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jakrar: Smallville, Clark/Lex, AU: After Lex pushes Lionel out of his office window, and the photographic evidence has been erased, Clark is determined to prove that Lex is a murderer. Accordingly, Clark goes digging for solid evidence that Lex had planned all along to kill Lionel, and instead finds evidence that Lionel was setting Lex up to be murdered if Lex couldn’t be dissuaded from investigating Veritas – and that Lex had almost certainly discovered the plot.
Note: No matter what I did, this stayed heavy. PG-13.
Clark stared at the computer screen. Chloe swore that the files weren’t fakes, that she’d found them hidden with all the other files that Lex couldn’t afford to have anyone uncover.
“He was going to kill his own son,” Clark said to himself, trying the words out. Even for him, whose own biological father had been willing to see him suffer in every kind of way, it was hard to make sense of it. Lionel had been plotting to kill Lex—and he’d said it was for Clark’s protection.
Lionel had said he’d changed. Maybe he’d even believed it: like taking Clark’s well-being as his supreme goal made all his old tactics legitimate now. But Lionel hadn’t learned anything. Instead he’d decided that Lex had to be eliminated.
Lex had records of Lionel’s conversation with an unnamed man. They’d been careful and coded, but with the information Lionel had handed over, not to mention the money, there was only one conclusion to be drawn: Lionel was providing a down payment on a hit on Lex.
Still, Lex could’ve gone to the cops. Okay, maybe Lionel had shown an endless ability to avoid justice. He’d bought his way out of the first murder conviction; why would anyone think that attempted murder would stick any better? But Lex could’ve—he could’ve done something other than push Lionel out of a window.
Clark could imagine all the ways Lex would find to explain to himself, if he’d still bothered to explain himself. It was self-defense, Clark, he’d say. Just like with Roger Nixon, and all the others since.
Lionel had been stepping into Lex’s shoes in that way, protecting Clark even when Clark didn’t want protection. Killing in his name, as if that would keep Clark’s hands clean. If only Lex had still trusted Clark, he could have told Clark, and Clark would’ve made Lionel stop. I’m not the one who stopped trusting, Clark, he heard Lex’s voice, and that was true; You never started, but Lex had proved himself too dangerous time and again, even before this last crime.
Or maybe Lex would go on the aggressive: This is your fault, Clark. If it weren’t for you, he never would have turned on me! Lex was too smart to believe that exactly, but he’d know it was worth saying anyway, just to see if it hurt.
It was him or me, the Lex in his head told him. Whether it was today or tomorrow, you know that it’s true. Clark wanted to argue: I could have stopped it, somehow. Really? When’s the last time you saved someone from my father when he was determined to rid himself of a threat? Would you have me go into witness protection, get a new identity, build a whole new life? And do you truly believe that would even succeed when I’m not just some rogue project that could never be exposed except in the Weekly World News, but his own son and heir, homing in on your secret? He’d come after me, Clark. You know that.
Clark didn’t like that the Lex in his head seemed to be winning the argument. That had to be worse than merely having a conversation with Lex in his head.
It didn’t matter, anyway. Maybe Lex didn’t think he had a choice up in that office, but that was only because of the choices he’d made long before that, again and again, until he crossed the line to murder.
Roger Nixon, Lex whispered again. In whose interests did I pick up that gun, Clark? Didn’t you help make me, too? Lex didn’t even know about Belle Reve, and while Clark still didn’t know which particular choice he could have made that would’ve ended differently and safely, he knew now how one small decision could reverberate. There were no takebacks in life when you needed them. There had been chances and choices for Lex, yes, but Clark had to remember that his path had always been narrower than others’, because of Lionel and all the other people who’d left Lex alone to Lionel—Clark among them.
Clark realized that the computer had gone to sleep while he was fighting with imaginary Lex.
He needed to stop brooding and start doing. And that meant talking to Lex.
A quick trip to LuthorCorp Tower revealed that Lex was nowhere to be found. Avoiding the scene of the crime; workers were even now, in the middle of the night, replacing the broken glass and vacuuming the carpet now that the police had finished their work.
