We All Have Truths
"But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We all have truths -- are mine the same as yours?" - Jesus Christ, Superstar
(OK, so I'm a lifelong atheist, I still like good rock operas. So hit me with a green rock already. Just don't sue. I attract lawsuits like dogs do fleas as it is.)
Speaking of which, somebody else owns all the Smallville stuff. This is for wacko entertainment purposes only. No want no profits / problems / hate and discontent.
LuthorCorp penthouse, nightfall:
Lex threw the folder full of pictures and reports and computer disks on the desk after one quick skim. He hadn't even bothered to boot the disks. "You're crazy!"
"Son, I assure you, whatever your opinion of my machinations, even I would not go to such blatant lengths to fabricate such bizarre evidence for no good reason."
"Oh, you always have a good reason, all right. In this case, probably because Martha Kent refused to sleep with you. Or does it still burn you that Jonathan Kent took me in when you threw me out? The fact that your stupid power play with your other psychotically-groomed heir backfired on you," Lex took a swig of brandy and snorted at his own pun, "or in this case, did fire on you, is hardly the Kents' fault." His emphasis on Kents, plural, was as pointed as he could make it.
"This is not about Jonathan and Martha," Lionel said quietly. "Whatever I think of their quaint and naive ways, they are still human beings. Of this Earth. That -- creature they took in, that you have allowed to associate with you, that has poisoned your mind, is not."
Lex went very still. Then he turned on his father with the controlled terrifying speed of a panther, empty brandy glass held somewhere between being held out for a refill and being thrown with deadly force. At Lionel. "If you call Clark a 'creature' again, you will regret it."
"Threats, son?" Lionel gave him a smile that would have frozen helium.
"Am I supposed to say 'no, that's a promise?' Come, dad. You taught me better than that. Machiavelli was an amateur, after all. Just one with a good PR agent." He considered, and refilled his glass. "Yes. That is a threat. And one I am working on improving even as we speak." He rounded on Lionel again, and made a short stabbing motion as if to actually throw the filled glass. At Lionel.
"Clark Kent saved my life. Clark Kent stood up for me when half the town was ready to crucify me. And, I might add, the reason they hate ME is because of YOU. Clark Kent is one of the few people who not only does not want anything from me, but he refuses to ask for favors even when his family is in dire straits and I could give them what they need without even picking up the phone. Clark Kent talks to me when no one else will. Clark Kent LISTENS to me. Clark Kent is a friend. Clark Kent is probably the only real friend I've ever had, not to mention the best friend ANYone could ever have. He's loyal, and brave, and decent, and kind, and thoughtful. If Clark Kent is from another planet, then this sorry planet needs a lot more like him. If Clark Kent is an alien, then so am I, twice over, according to every one in this town. And you, dad, do not even have any of the redeeming features of Darth Vader."
Lex considered tossing his glass over his shoulder and stomping out. No, that would be childish, the easy way out. To win against his father, he needed to stand his ground. He leaned back against the desk, folded his arms, and took a very small sip of brandy, so as not to interfere with his deliberate shark's smile.
For once, Lionel did not chide him or brush him off. Lionel stared at him, very seriously. "You can prove it to yourself," Lionel said in a voice of chilled steel. "Take one of the gold bars from the vault. Offer it to the family. They're applying for a third mortgage just to be able to buy animal feed. They should jump at the money represented by a thousand dollars of gold. But they'll refuse."
Lex stared at him. "You ARE crazy. Or have you gone senile, dad? Maybe I should have the doctor come check you out. Yes, I can see it now, LexCorp donates a new assisted-care facility for Alzheimer's, named after its most prominent resident..."
That shot hurt, Lex could tell. The thought of getting old, losing his power, terrified Lionel. The thought of losing his mind and his edge was his worst nightmare. Lex saw fear and anger warring in Lionel's usually so-controlled expression, violating Lionel's own cardinal rule about never giving your opponent a clue to weakness.
"Oh," Lionel hissed, "suppose you explain to me why someone would turn down gold."
Lex slammed his glass down on the marble edging of the table, shattering it. "You stupid, arrogant, forever-blind-in-the-head idiot! Jonathan Kent wouldn't even accept a new truck he desperately needed to work the farm with when his old one was falling apart, after his son pulled me back from drowning! I've offered to help them out a hundred times, in a hundred ways, and the only one they ever accepted was when I mucked out the barn!"
