A/N: Here´s the final instalment. Enjoy it!
I´ve been working on another fic but, it isn´t nearly finished and I don´t know if I´ll have the time to work on it until my winter holidays (late July). Who knows? Maybe I´ll complete it or even start penning a different one. Actually, it´ll be up to my muse and my hectic teaching schedule.
CHAPTER 11: Finding the Answers
The owners of The Waters Edge Cottage had met Lillian in 1979 when Iain had brought her to visit his hometown and introduce her to his childhood friends. Phoebe and Glen had been the ones to stand by the eldest of the Griersons when his parents had disowned him after he turned his back on the clan and refused to marry the bride of their choice.
Lillian had confided in Phoebe during her stay, telling her she was promised in marriage to a rich and powerful man in America and that, although she wasn´t in love with him, her family´s economic future was at stake. She had fallen in love with Iain while studying in Glasgow before her parents were forced to cut down her allowance and ask her to come back to America. Lillian and Iaian kept their romance alive by post and she ended up using all her savings to return to Loch Lomond on Christmas 1978 and stayed there for two months.
She had kept her impending nuptials with Lionel a secret, hoping the Griersons would learn to accept her and that she could remain in Scotland and marry the man she loved. Her dreams went up in smoke when the Griersons threatened to disown Iain, and she decided to sacrifice what they had to prevent that from happening.
Three months later, Iain turned his back on the clan and flew to America in search of Lillian, but it was too late- she had already got married and was expecting her first child.
Grierson came back to Scotland, where the MacAllister lent him a lodge that had been in Phoebe´s family for three generations, and he took up a job as a tutor with one of the land-owning families who had known him since he was a young boy. He became a hermit; his social life was almost non-existent, except for an occasional meal at the Cottage with his old friends, and he spent most of his free time locked up in his study, in the company of his old books and a good bottle of Scottish whisky.
"He was walking along the A82 when a drunk teenager lost control of his vehicle and knocked him over," Phoebe explained to Lex and Chloe when they arrived at the old lodge. "We were expecting him for dinner. He had talked with Glen on the phone, told him he had great news to share with us. We couldn´t remember ever hearing him so happy, except for the two months Lillian had stayed here. It wasn´t until a month after his funeral that I found the letter while cleaning the lodge. The morning of the accident he had received post from America- the address on the envelope was a P., but I recognised her handwriting. That evening he was going to celebrate the news with us- that he had a son, and that the boy was turning twelve that month."
THE GARDEN ROOM- 7 p.m.
Lex had been eerily quiet since they drove back from the MacAllisters´ lodge. Chloe´s heart was breaking for him- it seemed God was constantly mocking him and giving him hope just to take it away the next moment. Seeing him so quiet, cold and collected sent shivers down Chloe´s spine; it was too much like the calm before a storm and she feared for him and what this might do to his resolve to stay away from the path which had almost destroyed him.
"Lex," she murmured, getting closer to him and noticing the coiled tension in the muscles of his neck and his back.
He turned even more rigid when he herd her voice so near him.
"Lex," she insisted, resting her hand on the small of his back and feeling him start to tremble, "what can I do?"
Lex bit his lower lip and shut his eyes tightly as tears welled up in them. He had found his father only to lose him before ever getting the chance to meet him. Lex was tired of always losing the most important people around him, of investing himself emotionally to end up wounded time and time again. He felt her voice fighting to get through the wall he had erected in that garden behind the lodge when he had seen his father´s name carved in stone. She was touching him with the same hands which had brought him back from the dead and the wall started to shake.
Chloe´s sixth sense told her he was trying hard to hang onto his engrained stoicism, and she cursed Lionel Luthor for depriving him of the natural outlet for hurt.
"I´m here, Lex. I promised I´d be here," she uttered, wrapping his waist from behind and resting her face on his back.
The warmth that had enveloped him in that hospital room began to filter through his pores with determined resolve, and Lex felt his clenched fists leave his pockets to cover her hands and hang onto her like an anchor. He sensed the steady beat of her heart resonate in his chest and, gradually, his own slowed down to imitate hers. And, then, he perceived the dampness on the back of his shirt- she was crying for him, she was crying for what he´d found and lost that day; and, just as his heart had followed her lead, his tears finally started to fall.
Chloe felt the change in Lex when he decided give up his reticence to be touched and comforted, and she breathed relieved. If he let his defences down just a little to let her in, it meant there was still hope for little Alexander to rise victorious.
"Yesterday I promised you we´d look for another hotel," he said in a low but steady voice a while later. "We can drive to Glasgow now that the storm front has cleared."
"You´re exhausted, Lex," she responded, loosening the grip on him as he began to pull himself together. "I suppose I could drive, but it´s already close to dinner time, and I´m not really fond of travelling in the dark, particularly when I´m not familiar with the road."
"Has Lois phoned you?" he asked, slipping his hands in the pockets of his trousers.
"Yes. I guess you already know the news is out," she replied with a small smile.
"I´m going to kill that estate attorney," he said tersely.
