A/N: Kudos to anyone who can guess what Lex is referring to when he mentions Star Wars
Also, I can't believe the Titans season finale is coming up already. That was... Quick. Short. I won't give any spoilers(cause that's not nice unless you're my little brother, in which case I troll away), but I'm excited
Published: 12/16/2018
Warnings: None
Chapter 3
Confrontations
Leave it to Lex freakin' Luthor to create a suit capable of going toe to toe with a full powered Kryptonian. Clark honestly did not want to know what a teamup between Lex and Bruce would look like. The universe would not survive.
As it was, Clark wasn't sure he would survive.
"Stand still so I can beat the you senseless!" Lex demanded, blasting another nauseating green blast at Clark.
Clark dodged.
Yeah, no.
Clark had been hit with Kryptonite before. There was no way he'd williniling stand still and take a blast of that. Clark liked living. He also liked not being in pain. He very much liked not being in pain. He wasn't sure what his younger self had been thinking when he'd ranted for hours on end about how he was annoyed that nothing could hurt him.
Clark could only conclude he'd afflicted temporary insanity as a child. Temporary insanity that he, gratefully, no longer suffered from.
He was about to suffer from Kryptonite poisoning if he didn't stop Lex in time, though.
Clark decided to go for negotiation. Of all his enemies, Lex Luthor was surprisingly the most willing to sit down and just talk things out. Of course, this usually resulted in Lex talking circles around Clark while looking utterly amused, but details.
So, Clark let himself land on top of one of Metropolis' many skyscrapers. Hands raised in surrender, Clark watched as Lex touched down right in front of him.
Lex wasn't attacking again. So far so good.
"Lex! Can't we talk this out? Okay, look, I'm sorry and okay, I admit, maybe I should have said something-"
Clark should have known better. That had been the wrong thing to say.
"Maybe?! Maybe should have said something?! Maybe?" Lex thundered incredulously, skin flushing red.
Clark rapidly began to imitate his own cape as embarrassment surged in him. Okay, maybe Lex had a point. For once. It was bound to happen eventually, so Clark really shouldn't have been that surprised.
"Okay, definitely should have said something," Clark conceded. "But, in my defense, telling you about Conner would mean I'd have to tell you about-"
That had, apparently, also been the wrong thing to say.
"SECRETS, secrets, secrets! Is that all that matters to you, Clark?"
Clark flared, chest huffing as he took a deep breath. Lex muttered something about oh here we go again and genetic bitch faces, whatever that meant. Clark decided to ignore it. He did not have a bitch face, thank you very much, Lex was just… Overly sensitive.
"My business is my own, Lex! If I want to keep something private, then it's my damn right to do so!" Clark yelled right back.
"Which is perfectly fine when it's your secret! Not when it's my son, you lumbering backwater hillbilly!" Lex shouted.
"Yeah? Look around, Lex!" Clark motioned to the burning city below. "I didn't tell you about Conner because I was scared about how you'd react, and what did you do? You blew up half the city!"
If anything, Lex looked even more offended.
"And there you go! Accusing me falsely without anything to back it, no matter how much evidence contradicts it!"
Now it was Clark's turn to be offended.
"What do you mean, lack of evidence?" Clark repeated, words dipped in liquid skepticism, "There are literally Kryptonite-powered LexCorp robots wrecking the city!"
"Ah, yes Clark. Because my response to unexpected parenthood would be to create a situation that could potentially kill my own child." Lex deadpanned. "Bravo. Brilliant. I never could have seen that coming." Lex rolled his eyes.
…
This was why Clark never liked arguing with Lex. In seconds, Lex had used his uncanny ability of making Clark feel like an idiot to perfection.
Clark did what he usually did when Lex insulted his intelligence or denied accusations which were perfectly logical. He doubled down.
"Of course you'd say something like that! Because, of course, the amazing 'Lex the Great' can never make any mistakes and is never respected for his own actions!"
"I take full responsibility for my sins, thank you!" Lex, ever the pathological liar, somehow managed to say that load of manure with a straight face.
"Lies! Every word you say is a lie! A trick! There's no truth in you!"
"Don't go paraphrasing Star Wars novels at me, Clark! This is a serious discussion about your deceptions and the effects they have on the environment!"
"My 'deceptions' have never left half of Metropolis in ruins, you insane sociopath, and what do you mean Star Wars?"
