The berries and seeds on the bushes and trees Lex had been able to find had been picked completely clean. He couldn't find any fish in the little pools on the island, or in the shallows of the ocean. He had had no luck with any of the birds, either in killing them or finding their nests to take their eggs—he hadn't seen many birds around, come to think of it, since he had depleted their food source.

The hunger was overwhelming, as was the exhaustion and pain, but he wasn't quite to the point of eating insects yet. He hadn't exactly learned how to tell which ones would be safe to eat and which would be poisonous, so he would have to get a little bit more desperate before he started trying that.

A very, very little bit more desperate.

At this point, he was too tired to even think about any other creative ways of finding food. He had made a little shelter in the trees, and part of the floor beneath it with some extra grass that remained fairly soft even after having been uprooted, and he lay in his makeshift bed, allowing himself to wallow in his own misery for a little while longer than he did most mornings. To feel sorry for himself.

It was still his mind that he needed to worry about most. He needed to stay sharp to notice obvious signs of poison or other threats, to think of ways to find food that he might not of considered before. His mind was so weak right now, so desperate, so hungry. The sheer pain of it kept him awake at night, leaving him even more exhausted throughout the day . . .

He must have drifted off, because he could've sworn he heard the sound of a helicopter. It was a nice dream, one he had had before. Sometimes it turned into a nightmare, where Julian, eleven years old like he would've been if he had lived, came to find him and dragged him down to hell. But more often, the person in the helicopter was coming to rescue him. Most of the time it was Helen. A couple of times, it had been Aunt Martha, or his mother.

He wasn't exactly expecting Dean Winchester to come crashing through the thickets and calling his name.

Lex sat up in his shelter. If nothing else, this was new. He wasn't sure if this was going to be a better dream, or a worse one. Or maybe it would just be weird. Maybe Dean would morph into Lexis eighth grade geometry teacher or something, and then Lex would realize he had forgotten to study for a test, and his teeth were falling out, and he'd forgotten his pants . . .

"Luthor?"

Lex blinked a couple of times. "Dean?" His voice cracked on the first try; he suspected that was the natural result of not having spoken to anybody for a few weeks, though he'd never noticed it in a dream before.

"Oh, thank God." Dean looked over his shoulder and called, "I found him!" Then he looked down at Lex. "You're scared have to death, man." Dean gave him a light punch in the arm.

It hurt. Lex usually couldn't feel pain in his dreams. "Are you really…" Lex reached out and touched Dean's arms. It felt solid, but he supposed it would in a dream too.

"Just sit tight. We're going to get you out of here."

On the off chance it wasn't a dream, Lex wasn't passing up the opportunity. He pushed himself to stand.

"Whoa, whoa, take it easy. You don't look so good."

"You're not so handsome yourself."

Dean gave him another punch in the arm. Lex winced. He must've lost a lot of fat and muscle over the past couple of weeks, if the light punches were actually hurting.

Lex sat back down. "How did you know I was here?"

"Uh. One thing at a time. How are you alive?"

Lex smirked. "Ah, come on, Dean. You know me better than that. You really think I would go down that easy?"

"Your plane crashed in the middle of the ocean."

Lex breathed in to explain everything—how he had awoken to find the pilot unconscious or worse, how Helen had already disappeared, how he had softened the landing and swum away from the jet just before it sank, how he had found his way to the land. But suddenly, the thought of explaining all of that exhausted him. "Bring anything to eat?"

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Oh! Yeah." Dean looked over his shoulder again. "Coming?" he called.

"Just a second!" a familiar voice called back, and a moment later, a new figure came crashing through the bushes.

Chloe Sullivan. She was carrying a backpack that looked to be half her weight, and she knelt down beside the shelter and swung it out in front of her, beginning to rummage through its contents.

"Oh, Lex, you look awful!" She handed over a bag of crackers. "If it's been a while before you've eaten, you're going to need to take it slow."

Lex recognize the brand as when he had hated growing up. It was completely flavorless and dry. Right now, though, it looked better than the best gourmet meal he's ever had in his life. It took every ounce of restraint he had not to cram the whole bag in his mouth at once; for better or for worse, the dryness didn't really let him do that.

