As you can probably see below, I've reposted Part 3 in its entirety (so far) on my website. As I mentioned the other day, I uncovered some interesting discrepancies in the Clark and Lex timelines, namely that it was apparently simultaneously Saturday in Smallville and Monday in Metropolis. Fixed now, and rearranged, but you probably don't have to re-read the whole thing to recalibrate your brain. Just click the cut-tag below and trust that I have solved the issue without resorting to some sort of time-space tear opening up in Constellation!verse.

If, however, you *do* want a refresher, Part 3 as posted includes today's installment, so you'll be up to date by the end.

I've been thinking about it, and I think I need motivation of some sort to finish this beast. It barely got pulled off the scrap-heap this time, I tell you. I want to burn/eat/delete it at this point. So! Make me a deal! Offer me porn or cookies or naked Clarks and dangle them in front of me like the proverbial carrot before the donkey! Tell me I won't get whatever it is until the next installment, or the end of Part Three, or the bloody epilogue! It's either that, or I'm reinstituting the poetry-as-feedback fiasco of oh-four. And, oh yes, I *would* go there! Limericks ahoy! [/wanky writerly empty threats]

Rating: NC-17
Characters: Clark, Lex, Jonathan, Whitney, Lana, Gabe Sullivan, plus one.
Summary: The most heroic thing Clark did on a regular basis was to stitch up Taber’s right side whenever he needed it.
A/N: See above. I need bribery. And possibly puppies.

Part 1: Corvus
Part 2: House of Leaves
Part 3 (so far): Bigger Than My Body



Getting Whitney admitted was surprisingly simple. They waited at the gate for all of thirty seconds before a uniformed guard appeared. Though he did seem a bit taken aback by the appearance of Lex Luthor and his Porsche, he hid his surprise with a matter-of-fact, “Intake?”, to which Lex responded with a nod. Chloe slid out of the passenger seat and let the guard and an orderly manhandle Whitney out of the back of the car. Even though Whitney was feigning unconsciousness again, they didn’t seem to take any chances, cuffing him to a stretcher and then injecting him with an unknown substance. Both Lex and Chloe tensed at this development, watching as Whitney’s lids fluttered with true sleepiness, but they couldn’t intervene. For all they knew, much worse treatment awaited him inside the building. But Whitney had known, and he’d insisted that he risk it all for Lana’s sake.

They drove away from Belle Reve in silence. Lex wanted to talk to Chloe, wanted badly to press her for more information, to extract the missing pieces in the disjointed story she had told earlier. He tried several times, opening his mouth and taking in a breath, only to sigh the air out again, unable to think of any way of approaching the subject that wouldn’t highlight his own ignorance or make her feel threatened.

The last time he gathered his courage to question her, he happened to glance over at the passenger seat and saw that Chloe had fallen fast asleep. He surveyed her in quick peeks, flicking his eyes over from the spooling highway to capture small glimpses of her relaxed form – one pump sliding off her foot, her neatly tied hair growing messy against the leather headrest, her blouse untucked on one side. God, she was so young, it made a lump rise unexpectedly in Lex’s throat. It was almost the same as when Brodie fell and hurt himself, this strange and unavoidable sense of protectiveness.

He couldn’t interrogate her, not now. Not yet. He would simply let her rest while she could.

Unfortunately for both of them, Lex’s resolution was broken in short minutes when his cell phone shrilled, drawing Chloe out of her sleep. Before Lex could reach for his phone, Chloe had scooped it up from the cupholder and was flipping it open.

“Lex Luthor’s mobile phone,” she said pertly in a professional tone, without even a trace of sleepiness.

She paused and listened. “He’s not available at this moment. May I take a message? Or would you like to call back for his voicemail?” Another silence, then Chloe said, “Ms. Griggs? And what would you like to tell Mr. Luthor? I see. Is that all? All right, I’ll be sure to tell him. Thank you.” She flipped the phone shut again and stretched her shoulders back, sighing slightly. “Griggs,” she told Lex. “Molly. Wanted to tell you she’s done the thing you asked about yesterday. She’s freaking out – she thinks someone’s onto her.”

“She said that?” Lex said, frowning.

“No, but she sounded terrified,” Chloe replied matter-of-factly.

“Send her a text message,” Lex said, nodding in the direction of his phone. “Just say, ‘stay within sight of co-workers.’” Lionel couldn’t hurt her in plain view, after all. Chloe merely nodded and began keying the message into the phone.

They were almost at the Smallville town limits again, and Lex knew they should just drive through town and head straight back to Smallville. He knew it, and yet he found himself turning down Hickory Lane, squinting into the sunset ahead of them.

