A/N: I've taken some of the comic canon events and ignored the rest for my own personal benefit. Hey, who wants a future if there's no Clex?
Fabulous betaing and gorgeous cover art by the lovely Megabat.
Update: apparently first posting cleared all the formatting and section breaks? Aaargh! Fixed now.
Once the shock wore off, Lex had to imagine, he'd be pleased.
Surprise was understandable. Clark Kent, in whatever role he chose to fulfill and whatever suit he chose to wear, had been a presence in Lex's life since he'd driven off a bridge into a river in Smallville. For the last ten years, he had been devoted to the elimination of that presence, for the previous five to learning the secrets of his friendship.
Doomsday had obviously been a threat to the public—the careless disregard with which he'd destroyed everything in his path had spread an entirely justified panic—but Lex had hardly believed that the Man of Steel was at risk.
Now, one of the few constants in his life was simply… gone.
He'd shot Superman with Kryptonite bullets, he'd blown him up with Kryptonite land mines, he'd disabled him with Kryptonite lasers, he'd sunk him to the bottom of the sea with a Kryptonite dagger in his back, he'd locked him in a Kryptonite cage, he'd…
Considering the amount of Kryptonite he'd exposed the alien to and had him survive, it was surprising that he still considered it a weakness.
Lex should be overjoyed. The meddling alien menace, the intrusive, nosy, officious, self-righteous, self-centered superhero who had thwarted every scheme he'd concocted—heedless of whether or not it was evil—was finally, finally out of the picture.
But Clark Kent couldn't die. It was unthinkable.
Most of Clark's friends wouldn't be able to think it. Superman may have died in Lois Lane's arms on national television, but Clark Kent disappeared for extended periods on the flimsiest of excuses all the time, and had never failed to turn up again clutching an exclusive. Just because he hadn't been seen since he'd left to do… something… somewhere else… in the leadup to Superman's final battle with Doomsday, didn't mean there was any reason to worry about him, because Clark Kent was well known for running at the first hint of danger. He was a flake. No one who didn't know the truth would ever imagine that the perennial bad penny, who just kept on turning up, long after he'd promised and with an insultingly banal explanation, might really be dead.
And there were surprisingly few, given the transparency of his disguise, who had realized the truth.
The boy whose eyes had dipped and avoided as he'd lied to every person he saved had grown up. Grown to an adult who looked straight into the eyes of friend and foe alike as he deceived them with the guiltless skill of a professional.
How could anyone connect him with Superman, the lying, hypocritical, alien defender of Truth, Justice, and The American Way?
How could they not?
The papers on Lex's desk blurred, and he stalked over to his liquor cabinet, intent on pouring himself a scotch. He changed his mind halfway there, recalling something, and returned to press a button on his desk.
"Red tulips," he snapped at the intercom.
"Sir?" Hearing the puzzlement in his personal assistant's tone—Lex couldn't remember his name, Philip? Fenwick? Something like that—Lex decided to fire him. He was paid to keep up, after all.
"For the memorial," he clarified impatiently.
"For your wreath for Superman, sir?"
Lex clenched his teeth. "For everywhere," he managed.
"Er…what do you mean 'everywhere', sir?"
"Everywhere!" roared Lex, slamming his fist down on the desk next to the intercom, making the coffee cup and the keyboard jump half an inch off the hardwood surface. "The wreath, the statue, planted through Centennial Park, on the streets, hang them from the fucking balconies. I want to see every fucking red tulip on the face of the earth, do you understand me? Red! Tulips! Everywhere!"
"Yes, sir," said his assistant. "Red tulips, sir." He sounded so bewildered that Lex was severely tempted to fire him on the spot, rather than waiting until he could arrange a replacement. Then again, he didn't particularly relish the thought of explaining to someone else about the tulips.
Lex rubbed at his eyes and returned to the day's paperwork. His fingers were slippery on the pen as he blindly signed the papers in front of him. A hostile takeover set to make him billions. Or was this the patent application? Usually, he wouldn't have had to think about it to know.
Perhaps Governor Kent would understand that the tulips were all the apology he could give her.
There was nothing of Clark Kent in Superman's body.
They'd laid him in state, steely face composed, tattered blue and red suit replaced with a pristine new one, gaping wounds concealed with the professional touch of the city's best mortician, hair slicked back as they'd thought that it always was.
It had taken a number of large bribes to give Lex the chance to visit alone, the night before the rotunda opened for viewing by the public. The growing queues were already miles long, crowds of people camping out to ensure they didn't miss their last chance for a close encounter with the alien they'd thoughtlessly worshiped.
