No one, other than the two men involved, would ever know the actual circumstances surrounding Mr. Luthor's 'accident.' 

_ _ _ _ _

Young Mr. Luthor has been my patient since 1986.  His father first brought him to me when a young Alexander insisted that he was ''no longer a little kid and in need of a grownup's dentist."  It has been my pleasure to help him maintain the perfect set of teeth that can sometimes be seen in a candid photograph of the Daily Planet's society page. 

Whenever he comes in for his scheduled checkups, I always tell him that he has a smile to be envious of and that he should show it more often.  In reply, he always gives me his signature closed-mouthed smirk right before he opens wide.

When I was called to his home in the middle of the night because of an emergency, I honestly didn't know what to expect.  I will admit, however, that there were a couple scenarios that ran through my mind.  Maybe there was an emergency press conference the next morning, and he was in need of a quick brightening so that when he shook hands with the bigwigs and smiled for the cameras, his smile would be at its best.  Maybe he'd chipped a tooth at dinner, and I was being called in to do a temporary bonding.

As I was being escorted into the penthouse, I knew that my task was going to be something beyond what I had expected.    

When Mr. Luthor removed the slightly bloodied towel that was covering his mouth, I'm sure that everyone present in the room heard my highly unprofessional sharp intake of breath.  Never in my practice had I seen anything like it, and I would place money on never seeing anything like it again. 

My first guess would have been that he'd been hit in the mouth with a baseball bat or a tire iron.  One might also guess that he'd been punched in the mouth, but a punch like that would have damaged the bone structure of the lower face as well as what I saw.

The majority of the damage was to the left side of his mouth. 

The corner of his lip on that side had been split. 

In my medical opinion, it's a statistical anomaly that his jaw was not dislocated, broken or shattered considering the extensive damage to the upper and lower teeth on the damaged side.  The bottom halves of both upper central incisors were broken off.  The short, jagged pieces that remained also held evidence of multiple cracks.  The upper left canine and first premolar were completely missing.  The second premolar and first molar on the same level were fully intact.  However, they were severely cracked, and it looked like the two teeth had pierced the inside of his lip causing a small tear in the delicate tissues located there.

None of the teeth in the lower jaw were missing, but several of them on the injured side were chipped.

Like I said earlier, I've never in my life seen this kind of damage.  Oh, I've seen a lot worse.  I've seen assault victims with their mouths, teeth and jaws completely disfigured.  The same would apply to automobile accidents.  I've had two past patients that lost the majority of their front teeth when an airbag failed to deploy and their mouths ended up wrapped around a steering wheel.  But I've never seen localized damage that destroyed so many teeth, yet did not result in damage to the jaw or facial structure.

After I finished my initial examination and removed my gloves, I was about to ask the first person in the room that was willing to answer what in the hell had caused the injuries and why he wasn't in a hospital when Mr. Luthor reached out and placed a calming hand on my shoulder.

His eyes spoke to me before the words fell from his swollen and bruised lips.

I was about to be lied to and I was expected to accept what I was told and simply do the job that I'd been brought there to accomplish.  No questions.  No arguments.  Only acceptance.

He ran his tongue across his bloody teeth.

As soon as his tongue hit the still bleeding hole where teeth once had been, it became obvious to me that whatever pain medication he'd been given was completely inadequate. 

The agony that he'd been trying to hide had become too much to bear and apparently it'd started to make him nauseous.

As he stood in an attempt to get to the nearest bathroom, faintness caused him to stumble.  If it hadn't been for his partner's quick reaction, he would have fallen.  I turned to watch the young man help him to the bathroom, the entire time feeling the eyes of his two female bodyguards burning into me.

I'd met the young man before.  Clark Kent.

Everyone in Metropolis knows of Mr. Luthor's partner.  For a person barely out of his teens, he's one the most courteous, respectful and decent individuals that you could ever meet.  Plus, he has the most amazing smile.  Usually, an imperfect smile is not seen as a thing of beauty in my profession, but there's just something about it that outshines the most perfectly structured of smiles.  Clark's personality is as bright, beautiful and wholesome as his smile.

At least that was my first impression of him.

