"His name was Lubrano," Claire explained with her arms crossed tightly over herself as she managed this time to look the Bat in the eye when he appeared in her apartment - in characteristic Batman fashion, wind whistling through the open window, lurking in the corner as she walked through the door. Her exposure to men in capes was limited, but she had always expected that their entrances would be a little more valiant, a little less kidnapper-creeper. Things, it turned out, could never be counted on to turn out as you expected them to. Perhaps it had been the events of the day, and her intense exasperation with Lex Luthor at this very moment after having been used as a publicity stunt, but her protectiveness of him appeared to have, for the moment, waned. "Tan, had an accent, sounded like he was responsible for delivering something. Something about a shipment of antiques. That's all I know."

"And you said you've seen this man talking with Luthor before?"

"Once," Claire supplied, rolling her shoulders tiredly and walking over to pour herself a glass of water. She reflexively pulled another glass from the cupboard and poured water into it, before looking back at Batman with an arched eyebrow. "Probably useless to offer you a drink while you've got that thing on, huh?"

"When did you see him the first time?"

"I drove by the mansion on my way home from Gotham once," Claire supplied, bringing her own glass back over and resuming her stance in front of the Bat, taking a swig from her glass to wet her throat. All business, she thought with a brief click of her tongue that he seeimgnly ignored. By now, he had learned her tricks - that she reverted to snark and humor when she was nervous, or stalling. "He said Lubrano was his favorite antiques dealer."

"What kind of antiques?"

"I don't know, old ones?" Claire asked, her brow furrowing at the expectation that she was supposed to be good at spying. Claire made no pretense of being dumb by any means, but there were things she wasn't knowledgeable about - crime, antiques, and vigilantism were certainly among them. "Listen, I don't have anything else for you. If you wanted a professional -"

"You're doing more than enough, Miss Branigan," he interrupted. "There's just very little I can do without more information. That's why I've brought something that should help us get what we need." He tapped a spot on his utility belt which caused a small compartment to open, and he pulled out a small object the size of a button with a miniscule flashing light. "Your phone, Miss Branigan."

"You're sending me into Luthor Mansion bugged now?" Claire asked, suddenly bristling and taking a reflexive step backward. Reporting back was one thing - showing up bugged to the home of someone who exhibited any level of trust in her was another entirely. "Are you trying to get me murdered?"

Her expression quickly shifted into a frown - the concern for her own safety if she was ever found out was one thing - her conscience was entirely another. As intolerable as Lex Luthor could be, there were things said in confidence - and as a nurse, which she had not yet forgotten she was, this tried her sense of morality But this was an order from the Bat, the person who had orchestrated this situation to begin with. She could agree now, she could deal with her conscience later. Hesitantly, she reached for the back pocket of the scrubs pants she had changed back into, but as she patted around all of the multiple pockets, her stomach sank.

Her phone wasn't there.

"My phone's back at the mansion," Claire spoke up with a shrug, masking the fact that among the things she felt at the moment, one of the most prominent ones was definitely relief - a free pass. "I need to go back and get it."

"The next time you see me, then," he said sternly, tucking the small device away. "But we need this done as quickly as possible, Miss Branigan. You are a vital part of this."

"Gotcha."

Claire didn't dare mention how much she would have appreciated knowing what exactly she was a vital part of.

Lex had not felt confident that his hold on Claire remained as strong as it should, based on the terms upon which she departed. He had half-expected her to resign when they arrived back at the mansion away from prying eyes, but she hadn't. She had ridden out the remainder of a full shift, speaking as little as possible, and left.

He had decided to stay in the study for a few drinks to help himself sleep this evening, still perturbed by this unacceptable loss of control in his situation. The outing wasn't meant to go this way. If she had just stayed in the seat like she was supposed to, if she hadn't put her nose where it did not belong, there would have been no issue - but there was. There was most certainly an issue that would at some point need to be addressed, but not now. Right now, all that needed to be addressed was the full scotchglass in front of him, which he gladly downed. After two more overfilled glasses, which spilled a bit after his strangely shaky hands tipped it too far over, he finally felt the familiar sensation of sleep settling on him.

But one of the things he hated about sleep was dreaming...

"Now, Mister Luthor," a man in a white coat and thick-rimmed glasses, leaning towards Lex - he felt paralyzed, but knew he wasn't. He looked down and saw his arms strapped to the wooden armrests of the chair. He struggled and found that it felt just like it had when he'd been there - in Arkham. Again, he was trapped and powerless at the hands of men who were meant to have been helping him. Lex Luthor was no longer a boy who wanted or needed help - and yet, here he was. "I'm looking forward to speaking with you again..."

"Get your hands off me!" Lex attempted to roar, only to have his voice catch in his throat while the doctor yanked up the sleeve of Lex's loose, institution-issued shirt, poised to sink a syringe into his arm. "Get off me!"

