Chapter 50 - Fall

Lex hardly had time to enjoy the minor victory he'd had with Jonathan, nor to start implementing the ideas they'd discussed at that dinner. When everyone was gone, he checked his phone to see he had a missed call and a text from his father.

Meet me at the hospital tonight.

Lex almost picked up the phone and called his father—he'd never received a text quite like this before. Instead, he checked the time—even if he took the helicopter, he wouldn't arrive in Metropolis until nearly eleven, and probably wouldn't make it back to the mansion before two in the morning—and instead texted back, Just seeing this now. Can it wait until tomorrow?

Thirty seconds later, one word: No.

There was no way this was going to go well.

Lex didn't bother with the helicopter. He wasn't exactly in a hurry to arrive, and he doubted he was going to be able to sleep much tonight one way or another. Without traffic, the drive to Metropolis was closer to two hours than three; Lex arrived a bit after ten.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself before walking into the building. His legs felt like there was electricity running through them.

His dad was sitting in bed, as he often was when Lex came to visit him. "Son," he said.

"Dad."

"Come have a seat."

Lex sat on the edge of the bed. "What's on your mind?" He hardly got the words out without shaking.

"I just . . . I wanted to see you." His father's hand reached out and gently touched his face, softly stroking his cheek with the backs of his fingers.

Lex let himself relax into the touch. He knew his father got lonely at the hospital. Maybe that was all it was.

Then the hand coiled back and slapped Lex, hard, just where he'd been caressing.

Lex could have dodged. He could have jumped back or caught his father's hand. But he knew from far too much experience exactly where that would lead, and tonight, Lex wanted to just get through it. So he took the slap stoically, even though it stung badly. He touched his finger to his lip to find it bleeding.

"How dare you?" his father hissed. "What were you thinking?"

"What did you remember?"

"What do you think?"

Lex wiped the blood away from his mouth. "Julian."

His father's glare confirmed it.

"I know you think I lied to you," Lex said.

"Think?"

"I told you Julian died of SIDS. That was the official story."

"But you knew better."

"No. I was wrong."

"God knows you were wrong. You killed your brother."

"I didn't. I spent the last ten years believing I did, but . . . it wasn't me."

"I saw you, Lex. I saw you standing over that crib."

"Mom did it."

His father raised his eyebrows. He seemed to be considering Lex's words.

Then he landed another slap in the same place. This time, Lex shouted at the impact.

"You pathetic, useless excuse for a son! You dishonor her memory."

"I didn't find out the truth until the other day. And I didn't believe it when I first heard it."

"She loved Julian. She never would have hurt him."

"She spent his infancy in fear of you. She knew what kind of a parent you were, knew what kinds of—of effects you were having on me. She wanted to save him from that, but between the postpartum and living with you, she wasn't herself anymore. She thought it was a mercy kill."

His father sat, breathing hard, glaring. After a long, tense pause—Lex was ready to dodge if another slap came his way—his father finally said, "Let's say I believed you. Why would you take the blame for her?"

"Because she would have been the lamb to the slaughter if you had known. I was your only heir, you would never have killed me."

"You took the blame to save her life?"

It sounded selfless when his father put it that way. It didn't feel selfless to Lex. It was a simple choice: the pain of losing what limited favor he had from his father, or losing his mother. Had he known his mother would pass shortly after anyway, who knew what decision he might have made?

"Oh, you're some hero, then? So then, tell me, what did I do when I saw you standing over Julian's body?"

Lex swallowed hard. "You . . . beat me."

"And you just took that? To protect your mother? Save it for someone who believes you. You are many things, Lex, but a hero isn't one of them."

Lex had been wondering about that as well. He vaguely remembered the beating; much more clearly, he remembered waking up to the cuts and bruises. He couldn't imagine having stood up to that kind of pain as it was being inflicted when a few words could have stopped it. Maybe Pamela was wrong.

But Lex could remember the deadness in his mother's eyes as well, and the words she'd spoke to Pamela didn't leave much to the imagination. "I would have been more scared of losing her than of you."

"You were afraid of the competition. You were threatened by an infant because that's the kind of weak, pathetic son you were. And you lied to me because even as a man, you couldn't face up to your own mistakes."

Lex stood up from the edge of the bed. He was sure the words were only spoken to hurt as much as possible, but that didn't make them any less potent. "You called me all the way out to Metropolis just to scold me?"

"To warn you."

Lex swallowed. "Warn me?"

"That I recover new memories every day, and I will remember everything."