“Where are we going?” asked Chloe, though she must know, too.

Lex answered the spirit of the question rather than its obvious meaning. “I want to see him.” Lex watched his fingers tighten on the steering wheel before relaxing again. “I want to see that he’s okay.”

Chloe didn’t look his way, only slipped the cell phone into the cupholder and leaned back in her seat. “Are he and Justin –”

“No,” Lex interrupted, reaching for his sunglasses, needing to be inscrutable. “I meant Brodie.”

***

Clark went alone, after nightfall, and when his watch ticked past eleven o’clock, Clark started worrying. They’d said eleven, they’d agreed on eleven, and yet Clark couldn’t seem to pick out Whitney’s voice among the dozens and dozens of murmurs, rants, and shouts that drifted across the field from Belle Reve.

Eleven-oh-six, and still no Whitney. Was he being kept unconscious? Lex had said he was unconscious when they took him. Maybe he was being tested. Maybe he’d had his watch taken away and he didn’t know what time it was. Maybe Clark had missed it already. Maybe Luthor wasn’t wasting any more time with the meteor mutant research, maybe they were just executing them right away. Maybe it was too late –

“Clark Kent,” whispered Whitney, and Clark jumped, because it sounded like Whitney was right beside him, not a mile away and inside those concrete walls. Clark had to resist the urge to respond. Apparently the two days they’d spent honing Clark’s ability to hear Whitney’s voice at a great distance was paying off.

“Clark Kent,” Whitney repeated, sounding nervous. “I’m in the john, it’s the only place you can get privacy around here. But I’m okay, for now.”

He was okay. Clark released a lungful of air he hadn’t realized he was holding in.

“Anyway, I haven’t seen Lana. They’ve got me wearing these lead gloves, probably because they think I shoot fire from my fingers, and I can’t take them off – but they haven’t done anything to keep me from the other inmates. I haven’t seen Lana. The males and females are separated, I think. But, Clark – I’m pretty sure that she’s here. That she’s alive. At dinner, I was eating mashed potatoes and beef, and when I looked down at my plate, just for a second, I saw green beans that weren’t really there, and I know she loves green beans, so I think I was seeing her plate. I tried to reach her again, but she was gone. They must be dampening her powers somehow and she’s trying to break through.

“No one will talk to me, not yet anyway. I tried to make friends, but everyone’s acting weird. I’ve gotta wonder if somehow they know about what Chloe said. I wonder if it’s already started. Tomorrow they’ll be testing me – damned if I know what I’m going to do when they pull these gloves off and ask for a demonstration – but it doesn’t matter, because I’m going to find her, Clark. I am. Can you hear her? I wonder if you could if you tried.

“Anyway, I’m on the third floor, in a room with Ian Randall – both Ians, actually, they keep him separated. West end of the building, I think, but I’m all turned around in here. If you look inside – if you *can* -- I’m lifting up my left hand right now and waving it.”

Clark squinted, but the walls of Belle Reve must have been lead-lined, because there was no depth to the building in his x-ray vision.

“Well, it’s been five minutes so I’d better go before they start dosing me with laxatives or something. It’s like the cuckoo’s nest in here, I swear, Clark. It – it’s nice knowing you’re out there listening. It’s like it used to be with her, almost. Goodnight, Clark.”

“Goodnight, Whit,” Clark answered, his voice sounding small in the dark field. He tried tuning his hearing to the din of the asylum again, listening for Lana’s voice in the mixture – but with night and sedatives falling, there were fewer and fewer voices audible, and only a couple of female ones, neither of which was Lana. Clark waited a few minutes longer, fascinated to identify several of his past foes among those still speaking, intrigued by the indecipherable medical murmurings of the staff. But it was dangerous to be out here, even at this distance from the asylum, and so Clark sped homewards again.

He tried not to think about the possibility that he would never hear Whitney’s voice again.

***
Back in Metropolis, Lex and Chloe only managed to download the contents of two data servers before the connection closed on them. Two minutes later, while Lex was still cursing at his laptop and typing his security clearance code irritably, his phone rang again.

Molly Griggs was dead, said the voice on the other end. Her car had crashed on the freeway as she drove home that night.

Molly Griggs had died for two data servers’ worth of encrypted information, Lex thought bleakly now, swirling the scotch in his glass and feeling his head pound sickeningly. Why had she left the office? Had she been frightened away, or lured perhaps? And how had it been accomplished? An explosive under her car’s back axle?

