Part I.
Friday, November 14- 6:54 pm
Clark was having a bad day.
"I don't know if I've said this before, but I really hate teleports."
A snort came from the corner on the other side of the room. "Oh, maybe once or twice."
Flash's voice was nicely sarcastic, and sitting in the deepest shadows the room had to offer, he sounded eerily like Batman. He was radiating the kind of focused stillness that nobody else could quite duplicate, though. Batman could remove himself so far from the idea of motion that it got hard to remember he was there, but Flash was the only person Clark had ever met that could make sitting still look like the epic battle of concentration that it was, for him.
"Well, I do."
A dry little chuckle. "Yeah, man, I think I picked up on that."
Clark had to admit that he may have been whining about it. Just a little. Maybe a few times.
Or maybe once every ten minutes for the whole two hours they've been stuck in here, and really, it was kind of amazing Flash hadn't tried to kill him yet.
Whatever.
"When I get my hands on that conniving little-"
"Yeah, yeah, you'll wring her pretty little neck. Sing a different tune, would you?"
"Maybe then she'd actually hold still and stop blinking out on me," Clark muttered rebelliously.
Wally laughed at him. He had the courtesy not to do it out loud, but Clark could tell.
Things went silent for a little while. Time was you couldn't keep Wally silent for longer than two minutes, but he'd grown up a little since they first met.
"Kal-El, the results of the latest scans are in."
Clark looked quickly over at Wally's side of the room, but he hadn't appeared to have heard the almost sub-vocal message from his comm implant. Probably no one without super-hearing even could. "I can't talk about this right now," he tapped out. If anyone could understand high-speed Morse code, it was Wally, but he had to be listening at the right speed, and Clark kind of thought that Wally was focused on staying down at normal speed.
"I'm aware of your situation, but you instructed me to notify you the moment the results are in."
"I'll be home in a few hours," he tapped. "Clark out."
"You know we're going to be rescued any minute, right?" Wally said.
"Hmm?"
"The tapping," Wally said, nodding to his hand. Clark quickly curled it into a fist. "Calm down a little. Batman doesn't let us get, like, two feet without putting tracers on us."
Flash wasn't wrong. Flash also had a mike built into his- Clark had been listening to the feedback for two hours now- but Clark didn't think it prudent to bring the matter up if Flash didn't already know.
"I don't like enclosed spaces," he said, which was the best excuse he could come up with, and also, at the moment, entirely true.
He could feel Flash staring at him from across the room. "Dude, you work in a steel bunker. Underground."
"That's different," Clark said. "That's my enclosed space, and besides, it's a lot bigger than a bank vault, and-"
"Ahoy there," a familiar voice said faintly from the other side of the door. (Well, it was probably faint to Flash's ears. Clark had been tracking the sound of his bike for the last seven miles.) "Need a hand, Flash?"
"We both do," Flash called back. "Supes is in here with me."
A barely-discernable pause. Apparently Batman hadn't seen fit to inform him of the relevant information. "So why is the door still attached to the wall?"
Clark very carefully didn't grit his teeth. "She covered the walls with Kryptonite."
Another, much longer pause, and then Nightwing burst out laughing. "You have got to stop flirting with this woman. I don't have time to bail you out."
"Would you please just get this damn door open?" Clark said. "I've got places to be."
"Tell me about it. I'm supposed to be having dinner in Gotham tonight."
Clark winced, and Flash did the same. "The security system is still down, if that helps."
"Mmm," Nightwing said. "Yeah. Tell your girlfriend thanks for me."
"She's not my girlfriend," he said, but the sound of the blowtorch firing up drowned him out. Dick always did like to have the last word.
About five minutes later, Nightwing had managed to cut a hole big enough for him to squeeze through. Clark did so, ignoring the flash of pain that came as he brushed close to the kryptonite-painted door.
Flash was right behind him, a cannonball kept too long in the barrel of the cannon. "I am so out of here, man," he said, drubbing his knuckles against the top of his cowl. Clark could smell the sweat that would be darkening his red hair, and knew he was desperate to get a shower and into civvies. The vault had been uncomfortably warm and close, even to him. "And Clark? Next time Alicia pulls off a bank heist to get your attention, don't call me."
"I didn't call you this time," Clark said through gritted teeth, but Flash was already gone. Nightwing gave him a rueful shrug.
"Them's the breaks," he said philosophically. "Besides, it'll give him something to whine about to John."
Perfect. "Because I like having Lantern lecture me about abusing my teammates. Thank you, Dick. You've made my day so much better."
"Sorry," Nightwing said, but he didn't look particularly sorry. "Anyway, I'm heading back to Gotham. And Clark? Seriously, whatever it is you did to piss her off? Don't do it next time. She's mean."
"Yeah, thanks, I figured that out on my own," Clark grumbled. Dick only tossed him a careless, beautiful grin and slapped him on the shoulder.
"Till next time," he said, and disappeared in some kind of Bat-ish way Clark had never quite been able to figure out. He could have followed him by sound alone, but chose not to, listening in only when he heard the sound of the bike roaring to life.
"Yeah, I'm on my way. Alicia locked Clark up in a bank vault and painted the walls with the green stuff. Yeah, that's what I said, too-"
Clark thought briefly about heading back to his lab- he really needed to see those reports- but who knew what Alicia would do if he didn't answer her pointed little summons. He decided that in this case, discretion was the better part of valor, and aimed himself at the Metropolis skyline.
Friday, November 14- 8:37 pm
She'd left the patio doors open for him, like always. The filmy white curtains brushed against his skin as he stood near the doorway and stripped out of his costume, putting on the street clothes that she kept neatly folded up on a conveniently placed chair- slacks, shirt and tie, though he left the latter looped around his neck without actually knotting it. The costume was folded and left one the same chair, and then Clark followed the distinctive scent of her perfume back into her bedroom.
She was under the covers reading, dressed in simple cotton pajamas, her face bare of makeup and her thick blonde hair in a neat braid down her spine. He just stood in the doorway and looked at her for a long moment, then went in and sat down on the edge of the bed.
"You couldn't have thought I wouldn't show up."
She stuck her finger between the pages and closed the book around it, looking up at him with a familiar smirk on her face. "Don't flatter yourself, Clark. I just didn't feel like pulling the whole sex kitten thing tonight."
He studied her face, trying not to think about it too much. She looked kind of… wifely sitting there like that, which was freaking him right out. He'd known they were getting a little too comfortable in their not-relationship, but he'd never thought that she might actually think-
His face must have done something strange, because she laughed and set the book aside- dog-earing the page, he couldn't help but notice. "Relax, I'm not expecting anything. Sometimes a girl just doesn't feel like making the effort."
He let out a careful sigh of relief and moved on to the next issue. "You know you've got to put it all back."
"I already did," she said, on the crest of a luxurious, full-body stretch. "The diamonds were back in the vault the moment you took off."
He had gotten a little distracted by a mugger or two on the way, and as fast as he was, he still couldn't beat instantaneous transport. It wasn't like she needed the money. She was probably telling the truth.
