could feel the blood still barely pulsing under my fingers. Please, let go, Lex."
Lex didn't let go, but only released his wrists and wrapped his arms around Clark so that his arms were pinned to his side. "Shhh," he muttered, keeping a hold on Clark as he struggled to get loose.
Clark could feel his hold on reality slowly returning. Lex was gently maneuvering him up to his feet and turning him so that they were back to chest, but only after he'd gotten him facing away from Lana. Clark appreciated that.
The smell of blood hung in the air as they moved from the balcony and back to the bedroom. Clark tried not to look too much and instead concentrated on just moving forward. Lex had dropped his full body hold when he saw Clark was calming down and was now instead holding Clark firmly by the upper arms while guiding him out of the room.
Clark's hold on clear thought returned a little more when they were finally away from the smell. He didn't think he'd ever be able to be near the smell of blood again with out somewhat loosing his mind. It just—the memories that it triggered—Clark wasn't sure he could handle them, at least not yet.
"She—Lex, it's my fault," he said finally as Lex brought him through more rooms that he didn't bother to really look at. As long as they were further away from the smell, from the blood, from her, then it didn't really matter.
His face was instantly caught in a strong grip, and Clark thought that if he hadn't recently regained his powers then he might have been bruised from it. "It. Is. Not." Lex's voice was clear, but Clark thought something like steel was under it. The way he said it—it just left no room whatsoever for an argument. "It is not your fault that any of this happened. You didn't have a choice about who you'd be, what planet you'd be born on—any of that. All you ever tried to do was the right thing, and you've saved so many lives, Clark. When someone has power as great as yours, someone is always going to be affected negatively, even if it's only because you tried to do the right thing. Someone is always going to be greedy enough to want to exploit you; people will always have negative ambitions like Lana had; someone is always going to get hurt, if only because there's no way to save everyone."
"Then it would be better if I'd never been born—if I'd never come to earth," Clark replied softly. He had to really wonder if maybe that was true. Lex's grip dropped from his face to his shoulders, but something in his posture ordered Clark to continue paying attention. He thought he really should learn how Lex said things without actually saying them.
"That's not tru, and I think deep down you know that. Whenever you have to make big decisions people will die, whether the decision was right or not. Sometimes, like now, it's a catch 22 and people will die anyway. Look at President Truman and the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. If he didn't order it dropped the war wouldn't end and more people would die. If he dropped it people would die. Either way, someone was going to die. In the end, he just had to just do what he thought was right."
"I don't want that kind of responsibility. All I ever wanted was a normal life."
"But neither you nor I will ever have that. Longing over things you can't have only causes personal misery."
"It doesn't make sense, Lex. She broke up with me!" He was aware of just how plaintive his voice was, almost as if he were begging Lex to explain it to him. Yet, he knew he wouldn't get an explanation when the only person who had them was dead.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," Lex replied softly as means of explanation. "She probably just didn't know what she wanted at the time."
Clark pushed himself up to his feet, suddenly feeling the overwhelming urge to get out of Lana's house. He needed to sleep for something like fifty years, maybe. He just hoped he didn't dream.
"Alright, let's go," Lex suggested, reading Clark easily as he guided him from the place where they'd randomly sat down when Clark had disembarked on his guilt trip.
Clark was more than happy to leave the room and the mansion. For all of Lana's newly gained wealth, she hadn't been able to make the mansion at all homey. Maybe that was just because she'd never lived in a place that big before, or maybe it was because it was her lover's mansion and not her own. Clark didn't know, and he found he didn't much care. He was suddenly just too tired to think.
