Crossroads - Chapter 13

by a campbell

Clark Kent/Lex Luthor, PG-13

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Chloe tried to ignore the tense lump in her throat as the Luthorcorp elevator glided skyward.

Ordinarily, she would have thought twice about responding to a summons to Lex’s office in the city. Certainly, she would have considered long and hard before going alone. But, with Clark’s health and safety in the balance, it was a reasonable sacrifice of a lunch hour. A good investment. However she might distrust Lex Luthor, it could cause more problems now were she to stay away.

Follow Lady Macbeth’s advice and screw your courage to the sticking place, she told herself. After all, she had only one cryptic email message from Clark to protect: Going away for awhile. Will stay in touch.

And one strained conversation with Lana. Clark tried to break us up--Lex and me. He pretends to care, but he doesn’t. He always has some other agenda… didn’t want me himself. So why can’t he stay out of my life?

Chloe was almost glad, for once, that she didn’t know more.

But at least now, if Lex let slip any details about morally ambiguous plans to locate Clark, she could try to alert her friend before too much time passed. Martha would no doubt know how to get in touch with him.

Chloe walked down the deserted hallway, hesitated briefly outside the mahogany door labeled: "Lex Luthor", then mustered her determination and pressed the button. The door slid soundlessly open, and she entered.

Lex was behind his desk, illumined by dim light from the window and the glow of his computer screen. He looked up as she approached across the polished floor.

"Chloe. I appreciate your coming by today. Have a seat." He was paler than usual, forehead creased.

"Hello, Lex." She hoped her voice conveyed the aimed-for mix of cordiality and coolness. She sat down as bidden across from him as he typed a few more words and closed the lid on his laptop, then sat back and regarded her in silence for a few moments.

"How’s Lana?" she blurted out, just to say something, and then could have kicked herself.

Lex didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said: "I wondered if you knew anything about the whereabouts of your friend and mine, Clark Kent."

She held herself steady, spoke calmly, confidently, holding his gaze. "No, Lex, I don’t. The two of you are still friends? I thought--"

"Don't play games with me, Chloe." Lex said calmly. He picked up the telephone book from his desk and thumbed through it, pages rippling. "He appears to have left town over the weekend. Left without so much as a word. He’s good at that.”

"Well, I haven’t seen him since last week," she offered with a shrug.

Lex folded his hands on the desk before him. Chloe shifted uncomfortably as she waited for him to continue.

"And you have no idea where he went?"

"No."

Lex leaned forward. "You’re Clark’s closest friend. Have been, longer than any of the rest of us. I don’t know how much you know, but if he were to confide in anyone, I suspect it’d be you."

"I don’t know about that. There’s his mother--" Chloe began.

An elegant shrug and cool smile as he sat back. "I opted to try his best friend this time, instead. Humor me."

Chloe settled back in her seat, too, and thinned her lips. "I can’t help you, Lex." She spread her hands and shrugged.

Lex’s expression betrayed nothing. He continued as though she hadn’t spoken. "I’m sure you’ll agree that Clark’s health and safety are paramount and of prime concern for both of us."

Chloe recognized the technique. The maneuver. The books on stalking called it "false alignment." She mustered her defenses. "I always care about Clark. Always have, always will."

Lex rose and stepped around the desk to Chloe’s chair, so close she caught a whiff of the crisp, starched scent his shirt. He looked steadily down at her. "Even though he’ll never love you?"

A low blow, even for Lex, and one she wasn’t expecting. She swallowed, hard.

But she determined not to let him exploit her weakness. A long sigh helped her compose herself for her reply. "Lex, I’ve been so over that for eons. You must think I’m very shallow if you still assume that his not loving me will ruin our friendship." She fought to keep her voice steady. "Sure, we had a few rocky moments back in sophomore year, but, since then--" Chloe help up two crossed fingers.

Lex’s face relaxed into an almost-smile of satisfaction. "I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. I’d hate to think--"

"As much as we can be.” She subdued her irritation and other conflicted feelings stirred by Lex’s inference and made an effort to focus her thoughts on the matter at hand. This meeting, this conversation wasn’t about her.

Lex leaned down. "Chloe." She turned halfway round, noting how his knuckles whitened as he gripped the back of her chair. "I need your help in finding him."

Chloe swallowed hard as she looked up at him with a swift shake of her head. "Lex, I couldn’t help you even if I did know where he was. Because if Clark left, he must have had a reason. A good one." She looked up, but with his back at an angle to the window, his expression was shadowed.

A slow nod. "The circumstances of his departure were unfortunate."

"Were they?" Her throat felt suddenly dry.

Lex gazed down at her a moment longer before speaking. "How much do you know?"

"Not that much," she insisted.

"You spoke with Lana?"

"We talked once, last week."

She raised her chin as though daring him to make something of it. How much do you know, she couldn’t help but wonder.

"And she said?"

"That she and Clark had met, and quarreled. Which I probably should be keeping confidential, but something tells me you already know."

"Chloe, the mansion is wired with more cameras than the White House. Very little happens there without my knowledge."

"So you heard their conversation." Despite his casual tone, she knew he was avid for details. But she kept her guard up.