That shot hurt Lionel even worse -- Lex had never actually seen Lionel go pale before. The very thought of his son, cleaning a barn! It made Lex giddy with this newfound power over his father. "Some people can't be BOUGHT, dad. Maybe you should get a different shrink. One who can explain that to you."
Oh, that got the best flinch yet. Did Lionel really not believe that Lex knew about his psychiatrist? Hah, maybe the old boy really was losing it. Otherwise he would never have let slip what he said next.
"The gold is impregnated with meteorite radiation, Lex. That's the only reason they wouldn't take it. Otherwise it would be the answer to their prayers."
Lex fought down a surge of sheer fury. Then he changed his mind and decided to use it, though he rechanneled its cause. "You really have gone senile, old man," he said in as gentle a voice as his white-hot anger allowed him. "You haven't heard a word I said about the Kents. They wouldn't accept a Susan B Anthony dollar from you. But radioactive gold? You were the one who insisted on hiring scientists to investigate the meteorites, and every one of them came to a bad end. The radiation dose from the first strike left me a bald freak while I was still in elementary school, which seems to upset you more than it does me, any more.
"There are so many problems caused by meteorite craziness around here that people are actually inclined to blame them first, instead of the mutagenic garbage your factory spewed out while you paid off the least competent and most crooked of the EPA inspectors, though I myself doubt that rocks from outer space cause nearly as much damage as benzene and PCBs in the water and acid in the air.
"And you contaminated a load of gold with that poison? Where are you going to store it? Or sell it, for that matter? Last I looked, Fort Knox does not have a lead vault. Or were you simply planning on leaving it to me to clean up, like you do all your other problems and messes?"
"The meteorites," Lionel said thickly, as if he were breathing poisoned air himself, "are the only thing that can stop the alien invaders."
Lex stared at him for one solid minute. He gave himself an extra ten seconds on the count. Then he threw back his head and howled with laughter.
"You -- " gasp -- "think Clark -- " wheeze -- "Kent -- " snort -- "is a -- " bwhahahahaha -- "an alien -- " wipe tears from eyes -- "INVADER?" Whahahaha.... "A h-high-school B-average stu-student," ghahaha, "who f-falls on his ass in f-front of his girlfriend," Clark's clumsiness was legendary, "bent on ta-taking over the world...." Lex folded double at the image, holding both arms crossed over his abdomen to keep from rupturing his diaphragm with belly guffaws.
Lionel took six fast steps toward him and shook him by the shoulders, straightening him. When Lex kept giggling, Lionel slapped him.
Lex sobered instantly -- the laughter had been manufactured, after all -- and slapped Lionel back. Hard. Lionel stepped back, eyes wide with shock.
"You -- "
"That was not a threat, dad. That was a promise."
Lionel looked into eyes so much like his own, eyes gone cold and mean. "This is not a joke, son. These -- things -- that are invading our planet are dangerous. You've seen -- " he gestured at the folder scattered over the desk -- "What even one young one can do."
Lex ignored the desk entirely and took one step forward, getting into Lionel's space, his fist clenched and arm tight. "I don't know what your obsession with Clark is, except that he and his parents are more family to me than you ever were. But if you threaten him, or his parents, or his friends, or anyone in this entire town, for that matter, ever again, I will not just take LuthorCorp away from you, and Metropolis away from you, I will sadly and soberly and scientifically tell the nice men in white coats that you and your friends in the tinfoil tri-cornered beanie hats think that Smallville, Kansas, is the staging site for an alien invasion."
He settled back, looked for his glass, discovered its remains, shrugged, took the bottle from the bar, settled back, and swigged from it straight. "For that matter, Roswell might sue you for interfering with their tourist trade." Holding the bottle, he smirked at his father, and dangled it from his fingers as if he would let it drop.
Not that Lionel cared about even a six hundred dollar bottle of brandy, but the servants would certainly gossip when they had to clean the rug.
Lionel was ghost-pale. "You. Wouldn't. Dare."