There is something very mysterious about that young man.  Sometimes, when he's unaware that he's being watched, you can see a flash of something dark in his eyes.  I've only seen it twice.  Both times he was in the waiting area staring off into nothing as he waited for Mr. Luthor's appointment to be over.  He had the look of someone who has seen a lot of suffering.  Pain.  Death.  Anger.  It's weird and unsettling to see that in the eyes of someone who is so young and who should, by all rights, be virtually untouched by all of the ugliness in this world.

Like I said, I've only seen it a couple of times, but there was something very unsettling about it.

I saw that same look in his eyes when Mr. Luthor stood to go to the bathroom and almost fell.  But this time there was something there that made my stomach twist.

I saw guilt.

Trying to keep the shock that I was feeling off of my face, I quickly turned back towards the couch.  I took a seat and began rustling through the bag that I'd brought along searching for only God knows what to start repairing Mr. Luthor's serious injuries.

As I looked through my bag and waited for them to return from the bathroom, I couldn't seem to stop my mind from whirling.  How had this happened?  Was this an accident or had someone assaulted him?  If someone had assault him, had it been a stranger or someone he knew?  If it was someone he knew…

I heard the door open and Mr. Luthor and Clark exited the bathroom.  Alexander was extremely pale and holding a fresh towel to him mouth.  Clark moved to assist him by trying to place his hand on Alexander's elbow, but the older man moved away.  I couldn't hear the words that left Clark's mouth, but years of studying the human mouth allowed me to read his lips.

"Lex, I'm so sorry.  Please let me help you."

Guilt.

He stopped mid step and allowed Clark to catch up to him.  Removing the towel from his mouth, he looked at Clark and mouthed words that made my stomach twist once again.

"It's okay.  It wasn't your fault."

Forgiveness.

As they took a seat on the sofa across from me, I explained to Mr. Luthor the procedures and possible surgeries that would be needed to restore his teeth and smile to something as close to their original look as possible.  As I explained in detail the multiple procedures that would be needed, including crowns, veneers, bridges and possible implants, I watched as the guilt and fault that Clark was trying to hide in my presence began to make itself visible.

Mr. Luthor assured me that he'd rinsed his mouth thoroughly after being sick, but I checked him just to be sure.  I asked him if he needed anything immediately for pain.  He said, "No." His pallor told me otherwise. 

With his permission, I called my nurse and informed her that I would be arriving in the office shortly.  I also informed her that the patient information and nature of this visit was to be kept confidential.

As we were leaving the penthouse, I finally got a chance to ask the question that had been on my mind since I'd gotten there.

"Mr. Luthor – Alexander, how did this happen?"

His speech was slightly slurred, but it held all of the dignity that'd been instilled in him since youth.

"It was an accident, Dr. Shaw.  I tripped and fell on the stairs."

Your natural inclination is to assume the worse when it is apparent that someone is lying to your face.

A look of shame crossed Clark's handsome features when Lex answered my question, and I knew in that moment that my assumption was probably the truth in this case.

Mr. Luthor's bodyguards rode in the front of the limo, while I sat in the back opposite Clark and Alexander.  I tried to keep my attention focused on anything other than the two men sitting in front of me.

A quick glance allowed me to see where their hands were joined together on the seat between them.  Alexander held his head back on the seat with his eyes closed, holding the towel and his free hand to his mouth to stop any bleeding that was still happening.  Clark was looking out of the window.  The same look that I'd seen in his eyes in the waiting room was there again.

After riding about 10 minutes in complete silence, I couldn't help but draw my eyes back to Alexander.  In that moment, I saw the little boy that I'd known all those years ago.  A little boy with flaming red hair, sprinklings of freckles over his chubby little cheeks and a personality that showed a gleam of the great man he would one day become.

It was like a stab to the heart as I watched a grown up Alexander hold the hand of the man that had assaulted him.  In all likelihood, he was probably holding the same hand that had smashed and destroyed his teeth. 

Never in my life would I have imagined being called out of my bed in the middle of the night because Lex Luthor's partner had knocked his teeth out.

_ _ _ _ _

No one, other than the two men involved, would ever know the actual circumstances surrounding Mr. Luthor's 'accident.'

