Part 4

Isobel Lang-Luthor

Lana stared at the open file a little hesitant. It had so many pictures, so many handwritten notes and postits that she was afraid to touch anything in case something might be misplaced within the file. The first pictures – Chloe had carefully organized everything by date – were of Lana after she had come to from her coma or whatever other state of utter unconsciousness she had slipped into. Some taken in Metropolis where Lex had been – as the notes stated – so kind as to give her shelter in an apartment of her own. Her clothes weren't very different from what Lana herself would have chosen to wear. Isobel had probably learnt from past mistakes. Revealing herself wouldn't have brought her any advantages except an early exorcism. She couldn't believe no one had noticed she had changed. Her aunt, Chloe, Lois…anyone. Lex especially should have known given they had apparently spent the last two years together. A nagging question made Lana uneasy: what if Lex had known? After the incident the previous night she was beginning to suspect Lex was very much aware that his wife's spirit hadn't been the right one occupying the body.

She came across the cover of Bride magazine showing her in – she had to admit – the most beautiful wedding dress she had ever set her eyes on. She didn't want to know how much it had cost. It was probably some sort of one-of-a-kind. In the article attached to the cover, Lana – Isobel – spoke of the joy of marrying Lex Luthor and her sudden change in feelings toward him.

"Well, Lex and I have known each other for years. My aunt's been a family friend of the Luthors for a long time so it was only natural I would come to know Lex. To tell you the truth, I haven't thought of him or haven't dared to think of him as more than a friend for some time because of the age difference, but after Smallville was destroyed – by his concern and how much he took care of me afterwards I could really tell there was something more in his affections for me. So I dared to believe. And here I am today," Lana read out loud as if hearing it would diminish the strangeness of it all.

"What a load of crap, huh?" Chloe asked.

"What, the part with him taking caring me?" Lana asked her.

"Oh, no, that part's true," she shook her head. "I was talking about the whole soap-operish feel."

"He took care of me?" she asked again, raising her eyebrows slightly.

"Yeah, well, there wasn't really anyone else that could provide the services a Luthor could. And your condition was weird. Never heard of and all that," Chloe explained. "It wasn't an actual coma…it was more like you were sleeping, but you couldn't wake up. That's how some of the doctors put it. Lex never bought it though and he just kept bringing more and more doctors in," she recalled and then, staring at the cover of Bride magazine, she added, musing: "And the way he spent hours on end in your room, talking to you…That was the first time I realized Lex had a thing for you. Though it should've been obvious from before. I just never put two and two together," she chuckled. "I'm really starting to believe I turned out to be a two-bit reporter."

"No, you're a great reporter," Lana hurried to assure her. "You were just too preoccupied with other problems to have time to analyze your closest friends."

"And where did that get me? Up the wrong creek with a broken paddle," Chloe put away the cover of Bride magazine. "I always wanted to ask you, but, for obvious reasons, I haven't been able to ask you in the last two years…"

"Shoot," Lana said as she put away some articles similar to the one in Bride magazine in which her upcoming wedding with Lex was commented on. Some magazines had pictures with the two of them, not just her.

"Did you know about Lex before the meteor shower? About his feelings I mean," Chloe asked.

"I suppose I did. I tried hard to make myself believe it was just friendship on his side, but when that incident when he was split in half took place, it was the first time I realized how much I was deluding myself. I never told him about it. I thought…I don't know what I thought. That he'd get over it or something like that," Lana admitted.

"So you knew," Chloe said pensively. "Which means Isobel knew. Of course by the time you woke up, it was hard for anyone not to know…"

"Were you telling the truth when you said you don't know where Clark is?" Lana asked suddenly remembering their previous conversation.

"Yeah, he disappeared. He'd done it before, so at first I thought it was just another world famous Clark-Kent summer vanishing act and I was right. He came back for you. He was in your room for 2 minutes and you were awake. Then he was gone again. And that time it was for good. No one's seen him since. Anywhere. And I've been reading the entire world press like a maniac hoping I'd come across something so Clark I'd know it's him, like young man saves the day, rescues girl and then just disappears," she said smiling.

"And didn't I – Isobel – say anything?" she asked frustrated.

"You said he had to go. I couldn't get another word out of you. And then everyone kept telling me to stop it with the questions cause it was too painful for you so I stopped," she shrugged.