Lex felt himself flush, and it felt good. It was the dark red of anger heating his hairless-ape skin, not the pink of embarrassment, and he reveled in it. He contemplated dropping the bottle just to make a point. Nah. That would be alcohol abuse. He raised it and drank from it again instead.
"I would say 'try me,' dad, but that would be a waste of time, don't you think?" He set the bottle down on the desk, delicately. "What could you do to stop me? You raised your heir. Live with it."
Lionel glared at him with all the hatred locked in whatever heart or soul he had left. "Very well, then. Give your 'friend' a CHEAP gift. One of those tacky little meteorite souvenirs from a roadside stand. Though I daresay what rumors it will start, that Lex Luthor is reduced to buying tourist crap."
"Probably that you're planning another takeover, which will really do wonders for productivity and purchase prices around here."
"I am serious, Lex!" Lionel's voice was hoarse. It made Lex snicker.
"Really? You sound more like a candidate for the funny farm every minute, to me and to any Freudian head doctor. Classic paranoid schizophrenia, complete with delusions. Metropolis General's entire psychiatric wing will have a field day." Lex retrieved the bottle and gestured dramatically. "Alas, poor Lionel...." He took another swig. "Oh, and just imagine the headlines in the Inquisitor."
Lionel was so mad he was actually trembling. Lex watched with fascination, wondering just how far he could push it. "Your little pet abomination can't touch the meteorites. The alien loses his powers just from being near them. I saw it collapse when it entered the room when those thugs of yours opened the vault. And Martha knew about its weakness." Lionel was even more infuriated at the memory. He'd actually liked Martha, and she had been a traitor to the human race all along. "When she put the gold back into the vault, it was fine again. You don't have to believe me. Prove it to yourself. Just hand it any of the rocks off the side of the road."
" 'Powers.' You are very far gone, dad." There was so much more he could say, and oh, so very much he wanted to say! But the only way to get the best of Lionel was to be minimalist, because anything he said might give the old man ammunition, might let something slip, and would definitely be used against him.
Instead of arguing, Lex picked up the bottle and contemplated it, then deliberately tipped it upside down, pouring it all over the desk, tilting his head clinically at the thick flow of expensive liquid all over the marble and wood, the plush carpet, the paper and photos and disks. He smiled. He'd always wanted to do this anyway, and never really had the proper audience or occasion.
He rummaged in his pocket, found a stray $50, and took the decorative lighter from the desk. No one in the entire extended household smoked, not even the janitor or gardener, so he could only imagine it was there for some ostentatious purpose, like to show off the stupid presidential seal embossed on its gold side.
He lit the $50 and dropped it into the puddle of brandy, which burned with a satisfying blue flame, just as it had done in those awful drinks he used to order just for the hell of it and never drink. "Don't tell me. The aliens can't bend their pinkie fingers, either? And they turn into lizards or werewolves or cats or whatever when they do the wild thing? All those old sci-fi type shows run together in my poor young bald head, though no doubt you remember all of the worst of them from when you a poor abused child yourself," damn if that didn't get another flinch, "and hiding from the monsters under your bed. Is that the fantasy life you've retreated into now? The psychiatrists will definitely be fascinated. And forget the Inquisitor, you'll be famous in the UFO circles. Probably on the front cover of the Weekly World UFO Report."
"Lex!"
"Oh, don't be such a big baby. The sprinklers will go off any second. Unless you've been bribing the fire department too."
"Lex. It's not your friend. It's not from Earth. You can still get close enough to it to stop it. To poison it. Take the gold. Please. It may be our last chance. If you don't believe me," Lionel swallowed, "Then just try. See what happens."
"Do or do not, there is no try," Lex sing-songed. "Oh, wait, that was an alien too. Maybe if I got my ears bobbed? It would go well with the bald look, don't you think?" He decided to give up drinking and devote all his pursuit of pleasure into messing with the old man's head. It was so much more satisfying.
His dad, the powerful Lionel Luthor, was afraid! He, young condescended-to heir Lex, could finally frighten the vicious old bastard who had made his life a living hell since the day he could talk. It was better than brandy any day.
The sprinklers did indeed go off at that moment, putting out the fire, sogging the carpet, ruining what was left of the desk and the papers and photos. He picked up the disks, hefting them, toying with them like cards, wondering if a sprinkling had done them enough damage. Lionel took a step toward him, and his head snapped up.
