Fic: A Reporter's Work
Title: A Reporter’s Work
Summary: Chloe begins to investigate a murder, and her job takes her to a place she'd rather not go.
Warnings: Chloe-centric, Lex-apologetic, Minionic, Clex-hintic, Dark, Set after Noir S6
Rating: PG-13
Much thanks to danceswithgary for the lovely beta. Remaining flaws are my own.
Additional thanks to cinderella81 and aerynvala for discussing this with me in YIM :)
The look in the groom’s eyes right before the wedding had been familiar. After all these years, maybe it had just been a trick of the light, or he had simply been justifiably nervous. When your bride had been making public record of her doubts for this union, and she happens to be ten minutes late, well, a guy has to wonder if she’s going to show at all. If the trust and devotion he’d poured into a relationship would be thrown back in his face like hot oil.
The look eased as she came down the aisle and they said their vows, but it was still there, and his eyes glazed a bit, relaxing for a moment and losing focus. He smiled uncharacteristically. When he didn’t notice how his bride shook and almost cried, couldn’t notice, there was no doubt. He was under the influence of something.
By what, it was unclear. He could have simply been imbibing early from the stress. Though, the groom was so seldom seen inebriated it would have been difficult to tell if this was his reaction to intoxication. Taking up one of his youthful pursuits, perhaps? Given the bride’s penchant for drama and snooping, however, it seemed unlikely he would have been able to manage to keep his illicit activities discreet. As they left the church, both in fact appeared happy, but there was a mark on his lip where there had not been one before. The split in his lower lip would heal within a day. But someone had struck him. Hard.
The groom’s glance back to the crowd had been a relief. He now appeared mostly in control again, if a bit teary-eyed. He might have been about to cry, though he seemed to be feeling rather nostalgic… or proud. A swift glance backward would discern why. The ex was there, watching. For the groom to be feeling anything other than vengeful satisfaction was rather odd.
Seeing as the honeymoon went without incident despite being cut short, there seemed to be nothing to worry about. However, a close eye to the obituaries suggested otherwise, as the bride’s doctor had suffered a fatal car accident the day of the wedding.
Lex Luthor had a habit of disposing of bodies via car crashes, perhaps as a tribute to lost friends. He had a tendency to be sentimental in the most bizarre ways.
For good or ill, Chloe began her investigation of the subject. Clark would be too hotheaded about taking Lex down to trust with helping her here. Jimmy would get himself hurt. The same of Lois. Lionel… was only to be trusted during the end of the world and to be smiled at when your diphead host seats you next to him at Thanksgiving. Lana was completely out of the question. She had made it clear long ago, that Chloe was not to interfere in her self-destruction. Having created a lifeline for Lana, through her service as maid of honor, Chloe would likely only perform the function of token friend to Lana, arranging baby showers and listening to her complaints about how much she still loved Clark, and that Lex was being distant or secretive. Oliver Queen was a lunatic with a following.
She would have to do this alone.
It had been awhile since Chloe had flown solo against Lex, not since Clark had joined her in suspecting him. Even back then, she had been surprised Clark had gone along with her hypothesis so easily and wondered if it hadn’t a little to do with Lana’s disapproval of Lex at the time. Lana’s word had always held more sway than her own, and the girl seemed positively jealous of the time that Clark and Lex spent together.
Chloe knew her first order of business would be to break into the morgue to look at the body. It was not her first try at the activity, and the Smallville morgue had minimal security. She just had to remember where she kept her key. Upon a preliminary search of the computer files, she found that the cause of death for Dr. Langston was head trauma from the crash. She made a copy of this file on her flash drive. Her preliminary search of the corpse revealed that he did in fact suffer head trauma. Problematically, the split in his head was in the back rather than the front where it would be expected if he had slammed his head against the windshield or steering wheel. The official files were glaringly unspecific about the nature of his head trauma.
She was no autopsy expert, but Chloe could see something wrong here. Her latex covered fingers ran over the wound on the back of the doctor’s head as she lifted it off the table with her other hand. The wound was straight across horizontally. Not as though a blunt object had come smashing into it, as she might have expected of a murder. Shining her light deeper into the wound, she looked for any trace remnants to give her a clue and thanked her genetics for the ability to close off her nose from the inside. The scent of rot mingled with disinfectant. Then there was something else, old and musty. Chloe wondered if Clark had a supersniffer in his rainbow of superpowers. She set the corpse’s head down and shone her flashlight over his suit. There was dust. Moreover, there was evidence that he’d been in a fight. His face had been pummeled. These details were not in the file either, and Chloe assumed that the coroner must have been paid off or scared off.
The damn frustrating thing about investigating Lex was that she could so seldom prove anything. But she comforted herself in knowing that she had some clues. Chloe felt she had few virtues, and patience was not one of them. If this was Lex’s doing, and not just something he was covering up for someone else… Chloe felt a chill, though not from the cold of the morgue, as she momentarily wondered if Lana had killed this man, but dismissed that idea after a moment. … If it were Lex, he would have most likely covered up the crime by now, leaving the scene clean as a whistle.
His possible motivation, though, was throwing her. Lex wasn’t known for going around killing people for being insolent. He hadn’t killed the doctor involved in having her abducted. That idiot got himself killed by trying to take out Tobias. Bowling Alley Freak had actually died from some kind of fall, as far as she could tell after poking around at his dead body, but it wasn’t enough to assume Lex had taken him out. There wasn’t a rash of car crashes to cover up all the dots she and Clark had, stupidly she now admitted, watched turn into red X’s without trying to help. Almost a year ago, she had checked out the body of the doctor who had worked on Vic Stone, and it had seemed as though he had actually died in his crash, but she hadn’t been able to access the car to rule out sabotage.
Chloe snapped some shots of the ‘good’ doctor and left the morgue as quietly as she had arrived, wondering, not for the first time, if any of her sleuthing instincts came from a meteor freak instinct. If rather than any skill she’d accrued of her own efforts, instead something thick and oily bubbled up inside her and had been pushing her closer and closer to a destiny she couldn’t see, couldn’t even fathom. Her mutated, hodgepodge genetics would cause her one day, hour come round at last, to slouch towards her future, reborn as a mad, laughing creature of destruction. She had to admit there was a small comfort in the existence of 33.1. It meant that, suspected crimes against humanity aside, there was an alternative to Belle Reve. She didn’t want anyone keeping her drooling and senseless in a cell for the rest of her life if her powers ever emerged. She didn’t understand wanting that. Her mind was really all she had. At least her evidence from Lex suggested she’d be able to keep her mind, what was left of it. Maybe she was being selfish.
Maybe the next time she saw him, she should ask Lex if the cells in 33.1 had rent control. So hard to find a good place in Metropolis.