Chloe took out a water bottle as well, and he drank deeply. Clean water tasted strange after weeks of drinking muddy water.

"Not that I'm not happy to see you, Chloe, but... Dean, you dragged a teenager out here?"

"I needed another set of hands. You don't have any family, the Kents are busy with the baby, and Sam isn't talking to me."

Lex didn't want to ask the question was scaring him the most, so he started with, "I didn't know Aunt Martha was due so soon."

"I guess it was a preemie."

"I thought they were supposed to be twins."

Deans face fell, and Lex knew he shouldn't ask any more about this.

Chloe looked up from the backpack. "Any injuries from the fall? Anything that needs treatment?"

Lex had a few scrapes and bruises from his attempts to build fires, make shelter, and get food, but there was nothing major. He'd get some aloe for the sunburns when he got back home. "I think I'm OK."

"OK. Take your time, Lex."

He chewed slowly, but he knew she wasn't just talking about the food. When Lex had eaten all he could—he couldn't get through more than a few crackers and a half of the water bottle before he was starting to feel uncomfortably full—he took a deep breath and leaned back against the tree trunk that made up the back wall of his shelter. He was finally ready to know. "Dean, my wife…"

Both Dean and Chloe's faces fell.

That was all it took. He knew. He dropped his head, half expecting to weep on the spot, but the tears didn't come yet.

"Lex… "Dean shook his head. "She's not dead."

Lex looked up at him. He knew should have been relieved, but anything that would cause Chloe and Dean to have that look on their faces… Death would have been the kindest. "Where is she?"

Diana and Chloe exchanged a glance. Chloe grimaced and said, "He deserves to know."

"He's not exactly stable yet—"

"Wondering is going to be worse."

Lex's heart sank into his stomach. "What happened?"

Dean swallowed. "She was a demon."

Lex sucked in a breath. Dean had mentioned the possibility of demon possession; as far as Lex knew, demons could be exercised. He could have his wife back. "So she was possessed. The demon sabotaged the plane?"

"Lex —"

"It wasn't Helen. She didn't betray me. We can exorcise her, I can have my wife back…"

"Lex..." Dean let his breath out. "I'm so sorry. But she was possessed the entire time you knew her."

It took Lex a moment to figure out what he was saying.

"No." Lex pulled himself to standing, beginning to pace despite both Dean and Chloe's protests. "I knew her. I couldn't have…"

He couldn't finish that sentence. It was just like him, that he would've fallen in love with a demon.

"Demons can be good actors," Dean said. "They—they mess with your head. She was trying to manipulate you from the start."

"What does she want? The money?"

"It sounds like someone else was calling the shots on this one. They wanted information about Smallville, and you were the most powerful person she could attach herself to."

"How do you know? Demons, they lie. Maybe… maybe she just told you she had been possessing Helen the entire time."

"I lost control during my interrogation, and she smoked out. I talked to the host, a girl name Madison."

"But..." Lex hung his head as the reality set in. "Oh."

"I'm... so sorry, man..." Dean said, and Chloe put a hand on his shoulder.

This time, Lex's eyes really did begin to sting. There was a girl out there who bore Helen's face, but it wasn't her, and the woman he had fallen in love with was a demon who had been trying to manipulate him from the beginning.

He could imagine falling in Madison. Of course, there were a million things he'd liked about Helen, but he had been attracted to her before he knew who she was at all. But there was no way Madison would want to be with him. Sure, she had seen him at his best, albeit also at his worse, but she had never consented to the relationship. And she had slept with him against her will. At the very best, she wouldn't hold it against him, since there was no way he could've known, but she still would never want to see his face again.

The worst part was that he couldn't quite turn it off. He couldn't just stop loving the demon who had possessed an innocent woman, ruined both of their lives, and tried to kill him. He would still have to mourn her, or at least, mourn than the person he thought she was.

He should have known. Some part of him had known. He could never have deserved a woman like that, love as deep and passionate and unconditional as she professed and expressed. She had been so beautiful…

Chloe squeezed his shoulder gently. "We're going to get you home, OK?" she whispered.

Lex nodded and blinked back his tears. Dean took his other arm, and the three of them walk toward the helicopter.