Fracture - Smallville

[elandrialore.livejournal.com]

Title: Fracture
Author: elandrialore
Fandom: Smallville
Characters: Clark, Martha, Lex
Spoilers: Fracture
Rating: PG
A/N: Thank you to my betas danceswithgary and ailurophile6 who were both wonderful and fast.

He remembers her voice, Gently, Clark. Gently. The sense memory of her hands as they cradled his softly, showing them what to do. Her smile, patient and wise and filling up his empty spaces, even as she stood over a skillet that was popping and hissing his failure.

He remembers the days that turned to weeks and months, and that she never got discouraged, even when she spoke in low whispers to his father about money and the fact that they wouldn't be bringing eggs to market this time either.

He remembers her lips against his forehead and her arms around his shoulders as she sang him to sleep, after catching him standing there by the stairs in his footie pajamas, watching them argue.

He remembers, Jonathan, he's just a boy. He'll learn, and he remembers the pride he felt the day he gathered an entire batch and didn't break any of them.

He remembers that the next day he cracked four, and she wiped his tears with soft hands, brushed fingers over his temples and said, you know what you need to do here. Then opened she his hands and said, and you're learning what to do here. Her hand against his chest was warm and comforting and he remembers that she smelled like cinnamon. And if you take enough care, and do it enough times, then you'll stop having to think about it. It will be natural. Just like breathing.

And when she held him close, he believed her with all of his heart.

He remembers it all now; now as he looks at Lex. The fine lines marking a fragile, pale shell as it cracked in his hands after rough handling.

Lex was always a lot more fragile than Clark thought.

"Do you even know when you're lying anymore?" he asks, even though he's not sure at all that Lex is lying this time. He can easily imagine Lana hanging up on Lex and then not telling him. He's not sure that he'd blame her, except that Kara was missing and Lana might have been the one in the way of Clark finding her sooner.

He's also seen the madman that lives inside of Lex, and knows there is nothing that he wouldn't use as a weapon of distraction or destruction, including Clark's shaky faith in Lana.

But Lex doesn't even answer, saying instead, "You know, I stopped pretending I cared whether or not you believed me so...Why don't you?" When Lex sinks into the chair behind his desk, a position of power, all Clark can see is a white suit and a smirk, but all he can feel in his clenched fists are the tears from Alex's cheeks.

It occurs to Clark then – a rush of knowledge, a thin shell under his hand that isn't breaking – that maybe the man in Lex's head didn't start out as a threat to Alex. Maybe he started as a protector. "Because I do care, Lex," he says finally, easing his hands open. "And there's a side of you that knows what's right."

He wants to say that he's seen it in him. To tell him that he knows Lex still wants to see him as a friend, and still wants to protect him, even from himself. But he also knows that Lex would only see the procedure as an invasion, and he wouldn't stick around to hear that Clark had believed he had no other choice. That fear had overridden the sick twisting in his gut at the thought of not giving Lex a choice.

"... Wow," says Lex, voice soft with sarcasm. "Now, what would I do without Clark Kent, voice of reason?"

Despite all that he knows, Clark wants to hit him for that. Because they may both know now that Clark is responsible for many of the things that Lex keeps tucked away behind the locked doors in his mind, but Clark also has never not tried to be a good person. It's just that sometimes Clark forgets how much damage he can do when he's careless.

Instead, he breathes and shakes his head and says as honestly as he can, "That voice isn't me, Lex, it's you."

He wants to touch Lex's face again. To soothe him like his mother had done for him. To find the point where Lex had gone from protecting himself to hating himself, and then change it. Turn back time and alter the course of history, the course of their friendship. But Clark learned that very first time that you can't un-break an egg. Once the shell's been cracked there is nothing that anyone can do.

However he can take care in the future. If that means not judging Lex anymore on the cracks that Clark had a hand in making, then he's surprisingly okay with that.

"There's still good inside of you," he says, voice solid with belief. "Let that voice lead you back to it."

Lex merely half-smirks and says, "I didn't know it would only take a brush with death to see your softer side."

"Trust me, Lex," Clark says, and he suddenly, desperately wants to go back to the time when Lex would have. "There's nothing that's lost that can't be found again."

They're the same words that Lex used with Kara, and he knows that it's underhanded to use them now, because Lex was always a strong believer in destiny, even when he didn't want to be. But Clark wants it to be true. He wants to be able to look into Lex's eyes again and see something more than long, echoing corridors filled with pain and shadows.

He wants it to be true because he wasn't thinking before, but he's thinking now. And maybe he'll still have to think about it as days turn into weeks and months, but maybe one day not giving up on Lex, believing in Lex, will be easy. Natural. Habitual.

Maybe one day it will be just like breathing.
***
Based on this picture.