"Do you think Isobel might have harmed him? I know she didn't particularly like him," Lana recalled.

"I don't know. I've tried my best, but I'm either missing an important part of the puzzle or Clark's disappeared all by his own," she replied as Lana came across the wedding pictures and stared at them baffled.

Set in an exotic setting – what had it been? Bahamas? – it looked like a dream. Sandy beaches, sun setting in the background, flowers, everyone she ever knew, that beautiful wedding dress, she – smiling widely, with Lex's hand around her waist in a protective manner, he – tall, tastefully dressed and, if possible, looking like he was actually, genuinely, the happiest man alive. Would he have been so happy if he had known she was Isobel and not Lana?

"What happened to us?" she muttered as she stared at the picture intently. Chloe gave her a confused look. She hadn't heard her question the first time so Lana cleared her throat and then asked again: "What happened to us? To me and Lex?"

"His name was Sergio Precarrio," Chloe said pulling out a picture from the file. "You…uhm, Isobel and Lex met him while they were in Paris, about 5 or 6 months after they got married. He's what you'd call the Italian version of Lex. Rich, cocky, speed junky and not a particularly nice person. Add a little slickness and good ol' Italian charm to it and you'll understand why Isobel got hooked on him. Lex and Sergio got along brilliantly until Lex just happened to find out he was sleeping with his wife…"

"Did he, uhm, do something? To this Sergio or Isobel?" Lana asked looking at the handsome man smiling up at her from the picture.

"Let's just say Sergio had an unfortunate accident and is no longer among us," Chloe said, neglecting to tell her exactly how Sergio had been killed or the fact his head had been delivered to Isobel afterward and that that was how she had realized Lex knew about her little escapade. "As for Isobel…I don't exactly know what went down, but she covered her neck an awful long time afterward. There were rumors about the reasons for it, but nothing ever got confirmed so only the tabloids picked them up."

"And that's what started this whole thing?" she asked looking back at the stack of tabloids she had gathered, each one reporting her and Lex's affairs.

"Yeah, it's been pretty ugly ever since. Lex got pissed and slept with…uhm, some woman and then Isobel got pissed cause it was all over the papers and that's how you ended up here," Chloe explained.

"That's what kind of marriage we…they had?" Lana asked looking back at the wedding pictures.

"Not quite," she sighed. "I'll give you the short version. You and Lex fight, you continuously mock him, he takes it like a man until it's too much and he bursts into a tantrum of rage, then he begs for your forgiveness, you give in, you have some sort of wild sex thing, the next day you're on a plane to some exotic location. A week later, you're both back in Metropolis, cheating on each other like nothing happened." Lana didn't say anything, but continued to stare at the wedding pictures lost in thoughts.

In another part of Metropolis, still in his office, Lex was sitting in the darkness, staring out at the city before him. She hadn't left the city. His security people had checked every airport, every ticket that had been bought, every seat occupied in every plane that had headed out of Metropolis in the previous 5 days. She was somewhere in Metropolis. But where? He had had a very awkward and embarrassing conversation with Quentin Terrane that morning that Lana would have to pay for when she returned. At least now he was sure she wasn't hiding out with him or planning on leaving with him. Quentin hadn't seen Lana since the 'wonderful night she was his' as Quentin had put it. Florence was clueless and he had yelled at her for her incompetence. He had to remember to buy her flowers in the morning. His lawyers had suggested he calm down before people started suing him left and right for whatever mistakes his anger and frustration were letting him make. A shy knock on the door snapped him out of his thoughts.

"Come in," he said and his secretary entered the office.

"Mister Luthor?" she asked squinting her eyes in the darkness.

"Yes, I'm here," he answered her rubbing his face tiredly. "What is it?"

"A package just arrived for you. It's labeled as urgent so I thought…," she said nervously.

"Leave it on the desk," he told her and returned to staring out the windows. The secretary left the envelope on his desk and quickly made her way out of the office. She didn't like being alone with him. Especially at night.

