"Resignation? I'm not sure I... know what you're... talking about..."

"The resignation letter Mister Luthor brought by for you last week?"

For a moment, the world seemed to stand still. A resignation letter. She didn't work for the agency anymore - she no longer worked as Lex Luthor's nurse. She was, on one hand, off the hook for whatever the trip to Central City had become. A small part of her felt a wave of relief at the prospect of it. But on the other hand...

Lex had brought in the letter. Last week, while he had been plotting away how to make her as unsettled as possible, taking her out to dinner, kissing her in the elevator, he had already had his ace up his sleeve. For a brief moment, she'd allowed herself to harbor a fleeting illusion of who Lex Luthor was - a fantastical thought that perhaps the person in Central City was the real Lex, and everything else was merely smoke and mirrors. But this shattered the bubble in an instant, and there was nothing she could do to restore it.

"Right," Claire said vaguely, cognizant of the fact that right now, there was little that could be done in the way of damage control - not when she couldn't even think straight. "Right - just have it mailed. Thank you."

Claire ended the call and put her phone down in the cupholder between herself and Lex, drawing in a few deep breaths and attempting to piece together in her mind what all of this was.

"I had to," Lex spoke up without waiting for the question to be asked. "I had to know. Your free will, Claire - He had of me all he could have; I made him just and right. Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall..."

Claire felt her skin prickle as she recognized the passage Lex was now reciting, from Paradise Lost. But even more unnerving was the fact that Lex only began to pick from his repository of passages stored in his photographic memory when his own words were failing him - when he was so sorely agitated that he could not longer form his own thoughts completely, so he resorted to bits and pieces from the many books he had read. For a fleeting moment, there was a flicker of compassion in Claire's eyes because she knew this was what Lex did when he was frantic, when he was pressured.

"Free will is what allows us to see what a man - or, well," he said with a nasal, forced laugh, "woman is truly made of. You're free now. Don't you see?" Lex asked, shaking his head incredulously. "You have the freedom to choose now. You don't work for them anymore. You don't work for me anymore. You can choose me now -"

"Choose? I don't get to choose anything!" Claire retorted, feeling her chest start to tighten in sheer panic as the gravity of the situation really began to dawn on her. It wasn't just a job she had walked away from. It wasn't just the agency she answered to, and it was only a matter of time before someone Claire feared much more than any nurse manager was going to find out. Could she go back? Was the damage already done? "I have never had a choice in any of this, and now -"

"And now you do," Lex insisted. "And I'm the one who gave it to you -"

"You've gotta be kidding me!" Claire said, running her quivering hands over her hair as her mind processed the many things that could happen to her. Maybe getting branded wouldn't be too bad, she thought to herself with misplaced sarcasm, in futile hope that it would somehow make her feel any better. Maybe it would look good with her tattoo. "You didn't give me any choice, Lex."

"Yes. I did," he said, his jaw clenching in exasperation at her obstinance. "I gave you -"

"Don't give me this shit, Lex," Claire said, her teeth equally gritted, her tone equally tense, and Lex felt himself stiffen in response to this side of her. He had never pushed her to her limits, and now he had finally found them. "I've put up with your mind games for months, and I've taken more than my share - but I'm drawing the line. I'm drawing the goddamn line, I'm done -"

"No. We are not done yet, Claire," he said in a near-hiss. "I've given you the chance of a lifetime You just don't see it, Claire, but I've given you the opportunity -"

"The opportunity to what? Are you trying to get me killed? I could lose everything because of this," Claire retorted shrilly, before she could stop the words from leaving her mouth - but upon saying it, she let out a small gasp in realization that as vague as it was, it was very incriminating. It was not something that would be said by someone not harboring a secret. Lex's grip on the steering wheel tightened as they continued down the interstate back from the airstrip.

"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice lowering in volume and his eyes planted ahead of them on the road. Claire's jaw clenched shut, and she flinched when he slammed his palm down on the dashboard. She realized quickly that she was not a good enough liar to save herself now. The dam had cracked, and the flood was coming. Briefly, she entertained the thought of silence - of saying nothing and hoping it would blow over - only to have those hopes quickly dashed. "I said, what do you mean?"

Claire felt herself squirming - a part of her, perhaps, had loosened her hold on her secret because she knew it would hurt him back, and now, it was possibly too late to take back what she had chosen to do out of anger. More than anger, however, was the fact that she was simply tired. She wasn't so much afraid or angry at this point as she was exhausted at having been made a pawn for so long by everyone around her. Perhaps some small part of this had been self-sabotage - self-destructive - because Claire had lost the stamina to keep playing the game.

