June 16, 2005 (Commencement)

Morning at the Talon--it wasn't open yet, but Lex was inside, talking to the proprietress. "A big day for you, graduation--are you excited?"

"I am, actually. It's an achievement, I guess, getting through high school, though I think a bigger one is merely staying alive for four years in Smallville."

Lana walked back to the counter and then behind it, to attend to the coffee machines--Lex moved to follow, but his first step landed squarely on a pastry that had fallen as they were brought in, earlier. It spurted red jelly over the floor.

"Messy," he said. "Toss me the paper towel, would you, Lana? I'll clean this up for you."

---

The graduation ceremony was proceeding, outside the school. Clark's absence had been plausibly explained to the principal by his parents, and since he'd been doing well enough to forego any final exams, he graduated in absentia. Lana received her diploma, then Chloe. Lex sat in the back, watching and waiting--like many other audience members, he was filming the event, but his camera was in a van across the street, and took in the perimeter as well as the stage. The ceremony soon ended; caps were flung, hugs were exchanged. Gabe Sullivan, Lois, and Nell were there, looking proud, and the Kents were in attendance as well. Lex got up and walked over to Chloe. He separated her from the pack, and quietly said, "Congratulations."

"Why thank you, Lex. It's nice of you to come--er, to see Lana and me?"

"Of course; we're all friends, aren't we? What a pity Clark couldn't be here, though."

"It is, isn't it?"

---

Jason walked down the street in a grubby part of Metropolis--he was headed for a small bank at the end of the block, where he planned to empty a safe-deposit box and then rendezvous with his mother at a café across town. He was afraid for her--it was too dangerous for them in this city.

"Heads up!" he heard someone above call, and he glanced up to see an object hurtling toward him--there was no time to react. A half-cup of tepid coffee splashed over his shirt as a cup, dropped by a workman, hit him in the shoulder. "Gah!" he cried, disgusted.

July 18-19, 2005 (Carom)

A hot summer evening, and Chloe was at home. The AC was out, and she was sweaty and irritated. And worried, about Clark. His parents were worried too, of course, though perhaps all of them should be used to this--it was the third summer in a row that he'd disappeared. She was sorely tempted to follow him to wherever he'd gone; a month ago she'd stood back and watched him vanish in a flash of light down in the caves, after sticking a metal octagon into a slot--an octagon she had taken with her afterwards. Curiosity and worry were gnawing at her, but the possibility of being shot into another dimension where her human body would be instantly torn apart gave her pause.

There was a knock at the Sullivans' door; Chloe wearily answered it. Then she broke into a huge grin and flung herself at him.

"You're back!"

---

The next afternoon Clark was in the Kent barn, working at normal speed while he let his mind wander. The Kents had brought in a couple of hired hands in his absence, but there was still a long backlog of chores to be done. He absent-mindedly heard a car pull up by the house; the door opened and closed softly, as if someone were deliberately taking pains to be quiet about it--now he paid closer attention. He heard the individual take a few steps, presumably up to the house, pause for a moment, and then begin moving toward the barn. Clark could generally identify people he knew well by the sound of their footsteps; Chloe strode lightly and somewhat erratically, prone to varying her pace or gait at any moment. This person had longer legs and was striding with metronomic regularity toward the barn doors. Here we go, he thought.

"Hello, Lex," he said, a fraction of a second before that man appeared in the doorway. Lex looked a bit rattled; the element of surprise was usually his. He recovered quickly.

"Hello, Clark." He put on a friendly smile. "It's good to see you. You've been away for a while, and no one seemed to know where you were. Or if they did, they weren't inclined to tell me. I was quite worried."

"Everything's fine. I'm sorry if you were worried." he said, stressing the 'if' very slightly. He placed the iron bar he was holding down on a battered-looking table.

"Well, wherever it is you've been, I'm glad you're safe and sound--you are, aren't you?" Clark nodded. Lex came in past the doorway and sat down on a bench. He took off his jacket and undid a couple of shirt buttons--the barn was quite warm. He then continued, "It's been a hectic month out at the mansion. My father's been on a tear; some project he'd been working on was apparently shot out from under him, something 'of unimaginable importance.'" Lex uttered that last phrase in a credible imitation of his father's voice, then shook his head at the man's fondness for dramatics. "At first he was convinced that I had sandbagged him, but of late he's been strongly insinuating that you, Clark, were behind his turn of ill fortune." He looked at Clark guilelessly.

