*August 15, 2002*
Lex knew it was Clark in his hallway. The boy always walked with a distinctive gait and he'd tried to sneak up on Lex enough times now that Lex knew his stride off by heart. Lex always pretended to be surprised when Clark ducked in his office, though. It was only fair after all the effort Clark put in just to come and visit Lex everyday. It had been a long, busy summer for Clark and most of the other residents of Smallville. Cleaning up after the tornado hadn't been quick or easy, but it was almost completed now. The repairs at the school were well underway and, with the help of a large dose of anonymous Luthor money, would be finished for the start of school in September.
Today Clark seemed to be hesitating in the hall. He sounded like he was pacing right outside the door, and that wasn't normal at all. Lex wondered if Clark had a problem. If he did, Lex only hoped he would be able to fix it. Clark meant so much to him and Lex only wanted the boy to be happy.
Sometimes Lex could admit it to himself; that he was in love with Clark. Or at least as in love with Clark as any Luthor had ever been able to be in love with anyone. His family wasn't known for their ability to handle emotional commitments, and Lex wasn't fooling himself. His father had raised him for most of his life and, as much as he tried to deny it, he was his father's son. He couldn't change that. What he could change was how he used that legacy. As long as he had Clark in his life, Lex was fairly certain that he would turn out okay.
Lex had almost given up waiting for Clark to enter the room and was about to call him in when the young man finally stopped hesitating and stepped into Lex's office. Lex heard the door open and Clark enter. Lex smirked softly to himself, but didn't look up.
"Hi Clark," he greeted his visitor.
"L... Lex," Clark asked. His voice was hesitant and he sounded surprised to see Lex, which was really rather strange considering that they were in Lex's office. It was enough to bring Lex's eyes up to really see Clark.
Clark was standing across the room, just barely inside the door, and... he wasn't himself. It wasn't Clark. The man looked exactly like Clark, except that he was older. He was an adult. Lex scrambled to make sense out of what he was seeing.
Clark had been adopted. He didn't know who his parents were. He didn't know his family. Some stray relative coming back into Clark's life right then would be very disruptive. It wasn't something that Lex particularly wanted happening if he could prevent it.
"Who are you?" Lex asked in a low, dangerous voice. "And why are you here?" The second question was possibly the more important one. If this man was related to Clark, why was he coming to see Lex? Did he want something? Did he have some kind of information regarding Clark's adoption that he wanted to be paid to keep to himself? Why else would the man go there, to Lex, rather than going straight to see the Kents and introducing himself?
"Lex," the man gasped as though he was surprised by the question and unsure of how to answer. "It's me. Clark," he insisted.
Lex eyed the man warily. He pushed away from his desk and stood up. If the man turned out to be insane, Lex didn't want to end up stuck behind his desk. He would be better able to alert security and defend himself in a standing position.
"You might look like Clark, but you're definitely not him. Not unless Clark's aged a good ten years since I saw him yesterday," Lex reasoned. He wondered if anything he said would change the fact that this man really looked like he *believed* that he was Clark.
"Oh that," the other man said and then smiled. He seemed relieved to hear that this was the reason Lex didn't believe he was Clark. "Lex," he continued and stepped further into the room.
"I know that you don't believe me, but I really am Clark. The reason I look older is that... well, I'm from the future." The last was pushed out in a rush and it took Lex several seconds to sort it out and then comprehend it.
When he finally did, Lex laughed hard and sharp. This man's delusion *was* humorous, but also, very possibly quite dangerous. What if he tried to convince Lex that he was telling the truth? What could the man do? When Lex didn't believe him, and he wouldn't because, well time travel was just impossible, what would he do then? Would he become violent? For the first time since the man had entered his office, Lex started feeling concerned for himself.
"Lex, I know you don't believe me, but it's true. I've come back from the future, a really bad future in a world that you destroyed," pseudo-Clark explained.
"And you're here to stop that from happening?" Lex mocked him. "To change your future? How? By talking to me now? Or are you maybe here to kill me? Is that the plan?"
"No," the man snapped. He sounded horrified that Lex had suggested such a thing. "I couldn't do that again," the man muttered to himself, but Lex was able to hear enough of it to know what he had said.