The only guard was a strangely shaped shadow in an upper corner of the dome—Bruce Wayne was never as invisible in his costume as he imagined himself to be—but Lex knew that there was no point in objecting, despite the lengths he'd gone to in ensuring the more traditional guards' absence. It was probably for the best. Not all of Superman's unofficial visitors on this night would be as indifferent to the fallen hero as Lex.
Lex strode over to the body, making the lurking shadow shift in preparation to intervene. This close, his hands twitched as he repressed the urge to ruffle the hair back over Clark's forehead where it should have lain, disheveled and imperfect. Human.
But even if he could have done so without provoking a confrontation with the Dark Knight, Lex wouldn't have tried to bring any resemblance to Clark back into the chilly body before him. Clark's face had been softened by sunny smiles and shy blushes and warm lips that had once touched his to breathe life back into his frozen soul.
And then slowly suffocated it again with barefaced lies and accusations and broken promises.
The object in front of him was as much of a lifeless statue as the bronze that was being erected atop the mausoleum Lex had financed in Centennial Park to serve as Superman's final resting place. As much of a lifeless statue as Superman had always been. The chiseled features were as resolute in death as they had been whenever he'd put on the suit, and suddenly Lex recalled everything he'd hated about Superman: every false accusation, every true one, every falsehood and evasion, every suspicious glare and slander.
He'd hated the alien. Hated him. There was no doubt about that.
"I've won," he hissed at the dead body. "I'm still alive, and you're dead. You can't do anything more to stop me taking what I want. Do you hear me, Superman? I may not have killed you, but I will bury you. I've won."
He spun and walked away, fists clenched in his pockets.
This, apparently, was what triumph felt like.
Doomsday's body—tracked down to a basement government morgue lined with shrouded misshapen forms and gruesome scientific instruments—was even more unsatisfying. This monster, this thing, this abominable feat of extra-terrestrial genetic engineering had succeeded where Lex had failed.
He'd destroyed Superman.
He'd stolen the victory Lex had always known would be his when he decided he wanted it.
And he'd killed Clark.
Lex's knuckles went white on the back of the chair in front of him.
His useless assistant gasped and backed away, colliding with a gurney. Mercy was already moving swiftly to the guard the door from anyone coming to investigate the noise.
Lex barely noticed.
The chair shattered on Doomsday's massive head, quickly followed by another as Lex screamed and raged and struck out with anything he could grasp: furniture and medical equipment and finally his fists, until the rage drained away to leave only the silent invisible convulsions in his chest, his grip on Doomsday's granite shoulder all that was holding him up among the wreckage of the room.
Lex's burning eyes stared ahead, dry and blank, as he rested his forehead against the wrong alien chest.
He didn't wear the black armband with the red and yellow shield on it to Superman's funeral, despite the best efforts of his public relations adviser. Instead, he wore a single red tulip in his buttonhole.
Beside him on the podium awash with tulips stood Senator Kent. Her face was composed with grief, practical and professional even with her son now officially listed among the missing persons from the battle.
She gave a moving speech about all the things Superman had brought to Metropolis and to the state of Kansas; to America, and to the world. It wasn't his strength that had given him his power, she claimed, nor his speed, nor any of his other abilities, but his heart. If he had been an ordinary man, living an ordinary life, he would still have inspired those around him with the same compassion, the same kindness, the same indomitable will. The same rejection of injustice and human suffering. The same refusal to allow the people around him to be hurt, no matter the cost. His legacy, she said, would be seen in how the people he'd given his life to protect lived their lives, how they reached out to those around them, how they stood together to aid and protect others in whatever way they could.
To those who knew him, she said, he could never die.
She'd always been a good speech-maker.
Lex clapped along politely as the crowd across Centennial Square and across the world on their televisions went insane, and wondered if the stirring in his chest could truly be the result of such transparent emotional rhetoric.
But somewhere along the line, Lex had forgotten she was officially talking about Superman, rather than Clark.
And somewhere along the line, Lex had realized that she had a point.
He'd always imagined Superman's body would be lighter.
Even as the alien tore apart steel with his bare hands, he had drifted through the air like it was water. Lex had wondered what it felt like to be so weightless.
Once, back in Smallville, he'd known. He'd plunged through the guardrail, off the edge of a bridge into oblivion, and he'd risen, soaring high above the world, only to be dragged back into gravity by the kiss of the boy who could fly.
It had taken Lex two months to wrap up the necessary loose ends, including replacing his assistant with one marginally less incompetent. Then he'd assigned Mercy the task of overseeing Lexcorp, giving her full authority to deal with anything unexpected, while he took a brief and unprecedented holiday.
