inalienable rights CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Marin Blake was a master of discretion, and not even Lex, arguably the most diligently observant person in the room, noticed as she silently and fluidly slipped two of the small EF formula cases into the roomy pockets of her sweater. She didn't even feel the burning sensation she'd expected from the dry ice. It wasn't until she'd completed the maneuver and Jonathan took a reactive step toward the new arrivals that Clark glanced uneasily at the evidence on the table, to find half of its most volatile contents missing. He jerked his head up, looking at Marin in shocked alarm, then threw a glance at Lois and Lex, still standing by the door and coolly awaiting an explanation.

"Marin!" Clark shouted, turning his scrutinizing glare back to her. "Are you crazy?"

Marin jumped, and all eyes followed Clark's voice in her direction.

"I'm just straightening up so we can set the table, like your mom said," Marin covered with a shrug and prayed that the others would play along.

Clark nodded. "Right… I just meant, you shouldn't lift that, I'll do it." He walked around the table to Marin, covertly mouthing to her as he replaced the lid on the cooler. "What are you doing?" he said silently.

Marin kept her voice low, inaudible to anyone who didn't have an ear right up to her lips. "I wasn't going to use it, I was trying to hide it," she mumbled, her mouth barely moving.

Clark's ears picked up the words and he gave her a single nod. "I'll just… go get this out of the way." He set the cooler out of sight around the corner and returned to the group, the rest of which was hurriedly replacing papers and folders into the boxes from which they'd come, all trying to appear casual and nonchalant as they did so.

Lois and Lex, however, watched the scene unfold with keen interest.

"Aw, isn't this nice?" Lois began. "Look Lex, I think they're rehearsing community theatre. Let me guess - you're doing Martha Stewart's pre-indictment panic? Ah, the classics." She stepped up to the table and picked up a stray document that had slipped to the floor, eyes widening as she read the notations on it. "'5:30 a.m. - Subject continues to float overhead, still no sign of regained consciousness, appears controlled, unaffected by collisions with walls,'" she read aloud, dodging away from Chloe, who lunged at her to retrieve it. "What is this?" she queried, continuing to skim the page.

"It's private property," Dr. Crosby said starkly, forcefully tearing the page from Lois' grasp. "And it's no concern of yours."

"Like hell it's not!" Lois cried, looking at the anxious faces in the room. "I saw Clark's name on that page! What is going on here?" She turned to Lex, who was still standing impassively, feigning a casual demeanor far better than the others who fought so hard to do so. "Why are you just standing there?"

Lex smiled calmly and remained silent as Chloe stepped up to Lois. There were times when the actions that people took without his interference would tell him more than any interrogation.

"Lois, hey," Chloe greeted belatedly with her trademark grin. "It's nothing, really - just tax forms and stuff for the most part. A lot of old paperwork - spring cleaning, you know?"

"It's October, Chloe," Lois replied impatiently.

Chloe laughed nervously and grabbed Lois by the arm as she tried to propel her toward the door. "Yeah, well some people like to get an early start! Or a late start. Speaking of late, I was about to head back home. You should come with me, wouldn't make sense to make Lex drive you back - "

"Chloe, drop the act," Lois commanded, pulling her arm out of Chloe's grasp. "I'm not leaving until I find out what's going on! I have a lump on the back of my head the size of Plymouth Rock from being held hostage here last night, I consider my admission paid. Now I demand to see the show."

Jonathan and Martha exchanged uneasy glances, but not so much over Lois. Her vocal insistence was both expected and warranted. It was Lex, hovering darkly on the perimeter with no intelligible reaction to the tension, that gave them greater cause to worry. He was there during the siege, he'd seen the Kryptonite, and he'd seen and heard far too many things over recent years to allow the events of the past few hours to be brushed away like errant dust. Maintaining his stillness in that moment was perhaps the most terrifying thing he could have done.

Lex knew that.