Lex stepped back from his desk and further away from pseudo-Clark. This man had killed someone in the past. Sure, he was saying that he couldn't do it again, but the fact remained that he was also admitting to having done it. Lex turned slightly to obscure the left side of his body and slowly removed his cell phone from his pocket. If this guy wasn't going to leave on his own, then Lex would need help.
"You need to listen to me, Lex. I don't know how much time I have and this is important," the man insisted. He stepped towards Lex and Lex forced himself to stand his ground. He didn't want to draw any more attention to his movements than was necessary.
"Okay," Lex agreed with a nod. He tried to sound as accommodating as possible. He reached down on his phone and pressed the speed dial button that would call his security team.
"You're supposed to go on a business trip in a few weeks," the man prompted.
Lex nodded in response. "It's a conference," he confirmed.
"You can't go," pseudo-Clark insisted. "There's something that happens there, someone that will change your life and not in a good way."
"Oh really?" Lex asked. He wondered where his security guys were. They really should have arrived already. What if pseudo-Clark had been armed? Lex could have been dead by now and what use would his expensive security have been then?
"Yes. I'm... Clark's going to ask you to go camping. Just go. Forget about your conference."
Lex could hear his security guys in the hall now. The sound of their feet hitting the stone floor echoed down the hallway as they approached. He needed to distract the man in the room with him, if only for a moment. A moment was all it should have taken for security to burst into the room and apprehend Clark.
"Okay," Lex agreed, although he had absolutely no intention of following through on the promise. "I'll go camping with Clark."
The man sighed in what sounded like relief and smiled. "Good," he said. "I didn't know if you'd believe me."
Lex was shocked when the man suddenly started to fade out in front of him. Lex could see the bookcase through pseudo-Clark, and that just wasn't right. The man must have noticed what was happening to him and seemed equally shocked. He held his hands up in front of his body and looked back and forth between them and Lex.
His eyes took on a desperate look. "There's something else you need to know," he insisted.
"What?" Lex asked. He was starting to believe what this man was saying for the first time now that it was almost all over.
"I always loved you," Clark said. His voice was soft and breathy. He disappeared completely as he finished his declaration and Lex wondered if it was just his own wishful thinking that had filled in the words he'd hoped to hear for the better part of a year.
"Mr. Luthor," Dave Bond, his head of security, called out as he and his team finally reached Lex's office.
Lex snapped around to look at the man and forced himself to recover quickly from the shock of what had just happened to him. "What took you so long?" he demanded.
"Are you in danger?"
"No, Mr. Bond, I am not," Lex assured the man with a haughty tone in his voice. "Although, it is distressing to know how long it would have taken you to respond had there been, say, an intruder in my office."
"I apologize, Mr. Luthor," Dave said. He looked over his shoulder and dismissed his men with a nod of his head. "We were investigating a disturbance on the grounds."
"Oh?" Lex asked.
"Yes," Dave confirmed. "Ms. Pavich reported strange noises and a bright light from behind the stables about ten minutes ago."
Lex didn't say anything in response, but he couldn't help thinking of his strange pseudo-Clark encounter. If that man really had been Clark and he had been from the future, then the disturbance could have been him arriving. Lex could barely believe he was entertaining the possibility of believing what had just happened. He felt like he might be going insane. Was this just another one of his fantasies where Clark came to him to confess his feelings? Admittedly, it was much stranger than any he'd had in the past, but it was still possible.
"Mr. Luthor," Dave started speaking again. Lex had almost forgotten that the other man was there. If this was a dream, why was Dave there?
"I'm very sorry. I should have asked some of the men to stay behind in the manor," Dave continued.
"Yes, you should have," Lex snapped. Even though he was okay, the fact remained that if pseudo-Clark had wanted to hurt Lex, there would have been no one there to stop him.
"It won't happen again," the man assured him.
"You're right," Lex agreed. His voice was cold and flat. "It won't."
The man blanched and Lex knew that he understood that he had just been fired. "M... Mr. Luthor," the man stuttered.
"Goodbye Dave," Lex said. He turned from the man and walked back towards his desk. He heard Dave hesitate for a moment and then leave the room silently.
Lex was going to need to hire a new head of security. It wouldn't do to let the position stay open for any length of time. What had happened that afternoon couldn't be allowed to occur again. Maybe he would actually replace his entire security team. He wondered how loyal the other employees had been to Dave.
