Clark entered the library of the mansion to find Lex sitting on his couch, gripping a colossus of pages in his hands.

“What’re you reading?”

Lex paused in his reading and held up the cover for Clark to view. He saw the image of a statue viewed from below, bearing effortlessly on its shoulders the weight of a hollow metal globe. He recognized it from the multitude of photos Chloe had shown him of the Daily Planet. It was the same picture that decorated Max Taylor’s office, as well as the staircase that led down to the archives in the basement. Emblazoned on the cover were two words. Clark read them aloud:

“Atlas Shrugged?”

Lex nodded. “Ayn Rand’s masterpiece. It’s a great book. You should check it out sometime.”

Clark buried his hands in the pockets of his red jacket, which he had worn despite the unseasonably warm weather. Temperature just wasn’t a big deal to him. “What’s it about?”

“It’s an epic tale about a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world,” he answered, crossing one leg over the other and leaning further back into the couch. "It’s about the value of human productivity; about how men who possess great power and ability shouldn’t have to answer to those who don’t. It tells the story of the end of the world; and the beginning of a new one.”

“What caused it to happen?”

“The great men of the day—the businessmen, the producers, the saviors of the economic world—were leeched off of, tormented, and drained of their life solely because they had the power to give it. They were damned for their ability; cursed as a poison to the world when in fact they were its life blood. They were treated like a plague, even though they were the ones keeping the world from dying of starvation. They had the ability to move mountains, but drain a man of blood and his strength goes with it.”

He shifted his position so that both his feet were on the ground, then leaned forward and continued: “Eventually they’d had enough. When all they got for their hard work was punishment, when they were cursed as a boil on the back of humanity, when robbery became the proper function of the law and only the good men suffered, they dropped out of the race. They withdrew their minds, which the beggars and the looters of the world had damned them for daring to use. They shrugged the weight of the world off their shoulders.”

“Hence the title,” observed Clark.

Lex inclined his head.

“But why? Why quit when they were the only ones keeping the motor running?”

“Their plan was to let the world destroy itself, then rebuild it from scratch afterwards.”

“Did they succeed?”

“Yes.”

Several moments passed as Clark shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Finally he voiced his thought: “But there must have been a better way. The world isn’t all bad.”

“Of course not. But take out all the good and what have you got left?”

Clark said nothing.

“There’s a line from this book that I'll never forget,” Lex continued while turning to the appropriate page. “‘Every man builds his world in his own image,’” he read aloud. “‘He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.’”

He raised his head. “What will your world look like, Clark?”

“Well….” Clark looked around, idly flexing his hands before returning them to his pockets. “I guess it’d be a world of justice. A world where people do the right thing. A world where people won’t need somebody to save them.”

“People will always need saving,” disagreed Lex, reclining back against the cushions. “Especially from themselves.”

“You seem optimistic.”

Lex chuckled soundlessly.

“Do I even wanna know what your world would look like?”

“I plan to create a world where people aren’t expected to live up to their fathers’ expectations,” the billionaire answered. “Where we’ll all be free to choose our own destinies.”

“Sounds like my kind of world,” said Clark, unable to suppress a grin. Then he pondered the way his friend had worded that and furrowed his brow in confusion. “What do you mean, you ‘plan to?’”

Lex smiled. “There are two kinds of people in this world, Clark.” He held up a hand for emphasis, lowering all but his index and middle finger. “There are dreamers and then there are men of action. The first,” he lowered his middle finger so that only his pointer remained, “imagine what it would be like to try and move a mountain; the second,” he extended it again, “are the ones who actually go out there and move it.” He lowered his arm.

“I’m guessing you’re a man of action, then.”

“You guess correctly.”

There was a few moments’ pause before Lex said: “So while I’m touched by your newfound appreciation for small talk, I doubt you came here just to discuss the wider philosophical applications of great American Literature.”

He nodded. “Chloe’s in trouble.”

“What’s the intrepid reporter gotten herself into this time?”

“She made a deal with your father.”

“My father is the head of a multi-national corporation,” said Lex, setting his right arm on the back of the couch as though trying to make a move on some nonexistent girlfriend. At the same time, he rested his left ankle on his right thigh. “Thousands of companies and small businesses make deals with him every day.”

“This is different,” Clark said, being careful not to rip his jacket as his hands, still in the pockets, gestured slightly outwards. “He’s blackmailing her.”

