Lex had just arrived back at the mansion from the jail when it happened.

He had a lot to catch up on, which was why he'd been making phone calls on the car ride back, including one to Gabe Sullivan to promote him. His security guard looked a little confused when he'd arrived, asking whether Lex had already come in and gone back out; Lex had been on his guard as he came into the house, but it wasn't enough. Something hit him in the back of the head, and he'd woken up bound and gagged in one of his own supply closets.

Since then, he'd been trying to figure a way out of his makeshift prison, but it was hard to think straight in the pitch blackness and through the excruciating pounding in his head. It might have been three hours or three days before the door opened, blinding light flooded in, and a gentle voice said, "Lex? You okay?"

Lex couldn't give a reply, other than a slight groan—he hadn't even been able to get the gag off.

Sam came into the room, closely followed by Chloe, and both of them worked on untying his restraints while Dean watched from the doorway. As soon as he was able, Lex stood up and asked, "Where is it?"

"Where's what?" Sam asked.

"The shape shifter, or whatever that thing was."

"We've got her locked up."

"Her?"

"It's a girl from my school," Chloe said. "Tina Greer. She had a bone disease when she was little, and she underwent an experimental meteor rock treatment when she was younger. I'd actually had it solved before we found her."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Lex rubbed his wrists as soon as they were freed.

Chloe grinned ear to ear, giving Dean a pointed look. Lex figured there was a story there, but it would have to wait.

"I guess that explains why the shifter didn't respond to silver," Sam said to Dean.

"Yeah. It's not really a shifter. I mean, it is, but . . ."

Lex rubbed his wrists, stretching out his legs a little. "Are we going to talk to her?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "Sooner we gank this thing, sooner we can get out of here."

"Um. We're doing neither of those things," Sam said.

"Why the hell not?"

Sam's voice caught, and his face twisted in disbelief. "She's a teenager, and she's scared. We're not going to kill her, we're going to talk to her, and maybe help her. And anyway, why are you in such a rush to blow town? We just got here, don't you want to visit with Clark and Lex?" Sam turned to Lex. "It's good to see you, by the way."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine. Luthor, you good?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Lex spent a lot of time since he'd arrived in Smallville wishing his last name was anything but what it was. When any of his employees called him Mr. Luthor, he corrected them. But Dean spoke the name with no malice or disgust, and something about that made Lex want to break out grinning.

He didn't, though. There was work to be done. "Okay, Sam, you wanna drive Chloe home while Dean and I interrogate Tina?"

Sam scoffed. "Nice try. I'm going to be there with you guys."

"Me too," Chloe said. "I'm the one who figured out who she was. Plus, I'm the only one she knows."

Dean held up his hands. "Okay, the four of us are not going to all go in there at once and gang up on her. That's not how interrogations work."

"Maybe they should, this time," Chloe said. "Tina has enhanced strength."

"I'm sure she's not stronger than a real shifter," Dean said. "Lex and I can handle it."

"Dean—"

Dean groaned. "I promise I won't stab her without your permission. Is that what you want to hear?"

"Yeah, kind of." Sam sighed and turned to Chloe. "I'm sorry you had to get involved just to be pushed out of it. We'll let you know what happened when it's all over."

Chloe's eyes had narrowed, but she only said, "You guys should keep an eye out for Clark, too. I called his house and his mom said he'd headed over to the mansion."

"Noted," Lex said, though that concerned him. It wasn't impossible that Tina had knocked out Clark as well, and then posed as him to tell Martha that he was going to the mansion, so she wouldn't come looking for him.

Chloe nodded and followed Sam out. Just before they disappeared out of sight, Sam called back, "Guys, her hand's pretty badly injured. You'll want to have a look."

"I've got first aid supplies," Lex said, and Sam left.

Dean let his breath out. "Okay. Ready to come talk to her?"

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Lex nodded, even though every part of him was screaming that he didn't want to deal with this right now. He'd spent the night before in a jail cell and the better part of today tied up on the floor with a worsening concussion. He wanted nothing more than to surrender to sleep. But this had to be done.

Dean led the way down the hall and to an extra storage room. He knocked on the door. "We're coming in, and I'm armed. So. Don't try anything."

"O-okay," a female voice called back.

Dean unlocked and opened the door. A teenaged girl was kneeling on the floor, her hands cuffed to each other. She seemed to be holding her hands stiffly. Lex turned his head to see a little better; there were splinters coming out of the skin on the back of her hands. "She's injured," Lex said softly.

"Yeah, well, apparently she tried to knock Chloe's lights out and hit a bookshelf instead."

Lex frowned. "She'd bleeding."

"Well, get her some band-aids when we're done here, if you're so worried." Dean cleared his throat, raising his voice and addressing the girl on the floor: "What's your name?"

"Tina Greer. Please let me go, I'm sorry." Her eyes watered.

"You impersonated my friend here, robbed a bank, killed a woman, and knocked out three guys, then locked them up for hours. What makes you think I'm letting you go?"

"A-are you going to kill me?"

"Haven't decided yet," Dean said, though he took a silver knife from his back pocket and crouched down in front of her. "But I suggest you start talking."

Her eyes fixed on the knife, and her breathing became ragged. "I—I didn't mean for any of this to happen, it all just got out of control, I'm sorry!"

