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: Plotty parts are supposed to be the easiest parts to write, aren't they? What the hell is going on, then?

Part 1
Part 2:1
Part 2:2
Part 2:3
Part 2:4
Part 2:5
Part 2:6
Part 2:7
Part 2:8
Part 2:9
Part 2:10
Part 2:11
Part 2:12
Part 2:13
Part 2:14
Part 2:15
Part 2:16
Part 2:17
Part 2:18
Part 2:19
Part 3:1
Part 3:2



Standing on the doorstep of the mansion, Clark jammed his hands in his pockets and carefully studied the industrial-strength mat under his feet. He really didn’t want to be here, and judging from the way Whitney was echoing Clark’s posture, he could guess that Whitney felt the same way. But they had to ask if Lex knew where Lana had been. The only thing Whitney had been able to remember about Lana’s whereabouts the previous night was that she had had popcorn and it was a place she had been before.

Which was decidedly unhelpful.

So they had agreed, after Clark had hesitantly suggested it, that they try Lex’s place. After Lana’s apartment, its atmosphere still rife with the morning’s argument and the sex which had come before, Lex’s house was probably Clark’s second favorite place in the world. At least, he reflected, the memories here were mostly good.

Rita Palmer answered the door, appearing harried. “Clark! What are you doing here?” she exclaimed.

“Uh. Is Lex home?” Clark asked, glancing behind Rita and catching a glimpse of the chaos within. Cardboard boxes were littered everywhere and streams of employees seemed to be toting armloads of Lex’s possessions through the mansion.

“He left,” Rita offered, shaking her head. “Very suddenly. His father came and took him back to Metropolis, not more than a couple of hours ago.”

Clark opened his mouth, but could only manage words when Whitney gave him a nudge. “Why? Did he say why?”

Rita shook her head again. “The Luthors aren’t usually very forthcoming with the details of why they do what they do,” she informed him gravely, but not without a slight note of sympathy.

“Do you mind if we –” Clark began, as Whitney elbowed him again. “I think some of Brodie’s stuff is still here,” he said, letting his voice trail off hopefully.

“Oh,” Rita said, taken aback. “Well, I don’t see why not.” She stepped aside and waved Clark and Whitney in.

With a quick grateful smile for the housekeeper, Clark led Whitney towards Brodie’s playroom. Not wanting to dwell on the process, he was matter-of-fact in his ransacking of Brodie’s small chest of drawers. “We should take a quick look around,” Clark said, straightening up with an armload of toddler clothes. “See if you recognize anything.”

After making a hasty and somewhat stealthy tour, Whitney agreed that he had seen many parts of the mansion before. The major discovery was that of a half-spilled bowl of popcorn in the entertainment room. Though the room was itself in disarray, DVDs everywhere and the TV and components unplugged with wires trailing along the carpet, it was impossible to say how much of the damage had been done by the staff doing Lex’s packing and how much might be the sign of a struggle.

“I can’t believe they could take her from here, though,” Whitney said, puzzled. “Between the staff and the security system, someone would have noticed, right?”

“He dismisses the staff at night,” Clark said absently as he righted the bowl. “And most of the security stuff is just for show, doesn’t actually work. Lex likes his privacy.”

Whitney’s eyebrows shot up abruptly and Clark blushed, realizing he’d revealed too much of his own knowledge of Lex’s home. However, if Whitney was drawing any conclusions, he didn’t voice them, only fixing Clark with a curious stare, then returning to his study of the room. “There’s nothing here,” he said, finally, his voice dismayed.

Clark swept the room one last time with his x-ray vision, prepared to agree with Whitney and depart. But this time, he caught a glimpse of something metal hidden under one of the couch cushions.

A ring.

Clark lifted the cushion and patted around for the object, and his hand struck gold – Lana’s gold and diamond engagement ring.

“If I know Lana,” Whitney said, taking the ring from Clark’s outstretched palm, “she didn’t leave that thing here by accident. She’d leave her clothes behind before she’d leave a rock like this.”

Clark was the one who voiced it. “So they did take her from here.”

Whitney closed his fingers over the ring, making a loose fist before looking up to meet Clark’s concerned gaze. “I’ve never felt this alone in my life,” he said, voice quiet and shaken.

“We’ll get her back,” replied Clark. It was fast becoming a mantra for him, a comforting phrase that, if repeated often enough, had to come true.

But the trail ended here. Unless Whitney could either reestablish contact or remember a helpful detail from his memory of Lana’s abduction, Clark had no idea of where to go next.

“No one comes back,” Whitney said, his voice desolate. He sank down onto the couch, transferring the ring from palm to palm nervously. “No one ever comes back.”

“Not one of them?” Clark asked, growing impatient with the apparent dead end. “Come on, Whitney…of all those names you rattled off, they’ve all disappeared?”

Whitney nodded.

“What about the others? You said there were more.”

“Nobody comes back,” Whitney snapped, rubbing his forehead. “Wade Mahaney. Alicia Baker. Justin Gaines. Emily Dinsmore.”

“Justin Gaines!” Clark repeated, shocked. “He’s not – he’s – he was in a car accident!”

Whitney opened his mouth to answer, but suddenly his eyes lit up. “Holy shit, Clark – Justin Gaines! You – he was in town with you, yesterday!”

Only yesterday? It seemed like months had passed since he and Justin had run into Lex on the street. Then Clark remembered – Justin’s uneasy look, fixed on Whitney. Between Lex’s coldness and Clark’s desire to keep their relationship hidden from Justin, Clark had completely forgotten. “He goes to college with me – but Whitney, he was just in a car accident, he’s not a – he’s not one of you.”

Whitney shook his head. “No, trust me – Chloe had a list, I saw it. And he was on it.”