Clark sped to Smallville, hoping that Lex had decided to retreat there. Sure enough, there was a single skeleton in the mansion, sitting behind the desk in the study. Drinking.
“Clark,” Lex said when he pushed open the doors. “I thought I left you back in Metropolis.” Lex didn’t sound even slightly surprised.
“I’m not here to yell at you, Lex.” Clark figured he ought to make that much clear. “I know what you did, and I know why.”
“Your condolences are accepted, with thanks,” Lex said and took another drink from his tumbler. His hand was steady, even if he couldn’t meet Clark’s eyes. “I did love him, you know.” It was said casually, the way Lex always revealed his emotional truths to Clark, even if Clark was too late in understanding how Lex pushed Clark away even while inviting him in.
“I know,” he said, because he owed Lex at least that much. “And if you turn yourself in, Lex, I’ll visit you, and I’ll be there when you get out. I swear it.”
“Oh good,” Lex said, and drank again, “the accusation part of the encounter.”
Clark shook his head. “We both know I can’t prove anything. But we can still—you can still make amends. You don’t have to give up on yourself.”
Lex scoffed. “So you’re saying that you believe I killed my father, but it’s all right if I’m sorry?”
“It’s not all right,” Clark said. He remembered Lex when they’d met—barely older than Clark was now, hard as that was to believe—how world-weary and sophisticated he’d seemed then. “What I’m saying is that it’s never too late to change. Please, Lex.” He’d asked for so many favors from Lex over the years; he knew there was almost no chance that Lex would hear the difference now.
Lex tilted his glass, watching the slow swirl of the bourbon. His mouth turned up at the corners; anyone who didn’t know him (the rest of the world) would have called it a fond smile. “What would I get if I did, Clark? Would I earn your trust, at long last?”
“You could,” Clark said, and Lex looked up, shaken for the first time. “I know there’s still a good man in you.”
The moment stretched like taffy, then snapped when Lex scowled. “Paris may be worth a mass, but your good regard would be bought with the condemnation of the rest of the world. I’m no longer interested in your approval. Not at that price.”
“Then I’m sorry,” Clark told him. “I’m sorry that your father wanted to kill you, and I’m sorry that you killed him. I’m sorry we can’t be—what I’d like to be. But I won’t give up on you, Lex.”
Clark should have known not to push. Lex’s skin grew pale with rage, his lips thinning. “Spare me your condescension, please.” He put his glass down with a clunk and grabbed for the decanter.
But there was one last thing Clark needed to do, not for Lex but for himself. Though he’d been standing just inside the door for their entire conversation, he approached Lex, going around the desk and putting himself into Lex’s line of sight.
“Let me guess,” Lex sneered, “now you’re going to try physical intimidation. Usually that’s accompanied by far ruder demands, but there’s a first time for everything, I suppose.”
“Lex,” Clark said, and Lex’s head snapped up. His eyes were so blue, innocent despite all that he’d done and suffered. Clark moved towards him helplessly.
Kissing Lex was nothing like what he’d done with anyone else. It was sweet and painful, arousing and sad enough to bring tears to his eyes. The kiss lasted a while, and when he broke it they were both breathing hard. “You could be so much more,” he said, and then he couldn’t bear to be in that familiar room any more, for all that he’d known the likely outcome before he’d arrived.
Walking away was the hardest thing he’d ever done. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he went into superspeed mode, getting himself to the barn before his tears started to fall. Understand, he willed the Lex in his head. But there was only silence, his imaginary Lex as intransigient as the real one.
Someday, Lex would understand. Until then, Clark would have to wait. Oppose Lex, when necessary. Protect his secrets and his friends. But he’d never give up, and Lex could rail against that all he liked. Clark wasn’t going to be like Lionel, tossing people aside when they proved unworthy of his twisted standards. He wasn’t invincible—but for Lex, his hope could be.
forsvmadelyn: I would love yet ANOTHER sequel to my story from last year. (Epic Misunderstanding, in which the JL believes Clark & Lex are in a relationship, which they aren’t (at first).) Warning: someone throws up.
“You and Kal-El have reconciled,” Diana said, and Lex’s hand automatically went to his throat, even though the skin was already smooth, the bruise healed. How the Hell did she know? If she hadn’t been watching Batman’s inevitable security footage, then most likely the air filters hadn’t succeeded in removing the smell from the air of his office, which was just humiliating.
