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In honor of Asylum, and I do think it deserves honor, I offer a few thoughts and a chunk of the amnesia story, since ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mecurtin has the temerity to have a life and a family of her own, the minx.
Other than the way my interest plunged from Mt. Everest to the Marianas Trench every time Pinkster showed up, I was blown away. Clark waffles, then decides to do the right thing even though Lex was furious at him, but Fate has a hard-on for these guys and the switch that makes him Superman also builds Lex Luthor in his father's image. Now that's symbolism.
This show does parallels and reversals really well. Not just Lex and Clark on the table, or Lex's deeply creepy Clark-hug imitating his deeply creepy Lionel-hug from early in the season, though those were good. Anybody notice Lex's stigmata? When Lionel takes him up an exceeding high mountain and offers him the kingdoms of the earth, Lex is going to accept, because this time the Devil did his homework.
Okay, enough incoherent babbling.
Summary: Lex gets amnesia. Clark gets something else.
Thanks to Meret, Lenore, and the incomparable Mary Ellen Curtin. Any remaining mistakes are theirs.
“Clark?”
Lex’s voice was hoarse, but it was the content that shocked him. Lex hadn’t used that name in years. Clark fumbled for water as Lex pushed himself upright in the bed. He accepted the cup as if it were due tribute.
After a long swallow, Lex put the cup on the bedside table and looked at Clark – again, Clark couldn’t remember the last time Lex looked him in the eyes instead of staring at some point fixed yards beyond his head. Lex's regard had an impact physical blows never did.
“What happened? Where am I? And why are you wearing that ridiculous getup?”
Oh God. Intense relief crashed into new worry.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Lex’s brow wrinkled. “I – the wedding reception, Helen’s little cousin Sophie stepped on her train and Helen fell down, the flowers went all over. She was laughing. Then –“ He stopped, frustrated. Once again searching for answers that only Clark could give.
Clark had to look away. His hands twisted in his lap.
“Something’s happened to Helen.” Lex’s voice tried for calm, but when Clark looked up the expression on his face was as vulnerable as it had been back when Lex confessed that he’d thought about letting his father die.
“Lex.” His voice cracked and he had to swallow. “Lex, Helen died ten years ago.” Or at least had been declared dead, but the subtleties were probably not what Lex needed right now.
Lex grew even paler, the veins on his scalp standing out like whip marks.
“You’d better get a doctor,” he said dully, closing his eyes. “What hospital is this?”
“There’s no doctor. There’s just me.”
Fists clenched in the Fortress’s carefully replicated white sheets. “How long have I been here?” Lex examined his arms, found no sign of muscle atrophy, and looked up at Clark.
Right. Lex would deny grief and search out the puzzle. “Only a few days. But it’s 2013. I’ll take you to Metropolis and you can get a specialist.” The words rushed out, because he didn’t know how to be gentle with a shock like this.
Lex swung his legs off of the bed and stood, shakily. His hand went to the back of his head.
(Contre-coup injury, the Fortress said in Clark’s memory. Inflammation. Internal bleeding. Tearing of the dura mater. Possible permanent cognitive impairment. Possible permanent motor and sensory deficits. “Fix it,” he’d said, as savage with the AI as he’d been with Lex.)
Standing in just his underwear, Lex looked terribly fragile. It had been so easy to forget that he was nearly human.
Clark had to forget everything else and concentrate on what Lex needed now. It didn't matter how they'd gotten here. He'd ruined too many things in his life by thinking about the past; he wasn't going to ruin this.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, and Lex allowed himself to be hugged, even squeezed Clark back with a force that should have bruised. He was warm, and God, the smell of him, cocoa butter and something tart, still the same. All of it the same, skin smooth as the inside of an oyster's shell, the blood so terribly close to the surface.
“How did she die?” Lex asked, a whisper against his shoulder.
“An accident,” he answered, not letting Lex go as he tried to pull away. He didn't need to know she'd betrayed him just yet.
“I loved her,” Lex said. Although Clark knew better, he thought that Lex probably believed it. Lex had needed someone to share his obsession, enjoyed the company of a woman as focused as he was, wanted a sex partner. He didn’t love her. Love would have been uncontrolled, and Lex controlled his interactions with Helen too much for it to have been love.
It had been the same with Sylvia, the one Clark never even met in person. Lex just kept looking for people twisted enough to accept him but upright enough not to betray him, and when they couldn't contort themselves properly, he stopped caring. Of his wives, Desiree was probably the one Lex loved most, because someone else was controlling his emotions.
Of course, Lex might have changed after Clark had given up on him. Or possibly Clark’s definition of love was seriously deformed. Chloe, Lana and Lois would have been happy to endorse that latter thought.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. He should have felt more guilty, he thought, but he'd been carrying around Lex-guilt for so long that there was hardly any difference.
Lex was pushing away with a fair amount of seriousness now. Clark released him and he stepped back, still breathing hard.
“So,” Lex said, rubbing the back of his head, “what else is new?”
The idea presented itself to him like Venus rising from the waves, naked and pure.
Possible permanent cognitive impairment.
It worked once before. At least until the evidence piled up into a new mountain.
“Let me get you some clothes,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Out in the hallway, he scanned through the door and saw Lex sit on the edge of the bed, shoulders held straight. When they were still in Smallville, when things hadn't gone all the way bad, he'd sometimes stand outside the mansion and look in at Lex, checking up. Lex sat that way when he was getting ready to do business with people he didn't trust. In other words, with people.
“Can you tell if the memory loss is really permanent?” he asked the Fortress.
Its voice came from the air around him. “Many neural connections were damaged beyond repair. The structure of human memory, however, is not strictly temporal. He should recover fragmentary memories related to the memories he currently retains. In addition, there are doubtless gaps before his self-reported cutoff date which he simply has not yet noticed.”
Clark waved off that extra information. “Fragmentary. Not complete?”
“Correct.” The Fortress managed to sound disapproving, even without a frown or arms to fold across its nonexistent chest. It was smart enough to follow his thinking.
Lex had never remembered what happened between the time he was rescued from the island and the time he came out of Belle Reve. Mutant healing was good for many things, but it could only remake neurons wholesale, not reconnect them to retrieve specific memories.
