Lionel would remark that sentimentalism was the downfall of man.  Not that Lex had any intention of permitting his father to discover his most recent actions. 

Petty theft was beneath a Luthor.  Or, at least that’s what Lionel’s propaganda department would like everyone to think.  Seems Lex recalled some records of Lionel’s own father not having any problems with theft, petty or otherwise. 

Raising his scotch to his otherwise empty study in the Smallville mansion, Lex toasted the memory of his never met, not mourned Grandfather.  It was ironic, this call to his proverbial ancestral roots.   

All for the sake of a dead friendship in a dead-end town. 

Lex turned away from the stained glass windows.  They reminded him, these days, that he didn’t want to look outside.  He didn’t want to face Smallville and all it represented in his mind.  A chance at an approximation of normal life lost to prejudice, bigotry, and his own stubborn pride.   

But let’s not forget the deceit.  He would at least acknowledge that deceit played a massive hand in his choices.   

“Mr. Luthor?” 

The female voice brought his attention to the now open doors.  His inner irritation that he’d become so entrenched in his melancholy that he hadn’t heard her entrance never even blinked across his face.  The simplest of patiently expectant expressions and the bare raise of an eyebrow had her crossing the room with a notebook. 

In his hands, the cheap composition folder felt like the finest leather and velum.  It represented far more to him than whatever rambling thoughts would be found inside.  It was a goodbye.  A farewell conducted in the grandest fashion of the Luthor name.   

Perhaps he’d even have it returned in that damned red truck that had haunted his garage for so many years. 

“Thank you, Veronica.  Your fee is on the table.” 

The brunette practically skipped over to the low piece of furniture and tucked the envelope into her backpack.  The skip, like the backpack and the brown hair, were affectations for her most recent role.  

“I’ll look forward to your next call, Mr. Luthor.  Easiest job I ever did.” 

He disregarded her exit, far more excited by the visceral aura of Clark on the notebook he still held.  If it had been pointed out that he was lightly caressing the closed covers, he would have denied it most stridently.  But that didn’t change the fact that his fingertips practically tingled. 

It was time.  A dramatic gesture of departure to equal their equally dramatic meeting.  He’d considered replacing the bridge for the county simply so they’d let him have the old one.  But what would Clark do with a bridge? 

Lex could admit that his once healthy, now deceased friendship really had no place in his life as it was becoming.  Clark obviously had no place left for him.  Now, with the younger man’s high school graduation only weeks away, a formal parting. 

But that still left Lex with the eternal question on what to get the boy who seemed to need nothing?  Thus explaining the pilfered journal that he finally settled at his desk, splaying the tender pages in front of him.  Fortifying scotch in hand, he flipped to the front page.  It held unusually small, neat, and concise handwriting.  It was surprising, as he had occasionally seen the papers turned in for Clark’s schoolwork. 

Keep a journal… like that’s going to solve any of my problems.  Mom and Dad don’t ask about my meetings with the counselor.  Everyone just wants to forget that I ran away.  So it’s time to be the perfect son again and do what I’m told.  I owe them enough…this seems like far too small a price to pay.  

Lex sipped at his drink.  This wasn’t entirely a surprise.  He’d been informed of Clark’s dilettante trip into Metropolis by both his Smallville and Metropolis sources.  The only thing he hadn’t determined is why his young friend had gone by the name of Kal during that time.  It would also explain the sudden and persistent appearance of the journal afterwards.  Lower on the same page was a continuance of thoughts.  Clark was by no means consistent in his daily application of thoughts to page.  But he was consistent in putting as much data into as small a space as possible. 

I feel like a twelve-year-old girl.  Dear Diary, today I went to school.  Everyone forgets that not only am I not a girl, they don’t even know for sure that I’m seventeen.  I could be in my twenties.  After today’s physics class, it occurs to me that I could be even older.  Yeah, Mom and Dad would love that idea.  Hey, Mom?  You know that time dilation thing that occurs near the speed of light?  How does that affect my birth certificate? 

No, I don’t think so.  So, rather than Dear Diary, I’ve decided to have one place that I put the truth.  My life is a lie – everything about it is deception.  If no one reads this and no one will ever know, then here I can tell the truth.  I don’t have to be Clark Kent and I don’t have to be Kal-El.  I can be some anonymous voice that doesn’t lie.  And I’ll give that truth where it should have gone all along. 

Lex was almost disillusioned by the seeming bitter regret that seeped from the writings.  So far, it was mostly what he’d expected.  Teenage angst was the same the globe over and he’d wallowed in more than his fair share.  He did suddenly have some connection for the name Kal, now extended into Kal-El.  A reference to a birth name?  He was well aware that Clark was adopted.  

As the front page contained no more, Lex turned to see the writing continue in cramped perfection on the back of the sheet. 

Dear Lex,

He swallowed roughly, the scotch burning slightly in an unprepared esophagus.  Not admitting that his glass was refilled with a none-too-steady hand, Lex blessed his seeming ability to remain forever in good health.  If it weren’t for his own particular brand of meteorite-altered biology, he’d need a liver transplant.   

It’s a cop-out to do it this way, Lex, but this is the way it has to be.  I know you want my honesty as well as my friendship.  Here alone can I give you that.  

So, I’ll just say it.  You hit me on that bridge.  I ripped off the roof of your car to save your life.  I didn’t really understand how or why until later.  And my parents only told me the truth when I put my arm in a chipper.  I’m not from around here, Lex.  Not from Smallville, Not from Kansas, Not from the United States of America, Not from Earth, and probably not from this galaxy.   

