After All (1/2)
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark/Lex
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Six years after leaving, Lex is invited back to the Kent farm for Christmas.
Disclaimer: Nothing that you recognize belongs to me.
This story is part of the Slash Advent Calendar of 2003 at http://www.kardasi.com/Advent/2003
Notes:
1) This is the fifth story in my Movement series. In order for it to make sense, you should have at least read the previous story, Lessons in Deception.
2) For Teri, who has waited for so long for me to write again, and for everyone else who has asked for this story along the way. Beta: Zan and Tehomet - thanks guys, you were great!
December 2, 2008
The envelope stands out because it's red. It's been sitting in the pile of mail on my desk since I got in earlier this morning, but until now I haven't had the time to pay it any attention. I started out reading my email as usual. Then David came in with the completed papers for the Ferguson deal, and I needed to read through and sign them. Letter mail could wait, it was rarely important anyhow.
Now it has my full attention. Red is... unusual to say the least. The mail I typically get consists of invitations to parties, requests for money, and searing complaints from my father, who still insists on 'traditional' ways of communicating. Everything else is received electronically or goes through another department of my company. Red envelopes simply do not cross my desk. Especially ones with Christmas stickers on them, I think as I pick the strange piece of mail up and flip it over. It flashes through my mind that it could be something dangerous in a deceptive package, but at the same time I know that all my mail passes through security before it arrives on my desk and so its safety is guaranteed.
There's no return address on it, simply my name and office address on the front. I'm sure it must be a Christmas card, but no one has bothered to send me one for longer than I can remember. And I don't really appreciate this one now. I don't need the reminder of what I still lack, even with all my money and possessions.
I'm tempted to toss it into the pile of items that need to go out for shredding, but something stops me at the last minute. I don't know whom the card is from. I can't even imagine someone who would care about me enough to make the gesture, but something about the thought that there just might be someone who does care makes me stop. Without thinking about it, I pull open the bottom drawer of my desk and slip the red envelope inside.
I manage to ignore it until the end of the day. David has left hours ago and it's deeply dark outside. I tend to work late. It's been years since I've had anything resembling a social life, and truthfully I don't miss it. All it ever brought me was pain and disappointment. I'm getting ready to leave, but something about that damned card keeps calling to me.
I pull out the bottom drawer of my desk and stare down at the offending piece of mail. Before I even think about doing it, I'm reaching into the desk and picking the card up. I turn it over in my hands again. The postmark is smeared so that I can't even read from which city the card was sent. The green Christmas tree sticker and the hand writing on the front of the envelope vaguely reminds me of something or someone, but I can't think who or what it is.
Eventually I sigh. I realize that I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and open the envelope if I want to know what it is and who sent it. I shouldn't care. It's been so long since I've allowed myself to care about anything remotely like this, but the envelope is intriguing and I just can't seem to stop thinking about it.
I rip the envelope open more violently than is probably necessary. It tears down the front, leaving a gaping hole that I know will annoy me if I want to put the card back inside. The card is a fairly standard Christmas card. On the front is a nighttime winter scene with the words 'Season's Greetings' scrawled across the top in flowing red script. The whole card screams cheap and I'm almost sure that it has come from one of those packages of cards you can purchase at a card shop. I can't imagine whom I might know that would even shop at such a place.
I open it and my eyes zero in on the name signed at the bottom of the card before I even read the message inside. I suddenly feel cold all over. Martha Kent. I haven't seen any of the Kents since the spring of 2002, before my father brought me back into the fold at LuthorCorp. And my last meetings with them were anything other than cordial. The pain of those last few days rips through a heart that I have thought dead for a long time now and I gasp.
I can't even imagine why Mrs. Kent would be sending me a card now. I steel my heart against what is almost guaranteed pain and force myself to read the message.
Lex,
You may not be aware, but Jonathan passed away this summer. I loved my husband dearly, but there were certain things that he and I never agreed on. One of those was the way he handled your relationship with Clark. I think it's past time that we all sit down and talk about what happened. I would be honored if you would join us for Christmas this year. You know where I live and you're welcome any time. Clark will be here on the 23rd.
Merry Christmas.
All my love,
Martha
I drop the card on my desk. My hands are shaking. I feel hot and then cold. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to do.
Clark, the one person I have spent the past six years trying to forget I ever met. He's the only person, other than my mother, that I've ever loved, and the only person who has ever loved me without any sort of obligation on his part. My mom loved me, I know she did, but she was my mother and it's not the same thing. My father tolerated me because I was the only heir he had, and everyone else in my life has only ever befriended me because there was something in it for them. Clark chose to love me.