Clark reached the closet and got Lex’s clothes. The Fortress had managed to get the blood out of the jacket and shirt – if he could patent that, he’d be nearly as rich as Lex. He remembered too much blood, Lex seizing in his arms as they whipped through the atmosphere, decelerating so horribly slowly to avoid further damage to Lex. The rich fabric held no trace of Lex's scent.
Lex was still sitting when he returned, which was worrisome. Clark would have been more comfortable with the punching of walls. Lex’s hand had still been bandaged at Sylvia's funeral, though the shattered bones had mostly healed.
This Lex didn’t have the smooth suspicion of the Lex he knew now, just a shadow of it. Clark couldn’t remember how he’d dealt with this Lex a decade ago. He hadn’t been any good at it then, anyhow.
This was one wish Kryptonite never could have granted. They would get it right this time.
Wordlessly, he offered the pile of clothes to Lex, who didn’t even raise his eyebrows at the wrinkled jacket. Clark thought the tie had been lost over Tierra del Fuego. Lex dressed and left the collar of his shirt open. As always, he made it look like the only possible ensemble. The hollow of his neck was visible, Lex sharing another one of his secrets.
“You might want to sit down again. I have some things to tell you.”
Now Lex did cock his head in that mildly ironic, thoroughly intense way of his. Clark realized he’d been longing for that look for years, instead of the one that said: 'I’d really like to dissect you, and it would be a bonus if you were still conscious while I did it.' “I assume you’ll be explaining that outfit and why the door wouldn’t open for me.”
So Lex had tried to get out. Clark felt a moment of betrayal that the Fortress hadn’t warned him. He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling exposed. The suit had always been proof against blushes. It displayed Superman, not Clark. This Lex changed all that, mashing his identities together.
Clark cleared his throat. “There’s no good way to say this. I’m an alien, this is my secret hideout.”
Lex’s mouth worked. He half-turned, raised a fist, put his hand down again. “I knew it. I knew it! Not *exactly*, but I knew you knew something about – Where are the rest of you?”
Damn. Neither shock nor grief nor traumatic memory loss slowed Lex down. “I’m the last. My planet was destroyed. I’m the only survivor.” The words had gotten easier over time, worn smooth by repetition.
Lex blinked. “Okay. I’m sorry,” he said, his voice gentling, fast as the drop in barometric pressure before a tornado.
“I’ve had time to get used to it. I don’t have any memories of Krypton.” He wanted to, but any half-dreamed recollection was untrustworthy.
“Krypton,” Lex repeated, considering.
“Anyway,” Clark continued, wanting to leave the subject, “I’m kind of a, well -- you know I’m strong. And fast, and invulnerable, and I can fly and see through things and, you know, stuff like that. So I help people who are in trouble.”
Could he have rushed through that in any lamer a fashion?
There was a lot of white showing around Lex’s eyes. Still, his voice was even as he asked, “So that explains the costume how?”
Clark bit his lip. “It’s kind of my secret identity. Because it’s dangerous for me to have friends and family who could be taken hostage. They, uh, this –“ he indicated the symbol on his chest – “is adopted from the symbol of my family on Krypton. But people call me – don’t laugh, okay? – they call me Superman.”
Lex’s mouth compressed in a valiant and, unsurprisingly, successful attempt to hide his mirth. “All right,” he said at last. “I know all this.”
Clark nodded. “Yeah, you’ve stayed here before when you needed to get away. And also to play with the Fortress’s computers.”
“All right. I share your secret, and that’s why you’re not wearing your mask.”
Clark realized that it was, in fact, possible to blush even more than he already was. He should feel dizzy with all the blood rushing to his face.
“Actually – um, well. I don’t wear one. Nobody who doesn’t already know recognizes me,” he reassured Lex. “Clark Kent is – I’m a reporter with the Daily Planet. I wear glasses,” he added hopefully.
Now Lex was seriously taken aback, blue eyes narrowed. “Really. How – unobservant of our fellow citizens. How did I lose my memory?”
He should have expected Lex to change directions as fast as he took hairpin turns. It was a perfect opening.
“Like I said, it’s dangerous for Superman to have friends. That’s why he’s separate from Clark Kent. We decided that Lex Luthor and Superman would be antagonists in public. Everyone thinks we’re enemies, even your staff. Even my writing partner, Lois Lane.”
That didn’t quite answer the question, but Clark had gained a decade of lies on Lex, and he was just warming up. “Unfortunately, I had a – fan, I guess. Stalker. She decided to do me a favor by getting rid of you. I didn’t get there in time. You were already so seriously injured, I had to take you here – the Fortress – to treat you.” It wasn't the worst lie he'd told Lex. And Lex shouldn't have pushed him so far --
Lex nodded, his eyes free of suspicion above his usual background paranoia.
“I’m sorry,” Clark added, for verisimilitude.
There was silence for a minute. Clark looked at Lex, not caring if Lex saw the hunger and relief. He was entitled. He wanted Lex to know that Clark still cared, after everything, even if Lex didn't quite know what 'everything' was.
“I need to think,” Lex said, frowning distractedly. “Shit – LexCorp. It’s okay? It’s not going to fall apart because I disappeared?”
“I’ll send a message that you’re okay. You’ve got good people working for you. It will be fine.” He tried not to sound too enthusiastic. “Is there anything I can do?”
Lex snorted and looked away. “I’m over thirty – when Alexander the Great was my age, he was dead – I’m a widower, my best friend is an alien and pretends to be my nemesis – I need a little time here. And I need to learn everything I missed.”
He hadn’t thought of that. Lex needed to get up to speed fast, or he’d have more business rivals to worry about than just his father. “I’ll have all your files put on a console here.
The Fortress can get into any human computer system,” he explained at Lex’s inquisitive look. There might be secret files about him on some LexCorp computer with no connection to the net, but Clark could find those in due time, when they went back to the world together.
"Kal-El," the Fortress interrupted, "a message from the Department of State has arrived. They have received intelligence warning of a possible assault on the U.S. military base in Riyadh, and they request that you go there for an inspection and 'to show the flag.'" The last phrase was uttered with the mechanical version of distaste, which sounded an awful lot like the human version.