***
Getting a copy of the wedding video hadn’t been difficult. It had been delivered to her doorstep a few days after the wedding. Chloe loved it when the subjects of her investigation made things easy on her. Heating up her ramen, she popped the DVD into her laptop and started scanning the film, taking screencaps of certain timestamps to create a timeline of the wedding for herself.
Chloe lifted some noodles into her mouth, watching Lex on the screen before the ceremony had started. Ideally, she should find that he had his lip split after this footage where the participants in the wedding were being cute, talking to the early guests, watching things being set up, and before the footage of the wedding itself. She was short enough that she might have missed the bruise or blood on Lex’s lip, and he had been late. If the injury appeared then, she might be able to speculate that Lex had gotten into a fight with Dr. Feelgood, and he had either somehow accidentally fallen to his death or Lex had just slammed his head against something. That was a good working theory, if she could find the evidence to support it. Although, it didn’t explain the look in his eyes when she’d come to get him or the fuzzy, drugged expression he'd worn through the rest of the ceremony.
“Dammit.” She leaned forward and re-watched the section where Lex came into the sanctuary with her. His face was clear. Scratch one theory.
“Jimmy not doing it for you?” Lois said jovially, walking in from behind. Chloe resisted the urge to pull a Luthor and close her laptop. But she was the maid of honor, which was a decent reason to be watching this video.
“Do you think that dress makes my butt look big?” Chloe asked quickly. Lois leaned over her shoulder. She was sucking on a lolly. That usually meant that Lois was missing her cigarettes.
“Take it back a couple of frames. Lemme see.”
Trust Lois to take the task seriously. They both looked at the laptop screen intensely.
“You’ve got a little junk in the trunk for sure, but I think you look fine. Lex looks like he’s retaining water,” Lois said bluntly.
Chloe laughed. “No, Lana’s the one who’s pregnant.”
“You’d never know it. Is she wearing a corset? Is she crazy?”
Chloe’s eyes zeroed in on Lana. She sure looked miserable, despite forcing a smile on her face. She was wearing a corset. That was odd. She tucked that information away for later on.
“Thanks, Lo.”
“No prob, Chlo. You know, if he used a diuretic, Lex might not be so bad looking. Still all bald and undercooked, but he has something striking about him. If he had a world-saving complex instead of a god-complex, I might go for him,” Lois commented.
So Lex had received the cut on his lip between saying “I do” and leaving the church. Clark would have mentioned hitting Lex. That left Lionel, Dr. Langston, or Lana, the same Lana who had been smiling almost genuinely as she left the church, which didn't exactly rule her out, unfortunately. Dr. Langston had been found in his crash on the other side of town around the time Lex and Lana were cutting their wedding cake… Clean-up of the body occurred almost immediately after the death, and there just wasn’t enough time for Lex to have gone somewhere, called for a cover-up, and come back, even if he had been a little late.
Furthermore, dying from a blow to the back of the head didn’t scream ‘Planned by a Luthor’ to Chloe. Something wasn’t adding up. Unfortunately, clues to Lex Luthor rarely did.
***
She had been so stupid. So incredibly stupid. And emotional. And irrational. She hated herself.
Chloe had learned at age fifteen through the admonishments of Principal Kwan that as a reporter she would have to back up her stories. Lex coming by to give her a slap on the wrist was nothing compared to what he could do to her, and she still didn’t understand why he hadn’t taken her into one of his facilities yet, for keeps.
She couldn’t put thoughts of her mother out of her head. The events of the past few days didn’t make any sense. None of it did, and Lex had been right really, that Chloe couldn’t prove a damn thing. Her mother had done nothing except cut herself off from a line of medication that could have helped her and had caused Chloe to be at risk for imprisonment.
She sat alone in her apartment. Wanting to strangle Lex. Wanting to know his secrets. Wanting to understand what this whole 33.1 thing was about and why Lex had let her see her mother. He hadn’t even used her mother Moira to send mutants after any of his enemies or even used Chloe as leverage with her mother.
Even more unfathomable to Chloe was why a mutant that had strength comparable to Clark would walk around more or less unrestrained in the hallways without trying to escape! Were they suffering from some sort of Stockholm syndrome? She was dying to ask her mother what had really happened in there, but that would mean getting more medication from Lex. Her mother wouldn’t like it.
Chloe realized that she’d stopped working on her term paper entirely and was simply sitting there sniffling and sniveling like a baby. She wanted to talk to her mommy. She wanted her daddy to rub circles on her back. She wanted to stop being so afraid that one day she was going to stop being Chloe and start being another one of those freaks. It had been easy to vouch for them when she wasn’t one of them. Now she was just terrified witless. It didn’t matter if Clark was calling himself her personal bomb squad. He couldn’t stop her from going insane.
She wished she could talk to Jimmy about these things. She rolled her eyes. Egyptians. Had her theories ever been so ridiculous? Regardless, she couldn’t let him any closer to her right now, no matter how she felt. Meteor freaks always hurt their loved ones the most. Chloe looked down at her hands, remembering...or rather, not remembering.
She’d had a lot of blackouts when she was a little girl. At the time, she had decided that aliens were abducting her. But they were nice aliens. They just couldn’t afford to have little girls telling on them to the papers. That was all.
***
Considering that Chloe had harbored the same terrible thought earlier during the day, she felt more inclined to forgive Lana for wanting to leave Lex for dead, but nevertheless, it made Chloe look at her a bit differently. In Chloe’s case, she hadn't been friends with Lex for years. Lex was Lana's husband. It smarted a little to realize that she didn’t really know Lana anymore, even if it had been true for a long time. Wanting someone to die because you were angry with them… she hoped that it was different from wanting someone to die because they were an inconvenience to you.
That evening she had searched the church, just in case Lex had magically planned to commit murder immediately prior to his own wedding. Who knew? Maybe he prided himself on multitasking.
Chloe had bought a special light that was normally used by the police to find bloodstains, and she moved through every room the guests hadn't been in, using it slowly and systematically. She hadn’t known that she had this kind of patience in her. It had been a long time since she’d had to get down on her knees and do the dirty work without any help from Clark.
“Okay, that sounded perverted even in my head,” she whispered to herself.
Eventually she reached the crypt underneath the church, and even though it looked like the set of a bad horror movie, she walked inside slowly and tried not to jump when her hands hit some cobwebs.
That was it. That was that weird musty smell on Dr. Langston. She knew it.
“Lex, what have you done?”
Chloe walked through the crypt, trying to shine her light on everything. There was a stain there… she followed the trail. Someone had dragged the body and covered up afterward. It was obvious in how the dust had been disturbed. Then next to the tomb… there was a slight chip on the side of the stone lid. That explained the straight-edged dent in Langston’s head. But what was Lex doing here, of all places?
Lex wouldn’t plan to be down here. It was dirty, and not in a good way for committing a murder. It was dirty in a way that was noticeable when cleaned up. Not to mention, the transportation for the body… it could have happened during the ceremony. By the time Lex and Lana had made it outside? Maybe. Whoever planned this murder had planned it badly.
