Claire woke up to the sun streaming through the blinds into her eyes, and she pulled her arm out of the blanket to shield her face gently so she could open them. Sitting next to the table were their two small bags they had taken, which Lex must have brought up into the cabin since the rain had stopped. She walked over and pulled on a shirt, glancing around the room and realizing that Lex was not inside.

It was in this brief moment of solitude that Claire had a real opportunity to think about where they were - what was happening.

If someone had told her a matter of months ago that she would be in newspapers, that she would be on weekend getaways with Lex Luthor, she would have found the idea laughable. But here she was, in a lakefront cabin with the person who had started as her patient, because she had been the only nurse willing to take him on in Metropolis State Penitentiary.

Claire walked first over to the kitchen area and began peering through the cabinets to find that there were things in the cupboards, including a kettle. She started heating up some water and hurried back to her bag, where she kept travel-sized packets of coffee and tea. Broke college kid habits, she always explained, died hard. It didn't matter much what position she held in LexCorp. At her core, she would always feel like a girl from the south side of Metropolis.

When she got back to the kitchen and made two mugs of tea, she managed a glance out the window and saw where Lex had gone - he was standing outside on the balcony, looking out over the water. These pensive moments were by no means unusual for him, but still Claire hesitated before heading out the porch door, walking up next to him and gently sliding the mug of warm tea over the railing.

"It's nice out here," she said in a calm voice, "but you never really struck me as the outdoorsy type."

"Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations," he recited, and Claire again could not help but be impressed by his memory. It was a line she recognized from the work by Henry David Thoreau, which she'd read multiple times in school but never could have recited anything from, purely from memory.

Lex gave a choked laugh and looked back at Claire, unable to help a small sneer. "I'm not sure you understand how it feels to know that everyone you surround yourself with wants sooner or later to be rid of you."

The statement seemed to hit Claire hard, and while she played it off by taking a sip of her warm tea, the way her expression fell in response seemed to be a dead giveaway.

"I don't want to be rid of you," Claire replied before she could help herself, and Lex gave a disbelieving laugh, shaking his head slightly and not looking up from the mug of tea in his hands. The statement shook him. The idea of Claire not wanting to be rid of him, of actually being a willing recipient of his presence and his company, still had not become tangible to him because it was unthinkable.

"My father," he began carefully, and Claire felt herself tensing at the resurgence of the topic, which had last come up with his near-disclosure the night of the earthquake, "owned nine vacation homes, but this one - this one," he said with a dry chuckle and a gesture of his index finger as he eyed his surroundings, again with the same flustered expression as though he worried about being overheard. "This one was special. It was made especially for my mother. She never cared for the big city. It was boisterous and disorienting. It overwhelmed her. And my father loved her," he said with another laugh. This laugh, however, was choked, almost as though the statement disgusted him. "Ardently. Obsessively. And he never loved a soul again after her. She as a whole was only person he ever in his life considered worth loving - and even the piece of her that I was could never equal that worth."

Claire's knuckles grew pale where she gripped her mug, doing what she could not to react. Perhaps out of reflex it was too stiff, too routine, too clinical - but even if her insides writhed and bellowed with the need to somehow respond, she knew that it wasn't yet the time for her own shock.

"I hoped. When I was a boy, I hoped - to God," he added with a derisive snort of a laugh as though this were the punchline to a joke, "that somehow he'd recognize the little piece of my mother that survived in me."

He managed a brief glance into Claire's eyes, which were again filled that same warmth - that same concern that made Lex feel simultaneously safe and unsettled. It was an expression of softness that Lex simply struggled to understand because it was never his to receive. Again, Lex looked down at the warm drink in his hands, feeling his heart start to race, his hands start to shake. Why did she look at him like that? Why did the look in her eyes look so much like the secret memory he had created of how he thought his mother would have looked at him, with protection and compassion?

"Lex," Claire spoke up in a quiet voice, keeping a safe distance in anticipation for a poor response - and it became clear that now, the conversation that had nearly happened the night of the quake was finally heading towards fruition. Lex's grip tightened on the mug as he awaited the question that would change both of their worlds for good.