Lex could feel the blood draining from his face, but there was no way he could explain having left his father to die in a way that would be any better than if his father remembered it on his own. So he simply said, "I have nothing to hide."

"Good. Because I will not hesitate to destroy all you have built, should I discover you are lying to me."

"I would expect nothing less."

His father looked away. "Now get out of my sight," he spat.

Lex tried to ignore the tightness in his throat as he left the room. The past few weeks with his father had been some of the best of his life. Now, though, they were really over.

When Clark arrived at the mansion the morning after the family dinner where they'd finally made some progress, Lex wasn't in his study. He wasn't in the experiment room, either, or in the dining room, or in his own room, or in any of the other places Clark usually found him.

Finally, Clark checked the mat room. Lex was there in his sweats and a t-shirt, punching a bag repeatedly.

Clark frowned. He would have expected that Lex would be feeling less stressed and angry than usual after that family dinner; he didn't often use the mat room when he was happy. "Lex?"

Lex whirled around. Sweat dripped from the sides of his head. He lowered his gloves when he saw Clark, tossing them aside and swiping at his forehead with his sleeve. "Didn't know you were coming today," he said, breathing hard.

"Wanted to give you that blood sample." Clark really hated needles—well, he hated having to be close enough to the meteor rocks for the needle to be able to break his skin—so he figured he might as well get it over with. But now he wasn't sure Lex was up to it. "You okay?"

"My father remembered Julian."

Clark winced. They'd known it was coming, but he was really hoping Lex would have more time. "I'm sorry, Lex."

He shrugged. "It was a matter of time."

"Was he upset?"

"What do you think, Clark?"

Clark flinched. "Sorry."

"No, no. I'm sorry." Lex sighed, pacing a bit. "It's just, I haven't been able to get it out of my mind."

Clark shifted his weight a little. "Well, when I'm stressed out about something, sometimes I go on a run to clear my head."

Lex shrugged. "It's not so exciting when you top out at ten miles an hour."

That was probably true. "Well, have you ever ridden an ATV?" Clark used to sometimes rent them with Pete, when he'd saved up his allowance enough.

"No. I have a convertible, though."

"Oh, but . . . it's not the same. Riding through the trees . . ." He smiled. "We should rent some. Get your mind off things for a little while."

Lex turned to face him, his eyebrows knitted.

And that's how Clark found himself racing through the trees on an ATV while Lex rode a second one beside him.

Riding with Lex was nothing like riding with Pete. Pete whooped and yelled and laughed going over hills and around corners. Lex was silent; he barely cracked a smile. But he rode fast. Almost twice as fast as Pete was willing to go. It was fun in a completely different way, and right now, it seemed to be what Lex needed, so Clark was happy to be along for the ride.

As they went over a hill, the path separated into two branches; Lex went to the right, Clark to the left. Clark's eyes traced the paths to make sure they would converge back to the same place, but that meant he wasn't watching where he was going, and he missed the huge tree branch that had fallen over the road. He hit it at top speed and flipped, losing his grip on the handles and flying through the air.

The impact with the ground didn't hurt, but it also didn't stop his fall. It was as if he had fallen into a trap; the dirt beneath him instantly gave way, and he fell through it, air rushing in behind him, until he landed underground, some hundred feet below.

A hundred foot fall was enough to knock the wind out of him for a moment, and it was definitely uncomfortable; his head spun and actually hurt a bit. He took off his helmet and tossed it aside, then he blinked a couple of times until the slight headache faded away and left his vision clear.

He was in some kind of cave, with paintings on the walls. They looked like the Native American cave paintings he'd seen in his history textbooks at school, and they looked old—maybe even hundreds of years old. Clark never would have expected to find something like this in Smallville, of all places.

Lex's voice echoed off the walls. "Clark? You okay?"

Clark squinted up at the hole he'd left behind. "Yeah, I'm okay."

"Should I call for help?"

"No, I think I can get out." Clark looked around for a foothold to help him climb up the walls. Much of the paintings were over fairly smooth stone, and Clark didn't really want to mess them up by sticking his foot into the wall. He squinted in the darkness at a picture of some sort of two headed creature—or maybe it was just two separate creatures tangled together? He couldn't tell if they were supposed to be fighting or hugging.

Then his eyes fell on an impression on the wall. It was an octagon. The exact same size and shape as the metal octagon Lex had found in that field where his spaceship landed.

Clark frowned. It was a coincidence. It had to be. But as he glanced around in the dim light, he noticed that there weren't just paintings of images in the cave. There were symbols that looked a little like letters in another language.

It was a language he recognized. He'd seen the same symbols on his own ship.