Lex felt overwhelmed. He didn't know what had gone on earlier with the man who had claimed to be Clark. He had no way of reconciling what had occurred in his office with the way he knew the world worked. There were a lot of things that Lex didn't know about what had happened that day, but one thing he knew for sure was that he needed to find out if there was any truth to what he had been told by the strange man. If time travel was real, if one really could go back in time and change the past, then Lex needed to know that.
He needed to go to the conference, see what it was that Clark wanted him to avoid, and just not let it affect him as it had before. After all, as long as he knew ahead of time that something was going to happen, it couldn't affect him the same way, could it?
***_***
*September 20, 2002*
Time travel existed. Clark loved him. Time travel existed and therefore Clark loved him. Lex was still grappling with disbelief over both of those concepts.
Five days after Lex's mysterious visitor had arrived and then vanished from his study, Clark had come to see him and asked if Lex wanted to go camping over the long weekend before school started. It was exactly as pseudo-Clark had said it would be. Of course it could have been a coincidence, but Clark had never asked Lex out camping with him before. How could anyone have guessed that the boy would do it?
Lex had wanted to say yes when he saw the hope in Clark's eyes, but he couldn't. He needed to see fate out to the end. He needed to see if the rest of the prediction was true or not. So, he had turned Clark down saying that he needed to attend the conference in his father's enforced absence. It was the truth, and although Lex knew he didn't absolutely need to attend, Luthor Corp was expected to make an appearance, though, and that meant that he should.
His father was still recovering from his injuries and learning how to live with his new disability. Lex had to go. Clark had said that he understood.
Pseudo-Clark had been right. Desiree had changed Lex's life and knowing about her beforehand hadn't seemed to help any. Clark's explanation involving meteor-enhanced pheromones at least made Lex feel somewhat less like a fool, but he still couldn't believe he had married the woman. The whole two weeks she'd been in his life seemed like a hazy dream. It was all so unreal, but it was all true.
Just as true as time travel. Lex had been changed on his trip and that was the last confirmation he needed to believe what Clark had told him. Clark had come back in time to warn Lex about Desiree. He had come back to let Lex know how he felt. Somehow, Clark had thought that those two things would create a better future than the one he had known. If that was the case, did it mean that Clark thought he and Lex needed to be together to make the future work out right?
He could do that, Lex thought with a smile. He'd wanted Clark since the first time he'd laid eyes on the younger man. Besides, time travel existed and Clark obviously either knew how it worked or would discover how it worked sometime in the future. Lex needed that knowledge. He needed Clark. It all worked out. He would be with Clark and they would make the world better together. That had to be what the elder Clark had wanted.
***_***
*October 20, 2002*
"What do you think about time travel?" Lex asked Clark suddenly. The question seemed totally out of the blue. The two of them were sitting at the Kents' dining room table, and Lex was helping Clark with his homework. It was part of his mom's ongoing 'be nice to Lex' campaign that followed the incident with Nixon where Lex had saved Jonathan's life. Clark couldn't say that he wasn't enjoying it.
"I... what?" Clark asked. He raised his eyes from where he was trying to solve the value of 'x' and blinked at Lex.
"You know, time travel. What do you think about it?" Lex asked again.
Clark placed the end of his pencil against his bottom lip as he tried to determine when exactly his best friend has lost his grip on reality. "Have you been reading your H.G. Wells collection again?" Clark asked. He was only partially teasing.
"I'm serious," Lex insisted.
"Or maybe watching bad eighties movies?" Clark continued with a small smile. Sometimes he just didn't understand Lex at all. Maybe that was why he was so drawn to the man; there was always something new to discover about him.
"Clark, I'm serious," Lex insisted again and sighed heavily.
"Oh," Clark said quietly. He tapped the eraser of his pencil against his lip as he thought. "Okay, I'm sorry. I.... Lex, I'm fairly certain that time only moves in one direction."
"Yeah," Lex agreed. He looked like he was thinking hard, so Clark didn't interrupt him. "What if you could fold it somehow? So that the end was before the start. Like this piece of paper," Lex said. He reached out and retrieved the worksheet Clark was filling in. Lex held it out flat and then folded it so that then far end overlapped the near end.