He'd check it out later, before he headed home. "Fine."
"Yes it is," she grinned. "Are we done yet, or do you have any more Very Important Questions?"
He didn't. Stripping out of his street clothes in front of Alicia always took on a special significance, the knowledge that his costume was a room away, that this was an act of intimacy instead of immediacy. Undressing slowly, at human speed in front of a lover, was a world removed from the full-speed change in the elevator on the way up from his lab. There was a reason she left clothes out for him, even though they both knew he wouldn't keep them on for long.
She kicked off the covers and rolled over when he slid in next to her, her cotton tank-top riding up to expose the little red heart at the base of her spine, glowing faintly in the low light. Alicia had never met an emotional barrier she didn't want to annihilate, and she'd made sure that whenever he was around her, his liar's palace melted like cotton candy on the tongue. She'd never gotten anything but the real him, because she didn't give him any other choice.
It was a kind of love, he thought afterward as he was pulling his costume back on and folding the shirt and pants and tie, on the end of the bed where she'd see them when she woke up. It just wasn't the kind he wanted.
He tucked the covers back up around her shoulders, and flew home to Lex.
Friday, November 14- 10:23 pm
Contrary to what Clark seemed to think, Lex always knew when he was being watched.
Clark always thought he was being subtle when he hovered- literally- in the doorway to watch Lex working, eating, sleeping, what have you, but he never factored in air displacement when he came floating silently closer. He was used to the lack of footsteps being enough with everyone but Batman, and Batman was aware of his surroundings to a positively disturbing degree, so he really seemed to think that Lex didn't know he was there.
Lex never told him otherwise, because if he did, Clark would stop. And Lex liked the feeling of Clark's eyes on him. He held close the knowledge that wherever else Clark's responsibilities lay- Cadmus, his experiments, patrolling Metropolis, the ever-increasing demands of the Justice League- Clark always came home to him. Even so many years later, Clark still found the time to watch Lex with the same thoughtful obsession he'd had as a teenager, when everything about them was new-minted and strange.
There was a slight puff of air, and then Clark was standing directly behind him, one hand on Lex's shoulder. Lex didn't have to turn around to know that Clark's body was wrapped in expensive black wool instead of blindingly bright spandex, and he didn't have to strain his sense to catch the familiar hint of perfume.
"Destroying world economy?" Clark said lightly.
He hadn't showered. The suit had to have been picked up from his lab, and he could have grabbed a thirty-second spin in the facilities there, but he hadn't. Lex tried and failed to think of his motivations for leaving the scents and traces of sex on his skin, but as usual the labyrinthine twists of Clark's brain were too difficult to follow. Anyone else and the message would be clear- but this was Clark, who was sometimes alien in more ways than one. "Not tonight, Pinky," he said dryly. "I'm just balancing the budget." And as always, he chose not to interpret it as anything at all. It was simpler that way.
Clark snorted, and the weight of his hand disappeared as he blurred over to the couch and flopped down on it with all the grace of a bull elephant, his head stretched out along the back. Lex managed with great force of will to avert his gaze from the taut golden length of his throat. "You going to be balancing all night, or do you have time for a little dinner?"
Now that Clark brought it up, Lex realized that he might have missed lunch. By a few hours. And when had the sun gone down, anyway? "I think I can handle a little dinner."
"Great!" Clark said. "Because I called ahead and had Marina start it half an hour ago."
Lex had been wondering what smelled so good, but his office was far enough from the kitchen that he hadn't made the connection. "I should have known that was a rhetorical question."
"Yep," Clark said sunnily, and to all intents and purposes, seemed to go to sleep.
Lex knew better. "So how was your day?" he asked, because he couldn't quite resist. He knew Clark wasn't going to mention Alicia or the bank heist or where he'd been all evening, but he still poked at him anyway, like a rat pressing the button in eternal hope.
Clark just shrugged, of course. "Not much," he said. "The power simulations are coming along nicely, at least. I've got James monitoring them now."
Just about what Lex had expected, of course, and nothing he didn't already know. Clark wasn't the only one who was perhaps a bit too interested in watching. "And how is Mercy working out?"
"Surprisingly well, considering," Clark said. "I know you picked her because she's too loyal to try and take over, but it turns out those business courses she took in between learning how to kill someone with her pinky and lose the paparazzi without breaking the speed limit actually came in handy after all."
It had been inevitable that Clark would have to give up a little of his iron control of Cadmus' boardroom. He was good at it, mostly because Clark Kent was the only CEO who could make you feel like your life was at stake if you didn't finish your report on time, but he was a hero first and a scientist second, and an administrator only as a distant third.
Unlike, for example, himself. "Good, because if I had to give up Hope to help her, I'd be very annoyed with you, Clark."
"Can't have that. Don't worry, Hope is yours. I'd be pretty annoyed with myself if I took away your bodyguard and you got assassinated while I was off saving the world or something."
Lex arched an eyebrow. "I can take care of myself, you know."
"Yes, but I feel better when there's someone else to take care of you," Clark said, matching his expression. "Humor me."
And Lex would, of course. It was part of their deal. Clark had only let himself become Superman when Lex could show that he was adequately protected in Clark's absence. Lex knew that if he tried to change the deal now, Superman would disappear in a heartbeat, and Lex would go back to having Clark shadow his every move.
Obsession was a word that was tossed around so casually these days. Those people had never met Clark.
"I'm not trying to get rid of Hope," Lex said. The idea certainly had its appeal, but he avoided the temptation of it for the same reason he'd passed Cadmus to Mercy instead of taking it back into LexCorp. "Did you find time for a spar today?" When in doubt, change the subject.
Clark frowned. "We were both busy. I was-" Being trapped in a vault by my criminal lover, Lex's brain helpfully supplied. "-patrolling, and Bruce Wayne's appearance was required at some meeting or other. I'm hoping we can both make it tomorrow."
Lex eyed him carefully. "You do look a little twitchy. Need to let out a few frustrations?"
"You could say that," Clark replied, his face serene. "I-"
"Dinner is ready to be served, Kal-El."
"James!" Clark said cheerfully, as if he hadn't just been about to say something important. Lex cursed the AI's timing as Clark continued, "You finished with the power simulations?"
"The data is on your home unit," the mechanical voice informed him. Despite his irritation, Lex couldn't help but admire the human-sounding inflections it managed to inject into the voice synthesizer.
"Perfect."
"Your conversational upgrade is excellent," Lex told it.
"Thank you, Lex-Luthor," James replied. "Your linguistic matrix integration was instrumental to the improvement."
Lex didn't want to feel pride because a robot- even a highly-socialized artificial intelligence like James- complimented his work. But there it was, all the same. "I'm glad it helped. And I've told you before, call me Lex."
A pause. "Thank you, Lex."
Clark snorted. "Okay, as cute as this is, can we drop the mutual appreciation society for a bit? It's dinnertime, and I'm starving."
"Fine, fine," Lex said. He'd already shut down his computer. "We can continue this over dessert."