She could almost hear her heart thumping in the crypt as she puzzled this out. Chloe decided to go get some coffee and puzzle this out in a place that didn’t quite scream William the Bloody’s Lovenest.
***
Chloe didn’t cry like she thought she would when Jimmy left her. She was proud of him in a strange way. He’d solved a mystery without her. Had to, since her head was so buried in graves and Lex and her freak mom. And he’d done it without getting hurt, much, so she was incredibly grateful that he wouldn’t be taken from her permanently. Maybe the Egyptian theory had been a fluke, and how many times had she gotten hurt in her fledgling days of facing down the Smallville weird? But he would be away from her, and that was the important thing right now. He’d be gone, probably, when she eventually got her freak on. So it would be okay if he weren't around. She could talk to him on the phone and not put him in any danger.
She had nodded when Clark intimated that he didn’t believe the reason Lana was protecting him was Lex. Not long ago, Clark overtly said that Lex would snuff Lana out just to spite him. He had assumed Lex would be eager enough to kill him, given the chance. She felt that somehow his recent experience in the tunnels with Lex had changed his attitude. Therefore, she was dying to know exactly what had happened in those tunnels, but it could wait. Having found out that Lana was working with Lionel and that this possibly had to do with Lana’s unwilling marriage to Lex, the pieces of this puzzle around Dr. Langston’s death were beginning to come together.
Sitting alone again in her apartment, re-watching the wedding tape for perhaps the twelfth time, Chloe realized that there was a reason she recognized that look on Lex’s face during the wedding. Though, last time he’d worn it, Lex hadn’t been wearing anything so prim as a tuxedo and a paisley tie. He had been dressed in one of Clark’s shirts. It had been so big on him and the vibrant sky blue had been jarring to see next to Lex’s pallid complexion. His bald head was so soft and pale, his neck thin and exposed sticking out of the large shirt. Lex had looked like a boy in daddy’s clothing, as he gently rocked a blanket, with droplets of tears in eyes that she had only seen dry. Unshed tears as he sang softly and a little hoarsely to the blanket, then begged her not to wake the baby.
“I can’t stand it when he cries,” Lex had whispered, with eyes begging her to understand.
Unfocused, frightened, wild eyes. Crazy eyes. The eyes of a man who had been abused and drugged and pushed to the brink by his father.
Maybe someone else had noticed that cars were Lex’s preferred method of disposal.
Chloe had a theory. She just had no way to prove it at the moment.
***
Chloe had suspected that her luck would run out when she tried to break into the LuthorCorp building, but she hadn’t guessed it would be this bad. She had imagined that they would just toss her out on her cushy butt and maybe Lex would make a little career-crushing call to her boss. When she heard the doors to Lex’s office open, she knew she was effectively fucked.
“It’s a nice evening, isn’t it, Chloe?” Lex’s voice shattered the silence and left her heart pounding.
“Not bad. A little humid, you know.” She turned around and stood up. Lex raised a brow.
“What are you doing at my bar? Couldn’t get anyone in the Metropolis area to accept your fake ID?”
“Actually, I’m doing a little research.”
“Oh?”
She dove in. “A murder.”
“Oh.” Lex’s eyes were pinning her down. “Whose murder?”
Chloe tried to remember how to breathe. She took the moment to break Lex’s gaze and pull out the results of her digging over the past couple of days. Nothing conclusive, but she was interested to see the reaction.
“Did you know that Dr. Langston made three calls on your wedding day?” Chloe handed Lex a copy of the information she’d hacked from the cell phone companies. “One to his bank. One to you. Then one to Lionel Luthor, just before his death.”
Lex’s eyes sharpened noticeably, but she continued. “I looked up your father’s records, and Lionel made a call to Dr. Langston prior to those three.”
Her voice quieted, getting ready to lay her cards on the table. Lex had not yet moved. “His death, as far as I can tell not being Temperance Brannen or anything, wasn’t the result of a car wreck as much as it was the result of him whacking his head on a stone casket, in the church where you were married, somewhere around 4:40 and 4:50pm.”
Lex’s eyes fixed on her again. He was trying to scare her. Chloe swallowed, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, remembering the feel of Lex’s strong hands on her shoulders as he spoke to her about his worries for her safety in the upcoming trial. The smell of his cologne, light, but musky. The tender, brotherly worry in his voice.
“Have you had any alcohol since the wedding?” Chloe asked, motioning with her head to the bar. “I came here to get a sample. Because when I met with you before the ceremony, you looked drugged. This is how I see the timeline.”
She raised her chin. “Lionel did something to Lana and hired Dr. Feelgood to tell her that she was pregnant. He knew that you would pay to keep the doctor quiet if you thought something was off with the baby. So he did, and you did. I don’t know about the escalating events in between. Lana strung out her “yes” as long as humanly possible. Clark pissed around for far too long himself. Then, on the day of the wedding, Daddy Luthor called the doctor and told him what he was going to do. The good doctor called his bank to allow the transfer of funds. He called you to put you into position. Lionel had already drugged your scotch. Langston called Lionel once more before you showed up, which was a mistake.”
“If the drug he gave you this time was the same as the one he gave you three years ago, then I’m imagining that you lost control of your temper when he blackmailed you about what you thought was happening with Lana, attacked him, and beat him to a pulp. He lost his balance and… yeah, whacked his head on a stone casket. Lionel’s people came in immediately to clean up. You got married. The car crashed across town about thirty minutes later, during the reception. Lionel hit you. Maybe to make you think that he was upset about the murder?”
“Why are you telling me this?” Lex demanded with a guarded expression.
“Because I’m a reporter. It’s my job to investigate. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is going to have anything I can report on, unless you cooperate. It would be manslaughter at best, but you’ll have a good lawyer, I’m sure, and given the circumstances of being drugged and then incited to attack… not worth the time. But your father has hurt Lana. And he’s threatened Clark. And… he just keeps hurting you. If I can pin Lionel for anything he’s doing? It’ll be worth it.” Chloe thinned her lips. “I’m keeping things from you, but those are all the cards I want to show right now.”
Lex frowned deeply and looked her over. “When did he threaten Clark?”
Chloe paused and looked down, considering what she should say. “He… on the day of the wedding, he told Lana that if she didn’t go through with it, he’d kill Clark.”
There it was. That fire in his eyes. Not the out of control wildness of the drugs, but the fire she’d seen in his eyes the day of the second meteor shower. Deadly and protective.
“I don’t know how things would have turned out between the two of you if Lionel hadn’t interfered, but I don’t trust whatever his ultimate goal is, if he has to move people around on a chessboard like this. I mean, why should I? He’s tried to kill both of us before.”
“I can’t really blame this on Dad. Clark and I let our own problems tear us apart,” Lex admitted, his voice still sharp and deadly.
