A Man's Got to Know His Limitations
Chapter Three: A Pearl of Great Price
By LastScorpion

*Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.*
--Matthew 13:45-46

My mother was a religious woman. I don't think I've known one since. She was good and sweet and kind, and I can't remember exactly what she looked like anymore. She's been dead for more than thirty years.

My father was a bastard. He was the most evil person I've met so far, and I associate with some of the worst. Or I have, in the past. I don't think I will in the future. He died five years ago.

My brothers: one a holy innocent, dead in his crib -- the other more a bastard than his father, even, and mad as his mother's genes could make him. I've outlived them both.

I've had sex partners -- I won't call them lovers -- by the dozen, enemies by the score, rivals by the hundreds. I'm still here. Most of them aren't.

I've had one friend.

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When Superman finally met his match, I was discreetly overjoyed. The Extra-Terror (what a stupid name) had even had the good taste to demolish that ornate monstrosity of a library that my great-grandfather inflicted on Metropolis back in the 1890's. For once, LexCorp hadn't borne the brunt of the property damage resulting from one of Superman's little debacles. Our losses of personnel and materiel had been minimal, and one of the most persistent obstacles to our daily pursuit of profitable business opportunities had been eliminated. Better yet, it meant I'd be able to dissect an extraterrestrial biological entity. The Extra-Terror had had a disobligingly effective self-destruct device, but Superman was just as alien, and our previous disagreements could only make the knowledge I'd gain from dismembering and analyzing his corpse that much sweeter.

Radiation is not a problem with proper equipment. The night of Christmas was the time to send my people in to retrieve the specimen. There would be few witnesses because of the holiday. The city authorities would have had long enough to put up barricades to keep their citizens out of the contaminated zone, so the National Guard would be gone. It was an acceptable plan.

I remember wondering briefly why I hadn't gotten a card from Clark that Christmas. Every year since we'd met, he'd sent me a Christmas card. They always had reindeer or poinsettias on them; he was never religious either. I had two dozen of them hidden under the flask of brandy I kept in my left-hand lower desk drawer. They were the only Christmas cards I received from anyone who wasn't either a business associate or hoping to become a business associate. Clark even sent one the year that he and Lois did an expose that nearly got me indicted for the Mayburn scandal. I vaguely hoped nothing had happened to him.

It hardly seemed worth worrying about, though, considering the extraordinary Christmas present I was getting. I had my subordinates deliver the specimen to my old laboratory in the mansion near Plant Three. No one ever bothered me in Smallville anymore. The town had become even smaller than before, losing population to Metropolis as the city's crime rate had plummeted. My father, who was the only person who had ever thought of concerning himself with what I did there, was dead. I could be assured of privacy.

My employees had conveyed the specimen in a crate, which I had them leave in the lab. I dismissed them back to the city to enjoy the remainder of their holiday, and prepared to enjoy mine. My kryptonite knives and saws had been awaiting this day for a long time. I unboxed the specimen and rolled it out onto my work surface.

The firemen who buried the body had wrapped it in the library's scorched and tattered flag as a makeshift shroud. I unrolled the body from the cloth, and it landed prone. The cape had been burned or torn away, as had much of the underlying blue costume. I disengaged the locks on the weighing platform and took the weight of the body in toto -- eighty-eight kilograms. (193.6 lbs.) I re-engaged the locks so I could work without spoiling my scale's calibration. The length of the body was one hundred ninety-five centimeters. The body had been mildly to moderately burned, but there were no signs of decomposition. Upon inspection, glowing fragments of green kryptonite were revealed embedded in the flesh of the back. I removed a total of six, ranging in mass from 0.75 grams to 1.33 grams. They were faceted like gemstones. The mineral specimens stopped glowing when removed from contact with the alien's body.

I turned the body over and gazed upon the face of my nemesis. Whenever Superman and I had met, it had generally been a matter of him slamming my face into a wall while yet another of my more ethically-challenged laboratories burned in the distance and he scolded me about my responsibilities to mankind. Sometimes he would stand atop a building heroically with the sun at his back and warn me away from some nefarious scheme he'd heard I was contemplating. Whenever I had him trapped I usually was in a hurry to make good my escape. I never got the chance to look him in the face for long.

I hadn't expected such eyelashes in a superhero. Or such lips.