"Who do you think is going to kill you, Claire?" Lex asked, still with deceptive calm and blankness in his voice - though Claire could tell also that he was slowly piecing things together and would no longer be able to stop. The house of cards was already falling and there was nothing to do except to watch it collapse - a fact that Claire was quickly resigning herself to. "Who are you so afraid of?"

"Lex, just listen to me, please -"

"Who is it, Claire?!"

"Batman," Claire choked out, clenching her eyes shut. "It's Batman."

Claire immediately saw the shudder of revulsion run through Lex the instant she said it, but he continued driving - sped up, almost to the point of recklessness, weaving between other cars on the road while Claire fearfully gripped the edges of her seat, clenching her eyes shut. Whether she had finally let go of the revelation out of fear or out of fatigue at having carried it so long, it was out now. It was irreversible. If moments ago, she thought she would be the one asking the questions, the tables had very quickly turned.

"He picked me up off the street when I was leaving work at the prison and said I would never work again if I didn't help him keep an eye on you," Claire said in a shrill, rapid voice. "So I did it -"

"Can he hear us right now?" Lex asked with his lip curling in a sneer, his hand shooting out for the phone that sit in the center console between them and casting it away over his shoulder so that it landed in the backseat. "Are you bugged, Claire?"

"No," she answered in a near whimper. "No, not yet -"

"Not yet - what do you mean not yet?" he interrupted. Claire felt the car take a sharp curve and she forced her eyes open to see that they were taking an exit that they weren't intended to take. They weren't going home. She felt her heart begin pounding and again jumped when Lex's voice hoarsely yelled, "I said, what does that mean, not yet?"

"That's why I haven't been able to go home," Claire said, unconsciously curling into the side of the seat away from Lex, for the first time feeling genuinely fearful of him the way she had been warned that she should. "The night when I came back for my phone, that was the last time I spoke to him - he was going to bug my phone but I never went back."

"What does he want?"

"He wanted to know what you were doing, he just wanted to watch you - I never agreed to do anything else," Claire said in an almost pleading voice. "He and that woman just wanted me to watch you and make sure you weren't ahead of them in whatever they're trying to do, the keep you out of their way -"

"You think I believe that?" Lex said with a shrill, nasal, and still somehow terrifying laugh. "You think I believe that's true when you work for Bruce Wayne -"

"I don't -"

"Don't you get it? I thought you were clever!" Lex said, still laughing in a strange, unfamiliar way that Claire could tell meant that this realization for whatever reason was bringing him close to the edge of his stability. "Think, Claire. Use that shrewd little brain of yours. Bruce Wayne is Batman."

The statement washed over Claire like freezing cold water - her eyes widened, and she thought that her heart had all but stopped in her chest, like the wind had been knocked out of her. Bruce Wayne was Batman? Bruce Wayne, who she had nothing short of hero worshiped? This was the only reason he had treated her like she was special, like he saw potential in her? The look of shock seemed to catch Lex by surprise, but instead of allowing himself to calm, to think, he simply pressed down more on the gas as the car began speeding up a secluded hill road.

"Why did you tell me the truth, Claire?" he asked, shaking his head and keeping his gaze forward. He hadn't wanted this kind of revelation from her. Betrayal had not been the expected outcome - he had foreseen her passing this test with flying colors like every single one he had put before her, and this deviation left him clutching for the end of a very short rope. "You shouldn't have opened your mouth - why did you tell me?!"

"Lex, please slow down." Claire said, but Lex felt himself recoil at the choked tone of her voice. This was not the voice of compassion or protection that he had come to identify her with. This wasn't his Claire. This Claire was afraid. She was afraid of him. "Lex, please -"

And just then, he slammed the car to a halt. Claire felt her body lurch forward as the car stopped moving, grimacing at the jolt but immediately realizing where they had stopped - the cliff overlooking the Metropolis Bay, where they'd come not long ago, the first place where he had almost kissed her, the place that, as Claire looked back, had been the harbinger of what was happening here now.

"Get out," Lex snarled in a low voice. Claire slowly turned to face him, eyes full of question, and it was a look that he could not bear. "Get out of the car!" he roared, clenching his eyes shut. Claire now scrambled to comply, fumbling with the buckle of her seatbelt and stumbling out of the car. Lex got out of his own side as well and came around the front, advancing on Claire so that she was back against the rickety wooden fence that separated the edge of the cliff from the inevitable fall. Her hands groped behind her, holding onto the fence for support as she attempted to cower under Lex's gaze.

