Life Unplanned
Author: Cy Panache
Rating: PG-13
Category: Dark/Angst
Timeline: This is set in the alternate timeline set up by Season Five's "Reckoning" where Lana did die. Just assume Clark didn't or couldn't reset time and we go from there.
Disclaimer: Someone else's sandbox. I just play here because other people have all the best toys.
Author's Note: *Looks around wonderingly* So this is the board . . . Okay, so many reasons why I shouldn't be doing this (namely two unfinished stories), but equally as many reasons why I should. I'd been trying to get myself back into the groove of writing, and I got a little inspired by the November challenge, but the whole thing melded with other ideas I had been kicking around for awhile and got away from me (as is typical), and I went wildly off theme and over word limit. So we are posting it here. So as I said, trying to get back into the groove, think I accomplished it, but any interest is always appreciated and would help my momentum immensely.
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She's had her life planned for as long as she can remember, and if she had to guess, she would bet Lex has, too. They're strangely similar that way. The planners whose plans never quite work out.
This certainly wasn't anywhere in the cards.
But then neither was he.
God, he so wasn't in the cards.
As crazy as it sounds, she'd just never thought of him that way. Which she realizes puts her in a class of about one. But its true. Lex had always been the dark shadow to Clark Kent's sunlight. You don't see a shadow when you're busy staring at the sun.
But you don't expect to wake up one day and find the sun gone either.
She'd made the mistake of thinking of Clark as forever, confusing his physical invulnerability for a permanency she realizes in retrospect he had never shown. Now she gets it, understands that she was hero-worshipping a fantasy, that between the two of them Clark was never the brave one, never the strong one. That for all the fantastic things he did, he couldn't figure out how to survive the everyday, the simple terror of human existence.
Which is why two months after Lana's death in a car crash on the side of a darkened road, she's standing here amidst stained glass and mahogany, rather than rough-hewn planks and open sky.
Because when Clark ran away from the pain, it was like they'd lost their gravitational pull, the thing keeping them in orbit—separate, parallel—and in his absence they were free to go off course, to crash into each other with a fierceness she doesn't think either of them could have predicted.
---
She doesn't look up when he comes to stand beside her at the graveside, doesn't need to. Clark left days ago without so much as a note on her pillow, and even if he hadn't, well she only knows one person who would ruin italian leather shoes in four inches of snow.
She blames him for Lana's death because Clark does, because he cried in her arms and screamed Lex's name like a curse. There are a million things she wants to say to him, to scream at him. But standing here staring at Lana's name etched in stone, none of them come.
So they don't say anything, just stand there in silent vigil. Waiting for God knows what.
It's only when she's gotten tired of waiting, has started the slow trudge to her car, that Lex finally breaks the silence.
"Can he fly?"
The question stops her cold. "Don't you ever stop?"
Apparently, he doesn't. "I've seen most of it first hand, worked out some of the rest . . . the speed, the strength, the invulnerability, but the flying, that's the one I just can't decide."
Whirling around, she hisses, "What is wrong with you?! Lana's dead. Isn't that enough? Just let it go."
"I can't."
"Why?" She's unbearably tired all of the sudden. “How could it possibly matter now?”
"It matters because Lana is dead. Because she died protecting this great and terrible secret that nobody will talk about but we all know is there.” He hasn’t looked at her, his entire being focused on the headstone, but suddenly he looks up, and she sees it, the gaping hole in his implacable façade. “So tell me, was it worth it? Did the world make a good deal?"
Chloe doesn't have an answer for him, not anymore. And God knows he’s the last person entitled to one, but his eyes are a raw unbandaged wound and she’s lost her taste for salt.
So she gives him the one answer she does have.
“No one can fly, Lex.”
It's the last time they ever talk about Clark.
---
He’s looking up at her expectantly, has been for God knows how long. He must know she’s here for a reason, the air is charged with it, electric with expectation. But he sits waiting, letting her come to the words in her own time.
She wishes they wouldn’t have to come at all.