Suddenly I remembered when I'd seen faceted kryptonite before. I got the little green gemstones out of their lead container and looked at them again. They were very like Lana Lang's old meteor rock necklace, the one that I'd taken off of Clark that time.... I held the jewel close enough to Superman's chest to make it glow. When that eerie green light shone again on that battered, beautiful face, there was no doubt. So many years had passed, but it was undeniably the same. I slammed the lead box shut and swept all my kryptonite paraphernalia hastily away.

Superman was Clark Kent.

Superman was Clark Kent, but was he truly dead? The green rocks still glowed in contact with him, might that not mean something? I tried again, putting a piece of kryptonite against Clark's unburned left hand. The gem glowed, and the skin of the hand became greenish and the veins stood out. I snatched the gemstone away and slammed it back into the lead box. The hand slowly regained its original appearance. That had to mean something. I needed Clark to be alive.

Superman was Clark Kent. That explained so much. How could I have been so blind? I needed to think, but my mind kept running in circles. With all the things at which Superman had caught me, I could never understand how I hadn't been incarcerated years before. It wasn't that he was an idiot and accidentally destroyed so much evidence in his feckless enthusiasm. It wasn't my luck finally kicking in and proving that crime was my forte after all. It was the fact that Clark was my friend and didn't want me to get in trouble. He stopped my criminal behavior whenever he could, but he tried his best to keep me out of prison as well.

Damn it, he couldn't be dead. I started searching through the laboratory cupboards almost at random, and I found a sample of the red variation of the meteoritic rock. When I put the red stone against Clark's skin it glowed, just as the normal kryptonite did. It didn't seem to do Clark any additional harm.

Then he sneered at me. He didn't open his eyes, and he still didn't seem to be breathing, but his mouth definitely twisted into a scornful expression. I was so startled I dropped the stone. His face relaxed into blankness again.

He had to be alive. He had to. I picked up the red kryptonite stone and set it on Clark's abdomen. His lip curled in a grimace. I remembered the CPR class I'd taken more than twenty years before, not long after the first time Clark had saved my life. I checked for breathing and a heartbeat as well as I could remember. There was no breathing I could feel, and I thought there was no heartbeat, but then suddenly I felt one big thump. Mouth-to-mouth assisted breathing seemed like the right thing to do, although the fact that he'd been dead and buried for several days tended to make the whole idea seem a little insane.

I proceeded nevertheless, tilting Clark's head back to clear the airway, sealing my mouth to his and pinching the nostrils closed, breathing into him and counting, feeling for his heart (keep beating, damn it!) and checking periodically to see if he could breathe on his own. After a few long minutes his eyes snapped open. I was shocked. I hadn't genuinely dared to imagine that he might be alive, just because I so badly needed him to be. His eyes were battered and bloodshot, and I think they were glowing red, too, like the red meteorite.

"Sunlight," he hissed.

"Right. Clark, hang on." I should have realized. I'd read all the newspaper reports about Superman; I even remembered commenting to my assistant that the Extra-Terror was clever to keep the Big Dumb Alien in the dark during their long combat. Superman was solar-powered, and I had him in my basement. A month earlier, it would have been delicious.

I shouldered Clark in a fireman's carry and somehow got him up two flights of stone stairs. I could feel broken ribs shifting inside him while we moved. By the time I found a good east-facing window and dropped him on the floor, I'd lost the red stone somewhere. Clark's eyes were closed again, but he was still breathing, so I didn't go look for it. The black sky was studded with sharp frigid stars -- more than we ever got in Metropolis -- but there was fortunately a little glow showing at the eastern horizon. The mansion was absolutely silent except for Clark's slow labored breathing. I sat on the cold floor next to my friend and hoped for sunrise.

After about ten minutes I couldn't stand it anymore. My nurturing skills are vestigial at best. It was easy to convince myself that there was nothing more I could do for Clark until the sun came up. I thought of something I could do that might help, that was also out of the house, away from the battered broken body of the man (alien!) who was my only friend and my most unconquerable enemy. I shucked my lab coat and rubber gloves, found my driving gloves, hat, and greatcoat, and left.

Once I got into my car everything was harder to believe. I wanted to just drive and never stop, but I wasn't a kid anymore, and Clark needed me.

Superman was Clark Kent.

