(~(~)~)
Like all the great modern tragedies, it began with a game of Scrabble.
Lex was kicking Clark’s ass handily (or footily, Clark mused, punchy from too little sleep), and the “x” that seemed like a secret weapon when he drew it three rounds ago was starting to feel more like a secret weakness. One of many.
Unless — hah! With a triumphant flourish, Clark flipped six tiles onto the board, building off the “d” in Lex’s “quailed” (the word that landed Clark in this hole in the first place). “Take that!” he crowed. “That’s 5, 6, 14, 15, h on a double letter is 23, 24, 26 – and, oh, I do believe that ‘k’ is on a triple-word score. That’s 78 points, baby, and they’re all mine!” Clark couldn’t beat Lex, but at least he could lose with his dignity in tact.
Lex planted his tongue in his cheek and stared at the board. “Except that ‘kexehad’ isn’t a word.”
“Okay, first off,” Clark said as he drew his new tiles, “there’s a harder stop after the ‘x,’ and the last syllable rhymes with ‘odd,’ not ‘add.’ Second, you just don’t want to give me 78 points.”
“Then what does it mean?”
Clark snorted and rearranged three tiles on his rack. “‘Kexehad.’ A noun meaning 'a stubborn but loveable fool.' As in, ‘I can’t believe you’re being such a kexehad; give me my 78 points.’”
Lex tapped his pencil against the score pad. “Clark, I have studied 11 languages. That is not a word in any of them.”
“Sure it is. My mother used to say it to my father all the time.”
“Then your mother speaks some dead or obscure language the rest of us are not privy to. At any rate, it’s not English. Take it back.”
Clark froze as surely as if he was made of lead. “N—not Martha,” he whispered. “My...my biological mother.”
Lex set the pencil on the table. “Christ, Clark. Where did the Kents adopt you from?”
Wasn’t that the question of the galaxy? Clark stood so fast that his chair went skidding halfway across the Talon, and the Scrabble tiles spilled into Lex’s lap. “I have to – I should go.”
“Probably,” Lex said.
Clark ran out of the Talon so fast a couple people might have seen him go into super-speed, and he didn’t care. He raced through the fields like he always did when life went to shit, but this time he couldn’t move fast enough to outrun his thoughts.
His mother. Holy shit. He’d always assumed they’d done something to his memory before they shot him into space – wiped it or something – because even at age three, you remember something.
He had remembered something. He had remembered this word. There was no visual with it – no intergalactic Burns and Allen, where a tall, dark-haired Gracie kissed a tall, dark-haired George in a gleaming sci-fi kitchenette and told him he was such a kexehad. There was only this word, and the suggestion of a world, a home, where there had been, for the briefest of times, love.
Until they jettisoned him.
And Lex. He’d shown no reaction to Clark’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest moment – as though he was the one who wasn’t human. Clark wished he knew how to read Lex. There was also the fact that Lex was an eerily smart guy. Would he add, to his list of unexplainable things that happened when Clark was around, this memory, this word in a language unknown, and come up with the conclusion Clark had hidden for so long?
He needed two hours of top-speed zooming before the hopeless knot of his thoughts loosened enough to unravel. He half expected Lex to be waiting for him when he emerged from the corn, arm slung over the passenger seat of some Ferrari or other, offering a ride with the sultry arrogance of a man who knows he won’t be refused. But the road was empty, and Clark, for once more relieved than disappointed by that, turned his trudging gait towards home.
*~*~*
Martha Kent was singing. She found herself doing that a lot lately – ever since she and Jonathan came clean with Clark about his origins. To be sure, she worried about him more now than ever, but she felt she could help him much more easily now that he knew what to watch for, too – knew the difference between “weird” and “weird for him.”
The kitchen door blew open, and the notes died on her lips. Clark stood in the doorway, his face a dark mask of confusion, hurt, and rage. Martha made the four quick steps across the kitchen and closed her hands around his forearms. “What’s wrong? Clark, talk to me; what’s wrong?”
Had she mentioned lately that she worried about him?
She could feel that he was holding himself still, forcing himself not to shake off her hands. “It’s – really, Mom. I’m fine.”