He looked at Lex apologetically. "I'd better go. 'Truth, justice and the American way,' that's me."
Lex nodded.
On his way out, he told the Fortress to help Lex learn the public details of his life.
He flew towards Saudi Arabia in a great mood, even though he hated political missions more than anything else. Lex had recovered from his injury. Better than recovered; he was Clark's friend again, and Clark's confidante at last. At this point in his career, he could scan for weapons et cetera with only ten percent of his attention. The rest was occupied by what he recognized as over-elaborate fantasies about having Lex's friendship, Lex's presence.
Lex would think the Fortress was the coolest thing ever, which was correct, and there were things he could say to Lex about Superman that he could never say to his parents and that the Fortress wouldn't understand, like the various ways in which a lot of women (and a not insubstantial number of men) tried to reward him for rescues. And he wasn't just talking about the sexual favors, which were a lot more understandable than the food, knitted garments, and occasional plants and animals. Lex would love that sort of thing.
****
When Clark returned from his post-Riyadh patrol, sorting out some fishing vessels caught in a hurricane off the Grand Banks, Lex was still hunched over the console the Fortress had added to the room, flicking through screens of information as fast as a human could.
“You should eat,” he said, coming up behind Lex and placing a hand on his shoulder. “What would you like?”
Lex’s muscles jumped under his hand, but Lex didn’t pull away. Funny, how he felt just like other humans. Clark always thought he should be different somehow, made of sterner stuff. Warm and breathing, though, which were the most important features. “I’m not hungry,” Lex said absently. “So much has changed, and nothing has.”
Martha Kent’s child was not so easily deterred. Stepping to the far wall of the reconfigured room, he asked for food. That was enough to trigger Lex’s not-so-inner geek, and he watched in fascination as a slot opened and Clark removed two trays.
“I got the Fortress to watch a bunch of Star Trek episodes,” he admitted, smiling and avoiding Lex’s eyes. “It needed a template.”
Lex took a tray from his hand. “And still the food’s pure Kansas.” Meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, and green beans. Clark frowned; he hadn’t thought of catering to Lex’s tastes. Lex, however, simply put the tray on his knees and tucked in without further comment, eating rapidly and efficiently. Clark pulled up a chair and imitated him.
When he was finished, Lex put the tray on the desk by the computer and folded his hands in his lap, leaning back a little in his mogul-of-the-universe way.
"You didn't mention that I was a widower twice over," he said mildly.
Clark remembered Sylvia's face, gray with Kryptonite poisoning. He couldn’t get near her, couldn’t stop her mad attempt to drive away from what she’d become. And she’d become a mangled body in a crumpled metal shell. Clark wasn’t certain, but he suspected Lex kept the fragments of the Porsche that remained after they cut her out, just as he kept the remains of the first one. Clark hadn’t been able to attend the funeral, not with Lex’s ring and Sylvia's – and Sylvia. At the end, Sylvia had fled rather than risk hurting Lex, so she must have cared about him. Lex was chronically short of people who cared about him – partly his own fault, partly not. If Sylvia had lived, things might have been different.
And if your grandmother had wheels she’d be a wagon, Clark.
Then again, for all he knew, she did and was.
Clark swallowed. "I didn't really know what to say."
"What was she like?"
Here Clark was at a bit of a disadvantage. By the time Sylvia and Lex got together, Lex wouldn't have told him if it was night or day. He smiled weakly. "She was really smart, intense. You were – I wasn't sure when you got time to see each other, you were both working so hard."
"Did she know about you?"
Clark shook his head. "I've learned over the years that every person who knows is in danger." Not from Lex, oddly; Lex seemed to think that attacking his family and friends would have been gauche or something. Maybe he thought that Clark wouldn't mind Kryptonite arrows as much as any threat to his parents' safety. Lex was always a smart guy. In fact, if that lab hadn't blown up with Lois barely ten feet away, Clark wouldn't have gone to the penthouse in such a fury –
Lex was talking, something about LexCorp and its re-emergence from Luthorcorp in the last five years.
His face attempted impassivity, but Clark could see the hurt very clearly. Lex had been rewound past the time when he learned not to feel so deeply. Clark couldn't get distracted by emotions *he* needed to work through. That had been his mistake with Lex when he was a kid. Lex demanded Clark's full attention, and this time he was going to get it.
“From all reports, it seems that I have become my father,” Lex said.
“No,” Clark protested, sincerely but not quite meaning it the way Lex probably thought. Lionel lived up to his name, his mane; he roared and cuffed and kept a harem and lost interest. Lex was swifter, sleeker, a laser-guided missile whose megatonnage made the lion’s strength irrelevant. “The Planet – Lois needs a crusade, and you’re it. The TV stations love you.”
Lex snorted. “While it’s wonderful that I’m still photogenic, I wanted more than to become Metropolis’s merchant prince. I keep thinking, ten years later and this is it? Still rich, hated and alone.” His mouth did its old rueful twist, which made Clark want to hug him.
“You’re not alone,” he said instead and reached out to put his hand on Lex’s knee. Lex looked down at it with a kind of wonder, and Clark kept it there for a few seconds before he pulled away. “Also, you’re going to run for governor in three years, at which point you’ll employ more people in Kansas than everybody else combined. Not to mention all your holdings outside Kansas. And then –“
‘And then’ had kept Superman awake on some late nights. Sometimes he’d fly out to talk to his mom, who was sleeping less with age. It was easier to talk ‘and then’ with her than with Dad, who just got upset and did his heart no good.
“And then,” Lex agreed softly, staring down at his hands. “Unless my little relapse into instability gets out. Americans didn’t take too well to electroshock treatment for Senator Eagleton forty years ago, and I doubt they've changed much. Frankly, ten years’ worth of amnesia doesn’t sound reassuring even to me.”
“No one will know,” Clark promised. “You’ve kept my secret for years.”
Lex looked up at that, his eyes narrowing, sensing some mistake –
Oh. “Also, the Fortress says you should recover more memories over time. But not everything.”