But looking at her, even through the haze of his anger, Lex saw something in her eyes that shook him - that cooled the rage within him, even just for a matter of seconds. She was afraid.

The fear in her eyes when he stood over her in his anger was a fear that he knew - and knew well. It was a fear that he had felt nearly every day for years of his own young life until he had taken up arms against it, slain the beast that instilled it in him. But even more than fear, there was that look again. There was a softness in her fear that shot him through the chest with a realization that it was not just herself that she feared for. She feared for him too.

"Do you think I'm going to hurt you?" he asked blankly, tilting his head to one side and leaning in closer to Claire. "My beautiful, sweet Claire. Do you think I'm going to harm you?"

"I know you are."

Lex's brow knitted in genuine confusion, and he shook his head in disbelief before shoving his face even closer to hers, carefully scrutinizing her expressions as though he could read her honesty by the little wrinkles around her eyes. "If you know I'm going to hurt you, then why aren't you running?"

"Because this jig is up," Claire said simply. "And if I leave now... if I'm not the one who gets hurt, then you will be."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because I'm not the only one standing at the edge of a cliff right now, Lex. If I run, that leaves you here," she said, still trembling but steeling herself for whatever came next. "Keeping you safe is..."

Lex found his own emotions tethered strangely to hers in the heat of the moment - there was brief faltering in his anger when he saw her raised her hand to cover her mouth, but it lasted only a millisecond before she again put on her brave face with which he had grown so familiar.

"Keeping you safe is the one thing I haven't managed to screw up yet, so if it's all the same to you, Mister Luthor," she retorted, raising her eyebrows sharply, "I'm not about to abandon my post just yet."

And just like that, she had returned - the fire that he knew belonged to her had returned, had been real. And even more inconceivably, even after divesting herself of that awful truth, she was still the figure that Lex had come to recognize. The Angel.

Lex shifted so that he could take a few paces to the side, striding up to the fence next to Claire and looking out over the cliff and out into the distance in disquieting silence. But it was only in this quiet that Claire's mind circled back to the revelation that Lex had made to her - Bruce Wayne and Batman were one and the same. Claire felt almost nauseous, and she braced one hand on her abdomen, looking down at the ground and shaking her head. She had trusted Bruce Wayne - thought that he genuinely saw potential in her and wanted to give her a chance at her biggest dream.

It had all been a part of the plan. Lex glanced her over and felt a wave of something good-feeling wash over him - a sense of power over her, a feeling that took away his idea of being a pawn, of being the smallest and most easily manipulated piece on the chessboard.

"They used you, Claire," he said in a near-whisper. "You can see that, can't you?"

Claire looked up at the sound of Lex's voice, eerily quiet as he again turned to her, tilting his head and reaching up to brush the back of his knuckles across the side of her cheek - she tensed, but wouldn't dare pull away and show weakness now.

"So did you," she replied calmly, drawing herself up as straight as she could and managing to somehow look him in the eye, realizing for the first time, she couldn't read him. She couldn't sense what he was thinking or feeling.

"Claire," he said, gently shaking his head with a quiet chuckle. "Claire, Claire, Claire. What have I ever threatened to take away from you? When I have I ever taken your free will from you? I wouldn't dream of it."

She opened her mouth to reply, only to realize that strangely, Lex was right. Though many of the events of recent weeks had been to her great disdain, it still remained that she had freely complied with all of them, played the willing accomplice. Batman - Bruce Wayne - had forced her compliance with blackmail and subterfuge. Lex had still been the lesser of two evils.

"My offer still stands," Lex said coolly, drawing himself up to full height in front of her. "Your freedom. But because of what you've told me, you'll need to exercise that free will sooner than later."

"I don't understand."

"You can run, and I will not so much as utter a word against your impeccable moral character, Miss Branigan," Lex said matter-of-factly, placing his hands on his hips and tilting his head to one side. "But you will have me as an enemy. Or..."

"Or?"

The immediate, inquisitive response from Claire brought a slight smirk to Lex's face. It was satisfying, he conceded, that she did not want to be his enemy, that she did not immediately run. But he would have to wait and see if the alternative persuaded her to change her mind.

"Or you choose me," Lex said, leaning his face close to hers. "Cut off all ties with the Bat and with Gotham. For good."

