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3.
Clark hadn’t wanted to know that his arrival had been responsible for Lex Luthor’s distinctive appearance. Not to mention, if Lois were to be believed, for his estrangement from a father disappointed in his meteor-mangled son. Given what he knew of Lionel Luthor, he couldn’t say that Lex had been deprived of a good father, but as he knew the condemnation of a father was never easy to take regardless of whether the man deserved any respect. The knowledge that he was already part of Lex’s life convinced him that evading the man until he aged out of the spy business was cowardly as well as inefficient. So he called the number on the card Lex had given him – at their first meeting, not their second – and left him a message saying they could meet at a nondescript Starbucks in the business district.
It took a bit of fiddling to get the image enhancer to give him Superman’s face on top of a business suit – the tie ended up bright red and bearing little copies of the mark of the House of El in raised thread. Also, there were blue suspenders, but at least they were hidden by the jacket. Clark had to wonder at the necessity of the image enhancer when the barista didn’t give him a first look, much less a second, as she delivered his double espresso. He took the cardboard cup holding the drink and a Rice Krispy treat over to a corner, one shunned by the other denizens because there were no power outlets nearby, and sat down. He picked up a discarded copy of the Inquisitor while he waited.
“Checking out the competition?” a voice asked, making him jump and sweep his arm across the table, knocking his cup off the edge –
Where it was caught in Lex Luthor’s hand. He raised an eyebrow at Clark as he proffered the cup.
“Hunh?” Clark asked, staring at Lex’s face, which was close to his because Lex had bent his knees to catch the falling coffee. Automatically, he took the cup back from Lex.
Lex waved his hand at the Inquisitor. “I asked if you were checking out the competition.”
“I don’t – what do you mean?”
Lex smiled and tapped his finger on the headline of the page Clark was reading. “Batman? Dark Knight of Gotham? Getting a lot of your press these days?” He slithered around the table and sat across from Clark.
“Oh,” Clark said, breathing out his relief. “Oh, uh, I don’t mind. He seems like – he’s a little creepy, but he means well. And he’s got some pretty cool toys.”
Lex nodded fervently. “That car – I keep asking for a car like that.” His eyes were unfocused, contemplating the beauty of the Batmobile.
He was quite striking, what with the baldness and the intense eyes, Clark decided. Shouldn’t a spy be more nondescript?
“What do you want?” he asked.
Lex snapped back to the present, leaning forward, one forearm on the table. "My superiors –" he said the word as if it didn't really mean what the dictionary said – "would be thrilled if you'd put on star-spangled tights and go around the world serving American interests. Myself, I think the last thing we need is another instance of self-righteous propaganda. America's government lags behind America herself in international respect and affection, and that's a terrible thing, but it's not one that your recruitment would change.”
Clark tried to decide whether he'd just been insulted or complimented, then gave up. Luthor was still watching him expectantly, fine brows raised as if waiting for some equal eloquence from him.
"Do your superiors know you're undermining their agenda?" Belligerence wasn't quite what he was going for, but he had to do something to dislodge that easy confidence that kept reminding him of Lionel Luthor.
Luthor shrugged. "If they didn't expect me to use my own judgment about how to achieve the mission objective, they shouldn't have given me this job. And if you don't trust me, you're welcome to request another -- unofficial liason." He made it sound just about as dirty as Clark could imagine. Clark was pretty sure that blushing would be inappropriate, and by some miracle he didn't.
“What agency did you say you worked for, again?”
Luthor smiled. “I don’t think I did.” He paused, as if waiting for Clark to object, then continued. “As you may know, after 9/11, efforts were made to increase interagency cooperation and decrease the separation between domestic and foreign intelligence. Consider me a product of those efforts.”
Clark had been thinking about this on and off since they’d met. “I believe in the government. But nothing good ever comes from bad methods. I’m willing to consider helping out when there are things I can do without hurting or killing anyone, but I’m not taking orders or keeping secrets that ought to be told.”
Luthor nodded, not in agreement but with the air of a man who’d expected no better. “That’s what I told the higher-ups you’d say. They weren’t pleased. But there’s nothing they know how to do to control you that wouldn’t be more dangerous than letting you make your own decisions.”
Clark puzzled at this for a bit, concluding that Luthor was telling him that the government had considered holding total strangers hostage for his compliance. This spy stuff was no fun at all.
Luthor must have seen something on his (simulated) face. “Yes. So I have here a signalling device which looks like an ordinary cellphone. When I have a mission that won’t upset your delicate sensibilities, I’ll give you a call.”
“I won’t be –”
“I don’t expect you to drop your kittens and come running every time. I just want the opportunity to ask for your help, like every other Metropolis resident, only I’d prefer not to have to scream state secrets at the top of my lungs." Luthor pulled a small black square out of his pocket; it looked like it belonged on a keychain for use with an expensive car.
Clark considered for a moment. The idea seemed reasonable enough. “If this is a tracking device, you understand, I’m going to be extremely upset.”
“It’s a coded, untraceable signal. You don’t need to worry about us tracking your movements through a cellphone.”