"Dean," Lex chided. Even if the girl had no good explanation for any of her actions, she was clearly scared to death, and they weren't going to get any answers out of her this way. And besides, Lex was a good judge of character. He'd had to be, growing up the way he did. Tina was desperate, and she wasn't faking her fear. She might have made some awfully bad decisions, but she wasn't exactly a hardened criminal. "Ease up."

"She was going to leave you to die, Luthor."

"You don't know that."

Dean turned back to Tina. "What were you going to do?"

"I don't know, I hadn't planned that far! P-please don't hurt me!"

"Don't hurt you?"

"Dean," Lex said, "put the knife away."

Dean clenched his jaw, but he did as he was told.

Lex took a deep breath and turned to Tina. "Your hand looks pretty bad."

"It h-hurts."

Lex nodded. "My friend here is going to run to get a first aid kit, okay?"

"I am?" Dean raised his eyebrows.

"Bathroom by the study, under the sink."

Dean rolled his eyes and left the room.

Lex took a slow step closer to Tina and knelt down in front of her. "You're going to be okay," he said softly. "How'd you know where I was going to be?"

"I listened in on, um, Sam and Clark's conversation. In the Kents' barn. They were saying a lot of weird things . . ." She shook her head.

Lex decided to let that go for the time being. "Can you tell me what happened with your mom?"

"I didn't mean to kill her, I-I never would have hurt her! We were arguing at the top of the stairs, about the money I stole, and she tripped and broke her neck."

Normally, Lex never would have believed a story like that. Seeing the look on Tina's face, he believed every word. "Okay. Why did you steal the money?"

"It was stupid, I shouldn't have done it. M-my mom works—ah, worked so hard, but she barely made enough to pay the bills, and she deserved so much better."

Lex frowned. "And you were going to let me rot in prison?"

"Everyone says horrible things about you, I thought maybe I was doing the town a favor. Now . . ."

"Now what?"

"Well, you've been nice to me," she whispered.

Lex winced. "You belong in prison, Tina."

Her face paled and her head shook, over and over again, her eyes fixed on the ground.

"But you're not going to prison."

She looked up at him. "I'm not?"

He shook his head. "The bank security cameras show my face, not yours. And if we tell the cops you knocked out Sam, Dean, and me, and locked us up, they're going to laugh. The whole story doesn't make sense unless we reveal your powers, and I'm guessing you'd rather not do that, unless you want to be a bug under a microscope for the rest of your life."

"You'll keep my secret?"

"You deserve prison, not dissection."

"So . . . what are you gonna do with me?"

"You need help. You know it's the meteor rock that gave you these abilities, right?"

"Yeah. I know."

"Well, it messed with your mind, too. But you're young. There might still be hope for you."

"W-what do you mean?"

Lex looked her in the eyes. "Tina, have you heard of a place called Belle Reve?"

----------------------------------------

It was late when Sam returned to the farm house. He'd called the house before he left the mansion, since it was pretty late, and Aunt Martha had answered sounding half-asleep and a little surprised; she'd gotten the impression from Clark that they were going to spend the night at the mansion. That meant she hadn't seen Clark, either.

Sam dropped off Chloe at her house and then drove back to the farm as fast as he could.

He didn't bother going into the house; Uncle Jon or Aunt Martha would have seen Clark if he was there. Sam looked through the barn, shouting Clark's name, then he went over to the cellar. It was locked from the outside; Sam let himself in.

Clark lay on the floor, gasping, his skin a sickly green. A glowing piece of meteor rock sat beside him.

Sam ran forward, grabbed the meteor rock, and tossed it as far away from Clark as he could. Clark sucked in his breath and slowly began pulling himself to his hands and knees. "Thanks," he said.

"Don't mention it." Sam watched him carefully to make sure he wouldn't need help up, but physically, Clark seemed to be back to his usual self. Sam had expected to feel sympathy for him, but as he watched Clark stand, he was filled with annoyance instead.

All of this could have been avoided if Clark had just been honest with Dean and Lex. Even Clark himself would have been safer.

Clark's eyes fell on Sam's face, and he frowned. "Everything okay?"

"No," Sam said. "It's not okay." He stepped out of the cellar.

Clark followed behind him. "Lex and Dean—"

"They're fine. They found the shifter, it was a girl from your school. Tina Greer."

"Oh!" Clark blinked. "Then what's wrong?"

"You are. Look, man, I get wanting to keep your secret, I know what it's like out there, but . . . haven't Dean and Lex earned any of your trust?"

"Sam, I don't—"

"You kept away from Dean throughout this entire hunt just so he wouldn't find out your secret. That left him vulnerable, so you didn't know Lex had been taken over by the shifter."

Clark's eyes narrowed. "And if I hadn't discovered my X-ray vision this week, we would have been in that same situation anyway!"

"But you did discover it, Clark. Is it really that much more important to you to keep your secret than to keep your friends safe? Lex thinks of you like a brother. Dean, too."

Clark lowered his head.

Sam let his breath out. Suddenly he regretted being so harsh on the kid; it was easy to forget that he was only fourteen, and most of his decisions were made by his parents, not him. "Just . . . think about it, okay?"

"Okay."

Sam nodded. "Hey, you should go back into the house and let your parents know what happened."

"You're not coming?"

"I'm gonna head back to the mansion, in case the other guys need any help."

"You and Dean heading out in the morning?"

"Nah. We'll stick around and visit for a bit." Sam smiled. "If it's okay with you."

"Yeah," Clark said, and he smiled back.