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Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Part III: Smallville
To be loved is nothing. I want to be preferred. -- Gide
LexCorp already had the most advanced cybernetics lab outside of MIT; Lex acted swiftly to take out the qualifier. He thought it was likely that Misaki Hayashi signed on out of pity more than for the money, but that didn't bother him.
They were able to get a prototype together within weeks. It was ugly, and the fingers were too big, Clark's size rather than Lex's, but people didn't recoil from it when Lex wore gloves and long sleeves.
He was surprised how much it hurt. The interface with the remaining nerves and muscles in his forearm was direct. It was like having a ring of twenty-gauge steel needles jammed in just above his wrist. His forearm looked like a metal gauntlet had half-melted into his flesh. He had to be careful not to pull any of the wires out; he healed small wounds fast enough these days that it was a hassle to put them back in.
After about a week of practice, he was able to roll a wheelchair, shake hands, and lift weights with tolerable precision. Holding small objects and performing other random tasks of the non-dominant hand were simple. Showering was an annoyance, because he had to put on an elbow-length glove, tied off with a rubber hose, to keep the mechanism from getting wet. By the end of the day he generally had a headache to match the constant grinding pain in his arm, which pulsed as if he were holding it in a garbage disposal.
Other people lived with more pain and fewer compensations. That knowledge didn't stop the self-pity, but it did help him push it aside for most of the day.
Lex refused painkillers for the hand, though he did accept local anesthetics for his slowly healing feet. It was a good thing that LexCorp's tower was a new, ADA-compliant building, because it was still so damned awkward to get around in a wheelchair that he couldn't imagine what it would have been like in the old, unmodified LuthorCorp tower.
That was almost the only good thing about LexCorp. In his absence, his subordinates had realigned themselves into several factions, and not everyone was happy to have him return.
Lex had expected as much. It had been one of the tortures that happened naturally, without extra effort by the Joker and his people, the knowledge that his empire was flaking away from him like paper in water.
The Roman Empire's size and longevity -- still an amazing achievement -- could be traced to the absence of fast communication or transportation. The emperor couldn't just call a provincial governor on the phone or drop by via Learjet for an inspection. After a man was appointed, he disappeared. So he had to be the best, the best trained, the most knowledgeable about Roman culture and governance, before he went.
Even with modern communications, the lesson still held true. Crippling subordinates to hold on to one's own power wasn't just insecure, it was self-defeating. Indeed, his people had mostly responded quite well to his death, rearranging responsibilities to keep the company afloat. Precisely because of their strong leadership abilities, though, it was hard for them to step back into their former roles. As De Gaulle had observed, the graveyards were full of indispensable men. Too bad De Gaulle hadn't provided any advice on what to do when the grave yielded back one of her robberies.
At least Clark's story in the Planet had been flattering. Clark changed all the "I"s to "we"s in his big speech, so that Lex sounded more like a leader and less like a megalomaniac. The story made his return to power a PR coup for the company, strengthening his position both within and without. It was nice of Clark; it made Lex worry.
All in all, he'd thought it best to retreat to Smallville to recover, reintegrating himself into LexCorp, bringing the important people out to meet him a few at a time. It was a weakness to need familiar surroundings in order to stay in control. But then he'd always been indulgent of his own weaknesses, and it was only temporary.
****
Two weeks into his exile, Bruce Wayne darkened his doorstep. Lex picked him up coming down the drive, following him from camera to camera until he reached the front hallway. With a few phone calls to security, Lex made sure that no human confronted him on his way in. Bruce headed unerringly towards Lex's office, stopping only once, in front of a room that used to be a little museum of obsession and now held only spiders and dust.
Our problem, Lex thought, is that we have an unerring eye for secrets, but we just can't figure out what they are. If we were worse, or better, at unearthing them we might not be so angry.
At least Lex himself might not be so angry. With Bruce, it was hard to tell.
Lex had tried hard to be flattered by Clark's interest in Bruce. Bruce was like Lex, with his own infinite loop. Bruce didn't have a room where a reconstruction of his parents' murders played on a computer screen, but it was imprinted on the inside of Bruce's eyelids, and he had a whole mansion to remind him.
Bruce was even better than Lex, not just a better man, but a better symbol. Clark's childhood killed and killed again as the Kryptonite did its work, and Bruce's childhood was all about witnessing death. Lex could easily see how his immense grief would lock into Clark's guilt like a hook into an eye, the way Lana Lang's had done.
The doors to his study swung open as if of their own accord. Bruce strode in, his beautifully tailored suit damp from a spat of rain. Bruce rarely bothered with coats, even though they were useful in making grand entrances. Lex thought it was half bravado, being strong enough to resist any element, and half that he wanted as much separation between himself and a certain caped crusader as possible. Moving carefully so as not to crush his remaining fingers, Lex folded his hands on top of his desk and looked up expectantly.
If there were such a thing as a comfortable uncomfortable silence, it reigned then.
"Lex," Bruce said at last.
Lex wanted to stand, to be a little closer to Bruce's height, but maybe it was better to be trapped in his wheelchair, with a hard physical reason he couldn't possibly compete with Bruce. "Hello, Bruce. What brings you all the way to this insignificant hamlet?"
He saw Bruce fight his own ingrained dumb-playboy blankness, sincerity emerging from him like a cicada shaking free of its dun shell. "I wanted to see that you were recovering."
Lex nodded. "Your concern is appreciated. Still, you could have called. I would have told you what you wanted to know."
Bruce half-turned, looking at the little Goya hidden in the shadows, a study for Saturn devouring his children.
When he spoke, he sounded as if each word filled his mouth with the taste of blood. "This was my fault. If I hadn't gone to Metropolis, you wouldn't have attracted his attention."
If you'd killed him instead of locking him in an asylum that might as well have been made of papier-mache, Lex thought, this wouldn't have happened. Wasn't that the real failure here? Then again, Lex knew all about not being able to take the final step against the most terrible of adversaries. He'd choked twice, first with his father and then with Clark.
Lex turned away from Bruce and looked out the window at shredding grey clouds and patches of sky as blue as Wayne blood. Bruce's presence was entirely ridiculous here, where the land was flat and clean and the buildings didn't challenge the sky; he stood out like a black bear in a kindergarten. Not that Lex was one to talk – but at least the folk of Smallville were used to him.
"I'm not angry at you," he said at last. "I understand unintended consequences." The Joker's possessiveness of Batman and Gotham was like his own with Clark, and one thing Lex scorned to be was a hypocrite.
The whole thing could be summarized as a ploy to get Batman's attention. The Joker had been so insulted by being dealt with by another superhero that he orchestrated an elaborate scheme just to punish that superhero, and by extension Batman, because he'd almost surely known how Batman would absorb that guilt into his own. For a madman, the Joker was extremely psychologically astute – and yes, Lex ought to know.
There should be some sort of law of conservation of guilt, Lex thought, so that it wouldn't increase by being shared among people who took responsibility, so that it couldn't be evaded by people who were actually responsible.
He was so tired.
When he turned back, Bruce was watching him steadily, his hands at his sides, waiting like a soldier.
“I told Clark that I didn’t trust you, or him.” Bruce said this with an expression closer to satisfaction than anything else Lex could recognize.
Lex nodded. He, by contrast, trusted Bruce’s behavior in most circumstances. (His version of implicit trust had a lot of qualifications and hedges.) He considered what he ought to say in return. Before his abduction, he’d thought that his anger could be assuaged with sufficient success – over his father, over Clark, over the people who called him a freak and laughed at the things he valued. Now, though, he thought the anger wasn’t likely to go away.
Without knowing what he really wanted, he could neither lie to Bruce nor tell him the truth.
Bruce was watching, waiting for a better response, his blue eyes like Arctic ice.