"Then," Clark said thoughtfully, "I guess you'd be able to change the past." He smiled and plucked the paper back out of Lex's hands. Clark unfolded it and smoothed it out on the table in front of him.
"Yeah," Lex agreed. "Do you think that's possible?"
"Like, for real?" Clark asked. He almost couldn't believe that Lex was asking him this, but Lex was Lex. Sometimes he made very little sense.
Lex just nodded in response.
"I.... No," Clark insisted.
"Are you sure?"
"Umm... yeah."
"It's theoretically possible," Lex replied. "On a quantum level you can never really know where or when an electron will be. It moves in all four dimensions. Maybe more."
Clark looked at his friend strangely. Lex was so intelligent. He didn't know how to keep up with the older man's mind sometimes. "When did you get so interested in theoretical physics?"
"Just recently," Lex admitted. "I've been reading some books and it's fascinating."
"That's really cool," Clark said and was surprised to find that he was telling the truth. What Lex was talking about sounded interesting and what was most cool was that Lex wanted to talk with *him* about it. No one else treated Clark like an adult the same way that Lex did. It made him feel really special and needed.
"Maybe I can read some of them and then we can talk more," Clark offered and was gratified when he saw Lex's eyes light up.
"You're sure you don't know anything else about this?" Lex asked.
Clark looked at Lex strangely. Why would he know anything more about time travel than Lex had read in his books?
"Of course not," Lex conceded before Clark could say anything. "That sounds great, though. I have a few books that I'm done with. We can go get them now," Lex pushed his chair back from the table and started to stand up. Clark reached out and gently pulled his friend back down.
"Not now, silly," Clark insisted with a chuckle. "I still need to pass sophomore math."
"Oh," Lex said with a slightly embarrassed look. "I guess I'm just a little excited."
"I understand. Tomorrow after school?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, it's a deal. Now, can you explain how to calculate this again?" Clark asked and pointed at one of the problems on his paper. He really didn't need Lex's help. He could have solved the equation in his head, in fact he already had, but Clark wasn't ready to admit it and give up his study time with Lex.
Lex nodded and leaned in to explain it all one more time. Clark smiled contentedly.
Lex knew it was Clark in his hallway. The boy always walked with a distinctive gait and he'd tried to sneak up on Lex enough times now that Lex knew his stride off by heart. Lex always pretended to be surprised when Clark ducked in his office, though. It was only fair after all the effort Clark put in just to come and visit Lex everyday. It had been a long, busy summer for Clark and most of the other residents of Smallville. Cleaning up after the tornado hadn't been quick or easy, but it was almost completed now. The repairs at the school were well underway and, with the help of a large dose of anonymous Luthor money, would be finished for the start of school in September.
Today Clark seemed to be hesitating in the hall. He sounded like he was pacing right outside the door, and that wasn't normal at all. Lex wondered if Clark had a problem. If he did, Lex only hoped he would be able to fix it. Clark meant so much to him and Lex only wanted the boy to be happy.
Sometimes Lex could admit it to himself; that he was in love with Clark. Or at least as in love with Clark as any Luthor had ever been able to be in love with anyone. His family wasn't known for their ability to handle emotional commitments, and Lex wasn't fooling himself. His father had raised him for most of his life and, as much as he tried to deny it, he was his father's son. He couldn't change that. What he could change was how he used that legacy. As long as he had Clark in his life, Lex was fairly certain that he would turn out okay.
Lex had almost given up waiting for Clark to enter the room and was about to call him in when the young man finally stopped hesitating and stepped into Lex's office. Lex heard the door open and Clark enter. Lex smirked softly to himself, but didn't look up.
"Hi Clark," he greeted his visitor.
"L... Lex," Clark asked. His voice was hesitant and he sounded surprised to see Lex, which was really rather strange considering that they were in Lex's office. It was enough to bring Lex's eyes up to really see Clark.
Clark was standing across the room, just barely inside the door, and... he wasn't himself. It wasn't Clark. The man looked exactly like Clark, except that he was older. He was an adult. Lex scrambled to make sense out of what he was seeing.
Clark had been adopted. He didn't know who his parents were. He didn't know his family. Some stray relative coming back into Clark's life right then would be very disruptive. It wasn't something that Lex particularly wanted happening if he could prevent it.