"I warned you," he said, voice suddenly as depthless cold as Antarctic desert snow, "not to call Clark anything other than a friend. Ever again." The drenching had washed all the playfulness out of him. "And, dad?" Softly, dangerously. "If the meteorites are poisonous to anyone -- it's because you touched them."
And at that he did make his exit, light-hearted and nearly light-headed.
But not for long.
In fact, by the time the Ferrari made it to the Kent farm, minus a side mirror where he'd sideswiped a mailbox when he dodged oncoming traffic at very nearly the engine's rated capacity, he was seething.
The Ferrari was fast, but nothing outran a radio wave or telephone call.
He banged into the kitchen to discover the Kent family clearing up after dinner. Normalcy incorporated. Like the small town in "Small Town," so unremarkable on the surface, so mind-bendingly weird in the details. Two organic farmers who raised corn and chickens and cows for slaughter and one alien refugee.
Lex sagged. He might not have beaten a radio wave, but he'd beaten his father. He'd been in time, for once.
"Don't you ever knock, Lex?" Jonathan said irritably. Predictably. Normal gruff farmer, normal in a small town.
"We weren't expecting you , Lex," said Martha, apologetically. "Would you like something to eat? I can warm something up."
Lex held himself upright by sheer force of will. Typical hospitality from a typical cheery farm wife. Not what you expect from a woman harboring an alien invader who could destroy entire cities with his bare hands, that no weapon could stop. Probably even a nuclear bomb wouldn't do more than knock Clark on his kiester any more, Lex thought resignedly. Well, there was one weapon, but be damned if he'd do that to his friend unless he absolutely had to.
Clark met his eyes, blue-hazel to blue-gray. A kid's eyes. A teenager's guileless concern. Eyes that could see through concrete as if it were glass and melt steel at a glance. "You okay, Lex? You look like a pony that's been rode hard and put away wet." So normal. So, so backwoods hick unimpressive!
So hidden. So hard, to keep such a secret. So much set apart from everyone, never daring to relax for a second. Lex swallowed. And he'd thought covering up for his own escapades as a teen had been a tough row to hoe.
He almost giggled at his simile. Hanging around with backwoods hick farm aliens was rubbing off on his vocabulary. "I'm sorry, Mr. Kent, Mrs. Kent. Clark, can I talk to you for a minute? It won't take but a minute, but it's important."
Clark gave his parents a puzzled, wary look. "Sure, Lex." He rose, careful. His parents returned the wary look, but nodded for him to go with his friend.
Lex almost choked. Such normal teenage behavior. Well, for a respectful and well-behaved teenager. That alone should have tipped anybody off that Clark wasn't normal.
They wandered out to the barn loft together. Lex looked up at the sky occasionally, wondering. What did Clark see at night when he looked out into the mysteries, thinking about who had sent him here? Right now, Clark looked straight ahead as they walked, or at his feet. Lex didn't blame him for being nervous. "Can I talk to you in private" almost never led to anything good. The silence between them, given their usual easy chatter, was deafening.
Inside the loft, Lex looked around with professional suspicious scrutiny. The windows were open, but that didn't mean anything. Electronics, distance lenses, gun-focus microphones, and Lionel had probably bugged the damn place from one end to the other anyway. His thugs had managed to infiltrate Lex's own office. The Kent farm would have been, literally, child's play.
He sighed, and flopped down on a well-worn couch. "Well, if someone is going to listen in on us, they're going to listen no matter where we go. Cutting to the chase, bottom line and all that, I've got some very bad news, and some very very very bad news."
Clark went pale. Lex studied the reaction with interest. He hadn't realized that it was possible for Clark to lose blood flow to his extremities, except when he was around the radioactive rocks. Those bullet-proof blood vessels apparently reacted just like a normal human's under emotional stress. "Let me try the just very bad news first," Clark said, controlling his voice with difficulty.
"The very bad news is that my father is on to you."
Clark folded as if his legs had turned to water, as if he were about to faint. He collapsed to the floor on his butt. "What ... what are you ...