“Another activity that figures regularly into my father’s life and business. Of course in that case I can actually help. What sort of deal did she make with him?”

Clark hesitated, refusing to meet his gaze. “I’d rather not say.”

“Clark, in order for me to help, I need to know everything.”

He sighed, removing his hands from the jacket. “He offered her new computers for The Torch and a column at the Daily Planet.”

“And my father doesn’t believe in a one-sided deal,” said Lex. “What’s in it for him?”

“His condition was for her to tell him everything she knew about me, both from her research into my past and the things she’d learned as my friend. He basically wanted her to spy on me.”

“I'm betting you weren’t happy when you found that out.”

“It’s in the past now. Chloe needs your help getting out.”

“What did he threaten her with?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Clark, I need to know the exact terms of my father’s blackmail in order to ensure he can’t hold them over anyone’s head. I can’t help Chloe unless you tell me.”

“Well, besides threatening to remove her Daily Planet column, he also told her that her father would be fired from his job at the plant if she didn’t comply.”

“Gabe Sullivan is one of my best workers, Clark. My new position at LuthorCorp gives me undisputed control over the plant. It was my father’s way of sweetening the deal. If he asks me to fire him, I'll say no.”

“Thank you,” said Clark.

“Now as for her column, I’m afraid my father has more control over the Daily Planet than I do. I can guarantee her a job at The Inquisitor if she wants.”

“Thanks, but I think Chloe would rather lose her hands to carpal tunnel writing for The Torch the rest of her life than write a single word for a paper that she says isn’t worth lining a bird cage with.”

Lex chuckled. “I'll talk with my father,” he promised. “Just keep Chloe and yourself out of trouble. He’s not someone to mess with.”

“Thanks, Lex.” He turned to leave.

“Anytime.”

Before he walked out the door, he turned around. “Say, Lex, do you think I could borrow that book? I promise I'll return it.”

“You can keep it,” Lex replied, tossing it to him. He caught it easily. “I’ve read it cover to cover five times already. I practically have it memorized.”

Clark grinned. His friend was always so gratuitously generous. Most people would point to Lex’s desperate desire to be accepted as the reason for that, but Clark liked to believe that he was only doing what any friend would given his resources.

“See ya,” he said before walking out the door.

“Mr. Rearden,” said Fransisco, his voice solemnly calm. “If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?

“I… don’t know. What… could he do? What would you tell him?”

“To shrug.”

Clark heard footsteps coming up the stairs to his loft and looked up from his book. He smiled. It was Chloe.

“Hey!” she greeted. “What English assignment are you failing this time?”

He laughed. “Actually this is a book Lex gave me.” He held up the cover for her to see.

“Ah, Atlas Shrugged,” she said in a tone of fond reminiscence that would have seemed more appropriate if she’d been sipping Cognac and sitting in front of a fireplace. “The classic tale of the man who stopped the world from turning by removing the one thing that kept it spinning.”

“You’ve read it?”

“Clark, when I told you I’m a lexophile, I wasn’t referring to the billionaire who gave you that book. I like reading as much as I like writing.” She noticed that the two sides of the novel were almost even. “Say, what page are you on?”

“Four hundred twenty-two,” he answered.

She nodded, impressed. “You must have been at this for weeks.”

“I just got it today.”

Her eyes bugged. “Whoa! Are you reading a novel or a flip-book?”

Clark chuckled. “Actually, speed-reading is one of my abilities.”

“Too bad you never actually bothered with comprehension,” she quipped.

“I understand it pretty well,” he retorted. “I’m just starting to get a picture of the overlying theme, in fact.”

“The title scene?”

He nodded. “You know, I’ve been thinking. About Atlas.”

“What about him?”

“He had it easy. I mean, he might have had to carry the world on his shoulders, but at least everybody knew it. They knew their lives depended on him. They never called him jealous or questioned his judgment. He didn’t have to explain away mysterious hunches or quick exits. Everybody just knew who he was, and they accepted it.”

“He never had to lie,” Chloe finished the thought for him, then walked over to sit next to him on the couch.

Clark nodded. “I just don’t think he ever had to deal with keeping a secret.”

She smiled sympathetically and rubbed his shoulder. “Well I’m here to help you carry it, if you want.”