He got a glance over his shoulder at that. Lex should be looking at him, not the wall. “The Fortress also wants to monitor you overnight. But I can take you back first thing in the morning. If you feel ready.”
Lex smiled a little smile at that, the off-kilter, self-mocking one he’d never lost, just hidden until he thought no one was watching. “I’ve never been ready for any of the changes in my life. Why should this one be different?”
Clark fidgeted in his seat. Lex’s self-pity seemed less romantic now than it had when he was seventeen. Okay, lie, but it was romantic and gratingly maudlin at the same time. As far as Lex is concerned, you’re older now than he is, he reminded himself.
He’d always held Lex to a higher standard than everybody else. Lex, he knew, could meet it if he’d only try.
“You’ve always succeeded, you know.”
Lex’s face went blank. “I’ll have to take your word for that.”
Maybe he was being just a little bit unfair. Lex had lost nearly a third of his life. That couldn’t be easy to accept in under eight hours. God only knew Clark had taken plenty of time to accept the whole alien thing, which Lex was now trying to assimilate merely as a side note.
“Why don’t you get some rest?” He gestured back at the bed.
Lex’s gaze followed Clark’s hand. He frowned. “I should review more –“
“You should sleep. You won’t help yourself by getting too tired to think.”
Lex swallowed, looking suspiciously at the bed. Maybe he feared bad dreams. Or maybe it was just that his princess-and-the-pea sensibilities could tell the difference between 800-count Egyptian cotton and Kryptonian simulacrum.
“What else is going on?”
“What?” Clark tried to look innocent. He’d been told he did it well, these days.
“I can read you like a book. Granted, the book is Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, but I can tell there’s something crucial you’re not saying.”
Clark froze like a rabbit spotted by a hawk. “I –“
Lex’s eyes whipped around the newly created room. “You just had this place made for me. When I was here before, where did I stay?”
Whoah. Lex’s brain, twisty like a dragon being carried through the streets of Chinatown, had not gone anywhere Clark expected.
“You and I are more than friends, aren’t we?”
Yes. And no. And yes! They'd never made it that far before the truth tore them apart, but they should have. “I don’t think this is a good time to talk about that, Lex. Whatever happened before today – it wasn’t you.”
“What if I wanted it to be?” Lex’s face was as serious and intent as when he’d first confronted Clark about the accident on the bridge, as when he’d stood in his Metropolis office and told Clark that this was his last chance to tell the truth, as when he’d sworn to stick a Kryptonite knife into Clark’s chest and cut out his beating heart.
Clark drew in a calming breath, wondering if Lex would ever have admitted to his desires without thinking that Clark already knew.
“There’s so much you need to get used to,” he said, trying to be as gentle with his refusal as Lex would tolerate and expect.
Lex swallowed, his face so open and wounded that Clark nearly gave in. “Right. I'll be better off if I handle it on my own.”
“Lex –“
“It’s all right, Clark.” He turned away. “Any chance of materializing a toothbrush?”
Clark extended his hand, then let it drop. “I’ll tell the Fortress.”
When he left the room, Lex was sitting on the bed again, waiting for the next thing to happen. Clark quickly checked to see that the world was safe and sound and asked the AI to create a fully equipped bathroom for Lex.
“Are you certain this is wise, Kal-El?”
Clark winced. The Fortress only used his birth name when it was rebuking him. “The alternative is cruel. To tell him he’s hated and feared by everyone who knows who he really is and that I’m his worst enemy? Would that be better?”
“It would be true.”
Sometimes Clark hated that the Fortress’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once, like the voice from the burning bush. “I never hated him.”
There was a slight pause, doubtless calculated for effect. “It would be easier if you did.”
This hearkened back to old debates about who really ought to be ruling the world. “Hate can be blinding. And I want to see everything. Especially about Lex.” Reminded, he cast a glance through the walls, and saw Lex bent over a sink, examining his face in the mirror.
“As you wish,” the Fortress said, and Clark just knew he was supposed to hear the omitted “Master.”
****
While Lex slept, Clark decided to take care of a potential problem. The Fortress coughed up the requested information without protest, probably because it disliked this particular loose end even more than he did.
It was evening in Paris when he alighted on the terrace. The woman he was there to see was leaning on the rail, looking out over the city; she didn't hear him land. She was slim and elegant in the classic Parisienne fashion, wearing black slashed with crimson, like the claw marks of a panther that worked for Vogue.
She was blonde now.
"Hello, Helen," he said.
She spun, clutching at the iron railing. Her mouth worked as she struggled to say something.
He didn't give her the opportunity. "I know you probably won't believe me, but Lex really isn't still mad."
"Why --?"
"Of course," he continued, "*I'm* still a little cranky."
"I haven't tried to use what I know," Helen said quickly, already regaining her composure even though her hand was white-knuckled on the railing, and she had to be thinking about the six floors between her and the ground. "I'm not going to start now."
Clark smiled and crossed his arms over his chest. "It turns out that I need a little more assurance than your word on that."
"Please –"
"I'm not going to kill you, Helen," he said, smiling, as he advanced and she stopped breathing in terror. "I just need you to come with me. It won't take long."
He didn't need to use the knockout drug the Fortress had provided; she fainted quite nicely into his arms. He flew her back to Antarctica, and if he was a little less careful with her limp body than he'd been with Lex's, no one could really blame him.
She'd already had some plastic surgery, so he didn't need to change her appearance. The Fortress altered her DNA and her fingerprints with its wondrous Kryptonian technology. If she later decided to come back into Lex's life, all she'd have would be crazy claims, disproved by the evidence of her own body. It was ironic that Clark had brought her closer to Lex than she'd been in a decade, even though neither of them knew it.
The Fortress was glad to do the work – the Fortress would have preferred her to be made completely safe, by which it meant interred in the tundra, but it and Clark had learned that compromise made life much easier on both of them. He hadn't minded the risk when the only thing she could have done was harass Clark Kent, but if she'd come back to give Lex a different version of his history, that could have been bad.
