"You shouldn't be here."
"Do you want to see her or not, Mister Luthor?" Diana said with a graceful arch of her eyebrow, standing on the other side of the front gate to Luthor Manor. Lex had been on his way to prep for a press conference - his first alone in a good while - about LexCorp's contributions to repairing the damage done to the Metro Narrows Bridge when he'd spotted Amazonian standing outside his property as though she had business there. "If you don't, I'm happy not to have to waste my time."
"Where is she?"
"I'm going to take you to her," Diana retorted vaguely, crossing her arms over her chest. "But you must first realize that she isn't alone."
"I'd presumed as much," Lex said, fighting back a sneer because he knew he was far outmatched, especially alone - just this realization in and of itself, Lex realized, was a little bit sickening. He hated being the weaker party in any interaction. It was too dangerous. "Why would you bring me into your secret club's little clubhouse?"
"We're far from bringing you to our clubhouse, Mister Luthor," Diana said, allowing a small smirk to grace her lips. "You can think of where we're going as more of a getaway home. Follow me."
Lex could admit the disdain he felt at having to follow Diana Prince anywhere, let alone into her car, where she was behind the wheel and Lex held no control over their destination whatsoever. He inwardly cursed himself for having allowed this to happen, but knew that he would only need to suffer this embarrassment for a short time, and only because it was the means to an end.
The woman Lex loved - who he could now admit that he loved - was central to his success, and her swift return and a return to normalcy were both long overdue.
He exited the car in front of Wayne Towers and again sneered in disdain at the need to follow Diana Prince to the elevator, through the hallways until they reached one particular corridor and there at the end like a sentinel was another familiar figure. Bruce Wayne. Immediately at the sight of Lex Luthor, he broke into a rapid, steady stride in his direction. Lex felt himself recoil in response to the sight of the man's menacing approach until Diana placed herself squarely between them.
"He has a right to be here," Diana said curtly, drawing herself up to full height in front of Bruce, whose jaw clenched in indignation at this argument before Diana added with slightly narrowed eyes, "She would want him here."
And Bruce felt his temper subsiding, if only because he knew that Diana was correct and would need to lick his wound as he often did when proven wrong by the Amazonian. He let out a breath through his nostrils, accompanied by a sound that was something like a growl. Still, the piercing glare from Diana Prince was enough to move him - he walked off with one last, narrow-eyed glance at Lex Luthor. Diana exhaled with a heaving sigh and allowed her shoulders to relax only slightly before reaching out to open the door.
"Doctor," she said quietly, alerting Dr. Leslie Thompkins, who was sitting at the side of the single room in the suite where Claire lay, not yet having awakened. "Mister Luthor needs a moment alone."
Dr. Thompkins got to her feet and glanced questioningly at Diana, who merely nodded in affirmation.
"She's stable, Mister Luthor," Dr. Thompkins said calmly as she strode across to room past him. "But I can't say for sure when she's going to wake up."
Diana respectfully led Dr. Thompkins from the room, shutting the door behind them and leaving Lex alone with Claire for the first time in what felt like ages.
He felt his stomach writhe at seeing her like this. Lex had always said that he found her most beautiful in a little bit of chaos, but seeing Claire lying still in a hospital-style cot, there was no chaos to be found. He realized briefly in the back of his mind that he valued chaos because chaos was all that he knew of life.
And in this moment, there was barely any source of life in her.
"You're not going to take the easy way out, are you?" Lex said with a bitter chuckle, pacing back and forth at the foot of her bed like he often did when she was awake, when he was interrogating her about something or other. When he couldn't sleep and needed to think. "I've never known you to be the oversleeping type."
He wanted her to give begrudging laugh at his humor - she always did. It was a courtesy that she allotted him out of kindness, acknowledging him in that way, and not, not receiving it was foreign and perturbing to Lex.
"Terrible things happen when you intercept a destiny that doesn't belong to you," Lex said, his gaze going blank as he stepped to a spot at Claire's bedside, forcing himself to look down at her, to see her still and quiet. "I called him. I called Darkseid. That was my destiny. I would have been the one he chose, and no one would have saved me. No one would have decided I needed to be brought back. My destiny would have been fulfilled. But you intervened."