"It was bound to happen sooner or later, Lex. It´s too big a story to be kept under wraps."
"I´m sorry you´ve got involved in Luthor affairs again."
"I´ve been involved ever since I made that stupid deal with Lionel when I was in high school. He never knew how to let go. Or maybe I´m wrong, because if you think of it... our lives got intertwined long before that... when my mother made another reckless bargain with the old bastard. I still don´t get it.... why me? Why leave me forty percent of the corporation?"
"The evening I went to see him to his office... he said it was too late to undo the past, but he also told me something before exhaling for the last time I didn´t understand then: Paved the way. I didn´t set much store by those words, considering who they were coming from."
"Do you think leaving me those shares was a twisted attempt to give us a chance to start rebuilding what he had tried so hard to destroy four years ago?"
"Maybe. Or, maybe, he thought you´d make a hell of a CEO," he smirked. "You´re a hard nut to crack, Chloe Sullivan."
"I don´t want the money, Lex, or the power that comes with it. I´ve got more than I can handle with this," she gulped, looking at the palms of her hands.
"Don´t look at yourself as a freak, Chloe; you´re so much more than that. And the shares are for you to do with them as you please. I´m not planning to keep mine," he told her, rubbing his neck.
"What?" she asked dumbfounded.
"I´ll leave LuthorCorp the same way I arrived at the corporation, with the twenty percent my mum bequeathed me. I just want what I built with my own effort and the support of people like your father," he added, boring his intense blue-grey eyes into her," people who had faith in me and who jeopardised their future and that of their children to help me despite my name."
"What will you do with the other twenty percent?"
"I´ve already talked with my lawyers. I´m transferring the shares to Lucas. It´s only fair; he´s a Luthor. He can gamble the money away for all I care."
"I was thinking along similar lines... leaving him the shares, I mean."
"Even though he´s a pig?" he cocked an eyebrow.
"A filthy pig," she corrected him," but he got a raw deal. Let´s say I´ll do it for a mother and a child that were cruelly separated."
"You should sell part of the stock and keep the money for you. Give it to Queen, if you want."
"Queen? You´re kidding, right? Since when do you approve of Luthor money going to Queen´s bank account."
"It might be used to fund research on your mother´s illness now that I´m thinking about closing the pharmaceutical branch of LexCorp."
"Why? It´d be a great loss to waste everything your scientists have been working on."
"It´s too dangerous, Chloe. You´ve seen what happened in the past. I get too greedy, too soon. I just don´t know when to stop when I see something I want," he said passionately, and Chloe felt his scorching gaze burn her.
They had circumvented the issue that was hanging in the air to deal with more practical questions, namely how they were going to handle the business of Lionel´s inheritance- and now that they were settled, the tension between them was sizzling again. He´d given her a way out when he offered to take her to Glasgow, and she´d turned it down. If they stayed that night, there was a strong chance they would end up in each other´s arms. Although Chloe was scared of how intense the feelings they´d tried to repress were, she was done running away. A few days ago he had told her going for the safe choices wasn´t who she was, and he had been right. Unlike Lillian, she wouldn´t commit the mistake of listening to others and wasting the opportunity to find out if they were meant to be. She had already sacrificed too much for others, and it was high time she started thinking about herself.
Chloe looked across the room, locked her deep green eyes with his and heard Alexander´s childish voice say `Don´t leave me´ and she uttered: "I´ll stay, Lex."
"Are you sure this is what you want, Chloe? I´m not a charity case."
"Who said anything about charity?" she smiled conspiratorially.
"What´s going through that mind of yours?" he cocked an eyebrow.
"I´m imagining what you´d look like in a kilt. I´d love to see that before leaving for Kansas."
"Are we talking about wearing the kilt in the traditional way?"
"What? Is there another way?" she quipped.
"And you said you did no longer want to bring me down?" he responded.
"Never believe what a reporter says when she finds herself between the devil and the deep blue sea," she beamed.
"Well, I suppose it´s open to negotiation," he sighed.
"What is?" she frowned.
"The kilt. What did you think I was talking about?"
"I don´t know. You´ve always had secret agendas."
"This time it´s out in the open. Are you willing to run the risk?"
"When I brought you back I said I´d be there. My word´s good; I´ve never backed down."
"No, you haven´t," he responded with the ghost of a smile.
This time he´d paid heed and Lillian had been right. The answers had found him, and the blinding light which had surrounded him and the warmth that had enveloped his heart in that hospital bed were there when he finally woke up. Being blind for a while had been more than worth it. Having Chloe back in his life was the reason for his survival and the answer his heart had been waiting for so long.
THE END
A/N: I hope the ending hasn´t disappointed you. I wanted to finish this fic with a good amount of hope without forcing things between the two characters. They might have a future as a couple; that´s why Chloe is willing to stay and try to find it out- although I´m sure it´ll take them both more than one night in a secluded cottage to heal wounds and overcome their conflictive past. I´ll leave it to you to decide what´ ll happen to them.
