A/N: Direct quotes from 3x1, Exile, and 3x2, Phoenix. I own nothing.

Chapter 41 - Wounds

Three months later

Martha sat up on the couch deep into the night, her half-full coffee mug long since having gone cold in her hands. She wiped away her tears every so often.

It had all happened so quickly, and then so slowly. A single day of the worst, most sudden, most acute pain she had ever felt in her life, and then three months of wondering if death would have been more merciful.

In a single day, she'd lost all three of her children.

The littlest one was first. Clark had been lying about not hearing Jor El's voice, and he destroyed his space ship. Martha didn't know to stay away, and she never knew what hit her. When she woke up in the hospital, the first thing the doctor told her was that she would be fine, but her baby wouldn't.

Martha didn't even have time to consider whether to be angry with Clark before he was gone, too. He'd run away and taken Jonathan's motorcycle. Hours later, she received word that Lex's jet had gone down on its way to their honeymoon, and he was missing as well.

As her tears for her baby subsided in the following days, the tears for her older sons began.

It took Jonathan a couple of days to admit that he'd berated Clark hard enough to make him think the miscarriage was his fault, driving him away in the aftermath of the accident. Martha never mustered up any anger against her husband. Maybe she was too emotionally overwhelmed to feel anger on top of everything else. Or maybe it was the fact that Jonathan wept bitterly when he made his confession.

The newspaper started to fill with stories about crimes in Metropolis, and it became increasingly obvious to them that they were Clark's doing. As the weeks passed, she worried that her son was never coming home.

Meanwhile, search parties never found Lex. They never even found the remains of the LuthorCorp jet. Martha received the funeral announcement a couple of months later. It came in the wake of a particularly bad news story—a new bank robbery—and she didn't think she would have any more tears to cry, but they just kept coming.

Over everything else, losing the farm was just icing.

There was no describing the pain, neither the sharp and excruciating agony of each loss, nor the helplessness of knowing, day after day, that she'd lost everything, that things kept getting worse, that bad news kept rolling in, that she would never see her children again.

Martha focused as well as she could on taking care of the one person she had left to protect. She let Jonathan rage and shout when he needed to, weep when he was able to, and sleep when he hadn't in days. She made sure that he ate, that he didn't overexert himself on the farm, and that he stayed open and honest with her about everything he felt.

She herself didn't waste any time or effort in holding back her tears, but worked through them. Cried while she cooked. Cried while she cleaned the house. Cried while she helped Jonathan with the farm—it was too much for the two of them without Clark, but they had to try. Cried while she prayed for sleep, and for Clark to come home, and for Lex to be found, and for the farm to somehow be saved.

There was no sense in attempting to stop the tears, trying to power through, or seeking any true relief from the pain. Losing any one of her children would have been debilitating. Losing all three, as well as her home . . .

After Lex's funeral, Jonathan decided he had had enough. He announced to Martha that he wasn't coming back home until he had found Clark.

As Martha waited awake all night and into the next morning for Jonathan to return from his mission, unsure of whether to even dare to hope he would succeed, she remembered the words he'd spoken to her as they prepared their move out of the farm house:

You remember the day we found out we couldn't have children? You grabbed my hand and you told me not to worry. You said that we would have happy days again, and you were right. We have had happy days. With Clark. And with Lex, too. But even though they're not here with us anymore, Martha Kent, I am here to tell you that we will have happy days again.

Hope was dangerous. Hope had crushed her over the past few months—her hope that Lex's search parties would be successful, that Clark would return, or that she would wake up and find that everything had been a dream. Hope could destroy her.

Still, she held onto it, for the sake of Clark. Her last living son.

And then he walked through the front door.

Lex stumbled into his study late at night. He took off his wedding ring, and with it a tiny portion of the weight of all that had happened.

The plane crash three months ago. Helen's disappearance. The most intense visceral fear he'd ever felt in his life as the nose dived down, dropping, plunging . . .

The water landing. His suit soaked through in an instant, his whole body nearly crushed under the freezing, churning waves, until he could pull himself onto one of the wings, coughing and sputtering and gasping for breath.

Shivering in the water, knowing death was only a matter of time. Pulling out the compass from Mr. Kent and finding his way to an island.

Passing out from the exertion.

Waking up covered in scrapes, cuts, and burns, alive and stinging from the salty spray of the ocean.

Dehydration so intense, he would have drunk the salt water despite knowing it would kill him sooner, if he hadn't found a fresh pond from the rains.

Sunburns so hot, his skin hurt to move, let alone to touch.

Starvation so painful, he forgot what his aversion to eating bugs had ever been.

Loneliness so desperate, he began to hallucinate wildly. For a little while, some twisted version of his inner darkness became a person, who he tried to kill.

Missing Helen. Missing Lana. Missing the Kents and cursing every moment he'd spent away from them by choice. Missing warm showers and soft beds and hot food.