Lex didn't pay much attention to the envelope. He got a lot of urgent packages. Papers that needed to be signed yesterday, compromising pictures, people trying to blackmail him…So for a while he didn't open it, lost in his thoughts as he was. Then it suddenly dawned on him: the envelopes from the detectives watching Lana were labeled as urgent sometimes too. Quickly turning the lights on, he ripped the envelope open. Inside it he found a strange glass cube. If anyone else would've been thrown back or confused by it, Lex knew exactly what it was: a prototype for a new type of communication device based on holograms. Lana had been wild about them and Lang Pharmaceuticals had even become one of the project's main investors because of it. He pressed his finger on one side of the cube and a metallic voice said:

"Fingerprint recognition complete. Message for Alexander Luthor," and a translucent fan of light erupted from the cube before Lana's shimmering form appeared on it.

"If you're seeing this then it means I've been gone for 72 hours straight without you having the slightest clue as to where I am. If you're hoping this message will give you any hints as to where I might be, I'm sorry to disappoint you, I have no fuking clue where I am," Lana said smiling and then added: "If you're seeing this message although I haven't been missing, then woops, the couriers have screwed everything up and I'm probably going to be very mad about it. Anyway, since – hopefully - I'm gone, I thought you should know just what the hell I've been up to these last two years. You're entitled to know I suppose given you're my husband after all, Alexander."

Back at Lana's apartment, Chloe was laying out the articles concerning Lang Pharmaceuticals, most of which she herself was responsible for given no one else had dared touch such a delicate subject or risk angering the Luthors.

"Lang Pharmaceuticals was born about 2 months after you married Lex. The two factories plus the research labs were initially owned by a company highly indebted to Luthorcorp that Lex managed to take over. He gave you the company as a present. You changed the name to Lang Pharmaceuticals and invested a lot of money in the research facilities. 3 months later you tested an experimental drug for allergies on a few hundred subjects with some ghastly results. About 20 subjects died and it only worked like it was suppose to on 10 of them. A report concerning the tests was leaked to the press and you gave a public statement in which you swore the drug was tested prematurely against your will, that it would never reach the market in that form and that it would be perfected in the research labs. Problem was the research labs were already working on something else. Five months later, Lang Pharmaceuticals launched its anti-allergy pills without any modifications being added to its initial formula. I think you can guess yourself what happened."

"My god," Lana let out shocked.

"And that was just one of five drugs Lang Pharmaceuticals launched in its short life. The others included some highly addictive antidepressives, an unlikely replacement for insulin for diabetes and some brain damaging sleeping pills. Of course I could only get concrete material on the allergy pill thing. And even that was hard," she mused. "And now Lex…," she sighed. "He said the whole trial's been taken care of so Lang Pharmaceuticals' going to come out clean. I don't understand how he could've accepted all this so easily. I mean doesn't he care at all that people are dying out there because his wife's decided to play pharmacist? Cause that's what she's been doing: playing. She never thought about seriously making an effective drug. She just…," she shook her head: "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get so worked up. It's just…I've fought very hard to get this trial going and now to have it crushed by Lex just snapping his fingers…it just doesn't seem fair."

"Maybe he'll take the drugs off the market after the trial. I don't think he'd let something like this go on much longer even if it's simply to protect his reputation," Lana said.

"Did he say anything in that direction?" Chloe asked hopeful. "Do you remember him saying that?"

"Well, I've only talked to him twice since…uhm, since I came to, but both encounters were sort of, private?" she couldn't find a word that would better fit what she was trying to say.

"Of course you didn't. I keep forgetting who I'm talking to," she muttered more to herself. Then the meaning of her words sinking in, she asked: "Did you sleep with him?"

"No," she shook her head, but couldn't keep her face from becoming red.

"Lana Luthor, blushing, no there's something I never thought I'd see," Chloe said with a smirk. "But let me guess, he tried to sleep with you," she added and she nodded. "He's so predictable. When I saw him leaving the benefit I knew he was going straight to you."

"You were at the benefit?" Lana asked frowning.

"Yeah, the press always gets invited to these things and since I know Lex I always get shipped off to Luthorcorp related parties. Like I could, I don't know, get an exclusive out of him because we knew each other in another life and he still says hello to me on the street," Chloe scoffed.

"Did he have a bad time?" she asked.

"Horrible. He's always miserable when you're not around," she said. "And I'll tell you a secret. I think he's sleeping with all these women just so people won't start pitying him or thinking he's a chump for letting his wife sleep around while he's being fateful."

End Part 4