*August 25, 2005*
"I don't know why you're so against this, Lex," Clark said and sighed loudly. He wasn't happy. He really didn't know why Lex wasn't even willing to consider what he wanted.
They'd been together for almost a year. Clark had been accepted into Metropolis University for the fall semester and Lex was returning to the city at the same time to finally take up the position that his father had been offering him for several years. It was only natural that they would think about whether or not they wanted to live in the same place, at least to Clark it was. Lex didn't even want to have the conversation. Clark had been trying to bring it up for several weeks now and Lex just kept avoiding the topic.
When Lex had told Clark that there simply wasn't a reason for him to stay in Smallville once Clark left, he thought that Lex was finally becoming comfortable with their relationship. Maybe he was ready to let people know that they were together. Maybe he was ready for some type of commitment. But Lex's actions now were making Clark seriously reconsider his earlier conclusion. Lex didn't seem ready to deal with their relationship at all.
"I've explained to you, Clark. I'm not ready to live with you or anyone else," Lex said. He sounded frustrated and a little angry, like he wasn't sure why Clark simply couldn't get the point and drop the argument. He toyed with the glass in his hand and refused to meet Clark's eyes.
"We've been together for almost a year," Clark protested.
"We're just fucking, Clark," Lex snapped harshly. "It's not like we're going to get married or something."
"Lex," Clark gasped. He felt like he couldn't breathe. Lex didn't really think of their relationship like that, did he? Was that the reason that he'd never let Clark tell anyone about it?
"What?" Lex asked. He stood up from the chair he was sitting in, placed his glass down on the table with a loud thump, and walked around to stand at the window. "You're the one who's always made this into more than what it was, Clark. I told you a long time ago that this was what I could give you. You seemed fine with it then."
"I...," Clark stuttered. He did remember Lex telling him that. It was a vivid memory. At the time Clark had thought that Lex would grow out of his conviction, that once they had been together for some time he would see that they really did have a future together. His future self had promised him that Lex loved him back, so how couldn't he? How couldn't he love Clark when Clark felt like his heart would break if Lex ever left him?
"I love you," Clark eventually managed to force out. He loved Lex so much that it hurt sometimes. He couldn't even imagine being without Lex now. He'd always believed that the other man secretly loved him back, as well, but maybe... maybe he didn't.
Lex cringed and reached up to run his hand over his head. "Don't start," he warned Clark loudly.
"Surely what we have means more to you than just a good fuck," Clark insisted.
Lex came back across the room to stand next to the table again. He reached down and picked up his glass. "I like you, Clark. I really like what we do together. Don't ruin this by insisting that you need more than I can give you."
Clark stared at Lex and felt his mouth dropping open. "You don't love me," he said softly. He had just realized it. All these months, he had been holding out and hoping that Lex really did feel the same way about him that he felt about Lex, but it had all been in vain. Lex truly didn't love him. In fact, Clark wondered if Lex was capable of loving anyone at all.
"I never said that I did," Lex pointed out to him.
"I just... I always thought...," Clark trailed off. He couldn't finish what he was saying.
"What?" Lex demanded. "That I was wrong? That I really loved you but didn't know it? Clark," Lex laughed sharply, "this isn't some romance novel. We don't get to ride off into the sunset together. That's not how real life works."
"But, what we have...," Clark protested softly.
"I'm fucking my best friend, Clark. What do you think we have?" Lex's voice was blunt and oh so cold. Clark felt a small shiver run up his back. Had Lex felt like this all along? Why hadn't he caught onto it before now?
"I... I guess I don't know," Clark admitted eventually.
Lex just kept staring at him and Clark couldn't stop the feeling that he was going to start crying any second. He couldn't believe that Lex really felt that way about their relationship. He couldn't believe that he didn't really love him like Clark's future self had promised. Had everything they'd had over the last ten months been based on a dream that would never come true? Clark had thought that he had found the one person that he would be with for the rest of his life. Obviously Lex had other ideas about what they were to each other.
"I need to go," Clark muttered suddenly and pushed himself up off the couch he was sitting on. He couldn't stay there in Lex's home any longer. He needed to get out. He needed to be alone for a while so that he could think about what was going on. Could he still be with Lex now that he knew that the other man didn't see a future for them? Could he stay with Lex and be the dirty little secret that he kept hidden from the rest of the world? Could he really leave the man that he loved just because he wasn't loved back?