A sudden shift, a tugging sensation behind his navel as he felt that he had been yanked out of one scene and into another, also retrieved from the deepest recesses of his memory. He was in the general sleeping area for the lower acuity patients, where he had been thrown in with the others like a common criminal - a run of the mill unatic. This place - this was the reason why he didn't sleep anymore. This was the place where so many of the nightmares had started.

It was dark, almost pitch black except for a few slivers of moonlight peering in through the barred window, and practically silent until a sound seemed to bleed into the room, filling it through the vents and the grates - laughter. Someone here in this place was laughing. The thought of laughter - especially enthused, shrill, loud laughter like this - was unthinkable in a place like this. He sat bolt upright in his bed, swinging his legs over the side, and it was like he could still feel the cold tile floor underneath his feet. His head whipped around as though he could somehow find the source of the voice.

A second, more muted laugh came from the bed next to him, and Lex squinted against the darkness, glaring suspiciously at the person who stared pointedly at him.

"You're new here, aren't you?" the other, older, scraggly man chortled before getting to his feet and hovering right in front of Lex's face. "You don't know about him? The Joker?"

"The Joker?" Lex asked with a sneer on his face, attempting a guise of fearlessness in spite of this being an outright lie. "Sounds like -"

"The Bat got him put away years ago. Been in solitary ever since - we hear him every night. Laughin'," the man said hoarsely, not backing off a centimeter from Lex. "He's a relic, maybe. From the golden days of the Gotham Underworld. But he's here. He's real."

"I don't care," Lex sneered. "If he's here, he's no one. He's no one just like all of you in here. You're scum. You," he continued with a forced, high-pitched laugh, "are the dregs of society that society forgot -"

"You're here too, bigshot," the man hissed. "And Arkham breaks everyone eventually. You just haven't gotten a proper Arkham welcome."

And from his peripheral vision. Lex saw that more figures around him were moving in the darkness, all around him. They were coming towards him, stalking slowly and quietly as the man who spoke with him leaned in as close as evenly possible, his mouth curling into a toothy, sadistic grin. "It's time to change that."

And suddenly, Lex found himself being yanked by the front of his shirt and shoved onto the floor, with kicks and punches raining down on his back and abdomen as he left out a pained groan. It was too familiar, too reminiscent of a life he thought he'd escaped. He was no longer a boy. He was a man. He didn't cower in fear this way anymore - he was Lex Luthor now. He was the only remaining Lex Luthor.

But no. Here, he was just the broken boy he had been before at the hands of his father. Here, he was just weak, pathetic Alexander. "Stop!" he squelched, attempting futilely to hide himself from the blows. "Stop!"

Claire heard the sound of a scream immediately upon turning her key to Luthor Mansion - she had intended only to come back and collect her phone, but reflexively, she darted towards the source of the sound. She quickly reached the study and quickly took in the scene - a fallen glass and bottle of scotch on the floor at the feet of the large, plush armchair where Lex Luthor had fallen asleep and was now writhing, screaming in his sleep.

"Stop!" he growled through gritted teeth. "Get your hands off of me!" Claire rushed forward and knelt next to the chair, attempting to get a hold of his flailing arms and not succeeding. "Don't touch me -"

"Lex," Claire said, her voice clear as she reached out, grabbing a hold of his upper arms just firmly enough to stop his arms from swinging. She would have let him simply ride it out, were it not for the fact that he very well could have hurt himself with his swinging and flailing. "Lex, listen to me - wake up. You're home."

At the sound of the word home, Lex's eyes shot open and he visibly flinched at the fact that Claire's face, again in that same expression of concern and dutiful nurturing, was the first thing he saw. But everything still bled together in his mind, unclear whether what he was seeing and hearing was in the waking world or in his dreams. It made no sense for her to be here to wake him. He'd had nightmares as a boy - nothing like these, nothing like the terrors that had come to roost in his mind since the Penitentiary, since Arkham - and no one had ever woken him. No one had ever saved him.

"He's - he's always laughing," he said, desperately reaching out for something, anything, and unconsciously resting his hands on either side of Claire's face as though unsure if she was a figment of his imagination. His eyes focused intently on her face as though it would disappear as part of the dream - he rushed and stumbled over his words. "I can't go back there, Claire - I can't let them take me back there -"

"Hey - come on, just -"

"Don't-" he said with narrowed eyes filled with panic, his hands growing stiff and grasping, "- let them take me back there."

"You're not going anywhere, Lex," Claire interrupted, now placing her hands over his on either side of her face, removing them and doing what she always seemed to be able to - grasping them and halting their fidgeting and flailing, instead holding them still in his lap while he stared at her in something akin to confusion. "Look at me," she said once she saw his gaze start to flick around as though he was looking for someone, as though afraid of someone. "You're not going anywhere."