Clark looked pleased to be getting his way, but really, there was never any doubt.
What Clark wanted, Clark got.
Monday, November 17- 8:32 am
Three mornings a week, supervillains and natural disasters and alien invasions allowing, Wally met Chloe for breakfast in Gotham.
There was this little hole-in-the-wall diner he'd discovered years ago, when he was still picking pockets to get by, and when he'd gone home with Dick winter break of his sophomore year, he'd discovered that it was still there. It was the first place he'd shown her when she got the job in Gotham.
Everyone in their "family" had their own ways of looking out for each other. Batman had bugged the hell out of her apartment; Superman always chose the roof of her building as a set for his occasional staged arguments with Batman; Lex had funded a neighborhood-wide security upgrade. Wally went with his strengths- he offered food.
The place was cheap enough that he could afford to actually fill up for a change, and the waitress always brought him a whole jar of sugar for his coffee, without looking at him weird when he emptied it every time. And the food wasn't too bad, either.
"So," she said. "Tell me everything."
"Chloe," he grumbled. "There isn't anything to tell."
"Yeah, because you spend the night at John's place every night," she snorted, and reached out to smack the back of his head. He had to force himself not to duck. "Don't kid a kidder, Wally. Tell Sister Chloe all about it."
"God, it's creepy when you say that," he said. She raised a threatening hand again. "Okay, okay! Geez you're scary."
"And don't you forget it."
"Anyway, there really isn't anything to tell," he said. "I slept on the couch. There were movies, pizza, and beer. I crashed because John didn't want me to run home drunk."
She raised an eyebrow. "You don't get drunk."
"Yeah, but he doesn't seem to remember that," Wally said with a grin, and she laughed from behind her coffee mug.
"Good to know you haven't forgotten everything I've taught you," she said. "But you're sure it was just a buddy thing? He wasn't secretly trying to invite you back into the Holy Bedroom for some hot man-lovin'?"
He shuddered all over. "I'm outta here the next time you put it like that. Seriously."
She rolled her eyes. "Grow up, Wallyboy. So?"
He slumped. "Nothin'," he said.
"You sure you weren't so distracted by his hot Marine body you just missed it?"
"No one could have been watching more closely than me," he said. "My hand to God. I'm telling you, Chlo, the man's straight. I may have to give up on him."
"Well that's… disappointing," she said. He gave her an incredulous look.
"You think?"
"Oh please, you can always get laid if you want," she told him. "I have to live vicariously."
Her voice sounded so logical, and yet it said such crazy things. "You know you're really dysfunctional, right?"
She handwaved that little detail. "Yeah, yeah, I'm a paranoid, intimacy-avoidant freak. I'm in Gotham, it comes with the territory. I own my issues. Besides, Gotham's pretty much dead right now; your sad excuse for a love life is the only entertainment I have right now."
His head thumped down on the table. "Thank you so much," he said, his voice muffled. "Really, I feel better now."
One slim, nail-bitten hand patted the top of his head absently. "There, there," she said. "You'll live to flirt another day."
He lifted his head and rested his chin on his hands, folded across the cracking linoleum of the table-top. "I really think I'm gonna have to give up on the guy. He's just about as straight as they come."
"No, no, no! Giving up is not an option!" she said. "Persistence is key."
"Stop watching so much television," he said. "Persistence is annoying, and trust me because I learned this the hard way. And even when the flirt-ee in question is as oblivious as John, there comes a point when persistence is just pathetic, and I have reached that point."
She nudged him with her booted toe. "One more try?"
She sounded so hopeful he had to laugh. "I guess," he said. "But if it doesn't go anywhere, I'm giving up. I mean it this time."
She looked at him steadily. "That mean you're going to go back to dating girls?" she asked.
He felt a shifty look go across his face. "Maybe."
She snorted. "Maybe I can actually save you from yourself this time around." She took another look at his face and then shook her head. "Or maybe not."
That was probably closer to the mark. Wally usually dealt a little better with guys; it was the straight-best-friend part that was tripping him up with John. His history with women was a little… less than stellar.
"We're kind of pathetic, aren't we?"
He grinned at her. "You're just figuring that out?"
"Hah. Some heroes we are."
"Aww, Chloe," he said, and sat back up, taking her hand and giving her an earnest look. "You'll always be my hero."
"And on that note, I am out of here," she said, and tugged her hand free, using it to tweak his bangs. "Get a haircut, Shaggy. I've got an interview at ten and I've gotta prep."
"Yeah, yeah," he said. It was starting to get in his eyes a little. "Got get 'em, tiger."
"Right back atcha," she said, and strolled out of the diner.
At least four pairs of eyes followed her as she went, three of them male. Wally shook his head in bemusement. He'd never understand Chloe's issues with relationships, but he was pretty certain that most of those scars had Clark's name all over them.
He paid the check- it was Chloe's turn, but she could pick it up next time- and was on his way out of the diner when the comm in his ear clicked. "Flash, I need to see you."
Wally paused with one foot out the door. "I need to be at work in ten minutes."
"Then you've got nine minutes to talk to me," the Dark Knight growled.
"I've got a boatload of paperwork to catch up on," Wally said, trying (and mostly failing) to keep the whine out of his voice. "And can't you just use my cell? I look like a crazy person, talking to myself like this."
"Flash."
It wasn't a question. Wally sighed and walked over to the nearest alley. Not a good plan to start running in street clothes while in plain view. "I'll be right over."
A few moments later he was breezing into the Manor, grabbing one of Alfred's cookies out of the kitchen on his way down to the Batcave. Bruce had left the secret door open for him, which was… nice, but a little strange.
"Yeah, Bats, I'm here," he said, heading for the huge bank of monitors and the dark-suited figure in front of them. No cape- a Bruce Wayne suit today, not a Bat-suit. He must have a charity event or something. "What did you want to talk about? I really do have a lot of casework to deal with, you know."
"Have you spoken to Clark lately?"
Batman would call Wally "Flash" till the cows came home, but he always called Clark by name unless he was addressing Superman in public. Wally was never sure if it was supposed to say something about himself or Clark, and he'd always been a little too scared of the answer to just ask.
"I was stuck in a bank vault with him for two hours yesterday afternoon… But you already know that. What do you want?"
Batman appeared to be choosing his words carefully. "Have you noticed anything… off about his behavior lately?"
Wally cocked his head to the side and studied the unrevealing planes of Bruce Wayne's face. "Is this about Alicia? Because I checked back later and she put all the diamonds back, so she was just trying to get his attention."
"I'm not interested in Clark's inadvisable flirtations with the teleport," Batman said.
Interesting that both Bruce and Clark tended to think of her first by her ability. Maybe "teleport" was their way of separating themselves from the fact that she was actually a person, too? He could understand why Clark did it, even though it was screwed up, but Batman was usually more precise.
"Then what is it?" Wally asked.
Batman… frowned, and just abruptly he was just Bruce, worried about a friend, not Batman, about to embark on another rant about the "dangers of absolute power." "He's been acting somewhat erratically lately."