“Clark and I are – still finding our way around each other,” he said at last. “You’re a complicating factor, one I’d prefer to ignore for the time being. If you stick with the Kryptonite you have and make no attempts to acquire more, we can maintain the status quo.”
Bruce didn’t look happy with that. He probably saw a sword of Damocles hanging over his head, Clark the blade and Lex the hilt. But Bruce never looked happy when he was being relatively honest.
“Look, you’re never going to trust me to do the right thing as long as I’m alive, and I’m not going to die any time soon, so you need to decide what else is going to satisfy you.”
“Stay out of Gotham,” Bruce said immediately.
Lex was surprised into laughter, his living hand clenched on the arm of his wheelchair.
“I’ll take care of the Joker,” Bruce insisted. “I know I – failed, so far.” It sounded as if the words had been forced out over razor blades. “You’ve got reason to want revenge. But I won't let that happen in my city.”
If it was your city, why the fuck did the Joker elude you for months? Lex wondered. Still, he wouldn’t get far in Gotham with the Batman standing in his way.
“The Joker and anyone he worked with are fair game if they leave the city,” he said. When the Joker inevitably broke out of Arkham, he could reconsider his side of the deal. “And you’ll actually communicate with the other do-gooders. Better coordination could have kept this from being such an enormous disaster.”
Bruce nodded sharply. Lex realized that he’d asked for too little. Bruce was probably grateful to have the Justice League around, where he could keep an eye on all the most powerful beings at once and learn their secrets. He just needed to pretend to be reluctant, to strengthen the image. Well, Lex was still exhausted and shaken; he could be excused a few failures to exploit his advantages.
“We both want a better world, you know,” he said, suddenly weary of the conversation.
“And you’re so sure you know how to build it.” The delivery managed to be affectless and derisive at once. Lex almost envied him his communication skills.
Bruce lacked ambition; he wanted time to roll backwards, and failing that, he wanted safety. But total safety could only be found in the silence of the graveyard, as Lex’s mother and Julian had both discovered.
“Power is a constant, Bruce. It can be neither created nor destroyed.”
Bruce shrugged, his elegant brown suit coat moving fluidly over his broad shoulders, so like Clark in size and shape but so different from Clark’s careful awkwardness. “It still matters who has the power and what it’s used to do.”
“I can’t argue with you there,” he admitted and put his hand out to touch his desk, wanting to feel something solid, something his.
Bruce gathered himself, a stillness settling on him as he prepared to say words Lex just knew he wouldn’t like. “Speaking of power, the records from Star Labs make fascinating reading.”
Lex forced out a mild, inquiring expression. “Really? I didn’t realize biology was your field.”
“I dabble,” he said, in a voice that was pure Batman.
Lex mentally ran through the list of names of the security consultants he was going to fire.
“You should be careful,” Bruce continued. “Illegal experiments make people nervous, and I know how much your image matters to you.”
He gritted his teeth. “Of course, if you’ve only got one shot in your arsenal, you also have to be careful when you use it.”
Bruce moved his mouth into a shape very like a smile. “I agree completely.”
“You know, Bruce – and I mean this in the nicest possible way – from now on, I wish you’d just stay in Gotham.”
The full-on glower was less impressive without the mask. Still, if he couldn’t control Batman, he could at least break through the apparent indifference.
Without further conversation, Bruce turned on his heel and left.
Lex closed his eyes, thinking about all the plans he’d had through the years. Destroying his father, gaining the adulation of millions, remaking the face of the earth itself. If he didn’t think he knew how to improve things, there would be no point to existing – and that was just as true for the Batman.
Now that he'd escaped from that white room in Gotham – inasmuch as he'd ever leave, which was a matter of some internal debate – he was regaining his hope that existence did have meaning. At least, he was willing to make a version of Pascal's Wager on the possibility. If he was wrong, he wouldn't have wasted anything worth keeping.
He forced himself back to his desk, where mundane matters refused to resolve themselves just because he had conversations with superheroes.
****
Misaki had good news for him: The progress on the brain implant was steady. If they could get it working properly, so that it read patterns of neuronal activity indicating an intent to move a particular way, he could get rid of many of the wires and, it was to be hoped, a significant amount of the pain. Of course, it would require walking around with an electrode sticking out of his head, and he couldn't exactly keep it hidden under a mane of flowing hair, but nothing came for free.
Other facets of his existence were showing improvement, as well. The board was remembering what it was like to serve him, and most of the people he dealt with acted as if he'd never been gone. He was almost hesitant to go back to Metropolis, when having visitors come to Smallville as supplicants was working so well.
After reading the details of Misaki's latest advances, Lex turned to plans for expansion into California. With proper management and coordination, migrant workers could travel the country working on LexCorp farms year-round, with corresponding gains in productivity and profits.
Lex was just about to break for dinner when the gate guard buzzed to let him know Mercy had arrived with a man in tow.
He waited, unable to concentrate on the reports in front of him, his eyes roving over the eclectic art hung on the office walls. He'd always liked the one that looked like a starfield in royal blue, even if it wasn't old and manorial.
The office doors swung open. Mercy shoved the man and he stumbled in. His face was severely bruised, one eye swollen almost shut, but Lex still recognized him.
"What's his name?" he asked her. His voice sounded as featureless as poured concrete, which gave him a surge of pride that lasted until the man brought his chin up and snarled.
"John Thomas Collins," Mercy said.
Lex rolled his chair out from behind the desk, crossing the floor to get closer to Collins. If he could have stood, he would have gotten right in the man's face, but as it was he stayed back so he wouldn't have to crane his neck too far. The whirring of the wheelchair's electric motor was ominous in the silent room.
"You don't look as pretty as you did last time I saw you," Collins said, spitting the words out through obvious pain. Mercy liked to kick her targets in the ribs; she said it encouraged good behavior.
Lex smiled. Collins' bravado flickered for a second, then returned.
The question was, torture or swift death? Torture had the virtue of tit-for-tat, but the defect that the scales would never even out as far as Lex was concerned, so the attempt might just be setting himself up for disappointment. Swift death might be best; Lex would be left resentful, but one step closer to putting the whole mess behind him.
Collins knew he wasn't leaving the mansion. Lex could see the realization sinking in. It was in the way his shoulders twitched, the way his good eye darted around the room, looking for something that would let him get in a few good blows before he fell.
"I'd say your failure to beg for your life impressed me, if it did," Lex told him. "But I think you're just too stupid and too twisted to care. Mercy –"
She stepped closer, raising her hands preparatory to snapping Collins' neck.
There was a blur and a whoosh. Mercy was gone, the office doors were closed, and Clark was holding Collins' wrist like he was a recalcitrant schoolboy. The man was so big and bulky that Clark looked almost normal beside him – normal if you discounted the tights and cape, of course.
"Superman," Lex said wearily. He was almost tempted to use Clark's real name, but he'd kept mum for years and he wasn't going to change just for the sake of a piece of shit like Collins.
"You were going to tell Mercy to kill him."
Lex raised his eyebrows at the obviousness of the statement.
"He's one of them, isn't he? One of the Joker's."
Lex swallowed. "If you're just going to repeat information I already know –"
"Two choices, Lex. First, I can take him to the police and you can leave him to the justice system." Collins sniggered. Clark spared him an annoyed look. "Shut up," he suggested. Lex didn't see him move, but Collins' whimper suggested that Clark had done something painful.
"As attractive as that proposition is, I'm going to have to ask what's behind door number two."
"I'll kill him for you."
Lex choked on air.
"You can have him dead," Clark continued, as matter-of-factly as if he were discussing the weather – in fact, as a farm kid, he'd often sounded far more emotionally invested in the weather than he did now – "but only if you use me to do it."