"Why are you here?" Lex asked, his expression blank and piercing, perhaps not even sure if she too was not a figment of a nightmare that would lash out and do him harm. "You were gone."

"I left my phone in the guest suite, so I came back," she said honestly. "I heard screaming coming from in here."

"And you came. You knew it was me and you came. Why?" he asked, his brow furrowing. "It was perfectly clear when you left that you were completely disgusted with me."

"Because," Claire said simply, "I'm not supposed to let anything happen to you." Claire assumed that this answer would be sufficient, but instead, Lex's expression grew more suspicious, more perplexed at the fact that her response was so simple. She paused and shifted so that she was almost kneeling, positioned more comfortably next to the chair. "You were dreaming, weren't you? About Arkham?"

And Lex didn't not need to answer with words - his expression, pale, sickly, and full of barely concealed terror just at the mention of the place, said enough. Claire felt her heart sink. Batman was the one behind putting him there, and when she was angry at Lex Luthor, perhaps it was easy enough to say that it was justified - that he was manipulative and evil and belonged with his own kind. But face-to-face, when he was like this in front of her, Claire felt something very different. His actions, his treatment and exploitation of her, all of these things were something that Claire found reprehensible. Repugnant. But none of it was justification for being subject to such lasting terror.

Without thinking as she glanced over Lex's face and noted his rapid breaths, the perspiration on his brow, she reached out and gently swiped a hand over his cheek - the motion made Lex freeze, his face contorting into a confused frown as he got abruptly to his feet, removing his hands from Claire's hold and beginning to pace back and forth across the floor.

This was wrong, he thought to himself as he walked the same steps, back and forth, over and over, raising a balled fist up to cover his mouth as he shook his head. This was wrong. He wasn't meant to be seen this way, and now it was too late. He had shown weakness, and he knew the way people responded to being shown weakness. People were all the same, and Claire was no exception. Now, he had given her something to use against him. He had given her a foothold, and now, when she'd made herself his only ally, she was in every position to walk away.

"I'm going to stay here," Claire spoke up finally, causing his to stop in his tracks and face her as she stood up and walked over to the larger sofa, sitting on it and continuing to look at Lex with the same calm expression. Her calm was unsettling to him because it wasn't like his calm. There was a peacefulness to her demeanor that he could not grasp - a clarity to her that he could not relate to. Sighing gently at his expression, Claire stood up and gently clasped her hands around one of his forearms, guiding him to sit on the sofa before sitting down next to him.

"You need to rest," she stated firmly. "And I'm not going anywhere. Alright?"

Perhaps his nightmares about Arkham had just left him completely spent, but Lex found no reason to fight back on the issue. He didn't look at her, because seeing that face left him with more questions than answers. He had very intentionally structured the previous day to test her with every confidence that she would leave, and she did not. She was still here. What this meant, Lex didn't yet want to extrapolate because the implications of such an extrapolation were too great. But she was here, and Lex had reasonable faith that if he were to in his dreams find himself in that place again, she would wake him.

He had reached the conclusion now that Claire Branigan could perhaps be trusted. Trusted minimally, perhaps, but trusted nonetheless. Quickly, out of sheer exhaustion, he found that he couldn't have helped falling back asleep if he tried to, and his eyes again drifted shut, his neck relaxing and his head tilting to one side. But this wasn't comfortable at all, his mind reminded him sleepily, and without a second thought, he kicked his feet up and adjusted himself so he was laying across the couch with his legs draped over Claire's lap. Faintly through his sleepy haze, he heard a small snort of laughter, and Claire let out a huff but did not force him to move.

"Sleep tight, Mister Luthor," she said with a light chuckle. He felt her move only slightly, and then the slight weight of the blanket falling over him, covering him as he again more peacefully succumbed to sleep.

A/N's

Per one request via message, a semi-sweet moment for you - this chapter took some working and reworking, as the "sweetness" is a little out of my element. Next chapter will pick up the morning after this incident and deal with a little bit of the aftermath for Lex and Claire. Also, I'm in the process of deciding the order of events in upcoming chapters, but the Justice League will also be growing by another member within a few updates.

I also learned relatively recently that in the movie, the prison guards monitoring Lex are in fact from Belle Reve and not Metropolis State Pen, so this story is technically AU now, but I'm going to set up a few events for the appearance of another familiar face, way down the line. I finally have a bit of a story arc planned out, at it's going to take a lot of setting up, so I hope you're in this for the long haul!

As always, thank you for all your reviews and support! I wish I could respond to each and every one of you, but between work and grad school, sometimes it doesn't work out. Just know that you guys put a huge smile on my face! Until next update, cheers!