But they do come, like a burst of gun fire, abrupt and unwanted and life-altering.
“I’m pregnant.”
Lex sets down his pen.
---
She comes to drop off Lana's things only to find Lex already there, sitting awkwardly at the kitchen table as Nell sobs over a cup of coffee. They both stay longer than they meant to, and when he slides into the passenger seat of her car, she doesn't say anything.
Chloe doesn't want to drive back to Smallville alone either.
He doesn’t invite her in, but somehow she winds up standing in the middle of the library all the same. And when he goes to pour himself a drink, she’s not surprised when he returns with one for her, too.
She’s even less surprised when two drinks and thirty minutes later he’s pressing her into the leather cushions of the couch with his body.
It’s been that kind of week.
When its over, they don’t say anything because there’s nothing to be said. Neither has any illusions about what this was, and more so exactly what it wasn’t. Chloe simply rebuttons her shirt with matter-a-fact efficiency. Lex goes to get another drink. For once, she gets to be the one who leaves without a goodbye.
The action would be more satisfying if she’d left someone who cares.
---
Chloe thought she’d prepared herself for every possible reaction. Denials of paternity; demands she terminate the pregnancy; legal settlements and hush money; even some ridiculously chilvaric, but ultimately empty offer of marriage, she’s given careful consideration to them all, decided exactly how she’d react.
But she never prepared for Lex coming around from behind his desk to place a gentle hand on the curve of her stomach with something close to awe in his eyes.
Two months she’s been waiting to find the good in Lana’s death, in Clark’s exit, to discover the meaning behind a tragedy that is ultimately meaningless.
This can’t be it. It just can’t be.
It can’t be them.
---
He’s taken to haunting the Talon like a ghost. Until Lois is making threats under her breath to turn him into a real one, and even Mrs. Kent’s ever-present patience seems worn to the breaking point. And she tells herself it doesn’t matter. Tells herself she only cares because she wants to enjoy her coffee in peace. Tells herself she’s intercepted him in the back hallway because she just doesn’t want her cousin fired, because Martha Kent shouldn’t have to keep looking at the man responsible for the death of her would-be daughter-in-law.
The moment she gets him out into the alley Chloe forgets all of that, and gives him a hard shove. “What the hell is your problem?! You don’t get to do this!”
“Don’t get to enjoy the fruits of my investment?”
“You don’t get to keep vigil. She’s not yours to mourn. She was never yours, and you don’t get her now.”
“But you get Clark? Last time I checked he wasn’t even dead.”
The words land like a stinging slap and she turns away in an effort to hide the pain. “I’m not doing this with you.”
“Of course you are. Or do you get to keep vigil?”
She whirls around without thinking. “They’re my friends!”
The moment the words are out of her mouth she realizes her mistake, the tacit admission that yes she’s mourning Clark as much as Lana, that she’s just a guilty of clinging to fantasy as him, of taking comfort in the artificial closeness grief affords her. Its all there, writ large across his face, the triumphant expression that can’t quite mask that flicker of something close to regret at his inability to claim the same.
Suddenly it’s all too much. She’s tired of doing this alone, of being the only one left behind. Tired of walking on eggshells around Lana’s memory and pretending its not about Clark. She’s just so damn tired.
To her horror she can feel weeks of unshed tears threatening to overwhelm her, and she has to do something because she can’t cry in front of Lex, she just can’t.
And then Lex does the worst thing possible . . . he stops fighting. "Chloe-"
Her mouth crashes against his, cutting off his words before she knows what she’s doing. She doesn't know what he's about to say, but she can't hear it. Won't let him take this, him, away from her. She needs it too much, needs to fight with him and yell at him and blame him. The only way for her to be Chloe again, even for a moment, is for him to be Lex, and Lex Luthor does not apologize.
But he does fuck.
There’s nothing gentle about it. It’s raw and clumsy, teeth and tongues and fingernails digging into flesh. But its something, something different to feel other than grief. And it doesn’t even matter that she knows he’s not seeing her when he closes his eyes.
