A month after Lex's father was incarcerated, Lex went to visit him at the prison.

Jonathan drove him to the facility, and he offered to come sit with Lex, but Lex turned him down. He was thirteen years old, and he wasn't a coward. He didn't need someone to hold his hand.

He sat across from his father on a hard plastic chair, glass separating them, and picked up the phone. "Hi Dad."

His father merely stared at him. No—he stared past him, at a point in the distance. It took Lex a moment to notice that his father hadn't picked up the phone.

Lex gestures to his own phone, then pointed through the glass at his father.

His father kept staring off into the distance, though his eyes narrowed a bit.

Lex tapped on the glass.

Finally, his father's eyes locked onto his. He gave Lex a sneer, the one before which Lex knew to tremble, and he picked up the phone.

Lex took a deep breath. "I just wanted to say I . . . Dad, I'm so sorry—"

"You are not my son," he stated simply. "Get out."

With that, his father stood and walked away.

Lex held onto his composure for the ride home, but he cried into his pillow when he got back to his room. Martha found him there and held him, gently rocking him and rubbing his back until he confessed what had happened. The confession spurred a new round of tears from both of them, but as soon as the words were out, he felt an odd sense of relief. He wasn't Lionel Luthor's son anymore. He was Jonathan Kent's. His biological father had at least given him that much.

That's what he tried to tell himself, anyway.

Denying his own blood was easier said than done.

A year after the incarceration, when Lex was fourteen, he worked up the courage to ask Jonathan to take him for a second visit. It took a long time to try to explain why he wanted to see his father, and when that failed, it took even longer to convince Jonathan to go along with it even though he didn't understand.

The truth was, Lex wasn't ready to let go. Not completely. He was a year older, and he had come a long way, but he still had questions for his father. He didn't want to keep holding on to a childhood he had never had, and he didn't want to seem ungrateful for everything the Kents had done for him, but he couldn't just stop himself from loving his dad and wanting to be loved in return. He couldn't help but think that if they just talked things out, they could come to some sort of understanding.

They sat in a supervised room this time with other prisoners and visitors, no longer separated by glass. Jonathan sat close enough that his elbow pressed gently against Lex's. It was a comfort, even though Lex's stomach turned as his father took a seat across from them.

Lex sat up as straight as he could. "Dad," he said.

"Lex," his father said.

His dad wasn't ignoring him. That was a big step.

"I wanted to talk to you about . . . everything."

"That's a tall order for a ten-minute visit."

Lex swallowed and looked over at Jonathan, whose eyes were locked on his father. Jonathan wasn't going to be helpful with this.

Lex cleared his throat. "I know you don't love me, and, um, it's okay, I don't need you to, uh . . . But I just wanted to know if it's just because of Julian, or—"

"Don't say his name."

"Sorry." Lex's cheeks burned, and he looked down at his hands. "But, uh, about my question—"

"You're weak, Lex. You've always been weak. How could you expect me to be anything but ashamed of you?"

Lex didn't catch much of what happened after that. Jonathan lunged for his father, and three police officers had to break them up. Lex and Jonathan ended up at the police station for another two hours giving their statements, but Lex was in a fog.

He didn't cry this time. Instead, he expressed himself with anger.

He mostly kept it away from his adoptive parents, but he worked up a sullen attitude that he took with him to school, earning him more time in detention than he cared to admit. Whenever he had to stay after school for detention, he told the Kents that he was going to study group, and they never caught him in his lie.

It took three months for Lex to slip and accidentally take out his bitterness on Clark when Martha and Jonathan weren't watching. Clark cried so hard, Lex ended up having to bribe him for forgiveness by promising two weeks' allowance worth of ice cream. Even after that, Lex ended up sitting with Clark on his lap, holding him close and stroking his hair, for nearly ten minutes, waiting for the tears to subside.

Lex knew he had to change his attitude. He resolved to do better at school, and he tried to move on with his life.

In the year when Lex was fifteen, he put a note on his calendar at the start of August to stop by the prison. As much as he hated to admit it, and as desperate as he was to find the Kents sufficient, he still wanted and needed his biological father's love. But since he couldn't have that, he wondered if they could reach a compromise if he went back to the prison one more time.

