Chapter Text
Helen understands Lex, better than most of the people in Smallville ever will.
They come from the same world, the same primordial soup of expensive champagne and
designer originals, of Christmas parties wherein you spent most of the time talking business or
cheating on your significant other, where being gay is sometimes just another tool. Helen
remembers galas that the Luthor's used to throw in Metropolis, and flashes of pale porcelain
skin that she watched with mild fascination, years younger than herself, and already working the
room better than her father seemed to be. Dr. Bryce was well-loved in Metropolis for making
folds and unpleasant things disappear, and Helen was invited because she was.
Helen knows Lex, knows him in the way that only people who fought in two different wars
can see each other across the room and know.
Her first real memories of him aren't...pleasant. If they ever get married and have kids, she's
going to have to lie to them. "Your father? Well, there was this party, down on Amsterdam
(yes, Timmy, the warehouse district where everyone has sex with everyone else while snorting
things), and he came in and threw up all over Mommy's cheap shoes. What? No, I don't think
you should tell your teacher that. Why? Well, child services, for one."
It's about to get incredibly complicated.
"Lex," she starts, and she doesn't know why she says it. It's practically wasted air.
She knows that she is going to say yes.
He just smiles at her, the sweet, silky way that he does when he's pretending that he has to fight
for something. "Helen. Do this."
Well, of fucking course she will, because it's Lex Luthor and Jesus, that's almost as rare as
Johns Hopkins.
And Lex knows this. Knows she won't say "No, Lex. Pure research is the only love in my
life." No, Lex rarely does things unless he already knows the outcome, anyway, and Helen feels
a little bit...played.
And for Christ's sake, she's never been good at saying no to him. "Helen, stay for desert, I
want to talk to you." Okay. She doesn't remember what they talked about, only that she was
groggy for her morning shift and every time she smells coffee and chocolate for the rest of her
life, she'll think about the exact color blue of Lex's eyes. "Helen, wait." Okay. She doesn't
remember why she decided to other than it was Lex, and she knows this is going to end badly
but Lex seems to make crashing and burning romantic. "Helen, stay tonight." Okay. She
doesn't remember how they got from the den to the bedroom but she remembers waking up
pillowed on his shoulder, ensconced in pale gray sheets. She remembers feeling inordinately
loved. She remembers being scared, because of the bigness of everything, and how small Lex
made her feel against the largeness of his insistence. "Helen," he will always ask, and she will
always say "Okay."
He presses one slender hand to her cheek, and she tilts up to look at him, see beauty up close.
"Helen, stay with me," he asks.
"Okay," she says, and smiles because it's automatic, grief becoming joy out of lack of options
otherwise.
Oh, she knows that this is all wrong, terribly so, because she knows things that even Lex doesn't
know about himself.
She wonders if Lex knows about Clark, knows all the things that the microscope whispered and
screamed and implied.
She is starting to think that there are more interesting things in Smallville than at Johns Hopkins.
But the point is that he kisses her sweetly, like he really means it. Or maybe he thinks he does.
The lines have gotten confusing now, so blurred she can barely make out where they used to be.
Lex is like some sort of incredibly well dressed Hamlet, sauntering down along the river Congo
toward the heart of darkness and whistling a jaunty tune; Lex is all of British literature, twisted
together like flaming wreckage, with a splash of one-of-a-kind cologne, formulated by someone
sexually ambiguous from Milan. Lex is confusingly out of place everywhere.
Helen finds herself thinking about this a lot in between obsessing over Clark's lab results.
"That's hideous, Helen," Lex tells her.
She frowns at him, crossing her arms over her chest. "You asked me to move in," she
points out.
He brushes it off with a wave of his hand. "You can't keep using that as leverage. That thing,"
he says, pointing at the painting, "is awful."
"I like it," she says, just to be contrary.
"Where did you get it, the flea market?" Lex guesses.
Helen grits her teeth and digs her heels in. This is a test. "Yes. Is that a problem?"
Lex gives her a look, like he is genuinely distressed. He doesn't know what to do with it. This
is not a Monet, and Helen is not keeping it because she painted it or a patient gave it to her or
any of a thousand priceless/sentimental reasons that Lex knows how to handle. This is ordinary
whim, something Lex doesn't do well. It is one of the long-term side effects of living by himself
with an obscene spending limit for too many years.
He frowns, wrinkles his brow, and tries again. "What do you like about it, anyway?"