"Who are you?" Lex asked in a low, dangerous voice. "And why are you here?" The second question was possibly the more important one. If this man was related to Clark, why was he coming to see Lex? Did he want something? Did he have some kind of information regarding Clark's adoption that he wanted to be paid to keep to himself? Why else would the man go there, to Lex, rather than going straight to see the Kents and introducing himself?
"Lex," the man gasped as though he was surprised by the question and unsure of how to answer. "It's me. Clark," he insisted.
Lex eyed the man warily. He pushed away from his desk and stood up. If the man turned out to be insane, Lex didn't want to end up stuck behind his desk. He would be better able to alert security and defend himself in a standing position.
"You might look like Clark, but you're definitely not him. Not unless Clark's aged a good ten years since I saw him yesterday," Lex reasoned. He wondered if anything he said would change the fact that this man really looked like he *believed* that he was Clark.
"Oh that," the other man said and then smiled. He seemed relieved to hear that this was the reason Lex didn't believe he was Clark. "Lex," he continued and stepped further into the room.
"I know that you don't believe me, but I really am Clark. The reason I look older is that... well, I'm from the future." The last was pushed out in a rush and it took Lex several seconds to sort it out and then comprehend it.
When he finally did, Lex laughed hard and sharp. This man's delusion *was* humorous, but also, very possibly quite dangerous. What if he tried to convince Lex that he was telling the truth? What could the man do? When Lex didn't believe him, and he wouldn't because, well time travel was just impossible, what would he do then? Would he become violent? For the first time since the man had entered his office, Lex started feeling concerned for himself.
"Lex, I know you don't believe me, but it's true. I've come back from the future, a really bad future in a world that you destroyed," pseudo-Clark explained.
"And you're here to stop that from happening?" Lex mocked him. "To change your future? How? By talking to me now? Or are you maybe here to kill me? Is that the plan?"
"No," the man snapped. He sounded horrified that Lex had suggested such a thing. "I couldn't do that again," the man muttered to himself, but Lex was able to hear enough of it to know what he had said.
Lex stepped back from his desk and further away from pseudo-Clark. This man had killed someone in the past. Sure, he was saying that he couldn't do it again, but the fact remained that he was also admitting to having done it. Lex turned slightly to obscure the left side of his body and slowly removed his cell phone from his pocket. If this guy wasn't going to leave on his own, then Lex would need help.
"You need to listen to me, Lex. I don't know how much time I have and this is important," the man insisted. He stepped towards Lex and Lex forced himself to stand his ground. He didn't want to draw any more attention to his movements than was necessary.
"Okay," Lex agreed with a nod. He tried to sound as accommodating as possible. He reached down on his phone and pressed the speed dial button that would call his security team.
"You're supposed to go on a business trip in a few weeks," the man prompted.
Lex nodded in response. "It's a conference," he confirmed.
"You can't go," pseudo-Clark insisted. "There's something that happens there, someone that will change your life and not in a good way."
"Oh really?" Lex asked. He wondered where his security guys were. They really should have arrived already. What if pseudo-Clark had been armed? Lex could have been dead by now and what use would his expensive security have been then?
"Yes. I'm... Clark's going to ask you to go camping. Just go. Forget about your conference."
Lex could hear his security guys in the hall now. The sound of their feet hitting the stone floor echoed down the hallway as they approached. He needed to distract the man in the room with him, if only for a moment. A moment was all it should have taken for security to burst into the room and apprehend Clark.
"Okay," Lex agreed, although he had absolutely no intention of following through on the promise. "I'll go camping with Clark."
The man sighed in what sounded like relief and smiled. "Good," he said. "I didn't know if you'd believe me."
Lex was shocked when the man suddenly started to fade out in front of him. Lex could see the bookcase through pseudo-Clark, and that just wasn't right. The man must have noticed what was happening to him and seemed equally shocked. He held his hands up in front of his body and looked back and forth between them and Lex.
His eyes took on a desperate look. "There's something else you need to know," he insisted.
"What?" Lex asked. He was starting to believe what this man was saying for the first time now that it was almost all over.
"I always loved you," Clark said. His voice was soft and breathy. He disappeared completely as he finished his declaration and Lex wondered if it was just his own wishful thinking that had filled in the words he'd hoped to hear for the better part of a year.