Lex nodded and watched Clark as he stumbled out of the room. Clark wanted Lex to follow him out, but he was pretty sure that it wasn't going to happen, and it didn't. He made it down the stairs and out Lex's front door before he started running. Nothing was working out the way that he had thought it would when he had come to Lex's office last year, and he had no idea what he had done wrong.
***_***
*November 26, 2025*
Clark came awake slowly. He hurt all over, and that just wasn't right at all. He tried hard to remember what had happened to him. He refused to open his eyes until he had a grip on the situation. He could hear someone else in the room with him. He wasn't going to give them even more of the upper hand by admitting to his conscious status before he was ready. The floor was hard, but carpeted underneath him. He hurt and he could almost feel his blood pulsing through his veins. He knew that meant there was Kryptonite nearby and that he was going to be very nearly incapacitated as soon as he tried to move. He just couldn't seem to remember how he had gotten himself into this situation.
"You might as well open your eyes, Clark," someone called from across the room. "I know that you're awake over there." The voice was familiar and the fact that it had called him 'Clark' and not 'Superman' scared him more than he would have been willing to admit. Whoever this was knew him, knew his weakness, and knew his identity. There was only one person who could know that, Clark realized as he rolled towards the voice.
"Lex," Clark drawled and opened his eyes to see his former best friend and lover.
The older man was sitting across the room in a metal chair. It didn't look comfortable, but Lex was perched in it as elegantly as he had ever done anything in his life. They were in a large, concrete room with computer equipment all around them. On the wall behind Lex was a large, electronic map of the world. The hum of all the machines was almost overwhelming.
"You know," Clark said. He didn't know why that was the first thing that came to his mind to say, but it was. He was simply so surprised that anyone had found out his identity. His disguise had served him so well for all these years that he had just assumed it was foolproof. Obviously, it hadn't been enough for Lex.
"Of course I know," Lex scoffed.
"The disguise?"
"Please, Clark. I've fucked you. You think I don't know how you would look in tights? Besides, I knew you before you started wearing those hideous glasses."
Clark sighed. There were more important things for them to be talking about here than Clark's choice of clothing and accessories. To start with there was what exactly Lex thought he was doing and why he was doing Clark in this... basement?
"Why am I here?" Clark asked.
"You're here to witness our destiny being fulfilled and then to complete it. What, was there somewhere more important that you need to be today?" Lex's voice dripped with sarcasm. He seemed to be incredibly amused with himself and he laughed harshly after he finished talking. It suddenly crossed Clark's mind to wonder whether Lex was truly sane any longer. He hoped so. After all, this was the man the American people had elected as their president only a year ago.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Clark demanded. He slowly drew himself up to a standing position and took a step towards Lex. The movement hurt, but he willed himself to move through the pain. If Lex really was insane, Clark might need to be able to stop him from doing whatever it was that he was planning on doing. Even if Lex wasn't insane, he had still captured Clark and, as a captive, Clark was obligated to try and escape as best as he could.
Clark completed his first step with a grunt. He breathed heavily and tried to hide how much he was straining from Lex. The other man didn't need to know the extent to which Clark was hurting. Half way through his second step, Clark ran straight into an invisible barrier. He convulsed sharply and fell backwards with a cry of pain. Lex snorted and smirked at him from across the room.
"It's a Kryptonite-enhanced force field, Clark. There's no way you're coming through it, so you might as well stop trying right now. I told you. You're just here to *witness* our destiny right now. Later will be your time to act."
"You're crazy, Lex," Clark spat as he suddenly became certain of his ex-lover's state of mind. There was no way that a sane man would have Clark trapped down here and be speaking to him in strange riddles.
Lex laughed sharply, his voice echoing off the walls of where ever it was they were. It turned the sound hollow and eerie. Clark would have shivered if he'd even had that much control over his body. The Kryptonite exposure was continuing to affect him and he was pretty sure that he was lucky he was even conscious at the moment.
"Does that make you understand it more, Clark, to think that I must be insane to do these things? Maybe you're the one who's not quite right, Clark. Why can't you see the darkness that lies within all of us? Why couldn't you ever see that this is who I really am?" Lex stepped closer and closer to Clark as he continued to talk. As he neared the force field, he reached out with a gloved hand and laid it against the energy barrier, caressing it in some warped parody of what Clark had thought that he once shared with Lex.