Who was he trying to kid? There was no way out of this titanic embarrassment but to face it down, just like he had all the times Superman had dragged him to jail or Lionel had tormented him in public.
Lex tried to turn casually, but he was aware that he was not completely successful. At least the Amazon was unlikely to judge him. He swallowed. Diana’s expression was pleasant and only slightly superior (which was fair, since she was). “Can I help you with something?”
Diana tilted her head. “I would know how Kal-El fares, from one who knew him well before his resurrection.”
“You knew him well,” Lex snapped before he could think better of it. Wonder Woman certainly had spent more time with Superman in the past few years than Lex had, even counting all the times when lawyers had been present. “What, are you worried he didn’t come back right?”
Unfortunately, she nodded. “Returns from the underworld are dangerous, Luthor. Even one who is pure of heart may bring … passengers. New-risen, he may be in great peril, and we must be wary.”
Lex was out of disbelief for this lifetime, so he only nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind. But, in all honesty, he seems just the same to me.” Except for the part where we fucked, he added mentally.
Well, damn. Diana’s explanation for Clark’s otherwise inexplicable behavior made a lot more sense than ‘he’s wanted me all along but never knew how to say it,’ no matter how much Lex would have liked to believe the latter.
“Out of curiosity,” Lex said, as Diana was turning to leave, “just how would you treat the presence of a … passenger?”
She paused, one hand on the door handle. “Ordinarily, there would be a purification ritual, bringing the one affected back to death’s threshold. Evil spirits could be returned to their planes, if the peril were great enough. But for Kal-El—”
Lex nodded. Getting an ordinary human to the point of death was tricky enough. There was no telling what it would take to put Superman in that position. Lex himself knew how to make Clark hurt with Kryptonite, and he had some testable theories about how to kill him, but to calibrate precisely enough to cause a near-death experience would be extremely difficult. “Well, it’s good that you have nothing to worry about, then,” he said.
Her lips twitched, but she didn’t call him on it, and then she’d closed the door and he was alone again.
Life, Lex reflected, was a giant conspiracy against him. He was Charlie Brown, bald head and all, and the cosmos arranged itself in the shape of Lucy to snatch the football of triumph away every time he got close.
Or perhaps a better metaphor: life was a box of chocolates, except that on inspection what Lex had received was carob. Even if it had seemed like chocolate when he had initially, blissfully, tasted it.
****
“I can’t believe I actually slept with you,” Clark said bitterly, straining against the Kryptonite manacles. Lex was fairly impressed that he was even conscious (though that was another piece of evidence for the ‘demonic passenger’ theory, since Clark on his own should have been passed out for at least two minutes). “I should have known.”
“Probably,” Lex agreed, checking the priceless antique volume at the side of the room to make sure he had the Aeolic down properly; it wasn’t a dialect in which he was fluent.
“If you’re using me to raise some unholy evil—” Clark warned, and Lex turned an annoyed eye on him.
“First of all, it was the Joker who wanted to make a pact with He Who Must Not Be Named. I want to rule the world, not dissolve it into unspeakable brain-melting horror. Second, if you had paid a minute of attention to our conversations back in Smallville, or for that matter to Diana’s extensive lecture series—it’s available on iTunes, you should really check it out—you’d recognize the Greek symbols surrounding you.”
Clark had stopped struggling.
“Then what is this?” he asked, almost as if he were listening.
Lex sighed. “It’s a ritual to rid you of the dark passenger you apparently acquired as part of your return from the underworld.”
“Return from the underworld?” Clark repeated, his green-tinged skin making his incredulity even more exaggerated. “L—Lex, I was in a paradeath state!”
“Don’t use words you don’t understand, it’s undignified,” Lex said absently, cursing the idiots at STAR Labs who’d given Clark delusions of scientific competence. “It’s possible you’re not even aware of what’s happening. But answer me this: Since you’ve been reanimated—”
“Still not a zombie—” Clark muttered, though frankly the Kryptonite glow wasn’t doing him any favors in that regard.