After he dumped her back in her Paris flat, he cleaned up an oil spill and took a detour to round up a gang of elephant poachers. A good trip all around.
mecurtin has the temerity to have a life and a family of her own, the minx.Other than the way my interest plunged from Mt. Everest to the Marianas Trench every time Pinkster showed up, I was blown away. Clark waffles, then decides to do the right thing even though Lex was furious at him, but Fate has a hard-on for these guys and the switch that makes him Superman also builds Lex Luthor in his father's image. Now that's symbolism.
This show does parallels and reversals really well. Not just Lex and Clark on the table, or Lex's deeply creepy Clark-hug imitating his deeply creepy Lionel-hug from early in the season, though those were good. Anybody notice Lex's stigmata? When Lionel takes him up an exceeding high mountain and offers him the kingdoms of the earth, Lex is going to accept, because this time the Devil did his homework.
Okay, enough incoherent babbling.
Summary: Lex gets amnesia. Clark gets something else.
Thanks to Meret, Lenore, and the incomparable Mary Ellen Curtin. Any remaining mistakes are theirs.
“Clark?”
Lex’s voice was hoarse, but it was the content that shocked him. Lex hadn’t used that name in years. Clark fumbled for water as Lex pushed himself upright in the bed. He accepted the cup as if it were due tribute.
After a long swallow, Lex put the cup on the bedside table and looked at Clark – again, Clark couldn’t remember the last time Lex looked him in the eyes instead of staring at some point fixed yards beyond his head. Lex's regard had an impact physical blows never did.
“What happened? Where am I? And why are you wearing that ridiculous getup?”
Oh God. Intense relief crashed into new worry.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Lex’s brow wrinkled. “I – the wedding reception, Helen’s little cousin Sophie stepped on her train and Helen fell down, the flowers went all over. She was laughing. Then –“ He stopped, frustrated. Once again searching for answers that only Clark could give.
Clark had to look away. His hands twisted in his lap.
“Something’s happened to Helen.” Lex’s voice tried for calm, but when Clark looked up the expression on his face was as vulnerable as it had been back when Lex confessed that he’d thought about letting his father die.
“Lex.” His voice cracked and he had to swallow. “Lex, Helen died ten years ago.” Or at least had been declared dead, but the subtleties were probably not what Lex needed right now.
Lex grew even paler, the veins on his scalp standing out like whip marks.
“You’d better get a doctor,” he said dully, closing his eyes. “What hospital is this?”
“There’s no doctor. There’s just me.”
Fists clenched in the Fortress’s carefully replicated white sheets. “How long have I been here?” Lex examined his arms, found no sign of muscle atrophy, and looked up at Clark.
Right. Lex would deny grief and search out the puzzle. “Only a few days. But it’s 2013. I’ll take you to Metropolis and you can get a specialist.” The words rushed out, because he didn’t know how to be gentle with a shock like this.
Lex swung his legs off of the bed and stood, shakily. His hand went to the back of his head.
(Contre-coup injury, the Fortress said in Clark’s memory. Inflammation. Internal bleeding. Tearing of the dura mater. Possible permanent cognitive impairment. Possible permanent motor and sensory deficits. “Fix it,” he’d said, as savage with the AI as he’d been with Lex.)
Standing in just his underwear, Lex looked terribly fragile. It had been so easy to forget that he was nearly human.
Clark had to forget everything else and concentrate on what Lex needed now. It didn't matter how they'd gotten here. He'd ruined too many things in his life by thinking about the past; he wasn't going to ruin this.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, and Lex allowed himself to be hugged, even squeezed Clark back with a force that should have bruised. He was warm, and God, the smell of him, cocoa butter and something tart, still the same. All of it the same, skin smooth as the inside of an oyster's shell, the blood so terribly close to the surface.
“How did she die?” Lex asked, a whisper against his shoulder.
“An accident,” he answered, not letting Lex go as he tried to pull away. He didn't need to know she'd betrayed him just yet.
“I loved her,” Lex said. Although Clark knew better, he thought that Lex probably believed it. Lex had needed someone to share his obsession, enjoyed the company of a woman as focused as he was, wanted a sex partner. He didn’t love her. Love would have been uncontrolled, and Lex controlled his interactions with Helen too much for it to have been love.
It had been the same with Sylvia, the one Clark never even met in person. Lex just kept looking for people twisted enough to accept him but upright enough not to betray him, and when they couldn't contort themselves properly, he stopped caring. Of his wives, Desiree was probably the one Lex loved most, because someone else was controlling his emotions.
Of course, Lex might have changed after Clark had given up on him. Or possibly Clark’s definition of love was seriously deformed. Chloe, Lana and Lois would have been happy to endorse that latter thought.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. He should have felt more guilty, he thought, but he'd been carrying around Lex-guilt for so long that there was hardly any difference.
Lex was pushing away with a fair amount of seriousness now. Clark released him and he stepped back, still breathing hard.
“So,” Lex said, rubbing the back of his head, “what else is new?”
The idea presented itself to him like Venus rising from the waves, naked and pure.
Possible permanent cognitive impairment.
It worked once before. At least until the evidence piled up into a new mountain.
“Let me get you some clothes,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Out in the hallway, he scanned through the door and saw Lex sit on the edge of the bed, shoulders held straight. When they were still in Smallville, when things hadn't gone all the way bad, he'd sometimes stand outside the mansion and look in at Lex, checking up. Lex sat that way when he was getting ready to do business with people he didn't trust. In other words, with people.
“Can you tell if the memory loss is really permanent?” he asked the Fortress.
Its voice came from the air around him. “Many neural connections were damaged beyond repair. The structure of human memory, however, is not strictly temporal. He should recover fragmentary memories related to the memories he currently retains. In addition, there are doubtless gaps before his self-reported cutoff date which he simply has not yet noticed.”
Clark waved off that extra information. “Fragmentary. Not complete?”
“Correct.” The Fortress managed to sound disapproving, even without a frown or arms to fold across its nonexistent chest. It was smart enough to follow his thinking.
Lex had never remembered what happened between the time he was rescued from the island and the time he came out of Belle Reve. Mutant healing was good for many things, but it could only remake neurons wholesale, not reconnect them to retrieve specific memories.
