He's learned that answers never help any. They don't make anything better, easier, less confusing. They make it worse. Like he's been hurt, really hurt, like he's around the meteor rocks. Or maybe he's had the wind knocked out of him or been punched in the gut, but his gifts don't protect him.

He's asked people questions -- his parents, Lex, Lana, Cassandra, everybody. Why he's different; what's going to happen; why him; why not him. And they all gave him answers, but he didn't want them. Not when they changed things, made everything cloudy and hard and lonely.

Clark doesn't like change. He doesn't like complexity or ambiguity. Clark likes football, and summer, and cheeseburgers, and pretty girls: simple things, easy to classify and easy to recognize.

Clark thinks no one else sees what he sees. It's another way he's different.

His parents are all about doing the right thing, and part of the right thing is the truth. It's all perfect and polished. Questions are always simple, and answers are always clear.

It's only in the last few months that he's started to wonder at the paradoxes and contradictions of his parents' moral code. Good people, the best he knows, who have to do bad things.

He doesn't understand that gray area at all, and really, it's another question he doesn't want answered.

His friends don't have his problem. Chloe, for instance -- she demands the truth with a capital T. She loves to interrogate; she pursues her questions with this righteousness, this fervor. Clark can see her glow every time she gets another piece of the puzzle. She practically drools.

Then there's Lex. Lex craves answers. He needs to know things. Clark thinks it might be more of the whole business thing -- information has value. The more info you have, the more clout, and the better position you're in to negotiate and sway people to your will. He's a scientist, too, so he probably covets knowledge for its own sake, for the purity of it. And, well, he's Lex. He likes to be on top of things, have power and be in control of the situation, and he can't do that unless he knows all there is to know.

Lex has a lot of reasons for wanting answers, and Clark's spent too much time thinking about all of them.

Maybe this is something that he knows more about than Lex, for once. Because Clark knows Lex is better off not getting that answer. Clark can't give it to him -- even if he wants to, and he does; even if he trusts Lex, and he thinks he might -- and he's glad.

Questions and answers can only get you so far, and then you're on your own again.

Nothing, none of this crap, ever stops Clark from asking, though. Maybe he needs answers, too, no matter how much he hates them.

Lex is across the room, leaning against his desk, arms crossed. One eyebrow raised, just watching Clark. He's waiting.

Clark's so tense he can almost feel himself shaking. His hands are curled up, and his fingernails are digging into his skin hard enough to make anyone else bleed.

It's a question he's asked before, in dozens of different ways, but he's never gotten an answer, not a real one, so he's trying again.

Clark isn't stupid, and he isn't *that* naive; it's going to be hard, no matter what Lex replies. There is not going to be a great shining revelation. Things are going to change, and one way or another, it'll suck.

If he's lucky, other things will make up for the suck. Lex will say what he thinks Lex might want to say, and Lex will do what he knows he wants Lex to do.

If he's not....

Clark likes simple things, perfectly transparent and dependable. He eats his mother's homemade cookies, and washes them down with milk straight from the bottle. He has a crush on the untouchable girl next door, the flawless Homecoming Queen. He does his chores every day after school, and his homework every night after dinner.

But he likes Lex, too, and Lex is the most complex and ambiguous of them all.

It isn't like the carefully protected simplicity changes anything. It isn't like his secrets aren't still there under the surface. It isn't like he doesn't still have his powers, like he isn't still responsible for everything bad in Smallville. It isn't like the dreams that wake him up at night are of Lana, or girls on television, or of anything at all but this.

It isn't like he's normal, after all.

Clark doesn't like change, but things can't stand still. You have to keep moving.

He opens his mouth to ask his question, and waits for the answer to come.

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