And then just as soon as our relationship had started, our fathers had conspired to drive us apart. Of course I know that Clark's father hadn't been in on my father's little deception, but Jonathan had convinced me to use the situation to end our relationship before Clark could get hurt. Clark was special, I think I always knew it, and he had secrets, ones that I wasn't privy to, and I did know that Jonathan Kent was right about my father. Dad would have dug until he found out all of Clark's secrets and then he would have used them to destroy the man I loved and his family.
So I had let Clark go in the most painful way possible. I had made him believe that I didn't care about him, that our entire relationship had been a lie, and that as soon as I had gotten what I wanted from him I had lost interest. I had told him that my father's money was more important to me than his love. It was the biggest lie I ever told. It was the most painful thing I've ever done. I would have given almost anything to hold on to Clark's love, but the one thing I wouldn't give was the only thing I was asked to hand over. I simply couldn't allow him to be hurt.
Some girls in a literature class I once took at college had carried on about how romantic it was to sacrifice your self for love. They were fools. Never once have I considered what I did to Clark romantic. It was necessary, and it likely kept him safe for at least a couple years, but it was never romantic.
Clark had gone home crying to his parents, and Jonathan Kent had actually called me to say thank you. Thank you for breaking Clark's heart. Thank you for destroying my own.
So I'd moved on and allowed my father to draw me deep into his corporate world. But my father had seriously miscalculated in his move to bring me back into his sphere of influence. I had lost my heart, and the disdain I had held for him for so long had blossomed into a full-blown hatred. I'd spent two years at Harvard finishing my master's degree in business at my father's request. Once I was back within the company, it had only taken me three more years to wrest control of LuthorCorp from my father. Dad still draws a salary from the company, but he has no control over it anymore. He hates it and we fight constantly. The power struggle is something of legend, but he molded me into a cold-hearted monster and there is little he can use against me as leverage. Perversely, I think he sees my deception as some sort of coming of age.
After Clark left my house that night, I told myself that it didn't matter, that I could live without him, after all I had managed it for years before I met Clark. And although I've never allowed anyone to get close to me again, I still have feelings for him. I rarely allow myself to acknowledge them, but Martha's card seems to have brought them all to the surface.
I hadn't known that Clark's father passed away. If I had, I don't know if I would have done anything, either. I know the man was only trying to protect his only child, but I could never have forgiven him for what he asked me to do to Clark. It may have been right for him and it may have been right for Clark, but that decision has never been the right one for me.
But now Jonathan is out of the picture and Clark's mother has decided that it's time for all of us to have a little chat. Why? What could the three of us talking change now? It's been six years. Clark's surely at college by now, although I have specifically not kept track of him over the years. What would it have gained me besides heartache? Surely he's in some kind of relationship by now; another young man, perhaps, or maybe that insipid Lana girl that he mooned over for the first few months I knew him.
And suddenly I'm intrigued. This is the reason I've avoided thinking about Clark and the other Kents for so long. I knew my curiosity and my need to know everything would get the better of me, and now it has. Before I decide what I'm to do about Mrs. Kent's invitation, I need to know more about their situation. And I'm surprised to realize that I'm actually thinking of accepting the invitation at all. I'd had no intention of ever seeing them again, but... it's Clark.
Clark. I've needed him ever since I first met him. I've always known there was a connection there. We were meant to be together. I... loved him from the first moment I saw him and he felt the same way about me. Is it possible that he could still have feelings for me? That he could be as broken as I am even after all these years? Why would Mrs. Kent send me this invitation otherwise? She was never a cruel or heartless person. She wouldn't have invited me if it would only cause pain for both her son and me.
I shouldn't even be considering this. I should just ignore the envelope and put it in the pile to be shredded as I had originally intended. I've never done what I should. I promised myself so many times that I would never allow my heart to be exposed the way it was with Clark, but I just know that I'm going to break that promise. Clark taught me that, that what we had was worth almost anything.
But before I commit myself to this foolish course of action, I need to be sure that what Mrs. Kent is telling me is true. I need to know the possibility of Clark being receptive to me is there. If he's involved in a serious relationship, I'm not getting in the middle of it. It's not that I don't think I could win, Luthors can always win, it's that even now I don't want him to be hurt. He's always been the one person who can make me care about his wants and needs. With anyone else I would have just taken what I wanted and not worried about the consequences. With anyone else, I wouldn't be making this call.