Clark hoisted himself up onto the table and sat. "Your father--well, you know better than anyone that he never says what he really means, don't you?" Deflecting Lex's probing statements was old hat for him by now.

Lex waited a moment before answering. "Indeed I do, Clark. I suspect the source of his agitation is to do with those 'alien' artifacts--you know the ones I mean, don't you?"

Clark responded offhandedly, "Yes, I think so--the 'artifacts' that you, and he, and the Teagues, and that sixteenth-century witch who sometimes possesses Lana, have all been running around after all year?"

Lex bridled a little at that, then regained his composure and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Mm-hm, the very same. I take it from your tone that you don't think it's been time and effort well spent?"

"I know you can't resist trying to solve a mystery, or outdo your father, but..." He trailed off.

"Yes." The Kents' dog Shelby barked, out in the laneway; Lex cocked his head, and continued, "It occurs to me that you should be very careful of my father--"

"More so than usual?" Clark broke in.

Lex smiled. "Yes, even more so than usual. And you should watch out for Jason Teague. He too is very dangerous--doubly so since his mother's death, I would imagine." The front page of yesterday's Inquisitor had screamed, 'SOCIALITE SLAIN IN SUBTERRANEAN SLAUGHTERHOUSE!' with that paper's usual sense of decorum. She, along with her bodyguard, had been stabbed to death in a parking garage as she walked to her limousine.

Clark was genuinely surprised at this. "Mrs. Teague's dead?"

"Yes, she is, Clark."

"Oh." He processed that, then asked, "So, how's Lana? I haven't seen her, yet."

"She's fine--I talk to her at the Talon, or elsewhere, now and again. How do things stand, between the two of you, Clark? You know, when I arranged for that band to play at your prom, it was in no small part with you two in mind--I thought you might've gone together, or--"

"No, it didn't turn out that way. Lana and I really are just friends, now. Good friends."

"That's nice. One needs all the good friends one can get." Lex returned the conversation to a previous topic. "Clark, about those 'artifacts'...do you know where any of them, are? It really is important to me." He stood up, suddenly, and scanned Clark's face, watching closely.

"You need to stop obsessing over them, Lex." Clark said, turning away.

"Why? Why should I do that?" Lex strode over to him and spun him around, gripping him by the shoulders; Clark allowed himself to be turned. "Tell me, Clark. If you're still my friend, tell me where those stones are."

A long moment passed. Then he responded forcefully. "If you're still my friend, then you'll knock it off with this manipulative bullshit. Now, I've got work to do, Lex. Don't you?" He took a step back. Lex, thwarted, looked angry for a moment, then his face became a mask of indifference. He shrugged, and walked away.

August 15, 2005 (Mortal)

The plan was drawn up and ready to go. A little convoluted, but it had to be, to cover every eventuality. And the overseers at Belle Reve really ought to pay their guards more--they were appallingly vulnerable to bribery. He paused in his reflections because that thought had resounded in the dark, damaged recesses of his mind, raising the faintest of echoes. A series of murky images floated up to him: Belle Reve--bribed guard--Van McNulty--meteor rock--Clark; but it was all so ephemeral that as soon as he moved his head it was lost, not to return.

Lex blinked and refocused--he took a sip of whisky and ran through the plan again in his head, as he reclined in his study. There had been a familiar nagging voice hectoring him while he was plotting, saying, "This will be going too far--this will be unforgiveable." He didn't hear that voice so often anymore, and ignoring it now was easy because he really had to know, it was time to quit tiptoeing around the issue now because it was eating away at him, there were times when he could think of nothing else. He had tried to be a good friend, trusting, supportive, and what had it gotten him? Lies, because he wasn't to be trusted with the truth. And insanity was trying the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results--it was time to try something else. (They don't trust you, so you do something like this to find out what they won't tell you, which will make them trust you even less, which will make you do something even worse...) He grunted, and shook his head. It was an impossible situation, which he could no longer stand--he had done well to hold it together for this long.

He wondered speculatively if his ever-delicate sanity was at stake over this; that would make it a case of self-preservation, and perfectly justifiable. Yes, justifiable--he had every right to know, because it concerned him in so many ways. Once he had proof, just a scintilla of something that couldn't be dissembled away, he could confront him with it, maybe bluff a little that he knew more, knew enough that it made no sense not to tell him everything (or he could force him to spill the rest of it, he thought, once he had something, he could use it as a weapon and extract the rest from him--no, he pushed that thought back down whence it came, for now, for now). And he was doing Clark a favor, really; things would be much better for everyone afterwards--once he knew them, he could help Clark and the Kents protect their secrets...