Jesus. Clark – Clark was telling him to make Superman into a murderer. Stepping off that pedestal, if Lex asked it. Clark knew – it was becoming embarrassingly clear that he knew better than Lex – that Lex needed him to be the good one, the one who had uncrossable lines, so that Lex could cross them and feel assured that his ruthlessness was necessary. Lex needed balance, an immovable object to his irresistable force.
What happens to yin if yang lets go?
God, his obsession with myths and legends was fucking him hard here, what with Clark off the script, depriving Lex of the appropriate narrative models.
"You wouldn't," he said experimentally. Collins, at least, looked like he wanted to believe that, his expression truly terrified at last, a child's fear on the man-mountain's face.
"He was one of the ones who tortured you, wasn't he?"
Lex nodded without meaning to.
"Tell me."
Again, Lex found himself speaking without a plan. "I didn't get – let's just say that after the first day, I wasn't exactly going to arouse lust in anybody short of Jeffrey Dahmer. But Mr. Collins here – he liked watching them work. And at night, when everybody else had gone home, snug in their beds, he'd sit there, one hand in my fucking *guts*, and –" Saying it brought the sensation back, the pain only outpaced by the absolute humiliation, the violation making the endless brutal hospital tests when he was a kid seem like coddling. His *hands*, glistening –
In a way, Collins' presence was a blessing; it gave Lex the incentive he needed to shut the fuck up before he lost it. The artificial hand had compressed the metal arm of his chair into a twisted twig. He let go, deliberately, and looked only into Clark's eyes. "Yes, he was one of the ones who tortured me."
"And you think I wouldn't kill him?" For the first time ever, Lex could only see Superman, nothing of Clark at all. "I'd sleep like a baby. It's up to you."
Clark, on his side at last.
Clark, taking the step from policeman to executioner.
Everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd ever feared.
"You're playing with high stakes," he said. Clark's stance relaxed even as he spoke, which pissed him off because it meant that Clark was still ahead of him.
"You're the one who requires life-or-death drama." And that, Lex thought, was at least a return to Clark's lies of old, because Clark got as much a charge out of it as he did.
He didn't need to ask what would happen if Collins had an unfortunate accident in the prison yard. This was his big chance, and if he blew it, Clark would be lost to him forever. Only the greatest of traumas had given him this opportunity, a nonrefundable, unalterable ticket good for this flight only.
"Just – get him out of here. Before I change my mind."
Clark did, disappearing as fast as he'd arrived. Several minutes later, Mercy burst in, looking nearly miffed.
“Lex –“ she said, clearly about to abase herself. She’d just begun to lose the tightness in her face, the circles under her eyes.
“Don’t worry about it. You know he’s not going to kill me; just stay focused on the ones who *do* want to. Good work on Collins, by the way.”
She nodded slightly, looking unconvinced.
****
There had come a day when Lex had realized that he could escape the torment by giving himself over to madness. He'd been hanging over that abyss for a long time. He could have let go, unclenched his fingers – yes, ironic in retrospect – and fallen, wind-borne, into something new and strange.
Three times he'd almost done it. No devil at his shoulder, tempting him, no scent of brimstone in the air under the blood, but three very bad days. He hadn't even begged for it to stop because he'd screamed his throat raw and probably couldn't have formed coherent pleas in any event.
Dissociation, he'd known, would be permanent, a suicide of mind if not body.
Twice he'd rejected the option, knowing – not believing, because belief implied the possibility of doubt – that Clark was going to come for him.
But one night, looking down at his chest, marked with a grid like he was being tested for allergies rather than his response to various corrosives, the knowledge that Clark was on his way had lost its meaning. There had been only the now, the body, the knife. What he once thought, wanted, feared – all irrelevant, because all depended on the existence of some person over time, and he'd been ripped from time's grasp. The pain was now was forever. Was this Lex Luthor? This *thing*, raw and seeping, no boundaries between it and the edges of the world? How could it be?
Whatever was left of him had decided to live in the pain. Not in hope, not in faith. Life, blind and seeking. There was no reason. He didn't refuse madness; there had been no "he" to do so. The madness had looked at what Lex had become, and in that stillness – the heart of light, the silence – it had slid away from him, indifferent. It had passed him by as if his disintegration had made him invisible.
Back in Smallville, his body had often gone on fighting past the point of hope or reason, and in the Joker's abbatoir it seemed that his mind had joined that blind struggle. Neither mind nor body seemed to have much connection with what Lex thought of as himself. His soul was separate, and didn't have any control over what mind or body did, which maybe was proof that he didn't have a soul.
After that, he had fought even when he didn't really want to, struggling hopelessly, ceaselessly, cutting himself open on the restraints before any of the minions could do it for him. On his next visit, the Joker had seen that Lex had traveled through some undiscovered country, and he'd been delighted. He'd wanted to know what had been the trigger, so much that he'd let Lex heal enough to talk.
When Lex had proved incapable of explaining to his satisfaction, the Joker had become truly inventive.
Ten days later, Clark had arrived.
****
Two days after Collins, Clark came back. He actually checked in with the guards at the gate this time, waiting patiently while they checked with Hope, whose emotionless mask was flawed only by the twitch of the muscle in her jaw when Lex told her to let Clark come to the office.
Lex had time to send a few last messages and put away the reports on the agricultural division’s five-year plan before Clark arrived.
When he pushed open the doors, even though he was dressed in crayon-bright colors, Lex couldn’t help but remember all the times he’d come that way before. Smiling, frowning, brooding, blushing, asking for something only Lex could do for him. Lex had always looked forward to that, to confirm he was good for Clark. It would have been normal to resent being used as a vending machine, a car for a smile, but Lex was used to pay-as-you-go relationships, and it was only money. Clark’s material wants had never been the problem. It was when the tickets and mortgages weren’t enough any more that things had gone sour.
He opened his mouth to ask what he’d done to deserve the visit, but Clark beat him to it.
"Lex. I’ve been thinking – God, it seems like it’s all I think about, now that you’re back. I want to try again. I want to be your friend."
Lex blinked.
Well. That was – abrupt. Classic Clark, and really, why fritter away precious minutes on pleasantries that wouldn’t be pleasant with all their history hanging over each word?
Clark looked so out of place in this opulently appointed room, each object with a pedigree and a certificate of authenticity. No longer wrapped in cheap flannel, he was hidden behind his artificial colors and his technologically distorted face, and even so he seemed more familiar than any of the antiques Lionel had bought.
Yet Lex remembered why he’d bowed out of this dance so many years ago. Clark’s moves were clumsy and tended to leave bruises, and Lex’s steps involved too much humiliation even for him.
"We've been down this road before, Clark, and let's just say it was a road paved with the very best intentions." He could live without Clark, he knew, but not with him always just out of reach, and that was what friendship meant to Clark.
"I was *fifteen*, Lex. Cut me some slack – meeting you was like being pulled up to the major leagues to pitch against Sammy Sosa after only ever playing T-ball. And my parents didn't even *let* me play baseball."
"I'm not even going to touch that simile,” he said, buying time to figure out how to react. “Maybe you were too young – I admit I put a lot of pressure on you – but now we have that history. We can't start over."
"No, but maybe we can –"
Whatever they could do was lost in the howl of the perimeter alarms, loud as a tornado and twice as worrisome.
Lex hit a few buttons on the control panel by his desk and portions of the bookshelves slid aside. The screens they revealed showed different views of the mansion, interior and grounds both.
Men were converging on the mansion from all sides, pouring out from nowhere like a plague of ants. They must have been preparing for days, digging in just outside the grounds – in the sky, helicopters were circling like vultures, doubtless waiting to disgorge more troops.
Clark was staring at the images, looking as surprised as Lex felt.
The cellphone wouldn't work, nor would his secure land line.
What the hell --
The answer came to him like a lightning strike.