"Mr. Luthor," Dave Bond, his head of security, called out as he and his team finally reached Lex's office.
Lex snapped around to look at the man and forced himself to recover quickly from the shock of what had just happened to him. "What took you so long?" he demanded.
"Are you in danger?"
"No, Mr. Bond, I am not," Lex assured the man with a haughty tone in his voice. "Although, it is distressing to know how long it would have taken you to respond had there been, say, an intruder in my office."
"I apologize, Mr. Luthor," Dave said. He looked over his shoulder and dismissed his men with a nod of his head. "We were investigating a disturbance on the grounds."
"Oh?" Lex asked.
"Yes," Dave confirmed. "Ms. Pavich reported strange noises and a bright light from behind the stables about ten minutes ago."
Lex didn't say anything in response, but he couldn't help thinking of his strange pseudo-Clark encounter. If that man really had been Clark and he had been from the future, then the disturbance could have been him arriving. Lex could barely believe he was entertaining the possibility of believing what had just happened. He felt like he might be going insane. Was this just another one of his fantasies where Clark came to him to confess his feelings? Admittedly, it was much stranger than any he'd had in the past, but it was still possible.
"Mr. Luthor," Dave started speaking again. Lex had almost forgotten that the other man was there. If this was a dream, why was Dave there?
"I'm very sorry. I should have asked some of the men to stay behind in the manor," Dave continued.
"Yes, you should have," Lex snapped. Even though he was okay, the fact remained that if pseudo-Clark had wanted to hurt Lex, there would have been no one there to stop him.
"It won't happen again," the man assured him.
"You're right," Lex agreed. His voice was cold and flat. "It won't."
The man blanched and Lex knew that he understood that he had just been fired. "M... Mr. Luthor," the man stuttered.
"Goodbye Dave," Lex said. He turned from the man and walked back towards his desk. He heard Dave hesitate for a moment and then leave the room silently.
Lex was going to need to hire a new head of security. It wouldn't do to let the position stay open for any length of time. What had happened that afternoon couldn't be allowed to occur again. Maybe he would actually replace his entire security team. He wondered how loyal the other employees had been to Dave.
Lex felt overwhelmed. He didn't know what had gone on earlier with the man who had claimed to be Clark. He had no way of reconciling what had occurred in his office with the way he knew the world worked. There were a lot of things that Lex didn't know about what had happened that day, but one thing he knew for sure was that he needed to find out if there was any truth to what he had been told by the strange man. If time travel was real, if one really could go back in time and change the past, then Lex needed to know that.
He needed to go to the conference, see what it was that Clark wanted him to avoid, and just not let it affect him as it had before. After all, as long as he knew ahead of time that something was going to happen, it couldn't affect him the same way, could it?
***_***
*September 20, 2002*
Time travel existed. Clark loved him. Time travel existed and therefore Clark loved him. Lex was still grappling with disbelief over both of those concepts.
Five days after Lex's mysterious visitor had arrived and then vanished from his study, Clark had come to see him and asked if Lex wanted to go camping over the long weekend before school started. It was exactly as pseudo-Clark had said it would be. Of course it could have been a coincidence, but Clark had never asked Lex out camping with him before. How could anyone have guessed that the boy would do it?
Lex had wanted to say yes when he saw the hope in Clark's eyes, but he couldn't. He needed to see fate out to the end. He needed to see if the rest of the prediction was true or not. So, he had turned Clark down saying that he needed to attend the conference in his father's enforced absence. It was the truth, and although Lex knew he didn't absolutely need to attend, Luthor Corp was expected to make an appearance, though, and that meant that he should.
His father was still recovering from his injuries and learning how to live with his new disability. Lex had to go. Clark had said that he understood.
Pseudo-Clark had been right. Desiree had changed Lex's life and knowing about her beforehand hadn't seemed to help any. Clark's explanation involving meteor-enhanced pheromones at least made Lex feel somewhat less like a fool, but he still couldn't believe he had married the woman. The whole two weeks she'd been in his life seemed like a hazy dream. It was all so unreal, but it was all true.