Lex knew it was selfish, what went through his mind as he looked down at her - but he couldn't have cared. He had not missed someone or longed for someone for many, many years and did not want to feel it. He would have rather left Claire behind to feel those things and spared himself. In the deepest recesses of his mind, he was convinced that Claire was far stronger, far more equipped to deal with missing him.
"You brought him here without so much as telling the team? Diana, what were you -"
"Do not treat me like I'm foolish, Bruce."
The doors to the room flew open to reveal Bruce storming angrily in with his gaze now trained on Lex standing at Claire's bedside.
"I told you to give them a moment alone -"
"And I told you that I didn't trust this crook as far as I could throw him," Bruce sneered as he and Diana again stood practically toe-to-toe. "We're all here - you could have put us all in danger."
"He's not here to put us in danger, I brought him to see her," Diana said, holding her ground without wavering in the least. "What he chooses to do after is his own -"
"It's not his own anything, Diana. It was your decision and it's our problem," Bruce insisted, his teeth gritted in frustration - the woman in front of him was intelligent, she was powerful, but by God was she also stubborn. "We don't know what he wants from us -"
"I want nothing more, Mister Wayne," Lex said, sauntering over with a hand on his hips, shaking his heading with a weak laugh. "Than for the woman on that bed to be back on her feet. And since I'm a very busy man with another important engagement on my calendar, I'd appreciate if you'd hurry up and name your price -"
"Price?" Bruce said, unable to keep his voice from descending into a near snarl. "What price?"
"For giving Claire the best care possible."
"Your money is no good here," Diana said, placing a steadying hand on Bruce's chest to stop him from moving towards Lex and instead taking a few steps towards him herself. "She will be cared for with the very best we can offer. We don't need your bribes."
"Good to hear," Lex said with an expression torn between a sneer and a forced grin. "And since you're all a bunch of... bleeding heart superheroes," he added, raising his eyebrows and bending very slightly at the waist to lean closer to Diana without stepping nearer to her, "I'll hold you to your word. I'll see myself out, then."
Bruce considered his own restraint as Lex Luthor swept out of the room as though he owned the place to be just exemplary, but a single glance in Diana's direction made it clear that she was nowhere near as impressed as she stared at him, shaking her head gently.
"I'll call Doc and the others back in, then," he said, clearing his throat and turning to leave the room rather than stand for another lecture - they'd been happening a great deal more lately. As she waited for Bruce to call the others back in to Claire's bedside, Diana went to take a seat in the chair need the head of her bed, brushing hair out of the young woman's face and looking down at her sadly.
"If only," Diana said with a weak near-smile, "a girl like you could just how large a ripple she has created in the world."
"Her vitals have evened out. She might be able to wake up soon with a little more stimulation," Doctor Thompkins said as she returned to the room, resuming post on the other side of the bed from Diana while Bruce, Barry, Victor, and now even Clark - who had only just found himself with the strength to venture from the suite he'd been brought to for recovery - followed her inside.
"Arthur's gone again?" Diana asked briefly, looking up and scanning those who had entered the room.
"Fish Man's a little bit of a lone wolf," Barry said with a comical grimace. "He said if we needed him, he'd know."
"Well," Diana said, only barely hiding the disappointment that Arthur had departed so quickly, "he hasn't let us down yet. Just give him time. He's one of us."
But the glance shared a room hinted that there was a great deal of doubt. Arthur Curry, it seemed, was still very much on the fence when it came to the idea of being some kind of hero for the masses. He had his world. It was small, and it was hidden, but he was making it very clear that it was more than good enough for him.
"Well, about we trying waking our favorite patient up, then?" Barry spoke up, chuckling weakly in attempts at breaking the tension. "Not that she's not a hoot the way she is, but the Sleeping Beauty gig is a little bit of a downer."
"If she's ready, we'll see," Doctor Thompkins said, walking over to the sink to wet a washcloth with cool water, wringing it out before coming back to Claire's bedside. There seemed to be a collective holding of breath while the doctor wiped the cold cloth over Claire's brow, over her face and neck. She stood up and pulled on the small ornate chain that hung from the ceiling fan to blow a cool breeze towards the bed. For a short while, there seemed to be no response, and it seemed as though the effort was still in vain - Claire clearly wasn't ready. Just as Doctor Thompkins was about to give it a rest, however, there was a brief jolt of Claire's eyebrows. Another jolt, a tiny tilt of her head in response to the air hitting her face.