"Because this isn't you, Lex," Clark said softly. His voice was sad and full of pity. How had the man he'd once loved, the man who had been his best friend, turned into this insane monster? And suddenly he realized: he had failed.
"It was always me," Lex snapped. He removed his hand from the force field and turned around sharply. Lex stalked over to the large table in the room and picked up an interface tablet. It would allow him to operate one of the many computers in this room remotely.
Clark had failed.
"Do you know what this does?" Lex asked slowly. His voice was lower now than it had been before, more dangerous.
"No," Clark answered, although he had a fairly good idea that whatever it did he wouldn't like it. If Lex had captured him, caged him, and brought him down here to witness this, there was no way that Clark would like it at all. Just like he knew that he wouldn't like this 'destiny' that Lex kept talking about.
"It's a launch device," Lex told him. His voice was silky smooth and he smiled brokenly as he caressed the side of the tablet. "For our fusion weapons. No one even knows that I have it. All these fail safes that they've put into the system and they don't even know that just by pressing here," Lex moved his thumb over the face of the tablet, "I can control the entire thing."
"Lex," Clark growled as he saw Lex's finger glance over the face of the tablet. Shit. What the fuck did Lex think he was doing? He really was insane and much more dangerous than Clark had ever thought possible. If Lex was really in complete control of all their weapons... That was a scary thought indeed.
"Oh, don't worry, Clark. It's a biometric device. The gloves protect it." As Lex talked he placed the tablet down on the table and started to strip off his gloves.
Clark watched in horrified fascination as one black glove and then the other came off Lex's hands and fell to the floor. Lex couldn't really be serious about what he was planning to do, could he? Why? Why would Lex do this?
Because he's insane, Clark's mind whispered to him. Because Clark had failed. This is what his future self had come back to help Clark change. He had needed to stop Lex's eventual fall into this mad drive to destroy everything that existed. Clark wanted to cry. Maybe if he had fought harder for Lex all those years ago. If he hadn't just walked out of the other man's life because Lex had told him that he could never love him, that he was only fucking his best friend and that Clark needed to get with the program or leave the relationship. Maybe if he had stayed he would have been able to change Lex, to prevent what was going on now.
Clark struggled to stand once more and threw his body against the side of the energy barrier. Once again he hit hard, bounced off the invisible wall, and fell convulsing on the floor. Fuck, there was nothing to do. Of all the times to be powerless, this was the worst possible one.
"Clark," Lex said wryly and smirked at him. "You were always overly persistent." Lex stopped and cocked his head like he was thinking about that last statement. "Well, almost always. I remember you gave up on me fairly easily. I wonder what I did to make you lose all hope."
"Lex," Clark cried. He watched as the older man again picked up the interface tablet from the table. "Don't do this."
"Ah, Clark," Lex cooed and Clark got the disquieting feeling that Lex was trying to soothe him. "It will all be over soon, I promise. Once I press this button, the computer will wait thirty minutes and drop your force field. Then we will really get to finish this. Once and for all."
"You don't have to do this," Clark insisted. "It doesn't need to be like this."
"Of course it does," Lex chided him. "This is the road we've been on since that day when I first hit you with my car. We both should have been dead that day. I was saved from death to fulfill my destiny, our destiny. I told you that we would be great, Clark, and who's greater than the man who destroys everything?
"Don't you see? Don't you see that I finally have the entire world? It's all mine. Right here," Lex continued and emphasized his point by shaking the interface tablet in Clark's direction. "And I'm going to do the one thing with it that no one else in history has been able to do. I'm going to destroy it all."
"Lex, no," Clark cried out.
"Oh yes. Are you ready to fulfill our destiny, Clark? Are you ready to be great with me?"
"No. You need to stop this," Clark pleaded.
"I don't think so." Lex's thumb moved so that it was hovering over the face of the tablet. He just needed to move it down, touch the thin plastic plate, and everything would start to end.
"For me, Lex. Please?"
Lex looked at Clark with an amused smile on his face. "For you," Lex repeated. "Don't you understand yet, Clark? I'm doing this all for you. It's all been for you. Everything I've ever done since that day."