He nodded. “Before I agree to do anything, I want to meet a recognizable government official, in an official building, who’ll verify what you’ve told me.”
Luthor smiled again, this one close to a real grin. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d never even seen Alias. Of course, I’ll set it up – can you be at the Pentagon tomorrow at six AM? And I assume a four-star general will suffice?”
Clark let out a breath. “Uh, sure.” When he’d imagined going public, he’d seen himself lauded by mayors, governors, maybe even the President. He hadn’t given much thought to what the mayors etc. would want from him in return. Already, there’d been a problem with the unions when Clark had rebuilt a collapsed building in under an hour (that was mostly spent helping the cement dry with a bit of heat vision). This hero gig was a lot more complicated than Mighty Mouse made it look.
Luthor was watching him, nakedly curious. It reminded Clark too much of Lionel’s quest to discover Smallville’s secrets. One time Lionel had even come to the farm to ask if he could look for meteor rocks. Dad had kicked him out pretty quick, but not before Clark had spent too much time in a room with the elder Luthor, who looked at everything like he wanted to devour it. Lex Luthor’s face had the same intensity, though it was more detached. Lionel wanted to dissect Clark like a frog and sell his parts, whereas Lex would have been perfectly happy to dissect him like a frog and record the results for posterity.
Luthor seem to notice that Clark was uncomfortable with his scrutiny. “So why don’t you take over the world?” he asked, leaning forward and smirking as if he knew a secret about everyone in the room.
Clark blinked. “... I lack ambition?”
Luthor’s smile widened. “I find that hard to believe.” He reached over and took a drink of Clark’s cooling coffee.
“I don’t want to rule the world. What would I do with it? I’m already busier than a one-armed milkmaid, I don’t like yelling at people, and I believe in democracy and the American way.”
Luthor raised his fair brows and curled his fingers together loosely. “A real Boy Scout.”
Clark shrugged. “My parents never let me go scouting.”
“My father wouldn’t allow something so bourgeois. It might have built character, and he always preferred destruction to building.” Luthor said this with such nonchalance that Clark was unsure whether or not he wanted to be believed.
“Why aren’t you working for him?” Clark asked, unable to suppress the question. He’d heard Lois’s stories, but he found it hard to believe that Lionel would completely abandon his own son.
Luthor’s eyes hooded, turned inwards. “I can’t pretend the Luthor blood isn’t strong in me. When I was younger, and still trying to get his approval, I did things – things I’m not proud of. But I realized that my dark side could serve the greater good, not just corporate profit. Now the compromises I make are the kind that keep people like these –” he gestured at the oblivious workers around them – “safe.”
Clark could see it, a child raised by Lionel Luthor’s twisted moral standards, trying to find his own way. He remembered his own struggles with his father – both his fathers. He’d had a hard enough time with unconditional love and support; that Lex Luthor had managed to cast himself into the impersonal arms of his mother country was proof of great strength, at least.
They were both trying to do right, taking a dangerous legacy and wrestling it into submission.
He realized that his earlier talk about methods probably sounded like criticism of Lex himself. “I do admire your motives. I just –”
Lex looked at him carefully, as if he were trying to see through the projected image. His gaze was like a lashing of summer sun on Clark’s skin; it made Clark feel restless, filled to the brim with power. “You don’t need to apologize. For someone as powerful as you, constraints are even more important. I’m actually reassured.”
After another sip from Clark’s cup, Lex leaned back, nodded at him, and rose to go. “I’ll be seeing you around – by the way, is there a name you’d like me to call you? That – epithet – of yours seems so brash, and you’re a surprisingly modest individual.”
He struggled fruitlessly not to blush. “Thanks – I think. You can call me Kal.” He didn’t much like the idea of returning to the name he’d used that ill-fated, red Kryptonite-saturated summer, but it was the best he could do on short notice.
end part 3
Blessing
Janice had sent his stuff months ago, but he hadn’t bothered to open most of the boxes marked ‘house,’ and he’d had to open three before he’d found this, its plain metal black with age and uneven with years of crusted-on wax only haphazardly removed. He’d always meant to give it a good cleaning, but then he’d get it out at the last minute, and then it hardly made sense to clean it during the holiday, and after … after, he’d always put it off until Janice stuck it back in the closet for another year.
“I know what that is!” Molly said when he brought the hanukiah to the little table by the window.
He smiled at her. “Sure you do.” Molly had never asked to be taken to church, but they’d done Easter candy; he guessed she’d had some multi-cultural education, or whatever they were calling it these days.
“It’s a menorah,” she said confidently.
“Yes it is,” he assured her. “And we are going to have Hanukah.”
She frowned uncertainly. “But it’s not anywhere near Christmas yet.”
He shrugged. “Hanukah isn’t always at the same time. This year it’s a lot earlier.”
There had been enough time, between finding out about the pregnancy and finding out that it wasn’t his child, for him to imagine this: telling the Hanukah story to a rapt, upturned face. Saying the prayers. Lighting the candles. Putting the hanukiah in the window so that everyone could see that a Jew lived here, unapologetic.