She looks at the painting: two small children, holding hands and walking across a pumpkin patch.
She can admit it, it's gauche. It looked better over her couch in her own modest little apartment.
In Lex's second-floor den, set across dark paneling, the bleached-wood frame of it is
remarkably ugly, tacky, tasteless. She hates it almost as much as Lex looks like he does
suddenly. It doesn't fit. She wants everything to fit.
"Never mind," she says with a sigh. "You're right. It doesn't... It's not very pretty."
Lex looks distressed again. "You can keep it," he tells her quickly. "If you want." He looks at
it critically. "We can have it reframed."
She laughs, light and real. "It's not worth it. Your frame would cost more than the painting."
"Not more than your happiness," Lex says smoothly, a bass smile on his face, "not that I'd try to
buy that."
Helen smiles, and feels more doomed by the second. She can't make herself care. "Of course
not."
She wonders if she stayed for any of the right reasons, but then Lex kisses her knuckles and
asks if she's hungry.
They have dinner and dance in the ballroom that Lex has never used before that day.
He's not a morning person, and she's finding this out in strokes. In mumbles that may or may
not mean that he is looking for coffee. In thumping noises that may or may not be Lex slamming
into walls. In muffled yells that may or may not be Lex cursing in the shower. In the way that
he eats breakfast in whatever he pulls off the floor from the night before and glares at everyone
who walks in or out the doors before eight o'clock.
Helen wants to take photographs, develop them and leave them in her locker at work.
He is showing her everything about himself, and that is big. Maybe it all means something after
all. Maybe there was never any line.
People shouldn't call Lex before nine in the morning, but they do anyway, and Helen feels kind
of bad for them. But then again, it's the fourth day she's lived here, and she's already seen Lex
do this three times, once for every morning they've had together without the joys of one-night
post-coital bliss. Bliss seems different and less shiny if it's the gift that keeps on giving, she's
finding. Bliss shifts into comfort. Bliss is interrupted by people from the plant, or Metropolis, at
seven thirty in the morning.
"Those projections are wrong," Lex says, stirring cream into a cup of coffee with more vigilance
than necessary.
Helen smiles, and watches him. Lex is almost as vain as he seems, so she's never going to tell
him how beautiful he really is.
He frowns, and throws the coffee spoon in the sink before stalking back to the counter, the
phone still pressed to his ear. "Well, no, Gabe, I haven't."
Helen hides her grin behind a cup of coffee and pretends that she's not watching him as Lex's
blue eyes look up, narrowed in suspicion.
"My father, despite his tendency toward inducing an inconsolable urge for homicide in the
general public, is not an imbecile, and the only way that Lexcorp's projections could have
ever drifted to that level of depression is if an imbecile was handling them. Are you insulting my
bloodline, Gabe?" Lex asks dangerously.
Helen rolls her eyes and eats a piece of toast. Lex insults his bloodline all the time. It's like a
hobby.
"I thought so," Lex says, fumbling blindly around the breakfast counter for something until he
reaches her hand.
Lex blinks, like she's not supposed to be there, and she can't hide the thread of terror that
weaves its way into her sleep-fogged mind. Johns Hopkins suddenly looks so much friendlier.
He pauses for a moment, blinks a few times more, before smiling slowly, drawing her close, and
kissing her on the forehead. "Morning, Helen," he says.
"Okay," she murmurs. "Good morning, Lex."
She can get used to this.
Lex makes her happy, and this is a foreign concept to her.
She has always had romantic ideas about shaping Lex into a more perfect human being, fixing all
the cracks in him so that he could feel Love. It seems bizarre that he would do that for her
when she's not the one who was raised as the Poor Little Rich Boy. Helen thinks there's
something seriously wrong with this relationship; all of her preconceived notions are being
shattered left and right and she's not okay with that.
They have a routine now, and it's thrilling, this banality. It's what every girl really dreams
about: someone she can be ugly in front of. This morning, she went to breakfast without any
makeup on and watched Lex yell at the coffee maker in three different languages she didn't
know he spoke. "Where's the cook?" she asked. Lex said something about a religious holiday.
"In February?" she asked. Lex smiled vaguely. "Okay," she said. Then they both sat down
and split the newspaper until the coffee perked.
"I have tonight off," she says, tapping her pen against the desk. She is staring at Clark's test
results again.
Lex makes a humming noise, and sounds far away because he's on speakerphone.
"Unfortunately, I don't. Meeting with shareholders."