It didn’t really matter, he supposed – the mechanics of thing, the how and when. The fact remained: Molly was dead because of him. It was small comfort to think that she probably would have died anyway, exterminated by his father in some seemingly accidental fashion in the next month or so. The fact remained, Lex had all but tied the noose around her neck and kicked the chair out from under her.

And Lex had retreated into scotch, several glasses’ worth, and Chloe had joined him, which made him feel strange. He was unaccustomed to having company to go with his misery. But as they drank together in silence, as they got more maudlin and more liquid, Lex became more and more aware of the hard knot of sick guilt that was lodged in his core. Scotch wasn’t enough.

“I killed her,” he said aloud, just to hear the words.

“’S’not your fault,” said Chloe muzzily into her own glass, crawling over to him on her knees and patting his leg to comfort him. “You couldn’t have stopped it.” She rested her chin on Lex’s knee, the warm point of it digging into Lex’s thigh muscle, distracting him.

Lex contemplated Chloe, wondered if she was next, wondered who would lead them if she was. By now Lionel would have made the connection, discovered who Chloe was if not her importance in the scheme of Lex’s betrayal, and really, there were not many stupider things to be doing than sitting here in Lex’s office with stolen information, getting drunk on the couch and awaiting Lionel’s next move.

There weren’t *many* stupider things, Lex thought, feeling drunk and desolate and hopelessly flawed. But there was at least one more – Chloe was warm and pretty and the curve of her neck was like a fawn, and Lex was bending down, he was pulling her up into a kiss before he’d thought of anything else.

She was sweet and unresisting at first, more startled than anything, but then she was clambering away, batting at Lex’s grasping arms. “Lex, no,” she said, shaking her head and ducking another kiss. “No, Lex.”

“Please,” Lex said softly, capturing her long enough to whisper the words into her mouth.

“There’s someone else,” she said, eyes lowered.

Lex couldn’t quite grasp this for long moments, his whole body still surging forward, needing release and safety and the oblivion promised by that doe-like curve of Chloe’s neck, by the heat of her hand on his arm. If scotch wasn’t enough, then he wanted this, he chose this, and he couldn’t make his mind understand that it wasn’t that simple.

But she was moving away. Lex’s brain was sobering slowly, and as he released her waist, watched her stand up in stocking-feet on hardwood, he suddenly realized what he’d almost done. This was Chloe, the person he’d grown to admire and respect over the past few days – and she wasn’t some diverting substance to be imbibed in case of emotional overload. Lex blinked her form into clarity and saw how small she was, how nervous her motions as she straightened her skirt and her blouse. She kept her eyes averted.

“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “That was out of line.”

She nodded, simple agreement, no accusation.

“I should go. Home. But you should – come with me. Just for safety.”

“I’ll be safer here,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, at Renee’s place.”

Right, of course she was. Lionel wouldn’t know about that, not yet anyway. “Promise you’ll text message me first thing in the morning,” Lex demanded, suddenly terrified to let Chloe out of his sight.

“Promise,” she said, smiling more easily now. “Lex, it’s really okay. It’s been a hard day. For both of us.”

“I was still out of line,” Lex said, shaking his head and feeling his skin prickle with embarrassment. “Especially if you’re seeing someone else.”

Chloe opened her mouth as if to say something in response, then paused. “Goodnight, Lex,” she said.

“Goodnight, Chloe,” Lex answered, and watched her walk out of his office.

***

“You take the bed,” Clark said, waving Justin towards his creaky old mattress. “I’ll sleep with Brodie.”

“You sure?” Justin asked, uncertainly. “I don’t mind sharing.”

“My dad minds,” Clark said with a rueful smile. “Besides, if we’re going to squeeze two people into a twin-sized bed, it makes sense to have the three-year-old pair up with an adult.”

“Are you going to class tomorrow?” Justin asked suddenly, as Clark moved towards the doorway.

“Yeah, of course,” Clark said, mildly surprised. “Life goes on as usual.”

“It just – feels weird. Like putting gas in your car when you know the world’s ending tomorrow,” Justin said haltingly, sitting down on the edge of the bed, his vision focused on Clark’s area rug.

“Well, you want to be as educated as possible before the Apocalypse, don’t you?” Clark prodded with a smile.

Justin smiled back weakly. Clark didn’t feel up to another round of bleak goodnights, so he merely backed out of the room and slipped into the dark doorway down the hall. Brodie was sprawled on his back, one index finger tangled in his curls, his other hand resting on Taber’s fat belly.

It had been a few days since Clark had done much more than see Brodie in passing. Clark hadn’t spent so long apart from his brother in months, and it felt almost strange to reach out and adjust the small sleeping limbs, to clamber in beside the small bundle of warmth and to press a kiss onto the smooth forehead.

