"I've told you. The Kents are very important to me."

That was slightly less than the understatement of the decade, perhaps even of the century. Fascinated. Protective. Insanely curious. Insanely obsessed. Maybe just insane, Lex wasn't sure. It all focused around Clark, of course, the only real friend he'd ever had; certainly the best friend he'd ever had, despite the secrets and fights they'd had these past months.

It could be that his father was right and that Luthors didn't have friends. The friendship was too pedestrian and unnecessary. Before meeting Clark, he would have agreed with that assessment without a second thought. Now...

Now was a different story.

Lex was at war with himself and he didn't know whether his pre or post-Smallville self would win. Lex knew that the secrets contained within the vial of blood, hidden away from sight, would be incredible. That Clark was special for more reasons than his incredible penchant for saving lives and being such a good person. The lying didn't even really enter into the equation in Lex's opinion.

Lying for Clark was about as easy as a novice roller blading on ice and Lex knew each and every time one passed his friend's lips. It was protection for Clark, evasion as a shield for himself and his parents. Rather like Lex himself and so, yeah, it wasn't really a sin in his eyes. If Lex understood anything, it was needing to hide away parts of himself to protect the whole.

Unfortunately, his pre-Smallville self didn't care about any of that. All it cared about was putting that blood under a microscope and discovering exactly what lay behind Clark's incredible abilities. Suspicions of the meteor shower being a cover for the spaceship that had been rumored by separate sources, but never found ran through his mind. His pre-Smallville self thinking about the coincidence of Clark's adoption by the Kents right after.

Right. Like he believed in that kind of coincidence.

Not.

Sighing, Lex looked out the window to the darkened landscape and wondered what the hell he was going to do. This was the first real test of their friendship and Clark didn't even know it was being administered. If he put that blood under the microscope, then it meant he didn't trust Clark to have his own secrets. That he didn't even care about respecting the obviously very necessary privacy of his best and only friend.

He thought about how easy it had been to let Helen go in the face of her potential threat to his own secrets. He did love her, at least, he was pretty sure it was love. She made his life brighter, didn't take any of his crap, and still wanted to be with him. She was beautiful and kind and he loved her temper, the passion and impatience that matched his own. Lex knew that she was as good a match for him as he was ever likely to find.

And yet...he'd seen her eyes when he'd shown her the room devoted to Clark. Lex had trusted her a lot with that secret, but it had also been a test. One that she had failed, even without knowing it. She thought that the Kents had to be protected from him, that was the main reason she'd never told him about Martha now being her patient. Finding Martha's records among the items his man had found in the office had been a bonus, but also an unpleasant surprise.

Clark had given him a new life, literally breathing him back into existence. Lex wasn't sure if that new life was going to take hold or if his old ways would come back to haunt them all. Helen just didn't understand that. Though really, neither did he, if he was being honest about it. But did understanding preclude acceptance? No, not really. If Helen truly loved him, she would have to accept that Clark and the Kents came first in his life.

It certainly wasn't rational and it probably wasn't even sane, it just was.