Wally crossed his arms over his chest and rocked back on his heels. "Well, he's been in kind of a weird mood, I guess, but…"
"You don't think it's significant?"
Wally scowled at him. "Well I didn't until now."
Bruce didn't smile. "He's been behaving unlike his usual self in the past couple of weeks, which means that he's been behaving more like himself."
Sometimes Wally wished that he hung around sane people. But he'd probably have to get away from the superhero crowd for that. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Bruce looked at him, oh-so-patient. "You've never noticed the way he plays a different role with ever single person he meets?"
"Well I- I mean, sure, I guess, but everyone does that. Right?"
Sometimes, Batman still managed to make him feel like an idiot teenager, caught playfighting with Dick on the floor of the Cave when they were supposed to be studying. "Of course we do," Bruce said. "Especially people like us. But we use it as a social lubricant, or to keep our identities a secret. Clark uses it constantly, even with people like yourself, around whom one would think he'd be able to relax."
Wally didn't- he couldn't even- "Are you telling me that one of my closest friends is a lie?"
"Not precisely," Bruce said. "More an exaggeration of his self, based on what he believes you want him to be."
That- "I can't believe that."
"Nevertheless, it's true."
It was times like this that he wasn't surprised in the least that Dick had quit. He immediately quashed the thought, which was cruel and not really any of his business, besides.
Well, Bruce wasn't interested in sugarcoating things- not that he ever was- and Wally could deal with that. All business, then. He straightened his shoulders out of a defensive hunch and tucked his hands into his jacket pockets, where Bruce couldn't see them balled into fists. "Fine. And you think something has happened to change that?"
Bruce's eyes shone with something like approval for a moment. "Yes. On our last few meetings, he has been something less careful to behave the way he believes I want to see."
Believes I want to see. That was the second time Bruce had phrased it that way. "You want something different."
The approving look was sharper this time. Wally wanted to protest the implied insult to his intelligence- he hadn't made it through five years at Hudson and gotten a job at the best crime lab in the state because he was an idiot- but this was Batman. Compared to him, everyone but Lex Luthor and maybe Clark's psycho pet scientists were idiots.
"I'd like it better if he were more true to himself, yes," Bruce said. "I can't be certain, but I believe he navigates the complications of his various roles by way of a mental construct. I'm worried about what would happen if that construct were to collapse at an inopportune moment."
All of Clark's walls coming down, say, in the middle of a fight with Darkseid… Wally had to suppress a shudder. He'd known Clark a long time. Some things even he hadn't been fast enough to stop.
"I can see your point," he said, keeping his thoughts off his face with effort. He was used to having a cowl to help hide his expressions. "What do you want me to do about it?"
"Just talk to him," Bruce said. "Observe. It's possible my concern is exaggerated, and Clark is simply having a bad week. I'd like to hear your thoughts."
Sometimes Wally thought he'd outgrow puffing up with pride whenever Bruce said stuff like that, but most of the time, he knew that was bullshit. Batman trusted him. Not just to run really fast in a fight, but to watch, and think, and detect. That was basically one of the coolest things in the universe. "I will."
He waited for Bruce to say something else, and when he didn't, Wally turned to leave. He really did have to finish up a couple reports before shift started, and even modified WayneTech keyboards could only handle so much speed-typing.
"Flash."
He stopped at the base of the steps and turned, lifting his eyebrows. "Yeah?" That was one of the advantages of not wearing the cowl- with it on, he couldn't use the trademark Lex Luthor Sarcastic Eyebrow Move.
"You haven't been by in nearly a week."
Wally could say that he was already there, but he knew what Bruce really meant. He wanted to say, "You know me and Dick aren't actually your trainees anymore, right?" but that'd be just as cruel as his earlier thought, and anyway, he knew that Bruce wasn't just asking as a teacher. Because after he'd spent an hour working Wally into a buzzing mess sparring at normal speed, he'd step back and invite Wally to come at him with everything he had, grinning the way the Dark Knight never did.
Yeah.
"I'm going to stop by Clark's after shift," he said, and watched as Bruce's faintly open expression folded in on itself. "But I'll send him over to you when I'm done."
Bruce nodded slowly, but he didn't look any happier than he did a second ago. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. And Bruce?"
"Yes?"
"I'll come by tomorrow," he said, and sped off to work with the afterimage of Bruce's smile in his mind's eye.
Monday, November 17- 9:27 pm
The first thing out of Lois' mouth when she got into the passenger seat was, "You couldn't have picked me up in something a little less… flashy?"
Lex snorted as he put the car into gear. "If you wanted inconspicuous, you shouldn't have called a billionaire for a ride."
"Well, it's black, I guess that's about as subtle as you ever get," Lois sighed. "I forgive you."
"I'm sorry, who asked whom for the favor here?"
"Lex, you will be owing me favors for the rest of your life. Now don't quibble about the details; it's so immature."
"You'd think the alimony payments would cover it," Lex muttered rebelliously. "You robbed me blind in the divorce."
"I have a very sharp lawyer," Lois grinned. "Stop whining. It's not like I pulled you away from anything more important than your quarterly business report."
"I could have had a date," Lex said mildly enough.
She snorted at him. "Yeah, no. Pull the other one; it's got bells on."
Just because his social calendar had been a little empty lately… "What were you doing down here in Suicide Slums anyway?" he asked, in a blatant change of subject. "Or is it yet another top-secret, hush-hush expose?"
She gave him a mysterious smile that would make the Sphinx jealous. "You just have to wait for next Monday's front page."
"Fine, keep your secrets." When she got like this, there wasn't a chance in hell that he could get anything out of her. The woman made Fort Knox look insecure. "Where am I dropping you?"
He got a scornful look. "Back to the penthouse." The "duh" was clear in her voice, though she considered herself too classy to say it.
He could have argued that Wally was coming for dinner and he had no intention of letting anyone else into his home this evening, but he didn't believe in wasting his breath. "Fine. But I still have work to finish."
"That's because you're married to your job," she pointed out, and they bickered pleasantly the rest of the way back to the penthouse.
In fact, they were still bickering when they got off the elevator and found Clark in the living room, with about fifteen different file folders scattered across the floor and coffee table. He looked up and grinned when they came in. "Lois scared off another cabbie in the Slums, didn't she?"
"They never wait," Lois grumbled. "They always say they will, but they never do."
"Well, you usually manage to make people try to shoot you," Clark pointed out. "Or stab you, or beat you up, and so on and so on. Normal people don't like that sort of thing."
"I miss Bob," she said mournfully. "Why'd he have to retire? Bob would wait if I asked him to. No matter what."
"Then it sounds like Bob definitely earned his retirement," Lex said, and Lois gave any annoyed huff before disappearing into the kitchen. Lex allowed himself a warm glow of satisfaction; he so rarely got the last word when Lois was involved.
Clark gave him a softer version of his usual sunny smile. "Hey."
"Hello, yourself." The space on the couch next to Clark seemed too tempting to resist, so Lex didn't even bother to try, sinking down into the worn cushion with a sigh of relief. He nodded toward the folders. "Busy day?"