Lex cut him off with an impatient gesture. "The space ship in the storm cellar? Christ on a crossed computer node, Clark, throwing a lousy tarp over a space ship does not hide it from plain sight! And picking up a tractor with one hand out in the middle of a plowed open field on a Saturday afternoon was just plain stupid. You could have maybe waited until it was dark? Or at least used two hands and tried to make it look like it was an effort! And I realize you were under duress when you were being blackmailed, but did you really have no clue how fast a digital security camera is? Do you use that high-speed head of yours for anything except hair? You'd have been better off sticking around at normal speed and facing the cops.
"And dear old dad's cleaning staff found the bullets you left on the floor. Buy a vowel, Clark; at least clean up the evidence!"
Clark went so green that Lex looked around automatically for a meteorite rock. No, the kid had climbed up here by himself with no sign of illness. So much for invulnerability. Words and fear could cripple him as effectively as the radiation.
"How ... did ... you...." Clark's harsh whisper choked off.
"Clark, when you ripped the top off my Porsche to get me out, you left a hand print. Okay, so you were in a hurry. Did it not occur to you to use, like, the door? Or your fist? It wasn't difficult to match your glove size, especially YOUR glove size, especially since you were the only one on the scene. This is SMALLville. And you left a you-sized dent in the front fender and hood where I hit you. I had to beat them both out myself with a hammer before forensics got hold of it."
"Oh." Clark bent over, hiding his face in his hands, trying to curl his long frame into a ball. "Oh ... no...."
Lex felt a little sick himself. He'd bluffed his dad down and given him other fronts to concentrate on, at least for a little while, for whatever that was worth. He'd done a fair job destroying the evidence he'd been presented, but no doubt there were copies. Which reminded him. He dug the disks out and all but threw them at Clark.
"You might want to take a look at those some day and see what else the old man has seen, aside from the fact that he was faking his blindness when you crashed through the top of the LuthorCorp tower and ran straight into the vault room, and boy, didn't you think THAT one through. There are other reasons for looking through walls besides Lana, you know? He wanted me to 'give' you one of the gold bars with that refined insanity melted into it, as if your dad wouldn't shoot me on the spot just for coming onto your property with anything that glows green."
Lex suppressed a shiver. He'd seen Clark stagger and turn sickly pale from only a few seconds' exposure to Lana's idiotic meteorite-chip necklace when he was all the way across the room. He'd seen Clark folded in helpless agony from a cruddy little bit of meteor-laced ink in a tattoo. The separated-out atoms and molecules turning millions of dollars of gold into so much radioactive trash would probably be incurably deadly to him just about on contact. Lionel really did hate Clark that much. Why?
Insight suddenly blazed through him. Lionel was terrified of Clark, too. Of course. Someone with Clark's strength could be a serious challenge to the empire that was Lionel's life and reason for living. All that Lionel had ... and a clodding farm boy could take it away from him, with one hand, without hardly trying.
Damn Clark for his carelessness with the gun in front of Lionel, for his stupid swaggering kid's challenge to the dangerous old man. Although that had been the red rock's fault. Lex was going to have to slap some sense into the kid. Lex snorted to himself. As if he could. Maybe with a .44. Maybe not even then.
The alien invader who was going to take over the planet was rocking back and forth, head on his knees, like a small scared kid. As well he might, Lex thought sourly, and steeled himself to be brutal. "The very very very bad news," he hissed, in a voice hard-trained to match the threatening whisper of a sword being drawn, the quiet snick of a gun being taken off safety, "Is that I'm pretty unhappy with you, too."
Clark looked up. Lex almost lost it. The pain, the trust and hope and fear, the friendship longed for and relied on and betrayed by lies, his sheer open needy vulnerability.... Innocence, being lost for all time. It made Lex want to take the little lead box and its contents, that he had hastily grabbed before Lionel could catch him, out of his pocket and HIT Clark with it. Death by slow radiation torture couldn't possibly hurt any worse than what went through his gut at Clark's expression.
"Dammit, Clark, why didn't you TELL me?"
Clark swallowed and tried to speak, and failed. Lex felt his stomach twist again. Alien, schmalien. The kid in front of him was just a child, a teenager who had never gotten in worse trouble than forgetting his homework or being late, whose skin could bounce bullets but had never so much as smoked a joint, much less done some of the things Lex had done before he was old enough to vote. And he was about to be forced into the very worst rite of growing up that even Lex had never been through.