“—you’ve been behaving in extremely out-of-character ways. Why is that?”
Clark lifted his head as far off of the slab as he could and then banged it down a couple of times, eyes screwed shut in frustration. Because of his weakened state, the slab didn’t shatter. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, you know. If you’ve gone delusional, even I won’t be able to keep you out of Arkham—”
Lex held up fingers, to help Clark keep track. “You declined to assist with the earthquake in Hong Kong.”
“The government requested I stay away and their own superheroes had it under control! You know I don’t violate political boundaries unless there’s a real need!”
“You refused to give Lois Lane an interview.”
“That’s because she told me outright that the topic would be my apparently not-so-secret affair with billionaire Lex Luthor, which by the way is looking more and more like an ex-affair with every passing minute!”
Lex ignored the commentary, because he’d known from the minute Clark had touched him that they were on a timer.
“You refused to attend the Christmas party at the children’s ward at Metropolis General.”
“The Flash likes to go and so we swapped duty shifts. Lex,” Clark sighed, “this evidence is so bad it wouldn’t convince a Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist. Can we agree that what you’re really worried about is that I wouldn’t sleep with you if I were in my right mind?”
Lex paused in his candle-lighting. Put like that, it sounded a little self-undermining. “That in itself remains powerful evidence that something is amiss,” he pointed out.
“Guy who woke up in chains agrees.” Clark clanked them for emphasis. “On the other hand, you’ve been fighting on the side of good for upwards of a year, my friends practically locked us in a closet together, I’ve always kind of wondered what you’d be like, and—in a turn of events that will surprise no one who’s watched you walk across a room—you’re spectacular.” Lex noted, clinically, that a bright blush under Kryptonite poison was more of an apple-green. “Isn’t there some way you can test me without doing whatever painful and horrible thing you clearly have planned?”
The devil can cite scripture, but it wasn’t a ridiculous suggestion, so Lex gave it some thought. He flipped through the book of mysteries, translating on the fly, and indeed there was a spell of revelation written in the same hand as the ritual of banishment.
Clark didn’t react at all to the spell. His eyes should have flashed or his body should have arched up in pain, and even though the Kryptonite might have damped down some of that, the absence of reaction was worrisome.
It was empirical proof, to the extent that magic could be deemed empirical proof. Lex shook with indecision. He couldn’t guarantee Clark’s safety if he continued the cleansing ritual. But if he let a monster loose on humanity wearing Clark’s face, taking advantage of the trust they all had for Clark—
“Lex,” Clark said. His voice was fading already. Soon the choice might be taken away from Lex.
“You never talked to me like this before,” Lex said, still suspicious.
“Um, we were enemies through most of my twenties and a significant portion of my emotional and social development?” Clark managed.
Lex silently apologized to the teeming millions he was possibly condemning to horrible death, and went to blow the miniature charges that would release the Kryptonite manacles.
Minutes later, Clark shuddered as the last of the Kryptonite went back in its lead case. Lex, after a moment’s hesitation, offered him a hand off of the slab. Clark took it, ending up face to face with Lex. At which point, he vomited all over Lex.
“You deserved that,” he said while he was still wiping his mouth.
“The tie didn’t,” Lex pointed out, stripping until he was bare to the waist. Clark had mostly missed the pants, and the shoes could be cleaned.
Just then, the Flash burst into Lex’s supposedly secret chamber—God damn it!—and stopped in his tracks as he stared at the slab with its broken chains, Clark looming over Lex, and Lex’s half-dressed state. Lex deeply hoped that he hadn’t noticed the vomit, because the last thing Lex needed was a reputation as an emetophile.
“Right!” the Flash said brightly. “We’re gonna need you both at HQ, now-ish. I’ll just … wait outside.”
Clark and Lex regarded each other with dismay. “This isn’t over,” Clark warned, and for some reason it sounded different than all the other times he’d heard variations of that from Superman.
Lex swallowed and nodded.