"You don't know the half of it," Clark sighed. "I've been working on the replication protocol for those nanites of yours, but I'm starting to think that I've hit a dead end."
Cadmus was the R&D portion of LexCorp, and as such tended to focus on medical research, alternative energy sources and government weapons contracts, but Clark worked on whatever Clark felt like working on at any given moment, which was how James and all of his various more limited iterations had come to exist in the first place. Clark had had an Idea. "They're hardly 'my' nanites." I haven't even touched that project in months."
"Because it's in the fine-tuning stages," Clark countered. "All of the initial work was yours."
And then Lex had been forced to hand it off to a bunch of eager beavers in the micro-engineering lab while he dealt with the rest of the business. He was good at what he did, one of the best, really, but he missed the science. Science was his first love, had gotten him where he was today, and now he spent all of his time locked up in his office, or the Boardroom, dealing with finance.
Frankly, it was a tad bit depressing.
"Fine, they're my nanites." Lex didn't really feel like having this discussion with Clark tonight. His day had already been long enough, and he didn't Clark to try and "fix" things for him. "That doesn't explain why you're working on them now." Clark hated the fiddly later stages of a project. He preferred to get in on the ground levels, or to jump in when an idea was deadlocked. Most people managed a handful of truly groundbreaking intuitive leaps in their entire lives; Clark did nothing else. What looked like genius to the average eye was in actuality a brain that, no matter how much human conditioning had gone into the early years, simply wasn't human and didn't think like one.
"It went to Ivo after you handed it off."
"Ah." Ivo had been one of their best and brightest minds, until he'd finally succumbed to lung cancer three weeks before. Lex had told the bastard to quit smoking. "I take it he was being his usual secretive self about his research?"
Clark smiled, not at all happily. "Yeah, you could say that. I'm just trying to figure out what he did."
Before Lex could ask about that, Wally breezed into the room, coming back with a towering sandwich before Clark's papers had a chance to settle. "Sorry," he aid, around a large mouthful of wheat and turkey and… was that pineapple? "Patrol ran long." Did they even have pineapple in their fridge?
"Damn it, Wally, you took the last of the mayo!" Lois yelled.
"There's another jar in the fridge!" Wally yelled back. "She always forgets to look."
Clark raised an eyebrow. "How is it that the Fastest Man Alive is always late for dinner?"
"It's a mystery," Wally said cheerfully.
"Could it be that you are trying to avoid us, Wallace?" Lex asked, in his very best Lionel Luthor Parental Nightmare™ voice. "Because you know that never ends well."
Clark picked up the ball beautifully, of course. "I think he was spending time with That Boy again," Clark added. "Is takeout Chinese in Detroit really important enough to miss a family dinner?" His voice was vintage Disappointed Mom. Lex had never met the esteemed Martha Kent, but it wasn't hard to guess where Clark had picked that particular act up.
Wally slowly set down his sandwich, which was in itself enough to give Lex a private thrill of victory. "You two are so scary, you know that?"
Lex kept the frown on his face by sheer force of will. "You haven't answered our question."
Wally threw up his hands. "Okay, busted! I'm a bad person because I was fighting crime with a partner today instead of all by my lonesome. I confess! We beat the bad guys! Put on the shackles and take me away!"
Clark's eyebrow winched a little higher. "He seems defensive," he observed to Lex. "Don't you think he seems defensive?"
"I do," Lex agreed. "I think there's something he's not telling us."
"Yeah, to mind your own business," Wally muttered. "Clark, you're like three years older than me. You are not actually my mom."
Lois emerged from the kitchen, holding a sandwich that was, if possible, even larger than Wally's. "Leave the poor boy alone. It's not like any of us were on time for dinner. Or, you know, that there was any actual dinner for us to have."
"Ha!" Wally said, and went back to his sandwich.
Lex looked over at Clark, feeling something close to content for the first time all day. "Kids today," he said sadly.
Clark just smiled.
Wednesday, November 19- 12:33 am
"You know, I do actually see way too many semen samples on my day job," Wally pointed out.
Dick grinned back at him. "I appreciate you coming in on your day off, man."
"Hmmph." He pulled out the ALS. "Hit the lights."
Dick complied and Wally started scanning the room, wincing at the sheer number of stains. "You owe me big."
"Yeah, yeah." Wally heard him shift and tracked the sound automatically, registering the slick side of wrist guard against uniform. Crossed his arms. "Where'd you learn all this stuff, anyway? I thought you were just a lab rat."
"Excuse me, only we get to call ourselves lab rats."
"I stand corrected."
"Thanks. Anyway, I made sure I got some extra training."
Another shift, this one too small for Wally to detect. "Planning on moving up the ladder at your day job?"
"Yeah, no," Wally snorted. "Maybe I'll do it in all my free time." He was moving in spurts between sentences, covering one section of the room at a time. Three more to go- but that included the bed, which would take at least twice as long. Maybe three times.
"Okay, fair enough. Then why'd you go through the training?"
"Because the criminalists in Bluhaven are just as crooked as the cops, Nightwing."
Pause. "Oh."
Wally smirked, and in a rush of well-being, finished up the bed. "Yeah, oh." He tossed the bag of neatly boxed swabs to Dick, who caught it neatly despite the dark. Damned freaky Bats. "I'm not running 'em for you."
"I'll take care of it." Dick hit the lights and started out the door, jerking his head for Wally to follow. "You don't have to go to all that effort, you know. We're not sidekicks anymore. You've got your own bad guys to deal with."
Just for that, Wally smacked him on the back of the head. "Metropolis and Gotham work together," he said. "Or did you miss that memo? Maybe the first six times it went around?"
"Yeah, well, you're not in Metropolis anymore," Dick said. "You're not even in the state of New York."
"No, I'm right next door in Ohio, which is, uh, a forty second run for me, if I want a workout. Not really a hardship. And you're not exactly living in Gotham either, these days."
Dick glared at him. "That's not the point."
"Really kinda is, dude. Besides, we kick ass together and you know it." Wally hooked an arm around Dick's neck and reveled in the fact that he wasn't three inches shorter anymore. He'd grown into his legs years ago, and yet it still surprised him with that lingering hint of awesome, every once in a while. "I know how weird you guys are about metas in your cities and all, but you're totally not getting rid of me that easily."
"Yeah, whatever," Dick said, and hip checked him hard enough to knock him loose. "Speed freak."
"Right back atcha, wing nut," Wally said. "So we're good? No more trying to ditch me or whatever was going on in that freaky little bat-brain of yours?"
"Nah, we're good." Dick rolled his eyes and nudged open the window at the end of the hallway. "See you back at my place?"
Wally hesitated. Technically, he was supposed to be over at John's place in an hour or so, but…
Dick's laugh was easy enough, but his face was blank under his mask. "No problem, man, we can catch up later."
…but John could totally wait, and so could Wally's plans for seducing him, what with his other best friend acting all bat-crazy. It was a special brand of insanity, involving brooding, crouching menacingly on rooftops, throwing oneself off buildings for fun, and beating up bad guys, also for fun. Or justice. Something like that.