Before he left, she'd helped him extract Superman's body through the secret passage in the mausoleum Lex had donated, helped him ferry it across town and onto a waiting jet. From there, Lex had gone on alone.
Perhaps he would have done better to bring her with him; there was no one else he could trust to assist him with a task this delicate. But there was no one else he could trust to leave behind either. Trust hadn't exactly been the primary commodity he'd been pursuing over the last ten years. Not since he'd given up on ever deserving Clark's.
He scowled and set his feet as he sweated inside heavy layers of clothing and gave one last heave. There was a precarious moment where it seemed they might both end up in the snow, but finally Superman's body settled limply into place in the passenger seat of the motorized sled.
Lex kept his eyes straight ahead as he started the sled's engine for the long journey. Frost still curled in heavy gusts in front of his face from the exertion.
The alien really was unreasonably heavy.
And while they were on the subject, couldn't the alien have placed his extra-terrestrial fortress somewhere a little warmer?
Lex had discovered the exact location years ago, in some of his late father's notes. The crystals they had both worked so hard to track down and unite, Lex realized when he'd collated his father's research with his own, had been unrepentantly stolen and taken out of reach by the alien, preventing any of the knowledge they contained from being used for the betterment of humankind. But Lex had never been desperate enough to brave the cold weather—or chance the sudden return of the blue and red hypocrite—to attempt to take it back.
It was beautiful. More than beautiful. The luminous construction in the snow was magnificent: massive spikes of interlocking crystal that fractured and focused the perpetual sunlight of Arctic summer, wreathing the area in an unearthly brilliance.
When he first laid eyes on it, there was a long moment where Lex considered dumping his silent, duplicitous, thieving companion off the sled and continuing alone. Reason prevailed just in time to prevent Lex from having to return later and heave the body back up out of the snow alone. Again.
Lex was almost disappointed to discover that the 'Fortress', was lacking in even a front door to keep him out, and didn't seem to be defended by anything other than its location and the usual risk of an encounter with Superman. He'd come prepared with enough explosives to blast his way in, but it seemed that Kryptonian arrogance made that unnecessary.
It was marginally warmer inside the structure; the amplified sunlight heating the air nearly to the point where it would begin to melt the snow, if not to the point where it would be comfortable for humans. The warmest point was a tiny alcove populated by a pallet of blankets and a familiar smelling pillow, which wouldn't be precisely comfortable if Lex had to stay for a while, but would at least mean he was unlikely to freeze in his sleep.
Once he'd finished his initial exploration, Lex pulled the sled right up to the dense, unresponsive cluster of crystals that had to be the control panel, and began the laborious process of propping up Superman's body and operating the alien's lifeless hands over the controls.
Despite certain similarities of personality, Clark's Kryptonian father turned out to be significantly easier to manipulate into letting Lex into the system than Lionel would have been. Apparently the dead body of his son and the blank-faced temerity with which Lex had used it as a puppet to activate the console appealed to him. It probably would have charmed Lionel, too.
In the face of unrestricted access to the data banks, Lex decided to extend his 'holiday' and acquire as much as he could of the knowledge that should have been his all along. His supplies wouldn't last forever, but he was hardly likely to have another opportunity to absorb the collected wisdom of the lost civilisation of Krypton.
It didn't take long before Lex determined that despite the lack of actual people, 'Solitude' was as much of an overstatement as 'Fortress'. Jor-El simply would not leave well enough alone, and playing nice with him was giving Lex flashbacks to Lionel's moments of deeper insanity. He'd had quite enough of megalomaniac fathers trying to convince him that his ultimate destiny was to rule the world.
As though he didn't already know that.
When the time finally came for Lex to leave or starve, he was almost grateful to abandon the scientific goldmine and get back to Metropolis: a city of eleven million people where it was easy being alone.
Lex slammed into wakefulness so suddenly, he was surprised that even he didn't twitch.
The darkness and lush fabrics of his bedroom in Metropolis came as a shock; he'd been dreaming of the Fortress, dreaming of Superman's still body entombed in frozen, sun-drenched crystal, glowing with light in a land without night.
Lex had developed the art of knowing when he was being watched early, waking motionlessly and without a sound. He'd survived his first assassination attempt when he was just seven years old. Lionel had arranged it, Lex was sure; the explanation of a rival company a trifle too smooth and premeditated to be true. He wished he could have been as certain whether the assassin had been told to leave him alive if he hadn't managed to raise the alarm.