Clark's heart sank. He wasn't getting through to Lex. He didn't know what else to do. He was powerless. His words seemed all but meaningless to the man on the other side of the force field. There was nothing more that he could do. He had failed in the most important task he had ever been entrusted with. He had failed in protecting Lex from himself.
Lex's face took on a beatific look. He smiled in bliss. Clark had never seen the other man look quite like that. He seemed utterly at peace with himself and the rest of the world. How ironic that it would come from what he was about to do. "Yes, I think it's time," he said quietly and moved his finger over the face of the tablet. "Time."
"No," Clark cried out one last time, although he knew that it wasn't going to do any good. Lex had already done what he had set out to do and Clark was powerless to stop it. He felt the hot rush of tears pricking at his eyes, but he refused to let them fall. He wasn't going to give Lex that much. Not now, and not ever again.
On the electronic map behind Lex, little red dots started to appear above North America. They moved ever higher, arching off to the east and the west and crossing the oceans with what seemed like frightening speed. On the other side of the world, above China, Russia, and parts of the Middle East, yellow dots started to appear in answer. Only a few at first, and then more and more as the rest of the world started to realize what Lex had done. Lex's cell phone started to ring insistently. Lex pulled it out of his pocket and turned it off with a definitive movement. There was going to be no outside intervention on their little drama. They were all on their own. Just like they had always been.
When the first red dot reached its target and disappeared off the screen, Clark closed his eyes and screamed silently in agony. He could just imagine all those people out there dying. Dying because of him, because he couldn't complete the task that had been set out for him. People were being hurt, being killed, and again it was his fault.
"Isn't it pretty?" Lex asked in a wistful voice. "So pretty. All those little dots moving around. The dance of death."
"Fuck you, Lex," Clark finally spat. He had no patience, no sympathy left for this man.
"Would you like that?" Lex asked him seriously as he turned back to look at Clark. "It was something that I never let you do. Is that why you left me?"
Clark didn't know what to say. How was he supposed to respond to that? "You're an idiot, Lex. I left because you said you couldn't love me. You *know* that."
"Oh," Lex replied. He turned back to the map and continued to watch his little dots.
Oh? That's all Clark got? The fucking world was being destroyed and all Clark got was an 'oh'? This was the single most frustrating situation of his life. Lex *was* insane. That was the only thing that could possibly explain his behavior. No sane person would stand there watching the world being destroyed while he talked to Clark about why their relationship had ended twenty years ago. Only Lex would think that he needed to do something like this to make Clark really listen to him.
Suddenly the force field fell and the time for thinking about their situation was over. Clark moved slowly at first, straightening out his heavy limbs, gathering his strength and the courage to pounce on Lex and do what he knew he needed to do. Maybe he should have spent the last half an hour preparing for that instead of wallowing in guilt and thinking about their relationship, but the simple truth was that he hadn't. He hadn't thought about it, and now the shift from Lex's captive to predator was violent and jarring.
"Come on, Clark," Lex gibed softly as he turned to face the younger man, the man who had once thought that he would spend the rest of his life with Lex Luthor. "I know the force field is down. Let's finish this off. We've got a destiny to fulfill, and I know that you will have things to do later today."
"You're a bastard, Lex," Clark growled. He stood up straight and started moving towards Lex. It was better, he had decided, to let Lex know exactly what was coming, to not take him by surprise. Lex didn't deserve the reprieve that surprise would have supplied him with. He deserved to have terror wash over him before the end. "You're a sick, insane, evil bastard. I can't believe that I ever loved you."
"You really did, didn't you?" Lex asked softly as Clark finally reached him.
Clark reached Lex. He stopped so that they were standing face-to-face, Lex's eyes only inches below his. He brought his hands up to surround Lex's head. "Yes," Clark breathed.
"You were the only one," Lex said simply. He looked down for a second and then back up into Clark's eyes. "I'm scared."
"You should be," Clark growled. His hands tightened around Lex's head and Clark snapped his neck with one quick, easy movement. He watched as Lex's eyes widened for just a second before the intelligence and life suddenly drained out of them.
It was over, and yet it wasn't. He still needed to go find out what was left of the world and try to stop any more damage from occurring. Once that was done, he needed to go visit the AI and figure out how his other self had traveled back through time. He needed to go back again and this time he needed to make sure that it worked. There had to be a way to avoid Cassandra's prophecy. All this pain and suffering was unnecessary. If only he could manage to get himself and Lex together.
