Lex Luthor did not get good nights' sleep - it was the way of things, and always had been. He had never been safe in his own home, even when his father, the man who was supposed to be every boy's protector, was still alive. It was natural to him to sleep with one eye open. So, when he woke in the morning, still on the sofa in the den, covered by a blanket, he found it unsettling that he felt...

...rested.

He had slept, and woken without the haze of the sleeping pills he had recently grown fond of. The white noise, the buzzing, the constant droning on of activity that had become baseline for him had, for the moment, quieted to an unusual lull. A pleasant hum. He sat up, and his brow furrowed until he realized that one part of his very strange dreams from the previous evening weren't a dream after all. Claire had been by, but by the looks of things, had left at some point while he slept. But the point was that he had slept. Sleep - good sleep, anyway - was a luxury which he had never been afforded because it was never safe. The possibility that the presence of an admittedly scrawny young woman with no physical strength or advantage and nothing to aid her except razor-wit made him feel any safer was presposterous, he reminded himself as he got to his feet, prepared to leave the den. He'd haphazardly folded the blanket and cast it over the back of the sofa when he heard the sound of a clang and a voice in another room.

"Piece of shit!"

And now, another sense awoke - Lex smelled food coming from the kitchen and made his way down the hall, smoothing a hand over his head, which had grown out a small sheet of stubble after having gone unmaintained for a few days now. He made his way to the kitchen and found that Claire had not left after all, but was instead looking slightly tired and unkempt, frowning down at her hand before raising it to her mouth and gently sucking on the side, wincing.

Never mind the fact that for a moment, Lex was visually fixated on her mouth, pressed to the side of her hand. Never mind.

"I didn't think I'd need to child-proof my kitchen just to keep my nurse from getting injured," Lex chirped with a smirk, walking over and swiping up some food by hand - he'd gone straight for the stack of pancakes that were cooked and waiting on the counter, while Claire continued glaring at him. "Pans are - they're usually hot after you cook with them, it's fascinating. I guess they don't teach that in nursing school."

"I'm surprised you know that, considering you've never cooked a meal in your life," Claire said, fighting back a sneer of annoyance as she walked over to the sink, running cold water over the small spot on the side of her hand that had brushed the side of the hot pan she'd just finished cooking with. Lex, unfazed, took a seat at the kitchen counter and rolled the pancake up by hand, taking a bite from it as he leaned across the counter.

"So old-timey, Leave it to Beaver-ish," he said with a chortle between bites. "A beautiful woman in the kitchen making me breakfast - all that's missing is a newspaper and some slippers. I don't suppose you could make that happen, could you?"

Claire glanced back over her shoulder with a raised eyebrow as she turned off the running water and found that she couldn't tell whether Lex was kidding or not. With a roll of her eyes, she walked across to the coffee table and picked up a newspaper, opening it up to one page in particular and placing the day's edition of the Daily Planet on the counter in front of Lex, her expression now considerably soured as she tapped her finger impatiently on a photo on the page. Lex glance down and smirked at the site of himself and Claire seated at the table at La Parisienne, laughing and looking considerably cozy with one another from the particular angle at which it had been taken. "Since you bring up newspapers," she said shortly.

"That is an excellent photo of you - nice sneak peek at those legs under the table," Lex smirked, picking up the paper and holding it closer to his face to scrutinize the black-and-white photo more thoroughly. "You," he said finally, gently folding it and pointing it in Claire's direction, "are a natural at this. Never would've expected it under, you know, all of that." Lex now used the folded up paper as a pointer, making a vague gesture around Claire, who was still dressed in scrubs and had her hair pulled back messily, since she hadn't yet taken the time to change. "Maybe a little bit more of a pout next time. Little more leg -"

"Next time!" Claire said with a scoff, snatching the paper from Lex's hand and casting it aside before walking back around the counter to pour herself a mug of coffee.

Truth be told, Lex couldn't wrap his head around what Claire thought she was doing. She was, very likely, completely out of her mind. Just yesterday, she had been moments away from resigning, and Lex wasn't oblivious enough not to be able to pick up on it. He'd expected it, really. Even perhaps been angling for it. After all, it was best to weed out the ones who could not be trusted early. And now, instead, she had stayed when she didn't need to, just for the sake of taking care of him - not for the sake of ingratiating herself to him, clearly. His expression quickly shifted, and he felt the same old familiar hum of activity in his head again as he began to question what was happening.