“I meant Lana,” she replied in surprise. Lex opened his mouth slightly and turned his back on her, facing the window. He’d given something away. Something she had been beginning to suspect, had suspected often over the years, but had never found sufficient supporting evidence for. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to see it.
They were at war, and Lex saved Clark’s life. Didn’t even think about not saving his life. Chloe had certainly noticed how Clark’s feelings about Lex’s relationship with Lana hinged on how he and Lex were getting along, as though he somehow believed that Lana was nothing more than a mirror for Lex’s emotions for Clark…
“You love him,” she said bluntly. “Wow, I’m dense. How did I not see that?”
“Are you turning me in to the police?”
“No. Are you going to let me analyze your scotch? Have you had any since that day?”
“No. I’ve all but stopped drinking. I can’t afford the distraction.”
Her lips twitched into a nervous smirk. “Maybe you should take up green tea. I hear it’s soothing.”
Lex turned and gave her a disparaging look. “Are you giving up coffee?”
“Espresso runs through my veins. It’s the result of Lana’s meteor rock necklace falling into the beans at The Talon.” The playful, harsh words slipped out of her mouth then she darted her eyes away from Lex’s before he could trap her again.
“You were infected long before you came to Smallville, Chloe.”
Now his voice was gentle, despite his eyes remaining stern. She felt like a scared sixteen year old again in his presence. “I know. I just don’t know… what happened.”
“I never had the chance to ask her. You should talk to your father. He knows more about what happened.”
Chloe looked away. “I’m sorry she put your life and Lana’s life in danger.”
“I’m sorry that I ever woke her up. I thought she could help. It seems as though it would have been easier for you if she never had.”
“We all have to face our past sometime.” She looked at her hands. “Did you do any experiments on her?”
“I used Lowell to entice her to use her powers, but she was never in any danger,” Lex assured her. “If you believe me. Lowell has made a lot of good progress. He’s almost ready to go back into the world.”
He stepped closer to her. He sucked his cheeks in a little then breathed out. “I can cure it. The psychosis caused by the meteors. Not for all of us, but… we’re making steps. Tell Clark that. If either of you ever go critical, I know that you’re afraid that I’ll keep you… but I can help.” He wobbled his head from side to side. “About 57% of the time. Every case gets us closer to a permanent cure.”
“I’ll tell my dad. Clark won’t want to hear that.”
“Gabe already knows.”
Chloe wrinkled her nose. She felt tears pricking her eyes. “The scotch.”
He walked over to his bar, pulled out an empty flask, and began to fill it for her. “No need to tell me what you find. I’ll analyze the rest myself.”
“I think I already know the answer, though,” she said, taking the flask.
“Now what? I go away for manslaughter?” Lex tensed his lips staring down at her.
“Only if I can find enough evidence to mark Lionel for first degree murder. And, like I said, you’d have to cooperate. You have more hard evidence on me than I do on you.”
“True. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to point that out again.” Lex looked over to the bottle of scotch. “May I have copies of the information that you have?”
“Sure.” She hesitated. “There’s so much I want to ask you… some of them are really selfish questions. Some of them I know you won’t answer unless I give up something of equal value.”
“Depends on what you ask. And whether you’re on our side.” He ran his fingers along the bar. “And whether I believe you if you say you’re on our side. I find to my immense surprise, individuals attacking me with no clear reason. I suppose some of my facilities could be considered objectionable, but blowing them up is reckless and needless. They’ve taken out at least two labs devoted to cancer research. Killed a number of my employees. It’s unfathomable.”
Chloe sighed.
“So what were your questions?” Lex asked flatly.
She shook her head, feeling helpless. “Why? Why the secret labs? Why not have a public rehabilitation? Why not demand the government do something?”
“What do you think?” Lex asked in return. Chloe took an angry breath.
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. Why are there some freaks escaping from your labs, trying to kill you, and others who won’t lift a finger to save themselves? That just…”
“Follow orders? I think that’s probably a simple answer, Chloe. Some of them have decided that my labs are the best place for them. Some have not. Obviously.”
“Rather be with Mr. Big instead of in Belle Reve?”
“Mostly, yes. Some of them know more, and they agree with my end goals.”
“And the ones that don’t? What, they just stay there against their will?” Chloe challenged.
“They go home, not remembering how they came back to sanity, but knowing that they are somehow back in the world, thanks to me.” Lex touched his chest in a slightly self-mocking gesture. “It’s better that way. We can’t have an information leak, and we can’t hold them indefinitely either.”
She moved the flask back and forth in her hands. “What are these ultimate goals of yours?”
Lex shook his head slowly at her.
“Okay, got it. Too far.”
“If you joined me, it would be different. As things stand… Clark has aided the enemy. I can’t necessarily trust him.”
“You’re really threatened that much by Green Arrow and his Merry Men?” Chloe asked skeptically.
“I wasn’t talking about Green Arrow,” Lex replied in a sad, hushed voice. “So. Clark was working with them.”
Chloe froze, feeling the prickling sensation of fear behind her scalp.
His lips curled. Lex’s tone turned joking and bitter. “Don’t worry. I think he saved my life from that maniac Green Arrow. I’m not going to be looking for revenge on that account. But thank him for releasing enough meteor rock dust into the air and water supply of Metropolis to keep us stocked on meteor mutants for the next thirty years.”
She rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
“Did you do it?”
“No. But I helped. Clark got involved-“
“And you joined in because it’s Clark. Didn’t see you there.”
“I was on the outside.”
“That was brave of you to tell me.”
Chloe didn’t feel brave. “I didn’t know they were going to blow up the building. Clark didn’t either. He made them promise to get everyone out of the building. Have there been casualties?”
“Fewer than most wars,” he said harshly. “Are we done?”
“Anything else you’d like to share?” she asked with a quirk of the lips. Lex walked broadly around to his desk.
“Not particularly. But I trust that if you have any information about my father, you’ll give it to me. And, as before, I’ll do the same if it doesn’t compromise me.”
She nodded. “I’ll give what I can. Just know for now that he’s actively working against you.”
Lex sat in his chair and ran a finger over his lips. She started to walk away.
“Um, Lex?”
“You had another question?”
“No. I thought you should know that Clark misses you. I don’t know what happened in the tunnels, but…” She shook her head. “He’s been out of control this year. I don’t know what he wants. It’s just different now.”
She thought she saw some life in his dead eyes. A flicker of something that had been buried deeply out of necessity.
“Thank you for sharing that with me.”
“I hope I don’t regret it.”
“I hope I don’t regret what I’ve told you today.”
She rubbed the back of her neck and turned again, walking out of Lex Luthor’s office, feeling as though she had effectively sullied herself in a way Clark might not ever forgive. But, if she could get more information, save more lives... Maybe Lex could find a way to bring her mother back from that dark place where it seemed that everyone attacked her.