Lex's face went surprisingly frigid. Cold and frozen and dark, a look that actually bashed shivers to run up and down Clark's spine. Then, without any further warning, face still utterly blank, Lex lifted his arm and-
"STOP!"
Then, the object of their quarrel arrived, feet slamming down into the ground between the pair of them, shattering the concrete. Clark hid his secret identity by using glasses and Kryptonian technology to mess with perceptions of himself.
Conner…
Conner literally would just change his shirt. This was on a good day. On a lazy day, he'd shrug off a flimsy piece of flannel and shoot off into the distance.
The fact that this worked at all really said a lot about the American people.
There Conner stood between the pair of them, arms extended on either side of him towards the two nemesis, eyes darting back and forth frantically.
Conner, and another whose feet Clark heard landing lightly onto the pavement. A quick switch in vision revealed Robin(Clark was honestly surprised Wonder Girl and Impulse hadn't followed, actually), hidden away beneath some sort of light bending device.
Hm. That thing needed work. True, Clark had to tap into an alternate vision sense to see him, but the fact that he could at all meant this was likely a prototype.
"Really, guys? Really?" Conner demanded, sounding genuinely hurt. "Can't you two get along for like, five seconds? Ten? An hour without causing millions in property damage?"
To this, Lex snorted.
"If you wish to accuse someone of property damage, son, I suggest you look to big blue and red over there."
There was that word again. 'Son'. How Lex said it so flippantly, so easily, while Clark himself struggled with the concept was beyond him. To Lex, saying that word seemed as easy as breathing.
To Clark, even acknowledging it was a struggle because it had been so sudden, so unexpected. Unexpected, followed by the chaos of Conner going on a Red K rampage, complete with kidnapping Lois and blasting laser beams at Clark's head.
Wait…
Conner, technically speaking, was a toddler.
…
Oh fuck, was this what was meant by the term 'terrible twos'?
"That primary color obsessed musclehead doesn't know the meaning of the word 'restraint'." Lex continued on, either not realizing Clark's inner turmoil or outright ignoring it. Then, the words properly registered and Clark bristled.
Clark was annoyed by this. He very much knew restraint. He'd known it his entire life. Not knowing it would have resulted in him literally snapping everyone he came across like a toothpick, something he had never done even while under the influence of Red K.
Conner seemed to also take offense and actually turned towards Lex to defend Clark(ha!) before Clark himself beat the teen to the point.
"Excuse me! I'm not the one that goes waltzing around with the arrogance that I'm the only one that can fix the world's problems!" Clark countered.
To this, father and son both turned, shooting Clark identical incredulous looks, eyes raking up and down Clark's costume.
…
"Okay, I can concede that I'm a bit… Arrogant myself." Clark admitted.
…
"You call yourself Superman." Lex pointed out helpfully.
…
.
"Okay, fine! I'm an arrogant jackass!" Clark confessed, even if he didn't quite believe it himself. "Don't deny that you're worse, though!" Clark snapped.
Lex's face scrunched.
"Worse? Worse? What are you, Clark? An overgrown child? Is this a contest to you?" Lex demanded. Then, in a ridiculous high pitched voice, Lex began to mercilessly mock him. "Oh, Miss, it doesn't matter that I was bad, so was the other kid!"
Clark twitched.
Conner's head snapped up at that.
"You know his na- I mean, who's Clark, hehe?" Conner scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
It was at this point that Clark had to close his eyes, count to five, and breath. Breath, before opening them again.
Nope.
Nothing changing.
This was, sadly, not an elaborate nightmare.
Lex sighed, gazing accusingly at Clark. "I see you've infected our child with your pathological habit of lying badly."
"Hey!" Clark and Conner both exclaimed in reproach.
"Example," Lex continued on, turning slightly. "Bruce Wayne has a habit of adopting helpless orphans with anger management problems. Latest adoptee: Timothy Drake."
With that, Lex fired a laser beam at, what to him, should look like thin air.
Tim's body hit the ground in a roll, appearing in a shimmer of light as he dodged. The experimental Waynetech Stealth Belt did not approve of sudden movements, the sudden action jolting it, causing it to stop refracting light in a way to conceal the current Robin.
"Tim! Don't hurt him!" Conner snarled, stalking forth.
To this, Lex shot him a raised eyebrow look.
"Hurt? Oh, never. I just wanted young Mr. Drake to reveal himself. I even aimed far above the head." Lex claimed.