“For one thing,” Clark added before Lex could escape to get himself clean, “next time I think we ought to see how you like being chained up.”
jakrar: Smallville, Clark/Lex, AU: After Lex pushes Lionel out of his office window, and the photographic evidence has been erased, Clark is determined to prove that Lex is a murderer. Accordingly, Clark goes digging for solid evidence that Lex had planned all along to kill Lionel, and instead finds evidence that Lionel was setting Lex up to be murdered if Lex couldn’t be dissuaded from investigating Veritas – and that Lex had almost certainly discovered the plot. Note: No matter what I did, this stayed heavy. PG-13.
Clark stared at the computer screen. Chloe swore that the files weren’t fakes, that she’d found them hidden with all the other files that Lex couldn’t afford to have anyone uncover.
“He was going to kill his own son,” Clark said to himself, trying the words out. Even for him, whose own biological father had been willing to see him suffer in every kind of way, it was hard to make sense of it. Lionel had been plotting to kill Lex—and he’d said it was for Clark’s protection.
Lionel had said he’d changed. Maybe he’d even believed it: like taking Clark’s well-being as his supreme goal made all his old tactics legitimate now. But Lionel hadn’t learned anything. Instead he’d decided that Lex had to be eliminated.
Lex had records of Lionel’s conversation with an unnamed man. They’d been careful and coded, but with the information Lionel had handed over, not to mention the money, there was only one conclusion to be drawn: Lionel was providing a down payment on a hit on Lex.
Still, Lex could’ve gone to the cops. Okay, maybe Lionel had shown an endless ability to avoid justice. He’d bought his way out of the first murder conviction; why would anyone think that attempted murder would stick any better? But Lex could’ve—he could’ve done something other than push Lionel out of a window.
Clark could imagine all the ways Lex would find to explain to himself, if he’d still bothered to explain himself. It was self-defense, Clark, he’d say. Just like with Roger Nixon, and all the others since.
Lionel had been stepping into Lex’s shoes in that way, protecting Clark even when Clark didn’t want protection. Killing in his name, as if that would keep Clark’s hands clean. If only Lex had still trusted Clark, he could have told Clark, and Clark would’ve made Lionel stop. I’m not the one who stopped trusting, Clark, he heard Lex’s voice, and that was true; You never started, but Lex had proved himself too dangerous time and again, even before this last crime.
Or maybe Lex would go on the aggressive: This is your fault, Clark. If it weren’t for you, he never would have turned on me! Lex was too smart to believe that exactly, but he’d know it was worth saying anyway, just to see if it hurt.
It was him or me, the Lex in his head told him. Whether it was today or tomorrow, you know that it’s true. Clark wanted to argue: I could have stopped it, somehow. Really? When’s the last time you saved someone from my father when he was determined to rid himself of a threat? Would you have me go into witness protection, get a new identity, build a whole new life? And do you truly believe that would even succeed when I’m not just some rogue project that could never be exposed except in the Weekly World News, but his own son and heir, homing in on your secret? He’d come after me, Clark. You know that.
Clark didn’t like that the Lex in his head seemed to be winning the argument. That had to be worse than merely having a conversation with Lex in his head.
It didn’t matter, anyway. Maybe Lex didn’t think he had a choice up in that office, but that was only because of the choices he’d made long before that, again and again, until he crossed the line to murder.
Roger Nixon, Lex whispered again. In whose interests did I pick up that gun, Clark? Didn’t you help make me, too? Lex didn’t even know about Belle Reve, and while Clark still didn’t know which particular choice he could have made that would’ve ended differently and safely, he knew now how one small decision could reverberate. There were no takebacks in life when you needed them. There had been chances and choices for Lex, yes, but Clark had to remember that his path had always been narrower than others’, because of Lionel and all the other people who’d left Lex alone to Lionel—Clark among them.
Clark realized that the computer had gone to sleep while he was fighting with imaginary Lex.
He needed to stop brooding and start doing. And that meant talking to Lex.
A quick trip to LuthorCorp Tower revealed that Lex was nowhere to be found. Avoiding the scene of the crime; workers were even now, in the middle of the night, replacing the broken glass and vacuuming the carpet now that the police had finished their work.
Clark sped to Smallville, hoping that Lex had decided to retreat there. Sure enough, there was a single skeleton in the mansion, sitting behind the desk in the study. Drinking.