But he kept putting it off. It was September by the time he brought it up to his adoptive parents, and Jonathan refused to take him. They had an argument about it, but Martha finally agreed to drive him.

Lex asked Martha to wait for him outside of the visiting room.

His father looked older than the last time Lex had seen him, much older than the year that had passed. Lex sat down across from him at the table, noting that he was wearing hand cuffs this time.

"What do you want from me, Lex?" his father asked.

"I don't need you to love me. That's a lost cause."

"So you're here for what, money?"

"No. I'm here to request forgiveness."

There was a long pause. Lex couldn't quite pull in a breath.

"You hurt me," Lex said. "You . . . abused me. I know I deserved it for Julian, and I'm sorry you're in here, but I think I paid for . . . for—"

"For your brother," his father said.

"It was an accident. I swear. I don't even remember wanting to hurt him."

"Lex—"

"I don't need you to love me. I don't even need you to like me. But . . . if you could . . ."

His father's eyes softened for a moment, and he leaned forward in his chair. He held out a cuffed hand, and Lex took it.

Then he said, "What in God's name gives you the idea that I would ever forgive you?"

Lex's eyes fell closed, and his head dropped.

"I wish Julian had been the one to live," his father said. "There was strength in his eyes, even as an infant. Strength I never saw in yours. From the moment you were born—"

Lex didn't need to hear any more. He wrenched his hand away, stood, and walked out of the visiting room.

The following year, Lex doubled down on his therapy sessions. He was pretty sure the expense was driving the Kents to bankruptcy, but there was nothing he could do about it. His PTSD was getting in the way of his schoolwork, and it was making it impossible to continue trusting his adoptive parents, but more that, the night terrors and hallucinations about Julian had started back up.

One of the sessions with his therapist involved an exercise that unlocked repressed memories. That was how he learned the truth about how Julian had died.

Lex had had no intention of going to visit Lionel ever again. But now he couldn't help it. The August after his sixteenth birthday, he drove his own car to the prison without his adoptive parents' knowledge.

There was definite surprise in Lionel's eyes as they met again in the visiting room. "You don't quit, do you?" he asked. "Maybe I underestimated you."

"Maybe." Lex couldn't bring himself to sit in the chair across from Lionel. He remained standing, and Lionel did as well; the guard didn't say anything about it. "I've been visiting a therapist."

"Have you, now."

"Yes. She's been helping me recover some old memories."

Lionel raised an eyebrow. "More melodramatic stories about how I failed you as a father?"

"No. I remembered something about Julian."

That shut Lionel up. His eyebrows raised in a mock amusement that didn't quite hide his disgust or grief.

"I didn't kill him."

Lionel's eyes widened. "Lex, I understand that you need to, uh, excuse your behavior, but I, uh . . . I saw you, Lex. I saw you standing over Julian's crib."

Lex looked down at his hands and took a deep breath. He had to resist the voice inside that told him he was betraying his mother by confessing the truth. She was gone; he didn't need her protection anymore. "Mom did it."

Lex heard Lionel's gasp, but he couldn't bring himself to look up into his face.

"I walked in, and I found her." Lex could feel the sting of tears, but he didn't care. Not anymore. "My therapist says I repressed the memory, because it was too traumatic."

"Don't you dare. I won't let you desecrate your mother's memory like that."

Lex looked up into Lionel's eyes. "I don't blame her. I blame you."

"What are you talking about? Your mother loved Julian. She would never . . . she wasn't capable of murdering her own child! She loved him!"

"Loved him so much, she couldn't bear the thought of subjecting him to your particular brand of parenting."

Lionel's face went deathly pale, and he turned away. He paced for a moment, wringing his hands despite the handcuffs, then he returned to Lex. "Alright, Lex. Why would you take the blame for your brother's death?"

"Because I was your sole remaining heir, Dad. I knew you wouldn't let anything happen to me. But Mom . . . she would be the lamb to the slaughter."

"Oh . . ." Shock and pain filled Lionel's eyes. "Oh!"