"I don't know why you're so against this, Lex," Clark said and sighed loudly. He wasn't happy. He really didn't know why Lex wasn't even willing to consider what he wanted.
They'd been together for almost a year. Clark had been accepted into Metropolis University for the fall semester and Lex was returning to the city at the same time to finally take up the position that his father had been offering him for several years. It was only natural that they would think about whether or not they wanted to live in the same place, at least to Clark it was. Lex didn't even want to have the conversation. Clark had been trying to bring it up for several weeks now and Lex just kept avoiding the topic.
When Lex had told Clark that there simply wasn't a reason for him to stay in Smallville once Clark left, he thought that Lex was finally becoming comfortable with their relationship. Maybe he was ready to let people know that they were together. Maybe he was ready for some type of commitment. But Lex's actions now were making Clark seriously reconsider his earlier conclusion. Lex didn't seem ready to deal with their relationship at all.
"I've explained to you, Clark. I'm not ready to live with you or anyone else," Lex said. He sounded frustrated and a little angry, like he wasn't sure why Clark simply couldn't get the point and drop the argument. He toyed with the glass in his hand and refused to meet Clark's eyes.
"We've been together for almost a year," Clark protested.
"We're just fucking, Clark," Lex snapped harshly. "It's not like we're going to get married or something."
"Lex," Clark gasped. He felt like he couldn't breathe. Lex didn't really think of their relationship like that, did he? Was that the reason that he'd never let Clark tell anyone about it?
"What?" Lex asked. He stood up from the chair he was sitting in, placed his glass down on the table with a loud thump, and walked around to stand at the window. "You're the one who's always made this into more than what it was, Clark. I told you a long time ago that this was what I could give you. You seemed fine with it then."
"I...," Clark stuttered. He did remember Lex telling him that. It was a vivid memory. At the time Clark had thought that Lex would grow out of his conviction, that once they had been together for some time he would see that they really did have a future together. His future self had promised him that Lex loved him back, so how couldn't he? How couldn't he love Clark when Clark felt like his heart would break if Lex ever left him?
"I love you," Clark eventually managed to force out. He loved Lex so much that it hurt sometimes. He couldn't even imagine being without Lex now. He'd always believed that the other man secretly loved him back, as well, but maybe... maybe he didn't.
Lex cringed and reached up to run his hand over his head. "Don't start," he warned Clark loudly.
"Surely what we have means more to you than just a good fuck," Clark insisted.
Lex came back across the room to stand next to the table again. He reached down and picked up his glass. "I like you, Clark. I really like what we do together. Don't ruin this by insisting that you need more than I can give you."
Clark stared at Lex and felt his mouth dropping open. "You don't love me," he said softly. He had just realized it. All these months, he had been holding out and hoping that Lex really did feel the same way about him that he felt about Lex, but it had all been in vain. Lex truly didn't love him. In fact, Clark wondered if Lex was capable of loving anyone at all.
"I never said that I did," Lex pointed out to him.
"I just... I always thought...," Clark trailed off. He couldn't finish what he was saying.
"What?" Lex demanded. "That I was wrong? That I really loved you but didn't know it? Clark," Lex laughed sharply, "this isn't some romance novel. We don't get to ride off into the sunset together. That's not how real life works."
"But, what we have...," Clark protested softly.
"I'm fucking my best friend, Clark. What do you think we have?" Lex's voice was blunt and oh so cold. Clark felt a small shiver run up his back. Had Lex felt like this all along? Why hadn't he caught onto it before now?
"I... I guess I don't know," Clark admitted eventually.
Lex just kept staring at him and Clark couldn't stop the feeling that he was going to start crying any second. He couldn't believe that Lex really felt that way about their relationship. He couldn't believe that he didn't really love him like Clark's future self had promised. Had everything they'd had over the last ten months been based on a dream that would never come true? Clark had thought that he had found the one person that he would be with for the rest of his life. Obviously Lex had other ideas about what they were to each other.
"I need to go," Clark muttered suddenly and pushed himself up off the couch he was sitting on. He couldn't stay there in Lex's home any longer. He needed to get out. He needed to be alone for a while so that he could think about what was going on. Could he still be with Lex now that he knew that the other man didn't see a future for them? Could he stay with Lex and be the dirty little secret that he kept hidden from the rest of the world? Could he really leave the man that he loved just because he wasn't loved back?