After a few quiet moments, Claire let out a faint groan before gently and just barely opening her eyes.
"Welcome back, MVP," Victor spoke of first, unable to hold back a muted grin of approval at the fact that the woman was clearly a survivor. "That was some pretty beastly work you did."
"What?" Claire muttered, gently shaking her head and raising her arm to shield her eyes as they adjusted to the light. "What do you -"
"How much do you remember?" Diana asked carefully. "We defeated Darkseid on the Metro Narrows Bridge. We couldn't have done it without you."
"That was... that was real?" Claire asked, shaking her head slowly and incredulously. "That's not possible. I wasn't supposed to... I wasn't supposed to be here anymore," she said in slight confusion. "I..."
Clark Kent was perhaps the only person who truly understood the emotion that hung in that unfinished sentence, because he was the only one who had been in that very same position. His face morphed into an expression of sadness for the turmoil he knew the younger woman must have been going through - she had been ready to die. She'd thought her moment had come, and it hadn't. It was a moment that should have been full of joy and gratitude, and yet such emotions were difficult to conjure after having already been resigned to one's fate. It awed him that the woman who loved Lex Luthor would be the one whose plight he sympathized with so deeply.
"Where is he?" Claire asked carefully, knowing full well that talking aabout Lex in present company would be met less than cordially. "Is he alright? Can I-"
"You can see him," Diana spoke up before anyone else could make a decision to the contrary. "He's fine. Alive and well. I'll show you."
Glancing up at the clock, Diana nodded slightly to herself before reaching for the remote to the television set and turning it on to the local news. Five o'clock exactly. As expected, the face on the screen was that of Lex Luthor, standing at a familiar podium and giving a speech so a see of reporters gathered at the onramp to the Metro Narrows Bridge, where construction equipment could be seen in the background.
"Let it not be forgotten that it has been LexCorp that has remained the constant presence in Metropolis's every hour of need," Lex said from the podium as Claire watched silently from her bed. "Despite all accounts to the contrary, LexCorp and its leadership remains committed as ever to making sure Metropolis stays the greatest city in the nation."
He was fine. Everything had seemingly gone back to normal - it was practically the same press conference he had given, Claire remembered, when LexCorp had rebuilt Metropolis following Superman's battle with Zod. Nothing had changed. The world - Lex's world - was simply moving on without her.
"Claire..."
She paused and tore her gaze away from the television screen when she realized that every other eye in the room was fixated upon her - but not at her face. She followed their gaze downward and away, off to the side where one of her hands gripped the metal railing of the bed.
Her stomach lurched at the sight of the bar when she let go of it - it had bent in her grip, leaving waving imprints of where her fingers had dug in.
"N-no," she stammered, shaking her head and feeling herself grow cold in shock as she looked down at her own hands, which quivered even though she could barely feel them. It was Victor who ventured to take a step forward towards the bed first.
"The Motherbox... saved you," he said carefully, prompting her to immediately look up towards the sound of his voice. "But I don't think you get exposed to the kind of energy that thing has without it leaving a lasting impression -"
"No," Claire said, a little more firmly, her hands clenched at her sides. "No. I couldn't have done that," she said, her voice growing shrill as she shook her head fervently. "I can't be like all of you. I can't."
A/N
I know, it's been a long time since my last update! There has been a lot going on lately, but I haven't forgotten about all of you! Thank you for continuing to check up on me and motivate me, even if I haven't always had the energy to respond. I had a brief stint of writer's block after a round of mean anon messages, plus I also have been resting up more because I now have a little one on the way! So, things have been hectic, but I hope to get back on track with writing and updating. I still have a lot planned, and I hope to get through it all!
I'll try to keep this brief. The next chapter, we will see an unexpected but difficult solution to Claire's new dilemma. It's going to be a real roller coaster ahead for Lex and Claire, but keep the faith, everyone! Until next time, cheers!