Molly wasn’t what he’d imagined for himself. Neither was Mohinder. But as he showed her the dreidel game, and warned her about the waxy horror that was Hanukah gelt, and submitted to being pelted with the balled-up gold wrappers when she ignored him and ate it anyway – he felt the words in his heart as he never had before.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who has kept us alive, and has preserved us, and enabled us to reach this time.
Heroes
“You should be in bed,” Monica chided, closing the door behind her. Outside, the streetlights flickered, singing their nightsong to him. It was different from the hum of the household appliances, different still from the nervous chuckles of the lights in New York City. He knew that there was no intelligence in the electricity – he’d spent enough time looking – but there still seemed to be some sense of place, and duty.
“Micah?” she asked when he didn’t respond.
“Sorry,” he said, closing an imagined glass door in his head, muting the not-quite-noise. “I was just thinking about --.”
She sat next to him on his bed and put a tentative hand on his shoulder.
“We were happy,” he told her.
“You’ll always miss them,” she said softly, and squeezed him. Her hand was warm through his T-shirt. “But you’ll always have the good things they gave you, too. That love you remember, it’s still there.”
He looked down at his hands. “I know.” But at night, in this still-strange bed, surrounded by the possessions of other children, it was hard to remember.
“Tell me,” she began, “tell me something wonderful you did with them.”
And so, slowly but with gathering intensity, he did.
Smallville
The Secret Service was fast – the Omni was a regular enough site for secured visits that they didn’t have anything to learn, only the tension of attempting to fight off the kind of boredom that got people killed. They cleared him to go in after only ten minutes.
Lex walked past the tables, laden with wreaths and ornaments, gold and white. The china gleamed with white traceries of snowflakes. Lana’s taste in decorating was still effective, though never subtle. Most of the people were over in the reception area, drinking and glad-handing, though he passed an occasional lonely sitter, waiting for the rest of his or her table. He felt a brief twinge of sympathy for one, a girl who looked about twelve, hunched over in her little-girl black velvet and lace, staring determinedly at her portable reader.
He took his place at the dais in the front, just to the side of the guest of honor. The podium obscured his view of the other side, though he could hear the chair creak under the solid inhuman weight.
“I would have thought you’d be out there, making friends, influencing people,” Superman said, leaning back so that he could see Lex’s face.
Lex turned a fraction towards him and folded his hands together. “This is Pete’s night,” he said. “And very few of these people still have any relevant power.”
Lex, of course, was wearing black tie. Superman was not. After so many years, the incongruity had ceased to amuse him; it was simply standard practice for a social event to have a primary-colored visitor, garish as a bunch of balloons, in the midst of all the people dressed in more standard swan-and-peacock fashion. There had been a time, two decades back, when ‘Superman chic’ had been a style – but then it had been quickly replaced by Noughties revival, much to Lex’s gratification.
“So why did you come, if nobody here is any use to you?”
Lex smiled at him. “I didn’t say that.”
Superman peered at him, his habitual scowl turning sharper as he looked at Lex – not Luthor – with serious interest. “You envy them,” he said, as if it were some great revelation. “You envy them more than I do.”
Lex looked at that perfect face, recognized around the world by infants as young as seven months, apparently still in its early thirties. Being alien and not having any interest in elective office, Superman hadn’t had to abandon his entire identity and start again as a feckless nephew, but that wasn’t why Lex was resentful.
“But you won’t ever get any closer to what they have than I will,” he said, softly, letting the truth of it shine through his eyes to work its damage. “And that’s what matters.”
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Oh, perfect.
And poor Micah! *heart breaks* Good for Monica.
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cool
Excellent dialogues, especially the first one.
Nice building up of tension between superman and Luxor.
All very cool.
spike
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I like Lex when he's being playfully cruel. He pokes Clark and then graciously provides the way out, so smoothly, Clark doesn't even realize what's happening. It's interesting to see it done from Clark's POV.
Segue to the last SV ficlet, and I wince. Lex's perfect cruelty is possible because of his comprehensive knowledge of Clark, and the pinpoint accuracy of his last line hurts. I like the direction you took the prompt -- "and what they'll never have" -- the two of them remaining cordial enemies forever, separate and alone. It packs quite a disturbing punch for such a short piece.
(of course, in my head, 100 years later, Clark and Lex's "great grandson" finally come together after a passionate sturm and drang courtship -- possibly after foiling an alien attack ala "While the Tempest Hurled" because darnit I believe in their happy ending.)
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I'm glad the last one worked for you. I wasn't sure where it was going until it got there, but it felt right to me. I'd be happy with the 100 years later scenario!
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>“I don’t expect you to drop your kittens and come running every time..."
oh, lex, you're such a smart-ass. :)
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And the Smallville fic was perfect - Lex's cruelty packs so much punch when he unleashes it in that gentle way of his. He can hurt Clark like no one else can, and that just amplifies the connection between them.
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And I'm glad you thought Lex's cruelty worked -- he really meant it to.
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Btw, in part 2 I think there is a typo you wrote: "hors d'ouevres" and it's hors d'oeuvres, unless it's not like the French word.
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