Besides, he had a few things he wanted to talk about with Dick, too.
"Last one there buys the pizza," Wally smirked, and took off.
Wednesday, November 19- 12:33 am
Batman waited till he was absolutely sure that he was alone in the Watchtower before he placed the call to Metropolis.
"Hello?"
The voice was feminine, low, verging on sultry. He'd heard it a hundred times over the directional mike, but it was a little different right in his ear. "I'd like to speak with you. Meet me at the LexCorp helipad in half an hour."
A startled pause followed his order, and then laughter filtered down the line, as close as if she were standing right next to him. "Why, Batman. I didn't know you cared."
"Half an hour," he repeated, and prepared to sign off.
"I take it you're going to come down from your little space-nest and take me away in your Bat-plane? Don't bother. I think I can find the way."
It took a second to process what she'd just said, but by the time he registered the sound of the dial tone in his ear, a cloud of green light started to coalesce only a few yards away.
Alicia Baker stretched and looked around the observation deck. "So this is the famous lair of the Justice League," she said. "I have to admit, I'm impressed."
He waited for the inevitable, "And I'm a hard woman to impress," but she didn't say it. Maybe he spent too much time with criminals who liked to banter while they were getting beaten into the asphalt. "I didn't know your ability could stretch over such a long distance," he said neutrally. He wasn't going to let her toy with him. That was Clark's game, not his.
"Believe it or not, you don't actually know everything about me," she said. "Bugging my apartment only goes so far."
And bugging her person had only led to her "accidentally" leaving the device behind when she blinked out. She was dangerous for more than just her ability and ambiguous moral code, unfortunately.
"Does Clark?" he asked.
She smiled. "Right down to business, huh? I like that. Yeah, Clark knows. There's no percentage in keeping secrets from him."
He noted her choice of phrasing- how did Clark relate to money, in her head?- and moved on. "You know why I called you."
"Of course I do. You're worried about out little lost boy in blue. Look, you mind if I sit down?" Without waiting for an answer, she settled herself hipshot against the console. He had to control a wince at her proximity to some very important buttons.
"Make yourself at home," he murmured.
"Ooo, you have a sense of humor. No one told me about that."
He refused to rise to her bait. "What are you doing to him, Alicia?"
She huffed out a laugh. "You know, when I used to picture this conversation- and trust me, I always knew it was coming- I always thought you'd be a little balder. Guess Lex isn't quite as possessive as I gave him credit for."
Not surprising that she considered that particular trait a virtue, or that she misread Lex's motivations. Her psychological profile showed a marked tendency towards obsession that left her with something of a skewed viewpoint. "How do you know I'm not?"
"Oh, honey. If there's one thing I know, it's men. And if there's another thing I know, it's clothes. Lex is a big guy, but you've got about fifty pounds on him. Body armor only does so much."
Powerful, obsessive, intelligent, observant, beautiful, manipulative. Bruce was well aware of the mirror effect that occurred with most vigilantes of one stripe or another. Some were drawn to their reflections, some to their opposites. Bruce knew himself to be one of the latter. Clark, judging by the evidence in front of him, was one of the former.
"The original question still stands."
"What I am I doing to Clark, huh? See, I already know you've got bugs in my place, so unless you're a gentleman voyeur, you already know."
"Ms. Baker-"
"Oh, it's just killing you that I don't have another name you can use," she teased. "I'm not a supervillain, Batman. If you think treating me like your usual brand of super-powered crazy is going to work, then I think you need to get out of Gotham a little more."
He wasn't going to react. She wasn't that good. "As I'm not the only voyeur in the room, I'm sure you yourself are aware that Clark frequently joins me for a workout."
"Where your wear Kryptonite and the two of you beat each other bloody for fun, yeah, it's a little hard to miss," she said. "So what's your point?"
For someone who'd been doing her best to avoid his point since the beginning of the conversation, she was awfully eager all of a sudden to hear what he had to say. Apparently it was less enjoyable being on the other end of seemingly-pointless diversions. "And I'm assuming you know I always run a basic medical scan after our workouts are over, to ensure that he's taken no damage from his Kryptonite exposure."
She cocked her head to the side, birdlike. "And?"
"And when I ran the scan earlier this evening, he showed trace amounts of Kryptonite poisoning."
"You think I had something to do with it?"
"No," he said, and as she started to smile, he added, "I know you had something to do with it."
Wednesday, November 19- 12:47 am
"I always buy the pizza," Dick complained. "Someday you're going to have to let me win. My bank account can't take much more of this."
Wally made a rude noise and tossed him the phone. "Pull the other one, Mr. Adopted-Son-of-Bruce-Wayne. Your bank account is thriving."
"Yeah, and it's not like you're hurting for cash, either," Dick said, dialing one-handed as he peeled off his mask with the other. "LexCorp makes easily as much as WayneTech."
Wally, already back in civvies, stretched out on the couch and grinned up at him. "Is it my fault Lex likes to sneak money into my account when he thinks I'm not paying attention? It's kind of cute, actually. For the most part I tend to just turn around and donate it back, but-"
"Hello, Smiley's Pizza?" Dick interrupted. "Yeah, I'd like to put in an order for three extra-large pizzas…"
Dick wandered away towards his bedroom, working at the catches of his uniform with the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder. Wally left him to it and searched half-heartedly for the remote. It always ended up in the weirdest places after Tim had been over.
A quick speed-check told him that it wasn't anywhere near the couch, and he really didn't feel like getting up to hunt for it. For all he knew, it was in the refrigerator. He'd seen what looked like grenades in there last time he'd checked, so it wasn't like it'd be the weirdest thing to sit with the ketchup and mayo and science projects that had probably been vegetables at one point.
Or possibly he was thinking of his own fridge. Hmm. When was the last time he'd actually set foot inside a grocery store, anyway?
Dick came back in, setting the phone back on the cradle. "Done. They said ten minutes, so-"
"So we've got at least half an hour, yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the ins and outs of takeout." Wally stretched, relishing the slight pop of abused joints settling into their proper places, and rolled his head back against the back of the couch. Dick was a blurry upside-down figure at the very edge of his vision. "You know where the remote got to?"
Dick gave a helpless shrug, rounding the end of the couch to flop down next to Wally. "Beats me. Tim had it last."
"Yeah, that's what I thought." Silence, surprisingly awkward. They'd known each other for years, they'd freaking sidekicked together, they were family in every way that really mattered, there shouldn't be such a thing as awkward silences between them. But there was tonight.
"I-" Dick started, just as Wally said, "I talked to Bruce today." Dick gave him a shocked look, and Wally winced. "No, sorry, you were going to say something."
"Screw that, you wouldn't have brought Bruce up if it wasn't important."
"Nevermind, it's not that big a deal." Just, you know, a potential apocalypse if Bruce was right about Clark. Which he totally wasn't. "What were you going to say?"
"Date with Babs didn't exactly go off too well last night," Dick said with a sigh. "Just my usual whining. What did Bruce say?"