No, no; good arguments all, but ultimately unconvincing. Lex grimaced. It was a lie--no amount of tortured logic could conceal that this was going much too far; however many times Clark had lied to him, there was no justification to do this to someone he still considered his best friend, as sad a statement as that might be. There would be no coming back from it, if he found out. And what would it do to Lex himself? Something he had said to Clark about "...the darkness creeping out around the corners." came back to him--if he took this step... He weakly kicked out at a footstool in frustration. To hell with all of them, he thought miserably, and slammed shut the computer.

September 14, 2005 (Hidden)

At dawn of that day, a disturbed young man, an acquaintance of Chloe's from Smallville High named Gabriel, had seized control of an underground missile silo with the intention of obliterating the town. After doing so, he had called to warn her--at once she tracked down Clark at home, where he was enjoying a quiet family breakfast.

"Sorry to drop by so early," she said as she knocked on the door while coming through it, "but I just got a worrying phone call, if it's not a prank." She laid it out for them. In town, above the Talon, Lana slept, though the beam of sunlight that had just fallen across her face would soon awaken her.

Clark and Chloe conferred, and came up with a hasty plan wherein Chloe would lure Gabriel out of the silo with a phone call feigning distress and an inability to get out of town. She did, and he came. When Clark stepped into view demanding that he give up and tell them where the silo was, Gabriel calmly drew a pistol and shot him in the chest. He was momentarily nonplussed at the gunshot's ineffectiveness, but he put it down to a bullet proof vest and then shot him again, in the head this time.

Then he slowly lowered the gun, dumbstruck--it seemed to him that the meteor freaks must have cottoned on to his plan to kill all of them with a single stroke, for here was one in front of him, quite bulletproof and continuing to demand to be told where the missile was. Eventually, he did tell; the realities of a nuclear blast were beginning to come home to him as he stood out in the open at the side of the road, getting browbeaten by Chloe and Clark as the clock ticked down beneath a farmer's field. And later on, he would become just one more Belle Reve patient with a peculiar story to tell about Clark Kent.

Later, Lana came by the Kent house, to where Clark and Chloe had returned and were just then sitting down to a well-earned midday meal. "Am I to understand that the two of you saved this corner of Kansas from destruction, in between breakfast and lunch today?" she asked, entering the kitchen.

"Hey, Lana," Clark said, a little nervously. "Um, if you're hungry..." He gestured at the table.

"The police and military must not be covering this up with their usual efficiency--how'd you hear about it?" Chloe asked as Lana sat down.

"Lex called me with the news. And on behalf of a grateful county, I thank you both." Lana buttered a piece of toast and began munching on it.

"Uh, thanks. Yeah, we just--"

Chloe jumped in. "We just tricked a computer geek into coming out of his warren and played 'good cop, bad cop' with him, and he crumbled like bad concrete. Easiest nuclear-apocalypse-staving-off ever."

"Well, you should've called me--you could've both been good cops and I could've been the bad cop." Lana smacked her fist into her palm threateningly. "Hey, you've got a hole in your shirt, Clark." She pointed at a small hole in his white T-shirt.

"Oh. Yeah, I think, uh, moths..."

"Could you pass the juice?" Chloe did so, amused; Lana poured a glassful. "So, my move to Met U is off till tomorrow, then--remember Clark, I still need your help with that."

December 24, 2005 (Lexmas)

The ambulance sped through the snow-dusted streets of Grandville with Lex in the back, near death, shot by street criminals. As his body struggled to hang onto life, he dreamt, or possibly did something else--who knows what?

At any rate, he woke in the hospital to find Lionel by his bedside and a sewn-up wound in his lower chest. The Luthors had a fraught conversation like so many others down the years, and then after his father had gone, Lex phoned the 'investigator' Griff and told him his services wouldn't be required after all. Then he slowly got to his feet and edged over to the window. He looked out at the swirling snow, then down at the empty street. As ever, he thought bitterly, I'm betwixt and between, never able to be utterly ruthless, or entirely decent. And worse yet, now I'm in danger of becoming a cliche: the wicked man who reforms after a strange dream on Christmas Eve. How pathetic.

"Tell me, spirit," he muttered, "will Tiny Tim live?"