Oh, God, she thought. We did that to him. Because he was lying. Didn’t take a degree in biochemical engineering to figure that out. And because before she and Jonathan told him about his past, he’d never lied to anyone, and now it was as natural to him as picking up the truck. Martha pulled her hands back as though scorched and turned away from her son who lied. “Don’t forget—“ She shook her head. She’d been about to remind him that she would be there if he needed to talk, but she could only say that so many times before it started sounding clingy and desperate, even to her own ears. “Don’t forget to wash up before supper.”
Clark gave a strange snorting laugh like he’d heard the unspoken part anyway. “I won’t,” he promised and slipped out of the kitchen.
In a flame of rage at what her life had become, Martha picked up a paring knife and slammed it into an apple on the counter. It smashed all the way through (sometimes mothers have superpowers, too), and she left it there, stuck and quivering, while she went back to making dinner.
*~*~*
“Keep up, Lex!” Clark called joyfully as he flitted along the creek bed. And then, a few minutes later, “Le-ex! You’re not keeping up.” A week had passed since the Scrabble game, and by tacit agreement, they had not spoken of it. Clark thought about it – God, did he think about it – and he wished he could get any sort of gauge of Lex’s thoughts on the matter, but that would require talking about it. And, man, did he not want to do that.
Lex sighed and stepped prissily around a particularly squelchy patch of mud. “Number one,” he said, and Clark slowed to hear his friend attempt to defend himself, “your legs are as long as my entire body. Number two: you’ve taken this...shortcut before, and I have not.”
Clark crossed his arms and waited, highly amused, for Lex to catch up. Something about Lex when he got prim and defensive like this, showing his spoiled rich boy colors, made Clark want to scoop him up, old school damsel-in-distress fashion, carry him off to some deserted glen, and muss him up.
“Number three: you wore hiking boots. I didn’t.”
“I told you to wear good shoes,” Clark protested.
“These are very good shoes.” Lex lifted a sodden black loafer out of the mud and stared at it. “At least, they were.”
Any time Clark forgot how much separated him from Lex, he would remember today. He would remember that he told Lex to wear good shoes, and that, instead of the hiking boots he’d had in mind, Lex had worn five hundred dollar loafers. Clark’s own shoes and socks had been abandoned long ago, the boots slung over his shoulder by the laces, the socks stuffed inside.
As Clark gave Lex a hand across a slippery rock pile, Lex said, “I hope you’re taking me someplace good.”
“Lex,” Clark said, slightly wounded, “have I ever taken you anywhere you didn’t consider worthwhile?”
“I just hate to think I ruined these shoes for nothing. I was very fond of them.”
“You can always get another pair.” And he could. Just like that. Clark wasn’t going to think about it.
“By the way,” Lex said, “you look good barefoot.” He flashed that smile that always made Clark unsure whether or not he was joking.
Clark didn’t know how long the world had been wavy before he realized it wasn’t just because he was looking at the creek bed through the water. But at about the same time, he realized he was cold. Shaking. Nauseated. And feeling like he was about to pass out. “Lex—“
*~*~*
In many ways, Martha supposed she was no different from other adoptive parents. She worried about Clark’s biological parents coming back to claim him. She worried about unknown genetic traits and susceptibility to illness. She worried about other kids giving him a hard time for being adopted.
On the other hand, other adoptive parents didn’t have to worry about someone finding the spaceship their child crashed to Earth in.
Martha reached out and smoothed Clark’s hair for the twentieth time. He was so still. She’d been sitting here for four hours, and she’d seen no sign that he was getting better. He’d been four different kinds of sick (the shaking, the vomiting, the fever, and now the near-comatose stillness), but better? Not at all.
If only he hadn’t been with Lex when he got sick.
She supposed she should be grateful. Pete or Chloe or Lana would’ve called an ambulance. Only Lex really understood how anti-doctor the Kents were where Clark was concerned, which was why he called Jonathan after Clark passed out. She only hoped he wouldn’t figure out why they were so insistent that there be no doctors for their son.
Jonathan was asleep in their room. Once, he had gone to Metropolis for a week-long conference on herd health. A week, and she had stayed curled tightly in a corner of the bed as though afraid she would offend him if even a finger strayed onto “his” side. When she got up tonight to check on Clark, she hadn’t been completely into her robe before he flopped over and sprawled across the entire bed. Sometimes he got so obsessed with keeping his family’s secret that he forgot about his family.