Clark reached the closet and got Lex’s clothes. The Fortress had managed to get the blood out of the jacket and shirt – if he could patent that, he’d be nearly as rich as Lex. He remembered too much blood, Lex seizing in his arms as they whipped through the atmosphere, decelerating so horribly slowly to avoid further damage to Lex. The rich fabric held no trace of Lex's scent.
Lex was still sitting when he returned, which was worrisome. Clark would have been more comfortable with the punching of walls. Lex’s hand had still been bandaged at Sylvia's funeral, though the shattered bones had mostly healed.
This Lex didn’t have the smooth suspicion of the Lex he knew now, just a shadow of it. Clark couldn’t remember how he’d dealt with this Lex a decade ago. He hadn’t been any good at it then, anyhow.
This was one wish Kryptonite never could have granted. They would get it right this time.
Wordlessly, he offered the pile of clothes to Lex, who didn’t even raise his eyebrows at the wrinkled jacket. Clark thought the tie had been lost over Tierra del Fuego. Lex dressed and left the collar of his shirt open. As always, he made it look like the only possible ensemble. The hollow of his neck was visible, Lex sharing another one of his secrets.
“You might want to sit down again. I have some things to tell you.”
Now Lex did cock his head in that mildly ironic, thoroughly intense way of his. Clark realized he’d been longing for that look for years, instead of the one that said: 'I’d really like to dissect you, and it would be a bonus if you were still conscious while I did it.' “I assume you’ll be explaining that outfit and why the door wouldn’t open for me.”
So Lex had tried to get out. Clark felt a moment of betrayal that the Fortress hadn’t warned him. He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling exposed. The suit had always been proof against blushes. It displayed Superman, not Clark. This Lex changed all that, mashing his identities together.
Clark cleared his throat. “There’s no good way to say this. I’m an alien, this is my secret hideout.”
Lex’s mouth worked. He half-turned, raised a fist, put his hand down again. “I knew it. I knew it! Not *exactly*, but I knew you knew something about – Where are the rest of you?”
Damn. Neither shock nor grief nor traumatic memory loss slowed Lex down. “I’m the last. My planet was destroyed. I’m the only survivor.” The words had gotten easier over time, worn smooth by repetition.
Lex blinked. “Okay. I’m sorry,” he said, his voice gentling, fast as the drop in barometric pressure before a tornado.
“I’ve had time to get used to it. I don’t have any memories of Krypton.” He wanted to, but any half-dreamed recollection was untrustworthy.
“Krypton,” Lex repeated, considering.
“Anyway,” Clark continued, wanting to leave the subject, “I’m kind of a, well -- you know I’m strong. And fast, and invulnerable, and I can fly and see through things and, you know, stuff like that. So I help people who are in trouble.”
Could he have rushed through that in any lamer a fashion?
There was a lot of white showing around Lex’s eyes. Still, his voice was even as he asked, “So that explains the costume how?”
Clark bit his lip. “It’s kind of my secret identity. Because it’s dangerous for me to have friends and family who could be taken hostage. They, uh, this –“ he indicated the symbol on his chest – “is adopted from the symbol of my family on Krypton. But people call me – don’t laugh, okay? – they call me Superman.”
Lex’s mouth compressed in a valiant and, unsurprisingly, successful attempt to hide his mirth. “All right,” he said at last. “I know all this.”
Clark nodded. “Yeah, you’ve stayed here before when you needed to get away. And also to play with the Fortress’s computers.”
“All right. I share your secret, and that’s why you’re not wearing your mask.”
Clark realized that it was, in fact, possible to blush even more than he already was. He should feel dizzy with all the blood rushing to his face.
“Actually – um, well. I don’t wear one. Nobody who doesn’t already know recognizes me,” he reassured Lex. “Clark Kent is – I’m a reporter with the Daily Planet. I wear glasses,” he added hopefully.
Now Lex was seriously taken aback, blue eyes narrowed. “Really. How – unobservant of our fellow citizens. How did I lose my memory?”
He should have expected Lex to change directions as fast as he took hairpin turns. It was a perfect opening.
“Like I said, it’s dangerous for Superman to have friends. That’s why he’s separate from Clark Kent. We decided that Lex Luthor and Superman would be antagonists in public. Everyone thinks we’re enemies, even your staff. Even my writing partner, Lois Lane.”
That didn’t quite answer the question, but Clark had gained a decade of lies on Lex, and he was just warming up. “Unfortunately, I had a – fan, I guess. Stalker. She decided to do me a favor by getting rid of you. I didn’t get there in time. You were already so seriously injured, I had to take you here – the Fortress – to treat you.” It wasn't the worst lie he'd told Lex. And Lex shouldn't have pushed him so far --
Lex nodded, his eyes free of suspicion above his usual background paranoia.
“I’m sorry,” Clark added, for verisimilitude.
There was silence for a minute. Clark looked at Lex, not caring if Lex saw the hunger and relief. He was entitled. He wanted Lex to know that Clark still cared, after everything, even if Lex didn't quite know what 'everything' was.
“I need to think,” Lex said, frowning distractedly. “Shit – LexCorp. It’s okay? It’s not going to fall apart because I disappeared?”
“I’ll send a message that you’re okay. You’ve got good people working for you. It will be fine.” He tried not to sound too enthusiastic. “Is there anything I can do?”
Lex snorted and looked away. “I’m over thirty – when Alexander the Great was my age, he was dead – I’m a widower, my best friend is an alien and pretends to be my nemesis – I need a little time here. And I need to learn everything I missed.”
He hadn’t thought of that. Lex needed to get up to speed fast, or he’d have more business rivals to worry about than just his father. “I’ll have all your files put on a console here.
The Fortress can get into any human computer system,” he explained at Lex’s inquisitive look. There might be secret files about him on some LexCorp computer with no connection to the net, but Clark could find those in due time, when they went back to the world together.
"Kal-El," the Fortress interrupted, "a message from the Department of State has arrived. They have received intelligence warning of a possible assault on the U.S. military base in Riyadh, and they request that you go there for an inspection and 'to show the flag.'" The last phrase was uttered with the mechanical version of distaste, which sounded an awful lot like the human version.
He looked at Lex apologetically. "I'd better go. 'Truth, justice and the American way,' that's me."
Lex nodded.