"What happened to you?"

Lex's eyes clenched shut briefly, and he hissed as he inhaled, bowing his head slightly. No one had ever in his entire life asked him what had happened to him - not with only his interests in mind. It was only recently in Claire's presence that he realized he even wanted to be asked. His disclosures about his past, few and far between, had always been something had imposed on others - all of whom were dead and took the secret with them.

He realized now that the burden of vulnerability lay on his shoulders, and that this moment would change forever what he had with Claire. He knew that keeping her at his side was of the utmost importance, but also that this was his most powerful secret. This secret was the source of his entire personhood. In the absence of real power, this secret fueled his anger - and his anger was the closest to power that he could ever dream of possessing. Now was the moment wherein he would decide if he did or did not trust the woman with whom he already shared a home, shared a bed, shared his plans and plots and schemes.

"My father," Lex began shakily, forcing his eyes open slowly, "taught me since I was a boy that love and fear were no different. Every day, I lived in fear. I fell asleep every night bruised and broken..."

Claire found her breath catching in her chest, and she had to dig the nail of her finger into her palm to keep from reacting, knowing that there was no use in her interjecting her own shock, her own sadness at his story into the situation.

"...and I waited. I waited every day when I was a boy for that fear to turn into the love that every other boy had from his mother and father. I waited. And when I realized I would never have it after years of the same beatings... the same torture," he said, his forehead wrinkling and his hands clenching tighter around the mug. "I ran. I put a few things in a bag and tried to run away from home for three days."

Lex paused and shook his head, laughing bitterly and glancing upward. "And my father didn't even look for me. I never wandered far," he added matter-of-factly. "And I realized quickly that I had nowhere to go. No one to trust. So even though I'd never be loved by my father, I knew, neither would I find that love from anyone else. So I went back home."

"Lex..."

"And I expected what came first. I expected the beatings and berating," Lex continued, finding now that he was unable to stop now that he had started. Claire found her throat choking tightly when she saw tears threatening to escape from Lex's eyes as well. Then, as though observing them made them more real, a few tears escaped his eyes, which he wiped away with a mix of anger and embarrassment. "I was a humiliation. I had caused him such inconvenience. Such an awful scandal. Such an awful waste of time. But this time, I has disappointed him and disgraced far worse than ever. Far, far worse," Lex said - Claire almost felt a chill at the forced, humorless laugh that escaped his lips, accompanied by a wagging gesture of his index finger.

Lex drew a shuddering breath and finally managed to look at Claire, who seemed shocked by this fact herself. "I expected being beaten to within an inch of my life, but what came next... he'd broken my body too many times for it to teach me a lesson. This time. This time," Lex said, his voice a near his, sweat gathering at his temples, his hands shaking. "This time he broked what little I had left. All I had left," he said, shaking his head slowly. "And that was when I knew, I could never hope for love. Not from him, and not from anyone else."

"Lex -"

"He wanted to ensure that I had nothing. That I was aware that I was nothing..."

And like she had many times before, Claire reached out to gently clasp her hand over his. He looked down at their joined hands and she gently coaxed loose his grip on the mug, placing it back down on the railing. She squeezed his hands until the stopped shaking. She looked into his eyes with her own blank like pools of still water.

"That isn't true," Claire finally said gently. "You're not nothing, Lex."

And Lex saw that her eyes had welled with tears. For him. even if he could not decide whether or not he believed what she was saying, he was perfectly cognizant of the fact that it had been said. His face contorted slightly into a frown. "You're crying for me," he said with confusion in his eyes. "Don't. Don't pity me, Claire. I don't need it - I don't need it with everything I've become," he said with a dry cough of a laugh. "Between my father and I, I came out the greater man in the end. I won."