The Talon was still in business, oddly enough. I gave my interest in it to Lana as a wedding present when she married Pete Ross. I still had a key, though, and could get in even at this ungodly hour on the day after Christmas. There was a telephone call I didn't want to make from the mansion. Clark was alive; I wouldn't let him die. He might want his job back at some point, which meant I should call him in sick to the Planet. Believe it or not, that made sense to me at the time. There was an answering machine; I had to leave a message, so I disguised my voice. Suddenly I started to panic, which I never do. I was afraid Lana or someone would catch me and figure out what was up. I didn't even know what was going on, exactly, but I was sure I didn't want other people to know. I got in my car again without being seen. Again, I wanted to just drive, run away to Metropolis or Gotham or, hell, Canada.

Superman was Clark Kent. I couldn't leave him alone. He needed me. It had been years and years since Clark had needed my help. Even when we were enemies (were we really enemies?), Superman saved my life two or three times.

I headed back to the mansion.

The sun was just peeking above the horizon when I arrived. I stopped off in the kitchen and put a big mug of water into the microwave to boil. I knew I was putting off going up to look at him again, but I told myself I should bring him something warm -- tea or soup. Then I decided that was nuts; I should just give him water. Then I was suddenly afraid he was dead again. I left the mug in the microwave, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and ran up the stairs.

Clark was lying right where I'd left him. He was still breathing but still unconscious. I was shocked at his appearance; in my short time out of the house I'd forgotten how badly he'd been beaten and burned. He smelled burned, too. Somehow I hadn't noticed the smell when I'd been preparing to dissect him. I went into the bathroom and threw up, then got some towels and a basin of warm water and brought them back to Clark. I removed the remaining tatters of his costume and washed the blood, dirt and char from his skin. I carefully kept him in the puddle of pale winter sunlight as I manipulated his inert frame.

When I returned from pouring out the second pan of dirty water, I found that Clark had rolled onto his side to face the sun. His breathing still sounded terrible. He was cold to the touch. I decided not to cover him, despite the chill, because the sunlight would probably do him more good than the dubious warmth of a blanket.

Did I mention that I'm no good at taking care of people? All I could think to do was sit and stare at him. After a few hours the sun seemed to be getting too high for this window. I spent almost an hour deciding where to lay him down next. I was doing trigonometry in my head, trying to decide. When I got back to check on him, the sun had moved and Clark was in shadow. He was barely breathing. I pulled him back into the dwindling light that still came in through the window; I warned him not to dare die on my property and swore at him for being such an idiotic, stupid, alien busybody.

My shouting and fuming woke him up. He blinked those big green-blue eyes at me and licked his cracked lips. I sat heavily down on the floor beside him. He wrinkled his forehead in that cute way he had when he was confused.

"Lex?" he breathed.

"Yeah, Clark." I made my voice as gentle as I could.

He blinked some more, but then his eyes stayed closed.

"Wait!" I yelled. "Clark! Don't. You need water, or...." I scrambled for the water bottle I'd brought up before.

When I got back to him, his eyes were flickering again. "Here, drink," I said.

He opened his mouth like a little bird and I carefully poured some water in. He blinked and swallowed, and we did it again. After about a quarter of a liter, he whispered, "Thanks," and closed his eyes.

I took a minute to compose myself and re-cap the bottle. Then I made sure Clark was lying where the sun would continue to hit him for a few minutes and went to make up a pallet in the spot I'd selected for him. The building did actually have a solarium, a room with many windows and a southern exposure, originally designed to be a warm sunny spot in the gloom and cold of a Scottish castle. If I'd been thinking properly, I would have put Clark there right away. Once he was settled again, on a few blankets this time instead of the stone floor, and with a pillow under his head, in the sunniest room the mansion afforded, I sat and looked at him.

Superman was Clark Kent. Clark Kent was Superman.

The Clark I thought I knew would have been embarrassed to be lying here nude, even wounded as he was and understanding the necessity. Superman went around all the time as good as naked. I'd seen Clark injured only once -- that had been broken ribs, too. Superman, for all his vaunted invulnerability, had been battered and bloodied more than once by various extraterrestrial and/or super-powered foes. I remembered smiling at those news reports, and I felt sick again.

I remembered I hadn't eaten anything all day, so I went down to the kitchen and heated up some soup. I brought the pan up with me to the solarium, in case Clark woke up and I could try to feed him some. I decided that if I was going to stay I'd need to bring some staff in from Metropolis.

What the hell? When did I decide I was going to stay in Smallville?

When did I decide I was going to change my whole life?