FIC: Smallville - Two Secrets

[fajrdrako_fic]

Title: Two Secrets
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Smallville
Genre: Slash
Characters: Clark/Lex, Other m/f
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of Warner/DC.
Note: With thanks to my valued beta-readers, and gem225. Originally post at The Smallville Slash Archive.


Two Secrets

Martha broke down over a bowl of cookie dough.

She leaned her hands on the table, overwhelmed by sorrow and anguish. How could she bear this? And worst of all, to bear it alone, all alone.

She was beginning to understand why some people go mad. Why they kill other people, or themselves. Why they fall into catatonia, or go to live on a pillar, or make strange sculptures out in the woods alone. She could see no such escape for herself. There was no way out.

She lifted the bowl of cookie dough to stir in the chocolate chips, but it slipped from her fingers and smashed on the floor. Putting her hands over her face, she wept.

There was no physical pain. Just this hurting inside that wouldn't go away.

It ought to be the happiest time of her life. Her husband was a good, loving man, the best she had ever known. Her son was everything any mother would wish, and more. The recent money troubles were over, thanks to her father, and she had entirely recovered from her illness, as had Clark. Most significant, she had achieved her heart's desire, long after she had given up hope of it: the pregnancy she had wanted for so many years. What weighed on her most was Jonathan's happiness, his certainty that the ship which had saved her life had made all the difference - it felt like a cruel punishment, the weight of guilt that brought her.

She had achieved her dream, and found she could not bear it.

She was a strong, adult woman. She had drawn on her own courage in the past, and overcome unimaginable obstacles. She could endure this. Couldn't she?

If Jonathan could see her now.... No, he mustn't see her like this. Never. She had to be strong for him, strong enough to protect him from knowing about this. She didn't want him to think there might be anything wrong other than the normal mood swings of a pregnant woman. He already worried about her, and she had lied about her discomfort, letting him think it was merely physical, and passing. If she couldn't put a brave face on it, she would have to hide her distress from him until she recovered.

She leaned her hands on the table to steady herself. In another moment the tears would stop. Just another moment.

They didn't stop.

She heard the kitchen door open and close. She didn't look up, fearing that it was Jonathan. She wanted to run - Jonathan mustn't see how upset she was. She turned her face away from the door, praying for composure.

A strong arm embraced her. Not Jonathan's. "Mom?" said Clark.

He was concerned. Of course he was - she was probably frightening him. She could not speak.

He pulled her gently against him. She resisted at first, then rested her head on his wide, solid shoulder. He comforted her awkwardly, kindly, patting her back. She was sobbing too hard to speak, and he murmured, "Shh, shh, it's going to be okay, Mom." Of course he didn't understand, but his kindness was balm to her pain.

After a while the sobs stopped hurting her ribs. She was able to breathe again. She sniffed, realizing with a mixture of shame and sorrow that she had made a mess of his shirt.

"I'm sorry, Clark," she muttered, trying to pull herself together.

"It'll be okay," he said.

That set her off again. He held her tightly, warmly, a mountain of strength. She felt herself lifted, supported under the back and knees. She pressed her face against his shoulder as he carried her. There was a moment of fresh air; then the barn around her; he slowed to put her down gently on his sofa in his Fortress of Solitude. A cold drink was pressed into her hand - where had it come from? She would never get used to the things he could do at superspeed.

"Drink a little," he said. "It'll make you feel better. You'll dehydrate yourself." She wondered if she had ever said that to him, but couldn't remember it. More likely he had heard her say it to Jonathan, over the years; she could hear the maternal echo in his tone. She took a sip. It was lemonade. It tasted like nothing at all and she wanted to push it aside but she drank again, because he was right, she should drink it, and the tangy taste ran cold down her throat. She found herself gulping it, choking a little. Then she felt better. Not good, but better.

She put down the half-empty glass. "Thank you, Clark."

He sat beside her, putting a comforting arm around her shoulders. "I'd ask if you were okay, but I can tell you're not. Is there something wrong with the baby?"

She nodded before she could stop herself. "No," she said quickly. She was out of control, not thinking clearly. Thank God it was Clark instead of Jonathan, seeing her like this. She might be able to cope if it was only Clark.

He smiled warmly. "So is there or isn't there?"

"The baby is fine." She pulled a little away from him, looking down at her hands. "As far as I know. Dr. Bryce... Helen... says there's nothing to worry about. It's exactly what it should be at six months."

"So ... Mom? What's wrong?"

