If you are reading this, I'm guessing you liked my story "I Remember You." Normally, when I do author notes, I attach them to the chapter, but I couldn't do that without it being spoiler-y.

Easter eggs/tributes:
- I think most people caught that his assistants were all named Gina because that was the name of his assistant in S7. You may recall he wasn't very nice to the original Gina either...
- Chloe died at least twice in her records. Once when Lex himself faked her death in S3 (safehouse summer), and again in S7 when she died saving Lois in the dam. Yes, she died other times as well, but there wouldn't have necessarily been a death certificate.
- Chloe's records being corrupted. Yeah, that happened A LOT. Safehouse summer (S3), S8 when she ran with Davis, and S9 when she disappeared with the Suicide Squad. It just made sense to me that she would keep her records out of the hands of the greater public as a matter of course by S10 when she started recruiting other heroes. I also think this data wiping explains why Rok says in S8 that there is no record of a Chloe Sullivan in Clark's life.
- Lex mentions a ranch that his mother owned that Lionel sold after her death. In the S2 episode "Lucas," he tells Clark this. That is why I gave him a cabin to keep. :)
- "Open door policy." Lex mentions this to Chloe when she bursts into his office in S7 episode "Hero." Awful, awful, episode except for the Chlex.
- Lex never buys Chloe earrings. His "go away" gift to a woman was a pair of diamond solitaire earrings (S4 - Bound). So at no point does he give Chloe earrings of any kind.
- Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday. So I had Lex Luthor "reborn" on a Monday, too. :)
- What's with the Butterfly thing? Sorry, no canon reference. That is all me. I wanted something that would be very "Chloe-ish." She wasn't one to care about designers or expensive pieces. She liked color and flash.
- Where is Chloe's son in all this? Well, the way I see it, nothing specifically indicates that OLIVER is the kid's daddy. Why not have him be Lex's at some point post end of my story? :D Yes, there are arrows and such, but in my mind, any kid of Lex and Chloe would have his own mind. Even if that meant he wanted to like Green Arrow!

First off, thanks and praise for Apeygirl and her fantastic Chlex Trilogy! Here are my shout outs!

Chapter 4 - Chloe says "You gonna move, Luthor or what?"

Chapter 7 - While I would LOVE to be able to claim Lex sending Chloe to Black Creek as an original idea, I have to give credit where it is due - canon and (even better IMO) Apeygirl! Canon indicates that Lex had Chloe seized and sent there, especially from what Tess has to say about Black Creek in season 8. What canon does not indicate is his exact motivation for doing so. That part is up to us for interpretation, and with a character as complex as Lex, there are soooo many great options!

For a Chlexer story, it was Apeygirl and her wonderful story, "The Depths we sink to" that introduces the idea of Lex sending Chloe away to protect her. I hope I made it my own by twisting both his reasoning and what he thinks happened there, but original credit is definitely given! Of course, once he is "gone," things at Black Creek do not proceed as he planned in any storyline - canon, mine, or Apeygirl's...

So here is all my blather about how/why/inspiration:

This story was born from a great prompt by lynzie914 on fluffyflocker's porn! ficathon, that I mulled over in head for a few weeks until it finally hit me with how I wanted to approach the story.

forgive and forget you a thousand times
for the fire and the sleepless nights

The way I saw it, Lex had his memory corrupted, so there was the "forget." But I also wanted him to find a way to forgive...himself. In one of the early episodes Lex says that his father taught him sentiment was weakness. By the time he hit season 7, Lex had become angry and morally gray. He had 3 disastrous marriages under his belt, 2 which ended when his wife tried to kill him. Wife 3 just stalked him. If all that didn't make a man bitter and resentful of love, nothing would. He would have to find a way to forgive himself for letting Chloe in.

In season 10 when he returned (before the memory wipe) he was quite insane, planning to chop up his own sister. When he disappeared in "Arctic" and the few schemes we knew about in S8, he wasn't that crazy. Delusional, maybe, but he really seemed to think what he did was for the greater good. This made me think he had come back "wrong."

Something was missing - his soul.

But what if that soul wanted to be found?

What would tip the scales back? And what made him go off the deep end in the first place?

The answer was obvious - Chloe.

This was a unique writing challenge for me. My other long story (a Chlavis called "Something Between Us") was more or less by canon timeline. For Chlex, I'd only written a single one-shot titled "Apple." So, blurred chronology and new-ish characters aside, the trickiest part in this story was the 2 running timelines - past and present. To mange that, I wrote this story in snippets, that I then pieced together like a puzzle. The hardest part was fitting the snippets together in such a way that kept the story engaging in both timelines. I wanted him to have to fight to find who she was, where she was, and what had happened. This was how he would "earn" his soul back. But souls aren't easy things to have. He fights against what he sees as weakness, giving the story tension and so much of the two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back feel.

And yeah, there is lots and lots of sex. The prompt was from a porn! ficathon, after all! Throughout the series, Lex was a playboy. Without a soul, he would be an amoral playboy, which is why his present encounters with women are so often dark. By contrast, his encounters with Chloe have a very different feel, even when the two encounters (past/present) mirror each other.

Overall, I really hope you liked my story. If you did, how about some comments? Feed the Chlexiness!

I've got lots of other great things going, especially on my livejournal, so check back/friend me!