Tim, rising to his feet, nodded.
"He did. Shot a full meter above me. I… Might have panicked a little." Tim confessed, sounding embarrassed. Then, his eyes widened. "Wait, you know my name?!"
Lex gave the boy a patient look.
"Of course I know your name. I reversed Watchtower's piggyback into my system a few months ago. She really ought to be more careful."
"... and you accuse Batman of invading people's privacy." Tim said, shooting a pointed look at Clark.
"Watchtower doesn't have an arrangement of files to take us all down if we go rogue." Clark pointed out.
To this, the other three again shot him incredulous looks, including Conner, who usually looked at Clark as if Clark had personally hung the moon and the stars up each night. Clark was certain he would not be walking off of this roof with his self esteem intact. Nope, no way.
"Chlo' literally keeps giant stashes of Kryptonite stored away in case you go rogue." Conner pointed out, not giving a damn about secret identities and what not.
And, speaking of secret identities…
"Conner! How could you tell Lex my secret?" Clark asked, truly heartbroken by this violation in trust. Nevermind the fact that Conner had been surprised that Lex knew his secret. Clark was sure Conner had let it slip somehow.
He would not be surprised. Conner was not the poster child of covertness. He was the opposite of covert. He was so opposite of covert that Clark once had to stop him from signing a contract selling the Superboy name to a man whose last name was Leech.
If that wasn't a red flag, Clark wasn't sure what was.
"He didn't tell me, you alien moron!" Lex exploded. "I knew all along!" Lex paused. "Okay, I'll admit, not all along, but I'm not an idiot and I put the pieces together and you do realize I waited a full day after I had infected you with radiation to tell you about it, right?"
Oh hell, Clark had forgot Lex and his creepy stalker ways had done that. It's why he had been spending so much time in Russia, actually. Farther from Metropolis, the better.
"Wait, radiation?" Tim exclaimed, shooting Clark a wide eyed look before notably taking a step back.
Lex rolled his eyes.
"It's non lethal, don't worry." Lex assured. "All it does is make him look like a big neon sign in the right light spectrum."
Conner began to quint at Clark.
"Oh yeah! Huh. I see it. How in the name of Rao did you not notice that?" Conner asked, once more gazing at Clark as if he were an idiot.
If it wasn't for the fact that Tim was giving him the exact same look, Clark would be convinced it was Lex's evil villain genetics. As it was, Clark was instead convinced that Lex was corrupting poor impressionable minors.
…
Oh god.
Had… Had Lex also infected Clark when he was a teenager? Just when he had thought Lex Luthor's evilness had bounds, he was hit with this bombshell.
"Oh great. He's got that face on." Lex complained.
"What face?" Tim asked.
"The 'Im utterly convinced Lex did something bad even though I have zero evidence to support it face'." Lex shamelessly continued his corruption of teenagers.
From the way Tim was frowning at him, it was working. This was not good. Bruce would never forgive him if he let Lex twist the mind of his precious protege.
(Elsewhere, Batman had the bizarre urge to laugh at the concept of anyone trying to corrupt Tim(also elsewhere, Ra's al Ghul sneezed))
"In my defense, I'm usually right." Clark could not help but point out.
Notably, Lex did not answer.
"Wait," Tim said, turning towards Lex. "If you didn't set the LexCorp robots on Metropolis… Who did?"
Lex blinked.
"I assumed that was Watchtower, actually. She did breach my network recently when she hacked into my office surveillance video." Lex said.
Clark would not stand for this steaming pile of bullshit.
"So now you're accusing Chloe of trying to commit mass murder?" Clark demanded, outraged.
"Wait, wait, office camera?" Conner interrupted, sounding uncharacteristically panicked. Clark could not help but narrow his eyes in suspicion. What, exactly, was going on around here?
(Crap, crap, crap, I was a literal embarrassment last night, can't let that get out. Hm. Blackmail Chloe? Blackmail it is!)
"Yes. Worry not, my wonderful child, this is hardly the first time she's done this, so I do have parameters to keep her, or others, from getting anything coherent from those."
"Of course you do," Clark muttered.
Lex spun on him.
"Yes, Clark, of course I do. I have a superpowered nosy has-never-heard-of-privacy reporter that seems to have made it his personal mission in life to stick his head in my business!"
"I wouldn't have to be a nosy has-never-heard-of-privacy reporter if you weren't so goddamned vile and inhumane!"