Sometimes Clark was just the little boy he'd always been, grown to a size that made it impossible to keep him in good clothes. At other times he was oddly mature, almost a man, a person with a life all his own, going directions she hadn't imagined for him. Here in his private Fortress in the barn, she was a guest in a place that had become unfamiliar to her. The books on the shelf were not children's books any more. There was something about astronomy and another about abnormal psychology. His telescope, his basketball.... they were the odds and ends of a young person's life, but not the possessions of a child.

He had grown so much. Not just in size, but in maturity. The echoes of the little boy he had been were still there, but only facets of a personality that had broadened and deepened in the past few years. He no longer came to her with his secrets.

Nor could she tell him hers.

Almost a man.... but Clark would never be a man, not true homo sapiens, however much he might look like a man to the uninformed eye. He was becoming himself, whatever that might be. Something unique. Something better than a man, perhaps, or simply different. She wondered what that difference felt like inside him now. She had seen his distress when he had learned he was not from Earth, and his need to know more that had driven him to Dr. Swann and to an obsession with those caves. She would never know fully how he felt, but she might understand more than anyone else, since she knew him so well. He didn't want to distress her with thoughts and talk of his biological parents, yet the need to know about them was intense. She understood that.

His love, his steady arm, his reliable presence made her want to tell him the things she should not. He couldn't help her, or change what was done. She could not share her burden with him. Mature or not, he was still young, and wouldn't understand what even she could not fully understand. In her mind's eye she could imagine him asking the same thing Jonathan would ask: "How could you do it?"

The question to which she had no answer. The question that could tear her family apart.

She dared not confide in him, any more than in Jonathan. Suppose Clark told Jonathan her secret, deliberately or accidentally? No: he had a lot of practice with secrets.

Considering his sudden new maturity, it occurred to her to wonder if he had slept with Lana. She had once assumed he was too young, too much in awe of the girl, but what had been true a year ago was true no longer. He was a young man who had been in love for a long time. Why had the question not occurred to her before now? She realized now that if the answer was "yes", it wouldn't surprise her, though even six months ago she would have thought it an outrageous idea. She'd been more complacent in her judgements of people then, as if no one ever changed, as if her Clark would be a virgin forever.

In six months she had learned to revise her expectations of people. She knew how they could do the unexpected. She had learned how fallible flesh could be.

She didn't know what to say to him now. "I can't tell anyone," she said, feeling the panic well up inside her again. She dug her fingers into his arm, knowing he would feel no pain from it. It comforted her, to feel his strength, to clutch at him until her fingers ached as much as her heart. "Clark. I can't bear lying to you. But I can't tell you the truth."

He didn't answer at first. Then he said, "If you can't tell me, that's okay, but it looks to me as if keeping it to yourself isn't doing you any good."

She shook her head numbly. He was right. She couldn't bear this. Jonathan was out in the fields, but when he came back, she couldn't let him see her in this state.

Clark said, "Mom. You know who I am." She did: he was her beautiful, loving, responsible alien son. "You know you can trust me."

Could she? She couldn't even trust herself.

"You think there's going to be something wrong with the baby?" asked Clark.

"No. Helen says it's one of the healthiest babies she's seen."

"But that's great!" She felt the tears well over in her eyes again, and Clark reached behind him to fumble for kleenex, and hand her a piece. "So why are you crying? That sounds like good news."

"Clark, I can't... The longer this goes on...." She couldn't finish. She looked at her hands, and the sodden tissue she was twisting.

He said, "Can I guess? You don't want the baby." It was a logical conclusion under the circumstances, an intelligent guess. He spoke with a degree of maturity, without judging her.

"It isn't that," she said. "It's guilt, Clark. I'm dying of guilt."

"Guilt? You?" He almost laughed, she thought. He gave her a little squeeze. "Mom, I can't imagine you doing anything wrong."

That was when she knew she had to tell him. He couldn't go on believing she was the perfect mother, the perfect woman, the perfect wife, when it was all a lie now. She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead, and dropped them. "Clark, the baby isn't Jonathan's."

"Oh." The monosyllable was puzzled, almost interrogative.

She had said it. She couldn't believe she had said it aloud. To Clark.

Let the worst happen. Let the sky fall. Nothing could be worse than that it had been before, allowing herself to tell no one, letting the guilt expand until it filled her.

He knelt on the floor beside her, so he wasn't towering over her as he usually did, even when they were both sitting on the sofa. He said, "Can you tell me about it?" He didn't sound angry, or even incredulous. He believed her, then. Probably he didn't know what to make of it. That made two of them.

"Don't hate me, Clark."

"I couldn't," he said. "You've always been there for me. I can be here for you. It doesn't matter what happened. You're my mom."