Lex nodded and watched Clark as he stumbled out of the room. Clark wanted Lex to follow him out, but he was pretty sure that it wasn't going to happen, and it didn't. He made it down the stairs and out Lex's front door before he started running. Nothing was working out the way that he had thought it would when he had come to Lex's office last year, and he had no idea what he had done wrong.
***_***
*November 26, 2025*
Clark came awake slowly. He hurt all over, and that just wasn't right at all. He tried hard to remember what had happened to him. He refused to open his eyes until he had a grip on the situation. He could hear someone else in the room with him. He wasn't going to give them even more of the upper hand by admitting to his conscious status before he was ready. The floor was hard, but carpeted underneath him. He hurt and he could almost feel his blood pulsing through his veins. He knew that meant there was Kryptonite nearby and that he was going to be very nearly incapacitated as soon as he tried to move. He just couldn't seem to remember how he had gotten himself into this situation.
"You might as well open your eyes, Clark," someone called from across the room. "I know that you're awake over there." The voice was familiar and the fact that it had called him 'Clark' and not 'Superman' scared him more than he would have been willing to admit. Whoever this was knew him, knew his weakness, and knew his identity. There was only one person who could know that, Clark realized as he rolled towards the voice.
"Lex," Clark drawled and opened his eyes to see his former best friend and lover.
The older man was sitting across the room in a metal chair. It didn't look comfortable, but Lex was perched in it as elegantly as he had ever done anything in his life. They were in a large, concrete room with computer equipment all around them. On the wall behind Lex was a large, electronic map of the world. The hum of all the machines was almost overwhelming.
"You know," Clark said. He didn't know why that was the first thing that came to his mind to say, but it was. He was simply so surprised that anyone had found out his identity. His disguise had served him so well for all these years that he had just assumed it was foolproof. Obviously, it hadn't been enough for Lex.
"Of course I know," Lex scoffed.
"The disguise?"
"Please, Clark. I've fucked you. You think I don't know how you would look in tights? Besides, I knew you before you started wearing those hideous glasses."
Clark sighed. There were more important things for them to be talking about here than Clark's choice of clothing and accessories. To start with there was what exactly Lex thought he was doing and why he was doing Clark in this... basement?
"Why am I here?" Clark asked.
"You're here to witness our destiny being fulfilled and then to complete it. What, was there somewhere more important that you need to be today?" Lex's voice dripped with sarcasm. He seemed to be incredibly amused with himself and he laughed harshly after he finished talking. It suddenly crossed Clark's mind to wonder whether Lex was truly sane any longer. He hoped so. After all, this was the man the American people had elected as their president only a year ago.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Clark demanded. He slowly drew himself up to a standing position and took a step towards Lex. The movement hurt, but he willed himself to move through the pain. If Lex really was insane, Clark might need to be able to stop him from doing whatever it was that he was planning on doing. Even if Lex wasn't insane, he had still captured Clark and, as a captive, Clark was obligated to try and escape as best as he could.
Clark completed his first step with a grunt. He breathed heavily and tried to hide how much he was straining from Lex. The other man didn't need to know the extent to which Clark was hurting. Half way through his second step, Clark ran straight into an invisible barrier. He convulsed sharply and fell backwards with a cry of pain. Lex snorted and smirked at him from across the room.
"It's a Kryptonite-enhanced force field, Clark. There's no way you're coming through it, so you might as well stop trying right now. I told you. You're just here to *witness* our destiny right now. Later will be your time to act."
"You're crazy, Lex," Clark spat as he suddenly became certain of his ex-lover's state of mind. There was no way that a sane man would have Clark trapped down here and be speaking to him in strange riddles.
Lex laughed sharply, his voice echoing off the walls of where ever it was they were. It turned the sound hollow and eerie. Clark would have shivered if he'd even had that much control over his body. The Kryptonite exposure was continuing to affect him and he was pretty sure that he was lucky he was even conscious at the moment.
"Does that make you understand it more, Clark, to think that I must be insane to do these things? Maybe you're the one who's not quite right, Clark. Why can't you see the darkness that lies within all of us? Why couldn't you ever see that this is who I really am?" Lex stepped closer and closer to Clark as he continued to talk. As he neared the force field, he reached out with a gloved hand and laid it against the energy barrier, caressing it in some warped parody of what Clark had thought that he once shared with Lex.
