Disclaimer : I do not own Smallville, its characters, Superman, or anything associated.

Author's Note : All I have to say is please review.

Loses and Gains

Promises are very delicate things, sugar-spun beauties that flutter naively around heads for daydreams. A small whisper of interference could send them plummeting to the ground, collapsing into shards, dust, and other worthless things.

They used to be much stronger, capable and having a unique talent for survival. Now, their once iron limbs have rusted and faded, leaving behind these infant pixies with no survival instinct of their own.

The change occurred so surreptitiously, an alteration concealed in a mundane handling that were impossible to pin-point until so desired. It was the perfect murder weapon, a poison that hides in wait, eating and corroding. By the time it's presence was known, all that remains was a carcass of half-devoured limbs and neglected bones.

Lies are much easier than that. They attempt to dissuade and conceal with partially thought out loose ends and faulty backgrounds, a struggling house with no solid foundation. Despite one's best intentions, they are the ultimate elephant unable to be hidden in the room.

Beyond that, lies are no meek submissives, ready and willing to be broken, abused, and sullied until nothing remains. They are powerful, vindictive, and ironically, invulnerable. Where a promise would disintegrate after handling, a lie would reach out and bite the skin that binds it, hold on with its toxic claws until it's imprint lies there forever to mark the blow.

While one could dust a promise aside, sending it crashing into the wall with excuses and good-natured apologies, a lie cannot be forgotten. It blisters and boils, festering inside a heart until it caves from the pressure. A smile and a few words could murder a promise, but nothing on Earth could dispose of a a lie.

Lex analyzes all this in a few mere seconds without straying his gaze from the green eyes begging in his direction. There had been no more words since his pondering began, only a tense silence that had been forgotten for a short, blessed while. He returned to his thoughts; he was not ready yet.

With these distinctions, he wondered on, it is almost humorous that the two share such a relationship with trust.

Promises represent the manifestation of trust, of putting faith in someone to come through and succeed. They have their varying levels of importance and intensity, but in the end it is impossible to rely on the promise of those one holds suspicion of.

On the other hand, lies broadcast to the world the flip side of trust, the opposite face in the mirror, the necessary devil for an angel. Where there is no belief, there is no faithful kinship or similar virtue. There is deception, a need to hide the facts and guiltily horde honesty. To compensate for that void, there is fabrication, weak threads spun into an immeasurable gap between all parties involved. These rifts spread and multiply until everything is lost in a web of confusion and deceit.

As this train of thought ended, Lex allowed himself to become corporal again, made of flesh and blood and not theories and contemplations. The atmosphere still bristled with the previously uttered words, sentences so incredulous and improbable that Lex wondered how Clark had managed to keep a straight face. Upon examining that which was just mentioned, he took in the poorly practiced innocence and clashing indignation. There were also rare embers of anger and desperation glowing deeper still, quiet now but easily prepared to explode and turn into something deadly.

There were moments like this, moments where Lex could not help the doubt and cynical speculation that shrouded this friendship, a relationship he was coming to find more and more nominal each day. He was weary, tired of the courteous pretense that had begun twisting and blackening his insides into charred pieces.

Trust was such a difficult thing to give, and he knew his was wearing thin.

Yet while he felt tempted, as painful as it would be (equal to losing a hand or foot or just a piece of oneself that has become necessary for living), there was something that kept him from walking away.

There was a promise in Clark Kent's eyes.

Promises are normally difficult to find, such are they laden down with their ineffective tendencies. They are more often thrust upon the unprepared, forcing themselves to be accepted through brash words and actions. In contrast, the promise Lex saw was silent and steady, trusting in it's own durability and resilience, the purpose from which it sparkled in its emerald home.

Still, even with its soundless pledge, Lex knew what the promise said. It was telling him it knew that he could see past their poorly drawn facade at normality. It knew he was angry and exhausted, starting to see the whole endeavor as something bitter and worthless, a child's dream. It asked him to wait, to hold on to the edges of his patience a bit more tightly, even as it struggled to escape.

I swear I'll tell you, someday, when I'm ready. It's not that I don't trust you, because you mean more to me than I can say. The fact is, I'm scared, and...terrified, and I just need you to wait a little longer for me. I will tell you everything, and we'll laugh at my lies later (I know they're silly), because they won't matter anymore. Just place you're last piece of faith in me.

Lex knew that there was weakness in him, a trait his father had so often warned and berated him about, just as he would certainly expostulate against these words here and now. However, Lex found in that second that he was not like his father. It wasn't because he was any more truthful, nor any better a businessman, even if he wanted to be. Lex was only more human, because Clark was right. Even though he had just written a mental pamphlet on the worthlessness of disappointing promises and the plan effects of lies, he did still have that one fragment of faith left.

So Lex stood from his desk and smiled in that way that still felt new (because it was so bizarre to smile for real), extending that shard of himself into the unknown, knowing a relieved boy would reach out to catch it. He was living on it, betting on it, gambling away the last pure piece of himself.

At least if he was wrong, there would be nothing left to lose.