"The irony of being labeled as inhuman by a literal alien." Eyeroll.
"If anything, that should prove to you how utterly twisted you are!" Clark snarled.
"Oh my god," Tim gasped, "you two argue like an old married couple!"
Clark's jaw dropped. At the very least, he was not alone in this as Lex's touched down seconds after his own.
Conner actually looked victorious as he twirled, literally twirled, towards Tim.
Tim balanced. "No- Kon, no. I know that look."
Conner ignored it. Instead, Clark was besieged with the sight of his kind of kid / little brother / something bouncing up and down like a boy at a candy store, eyes darting back and forth between Clark and Lex.
What?
The utter confusion was enough for Clark to do something he hadn't done in years. Something he hadn't done since he was young and in high school and idealistic about people and the world.
He turned to Lex for help. The guy seemed to be better at this parenting thing anyways, so Lex should be able to help.
(And wasn't that just the mother of all ironies, considering Lex was raised by a homicidal maniac, while Clark was raised by two loving parents that would give the world for him)
Lex, however, did not meet his gaze. No. Instead, Clark was treated to the rare of sight of a horrified Lex Luthor, which really was not something you saw every day.
"Conner- NO." Lex emphasized.
Conner's expression fell.
"But-"
"I will… Try to get along with Kenobi over there," Lex conceded with a veiled whispered hiss about half truths and deceptions, "but, that does not mean- that."
Clark could legitimately state he had no idea what was going on.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Luthor." Tim added.
Clark winced. Fuck. It was too late. Lex had twisted the poor boy onto the path of darkness. Bruce would never forgive him.
Conner looked back and forth between his best friend and his rather bad choice of parental figure(seriously, if Conner had needed Clark to act more like a dad, he should have said something(okay, so Clark would have probably run for the hills if Conner actually had done that, but details)), before a sigh escaped the teens lips.
"Okay. I guess I can live with that." Conner conceded, although to what Clark had no idea. Instead, Conner turned to him and grin. "So, does this mean we can be one big happy family? Can I-"
"WAIT!" Tim screeched so loudly Clark wondered if the boy wasn't the secret love child of Bruce Wayne and Black Canary. All eyes turned towards him.
Tim was gazing at Lex, lifting an accusing finger.
"If you didn't set the robots on Metropolis- and, I'll admit, setting robots on Metropolis does sound weird, even for you-"
"Did this teenager seriously just say that to my face?"
"But," Tim continued, ignoring the interruption entirely, "if you didn't set the robots on the city, who did?"
You could hear a pin drop.
Silence.
"I… Genuinely don't know, to be honest. I was more concerned with stopping the carnage than finding the cause." Lex confessed.
"Carnage you caused…" Clark hissed.
Conner, without missing a beat, turned and flung a rock at Clark's head. Clark blinked as the projectile did… Well, nothing really, bullets couldn't pierce him, but the intent was clear from the sharp eyed look the teen shot him.
O… Kay. Clark would apparently have to give a supervillain the benefit of the doubt. Oh joy. Was this his life now?
Tim, horrifyingly, looked like he was taking Lex seriously. The teen lifted a curled hand to his face, foot stomping slightly, deep in thought.
"It didn't make much sense to me after I thought about it. I mean, seriously, you're a Super Villian, so going around and causing mayhem should be your thing-"
"Once more, I object."
"But you never do anything without benefit, since you're not a batshit megalomaniac like the Joker-"
"The fact that you called him batshit really says something about your own boss, Drake."
"So, the question then becomes, who would do this, and why?" Tim continued on, not at all perturbed by Lex's constant interruptions.
Conner hummed happily to himself.
"My dad and my bestie get along. Now, as soon as get rid of the robots, this will officially be the best day ever."
Clark could not help it. He finally surrendered to the temptation and face palmed.
Wait…
If Tim was right and Lex really was innocent(which, frankly, was such a microscopic chance that Clark wasn't even sure why he was contemplating it), the real question shouldn't be who would want to cause so much mayhem, but who could? It wasn't like Lex's security was lax and, other than Chloe, there weren't many that could break their way in.
Especially break their way in without Lex noticing.
So… The question was not why would, but who could.
Half a mile away, red glowed in the eyes of one of the robots battling toe to toe with Wonder Woman.
Hank Henshaw would see Superman ended, if it was the last thing he did.