Martha took her son’s hand. If he didn’t pull through, would her last memories of him be – the last week had not been good between them. Of course it hadn’t escaped her notice (how could it?) that for forty-eight hours after the day she stabbed the apple he hadn’t once called her “Mom.” She had no idea what happened that day, but he had been with Lex then, too.
“Mrs Kent.”
Martha’s head snapped up to the figure in the dark hall. “Lex. I thought you left hours ago.”
“I did. I came back to see if you wanted me to sit with Clark so you could go back to sleep for a while.”
In the morning, she was going to have to think long and hard about how he got into the house. “That’s sweet of you, Lex, but we’re fine.”
He came into the room. “May I at least join you?”
She gestured towards a chair in the corner. It was from Clark’s childhood, far too small for an adult, but Lex sat in it without comment or hesitation. The gesture didn’t make Martha like him more, trust him more. It was the only other chair in the room.
“Is he any better?”
She shook her head.
“May I ask what happened to him?”
She shrugged. “The meteor rocks make him sick. We don’t know why; that’s just how it’s always been. Where you were walking in the ravine, there’s run-off from a field full of meteor rocks. He walked along barefoot – and his cuffs were soaking up water...” Well, there it was. Too much stress and too little sleep had finally conspired to make her reveal half of the family secret to Lex Luthor, a man she mistrusted for more reasons than she could count. And yet she found it reassuring to have this much truth to share.
Lex nodded as though none of it were news to him.
Clark stirred, and his eyes fluttered open, dark in the moonlight. Lex and Martha leaned forward instantly. “Clark?” Martha said softly. “Clark, are you all right?”
He blinked up at them. “Lex? What are you doing here?”
Martha’s jaw set. “Can I get you anything?”
Clark kept his eyes directed away from her. “Water.”
She nodded. “I’ll be right back.” She raced down the stairs to the kitchen and filled a glass from the tap. But she didn’t return to Clark’s room. She would wait here until she saw Lex’s car leave – with Lex inside.
*~*~*
In the darkness of his room, Clark stared at Lex. “Why are you here?”
“I was worried about you. You gave me quite a scare.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been underwater for a week. Believe it or not, that’s an improvement.”
Lex nodded. “Your mother told me about the meteor rocks making you sick.”
Clark gaped at Lex. His mother had said that? To Lex? He shrugged helplessly. “You found me at homecoming; you knew that already.”
“I suspected. This is the first time anyone’s come out and said so.” He ran a hand across the top of his head. “Clark, is this – does this have anything to do with the Scrabble game?”
Clark stared out the window. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean that bizarre things happen when you’re around. The Porsche, Jeff Palmer, Earl Jenkins, Ryan’s stepfather – I could continue.”
“Don’t,” Clark said sharply, shutting his eyes tight. “Why are you pushing this, Lex?”
Lex leaned towards him. “Because it’s been building towards this. Everything that’s happened since you and I met has led us up to this moment. And so I’m asking you: who are you?”
Clark’s vision was still wavering; he was still shaking and feverish. And his heart was cracking with every word Lex said. Continuing to lie to Lex was going to take more strength than he had - even with superpowers. “I’m an alien. I came down with the meteors.”
Clark had always known that Lex would kiss him someday. He just hadn’t expected he would feel so...used when it happened. Hadn’t expected it would feel so good, and yet so manipulative at the same time. When it was over, Lex put his hand briefly over Clark’s. Then he was gone without a word, leaving Clark to stare up at his ceiling in the suffocating darkness.
*~*~*
Martha had watched Lex’s silver Bentley pull out of the driveway a good five minutes ago, but still she sat in the kitchen, staring into a glass of water.
“Mom?”
Martha turned at the wounded hitch in Clark’s voice. He stood at the bottom of the stairway, clutching the newel post so tightly it was about to crack. “Clark, honey, you shouldn’t be out of—“
Suddenly he was across the kitchen, throwing himself onto the floor and burying his head in her lap like he had when he was a child. Martha sat in immobilized shock for a moment, then cautiously raised her hand to stroke his hair. A sob wracked his body, then another, and she made the quiet, meaningless soothing noises mothers have made since time immemorial. She didn’t ask what was wrong. She had a pretty good idea, but the what didn’t really matter that much. Her son needed her, and she could wait until morning for anything else.
She could wait until morning to admit that she couldn’t fix it.
END