She smiles, and almost forgets about impossible cellular structure for a moment. "You sound
thrilled about it."
"Oh, absolutely," Lex mutters. "The monthly bend over and grab your ankles and who the fuck
needs lube anyway session is always great for kicks."
"Too much information, Lex," she tells him, but she's smiling. This is better than Johns Hopkins.
He sighs. "I'm actually not going to be in tonight. I'm heading straight toward Metropolis after I
finish up here." He pauses. "Clark's dropping the groceries by tonight."
She resists the urge to drive out to the Kent farm and hold them hostage until they tell her
everything on a daily basis. Barely. Clark's coming to her?
"Oh," she says oddly. The pen taps against her desk more quickly.
Lex hums again. "Yes. Their check's in my office. He always forgets unless you remind him."
Pause. "Oh, right, and ask him about his test."
"What test?" she asks idly, flipping through a few patients' files she's going to pretend to look at
instead of obsessing. Lex is not helping.
Lex chuckles. "Trig. He's terrible. I'd give him moral support but it's kind of funny to see him
fail miserably."
Helen files this away. A possible hereditary trait for Clark's kind?
Helen insists to herself that it isn't professional to be that bloodthirsty for information, but that's a
goddamn lie.
Clark is scared of her, and that much she gets very clearly.
"Dr. Bryce!" he says, green eyes big.
He's standing in the kitchen, writing a note in big, messy handwriting. There's a crate of organic
vegetables near his elbow. Clark looks terribly out of place against all the sleek metal
appliances in his cheap blue jacket and primary-colored clothes, but he fits, in a strange way
that makes Helen very uncomfortable.
She smiles at him, tries not to show any teeth. "Hi, Clark."
He looks nervous and tucks the pen back into a drawer she didn't know Lex kept pens. Lex
doesn't need pens in the kitchen. Maybe it's the cook's. Clark smiles at her, and the expression
wavers on his face and in his eyes before he says, "So."
She laughs. It sounds really inappropriate, but she sets her purse down on the counter and
settles in a stool. "Clark, I'm not...I'm not going to tell anyone anything."
He looks at her with barely-veiled suspicion. "Not even Lex?"
"Not even Lex," she says smoothly. "Doctor-patient confidentiality, you know."
His shoulders loosen, just a bit, and Clark smiles at her, real now. "Oh." Pause. "Are you
getting used to the castle?"
She shrugs. Why are your cell walls composed of things I've never studied in chemistry, her
brain screams. "It's nice, if drafty."
"It gets better," he assures her. "Like, around March. It starts getting really beautiful around
here, like a big English garden." Clark grins. "Lex hates it."
She raises an eyebrow. There's something wrong with this picture. She'll figure out what in a
second. How come your plasma is freaky?
"Lex hates beautiful?" she asks.
"Lex is allergic to the beautiful," Clark says. "Don't tell him I'm telling you this, but it's pretty
funny. He gets really groggy from the allergy medicine." Clark smiles at her and his green eyes
shine. "You get lots of dirt on him during spring."
He tucks the note onto the refrigerator door with a magnet. It reads: "I'm taping L&O:SVU for
you. Meeting go well?"
Helen blinks. Twice. But doesn't say anything because she doesn't know what to say anymore.
Something is terribly wrong, and she can't quite put her finger on what, exactly. She knows it
has something to do with this exact moment, this exact span of time, where she is in relation to
the universe. The Something Wrong has something to do with Clark, and nothing to do with his
biology, which is pretty fucked up considering his mitochondria.
"I - " Clark starts, pauses, and tries again. "I think you guys are really good together," he finally
manages.
Helen smiles. This makes her feel good. Verification: paging Dr. Bryce, you're in a functioning
relationship. "Yeah?" she says.
Clark smiles as big as the Kansas sky. "Yeah! I mean, Lex is happy around you, and that
should happen more," Clark says cheerfully.
She laughs, and it's not so inappropriate this time. "Well, thank you, Clark."
His face gets serious in an instant though. "Dr. Bryce?"
"Yes, Clark?" she says.
This is all so surreal. Her logical reasoning skills are totally defunct. She can't figure out what's
so wrong. But it's big. It's huge.
"Lex is my best friend," Clark says, solemn.
He looks like a judge. She's not going to laugh and scream and ask why he doesn't have a
blood type.
She nods, instead. "I know, Clark."
"Yeah, I know you know but," Clark pauses, frowning. Like he wants to say something but
can't really. "Be nice to him."