While he was gone, certain people at LexCorp must have been concerned for the company's future, with its founding father gone. They would need to reassure their best customer that the firm was still a valuable partner. Therefore, they would have made deals with the government, extremely advantageous deals that Lex had always refused for reasons he had never bothered to explain to anyone else. He'd always assumed that he'd be in control, because he was arrogant and overconfident, and he'd certainly never thought that he'd come *back* after being gone, so he hadn't planned on what to do if the government came into a large supply of Kryptonite.
At least he had some generic plans.
The computer system was still working, though he couldn't count on it lasting much longer with the hackers the government must be employing against it. Quickly, he tapped in commands, setting timers and activating defenses.
All across the grounds, automatic sprinklers popped up and began to throw out arcs of liquid, glistening in the sunlight. There wasn't much at first, but it built up quickly, coating the ground. Some of the soldiers tried to dodge it, but others just ran through.
And fell down.
LexCorp's military contracts included one for the Mobility Denial System, a translucent goo with the friction coefficient of wet ice. A layer of the stuff would stop a man from walking, stop a wheel from turning, even turn a helicopter's landing into a death slide. That was the theory, anyway; this was going to be the largest-scale test yet.
It was almost enjoyable to watch trained killers get turned into re-enactors of the Three Stooges' slapstick as they struggled to stand, to get a grip on their gooey weapons, even to get on hands and knees while the MDS continued to pump out.
But there were dozens of them inside the mansion already, so all he'd done was limit the immediate threat.
His attention was drawn back into the room as Clark staggered, looking nauseated. "They have a lot of Kryptonite," he said. "Even with the new suit, I can feel it."
"I don't know how much they got from LexCorp," Lex said. "If it's the whole supply –" and if it was, heads would roll – "it's something over eight tons."
"*Eight tons*?" Clark repeated.
"Now is not the time for recriminations. Get out of here," he told Clark. The order was pro forma; it was silly to suppose Clark would comply.
Nor did Clark bother to respond. Typical. Lex thought of saying that they were obviously here for Clark, and that if he left, they'd have no reason to harm anyone. But he wasn't sure that the claim would be correct. Some analyst might actually have noticed all those Superman-Luthor summits and concluded that Lex was a possible hostage. Lex hated the idea of being a mere tool to get someone *else* to behave. Even the Joker had done better by him in that way. He wasn't going to – okay, so he *was* going to take it sitting down, but by God he was going to orchestrate some punishment for the insult.
Lex struggled to think.
"Do you know how to shoot a gun?"
"I grew up on a farm, Lex."
As if it had been a stupid question, as if Clark's superpowers hadn't made guns puny by comparison. But it sounded as if Jonathan Kent's traditionalism prevailed, which in this case was a good thing. Lex went to a cabinet on the side of the room and keyed in his code. The door popped open. He took out a shotgun and held it out to Clark.
"I'm not using that."
Fucking pacifist. The Kents should have called him Ferdinand, like that wimp bull in the kids' book, Lex thought as he dumped a box of shells into his lap and prepared to wheel himself out to defend his property.
The box disappeared, as did the gun. Lex looked up to see Clark bend the barrel into an L-shape. "You're not using that either. These are American soldiers."
Lex stared at him, wondering how he'd survived this far.
"What do you suggest we use? Sarcasm?"
"You're well-supplied, at least." Clark had folded his arms over his chest. Even with greenish veins popping out over his face and hands, he looked resolute. And the pose made his arms look amazing, no matter how annoying it was otherwise. "That goo can't be your only defense."
"Yes, I was planning on supplementing with a *shotgun*." If Mercy wasn't with them by now, she was unlikely to break through any time soon. She was under orders not to kill any federal agents, which was most likely cramping her style.
Clark looked towards the ceiling. "They've set up a perimeter, with air support. I won't be able to fly out without getting close enough to the Kryptonite to be vulnerable. And they're bringing it in, shrinking the globe."
Lex could see it in his mind, a glowing green force diagram.
Wait –
"Real globe or half globe? Can you tunnel out?"
Clark blinked and glanced down. "Yeah," he said, eyes widening in surprise.
Just goes to show it's a mistake to use half measures, Lex thought, and bit down on the quip.
"What are you waiting for?" he demanded.
"Could you *be* any more annoying? Don't answer that."
Clark stepped away from Lex. In the blink of an eye, the carpet was rolled up and left at the side of the room. He began to twirl. Blue and red blurred into a miniature tornado, which threw up a cloud of wood shavings and other debris. Lex raised his hand to shield his eyes, wondering why exactly Clark had bothered to protect the carpet.
As Clark sank into the floor, Lex saw the office doors begin to shake. The soldiers must have arrived, despite the gas and other assorted party favors in the halls. It was a bad day for the mansion's structural integrity, he thought with resignation, though he hoped that his own structural integrity would suffer no further insults in the near future.
Lex drew a deep breath, preparing to deal with whoever came through the door. He expected a lack of humor matched only by an absence of imagination; he could work with that.
Just as the door burst open, the tornado whirled back out of the hole in the floor, like a swarm of killer bees on speed. Lex felt himself being lifted and slung over Clark's shoulder.
He put his hands over his head; Clark was decent at keeping him from bouncing off the ragged edges of his newly created tunnel, but bits and pieces were still crumbling around him, and he was spattered with dirt and stone fragments.
Lex couldn't tell how far they went underground. They came up in a featureless cornfield. Clark paused to look around.
"They're too far away to track us," he said. "I want to take you to my Fortress until we figure out how to deal with this."
Lex nodded.
They were over an ocean before he realized that Clark had said "we."
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Part III: Smallville
To be loved is nothing. I want to be preferred. -- Gide
LexCorp already had the most advanced cybernetics lab outside of MIT; Lex acted swiftly to take out the qualifier. He thought it was likely that Misaki Hayashi signed on out of pity more than for the money, but that didn't bother him.
They were able to get a prototype together within weeks. It was ugly, and the fingers were too big, Clark's size rather than Lex's, but people didn't recoil from it when Lex wore gloves and long sleeves.
He was surprised how much it hurt. The interface with the remaining nerves and muscles in his forearm was direct. It was like having a ring of twenty-gauge steel needles jammed in just above his wrist. His forearm looked like a metal gauntlet had half-melted into his flesh. He had to be careful not to pull any of the wires out; he healed small wounds fast enough these days that it was a hassle to put them back in.
After about a week of practice, he was able to roll a wheelchair, shake hands, and lift weights with tolerable precision. Holding small objects and performing other random tasks of the non-dominant hand were simple. Showering was an annoyance, because he had to put on an elbow-length glove, tied off with a rubber hose, to keep the mechanism from getting wet. By the end of the day he generally had a headache to match the constant grinding pain in his arm, which pulsed as if he were holding it in a garbage disposal.
Other people lived with more pain and fewer compensations. That knowledge didn't stop the self-pity, but it did help him push it aside for most of the day.
Lex refused painkillers for the hand, though he did accept local anesthetics for his slowly healing feet. It was a good thing that LexCorp's tower was a new, ADA-compliant building, because it was still so damned awkward to get around in a wheelchair that he couldn't imagine what it would have been like in the old, unmodified LuthorCorp tower.
That was almost the only good thing about LexCorp. In his absence, his subordinates had realigned themselves into several factions, and not everyone was happy to have him return.
Lex had expected as much. It had been one of the tortures that happened naturally, without extra effort by the Joker and his people, the knowledge that his empire was flaking away from him like paper in water.
The Roman Empire's size and longevity -- still an amazing achievement -- could be traced to the absence of fast communication or transportation. The emperor couldn't just call a provincial governor on the phone or drop by via Learjet for an inspection. After a man was appointed, he disappeared. So he had to be the best, the best trained, the most knowledgeable about Roman culture and governance, before he went.