"Where did you learn all of this? Last night. This morning," he said with a few frenetic gestures of his hands, and like clockwork, the sudden shift in tone caused Claire to turn towards him with that look again. Every time this happened, Lex began to process, she always gave him that look, as though she was concerned or something, which he knew to be false. People weren't concerned for others just for the sake of being concerned. That was not the way people were. "They don't teach it in nursing school," he said with a snide irk of his eyebrows, "and I'm certain that your gem of a mother didn't teach it to you."

And then, it was as though a switch had flipped off - Claire's forehead wrinkled, and her entire face seemed to melt into a mix between a glare and a frown. Lex's eyebrows jumped and he got to his feet, holding up his hands defensively. "Sorry! Sorry," he said with a falsely nervous chuckle. "Was that still supposed to be a secret, Claire? Because I told you before, I do my homework on people."

"I don't know what you -"

"It's a fascinating story. You should tell it more often," Lex said as he realized that he had finally, finally succeeded in touching a nerve. He'd made a dent in her armor, and now found that he couldn't help himself in continuing to chip away at it. Even after last night, after the loyalty she had shown him, this tiny thread he had exposed was one he couldn't help but tug at to see if he could make it unravel. "Loving father gets put in prison for a crime he didn't commit, because he blew the whistle on some bad, bad people - and poor Claire and Mother Dearest are left to fend for themselves in the big city until, Eureka! Daddy is exonerated and they can be a happy little family again."

"You don't know what you're -"

"But wait! By now, poor little Claire is all grown up and accustomed to being Daddyless, going to school in a new city, happy to be out from under Mommy's thumb. Didn't even know daddy was home. And while little Claire is away, Mommy decides she can't hang around waiting for her deadbeat ex-con of a husband to get a job -"

"Stop it..."

"So she ups and leaves town, and in his despair, poor Daddy put himself on the right side of a pistol and -"

"I said stop!"

Claire's voice had suddenly grown into a shrill scream, and she slammed her coffee mug down on the counter to reveal that her arms were shaking in fury at the affront to her privacy, as though by taking her story from her, Lex Luthor had actually stolen something from her. And then, he caught a glance of her eyes and the way they glinted from the light of the sun streaming through the window.

She wasn't supposed to cry. Crying was another thing entirely. Lex had merely hoped that he would make her snap, that she would be so angry at him that she would prove him right and walk away, as figures of good always did when their investment became too costly - that was not what this was. She was, on the contrary, becoming more invested. One didn't show weakness that way if they were not.

"Don't you get it? You're supposed to be... clever," Lex said, walking around to counter so that he was standing in front of her, almost hovering over her while she continued to shake in fury. "This is what made you. That's where all of it comes from. It's your Jabberwocky - your unslayable beast. You couldn't have more time with dear old daddy," he scoffed, lilting over the last word with ironic relish. "You didn't know what he was going through and you couldn't save him, so you want to try to save everyone else in hopes that your guilty, guilty conscience will eventually become as pure as the untrodden snow. You're so very simple to read, Claire. Clever mind, but simple, simple heart."

"That isn't any of your business," Claire said through gritted teeth. "You have no business -"

"I have no business? On the contrary, fair mademoiselle, I have business. I have a very, very big business," Lex interrupted with a smirk. "And you, my dear, are now a part of it."

Claire's breathing grew heavier, her chest gently heaved and her hands were still balled at her sides. Lex, seeing that he was pushing her buttons and again feeling unable to keep from continuing for the feeling of power that it instilled in him, he leaned closer to her face to make sure she could see his smirk. Lex Luthor needed her to know that he was in a position to taunt her.

And if the point was to finally break her, it appeared that he succeeded.

"That's enough," Claire said, breaking eye contact and placing a few steps of distance between herself and Lex, shaking her head. "I've had enough. I quit. There is a very thin line between being needed and being used, and since the moment I set foot in this house, you've picked up that line and twirled it the fuck around like some kind of deranged ribbon dancer," Claire said, jabbing her index finger onto Lex's chest before narrowing her eyes and repeating her decision. "I. Quit."

There it was - exactly what Lex had been aiming for. Proof to his theory that people simply could not just be good. Making her quit was the icing on the cake, because her concern for him was so unsettlingly genuine, and even that was something that could be broken because it was weak.

And yet, now that it was confirmed true in his mind, he found that it was entirely unsatisfying.

Claire rolled her eyes and scoffed in disgust before pushing past Lex out of the kitchen, prepared to walk out of Luthor Mansion and never look back, even if it meant drawing the ire of Gotham's resident vigilante. It simply wasn't worth it anymore. Lex, however, was not satisfied by this turn of events and in a few strides had caught up with Claire in the hallway, catching her by the crook of the arm and, rather than pulling, stopping in his tracks and forcing her to stop as well, stumbling back towards him with a livid, disbelieving expression.