Helen blinks. She's doing that a lot. "I thought that was a forgone conclusion, Clark," she
says.
He frowns at her: there's real fire behind that look. "I'm serious, Dr. Bryce."
"I am nice to him, Clark," she assures him. Does this boy know he's only sixteen? Or that
he's probably the greatest scientific find in the history of time, space, and distance? "I'm very
nice."
He warms up to her again. "Good. I'm holding you to that."
There's a long silence before she remembers. "Oh! Your check," she says. "Hold on just a
second."
She's about to go until she realizes she doesn't know where Lex keeps his checkbook in his
office. Lex's office is as big as her old apartment, and less touchable. He has a special filing
system that involves no other mortal beings touching it unless they want to see him throw a fit.
She bites her lip; maybe she can call, or Clark can just drop by tomorrow.
Clark says, "Oh, the check!" He blushes. "I always forget." He says it like it's some big
secret. "I can get it."
She nods, and follows him out of the kitchen, through some side doors, and down a hallway
she's never seen before. It emerges into a desolate little corner and Clark opens one of the
desolate little doors and they are suddenly in Lex's office. The castle is big, and cavernous, and
some really sick bastard must have designed it, Helen reflects, as she watches Clark sift
carefully through the things in Lex's desk until he finds the black checkbook. He opens it, tears
out the first check, and stares at it for a second before blushing to the tips of his ears and
whispering, "Lex, you creep."
She raises her eyebrows. "What? Did he short-change you?"
Clark rolls his eyes and shows her the check. "Hardly."
Under the "Note" line, it reads: "Triangles have 181 degrees, Clark. I swear."
Helen is starting to add to her repertoire of facts about Lex.
Lex has a really unhealthy and totally monogamous relationship with his "Warrior Angel" comics
that precludes sexual love.
Lex has a really unhealthy and totally monogamous relationship with his cars that does not.
Lex doesn't like having a household staff but doesn't know how to do things like launder his
own clothes. However, Lex won't let anyone else touch his bathroom, and watching Lex
Luthor clean his sink while brainstorming business strategy is probably one of the funniest things
she's ever seen.
Also, as much as Lex thinks Smallville hates him, the under eighteen population seems to think
he's God. It's always Lex this, Lex that, Lex's new car and damn it, I don't care if he's bald,
he's so much hotter than any of the guys at school. A large part of the conversation tends to
revolve around Clark Kent and his little group of friends, who don't talk about any of the things
that the rest of Smallville does in relation to Lex, but seem to talk about him a lot without saying
Lex's name at all. Helen doesn't exactly know how to look at this, and only knows the bare
bones details of the reasons why: "Clark was the first person to be kind to me in Smallville,
Helen," Lex explained. "He's a great guy."
"Guy," not kid. Helen thinks she should be worried about that.
But it's a Tuesday afternoon and she's leaving work early, so she can't be bothered.
She crosses the threshold at four o'clock and as she gets closer to den, she hears familiar voices.
" - is she?"
"She's doing much better. Thanks for all the stuff you sent over. Mom says Burts Bees is like,
"I love you" now."
There's a short chuckle. "'Like, "I love you."' Wow, Clark. Tell me, when I pay my property
taxes, do they just flush the money immediately, or do they let it ferment in a moldy room for
a few days before setting it all on fire?"
The sound of wood cracking, sliding across felt. "One day, Lex, someone's going to call you on
what a huge jackass you are."
"Me? I'm adorable, Clark."
It's just an average conversation, but it's one she thinks for some reason that she shouldn't have
to be jealous of.
There's no reason to try and figure out who's talking, or who is saying what, since Lex and
Clark are so bright and shining against one another it's impossible to confuse them for anyone
else while in one another's company. It's like social distillation: all the things that make Lex
Lex are concentrated, slapped side by side against Clark's most essential pieces, and they
just bounce, like complimentary colors, off of one another: red and green, brightening one
another. Helen remembers that purple and yellow are kind of garish, so is blue and orange, and
red and green should be.
Clark and Lex are not garish.
Their voices slide against one another's like silk on satin.
"Yeah, sure. You have a lot of sociopathic tendencies, Lex."
"You don't even know what that word means, Clark." Crack of a pool cue. "How're those
SAT lists coming?"
"Grudgingly," Clark says pointedly. "I'm finding that I'm not nearly as eloquent as I previously
thought, not to mention not as loquacious."
Long, meaningful silence.