Lex tightened his lips. Other kids had done it, though, and they weren't impervious to the dangers of the streets. He was going to have to brutalize Clark to get that through his head, and he didn't have a lot of time.
"I could have protected you, if I had just known a little sooner," he forced himself to say, still using that trained, deadly, false voice. "I knew within a month of meeting you that you weren't normal, maybe not even human. You wear the fact that you have secrets all over your face. But I didn't know what to look for, what to cover for, what mistakes you'd made and when. If I had known, I could have derailed my father's investigations, redirected them, planted false evidence. I could have helped you, dammit, if I'd only known how and what and why!
"I wouldn't have had to kill Nixon. Do you know how much suspicion that caused? I murdered a man in cold blood. Yes, he was about to kill your dad. And if I had told the cops that, they would have asked why he was about to kill your dad. So instead I told them that he had threatened me. Not you or your family. Me. Just another Luthor headline, of course. And I retrieved your jacket, the one with the meteorite in it, before the cops got there, to keep anyone from asking why your dad took time out while he had broken ribs and a concussion to pull your jacket off. I burned the jacket and the meteorites in the plant incinerator, since I wasn't sure if the jacket would still be contaminated. Where the hell did you think all that went?"
Clark's face was so pale that Lex surreptitiously checked to make sure the lead box in his pocket was still closed. "Lex...."
"Shut up. I left dear old dad with the impression that I was going to have him exposed and committed as a conspiracy nut, so he's busy with damage control right now, but by morning he's going to have a goon or ten out here with green-rock weapons. You had better make your goodbyes short, and pack light, and head out somewhere other than Metropolis. If you find some way to get in touch with me in a few weeks, that can't be traced, I can get you out of the country, but for ghod's sake don't get your picture on the news anywhere."
Lex took out his wallet (next to that little lead box, and oh, the temptation, just this one last time), rummaged through various compartments, and tossed the few hundred in cash he'd had lying around at Clark. "Don't tell your parents where you're going. They'll do something stupid like try to call you."
"What if ... your dad ... if my parents...."
"If dad tries to have them tortured?" Lex said so easily it shocked even him. Clark went, if possible, even paler. "I'll keep surveillance on them. I would dearly love to have a headline about Lionel Luthor extorting a couple of farmers."
"Lex...." Clark stood, shakily, and Lex fingered his box again. Nope, still closed. The shakes and the paleness and the choking voice were a purely human reaction to shock, to fear. And not just fear for himself, but for his parents.
Human.
"What about you?" Clark barely breathed. "Won't you get in trouble?"
Fear for Lex?
Lex buried that thought in a solid stainless steel lock box in his mind, and added a few mental meteorites to keep him from going near it again. Clark was worried about him. Clark cared about him.
If both of them were very lucky, he would never see Clark again. Clark was the only thing Lionel could still hold over him or hurt him with.
"I hope I never see you again," Lex said in a voice that was almost a cat's hunting rumble. He meant it, too, but not the way it sounded. "So I just want you to answer that one question before you go. Why? Didn't. You. TELL! Me?"
Clark folded over again, looking so sick that Lex automatically checked his pocket once more. "I wanted to," he said miserably. "I was afraid...."
Adrenaline anger pounded through Lex's veins like a sudden injection of one of the more illegal drugs. It hurt. He went dizzy with the blood pressure spike, sick to his stomach from the glandular biochemical overload of fury. He wondered in a distant corner of his mind if this was what the green poison felt like to Clark. He'd seen the awful pictures taken by those psychos Nixon and Phelan, of Clark's veins standing out while Clark was trapped and helpless, blood vessels swollen from the lethal allergen, curled up and convulsing as his body tried desperately to reject the killing toxin. That image was all that kept him from screaming at Clark. Of course the kid was afraid.
That knowledge didn't make it any easier to keep from being madder than he'd ever been in his life.