An emotionally disturbed person had somehow gained access to Lex's home office. 

Later, it would be determined that James Peters had been a former employee of LuthorCorp's latest expansion branch in Granville.  There had been odd changes in Mr. Peter's behavior and staff therapists had found him to be "emotionally unwell and unable to perform his assigned duties."  When he lost his job, his wife left him and took the kids.  Shortly after his separation from his wife, his mental state became such that he was placed in Belle Reve.  While there, he'd met a young man who constantly spoke of Lex and Clark.  He'd called them freaks. 

Apparently, he'd also mentioned Clark Kent's secrets and one weakness.

When James Peters was released from Belle Reve, he had one goal in mind – to take away from Luthor what Luthor had taken away from him.  

When Clark returned from his nightly patrol, he walked into Lex's office and found his partner being held at gunpoint.

As soon as the deranged man saw Clark, he pushed Lex to the floor and aimed his gun at his intended victim.  The man fired twice before Lex was able to recover and knock him to the ground, but the bullets had already done their damage.

Pressing the panic button under his desk – the panic button that had been just beyond his reach not two minutes ago, he called for his two on duty bodyguards to come to his office at once.

The guards were so busy trying to secure the crazed man that actually had the nerve to try to resist them, that they didn't notice that Lex was using his body to hide the bullet wounds in Clark's arm and chest.  Lex told them that he and Clark would be fine and he yelled at them to 'handle' the man immediately.

It wasn't all that long ago that Clark had finally opened up completely to the man he loved and respected, and Lex was proud and honored to be that man.  During one of their long conversations regarding Clark's origins, Clark told him about being shot once with a kryptonite bullet and how he would've died if his parents hadn't removed it.

Lex struggled to pull Clark's substantial weight into the bathroom that was attached to his office.  After locking the door behind them, Lex quickly stripped off Clark's shirts.

The bullet that'd stuck his left arm went clean through the flesh, but the wound was not healing. 

Lex knew that if he hesitated at all in doing what he needed to do, he would risk losing not only his nerve but also Clark's life.  Reaching into Clark's right pocket, he removed the pocket knife that was always kept there.  Using his right index and middle fingers as a guide and holding the small, sharp knife in the left one, he pressed around the site of the wound praying to a god that he seldom approached that the bullet was not buried somewhere deep in Clark's body.  When he couldn't find anything around the wound, he began to move his fingers outward.  Within 30 seconds, he'd found a hard knot under the right side of Clark's ribcage.  Acting on adrenaline and pushing fear aside, Lex stuck the knife into Clark and was able to get the kryptonite bullet out of him.

As soon as the poisonous rock was removed from Clark's body, the damage began to heal itself.

When everything appeared to have healed, Lex took a damp towel and cleaned the blood from Clark's body as well as the small amount that had gotten on the floor.  He rinsed off the knife and put it back in Clark's pocket.  As soon as he got a chance, he would destroy the bloody towel and Clark's shirts.

The loud knocking at the bathroom door startled Lex and woke Clark, who sat up before Lex could move from where he was leaning over him.  As Clark sat up, his head accidentally collided with the left side of Lex's mouth.

"Mr. Luthor, answer me now or I'm going to force the door open!" The guard yelled from her side of the locked door.

"Give us a minute." A stunned Clark said as he unsteadily rose to his feet and took in his surroundings.  He remembered coming home and finding Lex with a gun being pointed at him.  He remembered the bullets coming towards him and not being able to move out of their path fast enough.

He felt fine now.  Apparently, Lex had taken care of him. 

But there was something terribly wrong with Lex.  He'd visibly paled in front of Clark's eyes and his head was bobbing on his neck.  Clark dropped down to his knees and put his hands on Lex's shoulders.

"Lex, talk to me.  What's wrong?"

Clark felt the world slipping from under him as he realized what had happened and the next few seconds seemed to play themselves out in slow motion.  He remembered hitting his head on something as he sat up and his hand flew to his mouth in horror as he realized that the thing he'd hit had been Lex.

As Lex parted his lips to speak, two twin rivers of blood began to flow from the sides of his mouth.

The End