With all that was going on, it seemed almost wrong – but there was no denying that the first concern of Clark’s heart at the moment was the bone-deep sadness of knowing that he was losing Brodie. Clark put an arm around his baby brother and squeezed gently, trying to convey all his love in a single gesture.

What was it Lex had said earlier in the day, during his brief stop at the farm?

Oh yes, kneeling in front of Brodie, studying him with that intensely tender look that only Brodie could get out of Lex, Lex had said, “Remember that I love you. You’re going to be okay, because I love you.” And Brodie had nodded, strangely solemn even though he couldn’t have understood it, and Clark had found himself fighting back the urge to laugh even as the lump rose in his throat.

It had sounded so much like something Clark’s mother might have said to Brodie in this exact moment, if she’d been around to comfort him.

And abruptly, Clark was wide awake – because it was something his mother *had* said. She’d spoken almost those exact words to Clark a dozen times throughout his childhood, every time he’d manifested another freaky ability. On the heels of Jonathan’s rhetoric about ‘gifts’ and ‘responsibilities’, she would close every discussion with those two short sentences, her hands bracketing Clark’s narrow boyish shoulders, her blue eyes sincere and urgent.

“Remember that we love you,” she would always say. “You’re going to be okay, because we love you.” And like a kiss pressed to a scraped knee, Clark would be magically comforted by this ritual.

Just as Brodie had been earlier in the evening.

Clark rolled out of bed, mind whirling. How could it be a mere coincidence? It couldn’t be, it just couldn’t. He paced the length of the narrow room several times, turning possibilities and logic around in his mind, and finally found himself out in the hallway, walking towards the half-closed door of what had once been his parents’ bedroom. Clark hadn’t been in there since –

“Dad?”

He was still awake, sitting up in bed reading, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose and his mouth marked by lines of fatigue. “Son?” Immediately worried, because Clark didn’t ever come in here, not since he was a boy and still scared of the dark.

“Did Mom ever have anything to do with the Luthors?” Crazy hunch, and a good one, because Jonathan’s face darkened like a storm cloud.

“Why are you asking? Does this have to do with that business with Justin and Whitney?”

“It’s not that,” Clark ventured quickly. “It’s just – Lex said something about having met Mom when he was younger, and I didn’t get a chance to ask –”

“The meteor clean-up,” Jonathan explained, relaxing visibly, setting his book down on the sheets beside him. “When you were six, you stumbled across some meteor rock at the old foundry, and you got sick, and that’s when we realized you were allergic. Your mother couldn’t stand the thought of you running across the meteor rock again, so she spearheaded the campaign to clean up the meteor rocks in public places. She and I spent hours out in the fields picking green rock out of the soil, locked it all up in a lead chest in the storm cellar years ago. She was so scared you’d get hurt.”

His voice was going tender as he lost himself in the memory, and Clark briefly wondered why he didn’t allow this more often, this comforting reminiscence between them.

“Anyway, she got Lionel Luthor to fund the project, god knows how, and for a few years there, she spent a bit of time in Metropolis to get the job done. I suppose she must have seen Lex back then.”

“When was the last time?” Clark asked, his throat tightening suddenly. “The last time she would have seen him?”

Jonathan paused and thought. “I think the last time was in ’95 or so. The more she spent time with Luthor, the less she liked him. It put a bit of a strain on things here at home, you can imagine.”

1995. Clark had been nine, so it was small wonder that he didn’t remember any of this. He had only the vaguest recollection of the incident that had triggered the clean-up, the day he’d been so sick at the foundry. But in 1992, when it started – Lex had been twelve. And that was the year, Clark remembered from his research into Lex’s background, that Lex’s mother had become ill and died.

A young boy, isolated and afraid and grieving – Clark knew his mother, and he knew with bone-deep surety that she would have offered whatever solace she could. She had taken Lex in her arms and told him he would be okay, that he was loved.

And whatever else had passed in the meantime, Lex had remembered those words, had treasured them, and had seen fit to deliver them to a little boy whose own mother had since moved on.

It was almost enough to make Clark forgive him for how Lex had behaved.

He was slipping between the covers again when he realized the true import of what he’d just learned.

That must be what his father had meant a few days ago when he'd said that Clark's parents had worked to protect him from the meteor rocks. And his mother was the one who had helped Lionel Luthor stockpile all the meteor rock he’d needed to create Project Constellation – unknowingly, of course, but it was because of her that Justin – and that Whitney and Lana – and –

Clark pulled Brodie close and exhaled shakily. It was a very good thing that Martha Kent wasn’t around to discover what she’d really created in her attempts to protect her small son.