"Because this isn't you, Lex," Clark said softly. His voice was sad and full of pity. How had the man he'd once loved, the man who had been his best friend, turned into this insane monster? And suddenly he realized: he had failed.
"It was always me," Lex snapped. He removed his hand from the force field and turned around sharply. Lex stalked over to the large table in the room and picked up an interface tablet. It would allow him to operate one of the many computers in this room remotely.
Clark had failed.
"Do you know what this does?" Lex asked slowly. His voice was lower now than it had been before, more dangerous.
"No," Clark answered, although he had a fairly good idea that whatever it did he wouldn't like it. If Lex had captured him, caged him, and brought him down here to witness this, there was no way that Clark would like it at all. Just like he knew that he wouldn't like this 'destiny' that Lex kept talking about.
"It's a launch device," Lex told him. His voice was silky smooth and he smiled brokenly as he caressed the side of the tablet. "For our fusion weapons. No one even knows that I have it. All these fail safes that they've put into the system and they don't even know that just by pressing here," Lex moved his thumb over the face of the tablet, "I can control the entire thing."
"Lex," Clark growled as he saw Lex's finger glance over the face of the tablet. Shit. What the fuck did Lex think he was doing? He really was insane and much more dangerous than Clark had ever thought possible. If Lex was really in complete control of all their weapons... That was a scary thought indeed.
"Oh, don't worry, Clark. It's a biometric device. The gloves protect it." As Lex talked he placed the tablet down on the table and started to strip off his gloves.
Clark watched in horrified fascination as one black glove and then the other came off Lex's hands and fell to the floor. Lex couldn't really be serious about what he was planning to do, could he? Why? Why would Lex do this?
Because he's insane, Clark's mind whispered to him. Because Clark had failed. This is what his future self had come back to help Clark change. He had needed to stop Lex's eventual fall into this mad drive to destroy everything that existed. Clark wanted to cry. Maybe if he had fought harder for Lex all those years ago. If he hadn't just walked out of the other man's life because Lex had told him that he could never love him, that he was only fucking his best friend and that Clark needed to get with the program or leave the relationship. Maybe if he had stayed he would have been able to change Lex, to prevent what was going on now.
Clark struggled to stand once more and threw his body against the side of the energy barrier. Once again he hit hard, bounced off the invisible wall, and fell convulsing on the floor. Fuck, there was nothing to do. Of all the times to be powerless, this was the worst possible one.
"Clark," Lex said wryly and smirked at him. "You were always overly persistent." Lex stopped and cocked his head like he was thinking about that last statement. "Well, almost always. I remember you gave up on me fairly easily. I wonder what I did to make you lose all hope."
"Lex," Clark cried. He watched as the older man again picked up the interface tablet from the table. "Don't do this."
"Ah, Clark," Lex cooed and Clark got the disquieting feeling that Lex was trying to soothe him. "It will all be over soon, I promise. Once I press this button, the computer will wait thirty minutes and drop your force field. Then we will really get to finish this. Once and for all."
"You don't have to do this," Clark insisted. "It doesn't need to be like this."
"Of course it does," Lex chided him. "This is the road we've been on since that day when I first hit you with my car. We both should have been dead that day. I was saved from death to fulfill my destiny, our destiny. I told you that we would be great, Clark, and who's greater than the man who destroys everything?
"Don't you see? Don't you see that I finally have the entire world? It's all mine. Right here," Lex continued and emphasized his point by shaking the interface tablet in Clark's direction. "And I'm going to do the one thing with it that no one else in history has been able to do. I'm going to destroy it all."
"Lex, no," Clark cried out.
"Oh yes. Are you ready to fulfill our destiny, Clark? Are you ready to be great with me?"
"No. You need to stop this," Clark pleaded.
"I don't think so." Lex's thumb moved so that it was hovering over the face of the tablet. He just needed to move it down, touch the thin plastic plate, and everything would start to end.
"For me, Lex. Please?"
Lex looked at Clark with an amused smile on his face. "For you," Lex repeated. "Don't you understand yet, Clark? I'm doing this all for you. It's all been for you. Everything I've ever done since that day."