“Clark,” Lex said when he pushed open the doors. “I thought I left you back in Metropolis.” Lex didn’t sound even slightly surprised.
“I’m not here to yell at you, Lex.” Clark figured he ought to make that much clear. “I know what you did, and I know why.”
“Your condolences are accepted, with thanks,” Lex said and took another drink from his tumbler. His hand was steady, even if he couldn’t meet Clark’s eyes. “I did love him, you know.” It was said casually, the way Lex always revealed his emotional truths to Clark, even if Clark was too late in understanding how Lex pushed Clark away even while inviting him in.
“I know,” he said, because he owed Lex at least that much. “And if you turn yourself in, Lex, I’ll visit you, and I’ll be there when you get out. I swear it.”
“Oh good,” Lex said, and drank again, “the accusation part of the encounter.”
Clark shook his head. “We both know I can’t prove anything. But we can still—you can still make amends. You don’t have to give up on yourself.”
Lex scoffed. “So you’re saying that you believe I killed my father, but it’s all right if I’m sorry?”
“It’s not all right,” Clark said. He remembered Lex when they’d met—barely older than Clark was now, hard as that was to believe—how world-weary and sophisticated he’d seemed then. “What I’m saying is that it’s never too late to change. Please, Lex.” He’d asked for so many favors from Lex over the years; he knew there was almost no chance that Lex would hear the difference now.
Lex tilted his glass, watching the slow swirl of the bourbon. His mouth turned up at the corners; anyone who didn’t know him (the rest of the world) would have called it a fond smile. “What would I get if I did, Clark? Would I earn your trust, at long last?”
“You could,” Clark said, and Lex looked up, shaken for the first time. “I know there’s still a good man in you.”
The moment stretched like taffy, then snapped when Lex scowled. “Paris may be worth a mass, but your good regard would be bought with the condemnation of the rest of the world. I’m no longer interested in your approval. Not at that price.”
“Then I’m sorry,” Clark told him. “I’m sorry that your father wanted to kill you, and I’m sorry that you killed him. I’m sorry we can’t be—what I’d like to be. But I won’t give up on you, Lex.”
Clark should have known not to push. Lex’s skin grew pale with rage, his lips thinning. “Spare me your condescension, please.” He put his glass down with a clunk and grabbed for the decanter.
But there was one last thing Clark needed to do, not for Lex but for himself. Though he’d been standing just inside the door for their entire conversation, he approached Lex, going around the desk and putting himself into Lex’s line of sight.
“Let me guess,” Lex sneered, “now you’re going to try physical intimidation. Usually that’s accompanied by far ruder demands, but there’s a first time for everything, I suppose.”
“Lex,” Clark said, and Lex’s head snapped up. His eyes were so blue, innocent despite all that he’d done and suffered. Clark moved towards him helplessly.
Kissing Lex was nothing like what he’d done with anyone else. It was sweet and painful, arousing and sad enough to bring tears to his eyes. The kiss lasted a while, and when he broke it they were both breathing hard. “You could be so much more,” he said, and then he couldn’t bear to be in that familiar room any more, for all that he’d known the likely outcome before he’d arrived.
Walking away was the hardest thing he’d ever done. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he went into superspeed mode, getting himself to the barn before his tears started to fall. Understand, he willed the Lex in his head. But there was only silence, his imaginary Lex as intransigient as the real one.
Someday, Lex would understand. Until then, Clark would have to wait. Oppose Lex, when necessary. Protect his secrets and his friends. But he’d never give up, and Lex could rail against that all he liked. Clark wasn’t going to be like Lionel, tossing people aside when they proved unworthy of his twisted standards. He wasn’t invincible—but for Lex, his hope could be.
for
svmadelyn: I would love yet ANOTHER sequel to my story from last year. (Epic Misunderstanding, in which the JL believes Clark & Lex are in a relationship, which they aren’t (at first).) Warning: someone throws up. “You and Kal-El have reconciled,” Diana said, and Lex’s hand automatically went to his throat, even though the skin was already smooth, the bruise healed. How the Hell did she know? If she hadn’t been watching Batman’s inevitable security footage, then most likely the air filters hadn’t succeeded in removing the smell from the air of his office, which was just humiliating.