Even with modern communications, the lesson still held true. Crippling subordinates to hold on to one's own power wasn't just insecure, it was self-defeating. Indeed, his people had mostly responded quite well to his death, rearranging responsibilities to keep the company afloat. Precisely because of their strong leadership abilities, though, it was hard for them to step back into their former roles. As De Gaulle had observed, the graveyards were full of indispensable men. Too bad De Gaulle hadn't provided any advice on what to do when the grave yielded back one of her robberies.
At least Clark's story in the Planet had been flattering. Clark changed all the "I"s to "we"s in his big speech, so that Lex sounded more like a leader and less like a megalomaniac. The story made his return to power a PR coup for the company, strengthening his position both within and without. It was nice of Clark; it made Lex worry.
All in all, he'd thought it best to retreat to Smallville to recover, reintegrating himself into LexCorp, bringing the important people out to meet him a few at a time. It was a weakness to need familiar surroundings in order to stay in control. But then he'd always been indulgent of his own weaknesses, and it was only temporary.
****
Two weeks into his exile, Bruce Wayne darkened his doorstep. Lex picked him up coming down the drive, following him from camera to camera until he reached the front hallway. With a few phone calls to security, Lex made sure that no human confronted him on his way in. Bruce headed unerringly towards Lex's office, stopping only once, in front of a room that used to be a little museum of obsession and now held only spiders and dust.
Our problem, Lex thought, is that we have an unerring eye for secrets, but we just can't figure out what they are. If we were worse, or better, at unearthing them we might not be so angry.
At least Lex himself might not be so angry. With Bruce, it was hard to tell.
Lex had tried hard to be flattered by Clark's interest in Bruce. Bruce was like Lex, with his own infinite loop. Bruce didn't have a room where a reconstruction of his parents' murders played on a computer screen, but it was imprinted on the inside of Bruce's eyelids, and he had a whole mansion to remind him.
Bruce was even better than Lex, not just a better man, but a better symbol. Clark's childhood killed and killed again as the Kryptonite did its work, and Bruce's childhood was all about witnessing death. Lex could easily see how his immense grief would lock into Clark's guilt like a hook into an eye, the way Lana Lang's had done.
The doors to his study swung open as if of their own accord. Bruce strode in, his beautifully tailored suit damp from a spat of rain. Bruce rarely bothered with coats, even though they were useful in making grand entrances. Lex thought it was half bravado, being strong enough to resist any element, and half that he wanted as much separation between himself and a certain caped crusader as possible. Moving carefully so as not to crush his remaining fingers, Lex folded his hands on top of his desk and looked up expectantly.
If there were such a thing as a comfortable uncomfortable silence, it reigned then.
"Lex," Bruce said at last.
Lex wanted to stand, to be a little closer to Bruce's height, but maybe it was better to be trapped in his wheelchair, with a hard physical reason he couldn't possibly compete with Bruce. "Hello, Bruce. What brings you all the way to this insignificant hamlet?"
He saw Bruce fight his own ingrained dumb-playboy blankness, sincerity emerging from him like a cicada shaking free of its dun shell. "I wanted to see that you were recovering."
Lex nodded. "Your concern is appreciated. Still, you could have called. I would have told you what you wanted to know."
Bruce half-turned, looking at the little Goya hidden in the shadows, a study for Saturn devouring his children.
When he spoke, he sounded as if each word filled his mouth with the taste of blood. "This was my fault. If I hadn't gone to Metropolis, you wouldn't have attracted his attention."
If you'd killed him instead of locking him in an asylum that might as well have been made of papier-mache, Lex thought, this wouldn't have happened. Wasn't that the real failure here? Then again, Lex knew all about not being able to take the final step against the most terrible of adversaries. He'd choked twice, first with his father and then with Clark.
Lex turned away from Bruce and looked out the window at shredding grey clouds and patches of sky as blue as Wayne blood. Bruce's presence was entirely ridiculous here, where the land was flat and clean and the buildings didn't challenge the sky; he stood out like a black bear in a kindergarten. Not that Lex was one to talk – but at least the folk of Smallville were used to him.
"I'm not angry at you," he said at last. "I understand unintended consequences." The Joker's possessiveness of Batman and Gotham was like his own with Clark, and one thing Lex scorned to be was a hypocrite.
The whole thing could be summarized as a ploy to get Batman's attention. The Joker had been so insulted by being dealt with by another superhero that he orchestrated an elaborate scheme just to punish that superhero, and by extension Batman, because he'd almost surely known how Batman would absorb that guilt into his own. For a madman, the Joker was extremely psychologically astute – and yes, Lex ought to know.
There should be some sort of law of conservation of guilt, Lex thought, so that it wouldn't increase by being shared among people who took responsibility, so that it couldn't be evaded by people who were actually responsible.
He was so tired.
When he turned back, Bruce was watching him steadily, his hands at his sides, waiting like a soldier.
“I told Clark that I didn’t trust you, or him.” Bruce said this with an expression closer to satisfaction than anything else Lex could recognize.
Lex nodded. He, by contrast, trusted Bruce’s behavior in most circumstances. (His version of implicit trust had a lot of qualifications and hedges.) He considered what he ought to say in return. Before his abduction, he’d thought that his anger could be assuaged with sufficient success – over his father, over Clark, over the people who called him a freak and laughed at the things he valued. Now, though, he thought the anger wasn’t likely to go away.
Without knowing what he really wanted, he could neither lie to Bruce nor tell him the truth.
Bruce was watching, waiting for a better response, his blue eyes like Arctic ice.
“Clark and I are – still finding our way around each other,” he said at last. “You’re a complicating factor, one I’d prefer to ignore for the time being. If you stick with the Kryptonite you have and make no attempts to acquire more, we can maintain the status quo.”
Bruce didn’t look happy with that. He probably saw a sword of Damocles hanging over his head, Clark the blade and Lex the hilt. But Bruce never looked happy when he was being relatively honest.
“Look, you’re never going to trust me to do the right thing as long as I’m alive, and I’m not going to die any time soon, so you need to decide what else is going to satisfy you.”
“Stay out of Gotham,” Bruce said immediately.
Lex was surprised into laughter, his living hand clenched on the arm of his wheelchair.
“I’ll take care of the Joker,” Bruce insisted. “I know I – failed, so far.” It sounded as if the words had been forced out over razor blades. “You’ve got reason to want revenge. But I won't let that happen in my city.”
If it was your city, why the fuck did the Joker elude you for months? Lex wondered. Still, he wouldn’t get far in Gotham with the Batman standing in his way.
“The Joker and anyone he worked with are fair game if they leave the city,” he said. When the Joker inevitably broke out of Arkham, he could reconsider his side of the deal. “And you’ll actually communicate with the other do-gooders. Better coordination could have kept this from being such an enormous disaster.”
Bruce nodded sharply. Lex realized that he’d asked for too little. Bruce was probably grateful to have the Justice League around, where he could keep an eye on all the most powerful beings at once and learn their secrets. He just needed to pretend to be reluctant, to strengthen the image. Well, Lex was still exhausted and shaken; he could be excused a few failures to exploit his advantages.
“We both want a better world, you know,” he said, suddenly weary of the conversation.
“And you’re so sure you know how to build it.” The delivery managed to be affectless and derisive at once. Lex almost envied him his communication skills.
Bruce lacked ambition; he wanted time to roll backwards, and failing that, he wanted safety. But total safety could only be found in the silence of the graveyard, as Lex’s mother and Julian had both discovered.
“Power is a constant, Bruce. It can be neither created nor destroyed.”
Bruce shrugged, his elegant brown suit coat moving fluidly over his broad shoulders, so like Clark in size and shape but so different from Clark’s careful awkwardness. “It still matters who has the power and what it’s used to do.”