In this case, he was fairly certain that calling for help wouldn't do any good, even though Mercy was outside the door. The smallest noise would bring her running, but no one could be fast enough to protect him from this intruder.
The other had known the moment he woke, of course. However tight Lex's control over his body's visible reaction, he couldn't have prevented the surge of adrenaline that set his heart pounding like a timpani.
He waited, keeping his breathing even, unwilling to speak until he found out his visitor's identity.
Unsure who he would rather it be.
"I hear you deflowered Holland," a soft voice finally rang through the silence.
Clark. He was Clark, at least for the moment.
"Nice headline," Lex returned without moving, trying to sound calm even if Clark would know he wasn't. It was the principle of the thing. "But it's hardly accurate."
"That's fair." The glowing smile in Clark's voice flashed vividly in his mind, and Lex kept his eyes closed despite the darkness. The last thing he wanted was to catch a glimpse of that infernal costume. "You cleaned out most of the rest of the northern hemisphere as well."
"Tulips weren't in season further south." He sounded pathetic even to his own ears, and tried again. "I bought shares in all the southern hothouses. I've doubled my money on the original outlay already. For some reason, red tulips are all the rage now."
There was a long silence, and if Lex hadn't been able to feel Clark's presence, he might have suspected he was alone in the room.
"I see," said Clark, and somehow, Lex rather thought he might. "Mom appreciated them, anyway."
"I don't know what you mean," said Lex flatly.
"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you saved me," said Clark, the smirk audible in his voice. "I wouldn't want to ruin your reputation. Although I can't vouch for Jor-El. I think he likes you better than me. He actually sounded impressed when he told me how you didn't even threaten to destroy him when he wouldn't admit there was a regeneration chamber, just started packing explosives around the console and setting fuses."
Lex scoffed. "As though they would have missed out on that given the rest of the technology they sent with their precious son."
"Well, anyway. Thanks." Then Clark's voice slipped lower into differently familiar reverberating tones. "I won't forget the help you've given me in protecting the citizens of Earth."
Lex turned his face further into the pillow, eyes stinging behind closed lashes. "Get out, Superman," he ordered, his voice more moist than he would have liked. "Go… rescue kittens out of trees, or whatever it is you're back for. Just get out."
"Lex, I—" and that was Clark's voice again, so familiar that Lex sat up in bed, the deep purple silk of his sheets clutched to him as he tried to make out the form of his lost friend in the darkness.
"I hate him," spat Lex. "I don't think you've ever understood that. He's judgmental, he's dictatorial, he's dishonest, he's a menace to public property, and he absolutely cannot see the validity of any opinion but his own. It would have been better for everyone if he'd stayed dead, but…" He smirked and looked down, amused as always by his own failings. "Dad always said I was too sentimental."
He forced himself to reign in a full smile at the strangled noise from the other side of the room, unwilling to trust the darkness to hide his expression from Superman's eyes.
It was good to know, somehow, that he could still confuse Clark. Bewilderment suited him in a way that merely made his administrative staff exasperating.
"But we're the same person," Clark protested finally.
A spark traveled from the eyes of the dark figure at the end of the bed to light the tall candelabra on the other side of the room, and in the tiny glow of light, Lex forced himself to look at his midnight visitor.
It was Clark. But it wasn't.
Flickers of candlelight licked their way across the shadowy shield on his chest; his cape fluttered in the breeze from the open window.
It was Superman. But it wasn't.
"Yes," admitted Lex. "I know. I suppose nobody's perfect."
Clark considered that for long enough that Lex wondered if he was going to leave without saying anything else. Then he came closer, stepping carefully around the bed to Lex's side.
"You hit me with your car," he said.
The side of Lex's mouth pulled back into a smirk before he could stop it. "As I said. Nobody's perfect."
Clark looked down, then peeked up through his lashes, the impish smile that Lex had longed to see for so many years reappearing above the garish S. "S'alright," he shrugged. "Didn't hurt me. I'm an alien."
"No, you're not," said Lex seriously. "Not to me."
Lex's breath caught in his throat as Clark settled on the edge of his bed, inches away. He'd never seen that dazzling smile from quite this close before. The last time Clark's face had been so near, on the riverbank, he'd been a terrified immortal teenager giving Lex the kiss of life.
Clark had been many things to Lex over the years, but he had never been an alien.
"I'm glad," said Clark. And kissed him.
A/N: In the language of flowers, red tulips mean a declaration of love and "believe me". But that's just a coincidence. Really, the red tulips were because of Martha's insistent and very specific desire for them on the day the meteor shower brought her a son.