Then the rescue. Coming home. Pointing a gun at his father, only to eventually find out that it was his beloved wife who had betrayed him. Who had never, ever loved him. Who had only cared about the money. He only just managed to escape the second time she tried to kill him.

Lex pocketed the ring.

"Well done, Lex. Well done."

Lex flinched. His father sat at the piano. He stood and walked over to Lex.

"That was a Machiavellian maneuver worthy of a Luthor."

Lex didn't meet his eyes. "I appreciate the kudos, but I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, come on, Lex. Do you think I'd neglect to put surveillance on my planes?"

Lex said nothing. He should have known his father would somehow be watching him nearly get killed by his wife once again. He poured himself a drink.

"You know, Lex, I, uh . . . never imagined that you would fall in love with Helen. I'm sorry it happened, son, but don't be too hard on yourself."

Lex fought the urge to scream at his father that he knew nothing. Of course it had never occurred to him that Lex might fall in love. His father knew nothing of love.

On some level, Lex knew that if there was any time to be grateful for his genes, it was now. After all, it was his father's lessons that had kept him alive on that island. He knew if he had been anyone else's son, he probably would have died. The darkness inside him couldn't be his mother's doing, which meant it was his father's. And as much as that manifested darkness had tormented him on the island, it kept him sharp. Helped him find food and water and construct shelter. It wanted to survive even more than he did.

Lex knew he owed his father his life. He just didn't care. His father had made given him every means of surviving, but nothing to survive for.

Lex knew if it weren't for the Kents, he wouldn't know the difference. He wouldn't know what it was like to feel like he was worth something. He wouldn't know what a family was supposed to feel like. He would thank his father, he would go work for LuthorCorp in Metropolis. He would probably run into his father's arms.

He couldn't have the Kents. But he didn't want this pathetic alternative for a family, either.

"Lex?" His father took a step closer.

"Go to hell," Lex said, and he left the study.

He paced in the hallway. Despite so many weeks and months of fighting so hard to get off the island, his darker side had been right after all—he had no life to get back to.

His mother was dead. Julian was dead. Lucas was a psychopath. His father was a villain. His wife had never loved him. And the Kents . . .

Lex closed his eyes. He could almost feel Mrs. Kent's arms.

"You can't go back, Lex. Have you forgotten? She lied to you."

She had lied. The Kents all had. But Mr. Kent insisted they'd had a good reason, even if he couldn't tell Lex what that reason was. Lex had never exactly been upset that they couldn't tell him everything they knew; it had been the sheer number of lies that hurt, and the way Clark had treated him. But maybe Clark's treatment really just had been the result of a bad day in the temperamental life of a teenager. And maybe the secrets they kept really were dangerous enough that they'd had to lie to protect him.

"You can't trust them."

Lex hung his head. He was one to be the judge of trustworthiness. He'd broken their trust terribly—he couldn't even try to claim he had a good reason for stealing Mrs. Kent's medical record and Clark's blood. And then there was the Room of Obsession. Lex still reasoned with himself that he could justify the Room of Obsession—it wasn't all about the Kents, after all—but if Lex really didn't believe it would bother them, why did he keep it locked up with a key only he had?

"What are you going to do? Confess everything to them?"

He'd have to. They'd promised they wouldn't lie to him anymore; if he wanted even a chance at rebuilding the relationship he'd had with them, he couldn't lie either. Of course, they already knew most of what he'd done, but he'd have to tell them about stealing Clark's blood. About breaking into Helen's office. About giving into the darkness.

"What are you expecting to happen, Lex?"

He really didn't know what to expect. They could push him away. They should. But some of Mrs. Kent's words from a year ago echoed in his mind, words he'd never been able to forget:

"I will be here every time. Every. Time. I will be here to help you pick up the pieces, and I will never let you fall."

But he had fallen.

"Don't you dare think I'm going to give up on you because you make a mistake."

This was more than just making a mistake, though. He'd let his darker side take over. He'd broken his promise to call her if it tried; he'd given up the fight. He'd become everything he was afraid of, everything the Kents hated. He'd become his father.

"You're stronger than your dark side, Lex. And we're going to make sure it stays that way."

But he wasn't, and his dark side just kept getting stronger. She'd been wrong about him the entire time she knew him.

If Martha Kent had never loved him, she wouldn't want him back anyway; if she did love him, he'd have devastated her by staying away for so long, and by betraying her so many times. By now, she'd be too upset with him to want to see him again. He'd deleted every message and email from their family for the first week, and eventually blocked their numbers and email addresses.

The darkness spoke again: "They won't take you back."

Maybe they wouldn't. But Lex had to try.

It laughed. "You think they'll want you as their son? Your own wife didn't want you."

Adrenaline and rage surged through his veins. He hated the darkness. He hated it. Being around the Kents had always weakened it somehow, or maybe strengthened him against it.

And that decided it. He was going back, whether the Kents wanted him to or not. And if they didn't want him, they could always send him away.