“Oh, fuck.” 

Lex stood, pacing sharply across the study.  His glass was, for the moment, abandoned on his desk.  Clark may think he was blind, may be accustomed to people not noticing, but this made so much sense. 

Unable to resist its siren call, he returned to the page. 

I can never tell anyone.  Pete wouldn’t know if I had any choice.  How do I explain to you that I’m the reason you’re different?  I didn’t mean to, but I’ve hurt so many people… If there is a God, does he forgive aliens too?  Whose image was I made in, Lex?  You could probably answer that, if I was allowed to tell you. 

Still pondering the clearly impossible origins of the young man with whom he’d become acquainted, Lex flipped forward several pages.  It seemed to span the majority of a year, most of the early journal entries noted by date to skip and start over weeks or even months. 

Lex… When they ask why, I know the answer I can give and the one that’s the truth.  But I promised myself I’d always put the truth here.  They ask why I’m your friend and it’s always a trite response.  I can’t say that I’m the friend of Lex Luthor because he’s the only person who understands what it’s like to be different by the very nature of your being.  To exist on the outside of society, above it or below it by turns. 

But I’ve ruined even that, haven’t I?  I can see it in your eyes when I lie these days.  You know I’m lying.  I could convince you, or avoid you, or do one of the million things my father would prefer.  But I lie to you, Lex.  I lie badly because I want you to call me on it.  I want you to make me tell you the truth.  I can’t betray my parents; they’ve given up too much for me.  In return, I give them the only thing I can. 

A perfect son.  Dad wants me to play football, even while he says I can’t.  So I found a way and I do.  Mom wants me to be the perfect boy next door.  So I am, even when the girl next door moved away from me.  It’s easy to be what people expect, they expect so little of me. 

So when Mom washes my sheets more than used to be needed, Dad just makes the occasional sly comment about respecting Lana.  I blush and look away because it’s what they expect.  It’s already my fault his heart is failing him.  He’d die if he really knew that I dream in my sleep of what those looks I pretend not to notice you giving me really mean.  That I wake floating with wet sheets at the idea of what we could be together. 

He wasn’t really surprised by the sudden spark of arousal.  Clark had always seemed just a little too clueless.  Not even farmboys from the middle of nowhere Kansas could actually believe that learning to play pool required such close physical contact.   He’d never pulled away, Lex remembered with longing. 

Flipping forward several pages, his glass froze on its way to his mouth.  The pages were no longer filled with tight yet perfect printed words.  It was a sudden transition from English to symbols.   

Releasing his amber-tinted crystal to settle heavily against the glass surface of his desk, Lex raised the journal closer to his eyes.  The symbols from the cave, from the barn, from the fields… Clark was writing his journal in the symbols. 

Closing his eyes tightly and taking a few deep, even breaths didn’t release the tension headache that was settling heavily along the top of his spine and curling up his head.  Leaning back and flexing tight neck muscles didn’t release any of the pain.  And Lex had no idea why a headache would be causing his chest to ache as it did.  He was too young for a heart attack and there was no associated tingling in his arm.   

Maybe Lionel was right. 

Alexander had a weakness.  Lex was paying for his folly of once having fancied Clark as his very own Haephastion.  His only thought was that it was so unfair to see defeat without ever having tasted those thighs. 

Shoving away from his desk, Lex stood in the middle of his study.  He was shaking like a man with palsy, panting as if he’d run a distance.  He coasted a hand, trembling, over his bald pate. 

He’d only wanted to find a gift that Clark wouldn’t be able to refuse.  A fitting graduation and goodbye present for someone who had once truly been his best friend.  What he’d found was so much worse.   

Lex had found the one person who could have kept him from becoming his father.  He’d written Clark off, he could see that now.  Written him off because of the lies and half-truths as just another Luthor result.  And now they were both trapped as who they should be rather than who they could become. 

Sudden violence had the contents of Lex’s desk crashing across the floor.  The only item saved, an inexpensive construct of cardboard and wood pulp, was cradled against his chest.  The fire clicked on with the instant compliance of a gas line.  

Lex waited bare moments before he started to shred the pages into the flames.  He’d been looking for a gift that Clark wouldn’t either refuse or return.  He’d found one. 

He could leave. 

Finis

What Happened to Us?, by Hoobastank

I thought it was too good to be true
I found somebody who understands me
Someone who would help me to get through
And fill an emptiness I had inside me
But you kept inside and I just denied
Some things that we should have both said
I knew it was too good to be true
Cause I'm the only one who understands me

What happened to us
We used to be so perfect, now we're lost and lonely
What happened to us
And deep inside I wonder, did I lose my only?

Remember they thought we were too young
To really know what it takes to make it
But we had survived off what we have done
So we could show them all that they're mistaken
But who could have known the lies that would grow
Until we could see right through them
Remember they knew we were too young
We still don't know what it takes to make it

What happened to us
We used to be so perfect, now we're lost and lonely
What happened to us
And deep inside I wonder, did I lose my only?

We could have made it work, we could have found a way,
We should have done our best to see another day
But we kept it all inside until it was too late
And now we're both alone, the consequence we pay
For throwing it all away, for throwing it all away...

What happened to us
We used to be so perfect, now we're lost and lonely
What happened to us
And deep inside I wonder, did I lose my only?