Lex stood and watched him suffer. In the depths of his own pain, he felt no sympathy

"I . . ." Lionel stammered—Lex had never seen him like this before. "If I'd known, if . . . If I'd seen . . ." Lionel stepped toward him and took the front of his shirt in hand.

The guard caught Lex's eye—Lex shook his head, then turned back to Lionel.

Lionel trembled as he spoke. "Things would've been s-so different between us."

"Yes, Dad." Lex's jaw clenched. "You might've actually loved me."

"I—I d—"

"No. No." Lex pulled away from Lionel and left the facility.

His mother was waiting for him at the door when he arrived home, mere seconds before his curfew. He stepped into her arms, rested his head on her shoulder, and wept.

Lex understood why Lionel had hated him after Julian died.

Despite his parents and therapists constantly reminding him that the abuse he'd faced in the wake of Julian's death wasn't his fault, and that Lionel should have treated him better, Lex couldn't help but sympathize with Lionel for that part. Lex was going through hell, but so was his father. He knew what it was like to lose a brother and a mother; he couldn't imagine losing a wife and son.

What Lex didn't understand was why Lionel had hated him before that.

Lionel had hated Lex long before Julian's death. For awhile, Lex thought it might have had to do with losing his hair, but the abuse had started long before even then. He'd considered the possibility that Lionel was simply incapable of love, but he had loved Julian, and Lillian.

Lex had wanted to understand, needed to understand. Maybe that was why he kept going back to the prison.

He didn't wait until the following August to visit Lionel again. He went shortly after his seventeenth birthday. This time, for the first time, he knew exactly what he needed to say.

Lex knew Lionel wasn't getting any other visits in prison. He might have expected Lionel to look forward to talking with someone. But if Lionel was happy to see Lex, he didn't show it. For that matter, if he was angry or surprised, he didn't show that either.

He sat across from Lex and asked in an even voice, "What could you possibly want from me now?"

"Nothing. I want nothing from you."

Lionel's eyebrows raised. "Go on."

"You . . . don't love me."

"This again, Lex?"

"I was weak, a disgrace. I never earned your love. But love isn't something I should have had to earn. Love was something I needed, something I deserved just for being yours, and you . . . you never . . ." Lex's eyes watered, more than he had bargained for. A tear slid down his cheek.

The slightest hints of a sneer played with the corners of Lionel's lips.

Lex sniffed and wiped his eyes, only to find his tears replaced with new ones. "I—I know that look. You think I'm weak. But I can assure you, I'm stronger now than ever. My new parents taught me that . . . crying isn't weakness. Emotion isn't unmanly. And strength isn't everything."

"Ah yes. The Kents."

Lionel's tone was so flippant, Lex wanted to slap him, but he forced himself to stay strong. For years, he'd been trying to figure out what to say to Lionel, how to make his father love him. When that had failed, he'd tried to make himself stop loving Lionel. But somewhere along the way, he'd made peace with his inability to do either. Lex sniffed again.

"Skip the drama, Lex. What do you want?"

"Nothing. That's what I came to tell you. I'm done trying. I don't hold anything against you anymore."

Real surprise showed in Lionel's expression. "Lex, what are you saying?"

Lex loved Lionel; Lionel was ashamed of him. It wasn't okay, and it would never be okay but . . . he was okay.

He forced himself to look his biological father right in the eyes. "I'm saying I forgive you."

Lionel's eyes were wide. He just stared, jaw slack.

"I—I know you don't care, and it's . . . it's not even for you, it's more for me, but . . . I just needed to tell you. I forgive you."

Silence.

"Uh . . . that's all." Lex stood. He waited another second or two, just in case Lionel wanted to say something, anything, in return, but he didn't really expect anything. He wiped his eyes one last time and left the prison.

Maybe in another year, Lex could return. They could start to rebuild their relationship, or start a new one. Or not—it didn't matter to Lex either way. He felt like a weight had been removed from his shoulders, like a dark shadow had been carved away from his soul.

At last, he was free.

The next day, a police officer came to the front door at the Kent house with news for Lex.

Lionel had hung himself.