A quick scroll through the address book in my phone finds the number I want. Nathan has always been able to find me whatever information I need. A minute later the phone is ringing on his end.
December 8, 2008
The folder has been sitting on the edge of my desk all morning. Once again I'm feeling apprehensive about opening something that came through the mail. Nathan dropped off his findings on Clark and his family this morning. It had come in a plain, unmarked manila envelope. I had gotten as far as taking the folder out of that envelope before the worry about what I would find started to take over.
It makes me angry to think that I'm this emotionally involved again. I thought I was over these intense feelings for Clark. I have told myself for years that I have moved on and that the only reason I'm not in a relationship is that I've chosen not to be in a relationship. Now I realize how much of a lie that truly is. The reason I'm not in a relationship is that I'm still so tied up in Clark. I've never been able to truly let him go, and now that the possibility of us having something again is here, I'm too scared to move forward in fear that I might fuck it up. The same way I've fucked up everything good in my life.
If only I had been more careful in the first place. If I had understood the depth of my father's duplicity when I had first met Clark, I never would have taken him out in public somewhere that my father could spy on us. I would have waited. I would have made Clark understand that I cared for him but that we couldn't be together until he was at least a couple of years older.
I don't know. I could have done so many things differently, but I didn't and that will always haunt me. I will always regret that. But now, maybe I can make up for it. Maybe I can start over.
I hate this. I hate my father. I hate myself.
My hand shakes slightly as I reach out to draw the folder across the desk. I ignore it as best as I can.
The first couple pages of the folder are simply Clark's school transcripts. His marks are good. Clark was never a bad student and it doesn't surprise me to see that he graduated with honors. Other than that they are fairly unremarkable. The next page is an acceptance letter from Metropolis University into the journalism program dated three years ago. I can't believe he's been this close to me for three years now and I haven't even known it. Although, there's absolutely no normal reason for me to go out to the campus, and so there's no reason to imagine I would run in to Clark if I did. This is a big city after all.
The next two pages are Clark's transcripts from his first two years at college. Again he's doing extremely well, and I feel an unexpected waved of pride for him. I always knew that he would do well at anything he wanted to. But I had nothing to do with that. Clark has done this all on his own and maybe that's better in some ways. At least this way he knows that it was never my name that opened doors for him, but rather his own talents.
I never expected him to study journalism, though. Sure, he had worked on the school newspaper when I knew him in Smallville, but it always seemed to be something he did because his friend Chloe was passionate about it, rather than something he did because he had any overwhelming interest in it himself.
The next few pages are information about the Kent's farm and their mortgage. I'm unhappy, but not surprised, to see that they've been just scraping by for the last six years. Even when I was living in Smallville, it was fairly apparent that they didn't have a lot of extra cash. After my first few attempts of gifting Clark with things I thought he might need, I had tried to stay out of it. Even after all these years I feel anger rising within me at Jonathan's refusal to take help when he so obviously needed it. The man had always been proud and stubborn. I wonder how much like him Clark has become in the last six years.
Behind the information about the Kent farm is a copy of Jonathan's death certificate. A chill runs through my body as I suddenly realize that he's really dead. I always believed Mrs. Kent, but I guess it just didn't seem real before now. Clark's father, that strong, proud man who had kept me from Clark and done the only thing he could to protect his son, is really gone.
I reach up to touch my cheek. My fingers come away wet. I'm crying. I haven't cried since that January day when I sent Clark away from me forever.
Jonathan Kent's last words to me run through my mind. He was proud of me that day. He thanked me and he told me he thought I was a good man. It meant so much to me then, and I realize that it still means so much to me now. Jonathan was always a good person, if not the most accepting. I wish my father had been more like him. I wish I had been loved the way Clark was. And Clark wasn't even his father's biological child.
My father's a bastard.
It takes me a few minutes to compose myself enough to continue through the file. There aren't many pages left, and I wonder if this is really all that Nathan was able to find on Clark and his family. I had asked him to focus on any relationships that Clark had been in during the last six years or any he might be in now. I had expected more information than this.
The last thing in the file is a three-page report detailing Clark's personal life since I last saw him. He had apparently started seeing Lana Lang in the fall of his sophomore year at high school, and they had stayed together for most of the year. Clark had somewhat abruptly stopped seeing her over the summer before his junior year. About four months later, he had started a relationship with Robin Meyer, who turned out to be a young man a couple of years older than Clark. I feel cold again thinking of Clark with another man. Somehow the possibility of him being with a girl just wasn't the same. Another man indicated that his feelings for me hadn't been as anomalous as they had seemed at the time. I hadn't been special; Clark had been attracted to other men as well.