“I can’t argue with you there,” he admitted and put his hand out to touch his desk, wanting to feel something solid, something his.
Bruce gathered himself, a stillness settling on him as he prepared to say words Lex just knew he wouldn’t like. “Speaking of power, the records from Star Labs make fascinating reading.”
Lex forced out a mild, inquiring expression. “Really? I didn’t realize biology was your field.”
“I dabble,” he said, in a voice that was pure Batman.
Lex mentally ran through the list of names of the security consultants he was going to fire.
“You should be careful,” Bruce continued. “Illegal experiments make people nervous, and I know how much your image matters to you.”
He gritted his teeth. “Of course, if you’ve only got one shot in your arsenal, you also have to be careful when you use it.”
Bruce moved his mouth into a shape very like a smile. “I agree completely.”
“You know, Bruce – and I mean this in the nicest possible way – from now on, I wish you’d just stay in Gotham.”
The full-on glower was less impressive without the mask. Still, if he couldn’t control Batman, he could at least break through the apparent indifference.
Without further conversation, Bruce turned on his heel and left.
Lex closed his eyes, thinking about all the plans he’d had through the years. Destroying his father, gaining the adulation of millions, remaking the face of the earth itself. If he didn’t think he knew how to improve things, there would be no point to existing – and that was just as true for the Batman.
Now that he'd escaped from that white room in Gotham – inasmuch as he'd ever leave, which was a matter of some internal debate – he was regaining his hope that existence did have meaning. At least, he was willing to make a version of Pascal's Wager on the possibility. If he was wrong, he wouldn't have wasted anything worth keeping.
He forced himself back to his desk, where mundane matters refused to resolve themselves just because he had conversations with superheroes.
****
Misaki had good news for him: The progress on the brain implant was steady. If they could get it working properly, so that it read patterns of neuronal activity indicating an intent to move a particular way, he could get rid of many of the wires and, it was to be hoped, a significant amount of the pain. Of course, it would require walking around with an electrode sticking out of his head, and he couldn't exactly keep it hidden under a mane of flowing hair, but nothing came for free.
Other facets of his existence were showing improvement, as well. The board was remembering what it was like to serve him, and most of the people he dealt with acted as if he'd never been gone. He was almost hesitant to go back to Metropolis, when having visitors come to Smallville as supplicants was working so well.
After reading the details of Misaki's latest advances, Lex turned to plans for expansion into California. With proper management and coordination, migrant workers could travel the country working on LexCorp farms year-round, with corresponding gains in productivity and profits.
Lex was just about to break for dinner when the gate guard buzzed to let him know Mercy had arrived with a man in tow.
He waited, unable to concentrate on the reports in front of him, his eyes roving over the eclectic art hung on the office walls. He'd always liked the one that looked like a starfield in royal blue, even if it wasn't old and manorial.
The office doors swung open. Mercy shoved the man and he stumbled in. His face was severely bruised, one eye swollen almost shut, but Lex still recognized him.
"What's his name?" he asked her. His voice sounded as featureless as poured concrete, which gave him a surge of pride that lasted until the man brought his chin up and snarled.
"John Thomas Collins," Mercy said.
Lex rolled his chair out from behind the desk, crossing the floor to get closer to Collins. If he could have stood, he would have gotten right in the man's face, but as it was he stayed back so he wouldn't have to crane his neck too far. The whirring of the wheelchair's electric motor was ominous in the silent room.
"You don't look as pretty as you did last time I saw you," Collins said, spitting the words out through obvious pain. Mercy liked to kick her targets in the ribs; she said it encouraged good behavior.
Lex smiled. Collins' bravado flickered for a second, then returned.
The question was, torture or swift death? Torture had the virtue of tit-for-tat, but the defect that the scales would never even out as far as Lex was concerned, so the attempt might just be setting himself up for disappointment. Swift death might be best; Lex would be left resentful, but one step closer to putting the whole mess behind him.
Collins knew he wasn't leaving the mansion. Lex could see the realization sinking in. It was in the way his shoulders twitched, the way his good eye darted around the room, looking for something that would let him get in a few good blows before he fell.
"I'd say your failure to beg for your life impressed me, if it did," Lex told him. "But I think you're just too stupid and too twisted to care. Mercy –"
She stepped closer, raising her hands preparatory to snapping Collins' neck.
There was a blur and a whoosh. Mercy was gone, the office doors were closed, and Clark was holding Collins' wrist like he was a recalcitrant schoolboy. The man was so big and bulky that Clark looked almost normal beside him – normal if you discounted the tights and cape, of course.
"Superman," Lex said wearily. He was almost tempted to use Clark's real name, but he'd kept mum for years and he wasn't going to change just for the sake of a piece of shit like Collins.
"You were going to tell Mercy to kill him."
Lex raised his eyebrows at the obviousness of the statement.
"He's one of them, isn't he? One of the Joker's."
Lex swallowed. "If you're just going to repeat information I already know –"
"Two choices, Lex. First, I can take him to the police and you can leave him to the justice system." Collins sniggered. Clark spared him an annoyed look. "Shut up," he suggested. Lex didn't see him move, but Collins' whimper suggested that Clark had done something painful.
"As attractive as that proposition is, I'm going to have to ask what's behind door number two."
"I'll kill him for you."
Lex choked on air.
"You can have him dead," Clark continued, as matter-of-factly as if he were discussing the weather – in fact, as a farm kid, he'd often sounded far more emotionally invested in the weather than he did now – "but only if you use me to do it."
Jesus. Clark – Clark was telling him to make Superman into a murderer. Stepping off that pedestal, if Lex asked it. Clark knew – it was becoming embarrassingly clear that he knew better than Lex – that Lex needed him to be the good one, the one who had uncrossable lines, so that Lex could cross them and feel assured that his ruthlessness was necessary. Lex needed balance, an immovable object to his irresistable force.
What happens to yin if yang lets go?
God, his obsession with myths and legends was fucking him hard here, what with Clark off the script, depriving Lex of the appropriate narrative models.
"You wouldn't," he said experimentally. Collins, at least, looked like he wanted to believe that, his expression truly terrified at last, a child's fear on the man-mountain's face.
"He was one of the ones who tortured you, wasn't he?"
Lex nodded without meaning to.
"Tell me."
Again, Lex found himself speaking without a plan. "I didn't get – let's just say that after the first day, I wasn't exactly going to arouse lust in anybody short of Jeffrey Dahmer. But Mr. Collins here – he liked watching them work. And at night, when everybody else had gone home, snug in their beds, he'd sit there, one hand in my fucking *guts*, and –" Saying it brought the sensation back, the pain only outpaced by the absolute humiliation, the violation making the endless brutal hospital tests when he was a kid seem like coddling. His *hands*, glistening –
In a way, Collins' presence was a blessing; it gave Lex the incentive he needed to shut the fuck up before he lost it. The artificial hand had compressed the metal arm of his chair into a twisted twig. He let go, deliberately, and looked only into Clark's eyes. "Yes, he was one of the ones who tortured me."
"And you think I wouldn't kill him?" For the first time ever, Lex could only see Superman, nothing of Clark at all. "I'd sleep like a baby. It's up to you."
Clark, on his side at last.
Clark, taking the step from policeman to executioner.
Everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd ever feared.
"You're playing with high stakes," he said. Clark's stance relaxed even as he spoke, which pissed him off because it meant that Clark was still ahead of him.
"You're the one who requires life-or-death drama." And that, Lex thought, was at least a return to Clark's lies of old, because Clark got as much a charge out of it as he did.
He didn't need to ask what would happen if Collins had an unfortunate accident in the prison yard. This was his big chance, and if he blew it, Clark would be lost to him forever. Only the greatest of traumas had given him this opportunity, a nonrefundable, unalterable ticket good for this flight only.
"Just – get him out of here. Before I change my mind."