Clark's heart sank. He wasn't getting through to Lex. He didn't know what else to do. He was powerless. His words seemed all but meaningless to the man on the other side of the force field. There was nothing more that he could do. He had failed in the most important task he had ever been entrusted with. He had failed in protecting Lex from himself.
Lex's face took on a beatific look. He smiled in bliss. Clark had never seen the other man look quite like that. He seemed utterly at peace with himself and the rest of the world. How ironic that it would come from what he was about to do. "Yes, I think it's time," he said quietly and moved his finger over the face of the tablet. "Time."
"No," Clark cried out one last time, although he knew that it wasn't going to do any good. Lex had already done what he had set out to do and Clark was powerless to stop it. He felt the hot rush of tears pricking at his eyes, but he refused to let them fall. He wasn't going to give Lex that much. Not now, and not ever again.
On the electronic map behind Lex, little red dots started to appear above North America. They moved ever higher, arching off to the east and the west and crossing the oceans with what seemed like frightening speed. On the other side of the world, above China, Russia, and parts of the Middle East, yellow dots started to appear in answer. Only a few at first, and then more and more as the rest of the world started to realize what Lex had done. Lex's cell phone started to ring insistently. Lex pulled it out of his pocket and turned it off with a definitive movement. There was going to be no outside intervention on their little drama. They were all on their own. Just like they had always been.
When the first red dot reached its target and disappeared off the screen, Clark closed his eyes and screamed silently in agony. He could just imagine all those people out there dying. Dying because of him, because he couldn't complete the task that had been set out for him. People were being hurt, being killed, and again it was his fault.
"Isn't it pretty?" Lex asked in a wistful voice. "So pretty. All those little dots moving around. The dance of death."
"Fuck you, Lex," Clark finally spat. He had no patience, no sympathy left for this man.
"Would you like that?" Lex asked him seriously as he turned back to look at Clark. "It was something that I never let you do. Is that why you left me?"
Clark didn't know what to say. How was he supposed to respond to that? "You're an idiot, Lex. I left because you said you couldn't love me. You *know* that."
"Oh," Lex replied. He turned back to the map and continued to watch his little dots.
Oh? That's all Clark got? The fucking world was being destroyed and all Clark got was an 'oh'? This was the single most frustrating situation of his life. Lex *was* insane. That was the only thing that could possibly explain his behavior. No sane person would stand there watching the world being destroyed while he talked to Clark about why their relationship had ended twenty years ago. Only Lex would think that he needed to do something like this to make Clark really listen to him.
Suddenly the force field fell and the time for thinking about their situation was over. Clark moved slowly at first, straightening out his heavy limbs, gathering his strength and the courage to pounce on Lex and do what he knew he needed to do. Maybe he should have spent the last half an hour preparing for that instead of wallowing in guilt and thinking about their relationship, but the simple truth was that he hadn't. He hadn't thought about it, and now the shift from Lex's captive to predator was violent and jarring.
"Come on, Clark," Lex gibed softly as he turned to face the younger man, the man who had once thought that he would spend the rest of his life with Lex Luthor. "I know the force field is down. Let's finish this off. We've got a destiny to fulfill, and I know that you will have things to do later today."
"You're a bastard, Lex," Clark growled. He stood up straight and started moving towards Lex. It was better, he had decided, to let Lex know exactly what was coming, to not take him by surprise. Lex didn't deserve the reprieve that surprise would have supplied him with. He deserved to have terror wash over him before the end. "You're a sick, insane, evil bastard. I can't believe that I ever loved you."
"You really did, didn't you?" Lex asked softly as Clark finally reached him.
Clark reached Lex. He stopped so that they were standing face-to-face, Lex's eyes only inches below his. He brought his hands up to surround Lex's head. "Yes," Clark breathed.
"You were the only one," Lex said simply. He looked down for a second and then back up into Clark's eyes. "I'm scared."
"You should be," Clark growled. His hands tightened around Lex's head and Clark snapped his neck with one quick, easy movement. He watched as Lex's eyes widened for just a second before the intelligence and life suddenly drained out of them.
It was over, and yet it wasn't. He still needed to go find out what was left of the world and try to stop any more damage from occurring. Once that was done, he needed to go visit the AI and figure out how his other self had traveled back through time. He needed to go back again and this time he needed to make sure that it worked. There had to be a way to avoid Cassandra's prophecy. All this pain and suffering was unnecessary. If only he could manage to get himself and Lex together.
