"...that first night I stayed here in the mansion with you - the last night I ever went back to my apartment, that was the last time I told him anything," Claire admitted, having gone through the events of recent months in excruciating detail. "He knows Lubrano's name, and that he's your antiques dealer - I didn't have anything else."
Lex, truth be told, wasn't sure how much of her story he had listened to. He had trained his steely gaze on her face and found that for the first time since he had known her, she was in tears. He'd wanted to chalk them up to fear for her life, but he still felt confident that he could read this woman with whom he had spent so much of his time in recent weeks. Claire Branigan knew from the very beginning of their acquaintance what he was capable of, and she had never feared him. She wasn't crying because she was afraid. She was crying out of remorse.
She was crying because she was sorry.
Lex's initial gut reaction was suspicion. He had never had someone show remorse for having wronged him, so the concept was at first distant and ineffable. People were never sorry, Lex had come to bellieve, until you made them sorry. He continued pacing, drinking from his glass and attempting to show no reaction - but his knuckles were still pale from his tight grip on the half-empty scotch glass.
The fact remained, however, that a decision needed to be made of where to lay blame - and indeed, he not only needed but deeply desired to lay blame somewhere. In truth, Lex pondered silently to himself, continuing to sip at his glass while Claire squirmed in the silence, that all of this merely cemented his theory about the nature of man, the inverse relationship between good and power.
He was not ready to compromise the image of Claire he possessed in his mind, of the sort of delicate angel that represented to him all of the protection and care he had never in his life experienced - the love he should have known from a mother, of which he had been deprived, and the loyalty of a partner which he had never aspired to finding. And as such, because she was for Lex the ultimate good, then she would have to be in a state of the ultimate powerlessness as well.
Of course this had happened to her. Because she was small and powerless in the face of Batman, of Bruce Wayne who was as they spoke gathering a team of metahumans for a futile, supposedly noble cause - a concentration of power that in the guise of goodness could crush them all like the ants they were.
The thought brought a smirk to Lex's lips. The exchange he'd had with the Bat, months ago in the prison holding cell... he had not thought of it for a very long time. He hadn't thought of the things he had learned and seen and heard on the Kryptonian ship because he had accepted that something was coming. They did not know the hour or the day, but he knew. Moreover, he had warned the Bat, and the warning had been heeded.
Batman was afraid of him, he concluded.
And even better, Lex realized, this perhaps made Claire even more accessible to him. Because she was now a frail and delicate flower that needed protecting. His frail and delicate thing to have and own. The only piece that had yet to fall into place was her acquiescence.
"My offer still stands, Claire," Lex said in a quiet voice, staring down into his glass and swirling the last bit of his drink around the bottom. "You're free. You can run if you like."
When Lex finally managed to look at her again, she stared back and hardly breathed, having taking not even a sip from her glass as though she feared he would actually poison her on such short notice. Lex almost felt offended by her suspicion - he wasn't that sloppy. He crouched over slightly and clinked his glass against hers with a small smirk. "You're not running."
"Obviously I'm not going to be reporting back to anyone anymore. The jig is up. But what now?" she asked shakily. "If I do what you're asking me to do -"
"If you do as I ask, I'll protect you from him and whatever posse he's managed to wrangle up," Lex said with a strange, frenzied laugh as he thought back to the party at Wayne Manor - the feeling of being surrounded by the very metahumans he had identified. "Don't you think I can protect you, Claire?"
"Why would you protect me?"
"Why would you protect me?" Lex deflected, placing his glass down onto the side table with a little more force than was needed, then leaning his face close to Claire's with his eyes slightly narrowed. "You and I both know now that it wasn't just doing your job - you weren't assigned the job of keeping me safe. You were assigned to job of spying on me. Your excuse doesn't work anymore, Claire," he insisted. "You don't get to pass the buck, m'dear. Now you have a choice to make."
"Why did you do it?" Claire finally managed to ask, rather than addressing the subject Lex was attempting to steer her towards. "Why did you bring in the resignation letter?"
"Because I can't have an ally whose loyalty can be bought. Basic housekeeping," Lex said, taking the last swig of his drink - and the nonchalance seemed to finally tweak Claire's last nerve, forcing her to rise from her seat, despite her precarious position in light of the truth that had just been revealed.
"You can trust me, Lex," Claire said - but though the phrase should have been encouraging, should have been laced with her usual comforting tone, this was laced instead with venom. "You can trust that I would have never in a million years divulged information that would have put you in danger, that you're hooked on sleeping pills and tried to jump off a balcony or that you're lying to Doctor Cavendish to make sure you keep that nice label of criminally insane to stay out of prison," she said rapidly, jabbing her index finger into Lex's chest.
"But I can't trust you and I would never be stupid enough to trust you. I made mistake because I had to. What you did doesn't count as a mistake because you knew exactly what you were doing. I know you're not insane. You just don't give a shit."
At this, Lex pulled back as though he'd been scalded by her words, his lip curling into a sneer. He had in such a short span of time become addicted to the Claire that was enamored with him, the Claire that laughed and stared at him with stars in her eyes. His Claire. This was not her.