Who was he trying to kid? There was no way out of this titanic embarrassment but to face it down, just like he had all the times Superman had dragged him to jail or Lionel had tormented him in public.
Lex tried to turn casually, but he was aware that he was not completely successful. At least the Amazon was unlikely to judge him. He swallowed. Diana’s expression was pleasant and only slightly superior (which was fair, since she was). “Can I help you with something?”
Diana tilted her head. “I would know how Kal-El fares, from one who knew him well before his resurrection.”
“You knew him well,” Lex snapped before he could think better of it. Wonder Woman certainly had spent more time with Superman in the past few years than Lex had, even counting all the times when lawyers had been present. “What, are you worried he didn’t come back right?”
Unfortunately, she nodded. “Returns from the underworld are dangerous, Luthor. Even one who is pure of heart may bring … passengers. New-risen, he may be in great peril, and we must be wary.”
Lex was out of disbelief for this lifetime, so he only nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind. But, in all honesty, he seems just the same to me.” Except for the part where we fucked, he added mentally.
Well, damn. Diana’s explanation for Clark’s otherwise inexplicable behavior made a lot more sense than ‘he’s wanted me all along but never knew how to say it,’ no matter how much Lex would have liked to believe the latter.
“Out of curiosity,” Lex said, as Diana was turning to leave, “just how would you treat the presence of a … passenger?”
She paused, one hand on the door handle. “Ordinarily, there would be a purification ritual, bringing the one affected back to death’s threshold. Evil spirits could be returned to their planes, if the peril were great enough. But for Kal-El—”
Lex nodded. Getting an ordinary human to the point of death was tricky enough. There was no telling what it would take to put Superman in that position. Lex himself knew how to make Clark hurt with Kryptonite, and he had some testable theories about how to kill him, but to calibrate precisely enough to cause a near-death experience would be extremely difficult. “Well, it’s good that you have nothing to worry about, then,” he said.
Her lips twitched, but she didn’t call him on it, and then she’d closed the door and he was alone again.
Life, Lex reflected, was a giant conspiracy against him. He was Charlie Brown, bald head and all, and the cosmos arranged itself in the shape of Lucy to snatch the football of triumph away every time he got close.
Or perhaps a better metaphor: life was a box of chocolates, except that on inspection what Lex had received was carob. Even if it had seemed like chocolate when he had initially, blissfully, tasted it.
****
“I can’t believe I actually slept with you,” Clark said bitterly, straining against the Kryptonite manacles. Lex was fairly impressed that he was even conscious (though that was another piece of evidence for the ‘demonic passenger’ theory, since Clark on his own should have been passed out for at least two minutes). “I should have known.”
“Probably,” Lex agreed, checking the priceless antique volume at the side of the room to make sure he had the Aeolic down properly; it wasn’t a dialect in which he was fluent.
“If you’re using me to raise some unholy evil—” Clark warned, and Lex turned an annoyed eye on him.
“First of all, it was the Joker who wanted to make a pact with He Who Must Not Be Named. I want to rule the world, not dissolve it into unspeakable brain-melting horror. Second, if you had paid a minute of attention to our conversations back in Smallville, or for that matter to Diana’s extensive lecture series—it’s available on iTunes, you should really check it out—you’d recognize the Greek symbols surrounding you.”
Clark had stopped struggling.
“Then what is this?” he asked, almost as if he were listening.
Lex sighed. “It’s a ritual to rid you of the dark passenger you apparently acquired as part of your return from the underworld.”
“Return from the underworld?” Clark repeated, his green-tinged skin making his incredulity even more exaggerated. “L—Lex, I was in a paradeath state!”
“Don’t use words you don’t understand, it’s undignified,” Lex said absently, cursing the idiots at STAR Labs who’d given Clark delusions of scientific competence. “It’s possible you’re not even aware of what’s happening. But answer me this: Since you’ve been reanimated—”
“Still not a zombie—” Clark muttered, though frankly the Kryptonite glow wasn’t doing him any favors in that regard.
“—you’ve been behaving in extremely out-of-character ways. Why is that?”