Jonathan swallowed, feeling the labor of even so small an action down to his core. There was no question that both Luthors knew too much about his son. There was no explaining it away, either. He took a step toward the younger Luthor - the one he'd always seen as - and now hoped was - the lesser of two evils. "Lex - " he began, his voice coming out in a hoarse whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again, pulling out a chair. "Lex… why, uh… why don't you take a seat."

"Jonathan!" Martha gasped, watching her husband in horror. She'd never felt the unveiled contempt for the Luthors that he had, but she'd guarded her son's secret just as fiercely. She couldn't conceive of what kind of break from reality Jonathan must have experienced to behave as he was.

"Dad?" Clark said tentatively. He'd never seen his father with an expression of such uncertainty, and the last thing any of them expected was that the first person Jonathan Kent would extend the arm of truth to would be Lex Luthor.

"What choice do we have?" Jonathan choked. "Take a seat, Lex."

"Mr. Kent," Dr. Crosby interjected. "I really must protest. I think this is a reckless move."

"Do you think I want to do this?" Jonathan bellowed abruptly. "Our lives have been completely turned upside-down in the last two days, not to mention Marin's, and now we have more people than ever poking around with questions! And this is all because of you and your specialists, who were supposed to protect my son! You and that damn Dr. Ripley - look where you've left us! Our only option is to spill our guts to Lex Luthor, of all people! Believe me, I'm protesting the hell out of this myself, but I don't have any choice. Now Lex, sit down," Jonathan commanded, turning his fury on the stoic young man.

Dr. Ripley? The name struck a chord in Lex's mind, and he filed it away for later. "Thank you, Mr. Kent, but I'll stand if you don't mind. May I help myself to a glass of water, though?" Without waiting for an answer, Lex overturned an upended glass, drying on a dishtowel beside the sink. He let the faucet run for moment, then filled the glass and raised it to his lips. He grimaced inwardly at the metallic taste, something almost foreign to his refined palate, but downed the glass nonetheless - as slowly and methodically as he could - knowing full well that each second occupied by his silent swallowing was twisting the rope that bound the Kent family secret. He knew he needn't press them. The cord was already frayed, only a few more strands before it broke.

They would tell him everything.

Lex only had to bide his time. He washed the glass thoroughly and replaced it on the towel, carefully setting it into the same ring it had left before. The words "full circle" played through his mind, which he found somewhat amusing, but he suppressed the half-smile that pulled upward against his cheek. He must remain unreadable.

Lois was playing visual ping-pong, bouncing between the Kents and company, and Lex Luthor. She was no longer certain whether she'd walked into the funny farm, or walked in with somebody who belonged there. "Okay - well, I'm going to take that chair then, if nobody else is," she said brightly, seating herself almost primly on the edge of it, smiling with raised eyebrows at the perplexed faces around her. She waited, nodding for no good reason while the silence continued. "Okay, people! You missed your cue! You're all fired! See, that was the part where I - obviously the heroine of this tale - say something stupid to break the uncomfortable silence, and then one of you pipes up with a juicy piece of relevant exposition. Let's take that from the top, shall we? Clark, your line starts with 'Yes, of course Lois, I'm going to tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.' Jump in when you're ready." Silence, this time accompanied by expressions even more aghast than those previous. "Really, anytime."

"Stop it, Lois, this is serious," implored Clark.

Lois winced. "Oh, I'm sorry, that's not quite it. Now - once more, with feeling!"

"I said quit it, Lois! I'm not telling you anything if this is as mature as you can be about it."

Lois opened her mouth into a wicked smirk, the wind-up for an inevitable fastball of a comeback, but she was robbed of the chance to pitch a no-hitter by the sound of insistent knocking on the front door. She swallowed her fighting words and replaced them with slightly subdued snark. "How could somebody possibly come knocking at a time like this?"

"At least they did knock, before just barging in," Clark retorted, moving for the door. "Everybody act natural." Everyone else clustered behind him, both dreading and eager to see who else might have come in search of long-hidden truths. Lex hung back, subtly examining one of the many notebooks still lying out on the table.

