Title: Secrets
Author: scifichick774
Rating: PG
Category: Drama/Angst Chloe/Lex; Chloe/Lionel partnership reflection
Spoilers: Everything through the spoilers for season 3 at Kryptonsite is fair game.
Summary: Response to Humbuggirl’s ‘death’ challenge. Chloe reflects over Lionel’s recent death.
Disclaimer: Obviously not mine. I’m just playing with the imaginary characters’ lives for fun and not for profit.
Feedback: Yes please.
Archival: Sure – just let me know where.
Author’s Note: Carmen, you were probably looking for more of an introspective piece, but this is what my muse offered up. Hopefully it’s still okay. Challenge requirements: 1) There must be an argument. 2) Someone should say “I thought I was helping”. 3) A mention of all three Luthors – Lionel, Lex, and Lucas.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Chloe wrapped her arms around herself, shivering not because of the snow that had just started to fall again and was sticking in fat flakes against her clothing, but because of the grave she was staring down at.
“It’s kind of hard to believe that it’s been a month already,” a familiar male voice said, his footsteps crunching lightly in the already fallen snow until he came to stand directly beside her.
Chloe closed her eyes and tried to steel herself for a conversation with him, but she knew she wasn’t at the top of her game and hadn’t been since Lionel Luthor was killed a month ago. What was worse was that she knew the man beside her knew it as well.
“It’s surreal,” he continued, a hint of joy to his voice.
“What are you doing here, Lex?”
“Same as you – paying my respects,” Lex answered with teasing sarcasm. They were both silent for a moment until Lex turned his eyes away from the grave to face her. “I never got a chance to thank you properly for getting me out of the hospital.”
“I found out that Dr. Foster and your dad were drugging you…I thought I was helping,” Chloe replied defensively.
“And you were – immensely. I would still be in there if it wasn’t for you.”
Chloe glared at him, but the twitching in her jaw muscles betray her feelings of fear of the man in front of her; no matter how brave the front was that she put on.
“If I had known…I should have left you in there.”
“Why? So my father could continue terrorizing you? So he could continue to run your life into the ground until you were a shell of a human being like he did with me?”
“Don’t you *dare* act like you killed him for me!” Chloe half-yelled through gritted teeth.
“No. I killed him for *me*,” Lex admitted calmly. “A person can only take so many years of emotional abuse before they snap, Chloe. He’s just lucky it wasn’t Lucas. He’d have tortured him first. Besides, my father killed his father – so I figure in the grand scheme of things, it evens out somehow.”
He said the last part with a crooked grin, but Chloe was far from amused. By helping to release Lex from the insane asylum that Lionel had housed him in, she had unwittingly played a role in someone’s death. And even though that someone was Lionel, who had fast become the bane of her existence, she still found the guilt a terribly heavy burden to bear – especially when the only person she could talk to about it was the man beside her and he didn’t seem to feel even a twinge of remorse over his actions.
“He killed your grandfather, you killed him – must run in the family. Better hope you don’t have a son,” she said snidely and with considerably more control than she felt.
Lex smiled and a chuckle released from his throat.
“I don’t know why, but I have this feeling that I’m only going to have daughters,” he said with somewhat dismissive joking. He looked back at the grave with a pleased expression and after a long pause, he spoke again. “I will say this for him, his interference with my mind ended up giving me one hell of a defense for killing him…So, thanks for that, Dad.”
“Are you taking all of your court-ordered medication?” Chloe asked, already knowing the answer.
Lex smirked evilly.
“What’s the matter, Chloe? Don’t you trust me?” he teased, shrugging nonchalantly when Chloe shot a quick glare at him. “That’s okay. I understand that trust is something that needs to be earned – and we have the rest of our lives for me to earn it.”
Chloe looked at him with wary questioning and he reached out to finger the flip of her hair that her hat didn’t cover. He ran the back of his gloved hand along the soft skin of her cheek and jaw and Chloe found herself nervous, unable to make of his now serious – mixed with something else – expression.
“Knowing someone’s secrets is the tie that binds,” he said. “So make no mistake – we’re bound together forever now.” Chloe’s heart raced in her chest as Lex’s fingers skimmed down her neck and arm and then gradually rested with his hand pressed flat against her belly. “As if this wasn’t enough.”
Chloe’s eyes widened in panic. He couldn’t know.
He *couldn’t*.
She had only just found out herself.
Seeing her shock at his statement, Lex smirked again.
“You didn’t really think I was so drunk that I didn’t remember sleeping with you, did you?”
Chloe opened her mouth to speak, but when the words didn’t come out right away, she closed it again. A bad feeling built in her stomach and traveled to her throat as a sick suspicion dawned on her.
“You did this on purpose,” she said quietly and in horrified disbelief. “I thought you were upset about your dad – that you didn’t know or realize what had happened and were trying to cope by getting drunk, but ---”
“See it from my point of view, Chloe. I needed insurance that you wouldn’t betray me.”
“So you slept with me to get me pregnant?!”
“I knew that no matter how angry you were, or how much guilt you felt, you wouldn’t turn in the father of your child. And now you know another one of my secrets,” Lex said, leaning forward to brush his lips against her forehead. “The tie that binds,” he murmured. “You know my secrets and I know yours, and as long as we both can agree, I see no reason why they can’t just stay between us.”
“By agree you mean cooperate?”
Lex grinned.
“I must say, it’ll be nice to finally have a wife I can trust. Now, come on, let’s get you out of the cold.”
Chloe swallowed down the lump of nausea in her throat and stole one last glance at Lionel’s grave. Her arms wrapped around herself once again and a slow tear slid down her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out in little more than a whisper.
But whether she was apologizing to Lionel or to herself, she could not say; as even her subconscious had its secrets.
The End
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