"Don't look at me like that, Lex."
More silence.
"Okay, look. My English teacher says that incorporating SAT words into my vocabulary is the
best way to - Lex! Stop - ! You are such a jerk!"
And then she hears it: Lex laughing low and careless, like there's nothing there to hide. Nothing
at all.
"I'm leaving now," Clark says.
He so is not, Helen thinks.
Lex is still laughing. She knows instinctively that if Lex is laughing, Clark will never walk away.
She wouldn't.
"I hate you - Lex, stop it!" Clark whines. "God, you - I'm going to tell Helen you're mean to
me."
"Oh, like she cares," Lex manages between laughs.
There's another long silence, and this one isn't nearly as casual. "So. You guys are serious,
huh?"
A pause, and Helen holds her breath. She doesn't know why what Lex tells Clark matters
more than what Lex tells her, but it does. That's always been true, she realizes suddenly, and
it'll never change. If Lex drops to his knees tonight and asks her to marry him, if they move
away, he will still call Clark every week and they will still talk about everything that Helen talks
to Lex about, but on a different level, and it will all matter more than what Lex told to her. It's
been truth so long that she simply accepted it, she finds, like she accepts other things about Lex
and Clark without ever thinking about it.
There's a phrase forming in her mind, but she can't quite give it tangible syllables.
"Pretty serious, Clark," Lex says. "She is living here."
Clark doesn't say anything, just makes a noise of agreement. "I like her. She seems nice."
"She is nice, Clark. You should talk to her more," Lex says, and Helen breathes a sigh of
relief.
Because she's found over time that if Lex says it to Clark, then Lex actually means it.
It figures that Lex needs the most biologically anomalous person in the universe to get along with.
Poetic justice. Or something.
She doesn't know what any of this really means.
March, everything goes to hell in a bad way.
Lex is in Metropolis, and fourteen hundred reporters are digging through her past. They are
saying ugly things. Her ex-boyfriend is staying ugly things, and Lionel is watching ringside like
it's some sort of game. She's been fixated by Entertainment Tonight for about a week, and Lex
finally gave up trying to distract her. "I have to go to Metropolis, Helen," he tells her, genuinely
worried. "You can't - you can't just watch the shit the whole time, do you understand this?"
She nodded. "You're a doctor, Helen. Focus and go save someone."
Yeah, right.
She takes three days off and sits around the mansion, torturing herself.
She hears knocking, and looks away from the television to see Clark stepping into the room.
"Clark," she says, voice level. Look, is there a reason I bet your DNA isn't double-helixed?
He smiles at her kindly. "Hi, Dr. Bryce."
"It's not grocery day," she says. Just one urine sample, Clark. Just one.
He looks rueful at that. "I know." He looks around the room, pauses, and says, "Dr. Bryce?"
"Yeah, Clark?"
He walks across the room and turns off the television, standing in front of it and looking down at
her with a worried expression on his face. "Lex sent me. To check on you." Clark frowns, real
and earnest. "He's really worried. You can't just...sit here and drive yourself nuts over this."
She raises one eyebrow at him. "So I should ignore the fact that the entire Midwestern press
corps is destroying my reputation?"
Clark winces, pauses, and says, "Well, Lex does. Every day." She stares at him until he says,
"Look, Dr. Bryce, he's worried, all right? He's killing himself that this is happening to you the
more you do this, the more it hurts him." He frowns at her seriously now. "You said you were
going to be nice."
This isn't actually happening, you see, because Helen Bryce does not get bossed around, guilttripped,
or lectured by pubescent boys from Kansas. In fact, there are a lot of things that Helen
Bryce doesn't do, and one of them involves sitting around on a sofa in the bedroom of her livein
boyfriend of a month and destroy herself day after day over what the press is saying about
her. Sometimes, Helen Bryce really hates Lex Luthor; some days, Helen Bryce thinks none of
this is actually happening, because, you know, it's not like she ran over God's dog or anything
like that.
She sighs and leans back against the couch. "I didn't know it was going to be like this." How
about you console me by letting me run tests?
Clark laughs softly and sits down next to her, on the other end of the couch. "Well. Lex is full
of surprises."
Helen looks to the side, and sees Clark's profile against the dying afternoon light. His eyes are
far away, and his mouth is set in a line. He looks like he's over thinking something, like he's
brooding. It doesn't, and she wishes it did, surprise her that she thinks he's wondering about
Lex.
"You guys are really close," she murmurs, and Clark cracks a smile at that.