Maybe she could save herself, too.
Summary: Chloe begins to investigate a murder, and her job takes her to a place she'd rather not go.
Warnings: Chloe-centric, Lex-apologetic, Minionic, Clex-hintic, Dark, Set after Noir S6
Rating: PG-13
Much thanks to danceswithgary for the lovely beta. Remaining flaws are my own.
Additional thanks to cinderella81 and aerynvala for discussing this with me in YIM :)
The look in the groom’s eyes right before the wedding had been familiar. After all these years, maybe it had just been a trick of the light, or he had simply been justifiably nervous. When your bride had been making public record of her doubts for this union, and she happens to be ten minutes late, well, a guy has to wonder if she’s going to show at all. If the trust and devotion he’d poured into a relationship would be thrown back in his face like hot oil.
The look eased as she came down the aisle and they said their vows, but it was still there, and his eyes glazed a bit, relaxing for a moment and losing focus. He smiled uncharacteristically. When he didn’t notice how his bride shook and almost cried, couldn’t notice, there was no doubt. He was under the influence of something.
By what, it was unclear. He could have simply been imbibing early from the stress. Though, the groom was so seldom seen inebriated it would have been difficult to tell if this was his reaction to intoxication. Taking up one of his youthful pursuits, perhaps? Given the bride’s penchant for drama and snooping, however, it seemed unlikely he would have been able to manage to keep his illicit activities discreet. As they left the church, both in fact appeared happy, but there was a mark on his lip where there had not been one before. The split in his lower lip would heal within a day. But someone had struck him. Hard.
The groom’s glance back to the crowd had been a relief. He now appeared mostly in control again, if a bit teary-eyed. He might have been about to cry, though he seemed to be feeling rather nostalgic… or proud. A swift glance backward would discern why. The ex was there, watching. For the groom to be feeling anything other than vengeful satisfaction was rather odd.
Seeing as the honeymoon went without incident despite being cut short, there seemed to be nothing to worry about. However, a close eye to the obituaries suggested otherwise, as the bride’s doctor had suffered a fatal car accident the day of the wedding.
Lex Luthor had a habit of disposing of bodies via car crashes, perhaps as a tribute to lost friends. He had a tendency to be sentimental in the most bizarre ways.
For good or ill, Chloe began her investigation of the subject. Clark would be too hotheaded about taking Lex down to trust with helping her here. Jimmy would get himself hurt. The same of Lois. Lionel… was only to be trusted during the end of the world and to be smiled at when your diphead host seats you next to him at Thanksgiving. Lana was completely out of the question. She had made it clear long ago, that Chloe was not to interfere in her self-destruction. Having created a lifeline for Lana, through her service as maid of honor, Chloe would likely only perform the function of token friend to Lana, arranging baby showers and listening to her complaints about how much she still loved Clark, and that Lex was being distant or secretive. Oliver Queen was a lunatic with a following.
She would have to do this alone.
It had been awhile since Chloe had flown solo against Lex, not since Clark had joined her in suspecting him. Even back then, she had been surprised Clark had gone along with her hypothesis so easily and wondered if it hadn’t a little to do with Lana’s disapproval of Lex at the time. Lana’s word had always held more sway than her own, and the girl seemed positively jealous of the time that Clark and Lex spent together.
Chloe knew her first order of business would be to break into the morgue to look at the body. It was not her first try at the activity, and the Smallville morgue had minimal security. She just had to remember where she kept her key. Upon a preliminary search of the computer files, she found that the cause of death for Dr. Langston was head trauma from the crash. She made a copy of this file on her flash drive. Her preliminary search of the corpse revealed that he did in fact suffer head trauma. Problematically, the split in his head was in the back rather than the front where it would be expected if he had slammed his head against the windshield or steering wheel. The official files were glaringly unspecific about the nature of his head trauma.
She was no autopsy expert, but Chloe could see something wrong here. Her latex covered fingers ran over the wound on the back of the doctor’s head as she lifted it off the table with her other hand. The wound was straight across horizontally. Not as though a blunt object had come smashing into it, as she might have expected of a murder. Shining her light deeper into the wound, she looked for any trace remnants to give her a clue and thanked her genetics for the ability to close off her nose from the inside. The scent of rot mingled with disinfectant. Then there was something else, old and musty. Chloe wondered if Clark had a supersniffer in his rainbow of superpowers. She set the corpse’s head down and shone her flashlight over his suit. There was dust. Moreover, there was evidence that he’d been in a fight. His face had been pummeled. These details were not in the file either, and Chloe assumed that the coroner must have been paid off or scared off.
The damn frustrating thing about investigating Lex was that she could so seldom prove anything. But she comforted herself in knowing that she had some clues. Chloe felt she had few virtues, and patience was not one of them. If this was Lex’s doing, and not just something he was covering up for someone else… Chloe felt a chill, though not from the cold of the morgue, as she momentarily wondered if Lana had killed this man, but dismissed that idea after a moment. … If it were Lex, he would have most likely covered up the crime by now, leaving the scene clean as a whistle.
His possible motivation, though, was throwing her. Lex wasn’t known for going around killing people for being insolent. He hadn’t killed the doctor involved in having her abducted. That idiot got himself killed by trying to take out Tobias. Bowling Alley Freak had actually died from some kind of fall, as far as she could tell after poking around at his dead body, but it wasn’t enough to assume Lex had taken him out. There wasn’t a rash of car crashes to cover up all the dots she and Clark had, stupidly she now admitted, watched turn into red X’s without trying to help. Almost a year ago, she had checked out the body of the doctor who had worked on Vic Stone, and it had seemed as though he had actually died in his crash, but she hadn’t been able to access the car to rule out sabotage.
Chloe snapped some shots of the ‘good’ doctor and left the morgue as quietly as she had arrived, wondering, not for the first time, if any of her sleuthing instincts came from a meteor freak instinct. If rather than any skill she’d accrued of her own efforts, instead something thick and oily bubbled up inside her and had been pushing her closer and closer to a destiny she couldn’t see, couldn’t even fathom. Her mutated, hodgepodge genetics would cause her one day, hour come round at last, to slouch towards her future, reborn as a mad, laughing creature of destruction. She had to admit there was a small comfort in the existence of 33.1. It meant that, suspected crimes against humanity aside, there was an alternative to Belle Reve. She didn’t want anyone keeping her drooling and senseless in a cell for the rest of her life if her powers ever emerged. She didn’t understand wanting that. Her mind was really all she had. At least her evidence from Lex suggested she’d be able to keep her mind, what was left of it. Maybe she was being selfish.
Maybe the next time she saw him, she should ask Lex if the cells in 33.1 had rent control. So hard to find a good place in Metropolis.