Besides, she thought wryly, you aren't the one I wronged. I wronged your father. And if the family falls apart because of it, you're the one who will suffer most. Aloud she said, "Adultery is an awful thing."

He almost flinched, but controlled it. "Did you love him? The baby's father?" He was earnest, and trying to understand, tolerance lying thin over shock and disbelief. But he wasn't going to condemn her.

She nodded. "Sort of." Which was a stupid answer, but what could she say? Even now, she hardly understood her feelings. She knew she loved Jonathan, but one love and another can be so totally different. The other love was so different as to be unrecognizable, so deep as to be overwhelming. Love, and need, and other things she had no name for.

Which had left her with another child who was no blood-kin to Jonathan, to raise as a Kent.

She realized she was shredding the piece of kleenex and making an awful mess. She dropped the shreds in Clark's wastebasket and took his hands in hers. They were warm and strong. Her Clark was always so strong.

"So who is it?" His voice was matter of fact, and it was only because she knew him so well that she heard the tremor of strain within it. Yes, he might well be afraid. This was the punchline to a joke that would bring no laughs. The real kicker, the seal of unforgiveness.

"Lionel." She said it flatly. There; it was said.

Shock passed over Clark's face like a shadow, quickly hidden but unmistakable. He looked down, on a breath like a sigh. "Oh," he said again, with a different undertone. He thought for a moment, then glanced up. "Mom. Did he force you?"

"What?" She wrapped her hands over his, and he continued to look up at her, anxiety on those expressive features. "No. Oh, no. Honey, I know what you must be thinking, but no, it was nothing like that."

"But how could you?" Anger, pain, horror were clear on his face. He dropped his eyes, and pulled his hands away from hers.

"I don't know. I didn't expect it or plan it. He made me feel things I haven't felt in many years - he tempted me with feelings I didn't know I could have. He made me feel alive and valued. It shouldn't have been something I was looking for, but it was."

"I see." He had himself in control again, but his voice was tense with condemnation that he was trying to hide for her sake. He had never liked Lionel, never understood him. "He doesn't need to use force, does he? He just - uses people and gets away with it."

"No, Clark." This wasn't the nightmare she had imagined this conversation would become. She had expected anger, fury, accusations of betrayal on his father's behalf if not his own. She had lied to him, after putting her desires before the needs of the family. Perhaps if he understood better, he would be disgusted with her as she had feared. She didn't want it to happen, but she couldn't let him believe a lie of Lionel, who already had so many enemies. "I was willing, Clark. Don't put the blame on him."

The anger in his eyes didn't show acceptance, but he didn't argue with her. "Does he know about the baby?"

"He knows."

"Can you be sure it's his?"

She nodded. "As sure as I need to be. I suppose I can't prove it. But the likelihood..... I feel sure, Clark. I feel it in my heart."

He looked thoughtful. "All those years with Dad, and you couldn't conceive. It was his problem all along, wasn't it? Not yours."

She couldn't answer that, since it concerned a secret that wasn't hers to share. She shook her head quickly, but his thought had already passed on to something else, a dreamy look in his eyes as he looked at her belly.

"I can see the baby inside you, when I look. It's beautiful.... Such an innocent, unfinished little person, whoever its father is. Does he knows it's his? That you think it's his?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"He asked me to leave Jonathan. I refused. I'm not breaking up this family if I can help it, Clark. I told him not to contact me again. I may love him, Clark. That doesn't mean I don't love Jonathan too. It may sound foolish now to say that my marriage vows mean a lot to me, but they do. Jonathan is my life. This family is mine, this farm is everything to me. What I feel. . . what I felt for Lionel doesn't change that. I'm not leaving."

"Lionel," he said, with a new shading in his voice that might have been bitterness.

"I know you don't like him. Don't hate him for this, Clark. It was my doing as much as it was his. You don't understand, I know, but Luthors are very compelling. . . . They can be fascinating." She thought of the caress of his soft beard against her skin, the thrill of feeling his breath on her body, the touch of his tongue. "It can be difficult to resist them. It can be impossible."

Clark stood up rather suddenly. "Yeah. Yeah, I can see that." He wandered over to stand by his telescope, fingering the end of it, then wandered back and hunkered down beside her again, without meeting her eyes. "So my little brother or sister is going to be Lex's brother or sister too." He must know the sex of the baby, she realized, but with careful consideration of her feelings did not reveal it. Gently, he touched her stomach. "It'll be clever and charming and gorgeous. But it would be anyway.

"We can't let Dad know. We can't let them arrest him a second time for trying to kill Lionel Luthor."

