At significant points in his life Lex cuts himself, parallel cuts across his right bicep, made with a knife honed to razor sharpness. To date there are five scars. Neat. Perfectly aligned. They're the only way he can be really sure something has happened. Oh, of course, he has a perfect memory. It came with the whole gifted child genes. But, he has a perfect memory of other things too, things he's never experienced, things he's read about or seen in films. Memories of a childhood fantasy life, of adventures and invisible friends. This is the only way to be sure. The only way to know the truth is to etch the memory into his skin.

He remembers the first time vividly. After his mother died. Not right after the funeral, but almost, while he was still in mourning clothes, a heavy black wool suit that was no barrier against the chill in the church.

Death and puberty had hit in the same month. Watching his mother die while his body changed, developed the potential to create new life had left him unsettled and angry at the injustice of the world. The changes made him more like her, taller, slimmer, eyes settling to their now familiar ice blue. It had been too much for his father to bear. Lionel had disappeared even before the wake, fleeing to his house in Switzerland. A house so new his wife's perfume had yet to become ingrained in the woodwork. His crushing grief had been too complete for him even to consider a teenage son, a son who reminded him so much of his dead wife yet because of business and boarding school was almost a stranger to him

Lex, left with only faceless staff for company, had just wanted to feel something, anything. Something to cut clinically hard and real through the numbness, the loneliness and shock. In the end the knife had been the only solution he could imagine.

It hadn't been deep that first time. That scar is fainter than the others and has a slight wobble at the start. But he knows it's there. Knows that when his father finally dies, he'll cut it again, deeper, make it more obvious.

Even then, even the first time, there was planning, ritual. Just like now. Bare feet, black jeans, stripped to the waist, the flame sterilised knife, a towel, thin strips of tape to hold the cut closed afterwards, to ensure the scar is clean and straight.

Control is important to him. The cut has to be dead straight, perfect against the freckled canvas of his skin. This is his choice. Not something he does because society or his father or business demands it of him. This is done because he wants it. To show he has power over his own body, his own pain and his own desire to do this again and again. It could easily spiral out into addiction but he doesn't let it. That's why the events he chooses have to be special, worth remembering.

A year later there had been the final confirmation that he should start taking university courses early, that he was, by all assessments, an exceptionally smart kid. He'd carved a second scar that night, a memory of his own achievements in the face of his father's casual indifference.

"I didn't expect anything else from my son."

Lex presses the flat of the blade over the old scars. It's warm, the heat from his hand transferred to the metal. He's been here a while now, maybe an hour, waiting for the right moment, anticipating the cut, the thin red line, the copper scent as bright as his hair had been. His breathing and heart have slowed in something like meditation and that's how he knows it's not time. He presses a little harder and the coolness of his inner arm across his chest makes him shiver. That's better, he can feel it starting, a slow coil of tension in his belly. Soon now. He drops his hand back to his thigh, the knife held tighter now, with more purpose.

After the crash, after Clark had breathed life back into him, he'd thought he was making a new start, being reborn. But he knows he lied to Clark, lied to himself – almost unforgivable. The past isn't something to be escaped; it's what marks you out as what you are. It shapes your reactions, your actions. It's the foundation on which you build the empire of your life. So, in the end there was no new start, just Lex alone with the knife marking the past onto his skin.

He didn't cut himself after Zero; Jude had already left his mark. Subconsciously, he'd known, it wasn't over, that the loose ends would come back to bite him in the ass. But he'd always thought it would be his father using it against him, not some stranger. He's the only one who knows the truth now. The others are dead. Jude, Amanda, Max, Phelan. He didn't tell Amanda's brother everything. In fact he didn't tell him more than a distorted version of the official record. Why should he? He'd never have understood. It was too complicated then and it hasn't become any easier to decipher with time.

Lex reaches up with his free hand to trace the scar. One straight line framed by the marks of the three stitches. To touch it makes him feel nauseous and paradoxically stokes his excitement too. Memory giving him the charge he needs right now. It's a lie that he was calm afterwards, shocked into inaction until Phelan took over. He was just - lost - hyped and hard with no outlet for the energy. No way to come down. Time spent running sticky fingers over and over the wound, keeping it bleeding and open. Lost time that finally stopped when Toby drove him to his apartment and sewed him up.

He doesn't believe the books and psychologists who tell you this isn't sexual. It is. A peculiarly advanced form of masturbation if you will. You choose the time, the place, how long it takes, how far, how deep. Hypersexual, meta-sexual almost.

He feels the warm coil of sensation flow up through his body, speeding up his heart, pumping blood into his cock, lips and fingertips. It's like his whole body is about to shiver.

Not for the first time he wonders what it would be like to have someone else do this to him. But there's no one he'd trust with it. No one who, given the chance wouldn't stab him in the back, carve his heart out, fuck his corpse.

He's been alone too long to ever trust fully again. He knows his father tried to bridge the gap after the incident at the plant. But it was too little, too late. However proud his father was of him then, and he does recognise Lionel was proud of him, he's built walls too strong to let anyone in. Not Lionel, not Victoria, not even Clark.

Clark. Right from the start there's been a connection between them. The breath of life will do that to you. But it's something he can't yet fully understand, won't fully acknowledge. He flirts with the boy secure in the knowledge it can't - he won't let it - come to anything. Clark doesn't know what it's like to be the outsider, the alien. Clark has a perfect fucking Norman Rockwell life, right down to the crush on the head cheerleader. Clark is so normal it hurts. He has secrets, yes, but Lex has no problem with secrets. He has a few of his own. And, whatever Clark is hiding it doesn't change what he is, secure, loved and perfect. Clark unnerves him. The capacity the boy has to act because it's the right thing to do rather than the most profitable or advantageous isn't something he understands or can control. And that's the issue. Things he can't control don't belong in his world, not now, not ever.

Clark wouldn't be able to separate sex from love whereas Lex doesn't believe he'll ever be in love.

There's control in this too. It would be easy, too easy, to slip in under the cover of friendship, to persuade the boy that Lex's lust, Lex's needs are his own. But that's what got him exiled here in the first place. Resisting temptation, the discipline of self- denial has more power. If he can shut his desires, his emotions, away in boxes he'll be stronger. He can't let anyone get too close. Close enough to open those boxes. That would make him weak and he knows he's better than that. Knows it's the only way to achieve great things rather than just good ones.

It's time now. No more waiting. His choice.