“Thanks, but you knowing actually makes this harder,” he said. “I’m putting you at risk by letting you in on this. I’m making you a target for anyone who wants to know my secret.”

“Uh, in case you’ve forgotten, I was already a target of Lionel’s,” Chloe retorted. “You did the right thing by telling me.”

“It still doesn’t mean I should be burdening you with all this.”

She studied him for several moments, trying to figure out what it was that he refused to say. “Clark, what are you thinking about right now?”

He started rubbing his hands together. “I was just thinking about how Pete reacted when I first told him. He didn’t take it as well as you. In fact I almost lost him as a friend because he was mad at the fact that I’d lied to him all those years.”

“What made him get over it?”

“The fact that I saved his life from Dr. Hamilton,” answered Clark. When Chloe motioned for him to continue, he said: “Hamilton had strapped him to a chair and was threatening to inject him with enough Kryptonite to give him the same symptoms as Earl Jenkins. I busted in and saved him at the last minute.”

He looked down. “Later on Pete told me the reason he forgave me was because the whole thing made him realize just how much of a risk it was to know my secret, and that he understood why I felt like I had to protect him all those years by not letting him know.”

“I also told you I’d do it all again.”

They looked up.

Chloe grinned sheepishly. “Uh, did I forget to tell you Pete was coming over too?”

“It’s okay,” said Clark. “Come on over here, Pete. The couch always has room for one more.”

Pete chuckled and walked over to the chair at Clark’s desk instead. “That’s okay; I'll just let you two lovebirds snuggle.”

Clark turned redder than Mississippi on a political map. “So I take it you know?” he asked once his cheeks stopped burning.

He nodded, grinning slyly. “Your mom filled me in. I mean, you told me Chloe knew your secret, but you didn’t tell me she took it this well!”

In an effort to get Clark to imitate a tomato once more, Chloe leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Pete whooped in celebration, then clapped at the display.

“Oh hush,” Clark chided, tossing a baseball at his best friend’s head. Pete ducked, grateful that he hadn’t used his powers to throw it.

He shrugged. “Hey, you can’t blame me for getting excited at the fact that our club has a new member.”

Chloe liked the sound of an exclusive ‘club’ for people who knew Clark’s secret. “Ooh, do we get cool jackets?” she asked.

“You want mine?” Clark offered, and she shook her head.

“No, thanks. How can you even stand to wear that when it’s so hot out?”

“The invulnerable skin means he doesn’t get affected by temperature much,” supplied Pete. “He could go skinny-dipping in the Arctic.”

They all laughed.

“So how did you feel about it when you found out, Pete?” Chloe asked.

“Well, like Clark said, I was a little ticked off that he lied to me all those years. But I got over that. I think more than anything I was scared.”

“Why?”

“Because suddenly I was the man who knew too much. I was afraid there were gonna be other people like Hamilton who would try and force his secret out of me.”

“But you know Clark would never let that happen,” she insisted.

“I can’t be there all the time,” Clark countered. “With each person I tell, I’m putting more and more people at risk. No matter how hard I try, I can’t keep everybody safe.”

“You don’t have to,” she said, stroking his shoulder. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

“What about Lionel?” Pete challenged, and Chloe looked down.

“I went to talk to Lex,” said Clark. “He said he’d take care of it.”

“You sure about that?”

He nodded. “I know you don’t trust him, Pete, but I do. He’s not his father.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

Silence reigned over the loft for several minutes. Finally Chloe spoke up. “So enough serious talk. What do you guys wanna do now?”

“Let’s go to The Talon,” Clark suggested. “I think I could go for some coffee right now.”

Chloe couldn’t help scowling. “And because you want to talk to Lana, right?”

“She’s still my friend,” he said. “And besides, even if I can’t be totally honest with her, she deserves to know about you and me. I think it’d be better if we told her together.”

She shrugged, seeing the logic in that. “Okay, but we’re taking my car. I think I’m gonna have to start wearing a neck brace for whenever you speed me anywhere.”

Clark nodded. “You coming, Pete?”

“Sure.” He got up, and the three of them headed down the stairs.

It was just like old times, thought Clark. No secrets, no lies. Just Clark, Chloe and Pete. Three friends.

But at the same time so much more.

The frosted glass doors hissed open and Lex entered his father’s office to find him sitting at his desk like it was a throne. Rather than kneel, the younger billionaire strode confidently over to Lionel and smirked in greeting.