Clark lifted his head as far off of the slab as he could and then banged it down a couple of times, eyes screwed shut in frustration. Because of his weakened state, the slab didn’t shatter. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, you know. If you’ve gone delusional, even I won’t be able to keep you out of Arkham—”
Lex held up fingers, to help Clark keep track. “You declined to assist with the earthquake in Hong Kong.”
“The government requested I stay away and their own superheroes had it under control! You know I don’t violate political boundaries unless there’s a real need!”
“You refused to give Lois Lane an interview.”
“That’s because she told me outright that the topic would be my apparently not-so-secret affair with billionaire Lex Luthor, which by the way is looking more and more like an ex-affair with every passing minute!”
Lex ignored the commentary, because he’d known from the minute Clark had touched him that they were on a timer.
“You refused to attend the Christmas party at the children’s ward at Metropolis General.”
“The Flash likes to go and so we swapped duty shifts. Lex,” Clark sighed, “this evidence is so bad it wouldn’t convince a Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist. Can we agree that what you’re really worried about is that I wouldn’t sleep with you if I were in my right mind?”
Lex paused in his candle-lighting. Put like that, it sounded a little self-undermining. “That in itself remains powerful evidence that something is amiss,” he pointed out.
“Guy who woke up in chains agrees.” Clark clanked them for emphasis. “On the other hand, you’ve been fighting on the side of good for upwards of a year, my friends practically locked us in a closet together, I’ve always kind of wondered what you’d be like, and—in a turn of events that will surprise no one who’s watched you walk across a room—you’re spectacular.” Lex noted, clinically, that a bright blush under Kryptonite poison was more of an apple-green. “Isn’t there some way you can test me without doing whatever painful and horrible thing you clearly have planned?”
The devil can cite scripture, but it wasn’t a ridiculous suggestion, so Lex gave it some thought. He flipped through the book of mysteries, translating on the fly, and indeed there was a spell of revelation written in the same hand as the ritual of banishment.
Clark didn’t react at all to the spell. His eyes should have flashed or his body should have arched up in pain, and even though the Kryptonite might have damped down some of that, the absence of reaction was worrisome.
It was empirical proof, to the extent that magic could be deemed empirical proof. Lex shook with indecision. He couldn’t guarantee Clark’s safety if he continued the cleansing ritual. But if he let a monster loose on humanity wearing Clark’s face, taking advantage of the trust they all had for Clark—
“Lex,” Clark said. His voice was fading already. Soon the choice might be taken away from Lex.
“You never talked to me like this before,” Lex said, still suspicious.
“Um, we were enemies through most of my twenties and a significant portion of my emotional and social development?” Clark managed.
Lex silently apologized to the teeming millions he was possibly condemning to horrible death, and went to blow the miniature charges that would release the Kryptonite manacles.
Minutes later, Clark shuddered as the last of the Kryptonite went back in its lead case. Lex, after a moment’s hesitation, offered him a hand off of the slab. Clark took it, ending up face to face with Lex. At which point, he vomited all over Lex.
“You deserved that,” he said while he was still wiping his mouth.
“The tie didn’t,” Lex pointed out, stripping until he was bare to the waist. Clark had mostly missed the pants, and the shoes could be cleaned.
Just then, the Flash burst into Lex’s supposedly secret chamber—God damn it!—and stopped in his tracks as he stared at the slab with its broken chains, Clark looming over Lex, and Lex’s half-dressed state. Lex deeply hoped that he hadn’t noticed the vomit, because the last thing Lex needed was a reputation as an emetophile.
“Right!” the Flash said brightly. “We’re gonna need you both at HQ, now-ish. I’ll just … wait outside.”
Clark and Lex regarded each other with dismay. “This isn’t over,” Clark warned, and for some reason it sounded different than all the other times he’d heard variations of that from Superman.
Lex swallowed and nodded.
“For one thing,” Clark added before Lex could escape to get himself clean, “next time I think we ought to see how you like being chained up.”
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I love how you keep adding to the Epic Misunderstanding universe. It delights me every time.
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Lex silently apologized to the teeming millions he was possibly condemning to horrible death, and went to blow the miniature charges that would release the Kryptonite manacles.
Aww, sometimes the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. Lex is such a softie, in his own, twisted way.
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