"Coach Teague?" Clark greeted, his voice an octave higher than he'd intended. "I mean - uh, Coach. Hi." He looked to his parents for some clue to a course of action.

Jason smiled easily, his face both excited and relieved. "Clark, hey! Is your phone working?"

"Uh.. yeah, I think so," Clark shrugged.

"The refrigerator's running, too!" Lois called, followed by a quick elbow to the ribs from Chloe. "Ow!" Lois hissed. "Sorry, I was 'acting natural,' whatever that was supposed to mean."

Marin reached out from behind Lois and placed a steady hand on her arm. "Lois," she whispered. "Please don't say anything - if you care about Clark at all, just stay quiet. It's important."

Lois looked down at the shorter girl, confused and slightly perturbed that this stranger had not only addressed her by name, but had also made assumptions as to whom she cared for. It didn't matter that the assumptions were true.

But she did hold her tongue.

Jason chuckled, clearly hearing only the first portion of Lois' comment. "I've been trying to get in touch with you all day, thought maybe there was a problem with the phone. Sorry for dropping in like this. Am I interrupting something?"

"No, it's fine," Clark said with a forced smile. "We just didn't expect you."

Jason smiled and glanced over Clark's shoulder. "Looks like you were expecting everyone else though."

Clark chuckled in a manner that was uneasy at best. "You're not the first to turn up unannounced today."

Jason nodded, momentarily tossing aside the slight oddity of that remark. "Well, I would have waited until tomorrow's practice, but I have recruiters from the University of Alabama breathing down my neck about you, and they're not the most patient people I've come up against. They say head coach Mike Shula's got an eye on that arm of yours for the Crimson Tide."

"Really?" Clark wanted to be excited, but the tingle of electric anxiety in the room drew his smile into a tight line, and football was the last thing he could bring himself to be concerned with just then.

"Yeah - one of the top ten teams of all time, twelve national championships to their credit - which, I'm just gonna say, no other team in the country has, so you could definitely do worse, and it sounds like they'd give you a free ride." Jason couldn't mask his pride, nor could he deny that he felt he deserved a measure of credit for the light shining in Clark Kent's direction.

Clark grinned, praying it looked sincere. "Wow! That's - that's really great, Coach! Thanks!"

Jason assessed Clark skeptically, assuming there was indeed something going on involving the anxious group that appeared to be hanging on every word. He found his eyes searching, and was annoyed to realize that he half expected to find Lana's face among them. He was annoyed further still when he admitted to himself that it wouldn't surprise him. She wasn't as good at keeping secrets as she liked to think she was, and her unwieldy affection for Clark was one of her biggest secrets.

"Well… ah, I'll get back to the boys from Bama, then, and… I'll see you at practice tomorrow, right?" His tone had suddenly become tense and heavy, conditions evidently mutated into airborne contagions on the Kent farm.

"Right," Clark affirmed with an over-emphatic nod. "Practice. Tomorrow. I will - I will definitely be there."

"Good," Jason nodded curtly. "See you then. Sorry for interrupting your evening, Mrs. Kent, Mr. Kent… everybody."

Everyone mumbled random pleasantries as Jason gave them all a wave and ambled down the steps. Clark closed the door behind him and watched through it as the young coach got into his car and backed down the drive. He turned at last to face the room, pointing at the door behind him.

"This does not happen again, understand?" he ordered. "We have to keep this calm and quiet so I can pay attention to what's going on out there. We can't afford more surprises, especially when we know there's one coming."

"Does that mean we're going to get the truth now?" Lois asked in earnest, without a trace of attitude.

"As long as you can stay quiet and listen, yes," Clark answered. He glanced nervously at Lex, who was still poring over the notebook he'd picked up earlier. "But this… this isn't going to be easy to take." He waited for an approving nod from each of his parents before he continued. "I'm… not really what you think I am," he began.

"On the contrary, Clark," Lex interrupted, finally speaking as he looked up from the meticulous notes. "You're exactly what I think you are."