The relationship with Robin had lasted all of a couple months. Throughout the next year Clark had dated three young women for brief periods of time. None of the relationships lasted longer than a month. By Christmas of his senior year, Clark seemed to have given up on dating. He didn't see anyone else until after he had arrived at college. I check back to the beginning of the file and I'm not surprised to see that this lack of a social life resulted in even higher grades than before in the final half of Clark's senior year.
At college, Clark had dated two men in his first year, Ben and Steven. Again neither of those relationships lasted for longer than a month. After that there was nothing. The end of Nathan's report is all the evidence he has been able to gather for the fact that Clark is currently single. I don't doubt it. Clark was always a sensitive young man and a string of disastrous relationships like that would put almost anyone off dating. It also makes me wonder why Clark wasn't able to find what he wanted. Perhaps he has been waiting for me. Perhaps I am the only person for Clark in exactly the same way that Clark is the only person for me.
And isn't that the most disgustingly romantic thought I've had in the last six years? I shudder. I can't believe that thought just passed through my mind. I'm a Luthor. We do not think like that. Clark's affecting me already and I haven't even seen him yet.
And will I see him at all? That's the decision I have to make now. Commissioning this information from Nathan allowed me to put this decision off for the past week, but now Mrs. Kent's invitation is still hanging over my head and I still need to figure out what I'm going to do.
I'm scared, but Clark deserves to know the truth. I already know that's going to be the deciding factor, so why should I even deceive myself into this debate? Clark needs to know the truth, his mother and I can give it to him. It's only fair for him to know. If Mrs. Kent thinks it's safe to tell him now, then I have to believe that she knows what's best for her son, especially as I haven't seen him for years.
The number is still in my phone, even after all these years. I guess it was some kind of hopefulness that made me reprogram it into each successive phone I acquired. A moment later the phone is ringing and I force myself not to hang it up.
"Hello?" It's a woman on the other end of the phone and I can only imagine that it's Clark's mom. Who else would be answering the phone at the farm?
"Mrs. Kent?" I ask just to make sure.
"Yes. Who is this?" She sounds curious and a little guarded. I imagine that there aren't many people who call and ask after her in this way.
I want to tell her who I am, but the words stick in my throat. She's going to want to talk about Clark and I don't know if I'm ready yet. This is foolish. I never should have called her, but I can't hang up now. The silence stretches out. It's unbearable. I never have trouble speaking on the phone. I'm a businessman, it's something I do everyday. I can't believe the weaknesses that this family has always been able to make me reveal.
"Lex?" she asks softly after several long moments of silence. Her voice is kind, gentle and full of concern. Had she been expecting my call for some time now?
"I..." I manage to stutter out. "Mrs. Kent," I gasp a moment later. It sounds like those two words have been ripped out of my throat and perhaps they have. This is so hard after so many years.
I'm gripping the phone so tightly my hand starts to hurt and I have to tell myself to relax my grip. I feel completely emotionally exposed and I hate it more than I can possibly say. And yet in so many ways it's a relief to finally allow myself to feel something again. I've been dead and cold for so long.
"Lex," she confirms to herself and I can hear the smile in her voice.
"I got your card," I tell her, the words tumbling out of my mouth in a rush. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know about your husband. I... is there anything I can do for you?" I ask, my tone business-like for the first time in the conversation. Suddenly I feel too exposed and it's safer to hide back behind the veil of the wealthy family friend offering help in a time of need. I want to kick myself. Jonathan never took anything from me, stubborn bastard that he was.
"Lex, no," she says with a gentle laugh. "I just want you to come out for Christmas. It's time, don't you think?"
"Maybe," I hedge.
"It is," she tells me. "When will you be here?"
"The twenty-fourth?" I say. I want it to sound more certain than it does. Damn my emotions over this.
"I'll see you then. Don't worry, Lex. This will all work out in the end." She sounds so sure of that and I want to be sure as well, but I can't. Clark must hate me after all these years, after what I did to him. That's not going to be changed by a couple of hours of conversation and a nice family holiday.
"We'll see. Goodbye, Mrs. Kent."
"Goodbye, Lex," she says softly. "Keep yourself safe," she adds just as I hang up and I can't help but feel a warm sensation spread through me at her concern. Maybe this isn't just about making things right for Clark. Maybe even after everything she still cares about me.
Part 2