The surprise in Claire's eyes sent a jolt of resentment and perhaps even jealousy through Lex - he felt bitterness surging through him at the fact that her decision was not immediate. It should have been. Wasn't she his? His hands clenched into fists, and he again leaned in closely - threateningly - with his face close to Claire's.

"I'm offering you one chance. I don't give second chances, Claire," he hissed, unable to string together a way of making her understand the significance of the opportunity he was handing her, even in light of how much he had been wounded by her disclosure. He was trying to reward her loyalty, and there was no gratitude in her eyes. "Do you know that? Do you understand? Do you know what happens to people who -"

"I know what happens to people who let you down, Lex," Claire interrupted, her eyes narrowed slightly. "And I'm not sure what you have to gain in not doing the same to me -"

"Choose me, and I will erase the Bat from your life," Lex said, suddenly grabbing Claire by the shoulders and barely fighting off the urge to shake her, unable to bear answering her question directly. She asked too many of them. "He's the reason you were afraid to go home, wasn't it? You're afraid of him. I can protect you from him -"

"- but you won't unless I leave behind everything that comes with it," Claire finished, removing his hands from her shoulders. She knew what this meant. It didn't just mean walking away from the work she had agreed to do as Lex Luthor's nurse. It meant walking away from the Wayne Memorial Clinic, from all of her dreams and goals and aspirations. And Lex knew he was demanding it of her. He knew and yet still persisted. But to Lex, it made perfect sense. He first needed to divest her of her ties to what had been and of any connections to that which previously held her captive. The thought of her being controlled by Bruce Wayne made Lex almost physically ill - but he would banish it from his very memory to keep his only ally if she would only give over that control to him.

She would, he thought repeatedly to himself. He could not have been wrong about her. Lex Luthor was wrong about no one.

"Get in the car," Lex said with eerie calm that caused Claire immediately bristle in response. "We're going to drive home. I'm not going to hurt you. And you are going to tell me everything that brought you from Metropolis State Penitentiary to this precarious position we are now standing in."

He placed his hand on her back and moved her in her stunned silence back to the passenger side door of the car, but she did not yet get inside, instead frowning and staring at Lex in confusion.

"Maybe we shouldn't -"

"Not. Here," Lex interrupted, raising a hand and rest his index finger to her lips in a shushing motion. It was at once both threatening and sensual - a strange culmination of the events of the past day. "Get in the car, Claire."

And Claire complied, sitting wordlessly with her quivering hands clenched into fists and resting on her thighs, her eyes locked in position as they stared forward. Lex drove home calmly, though not speaking a word to Claire, and that in and of itself left her feeling unsettled. There was an almost ironic chivalry in the way he opened the door for her, walked her inside Luthor Mansion with his hand resting on the small of her back. It was almost calming, until Claire realized that he was leading her into his father's study.

This was not a place of safety. It was not a place of good thoughts. It was a place that smelled permanently of firewood and bourbon, that was perpetually dim as sunlight fought its way through heavy curtains and shaded windows, casting a glow onto the enlarged Gustave Dore print of angels and fallen angels on the wall. This was the place that Lex came to try and channel his father - to try and feel powerful when he was not. This was where he brought those he sought to be powerful over.

Lex coaxed Claire to sit in one of the plush armchairs before walking over to the wheeled caddy on the other side of the room, taking two scotch glasses and pouring out two drinks - not his drink of choice, the Butterscotch Schnapps, but his father's preferred poison. Kentucky Bourbon. He brought the drinks over and handed one to Claire with surprising nonchalance, but at the same time, she knew she was expected - required, even - to accept.

"You're more of a talker with a little liquid courage," Lex pointed out, taking a sip from the glass and starting to pace back and forth. "I'm going to give you one chance, Claire. Tell me everything."

A/N

And how the conversation goes, you will get to find out next update! It's taking a little more time than usual to get the scenes just the way I want them, so updates will take a few days longer, but I'm plugging away at them as much as I can. As always, your reviews mean a lot to me, and it brightens up my day when they pop into my inbox, so I want to thank you for that! I don't always get to respond to reviews individually, and I know not everyone has the time to review, so just know that I am so grateful for each of you out there reading.

I know that there was some desire for Lex to get his comeuppance for his underhandedness and possessiveness, but this revelation took a little precedence - so now, Lex and Claire have to see where they stand with all of the cards on the table.

Next chapter, the aftermath of the big reveal Until next time, cheers!