On his way out, he told the Fortress to help Lex learn the public details of his life.
He flew towards Saudi Arabia in a great mood, even though he hated political missions more than anything else. Lex had recovered from his injury. Better than recovered; he was Clark's friend again, and Clark's confidante at last. At this point in his career, he could scan for weapons et cetera with only ten percent of his attention. The rest was occupied by what he recognized as over-elaborate fantasies about having Lex's friendship, Lex's presence.
Lex would think the Fortress was the coolest thing ever, which was correct, and there were things he could say to Lex about Superman that he could never say to his parents and that the Fortress wouldn't understand, like the various ways in which a lot of women (and a not insubstantial number of men) tried to reward him for rescues. And he wasn't just talking about the sexual favors, which were a lot more understandable than the food, knitted garments, and occasional plants and animals. Lex would love that sort of thing.
****
When Clark returned from his post-Riyadh patrol, sorting out some fishing vessels caught in a hurricane off the Grand Banks, Lex was still hunched over the console the Fortress had added to the room, flicking through screens of information as fast as a human could.
“You should eat,” he said, coming up behind Lex and placing a hand on his shoulder. “What would you like?”
Lex’s muscles jumped under his hand, but Lex didn’t pull away. Funny, how he felt just like other humans. Clark always thought he should be different somehow, made of sterner stuff. Warm and breathing, though, which were the most important features. “I’m not hungry,” Lex said absently. “So much has changed, and nothing has.”
Martha Kent’s child was not so easily deterred. Stepping to the far wall of the reconfigured room, he asked for food. That was enough to trigger Lex’s not-so-inner geek, and he watched in fascination as a slot opened and Clark removed two trays.
“I got the Fortress to watch a bunch of Star Trek episodes,” he admitted, smiling and avoiding Lex’s eyes. “It needed a template.”
Lex took a tray from his hand. “And still the food’s pure Kansas.” Meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, and green beans. Clark frowned; he hadn’t thought of catering to Lex’s tastes. Lex, however, simply put the tray on his knees and tucked in without further comment, eating rapidly and efficiently. Clark pulled up a chair and imitated him.
When he was finished, Lex put the tray on the desk by the computer and folded his hands in his lap, leaning back a little in his mogul-of-the-universe way.
"You didn't mention that I was a widower twice over," he said mildly.
Clark remembered Sylvia's face, gray with Kryptonite poisoning. He couldn’t get near her, couldn’t stop her mad attempt to drive away from what she’d become. And she’d become a mangled body in a crumpled metal shell. Clark wasn’t certain, but he suspected Lex kept the fragments of the Porsche that remained after they cut her out, just as he kept the remains of the first one. Clark hadn’t been able to attend the funeral, not with Lex’s ring and Sylvia's – and Sylvia. At the end, Sylvia had fled rather than risk hurting Lex, so she must have cared about him. Lex was chronically short of people who cared about him – partly his own fault, partly not. If Sylvia had lived, things might have been different.
And if your grandmother had wheels she’d be a wagon, Clark.
Then again, for all he knew, she did and was.
Clark swallowed. "I didn't really know what to say."
"What was she like?"
Here Clark was at a bit of a disadvantage. By the time Sylvia and Lex got together, Lex wouldn't have told him if it was night or day. He smiled weakly. "She was really smart, intense. You were – I wasn't sure when you got time to see each other, you were both working so hard."
"Did she know about you?"
Clark shook his head. "I've learned over the years that every person who knows is in danger." Not from Lex, oddly; Lex seemed to think that attacking his family and friends would have been gauche or something. Maybe he thought that Clark wouldn't mind Kryptonite arrows as much as any threat to his parents' safety. Lex was always a smart guy. In fact, if that lab hadn't blown up with Lois barely ten feet away, Clark wouldn't have gone to the penthouse in such a fury –
Lex was talking, something about LexCorp and its re-emergence from Luthorcorp in the last five years.
His face attempted impassivity, but Clark could see the hurt very clearly. Lex had been rewound past the time when he learned not to feel so deeply. Clark couldn't get distracted by emotions *he* needed to work through. That had been his mistake with Lex when he was a kid. Lex demanded Clark's full attention, and this time he was going to get it.
“From all reports, it seems that I have become my father,” Lex said.
“No,” Clark protested, sincerely but not quite meaning it the way Lex probably thought. Lionel lived up to his name, his mane; he roared and cuffed and kept a harem and lost interest. Lex was swifter, sleeker, a laser-guided missile whose megatonnage made the lion’s strength irrelevant. “The Planet – Lois needs a crusade, and you’re it. The TV stations love you.”
Lex snorted. “While it’s wonderful that I’m still photogenic, I wanted more than to become Metropolis’s merchant prince. I keep thinking, ten years later and this is it? Still rich, hated and alone.” His mouth did its old rueful twist, which made Clark want to hug him.
“You’re not alone,” he said instead and reached out to put his hand on Lex’s knee. Lex looked down at it with a kind of wonder, and Clark kept it there for a few seconds before he pulled away. “Also, you’re going to run for governor in three years, at which point you’ll employ more people in Kansas than everybody else combined. Not to mention all your holdings outside Kansas. And then –“
‘And then’ had kept Superman awake on some late nights. Sometimes he’d fly out to talk to his mom, who was sleeping less with age. It was easier to talk ‘and then’ with her than with Dad, who just got upset and did his heart no good.
“And then,” Lex agreed softly, staring down at his hands. “Unless my little relapse into instability gets out. Americans didn’t take too well to electroshock treatment for Senator Eagleton forty years ago, and I doubt they've changed much. Frankly, ten years’ worth of amnesia doesn’t sound reassuring even to me.”
“No one will know,” Clark promised. “You’ve kept my secret for years.”
Lex looked up at that, his eyes narrowing, sensing some mistake –
Oh. “Also, the Fortress says you should recover more memories over time. But not everything.”
He got a glance over his shoulder at that. Lex should be looking at him, not the wall. “The Fortress also wants to monitor you overnight. But I can take you back first thing in the morning. If you feel ready.”
Lex smiled a little smile at that, the off-kilter, self-mocking one he’d never lost, just hidden until he thought no one was watching. “I’ve never been ready for any of the changes in my life. Why should this one be different?”