"Enough to know why he left." Lex shoved balled fists into his pockets and rocked a little back and forth from his soles onto his toes.

"He made the decision on his own, Lex."

"That’s the problem, Chloe. He made it alone."

"I can’t speak against my friends, Lex. Either of them. But I have to ask you: how could you think that arrangement could ever work? Having them both there in the mansion that way. It was a disaster waiting to happen from Day One." Chloe took a deep breath. "I tried to tell you that a couple of months ago, when Lana was reeling from their breakup, and so was Clark. But you wouldn’t listen." She stood up to face him, brushing a stray lock of hair from her eyes and continued. "Even Luthors have to make choices, Lex. You can’t have it all."

He raised his eyebrows with a small, bleak smile as though to say Can’t I?

"You have to decide who means more to you. Lana or Clark. Decide which of them you want to spend your life with. And then let them both know. You can’t have them both. Not that way."

Lex looked off toward the window for a moment that seemed to last eons as Chloe waited for his response. Her lunch hour was up and she really needed to get back to the Planet, but she felt powerless to move.

"You and I haven’t always been the best of friends, Chloe. But I know the welfare of your true friends is important to you. So I’m asking you again: where is Clark?"

"I told you: I don’t know," Chloe replied steadily.

Lex’s voice was low, quiet, lethal. "I need the truth. Now."

"He didn’t tell me anything more, Lex. I swear it on...on your laptop." She rose quickly and laid a palm on the warm lid of the laptop with a weak grin.

No smile in response. "I don’t believe you." And, in spite of herself, she felt her resolve begin to weaken at the bleak frustration in his voice.

"Okay, well, all right. He told me a few things." Stupid, she hissed inwardly. She should have known--that he would pounce on that, as soon as the words left her mouth.

"What?"

"Just—things."

"About our child?"

"Yes." She seemed to have lost the power to master her words, her responses. To hear Lex confirm the reality of what she’d half-convinced herself was a dubious memory from an odd, fleeeting dream, was strange.

"And that doesn’t that seem odd to you? Even as former documenter of all that was weird in Smallville?"

"That Clark is carrying a child, or that he told me about it? Regardless, it doesn’t matter what I think. Because you're right: stranger things have happened in Smallville--" She hated falling back on that age-old, all-purpose explanation, but if it worked--"and even in Metropolis."

"Our child," he repeated slowly, looking out over the buildings to the horizon beyond. "Clark's child...and my child, too, Chloe. Consequently, I have some right to know where Clark has gone." He turned to her, desperation darkening his gaze. "Please. Help me find him."

It was hard to say "No" to Lex Luthor. Lex was a master at persuading foreign business partners to cough up millions for this new project or that, could talk his mellifluous way around just about anyone, coax information from behind the most fortified defenses. Chloe felt her resolve weakening seriously now, and made one more valiant effort to be strong.

"I know him well enough to know that he’s devastated, Lex."

Lex glanced over at her and gnawed his lower lip. "I wish I had the inroad to his thoughts and feelings that you seem to enjoy."

Chloe sighed again. "Oh, Lex. How could you expect Clark to live that way, knowing you were with Lana, and were making no move to end it? He has more pride than that. Again, sometimes in life we have to choose. It’s not possible to have everything."

Lex didn’t look at her. "Clark is an extraordinary young man. But he’s bearing the weight of more than one world. He belongs with people who care about him, can give him the support he needs."

"I hope you’re including yourself in that mix. Because you have his heart, Lex. All of it."

She tried not to let Lex’s expression, which softened as though he’d been given a gift long despaired of, make her go fond and foolish. He glanced up at her again, and moved closer, his gaze burning into her, holding her still.

"He shouldn’t be alone, Chloe. Who knows the multitude of risks this pregnancy may mean for him? He needs to be back under expert medical care. Which I can provide." Lex spoke low and rapidly. "He needs careful monitoring to ensure his survival--and the child’s." He reached up, both hands grasping her wrists. "I’m convinced you’ve known about him--about his powers--for some time, now. Now, tell me: where is he?"

Lex had made her uneasy from the day they first met, long ago in the Torch office on an autumn afternoon, but, now she was afraid. She flexed her wrists with a moan, and his grip loosened.

Chloe pulled back, keeping her voice steady. "I can’t help you find him, Lex. But I’ll tell you one thing. One thing I’m sure of. Clark wants you as much as you want him." With a deep breath, she reached out hesitantly to touch his arm. "I just hope that what you say is true and that he can trust you to put his needs foremost. And that your main aim is keeping him safe."

Lex looked off and across the room. The buzz of his desk phone provided Chloe an opportunity for escape, though he made no move to take the call.

"Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t be of help, Lex, but I need to get back now. I have to finish a final draft for the five o’clock copy deadline--" She reached for her purse from the arm of the chair, not taking her eyes from him.

Lex fingered the telephone receiver but didn’t lift it from the cradle. "Chloe. When you talk to him--and I know you will--tell him I’ll find him. It’s only a matter of time."

She swallowed hard, at an uncharacteristic loss for words.

"Everyone thinks I’m the Antichrist, Chloe. I assure you, I’m not. I want only the best for Clark. But I’ll find him. There’s nowhere in the world he can hide from me."

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