***
Getting a copy of the wedding video hadn’t been difficult. It had been delivered to her doorstep a few days after the wedding. Chloe loved it when the subjects of her investigation made things easy on her. Heating up her ramen, she popped the DVD into her laptop and started scanning the film, taking screencaps of certain timestamps to create a timeline of the wedding for herself.
Chloe lifted some noodles into her mouth, watching Lex on the screen before the ceremony had started. Ideally, she should find that he had his lip split after this footage where the participants in the wedding were being cute, talking to the early guests, watching things being set up, and before the footage of the wedding itself. She was short enough that she might have missed the bruise or blood on Lex’s lip, and he had been late. If the injury appeared then, she might be able to speculate that Lex had gotten into a fight with Dr. Feelgood, and he had either somehow accidentally fallen to his death or Lex had just slammed his head against something. That was a good working theory, if she could find the evidence to support it. Although, it didn’t explain the look in his eyes when she’d come to get him or the fuzzy, drugged expression he'd worn through the rest of the ceremony.
“Dammit.” She leaned forward and re-watched the section where Lex came into the sanctuary with her. His face was clear. Scratch one theory.
“Jimmy not doing it for you?” Lois said jovially, walking in from behind. Chloe resisted the urge to pull a Luthor and close her laptop. But she was the maid of honor, which was a decent reason to be watching this video.
“Do you think that dress makes my butt look big?” Chloe asked quickly. Lois leaned over her shoulder. She was sucking on a lolly. That usually meant that Lois was missing her cigarettes.
“Take it back a couple of frames. Lemme see.”
Trust Lois to take the task seriously. They both looked at the laptop screen intensely.
“You’ve got a little junk in the trunk for sure, but I think you look fine. Lex looks like he’s retaining water,” Lois said bluntly.
Chloe laughed. “No, Lana’s the one who’s pregnant.”
“You’d never know it. Is she wearing a corset? Is she crazy?”
Chloe’s eyes zeroed in on Lana. She sure looked miserable, despite forcing a smile on her face. She was wearing a corset. That was odd. She tucked that information away for later on.
“Thanks, Lo.”
“No prob, Chlo. You know, if he used a diuretic, Lex might not be so bad looking. Still all bald and undercooked, but he has something striking about him. If he had a world-saving complex instead of a god-complex, I might go for him,” Lois commented.
So Lex had received the cut on his lip between saying “I do” and leaving the church. Clark would have mentioned hitting Lex. That left Lionel, Dr. Langston, or Lana, the same Lana who had been smiling almost genuinely as she left the church, which didn't exactly rule her out, unfortunately. Dr. Langston had been found in his crash on the other side of town around the time Lex and Lana were cutting their wedding cake… Clean-up of the body occurred almost immediately after the death, and there just wasn’t enough time for Lex to have gone somewhere, called for a cover-up, and come back, even if he had been a little late.
Furthermore, dying from a blow to the back of the head didn’t scream ‘Planned by a Luthor’ to Chloe. Something wasn’t adding up. Unfortunately, clues to Lex Luthor rarely did.
***
She had been so stupid. So incredibly stupid. And emotional. And irrational. She hated herself.
Chloe had learned at age fifteen through the admonishments of Principal Kwan that as a reporter she would have to back up her stories. Lex coming by to give her a slap on the wrist was nothing compared to what he could do to her, and she still didn’t understand why he hadn’t taken her into one of his facilities yet, for keeps.
She couldn’t put thoughts of her mother out of her head. The events of the past few days didn’t make any sense. None of it did, and Lex had been right really, that Chloe couldn’t prove a damn thing. Her mother had done nothing except cut herself off from a line of medication that could have helped her and had caused Chloe to be at risk for imprisonment.
She sat alone in her apartment. Wanting to strangle Lex. Wanting to know his secrets. Wanting to understand what this whole 33.1 thing was about and why Lex had let her see her mother. He hadn’t even used her mother Moira to send mutants after any of his enemies or even used Chloe as leverage with her mother.
Even more unfathomable to Chloe was why a mutant that had strength comparable to Clark would walk around more or less unrestrained in the hallways without trying to escape! Were they suffering from some sort of Stockholm syndrome? She was dying to ask her mother what had really happened in there, but that would mean getting more medication from Lex. Her mother wouldn’t like it.
Chloe realized that she’d stopped working on her term paper entirely and was simply sitting there sniffling and sniveling like a baby. She wanted to talk to her mommy. She wanted her daddy to rub circles on her back. She wanted to stop being so afraid that one day she was going to stop being Chloe and start being another one of those freaks. It had been easy to vouch for them when she wasn’t one of them. Now she was just terrified witless. It didn’t matter if Clark was calling himself her personal bomb squad. He couldn’t stop her from going insane.
She wished she could talk to Jimmy about these things. She rolled her eyes. Egyptians. Had her theories ever been so ridiculous? Regardless, she couldn’t let him any closer to her right now, no matter how she felt. Meteor freaks always hurt their loved ones the most. Chloe looked down at her hands, remembering...or rather, not remembering.
She’d had a lot of blackouts when she was a little girl. At the time, she had decided that aliens were abducting her. But they were nice aliens. They just couldn’t afford to have little girls telling on them to the papers. That was all.
***
Considering that Chloe had harbored the same terrible thought earlier during the day, she felt more inclined to forgive Lana for wanting to leave Lex for dead, but nevertheless, it made Chloe look at her a bit differently. In Chloe’s case, she hadn't been friends with Lex for years. Lex was Lana's husband. It smarted a little to realize that she didn’t really know Lana anymore, even if it had been true for a long time. Wanting someone to die because you were angry with them… she hoped that it was different from wanting someone to die because they were an inconvenience to you.
That evening she had searched the church, just in case Lex had magically planned to commit murder immediately prior to his own wedding. Who knew? Maybe he prided himself on multitasking.
Chloe had bought a special light that was normally used by the police to find bloodstains, and she moved through every room the guests hadn't been in, using it slowly and systematically. She hadn’t known that she had this kind of patience in her. It had been a long time since she’d had to get down on her knees and do the dirty work without any help from Clark.
“Okay, that sounded perverted even in my head,” she whispered to herself.
Eventually she reached the crypt underneath the church, and even though it looked like the set of a bad horror movie, she walked inside slowly and tried not to jump when her hands hit some cobwebs.
That was it. That was that weird musty smell on Dr. Langston. She knew it.
“Lex, what have you done?”
Chloe walked through the crypt, trying to shine her light on everything. There was a stain there… she followed the trail. Someone had dragged the body and covered up afterward. It was obvious in how the dust had been disturbed. Then next to the tomb… there was a slight chip on the side of the stone lid. That explained the straight-edged dent in Langston’s head. But what was Lex doing here, of all places?
Lex wouldn’t plan to be down here. It was dirty, and not in a good way for committing a murder. It was dirty in a way that was noticeable when cleaned up. Not to mention, the transportation for the body… it could have happened during the ceremony. By the time Lex and Lana had made it outside? Maybe. Whoever planned this murder had planned it badly.