Clark fidgeted in his seat. Lex’s self-pity seemed less romantic now than it had when he was seventeen. Okay, lie, but it was romantic and gratingly maudlin at the same time. As far as Lex is concerned, you’re older now than he is, he reminded himself.
He’d always held Lex to a higher standard than everybody else. Lex, he knew, could meet it if he’d only try.
“You’ve always succeeded, you know.”
Lex’s face went blank. “I’ll have to take your word for that.”
Maybe he was being just a little bit unfair. Lex had lost nearly a third of his life. That couldn’t be easy to accept in under eight hours. God only knew Clark had taken plenty of time to accept the whole alien thing, which Lex was now trying to assimilate merely as a side note.
“Why don’t you get some rest?” He gestured back at the bed.
Lex’s gaze followed Clark’s hand. He frowned. “I should review more –“
“You should sleep. You won’t help yourself by getting too tired to think.”
Lex swallowed, looking suspiciously at the bed. Maybe he feared bad dreams. Or maybe it was just that his princess-and-the-pea sensibilities could tell the difference between 800-count Egyptian cotton and Kryptonian simulacrum.
“What else is going on?”
“What?” Clark tried to look innocent. He’d been told he did it well, these days.
“I can read you like a book. Granted, the book is Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, but I can tell there’s something crucial you’re not saying.”
Clark froze like a rabbit spotted by a hawk. “I –“
Lex’s eyes whipped around the newly created room. “You just had this place made for me. When I was here before, where did I stay?”
Whoah. Lex’s brain, twisty like a dragon being carried through the streets of Chinatown, had not gone anywhere Clark expected.
“You and I are more than friends, aren’t we?”
Yes. And no. And yes! They'd never made it that far before the truth tore them apart, but they should have. “I don’t think this is a good time to talk about that, Lex. Whatever happened before today – it wasn’t you.”
“What if I wanted it to be?” Lex’s face was as serious and intent as when he’d first confronted Clark about the accident on the bridge, as when he’d stood in his Metropolis office and told Clark that this was his last chance to tell the truth, as when he’d sworn to stick a Kryptonite knife into Clark’s chest and cut out his beating heart.
Clark drew in a calming breath, wondering if Lex would ever have admitted to his desires without thinking that Clark already knew.
“There’s so much you need to get used to,” he said, trying to be as gentle with his refusal as Lex would tolerate and expect.
Lex swallowed, his face so open and wounded that Clark nearly gave in. “Right. I'll be better off if I handle it on my own.”
“Lex –“
“It’s all right, Clark.” He turned away. “Any chance of materializing a toothbrush?”
Clark extended his hand, then let it drop. “I’ll tell the Fortress.”
When he left the room, Lex was sitting on the bed again, waiting for the next thing to happen. Clark quickly checked to see that the world was safe and sound and asked the AI to create a fully equipped bathroom for Lex.
“Are you certain this is wise, Kal-El?”
Clark winced. The Fortress only used his birth name when it was rebuking him. “The alternative is cruel. To tell him he’s hated and feared by everyone who knows who he really is and that I’m his worst enemy? Would that be better?”
“It would be true.”
Sometimes Clark hated that the Fortress’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once, like the voice from the burning bush. “I never hated him.”
There was a slight pause, doubtless calculated for effect. “It would be easier if you did.”
This hearkened back to old debates about who really ought to be ruling the world. “Hate can be blinding. And I want to see everything. Especially about Lex.” Reminded, he cast a glance through the walls, and saw Lex bent over a sink, examining his face in the mirror.
“As you wish,” the Fortress said, and Clark just knew he was supposed to hear the omitted “Master.”
****
While Lex slept, Clark decided to take care of a potential problem. The Fortress coughed up the requested information without protest, probably because it disliked this particular loose end even more than he did.
It was evening in Paris when he alighted on the terrace. The woman he was there to see was leaning on the rail, looking out over the city; she didn't hear him land. She was slim and elegant in the classic Parisienne fashion, wearing black slashed with crimson, like the claw marks of a panther that worked for Vogue.
She was blonde now.
"Hello, Helen," he said.
She spun, clutching at the iron railing. Her mouth worked as she struggled to say something.
He didn't give her the opportunity. "I know you probably won't believe me, but Lex really isn't still mad."
"Why --?"
"Of course," he continued, "*I'm* still a little cranky."
"I haven't tried to use what I know," Helen said quickly, already regaining her composure even though her hand was white-knuckled on the railing, and she had to be thinking about the six floors between her and the ground. "I'm not going to start now."
Clark smiled and crossed his arms over his chest. "It turns out that I need a little more assurance than your word on that."
"Please –"
"I'm not going to kill you, Helen," he said, smiling, as he advanced and she stopped breathing in terror. "I just need you to come with me. It won't take long."
He didn't need to use the knockout drug the Fortress had provided; she fainted quite nicely into his arms. He flew her back to Antarctica, and if he was a little less careful with her limp body than he'd been with Lex's, no one could really blame him.
She'd already had some plastic surgery, so he didn't need to change her appearance. The Fortress altered her DNA and her fingerprints with its wondrous Kryptonian technology. If she later decided to come back into Lex's life, all she'd have would be crazy claims, disproved by the evidence of her own body. It was ironic that Clark had brought her closer to Lex than she'd been in a decade, even though neither of them knew it.
The Fortress was glad to do the work – the Fortress would have preferred her to be made completely safe, by which it meant interred in the tundra, but it and Clark had learned that compromise made life much easier on both of them. He hadn't minded the risk when the only thing she could have done was harass Clark Kent, but if she'd come back to give Lex a different version of his history, that could have been bad.
After he dumped her back in her Paris flat, he cleaned up an oil spill and took a detour to round up a gang of elephant poachers. A good trip all around.
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Exactly what i was looking for after Asylum (which i haven't seen myself yet - but the flist is full of nothing else! LOL)
The details are great, and it will be interesting to see what happens with Clark's lies this time....
I find Clark's relatioinship with the AI very interesting, and the way he justifies all his lies - the inside of Clark's head is truly strange.