"I'm done. I'm out," Claire said, shaking her head in disdain. "I can't -"
"Where are you going to go?" Lex asked quietly, raising his eyebrows, and when Claire managed to look up at him in the pause that followed, she realized that he was smirking as well. "Where do you have besides here that the Bat can't find you? You know too much about him, about what he's planning. You think that you can make a clean break? Because I'll tell you now - there are no clean breaks."
Claire inhaled sharply through her nostrils as Lex took a few steps closer to her, leaning his face closer to hers. "We're just ants, Claire. We're ants, walking through life trying not to get stepped on. And now, only I can keep you safe."
"Safe," Claire scoffed. "You're unbelievable."
"I'm effective," Lex said nonchalantly, shrugging and picking up the glass that Claire had put down, holding it out in her direction again. "Tell me, what have I done to you that's any worse than what Bruce Wayne has done?"
Claire opened her mouth to reply but found words quickly failing her in her time of need. She felt her resolve weaken as she realized that Lex was right. Bruce Wayne had forced her to leave the job at the Penitentiary to spy on Lex Luthor. Bruce Wayne had limited her options so that she had no choice but to comply. Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne had each implemented the same strategy at opposite ends of a game of tug-o-war. She finally accepted the glass from his hand and took a small sip.
Lex smirked silently to himself - it was almost a sacramental gesture in his mind. It meant that the tie was not yet completely severed.
The difference between Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne, Claire was coming to conclude, was that none of the things that Claire had done for Bruce Wayne were for genuine care for him - even in this haze of rage and affront, Claire could not say the same of the things she had done for Lex. She had submitted to much of what was happening with Lex out of her own free will... and this was a side of herself that Claire was not sure she had yet made amends with.
"I can't be here," Claire said sternly. "I won't go back to Bruce Wayne. Not now, not ever. But I can't be around you either. I kept the truth from you, and I'm sorry for that -"
"What?"
Lex paled - it was, perhaps, not an appropriate or expected response, but the sound of a genuine apology struck him deeply because it was something he had never received. He had been hurt and wronged and slighted, but had never received an apology for it - Lex Luthor had never seen genuine remorse for having hurt him, and he was indeed, whether he would admit it or not, deeply wounded. Lex did not believe people could feel remorse for their wrongdoings without his prompting, without his force. That was the nature and the truth about humanity that he knew. It disoriented him to no end when Claire did not follow it.
"For whatever reason," Lex bagan vaguely, moving around the side of the chair to lean on the back, pulling himself out of Claire's line of sight and giving her a small amount of room to breathe. "You've taken an interest beyond what was asked of you in what happens to me. And I consider you an invaluable ally, Claire. At this point, I consider us square. Nothing needs to change -"
"Lex, I'm leaving -"
"And staying where? He'll find you," Lex said. "You have no job, and if the Bat is good to his word, you most likely won't find one. You're free to walk out, but let's face it. Even if the Bat does absolutely nothing to besmirch your reputation, there's still the matter of damage that's already been done."
"What?"
"Well, let's face it," Lex said with a snide grin and a quirk of his eyebrows, "I've been your patient, and the public is well aware of the special treatment I get. I don't mind it, but I don't know if other potential employers would have high regard for your bedside manner."
Lex knew it would enrage her, throwing it in her face that she was now known for having done exactly what she was asked - that her behavior in playing along with his games was a legacy she could not escape. He knew it would hurt her - and he wanted it to hurt her but at the same time he did not, and again, there was an overwhelming sense of noise in his head that made everything cease to make sense. He trusted her and yet he didn't. He wanted her to hurt and yet seeing her hurt made him feel physically nauseous. He didn't know if his anger was at her or at her unsettling calm - he needed her to react in anger because it was all he knew how to process. Claire's hands reflexively clenched, her grip tightening on the armrest of the couch on one side, around her glass on the other. Her breaths became heavy, her chest heaving laboriously.
Lex Luthor at times had the urge like Icarus to fly too close to the sun - to either transcend or succumb to his mortality. So, it seemed only reasonable that he now come back around the chair to stand in front of Claire in spite of the fact of the anger he had knowingly instilled in her. Immediately, he was met with the contents of Claire's glass splashed on his face, and as he wiped away at his face, sputtering and swiping with his sleeve, he heard Claire slam the glass down on the table and storm past him. He roved his sleeve roughly over his eyes one more time before striding up behind her as she made to leave the den, but she had enough of a head start and got out the doors, out into the main hallway before Lex caught up with her. To stop her in her tracks, he caught her like he always did by her forearm, but when she turned to face him and they were no longer inside the den - inside the place Lex thought of as a place of power - he found himself tensing at the sight of the anger in Claire's eyes. His eyes darted to Claire's free hand at her side, now clenched in a fist - the sight of the fist set off an alarm in Lex's mind.
"Do it."
His voice was a low near-whisper, and his eyes were still fixated on Claire's clenched fist. Some small part of him meant what he'd said. He wanted her to do it because if she did, if she lashed out and hurt him, then he would be free of her. He would no longer harbor this thought that she was some embodiment of goodness and concern, and he could go on to believe what he had always believed. But, Lex noted with surprise that he no longer bothered to conceal, Claire did no such thing. She unclenched her fist and gently pulled her arm out of his grasp.