She could almost hear her heart thumping in the crypt as she puzzled this out. Chloe decided to go get some coffee and puzzle this out in a place that didn’t quite scream William the Bloody’s Lovenest.
***
Chloe didn’t cry like she thought she would when Jimmy left her. She was proud of him in a strange way. He’d solved a mystery without her. Had to, since her head was so buried in graves and Lex and her freak mom. And he’d done it without getting hurt, much, so she was incredibly grateful that he wouldn’t be taken from her permanently. Maybe the Egyptian theory had been a fluke, and how many times had she gotten hurt in her fledgling days of facing down the Smallville weird? But he would be away from her, and that was the important thing right now. He’d be gone, probably, when she eventually got her freak on. So it would be okay if he weren't around. She could talk to him on the phone and not put him in any danger.
She had nodded when Clark intimated that he didn’t believe the reason Lana was protecting him was Lex. Not long ago, Clark overtly said that Lex would snuff Lana out just to spite him. He had assumed Lex would be eager enough to kill him, given the chance. She felt that somehow his recent experience in the tunnels with Lex had changed his attitude. Therefore, she was dying to know exactly what had happened in those tunnels, but it could wait. Having found out that Lana was working with Lionel and that this possibly had to do with Lana’s unwilling marriage to Lex, the pieces of this puzzle around Dr. Langston’s death were beginning to come together.
Sitting alone again in her apartment, re-watching the wedding tape for perhaps the twelfth time, Chloe realized that there was a reason she recognized that look on Lex’s face during the wedding. Though, last time he’d worn it, Lex hadn’t been wearing anything so prim as a tuxedo and a paisley tie. He had been dressed in one of Clark’s shirts. It had been so big on him and the vibrant sky blue had been jarring to see next to Lex’s pallid complexion. His bald head was so soft and pale, his neck thin and exposed sticking out of the large shirt. Lex had looked like a boy in daddy’s clothing, as he gently rocked a blanket, with droplets of tears in eyes that she had only seen dry. Unshed tears as he sang softly and a little hoarsely to the blanket, then begged her not to wake the baby.
“I can’t stand it when he cries,” Lex had whispered, with eyes begging her to understand.
Unfocused, frightened, wild eyes. Crazy eyes. The eyes of a man who had been abused and drugged and pushed to the brink by his father.
Maybe someone else had noticed that cars were Lex’s preferred method of disposal.
Chloe had a theory. She just had no way to prove it at the moment.
***
Chloe had suspected that her luck would run out when she tried to break into the LuthorCorp building, but she hadn’t guessed it would be this bad. She had imagined that they would just toss her out on her cushy butt and maybe Lex would make a little career-crushing call to her boss. When she heard the doors to Lex’s office open, she knew she was effectively fucked.
“It’s a nice evening, isn’t it, Chloe?” Lex’s voice shattered the silence and left her heart pounding.
“Not bad. A little humid, you know.” She turned around and stood up. Lex raised a brow.
“What are you doing at my bar? Couldn’t get anyone in the Metropolis area to accept your fake ID?”
“Actually, I’m doing a little research.”
“Oh?”
She dove in. “A murder.”
“Oh.” Lex’s eyes were pinning her down. “Whose murder?”
Chloe tried to remember how to breathe. She took the moment to break Lex’s gaze and pull out the results of her digging over the past couple of days. Nothing conclusive, but she was interested to see the reaction.
“Did you know that Dr. Langston made three calls on your wedding day?” Chloe handed Lex a copy of the information she’d hacked from the cell phone companies. “One to his bank. One to you. Then one to Lionel Luthor, just before his death.”
Lex’s eyes sharpened noticeably, but she continued. “I looked up your father’s records, and Lionel made a call to Dr. Langston prior to those three.”
Her voice quieted, getting ready to lay her cards on the table. Lex had not yet moved. “His death, as far as I can tell not being Temperance Brannen or anything, wasn’t the result of a car wreck as much as it was the result of him whacking his head on a stone casket, in the church where you were married, somewhere around 4:40 and 4:50pm.”
Lex’s eyes fixed on her again. He was trying to scare her. Chloe swallowed, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, remembering the feel of Lex’s strong hands on her shoulders as he spoke to her about his worries for her safety in the upcoming trial. The smell of his cologne, light, but musky. The tender, brotherly worry in his voice.
“Have you had any alcohol since the wedding?” Chloe asked, motioning with her head to the bar. “I came here to get a sample. Because when I met with you before the ceremony, you looked drugged. This is how I see the timeline.”
She raised her chin. “Lionel did something to Lana and hired Dr. Feelgood to tell her that she was pregnant. He knew that you would pay to keep the doctor quiet if you thought something was off with the baby. So he did, and you did. I don’t know about the escalating events in between. Lana strung out her “yes” as long as humanly possible. Clark pissed around for far too long himself. Then, on the day of the wedding, Daddy Luthor called the doctor and told him what he was going to do. The good doctor called his bank to allow the transfer of funds. He called you to put you into position. Lionel had already drugged your scotch. Langston called Lionel once more before you showed up, which was a mistake.”
“If the drug he gave you this time was the same as the one he gave you three years ago, then I’m imagining that you lost control of your temper when he blackmailed you about what you thought was happening with Lana, attacked him, and beat him to a pulp. He lost his balance and… yeah, whacked his head on a stone casket. Lionel’s people came in immediately to clean up. You got married. The car crashed across town about thirty minutes later, during the reception. Lionel hit you. Maybe to make you think that he was upset about the murder?”
“Why are you telling me this?” Lex demanded with a guarded expression.
“Because I’m a reporter. It’s my job to investigate. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is going to have anything I can report on, unless you cooperate. It would be manslaughter at best, but you’ll have a good lawyer, I’m sure, and given the circumstances of being drugged and then incited to attack… not worth the time. But your father has hurt Lana. And he’s threatened Clark. And… he just keeps hurting you. If I can pin Lionel for anything he’s doing? It’ll be worth it.” Chloe thinned her lips. “I’m keeping things from you, but those are all the cards I want to show right now.”
Lex frowned deeply and looked her over. “When did he threaten Clark?”
Chloe paused and looked down, considering what she should say. “He… on the day of the wedding, he told Lana that if she didn’t go through with it, he’d kill Clark.”
There it was. That fire in his eyes. Not the out of control wildness of the drugs, but the fire she’d seen in his eyes the day of the second meteor shower. Deadly and protective.
“I don’t know how things would have turned out between the two of you if Lionel hadn’t interfered, but I don’t trust whatever his ultimate goal is, if he has to move people around on a chessboard like this. I mean, why should I? He’s tried to kill both of us before.”
“I can’t really blame this on Dad. Clark and I let our own problems tear us apart,” Lex admitted, his voice still sharp and deadly.