Clark did, disappearing as fast as he'd arrived. Several minutes later, Mercy burst in, looking nearly miffed.
“Lex –“ she said, clearly about to abase herself. She’d just begun to lose the tightness in her face, the circles under her eyes.
“Don’t worry about it. You know he’s not going to kill me; just stay focused on the ones who *do* want to. Good work on Collins, by the way.”
She nodded slightly, looking unconvinced.
****
There had come a day when Lex had realized that he could escape the torment by giving himself over to madness. He'd been hanging over that abyss for a long time. He could have let go, unclenched his fingers – yes, ironic in retrospect – and fallen, wind-borne, into something new and strange.
Three times he'd almost done it. No devil at his shoulder, tempting him, no scent of brimstone in the air under the blood, but three very bad days. He hadn't even begged for it to stop because he'd screamed his throat raw and probably couldn't have formed coherent pleas in any event.
Dissociation, he'd known, would be permanent, a suicide of mind if not body.
Twice he'd rejected the option, knowing – not believing, because belief implied the possibility of doubt – that Clark was going to come for him.
But one night, looking down at his chest, marked with a grid like he was being tested for allergies rather than his response to various corrosives, the knowledge that Clark was on his way had lost its meaning. There had been only the now, the body, the knife. What he once thought, wanted, feared – all irrelevant, because all depended on the existence of some person over time, and he'd been ripped from time's grasp. The pain was now was forever. Was this Lex Luthor? This *thing*, raw and seeping, no boundaries between it and the edges of the world? How could it be?
Whatever was left of him had decided to live in the pain. Not in hope, not in faith. Life, blind and seeking. There was no reason. He didn't refuse madness; there had been no "he" to do so. The madness had looked at what Lex had become, and in that stillness – the heart of light, the silence – it had slid away from him, indifferent. It had passed him by as if his disintegration had made him invisible.
Back in Smallville, his body had often gone on fighting past the point of hope or reason, and in the Joker's abbatoir it seemed that his mind had joined that blind struggle. Neither mind nor body seemed to have much connection with what Lex thought of as himself. His soul was separate, and didn't have any control over what mind or body did, which maybe was proof that he didn't have a soul.
After that, he had fought even when he didn't really want to, struggling hopelessly, ceaselessly, cutting himself open on the restraints before any of the minions could do it for him. On his next visit, the Joker had seen that Lex had traveled through some undiscovered country, and he'd been delighted. He'd wanted to know what had been the trigger, so much that he'd let Lex heal enough to talk.
When Lex had proved incapable of explaining to his satisfaction, the Joker had become truly inventive.
Ten days later, Clark had arrived.
****
Two days after Collins, Clark came back. He actually checked in with the guards at the gate this time, waiting patiently while they checked with Hope, whose emotionless mask was flawed only by the twitch of the muscle in her jaw when Lex told her to let Clark come to the office.
Lex had time to send a few last messages and put away the reports on the agricultural division’s five-year plan before Clark arrived.
When he pushed open the doors, even though he was dressed in crayon-bright colors, Lex couldn’t help but remember all the times he’d come that way before. Smiling, frowning, brooding, blushing, asking for something only Lex could do for him. Lex had always looked forward to that, to confirm he was good for Clark. It would have been normal to resent being used as a vending machine, a car for a smile, but Lex was used to pay-as-you-go relationships, and it was only money. Clark’s material wants had never been the problem. It was when the tickets and mortgages weren’t enough any more that things had gone sour.
He opened his mouth to ask what he’d done to deserve the visit, but Clark beat him to it.
"Lex. I’ve been thinking – God, it seems like it’s all I think about, now that you’re back. I want to try again. I want to be your friend."
Lex blinked.
Well. That was – abrupt. Classic Clark, and really, why fritter away precious minutes on pleasantries that wouldn’t be pleasant with all their history hanging over each word?
Clark looked so out of place in this opulently appointed room, each object with a pedigree and a certificate of authenticity. No longer wrapped in cheap flannel, he was hidden behind his artificial colors and his technologically distorted face, and even so he seemed more familiar than any of the antiques Lionel had bought.
Yet Lex remembered why he’d bowed out of this dance so many years ago. Clark’s moves were clumsy and tended to leave bruises, and Lex’s steps involved too much humiliation even for him.
"We've been down this road before, Clark, and let's just say it was a road paved with the very best intentions." He could live without Clark, he knew, but not with him always just out of reach, and that was what friendship meant to Clark.
"I was *fifteen*, Lex. Cut me some slack – meeting you was like being pulled up to the major leagues to pitch against Sammy Sosa after only ever playing T-ball. And my parents didn't even *let* me play baseball."
"I'm not even going to touch that simile,” he said, buying time to figure out how to react. “Maybe you were too young – I admit I put a lot of pressure on you – but now we have that history. We can't start over."
"No, but maybe we can –"
Whatever they could do was lost in the howl of the perimeter alarms, loud as a tornado and twice as worrisome.
Lex hit a few buttons on the control panel by his desk and portions of the bookshelves slid aside. The screens they revealed showed different views of the mansion, interior and grounds both.
Men were converging on the mansion from all sides, pouring out from nowhere like a plague of ants. They must have been preparing for days, digging in just outside the grounds – in the sky, helicopters were circling like vultures, doubtless waiting to disgorge more troops.
Clark was staring at the images, looking as surprised as Lex felt.
The cellphone wouldn't work, nor would his secure land line.
What the hell --
The answer came to him like a lightning strike.
While he was gone, certain people at LexCorp must have been concerned for the company's future, with its founding father gone. They would need to reassure their best customer that the firm was still a valuable partner. Therefore, they would have made deals with the government, extremely advantageous deals that Lex had always refused for reasons he had never bothered to explain to anyone else. He'd always assumed that he'd be in control, because he was arrogant and overconfident, and he'd certainly never thought that he'd come *back* after being gone, so he hadn't planned on what to do if the government came into a large supply of Kryptonite.
At least he had some generic plans.
The computer system was still working, though he couldn't count on it lasting much longer with the hackers the government must be employing against it. Quickly, he tapped in commands, setting timers and activating defenses.
All across the grounds, automatic sprinklers popped up and began to throw out arcs of liquid, glistening in the sunlight. There wasn't much at first, but it built up quickly, coating the ground. Some of the soldiers tried to dodge it, but others just ran through.
And fell down.
LexCorp's military contracts included one for the Mobility Denial System, a translucent goo with the friction coefficient of wet ice. A layer of the stuff would stop a man from walking, stop a wheel from turning, even turn a helicopter's landing into a death slide. That was the theory, anyway; this was going to be the largest-scale test yet.
It was almost enjoyable to watch trained killers get turned into re-enactors of the Three Stooges' slapstick as they struggled to stand, to get a grip on their gooey weapons, even to get on hands and knees while the MDS continued to pump out.
But there were dozens of them inside the mansion already, so all he'd done was limit the immediate threat.
His attention was drawn back into the room as Clark staggered, looking nauseated. "They have a lot of Kryptonite," he said. "Even with the new suit, I can feel it."
"I don't know how much they got from LexCorp," Lex said. "If it's the whole supply –" and if it was, heads would roll – "it's something over eight tons."
"*Eight tons*?" Clark repeated.
"Now is not the time for recriminations. Get out of here," he told Clark. The order was pro forma; it was silly to suppose Clark would comply.
Nor did Clark bother to respond. Typical. Lex thought of saying that they were obviously here for Clark, and that if he left, they'd have no reason to harm anyone. But he wasn't sure that the claim would be correct. Some analyst might actually have noticed all those Superman-Luthor summits and concluded that Lex was a possible hostage. Lex hated the idea of being a mere tool to get someone *else* to behave. Even the Joker had done better by him in that way. He wasn't going to – okay, so he *was* going to take it sitting down, but by God he was going to orchestrate some punishment for the insult.