That almost made her smile: the resigned understanding of the family dynamics it showed. "I shouldn't have told you, Clark, but... I couldn't help it. It isn't fair to you, but it makes me feel better - to know you know. To know you know, and don't hate me. You don't, do you?"

"No," he said. "I never could." He gave her hand a comforting touch, but he didn't look up at her. She couldn't guess what he was hiding. He was disturbed - of course he was.

She said firmly, "Clark, the worst part, the very worst part - I can't regret what I did with Lionel. Yes, I'm miserable with guilt, but I'm not sorry. I was happy when I was with him."

Clark bit his lip. "Yeah."

At first she thought she'd simply said too much, but that wasn't it. There was something else on his mind. Not disapproval; something not directly related to what she'd said. "Clark?"

He got up again and went over to the window. He leaned against the frame, one hand to either side of the window, and stood looking out over the fields. "I have a secret too."

It reminded her of childish jokes they had shared; riddles; plans for Jonathan's birthday, or Father's Day, or surprises for supper.

But this was different. His tone alone told her that. She said, "You've had more secrets than any boy should have to carry. I know that, and I've always felt bad about it. You ought to be able to be who you are."

"Maybe no one can be," he said. "I wanted to tell you before, but it isn't just my secret, and it didn't seem fair."

She took a deep breath, suddenly frightened. There were so many ways this could go. So many ways his life could have taken a turn that neither she nor Jonathan had any inkling of. Her straightforward, open-hearted son whose physiology was not human, whose nature was a series of surprises. There had been Kryptonite, fire-setting, seeing through things, floating, disappearing in the middle of the night, fighting monsters and crooks though his caring about people - a caring which disappeared when he put on the red Kryptonite ring.

His power was enormous, with potential they had hardly explored. She and Jonathan had always tried to minimize the possibilities for fear of what he might do if he lost his perspective. What might he have done if he ignored, or discarded, the values they had so carefully taught him?

What might Lex Luthor have persuaded him to do?

She kept her voice calm, leaving the decisions to him. "Do you want to tell me now?"

"Can I?"

She smiled, astounded that she was able to smile again. "After my little bombshell, you should feel free. Your secret can hardly be worse than mine."

"That depends. I don't think Dad would think it's any better. What I want to say is.... something I've been hiding from both of you for a while. I still don't want Dad to know. I'm not ready - I don't know how to explain it to him. I might have told you a few months ago, but Lex talked me out of it."

"Lex knows your secret?" The implications of that struck her cold. If Clark had told Lex Luthor what he was.... Oh dear God, no.

Clark was for a moment confused. Then he must have realized what she was thinking because he said impatiently, "No, I didn't tell him anything about me or the ship or Krypton. Don't worry. He doesn't know I'm an alien."

"Thank God. So tell me, Clark. What is it?"

"You know what you said about Luthors being sexually fascinating? Hard to resist?"

"Clark. . . what do you mean?"

"Let's just say I didn't try to resist him."

He met her eyes, then, and she found herself looking into the eyes of the man Clark was becoming, no longer her little boy, but an adult with his own choices to make in the world. And this. . . was the choice of that adult.

She closed her eyes, opened them, and touched him gently on the cheek. "Oh, Clark."

"I love him," said Clark, and it was all there in his face: happiness and pride, and fear of what she was going to say.

Lex would never have been her choice for Clark, but this wasn't her choice to make any more than Clark would have chosen for her to have an affair with Lionel. What she saw in his face implied the depth of love she felt for Jonathan and the passion she had felt for Lionel, wrapped up together. A Luthor, irresistible.

Poor Lana.

Martha swallowed her misgivings and said, "Then I hope you find happiness with him." Her voice sounded dry and strained to her, but Clark heard what he wanted to hear.

She received one of his spectacular smiles. "Thanks, Mom. That means a lot. I'm glad I could tell you."

She would help him in any way she could. They would have to talk more about this, but today wasn't the time for it. All she could do was go on accepting him and the choices he made without judgement, as he had done with her. "Thank you for listening to me," she said. "I think I might be ready to face your father when he gets back now. I don't want him to guess the truth. I don't want to hurt him."

"You don't want to hurt anybody," said Clark. "Neither do I."

"Luthors," she said, with a laugh. "Irresistible. They'll be the death of us."

His smile was mischievous. "Yeah. But they're worth it, don't you think?"

He was right, she thought. They brought chaos with them like a summer tornado, and overturned the worlds of those they met.

She could not imagine it being any other way, and she could not regret it. It only remained to contain the damage.

She could live with her secret, as Clark could with his, and they could help each other.