Lex's eyes were trained carefully on Claire's face at this moment, waiting for some betrayal of a reaction - of some sort of recoil or terror at the clear implication. In his mind, he was all but waving the truth like a banner in Claire's face - she had witnessed him send Lubrano out to his death with a smile and a wave. She would know, Lex surmised, that he had killed for far less than his father's transgressions towards him. This was a final test to determine an imperative - either to possess her or to destroy her. She was so good, Lex reminded himself. He awaited her attempts to flee, to tell him he was a monster. The words he awaited from her, however, did not come.

The pieces seemed, in Lex's mind however, to be falling more and more cleanly into place now that the truth was laid bare at Claire's feet to do with as she pleased. His father had been, beneath all of the pomp and luxury and grandiosity, a deplorable and power-mongering human being, and yet he had still had a woman love him dearly and truly. Even if he had not been the same cruel, conniving slavedriver of a man before losing his wife, that darkness must have still been inside him. Everyone harbored a little darkness, Lex concluded, when they witnessed terrible horrors. For Lex Luthor the Elder, the horrors had been those of war - and he had in turn become those very same horrors to his son. Yet despite that darkness, someone had considered him worthy, in spite of all he had done to acquire worth. Lex had never possessed this. Having Claire was the last piece of the puzzle, the final way in which he could finally meet the mark set by Lex Luthor Senior.

"I don't pity you, Lex."

"Then what?" Lex asked, leaning forward with his face just a hair's breadth from hers. "If it isn't pity, then what is it?"

The silence again settled between the pair of them. Claire inhaled deeply once, twice, three times. There were true answers, there were false answers, and there were many in between that swam around in Claire's mind as she attempted to formulate her response. She knew the true answer, but she did not know her own willingness to give it.

And moreover, if she told the whole truth now, it put the burden upon him to accept it - and placing that burden on him to feel so intensely, to reciprocate, to receive, was the last thing Claire thought wise. Now that he had rid himself of one burden, she had no desire to give him another, and that was all her real feelings would be. So, she gave the only answer she considered right.

"It's whatever you need it to be."

Claire answered simply. Succinctly. Vaguely. In a manner that was only befitting her character - and yet, despite its lack of clarity, it seemed more than enough for Lex. He would have perhaps felt a greater sense of control over the situation with a more definite answer, but the thought of someone truly in tune with his needs was consolation enough. She believed him - without disgust or abject horror.

His pause in thought, however, left Claire hanging perhaps a millisecond too long. She let out a heaving sigh and started to walk away back towards the house, only to have Lex catch her by the crook of the arm and pull her back towards him. He held still, holding her there, close enough to him that he could feel her breaths, her movements when she tilted her head in confusion at his actions.

"I don't wanna get rid of you," Claire repeated, shaking her head slowly. "I'll never want to get rid of you."

Lex couldn't not help the confused expression on his face, the apprehensive gulp that made him feel as though he were choking on his own Adam's apple.

His father had his mother. Clark Kent had Lois Lane. Men who were strong and powerful always had someone - a woman whose mere existence was both their greatest weakness and strength. And now, Lex practically felt him swell with realization that he too was one of those men. Whether or not he was substantively any different than he had ever been was a point that stood to question, but the fact remained that he felt he had now been changed, and would not stand to go back to what he had been.

So again, he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, but not out of fulfillment of an urge or need - there was a strange chasteness and innocence to it, like the sealing of a covenant. They had chased this conclusion in circles for months now without actually reaching it, always allowing it to remain out of reach until now. It was caught. It was true.

But when he pulled away, he felt a sense of apprehension immediately seize control of him as he stared at Claire's face and straightened his posture. He exhaled deeply, then quickly shook his head and strode past Claire, walking back inside the back door of the cabin with a fierce expression.

There was an immediate sense of regret in having divulged these truths, not because of anything Claire had said or done, but because no one before had ever given him reason to believe in anything. His hands were again clenched into fists at his sides, shaking with fury and perhaps more than a small amount of fear. Lex clenched his eyes shut when he heard the hinges of the door squeal gently, the sound of footsteps coming inside, and the door closing once again. Then, everything was still. Without looking, he realized Claire was standing there, waiting for him.