"I'm not going to do that," Claire said knowingly, taking a step back from Lex and gently shaking her head as she looked over his dumbfounded expression. "I don't want to hurt you. I just want to get away from you."
"Where are you going to go?" Lex asked. Now, it was Claire who looked suddenly taken aback by the fact that this time, it wasn't sardonic or taunting. For the first time, it sounded as though he actually had some interest in her answer - some level of concern for what was going to happen to her if she walked out of the mansion at that point.
"I don't know," she replied honestly.
"That's not a good enough answer."
"Why not?"
Claire retaliated with a piercing stare - and she wasn't stupid. She knew that this was only happening as a result of something growing between herself and Lex Luthor. But he couldn't say as much, he could speak in deeply coded riddles and epithets. She saw Lex's jaw clench, his lip curl as he fought back a sneer in processing the question she was asking him.
For once, she wanted him to just say something - to give her some semblance of hope that there could be some level of normalcy in their interactions. Claire hadn't held it against him that he lacked the ability to simply speak to her, that he struggled with whatever it was he struggled with - but there were times that she was simply exhausted with the day-to-day feeling of being tugged like a yo-yo in the hand of a child.
She could see it. Claire could practically see a genuine, human answer turning the gears in his head - but she could see him quickly begin to restrain it as soon as it began to take shape, and she knew immediately that she should be wary of his answer. That she should yes, but knowing that something lay beneath, whether or not she could was a different issue. Back and forth, it was as though each was pleading with one another silently to say something true - something real - and neither was willing to acquiesce.
"You and I aren't that different, Claire," Lex said walking a few paces closer, starting to slowly pace and circle around her. "You've had everything taken from you - everything you've built as a stepping stone to climb out of a life you hated. A life that made you feel utterly diminutive. Am I getting close?" he asked, leaning his face close to hers and almost tauntingly wagging his index finger in her face, smirking a little at the sickly expression she now bore in response to him. "You play the Wendy to my Peter Pan but in the end, we're both lost."
Claire fell silent for a few seconds before drawing a shuddering breath, clenching her eyes shut for a few seconds to regain her bearings before shaking her head and meeting Lex's gaze.
"You're really good with words, Lex," she said in a matter-of-fact but almost sorrowful tone. "And I'm not going to pretend you're not getting into my head. You are. But that's not enough anymore."
Her shoulders drooped momentarily before she started walking away towards the door, leaving a nonplussed Lex Luthor in her wake.
"I have nothing left."
The statement came in a near-whisper, so quiet that Claire wasn't sure she'd actually heard it but hesitated in her steps nonetheless without turning back. Claire didn't hear Lex take any steps closer to her to attempt to stop her again, but instead heard the same voice - childlike and almost fearful - speak as though coming from somewhere very far away.
"I have nothing and no one left. Bruce Wayne is sinking his teeth into my city, capitalizing on everything I've dedicated my life to building and rebuilding a thousand times over," Lex said through gritted teeth - and for the first time, Claire heard a quality in his tone that felt real. "No one sees these heroes for what they really are the way I do. No one except you. You know that Batman isn't a hero, don't you, Claire?" he asked, and finally, almost in resignation, Claire turned around to face him again to see that he was not smiling. He was not smirking. His face was blank, almost quivering. "If you walk away, I have no one else, Claire. You're my most valuable ally. You're my only ally."
It stirred something in Claire. Could she walk away when Lex had no one else? In her own mind, she felt she had brought this upon the pair of them - made him dependent on her in many ways, knowing who and what he was, and now that she no long could deal with it, she was throwing in the towel and trying to leave. Just like.
No, her mind seemed to roar violently. She was not willing to be her mother. And maybe some part of her knew that Lex was well aware of this being her greatest weakness, but in this moment, she had a choice to make that was hers. It was not an ideal choice. It was not an easy choice. But she had it. In a mixture of both resignation and resolution, she strode past Lex, away from the door, back towards the heart of the house and retreated back into the guest suite, shutting the door behind her.
She wasn't leaving, Lex realized - his expression softened. She perhaps hated him a little more than she had this morning - and Lex felt a pang of something unpleasant at the thought of this morning, when he had been the recipient of her warmth, her laughter, her genuine desire - but she was not leaving.
"All in due time," he muttered to himself before retreating back to his father's study. "All in due time."
A/N
And with that, we leave Lex and Claire in a really ambiguous place. To my guest reviewer who said that they might need a therapist if I didn't update, I hope I didn't make it any worse! This was a relatively short chapter, but a turning point in our story. The next chapter, we'll finally pull back from Lex and Claire and see how things are playing out for the story as a whole. As always, thank you for all of your feedback and reviews - you all are amazing!
I'm going to be going on a vacation next week, but will try to get one more update out before I leave, and maybe one during (though I can't make any promises). To address a couple things I've received messages about, I'm going to be pulling together elements from different interpretations of the DC Universe, so there might be familiar elements from the cartoons, from Smallville, from some comic story arcs, with an original twist to them.
Until next time, cheers!