Clark blinked against this revelation. Was everyone he knew a meteor mutant? First Whitney and Lana, now Justin…was Lex next? Brodie? His father? “What did he do? I mean, what was his power?”

Whitney lifted one shoulder quickly, tossing away the question. “Don’t know. But Clark – he’s one of us, he got taken away, and – he’s back!”

Clark thought again about Justin’s expression when he’d looked at Whitney, remembered Justin desperate and hurt on his knees in the bathroom at school, thought about the wrenchingly vulnerable way Justin toyed with his hand brace when he was nervous… if Whitney was right, if Justin had survived whoever or whatever this Constellation thing was, then Clark thought that maybe the survival had been partial at best. Justin, Clark suspected, was damaged in some way, and it was that suspicion which made him say, “I’ll talk to him,” adding, to belay Whitney’s urgent interjection, “alone.”

***

Lex let Chloe come to him. As difficult as it was to admit, between the two of them, she was the expert in maneuvering around LuthorCorp’s many eyes and ears. Waiting for her to make her move should have been torturous, but in the meantime, Lionel’s promise of grooming Lex was coming true, at least on the surface. Lex barely had time to shower and dress in one of his new suits before the paperwork and phone calls started arriving. For years, he’d wondered when Lionel would finally trust him with some real responsibility, *if* Lionel would. Now, faced with the mounds of work that began to stack up on his desk, Lex realized what Lionel expected. He expected Lex to fold under the pressure, to bail and return to his old haunts, his old habits.

The Lex of two months ago, the Lex before Smallville, would have done just that.

But Gabe’s puzzles, the Constellation mystery, they had made Lex realize his own capabilities. Even if he was out of practice, even if he was a novice at this game, Lex’s mind was made for this – corporate intrigue, project management, networking and using people to Lex’s best advantage. It was so natural, so invigorating. Lex sailed through four days’ worth of work in ten hours, and it was only when he looked up to see that it was after midnight that he realized that he was alone in the building, barring a few security personnel.

Lex rubbed his eyes and slowly shut his laptop, shelving a dozen ideas for the next day. Midnight.

In Smallville, Brodie would have been asleep for four hours. Eight o’clock, off like a light switch. The sleepy weight of his head on Lex’s shoulder.

Lex stood up from his desk, hurriedly clearing it of papers and forcing himself to focus on something else, anything that might –

“My dad doesn’t know,” spoke a voice from the doorway.

Chloe, one foot into the cool blue light of Lex’s office, seeming even younger than she had that morning.

Lex cleared his throat, grateful for the distraction. “He doesn’t know you’re here?” he asked, clarifying.

A small negative gesture. “He wanted… well, he wanted something different for me.” She emitted a short ironic laugh. “So did I, you have no idea.”

“And now you’re here because…” Lex prompted, loosening his tie and flicking open the top button of his dress shirt.

She was silent, her gaze dropping to the stretch of floor between them. It was a posture, Lex realized, of sweet helplessness. She was trying to appeal to Lex’s heroic side, get him to drop his guard, get him vulnerable while he protected her own vulnerability. She was playing him, in other words.

“Maybe we haven’t been properly introduced,” Lex said, feeling his voice grow sharper, almost angry, as he strode over to Chloe. She looked up, startled, when he held out his palm. “I’m Crow.”

The word unlocked Chloe’s taut posed posture, and yet nothing about her seemed to relax. She took his hand, maybe simply out of instinct, and breathed, “He told you. He went to you.” Her eyes were wide, but it was impossible to tell if she was frightened or astounded.

“And I had every right to know,” Lex bit back, unable to shake the rising sense of anger, unable to even guess its source. He drew back his hand abruptly, thinking that he might hurt Chloe by squeezing her palm too hard, but the gesture itself was almost violent in its suddenness.

Chloe, however, didn’t flinch. “Does the pawn have a right to know he’s a pawn?” she asked, losing the last traces of her younger persona, becoming someone much older than she had any right to be. “Does he deserve to know? After all, he’s let himself be used.”

“I’m no one’s pawn!” Lex exploded, and reeled away, pacing back across the office, heading for –

For the scotch.

Lex stopped himself with a quick puff of self-derision.

“God, I can’t believe he’d risk that, letting you on in this!” Chloe exclaimed, her voice filled with irritation. “Of all the stupid –”

“I’ve been helping!” Lex interrupted, turning back to face her. “I’ve been helping your father, not working against him!”

“Helping? You?” Chloe laughed, her voice echoing disbelief. “What, are you sleeping your way to the truth? No, wait, let me guess. You’re going to take enough drugs so that you *hallucinate* the answer.”

“You don’t know me!” Lex exclaimed, truly aggravated now, but his instinctive motion at the end of the declaration again took him in the direction of the bar. He stopped himself once more.

“Okay, what have you been doing that’s so helpful?” Chloe asked. “Have you infiltrated the project? Used your name to unlock doors? Or have you started looking for blackmail material on a board member who could give us information? What exactly have you done to help my dad?”

Lex wanted to answer, but his mind was freezing up like a sluggish computer. All the things Chloe said, he could have *done* those things. What had he been doing instead?

Butting his head up against dead ends. Stealing information that Chloe and Gabe had already collected. Distracting his father and fucking a local – make that *two* locals.

And, oh yeah, rolling around on the carpet with a three-year-old piano prodigy.

The fact was, Lex had done nothing to help.

“Look, I’m not exactly top of the heap here at SatanCorp,” Chloe’s voice sounded, behind him, dim under the roaring of Lex’s blood. “But even I know that fucking a meteor freak isn’t the same as helping one.”

It took a moment for it to strike, and when it did, Lex didn’t think. He just spoke, pivoting one last time to face Chloe.

“Clark? He’s one of them?”

The look of shock that crossed her face told him that he’d blurted the wrong name.


***