He rolls his eyes before heaving a sigh and saying, "Yes, we are. And I swear, I've already
heard all the jokes."
She can't help it. The grin comes on its own. "Jokes? Still?"
None of this is about her, she knows. No matter how kind Clark is to her, it's always going to
come with the trappings of a disclaimer: Lex asked me, Lex wants me, Lex says we should. It
will never be Clark and Helen friends for friends' sake. It will always be Clark and Helen, since
Lex is in between.
Clark blushes. "Yeah, still. That's not the point, though." He flashes an encouraging expression.
"Want to come over for dinner?"
She's starting to get this. Maybe they haven't even figured it out yet.
"Clark, I'm not sure - "
"Please?" he asks her sincerely, and it's sincerely for Lex. "To quote Lex, if I fail in my
mission to cheer you up, he's going to take me to a museum opening or an art gallery or make
me watch Alexander the Great documentaries with him." Clark looks at her, eyes big and
doleful. "You don't want that to happen to me, do you, Dr. Bryce?"
But it's so terribly clear to her now. She can't believe it's taken her this long.
It's totally hollow, but she can't help but laugh. "No, Clark, I don't."
Clark grins, and it barely hides the ugly grief underneath. "Perfect! I really think Lex wants us
to get along."
That just figures, she thinks with unnatural detachment: the first time she truly loves someone in
an adult way, he would already be involved with someone else.
The really sick part, Lex probably doesn't know that Clark's in love with him. Mostly because
Clark is sixteen and male and there are all those annoying laws about sodomy and statutory
rape and contributing to the delinquency of a minor in Kansas. Mostly because Lex doesn't let
himself think that way about Clark. Mostly because Helen thinks she knows that Lex imagines
it can never happen, that it could never be. Clark is always talked about in broad, affectionate
tones, with a sort of reverence that tells her that he thinks Clark's Too Good, Too Far Away.
When really, Clark is right there, always, just in arms reach.
When really, Clark is right there, begging to be touched.
She can't be angry at all, betrayed or feel used because it's all been unintentional, not some
decision or a series of actions. Just a natural, organic progression that went from first meetings
to smiles over coffee, phone calls and intimacy. Till it blooms into comfortable belonging
regardless of location, and teasing about trig tests and taping television shows for one another
without the commercial breaks. That's true love.
Lex has a boyfriend and he doesn't even know it.
On Wednesday night, Lex gets home, and slips in between the covers without a word. He just
presses his face into her hair and wraps his arms around her waist, breathing in deeply and
slipping out of consciousness, exhausted.
Helen lays there for a long time and thinks.
This won't last forever, she knows, because Lex is a smart guy.
One day, one slip, and Clark will reveal himself: he'll let his eyes linger too long or make a
comment about something or trip and fall on Lex's face. All of these are feasible. All of these
can happen. All of these, Helen realizes with a thud, will.
It's not unfair, it's not even fate, or destiny, or karma.
It's as if Clark and Lex have already happened, and the world just hasn't picked up on it yet.
Like the water temperature is rising by degrees, and everyone needs to hurry the hell up and
realize before they're boiled alive, because if they're still idling by the time Lex or Clark or both
of them figure it out, it's everyone for themselves. And Helen sees faces: a small, perky blonde
girl who is always asking everyone questions, a pretty but bland brunette from the Talon, and
herself, and they're all just treading water, waiting it out, hoping that this isn't actually happening,
when really, all of them must already know. Somewhere, deep down inside, they must already
know.
She shouldn't have been there to begin with.
She suddenly feels like the other woman, the interloper, and it's all so horribly wrong.
It's just that she's been lying to herself, pretending and making up reasons to stay.
Because if she can convince herself that having to get used to one another, when Clark already
fits like a pair of gloves, or that the way Clark's eyes linger just a moment to long is all in her
mind, or how Lex seems to think Clark's the best person in the world is simply friendly affection
then it's okay.
She pulls away, sits by the side of the bed, watches Lex sleep. She thinks about all the things
he's asked her to do.
And she remembers knowing that it was going to end, that she was going to crash and burn.
She remembers thinking that Lex made it romantic.
Lex is going to figure it out someday soon, and there's no reason to be in a rush for a broken
heart.
She remembers it all, and tells herself that it's okay because she'll get out in time. She won't be
burned.
She'll recognize all the signs, and run before she loses control.
Yeah. Helen understands Lex, understands him more than she wants to.