“I meant Lana,” she replied in surprise. Lex opened his mouth slightly and turned his back on her, facing the window. He’d given something away. Something she had been beginning to suspect, had suspected often over the years, but had never found sufficient supporting evidence for. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to see it.
They were at war, and Lex saved Clark’s life. Didn’t even think about not saving his life. Chloe had certainly noticed how Clark’s feelings about Lex’s relationship with Lana hinged on how he and Lex were getting along, as though he somehow believed that Lana was nothing more than a mirror for Lex’s emotions for Clark…
“You love him,” she said bluntly. “Wow, I’m dense. How did I not see that?”
“Are you turning me in to the police?”
“No. Are you going to let me analyze your scotch? Have you had any since that day?”
“No. I’ve all but stopped drinking. I can’t afford the distraction.”
Her lips twitched into a nervous smirk. “Maybe you should take up green tea. I hear it’s soothing.”
Lex turned and gave her a disparaging look. “Are you giving up coffee?”
“Espresso runs through my veins. It’s the result of Lana’s meteor rock necklace falling into the beans at The Talon.” The playful, harsh words slipped out of her mouth then she darted her eyes away from Lex’s before he could trap her again.
“You were infected long before you came to Smallville, Chloe.”
Now his voice was gentle, despite his eyes remaining stern. She felt like a scared sixteen year old again in his presence. “I know. I just don’t know… what happened.”
“I never had the chance to ask her. You should talk to your father. He knows more about what happened.”
Chloe looked away. “I’m sorry she put your life and Lana’s life in danger.”
“I’m sorry that I ever woke her up. I thought she could help. It seems as though it would have been easier for you if she never had.”
“We all have to face our past sometime.” She looked at her hands. “Did you do any experiments on her?”
“I used Lowell to entice her to use her powers, but she was never in any danger,” Lex assured her. “If you believe me. Lowell has made a lot of good progress. He’s almost ready to go back into the world.”
He stepped closer to her. He sucked his cheeks in a little then breathed out. “I can cure it. The psychosis caused by the meteors. Not for all of us, but… we’re making steps. Tell Clark that. If either of you ever go critical, I know that you’re afraid that I’ll keep you… but I can help.” He wobbled his head from side to side. “About 57% of the time. Every case gets us closer to a permanent cure.”
“I’ll tell my dad. Clark won’t want to hear that.”
“Gabe already knows.”
Chloe wrinkled her nose. She felt tears pricking her eyes. “The scotch.”
He walked over to his bar, pulled out an empty flask, and began to fill it for her. “No need to tell me what you find. I’ll analyze the rest myself.”
“I think I already know the answer, though,” she said, taking the flask.
“Now what? I go away for manslaughter?” Lex tensed his lips staring down at her.
“Only if I can find enough evidence to mark Lionel for first degree murder. And, like I said, you’d have to cooperate. You have more hard evidence on me than I do on you.”
“True. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to point that out again.” Lex looked over to the bottle of scotch. “May I have copies of the information that you have?”
“Sure.” She hesitated. “There’s so much I want to ask you… some of them are really selfish questions. Some of them I know you won’t answer unless I give up something of equal value.”
“Depends on what you ask. And whether you’re on our side.” He ran his fingers along the bar. “And whether I believe you if you say you’re on our side. I find to my immense surprise, individuals attacking me with no clear reason. I suppose some of my facilities could be considered objectionable, but blowing them up is reckless and needless. They’ve taken out at least two labs devoted to cancer research. Killed a number of my employees. It’s unfathomable.”
Chloe sighed.
“So what were your questions?” Lex asked flatly.
She shook her head, feeling helpless. “Why? Why the secret labs? Why not have a public rehabilitation? Why not demand the government do something?”
“What do you think?” Lex asked in return. Chloe took an angry breath.
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. Why are there some freaks escaping from your labs, trying to kill you, and others who won’t lift a finger to save themselves? That just…”
“Follow orders? I think that’s probably a simple answer, Chloe. Some of them have decided that my labs are the best place for them. Some have not. Obviously.”
“Rather be with Mr. Big instead of in Belle Reve?”
“Mostly, yes. Some of them know more, and they agree with my end goals.”
“And the ones that don’t? What, they just stay there against their will?” Chloe challenged.
“They go home, not remembering how they came back to sanity, but knowing that they are somehow back in the world, thanks to me.” Lex touched his chest in a slightly self-mocking gesture. “It’s better that way. We can’t have an information leak, and we can’t hold them indefinitely either.”
She moved the flask back and forth in her hands. “What are these ultimate goals of yours?”
Lex shook his head slowly at her.
“Okay, got it. Too far.”
“If you joined me, it would be different. As things stand… Clark has aided the enemy. I can’t necessarily trust him.”
“You’re really threatened that much by Green Arrow and his Merry Men?” Chloe asked skeptically.
“I wasn’t talking about Green Arrow,” Lex replied in a sad, hushed voice. “So. Clark was working with them.”
Chloe froze, feeling the prickling sensation of fear behind her scalp.
His lips curled. Lex’s tone turned joking and bitter. “Don’t worry. I think he saved my life from that maniac Green Arrow. I’m not going to be looking for revenge on that account. But thank him for releasing enough meteor rock dust into the air and water supply of Metropolis to keep us stocked on meteor mutants for the next thirty years.”
She rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
“Did you do it?”
“No. But I helped. Clark got involved-“
“And you joined in because it’s Clark. Didn’t see you there.”
“I was on the outside.”
“That was brave of you to tell me.”
Chloe didn’t feel brave. “I didn’t know they were going to blow up the building. Clark didn’t either. He made them promise to get everyone out of the building. Have there been casualties?”
“Fewer than most wars,” he said harshly. “Are we done?”
“Anything else you’d like to share?” she asked with a quirk of the lips. Lex walked broadly around to his desk.
“Not particularly. But I trust that if you have any information about my father, you’ll give it to me. And, as before, I’ll do the same if it doesn’t compromise me.”
She nodded. “I’ll give what I can. Just know for now that he’s actively working against you.”
Lex sat in his chair and ran a finger over his lips. She started to walk away.
“Um, Lex?”
“You had another question?”
“No. I thought you should know that Clark misses you. I don’t know what happened in the tunnels, but…” She shook her head. “He’s been out of control this year. I don’t know what he wants. It’s just different now.”
She thought she saw some life in his dead eyes. A flicker of something that had been buried deeply out of necessity.
“Thank you for sharing that with me.”
“I hope I don’t regret it.”
“I hope I don’t regret what I’ve told you today.”
She rubbed the back of her neck and turned again, walking out of Lex Luthor’s office, feeling as though she had effectively sullied herself in a way Clark might not ever forgive. But, if she could get more information, save more lives... Maybe Lex could find a way to bring her mother back from that dark place where it seemed that everyone attacked her.
Maybe she could save herself, too.