Lex struggled to think.
"Do you know how to shoot a gun?"
"I grew up on a farm, Lex."
As if it had been a stupid question, as if Clark's superpowers hadn't made guns puny by comparison. But it sounded as if Jonathan Kent's traditionalism prevailed, which in this case was a good thing. Lex went to a cabinet on the side of the room and keyed in his code. The door popped open. He took out a shotgun and held it out to Clark.
"I'm not using that."
Fucking pacifist. The Kents should have called him Ferdinand, like that wimp bull in the kids' book, Lex thought as he dumped a box of shells into his lap and prepared to wheel himself out to defend his property.
The box disappeared, as did the gun. Lex looked up to see Clark bend the barrel into an L-shape. "You're not using that either. These are American soldiers."
Lex stared at him, wondering how he'd survived this far.
"What do you suggest we use? Sarcasm?"
"You're well-supplied, at least." Clark had folded his arms over his chest. Even with greenish veins popping out over his face and hands, he looked resolute. And the pose made his arms look amazing, no matter how annoying it was otherwise. "That goo can't be your only defense."
"Yes, I was planning on supplementing with a *shotgun*." If Mercy wasn't with them by now, she was unlikely to break through any time soon. She was under orders not to kill any federal agents, which was most likely cramping her style.
Clark looked towards the ceiling. "They've set up a perimeter, with air support. I won't be able to fly out without getting close enough to the Kryptonite to be vulnerable. And they're bringing it in, shrinking the globe."
Lex could see it in his mind, a glowing green force diagram.
Wait –
"Real globe or half globe? Can you tunnel out?"
Clark blinked and glanced down. "Yeah," he said, eyes widening in surprise.
Just goes to show it's a mistake to use half measures, Lex thought, and bit down on the quip.
"What are you waiting for?" he demanded.
"Could you *be* any more annoying? Don't answer that."
Clark stepped away from Lex. In the blink of an eye, the carpet was rolled up and left at the side of the room. He began to twirl. Blue and red blurred into a miniature tornado, which threw up a cloud of wood shavings and other debris. Lex raised his hand to shield his eyes, wondering why exactly Clark had bothered to protect the carpet.
As Clark sank into the floor, Lex saw the office doors begin to shake. The soldiers must have arrived, despite the gas and other assorted party favors in the halls. It was a bad day for the mansion's structural integrity, he thought with resignation, though he hoped that his own structural integrity would suffer no further insults in the near future.
Lex drew a deep breath, preparing to deal with whoever came through the door. He expected a lack of humor matched only by an absence of imagination; he could work with that.
Just as the door burst open, the tornado whirled back out of the hole in the floor, like a swarm of killer bees on speed. Lex felt himself being lifted and slung over Clark's shoulder.
He put his hands over his head; Clark was decent at keeping him from bouncing off the ragged edges of his newly created tunnel, but bits and pieces were still crumbling around him, and he was spattered with dirt and stone fragments.
Lex couldn't tell how far they went underground. They came up in a featureless cornfield. Clark paused to look around.
"They're too far away to track us," he said. "I want to take you to my Fortress until we figure out how to deal with this."
Lex nodded.
They were over an ocean before he realized that Clark had said "we."
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Oh, God, I am mentally scarred for such a long time now after the images in this chapter. That--*thing*, twisting around in Lex and touching him was just so horrifying. And still, after all of that, Lex's deciding thought on the matter, This was his big chance, and if he blew it, Clark would be lost to him forever. Only the greatest of traumas had given him this opportunity, a nonrefundable, unalterable ticket good for this flight only. was so *perfect* and...breathtaking.
I'm--I'm personally hoping an accident does occur in the prison though. (Sure, Lex won't but an actual accident or really, anything, I just--I don't like that that guy is still breathing, I'm sorry. Jesus.)
But you take us through all of that wretchedness and end with Lex and Clark going off to the Fortress. *heart clenches* So good.
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I'm afraid it'll go away
p.s. LexLexLex... nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
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Re: I'm afraid it'll go away
I'm very glad you're enjoying the story, though -- praise is never, ever, ever wasted. You'd be surprised how grateful I am for it.
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I love your characterisations of Lex, Clark and Bruce, they're all so beautifully damaged in different ways.
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Then, on top of the beautiful writing and beautifully twisted plot, my bulletproof kink: H/C. Well, a world of H, anyway. I'm hoping that there's some C coming up :)
Anyway, please pardon my fangirl gushiness. I powered through five sections without feedbacking, so it's been building up ;) Looking forward to the final two sections.
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And now . . . well. Anyway, that said, I just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying this. Because I really am -- it's so well-done and layered and utterly, utterly fantastic. I love your Clark (telling Batman that he wouldn't have had sex with him if he'd known because he has enough psycho obsessive geniuses in his life! omg brilliant), I love your Lex, I love your Bruce. They're scary and intelligent and powerful and, oh, hot. Like the story itself! And I'm going to be making the sad face when it's over.
But I'm definitely looking forward to your Lots Lighter Than Yours story -- it will be a nice change of pace. :)
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It was nice of Clark; it made Lex worry.
That line cracked me up.
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I want revenge for him, damn it! (thou the Lex needed him to be the good one... "And you think I wouldn't kill him?" For the first time ever, Lex could only see Superman, nothing of Clark at all. "I'd sleep like a baby. It's up to you."
Clark, on his side at last.
Clark, taking the step from policeman to executioner.
Everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd ever feared broke me awww! so good)
*G*
Must admit htat pacifist side is abit annoying, but it does also provide for lovely banter!
"What do you suggest we use? Sarcasm?"
"You're well-supplied, at least."
LMAO!!
I'm enjoying this story so much. I'm really glad that you're posting in parts. Thank you.
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BEST paragraph. Wonderful.
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I like Lex's explanation for why Clark was so fascinated with Lana.
Bruce's presence was entirely ridiculous here, where the land was flat and clean and the buildings didn't challenge the sky; he stood out like a black bear in a kindergarten.
Great description.
But total safety could only be found in the silence of the graveyard, as Lex's mother and Julian had both discovered.
The above is such a great look into how experience has formed Lex's thinking.
Lex mentally ran through the list of names of the security consultants he was going to fire.
LOL.
The scene with Collins...WOW! What an incredible bit of writing. Clark offering to kill Collins, Lex knowing what the offer means, and Lex describing what was done to him all of it blew me away.
And I'm so excited that not only did Clark get Lex out, but they're going to the fortress.
Fantastic writing!
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Poor Lex. I hope Collins dies in prison.
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And Clark's the one sacred thing Lex is totally unwilling to spoil or corrupt. If that isn't love, at least for him, I don't know what is. I know that Lex will have to be whiter of soul to finally be with Lex, but I wonder how dark Clark will have to get.
I can't help but say it -- I can't wait for Lex to start walking again.
I've always liked the serial form, much like I like to watch TV shows when they're aired weekly rather than in a long marathon on DVD. There's something about the build-up of anticipation and plot, and of the knowledge of regularly scheduled doses of pleasure and validation of anticipation, that makes me happy like a kid. It's a form that allows for a story to really grow in one's mind before it's even finished -- I think that's one of the nicest pleasures of reading this story, the daily expectation of something really good to read and digest and brood over.
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Lex says of himself, But then he'd always been indulgent of his own weaknesses, and it was only temporary. even though he's refusing painkillers for the arm, etc. He's just so hard on himself! I was surprised and happy that Clark came back and took Lex with him at the end; I was afraid he'd leave him to the Government.
Thank you so much for writing this and putting it up!
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WOW.
I'll be adding you to my f-list, I hope you don't mind!
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Re: WOW.
Your icon is exactly my mental image of MR.