"Yesterday wasn't enough to make you quit, and this was?" Lex asked with a brow-furrowing, disbelieving chuckle. "A shifty, fickle object is woman, always. You are a conundrum, Claire."

"Yeah. Thank you."

"You're not quitting."

The statement was spoken with such confidence, such finality, and no sense of asking or worry whatsoever. Claire's eyebrows rose and she blinked a few times as though waiting for the punchline of a joke, only to find that it didn't come.

"Wow," she said with a humorless dry cough of a laugh, shaking her head and yanking her arm out of Lex's grasp. "Wow."

She turned on her heel again to leave, with the front door in her direct line of sight - but froze when Lex barked out her name with such authority, such fury that she turned around to stare in a mix of both confusion and fear and... there is was again. Concern. Lex's lip curled into a slight sneer as he plodded the few steps to close the space between them, placing a hand on each of her shoulders with a firm grip and planting himself directly in front of her with a deep, probing expression.

"If you were planning on leaving, you would have done it after last night and you didn't," he said, his voice still practically a growl as though her concern now legitimately angered him. "Your job is not to look at me with that look in your eyes. That is not your job, Claire. It is no one's job. It is their job to do as I say. It is no one's job to... to..."

To care about you, Claire supplied silently through only the look in her eyes - that look that Lex found so unsettling because it was something he had never been on the receiving end of. He had never been destined for genuine caring or adulation. The grip of his hands on her shoulders grew tighter and began shaking slightly, and the color seemed to drain from his face as he studied her with great confusion and frustration. Claire reached up and clasped her hands over his, removing them from her shoulders with a gentle squeeze and lowering them to his sides.

It perturbed him, Lex realized, that something about this woman had a way of disarming him. The fact of the matter was that by training or witchcraft or anything else, something in her character remained unaffected by his most powerful weapons, the wit and the barbs which he had developed out of necessity. And having her walk out of Luthor Mansion meant the risk of a weapon falling into the wrong hands. It meant that knowledge of his weakness went wherever she went.

"I... need you," he said with a plaintive shake of his head, now calm again as he made a gesture almost of surrender that, to his internal joy, seemed to catch Claire off her guard enough to now disarm her of her anger from moments earlier. "I have a legacy to rebuild, and I need you."

That was it, Lex realized as he almost could see the shift in her eyes. That was the key - her need to be needed, to save someone. And Lex could allow himself to believe now that to some extent, these things could be out of inherent goodness because she was...

...frail. Powerless. Delicate. Because is she were anything but these things, if she did have power, then it was his long-held, loudly spoken belief that she could not be good. But she was, and she was on his side. Now, though he was not willing to explore the reasons why he felt this way, it would behoove him to keep her here.

He felt his body tense when she sighed and started to turn back to the door, but seeing his sudden shift, she held up her hand - and he cringed inwardly at the fact that somehow, the small gesture had caused him to heel like a domesticated animal.

"I'll be back tonight," she said, raising her eyebrows gently. "I have things to do."

"You have a shift at the clinic in Gotham. You don't need to be secretive about it," he said, tilting his head to one side. "I told you -"

"I know," Claire interrupted in slight exasperation. "You do your homework."

And Lex smirked to himself slightly now as she walked out the door. She would be back, he was more than reasonably certain. He deserved a worthy ally. He deserved her. All other things were futile - even rebuilding his reputation was, in his mind, some level of folly that was for his own amusement. After all, he and only he knew what was coming - Lex certainly had not forgotten the things he had learned on the Kryptonian vessel. Things were not happening as soon or as quickly as expected, but they would happen.

He deserved decent amusement in the meantime, and Claire Branigan was by far the most amusing person he had encountered in a good while. That was all, he reminded himself. She was an amusing plaything.

A/N

Again and again and again - I'm so overwhelmed by how kind you all are in your feedback reviews and messages. You make it such a pleasure to update, even when it's hard to write with my crazy schedule. I especially want to reach out to KT (Guest) for leaving such a meaningful, heartfelt review. I'm so, so glad that you feel like I did justice to your experiences, and I will work hard to continue to treat the topic with the utmost respect.

Of course, thank you to all of you! I hope to keep delivering good material. I know that it's been very Lex/Claire centric for the past few updates, but we will expand the scope a little more in the very near future. Until next time, cheers!