“Feeling like royalty, Dad?”

It was his hair, thought Lex, that made his father appear so untouchable. It gave the very correct impression that Lionel Luthor was a man who did what he wanted, the rest of the world be damned. He was, unlike the kings of old, a man who had gotten to his position on his own effort. That he had scaled a mountain of his enemies’ corpses to rise to such heights was worth noting, and always at the back of anyone’s mind whenever they met him. His regal posture suggested majesty, but it was impossible to ignore the fact that he was a bastard heir who, while fit for the throne he had created, was nothing even remotely close to a figure of nobility.

Still, his father at least looked like a king. Not that kings were usually dressed in Armani suits, but still.

Lionel chuckled and his mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Only because I know you’re not going to try and usurp me, right Lex?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he answered, keeping the right corner of his lip curled upward. “Not after you’ve exiled me so many times. I know better than to challenge the king when he’s not weak.”

The elder Luthor crossed his hands over his lap, intertwining his fingers. “So if you’re not here to stage a coup, Lex, what brings you to my office?”

“It’s recently come to my attention that you have a problem with an employee at the Smallville plant,” said Lex, walking over to his father’s Scotch and pouring himself a glass. “Gabe Sullivan, to be exact. I’m curious to know why such a good man would be in your crosshairs.” He took a sip. “Although I suppose I just answered my own question.”

His father laughed out loud and leaned back in his chair. “I assume your mysterious source had something to do with this?”

“I’m no longer in contact with his daughter, if that’s what you’re accusing me of,” said Lex. “In fact, I don’t even remember speaking to her recently due to the seven week gap that you so graciously provided me with,” he continued, pointing at his head.

“You were sick, Lex,” Lionel defended. “I was only trying to help.”

“I’m sure you were.”

He scowled. “Well then who is it? Who’s been giving you this information?”

“What’s to say I don’t have my own people monitoring your phone calls?” challenged Lex, extending the glass in his father’s direction, then back at himself. “Between us we’ve planted enough bugs to start an insect farm.”

“Because that would be too easy, even for you.”

Lex smirked. Sometimes it seemed like his father knew him too well.

“What do you want, Lex?”

“I want you to leave Chloe Sullivan alone. She’s a friend of Clark’s. He wouldn’t be happy if anything were to happen to her.”

“And what will you do if something does?”

Internally, Lex paused. He hadn’t expected his father to say that. “What are you implying?”

“I know that your interest in Miss Sullivan is more than just a favor for a friend,” he accused. “You’re drawn to her for the same reason I was—she’s the only one who can match your strength of will. She’s just like you when it comes to pursuing the truth, Lex. Her strength and tenacity are just as developed as yours. You’ve become attracted to her.”

Even though his father was a bastard, Lex had to admit that he had a near unnatural talent for reading people. He knew, because ever since he was old enough to speak the man had taught him how to look at things like body language, how to read between the lines, and how to determine a person’s true intentions by examining what they didn’t say. He smiled. Lionel really did know him too well.

“Do you remember the story of Atlas, son?”

Lex’s smile did not waver, growing only wider as he recalled his conversation with Clark. “Bits and pieces,” he replied.

“He was the one who led the Titans in the Great War against the Olympians,” Lionel elaborated. “The sky was damaged from the fighting and Atlas was condemned by Zeus to hold up the heavens for eternity. If he tried to relieve himself of the burden, existence itself would perish. The universe, which he and his brethren had once ruled with absolute power, was now the source of his endless torment. All because he had to go and challenge the gods.”

“And here I thought you’d make a comparison to Icarus, or maybe even Prometheus,” said Lex, bored. “And if I remember correctly, the Great War started because the Titan Cronus was so afraid of his children rising up against him that he decided to swallow them whole.”

As if to punctuate that last statement, he took a long swig of Scotch before slamming down the empty glass and leaning over his father’s desk, a cold-hearted malice in his eyes. “I may be in your belly now, Dad,” he said, “but if you do anything to hurt my friends, I swear I'll give you a case of the stomach flu that you’ll never forget.”

Lionel chuckled, impressed with his son’s resolve. “All right,” he said. “I'll leave your little love interest alone. It will be amusing to watch you try and get close to her only to have her see you for what you really are.”

“Which is?”

He smirked. “My son.”

Lex chuckled, then gave a small bow. “Your majesty,” he said before departing.