He realized that Claire was giving him control, that he had only ever had control over her because she had willingly given it. Without turning around, he drew himself to the fullest height he could manage.

"The clock is ticking now," he said in a strangely gentle tone, slightly higher pitched as if in threat to become a whimper. "Inevitably, now, your opinion of me is going to change. To borrow your own words... the jig is up."

"This isn't going to change anything. Not unless you want it to," Claire said, her voice growing only slightly closer. "All of the things that happened to you, happened to you before I met you. It was there whether I knew it or not."

"I know it's in your nature, Claire, but you don't need to patronize me," Lex said with his jaw clenching tightly, and Claire recoiled at the remark, which Lex figured from the sound of her drawing in a sharp breath. Some small part of him was angry with himself. He had already given her his trust, irrevocably shared the truth with her, and yet this beast in his mind was trying now to recant. "You think I'm weak."

"Why would I think that?" Claire asked, and the sincere, sharp lilt of surprise in her voice was enough to make Lex turn around to level a scrutinizing glance in her direction. "I don't know everything you went through, but I know you got through it. I know you're not weak, Lex." It was, Lex realized, the kindest thing anyone had ever said to him with any level of sincerity. It was so beautiful that it made him nearly feel sick. One more time, Claire walked over and gently loosened his fists, and he found his breathing slowing to keep pace with her own even breaths. Even perhaps against his will, she brought him a strange sort of peace. He didn't think he wanted peace, because he didn't know what to do with it - yet when it was here, the reprieve was strange and welcome.

"You don't get it, do you?" Claire asked, squeezing his hands and bearing a look of genuine disbelief. "I could never think of you as weak. You gave me a chance to live my life again. You gave me a choice again," Claire said. " And I chose you. Lex, I'm not sure how much the opinion of a girl from the south side of Metropolis is worth, but to me, you're as close to a hero as I've ever met."

Again, confusion crossed Lex's face. No one had ever without being facetious called or considered him a hero. Now, he understood what it was like to be a man like his father, like Superman. The image of a hero and a savior was something he had long tried to project was what she saw in him - inexplicably, perhaps unreasonably. He'd once accused her of being the Wendy to his Peter Pan, but in all truth, the roles were possibly reversed. It was Claire who took him away from the world he knew. But now for the first time, he saw fear in her face - she feared being rejected by him. It was something Lex could not admit to understanding. It was as though Claire did not value power or control - because if she did, she easily could have exerted them over him in this moment.

"The opinion of a certain girl from the south side of Metropolis," Lex repeated, his brow furrowing as he hesitantly crossed the few steps between himself and Claire, "matters more to me than any other opinion does."

It was a little bit poetic the way Claire's face, beyond her control, lit up upon hearing the profession, and how Lex, who like Pandora had brought chaos into the world and like Icarus was brought back to Earth to face his own weakness and humanity, had managed this single act of good without pretense. Claire valued very much the idea that her opinion was valued.

She reached out and as she always did, gripped his hands, but this time, he squeezed back equally and looked back at her. This place, this haven far out in the hills outside of Central City, was a place he associated with the mother Lex never knew but always longed for because she was comfort and protection. But she had always been distant and theoretical until, strangely enough, this moment. For the first time, it felt like his mother was somehow tangible and real. Every place in his life he had ever dwelled in felt as though it belonged to his father - as though it was tainted by his father. This cabin was his mother's place, and it felt as though she had given it to him.

A/N

I know this was a much-requested scene, and I think I had a few requests for it to happen much earlier, but I felt like it was something that needed to happen after more in the story. Now that we've put Lex and Claire on somewhat solid ground, it'll soon be time for another shake-up.

The next chapters will revisit the budding Justice League in their travels to the Netherlands, and another long-awaited (perhaps long overdue) event will finally come to pass. Kind of. Let me know your guesses for what it might be! Until next update (which will probably be after I have finally traveled back home from my vacation), cheers!