She’s not seeing him either.
---
When did it stop being about Clark and Lana?
The question tumbles over and over in her head, but she can’t find the answer. Until now, she wasn’t aware that it had. They have been defined by their lack of definition. Their couplings more random chance than need, more need than affection. She can’t even remember the day she moved into the mansion, just that one day she stopped leaving.
And still there is nothing remotely domestic about them. They sleep in separate rooms, plan days without consulting each other, eat meals together by coincidence. They’re each other’s halfway house, the temporary stopover before they rejoin the real world.
So why does his hand over their child feel permanent?
Unconsciously she lets herself lean against him, drops her forehead to his shoulder and sighs an admission, “It wasn’t supposed to be you.”
Without missing a beat, he whispers back, “I know," then adds, "But I can be a better father.”
What else can she ask for? After all it wasn’t supposed to be her either.
---
Because they’re still them there’s no celebratory dinner, no dreamy discussions of futures and first Christmases. Lex has merger negotiations in Shanghai. She has a deadline. Their sole concession to this polar shift is the note to the staff to order decaf coffee, the scheduling of a pre-natal visit, and Lex’s repeat of his earlier promise when, for the first time, he calls to say goodbye.
She doesn’t think about it much after she hangs up, has almost put it entirely from her mind by the time she gets home. But that evening when she goes up to her room she finds something waiting for her on her bed.
It’s a medical file. Lex’s medical file. She reaches for it with a vague foreboding that coalesces into horror as she reads the highlighted passage.
“Patient sterile. Suspected complication of meteor rock infection.”
And suddenly Lex’s words earlier today make an awful kind of sense. She’d thought he was talking about his father or himself, promising not to repeat the shortcomings of his own upbringing, to improve upon his own nature for the sake of their child.
But he wasn't.
Because it’s not their child at all.
It’s hers.
And Clark’s.
Clark who came to her in the wake of Lana’s death looking for solace, who cried in her arms, and took comfort in her body all the while cursing Lex’s name.
Clark who she’d sworn in her heart to protect until her dying breath.
Clark who left with the dawn and never looked back.
She had never even stopped to consider the possibility, just assumed . . .
But Lex knew, had known since the moment she uttered the words that it wasn’t his child and by default whose it was. Knew exactly who he was promising to be better than. Was that the reason for his reaction? Not wonder at what they had created but at the prospect of watching Clark’s child first hand?
Everything she thought she knew, every realization of this day, it’s all gone, shattered, leaving her sick in a way that has nothing to do with her condition.
She has to get out of here.
Panicky and shaking she hauls out two duffels and starts emptying drawers into them. There’s no thought to the process, just a frantic daze of movement, as she tries to get away from this place as fast as possible.
It’s only when she gets down to grab her shoes from underneath the bed that she sees it. There on a single slip of paper that must have fluttered to the floor when she picked up the medical file.
Baby names.
In Lex’s handwriting.
The sight stops her cold. Numbly she picks up the piece of paper, and sits down on the floor to read.
There are some she expected—Julian, Lillian, Lana—and some she didn’t—Edward, for her grandfather, Jonathan, for the baby’s, and Duncan for reasons she can’t fathom.
She sits there for a long time, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t pack, just sits. There’ll be time to run if she wants it. She gets that now.
So she sits and thinks about Clark, about his powers and his secret and his burden. Thinks about what he’d do if he knew he had a son, about what a good father he could be if he were here.
And she thinks about Lex, thinks about the his hand on her stomach, thinks about everything she wasn’t saying when she told him it wasn’t supposed to be him, thinks about his insistence on knowing whether Clark can fly and his promise to be the better father, about this little list of potential names, none of which are right.
When dawn comes, Chloe’s made her decision, and for the first time since Lana died, she starts to do what she does best . . .
She makes plans.
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Re: Life Unplanned (PG-13) 11/17/09
Originally Posted by cypanache
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