Just as true as time travel. Lex had been changed on his trip and that was the last confirmation he needed to believe what Clark had told him. Clark had come back in time to warn Lex about Desiree. He had come back to let Lex know how he felt. Somehow, Clark had thought that those two things would create a better future than the one he had known. If that was the case, did it mean that Clark thought he and Lex needed to be together to make the future work out right?
He could do that, Lex thought with a smile. He'd wanted Clark since the first time he'd laid eyes on the younger man. Besides, time travel existed and Clark obviously either knew how it worked or would discover how it worked sometime in the future. Lex needed that knowledge. He needed Clark. It all worked out. He would be with Clark and they would make the world better together. That had to be what the elder Clark had wanted.
***_***
*October 20, 2002*
"What do you think about time travel?" Lex asked Clark suddenly. The question seemed totally out of the blue. The two of them were sitting at the Kents' dining room table, and Lex was helping Clark with his homework. It was part of his mom's ongoing 'be nice to Lex' campaign that followed the incident with Nixon where Lex had saved Jonathan's life. Clark couldn't say that he wasn't enjoying it.
"I... what?" Clark asked. He raised his eyes from where he was trying to solve the value of 'x' and blinked at Lex.
"You know, time travel. What do you think about it?" Lex asked again.
Clark placed the end of his pencil against his bottom lip as he tried to determine when exactly his best friend has lost his grip on reality. "Have you been reading your H.G. Wells collection again?" Clark asked. He was only partially teasing.
"I'm serious," Lex insisted.
"Or maybe watching bad eighties movies?" Clark continued with a small smile. Sometimes he just didn't understand Lex at all. Maybe that was why he was so drawn to the man; there was always something new to discover about him.
"Clark, I'm serious," Lex insisted again and sighed heavily.
"Oh," Clark said quietly. He tapped the eraser of his pencil against his lip as he thought. "Okay, I'm sorry. I.... Lex, I'm fairly certain that time only moves in one direction."
"Yeah," Lex agreed. He looked like he was thinking hard, so Clark didn't interrupt him. "What if you could fold it somehow? So that the end was before the start. Like this piece of paper," Lex said. He reached out and retrieved the worksheet Clark was filling in. Lex held it out flat and then folded it so that then far end overlapped the near end.
"Then," Clark said thoughtfully, "I guess you'd be able to change the past." He smiled and plucked the paper back out of Lex's hands. Clark unfolded it and smoothed it out on the table in front of him.
"Yeah," Lex agreed. "Do you think that's possible?"
"Like, for real?" Clark asked. He almost couldn't believe that Lex was asking him this, but Lex was Lex. Sometimes he made very little sense.
Lex just nodded in response.
"I.... No," Clark insisted.
"Are you sure?"
"Umm... yeah."
"It's theoretically possible," Lex replied. "On a quantum level you can never really know where or when an electron will be. It moves in all four dimensions. Maybe more."
Clark looked at his friend strangely. Lex was so intelligent. He didn't know how to keep up with the older man's mind sometimes. "When did you get so interested in theoretical physics?"
"Just recently," Lex admitted. "I've been reading some books and it's fascinating."
"That's really cool," Clark said and was surprised to find that he was telling the truth. What Lex was talking about sounded interesting and what was most cool was that Lex wanted to talk with *him* about it. No one else treated Clark like an adult the same way that Lex did. It made him feel really special and needed.
"Maybe I can read some of them and then we can talk more," Clark offered and was gratified when he saw Lex's eyes light up.
"You're sure you don't know anything else about this?" Lex asked.
Clark looked at Lex strangely. Why would he know anything more about time travel than Lex had read in his books?
"Of course not," Lex conceded before Clark could say anything. "That sounds great, though. I have a few books that I'm done with. We can go get them now," Lex pushed his chair back from the table and started to stand up. Clark reached out and gently pulled his friend back down.
"Not now, silly," Clark insisted with a chuckle. "I still need to pass sophomore math."
"Oh," Lex said with a slightly embarrassed look. "I guess I'm just a little excited."
"I understand. Tomorrow after school?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, it's a deal. Now, can you explain how to calculate this again?" Clark asked and pointed at one of the problems on his paper. He really didn't need Lex's help. He could have solved the equation in his head, in fact he already had, but Clark wasn't ready to admit it and give up his study time with Lex.
Lex nodded and leaned in to explain it all one more time. Clark smiled contentedly.