Yeah, he should have known he wouldn't have been able to deflect Dick away from that one. Freaking pitbull in spandex, that was Richard Grayson. "Uh, something about Clark." Wally bit his lip. "He talk to you about it?"
Dick snorted, but there wasn't much humor in the sound. "You know perfectly well he wouldn't."
"I thought you two were getting along okay."
"As long as we're on the streets or training with Tim, sure. Anything else I might as well forget about it. And let's not even talk about what he thinks I'm doing with Babs. What'd he say about Clark?"
"He's… worried," Wally temporized. "He wanted to know if I'd noticed Clark acting out of character recently."
Dick shook his head in disgust. "Christ, is this one of his 'the dangers of superhuman powers in less than human hands' lectures again? Swear to God, if Clark so much as gets annoyed because his coffee is cold, Bruce thinks he's going to make a try for world dominance. Don't tell me he's trying to pull you into his whole paranoid delusion, too?"
Wally offered a weak smile. "No, I think he was just trying to-" He groped frantically for an answer. "-warn me, you know? Just in case. Because I'm around Clark so much."
Dick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that sounds like him. Don't listen to him, okay? I know Clark's his friend, but Bruce has never dealt all that well with the idea of someone like Clark having that much power. The fact that Superman has saved the world a hundred times over hasn't seemed to change his opinion any."
Wally smiled and nodded agreeably, but internally he wasn't so sure. Dick hadn't really gotten to know Clark until Clark had already settled into his role as Superman. He didn't know what Clark had been like before, when he was still pretending to be just Lex's bodyguard/personal assistant/freak on a leash. He didn't realize just how dangerous Clark could be. He'd never seen Clark snap a man's neck in cold blood.
Wally had long since come to peace with that night, but it wasn't a side of Clark that he was eager to see again. And if Bruce was right- if Batman was right- then they might all be in danger of seeing it, in a particularly explosive way. Wally knew his own strengths, knew what he could and couldn't do down to the finest detail. He knew what John was capable of, and Shayera, and J'onn, and Wonder Woman, and- well, no one knew just what limits Batman had, not really, but Wally could make a decent guess.
And he knew, maybe better than any of them, that there wasn't a single person on this planet that could stop Clark if it needed doing.
Trying to distract himself from his own train of thought, he slung one arm over Dick's shoulders. "Hey man, enough about my weird day. How was your date with Babs last night?"
"As long as you tell me about your love life," Dick agreed with a raised eyebrow. "I've heard you've been spending a lot of time with Green Lantern. Fair trade only, buddy."
Wally grinned and gave Dick's shoulder a mock-punch, faster than even the Boy Wonder could follow. "It's a deal."
This was why they'd stayed best friends for as long as they had. And as to Clark, well, he could set his worries aside for now. Whatever was going on with him, it probably wasn't too urgent. There was plenty of time.
Wednesday, November 19th- 12:47 am.
Alicia teleported a couple feet away in an apparently involuntary reflexive response to the menace in his voice. "Hey, wait a minute, you got this all wrong," she protested. "Whatever's causing this, it's not me."
"Clark's blood is showing signs of Kryptonite poisoning," Batman repeated. "And you expose him to Kryptonite every time you have one of your… liaisons."
"So do you, during every one of your little sparring sessions! A whole lot more of the stuff than I have in my little tattoo!"
"I'm very familiar with the effects of green Kryptonite on his system," Batman said. "Clark is showing signs of another type. This isn't happening because of me, Miss Baker. This is happening because of you."
She started to pace, just a little beyond his reach from his seat in the command chair. "Have you told him about his little medical problem?"
Batman inclined his head. "Not yet."
"Of course you haven't," she muttered. "C'mon, Clark's been exposing himself to me for years now. There's not logical reason for it to start causing him problems now."
Oh, Batman thought that Alicia had been causing Clark any number of problems- from day one onward, as a matter of fact. But that was not the issue here. Not tonight, anyway. "Simply because you don't know of any reason does not mean that one doesn't exist."
"God, you're even worse than I thought you would be." She collapsed back into her former position on the command console, exasperation written across her pretty face. "Look. The thing about Clark is that he's been lying his entire life. You'd know a little bit about that, I'd think. After a while he got so that he couldn't stop lying, with his face and his personality if not with his words, if you get what I'm saying."
Batman nodded. He'd noticed the very same phenomenon, of course. Clark took the game of identity much father than any other costumed superhero or vigilante, even himself. It was exactly what he'd tried to describe to Flash the morning before.
"When he's with me, I take that away from him. He's no one but himself. He keeps coming back to me because he needs that. It's good for him."
The temptation to reach out and strangle her was resistible only because he knew it wouldn't work. "It's a crutch," he snarled. "He will never recover from this handicap, which is potentially dangerous for all of us, not to mention self-destructive, as long as he has you as a failsafe."
"Oh, I know."
The very casualness of her answer was almost stunning. He stared at her in silence for a long moment, trying to parse her statement into some sort of logical sense, and only belatedly remembering that in her own way, she was just as insane as the Joker. "You don't care," he said. "As long as you have him, I take it?"
She smiled at him, once more the charming seductress. "Got it in one, darling. Everyone has their own priorities. It just so happens that I consider myself as my very own number one."
"Without a care for the damage that you've done to Clark," Batman said flatly.
She sneered at him. "Oh, please. Like you have any right to lecture me on doing what's best for people. Have any birdies fly the coop lately?"
Batman's knuckles turned white on the armrest of the chair. "That's none of your concern."
"You're such a hypocrite," she threw at him. "You throw children into the line of fire without a qualm, but because Clark has the power of a god, you pull out the rubber hose if he gets so much as a cold. You're not worried about him, you're worried about what he might do."
"Miss Baker-"
"Do you really think you're fooling him?" she taunted. "He's not stupid, Batman. He knows you'll never trust him. It's not like he really thinks he's your friend-"
Batman's hand shot out, faster than a striking snake. Not fast enough, however, as she blinked away a second before his hand would have closed on her wrist.
He hadn't been smooth enough when he'd palmed the lead band, apparently. Hadn't thought she'd have the kind of training necessary to notice it. Still underestimating her. "Stay away from Clark," he growled.
She glared right back at him. "No! I'm not one of your crime-fighting kids. You don't get to give me orders."
"I'm warning you-"
"And I'm not Selina Kyle," she said over him. "You don't get to spank me and throw me in a cage because you think I've been naughty. And you sure as hell don't get to tie me down with that." She directed a look filled with sheer loathing toward his hand. "Nobody does that. Not anymore."
"You're a danger to everyone around you."
She tossed her long blonde hair defiantly. "Me? I steal stuff from rich people and sell it off to other rich people. It's as close to a no-victim crime as you can get. What you mean is that Clark is a danger. And I'm not the one who's causing it. I suggest you figure out who is, and stop wasting your time with empty threats."
