Pairing: Helen/Lex, Helen/Lionel
Rating: R
Summary: Future fic. What happens after?
Spoilers: Exodus

Their bed smells of him.

It doesn’t matter how many times that Helen changes the sheets she can still smell him lingering on them and finds it a constant wonder that Lex doesn’t pick up on it. He is, after all, the sort of man who is so meticulous sometimes that it scares her. The good doctor – known in college for being the most responsible and organised – lives in a constant state of fear that her husband, a man she had once believed was dead, will discover the truth and slowly but surely she knows that it’s turning her into a shivering wreck of her former self.

She likes to pretend to herself that Lex would forgive her if he ever found out the truth; she does regret what happened all those years ago after all. When Lionel had first approached her with the supposed evidence of Lex’s affair she had been sceptical but his behaviour in breaking into her office had convinced her that what his father had said about him could be true. It was only after the fact, after she had found herself safely back on US soil with the knowledge that Lex was dead somewhere out there at the bottom of the ocean that she had discovered the story she had been fed had been a lie.

When Lex had reappeared, battered, bruised, still so desperately in love with her and ready to take her at her word; a modern day miracle that she could cling onto, there had been an overwhelming set of desires in her to go back to him so in the end she had. She had managed to convince herself somewhere along the line that being with him and suffering in silence with the truth forever riding her back would be her path to redemption.

As a doctor it was unthinkable that she should try to kill someone but somehow *he* had managed to twist it and convince her differently.

If she closes her eyes she can still see him lying below her on the bed, a delicious sense of revenge welling in her stomach along with an impending orgasm as she rolled the fact over in her mind that if one thing would surely hurt Lex then it would be the knowledge that she had screwed his father in *their* marital bed. At the same time however, Helen now realises, that there had been safety in the knowledge that there was no way that Lex would be able to hurt her back and that *that* was the thing which had made the idea all the more attractive. She should have known that something would go wrong with that little ideal. After all, if nothing else, Lex was a survivor so it didn’t take long for her to realise on his return, considering his rather vicious, ruthless manner of dealing with the men who had piloted the plane that if he ever found out the truth about what had happened that her days on earth would be numbered. She didn’t even want to think about the multiple horrible ways that Lex would be able to think of in order to kill her.

Rolling over in bed she buried her face against Lex’s shoulder, breathing in deeply to try and rid herself of Lionel’s scent. The simple action is a routine that she puts herself through every night after getting in from the hospital and before trying to get to sleep and for a moment, a very brief moment granted, it almost works leaving Helen feeling once again as if she has been robbed of the last dwindling sense of hope. Perhaps this is what she deserves; an everlasting sense that the end is just around the corner or even the weathering paranoia that perhaps Lex already knows and that he’s just playing with her.

She could always run of course; that’s a definite possibility. Of course it would mean giving up on any hope of salvation and that isn’t something she’s really willing to do just yet.

Her husband shifts in his sleep and wraps an arm about her shoulders. Yesterday he announced that it was time to start thinking about having a baby. He didn’t ask; he announced. It’s becoming an increasingly common occurrence of late and although she hates the idea of giving up any more of the degree of control she has of her life, the maintaining the constant worry already taking up far too much, Helen had just nodded and agreed.

Smile. Be the perfect wife. Maybe he won’t notice you hate him for it.

THE END