She was gone before he could formulate a reply, a flash of green light and then nothing. He considered it likely that she had returned to her apartment in Metropolis, anger and fear causing her to seek familiar ground, but he didn't know for sure. She could be anywhere. That was her most dangerous talent- her unpredictability, and the near-impossibility of pinning her down.
She did seem sure of herself, however. And he had no actual evidence that she was the source of the trace readings in Clark's blood. Clark wasn't normally secretive, but there were exceptions. Something could have happened, something capable of causing both the Kryptonite poisoning and his erratic behavior.
The question then, was simple. What, or who, could do something like that to someone like Clark?
Wednesday, November 19th- 7:09 am
Clark stared at the readouts that were scrolling by on his screen, fighting the urge to scrub at his eyes. God, he was tired. Even aliens needed sleep.
He'd been up since about three this morning, when James had chimed a quiet alert on his comm implant and he'd had to haul himself out of bed to deal with the latest crisis. He hadn't seen Lex since that one brief glance through their shared bedroom wall, making sure that he was sleeping peacefully and safe in his bed. The lack was starting to bother him more than a little, and if he didn't have so much to deal with right now, he'd already be on his way to the LexCorp tower to check up on him.
"Kal-El, Dr. Hamilton is here to see you."
Of course he was. "Let him in, James."
"You shouldn't be keeping this a secret from Lex-Luthor."
Clark suppressed a sigh. This wasn't exactly a new discussion. "He's been exposed to black kryptonite before and it didn't go well," he said. "I'm not exposing him to this."
"You, too, have had adverse reactions to the material."
"I can handle it." He could, Clark assured himself. There was always a sort of tearing sensation in his head whenever he was around it, but he'd almost gotten used to it by now.
"If you say so." James' synthesized voice practically dripped with disapproval.
He was going to kill Lex for helping him with those voice upgrades. "I say so."
Thankfully, Hamilton arrived before it could devolve into "I'm not touching!" For one of the most advanced AI's on the planet, James certainly could get childish, and he usually dragged Clark right down with him.
"Clark, m'boy! How's out subject doing?"
Clark felt a vein throb in his temple at the man's jocular tone. "Pretty well, considering that you let him out last night."
Hamilton and Ivo were the finest scientific team Clark had ever come across, but he was already feeling Ivo's loss in a more than intellectual way. Hamilton's genius was with the coldly mechanical, and he lacked the reverential, human touch that had lead Ivo to shape the creation sitting in the next room. But Ivo had gotten sloppy, dropped the lead shielding too early, and now the bastard was gone and Clark was stuck riding herd on his recalcitrant partner and playing Daddy to what could be either the greatest scientific creation of the twentieth century or a weapon to make the Manhattan project look like a 4th of July sparkler.
Hamilton shrugged and sat down- in Clark's chair. "Nothing happened."
If Clark snapped and strangled him right here, no jury in the land would convict him. "Oh, something happened all right. He ran across Killer Frost."
Hamilton sat bolt upright. "Is it-"
"He is fine," Clark snapped. Technically speaking the android was gender-neutral, but Clark thought that using "it" was a distancing method and a cop-out. James had been "he" from the moment he'd emerged from the tangle of wires under Clark's hands and asked him for a name. "So's Frost; I've got her locked up in the Catacombs until I can figure out what to do with her. But the really interesting thing is that when I went back to his quarters afterwards, they were completely iced over."
"He-"
"Yep."
Hamilton blinked. "Then it worked."
Clark sighed. "Yes, it worked. Not that that's really the main prob-"
"We did it!" Hamilton laughed a little hysterically and ran his hands through his thinning hair. "He was already performing to spec otherwise, but I never dreamed…"
This was what happened when you didn't pay close enough attention to your scientists, Clark thought, disgusted with himself. He'd been too wrapped up in his own work, both here and with the Justice League, and they'd gotten away with this completely behind his back. They knew he'd've stopped them- God, nanite tech was one thing, AI's even, but throw in the black K and the replication program, and Clark would have crushed the project before it had even started. They'd managed to keep it completely off-the-books till Ivo's death, but by then it was already too late for Clark do anything but try and minimize the damage.
God, he didn't want to even think about how Bruce was going to react when he found out. Last night had shown that Clark couldn't keep the android cooped up forever, so eventually Bruce would find out. The man was the World's Greatest Detective, he'd detect things and follow the trail right back to Clark's doorstep.
"And did it- sorry, he- manage to replicate your own powers?"
Clark sighed. "He's in there, floating five feet above the floor. What do you think?"
If Clark were any less pissed at the man, his delight would be almost contagious. "This is better than we could have possibly hoped, Kent, you know that. The power that this beauty could have…"
Which was, of course, the problem. Ivo and Hamilton had both been blind to the outside world in their own unique ways. Hamilton saw only the limitless potential of his kryptonite fuel cells made into beautiful reality, and Ivo… well, who knew what was going through the man's head, but if he had to take a guess Clark would say that he'd probably been trying to play God, create a whole new being with his own hands. It had all been about the science, the thrill of doing what no one had managed to do before. He'd loved the android because it was his.
Clark, of course, had to deal with the real world, and if anyone knew about the dangers of unlimited power, it was him. Ivo had also managed to impart some kind of major Daddy complex to his creation that had passed neatly over to Clark with Ivo's death, so he had some degree of control, but it wouldn't last forever. Eventually the android would lose his leading-rein, and Clark would be finding out the hard way whether Ivo had created Adam or Lucifer.
"Containment is still our primary goal," Clark said. "Do not forget that."
Hamilton looked back at him, some of his joy leached out by Clark's tone. "You think he's dangerous."
"I think everything's dangerous in the wrong hands," Clark said. It was a lesson Lionel Luthor had taught him the hard way. "Like you said, the power he'll have access to if he leaves Cadmus is almost unlimited, and he hasn't been around long enough for us to figure out if his are hands that can hold that kind of power without crushing the rest of the world. Do you understand me?"
Hamilton nodded, a little cowed. "I suppose this is still top secret to Luthor, as well?"
Clark felt a pang about lying to Lex, but he was a lot more concerned about Lex's welfare than his hurt feelings. This was how it had to be. "Absolutely," he said. "Now we're going to go in there and you're going to do your tests, but I swear to God if you open your mouth about a single thing not related to the question at hand, I will end you." Clark was having enough problems when it was just his influence on the android's startlingly quick-learning circuits without Hamilton sticking his dangerously naïve little nose into the mix. One wrong question and Clark could have an apocalypse on his hands.
Hamilton nodded seriously, his eyes a little wide. He knew exactly what Clark was, but Hamilton's room in Clark's palace was a soft-edged one, and Clark usually babied him. Today he could barely keep from smacking the man senseless; playing nice was a little beyond him.
He took a deep breath. "James?"
"Going on standby," James said, disgruntled. For whatever reason, the android would completely shut down whenever James showed his presence. Clark had yet to figure that one out.
"Alright," Clark said, and opened the door.
The android looked up when he entered and gave the head-tilt that was his approximation of a welcoming smile. "Hello, Clark."
Clark smiled back. "Hello, Amazo."
tbc.