"You were afraid. Of ME? After all we'd been through together? You saved my life, I saved yours, I went into that damn field where I nearly died as a kid, only because I THOUGHT I heard you. I killed for you, and you put yourself through hell for me a couple of times over, do you think I didn't see how bad it hurt you to even be near Jenkins? Do you think I'm STUPID, Clark?" There, that was an insult worthy of a Luthor, Lex thought bitterly. "Don't ever underestimate me like that again," the deadly reflexive voice lashed out before he could stop it. "You'll regret it." He got himself back under control, barely. "You were afraid of me? Or you didn't trust me?"
Clark's breathing broke on a sob. He was beginning to get it all through his head, Lex decided. That he was going to have to leave. That he could no longer hide in his parents' house for safety. That childhood was over.
Welcome to the club, Clark, Lex thought, but did not say. In retrospect, he understood that it might have saved them both a lot of pain to tell Clark that Lex had gone through this too, this realization that the world was a bitter and unsafe place after all, even when you had retreated to the sanctuary of home, that Lex had been put through similar torment since he was two himself.
Perhaps the worst mistake of his life was not making an effort that would have been as easy as picking up a car was for Clark, a motion of two feet: not reaching out and putting his hand on his former best friend's shoulder.
"I wasn't," Clark managed, choking as if he had a meteor rock stuck in his throat, "afraid .. of YOU."
Oh. Oh, stars and planets and destruction and hellfire and damnation. Lex turned away, fighting the burning liquid in his eyes. Maybe he should open the little box after all. Yes. And swallow the fragment inside. And hope it would kill him or mutate him into something without emotions. At least keep Clark away from him. Anything to keep from ever having to meet Clark's eyes again.
Clark was afraid, all right. Of everything. Of TOUCHING anything, or anyone. Clark was afraid of himself. Clark had been afraid of himself probably since the third day after he'd landed on this fragile planet and begun to discover his unnatural strength. Discovered how different he was from all the people around him. How badly he could hurt them with a casual wave of his hand. How he could never be one of them. That all the people he had ever cared for, he did not dare ever get close to.
Power versus power, Lex thought, with the tingle of the ancient instinctive alpha male desire to fight and defeat, to possess and command. His own power, hard won, daily fought for, ultimately not really wanted because of the price to his soul.
Against Clark's power, inborn, unable to be renounced, as much a part of him as his skin, not really wanted because it made him less than human even as it made him more. Lex wanted to dominate that power, with every fiber in his body. To own, and to protect. It terrified him, too, even as he understood that he could never let it go.
It was giddying to the primal fight-or-flight hormonal rush. It was strange and uncomfortable to a young man who thought of himself as civilized. It was horrifying, mortifying, to think of himself that way, to think of Clark as a caveman challenger against whom he would surely always lose in a fair fight.
Only Clark could ever challenge him. Only Clark could ever hurt him. Only Clark could ever be his equal. His counterpart. His friend.
Or his enemy.
"Then it was because you didn't trust me," Lex whispered, silk on steel. Below the trained voice was the laceration of his soul, blood wrapped in lace, hurt without reason or logic but untouchable agony nonetheless.
"I can't .. can't trust .. anybody."
Lex felt his stomach drop out. If the meteorite's effect on Clark was worse than this feeling, he didn't want to know it. "Not even your parents?" he demanded in cold anger, twisting the knife, in himself as well as Clark.
"Dad once -- shot me. It was the -- the flower drug. And he knew he -- he knew he couldn't really hurt me. Not that way, anyway. But he .. he didn't even hesitate. Like I wasn't ... wasn't...."
Wasn't his own son. Wasn't human. Wasn't loved, wasn't anything that mattered. Wasn't a real person. Just a lab rat, an insect, an obstacle. A thing. Lex briefly contemplated beating the living crap out of Jonathan. Aside from the fact that the rangy farmer could have put Lex into traction with one hand, it was a highly appealing image. Yes, the nicodemus drug caused craziness. He had copies of the pictures of Lana in her underwear on the pool diving board. Whee-hoo! But for your own father to turn a shotgun on you.... Even Lionel had never gone that far.
He wondered if they would ever be able to look back and laugh on Jonathan's tendency to turn shotguns on people.
Of course, Lex wasn't exactly innocent in that department either, and the gun he'd tried to cut Clark in half with had been considerably more powerful than the farmer's shotgun. The mind-control handshake, he'd later learned, was supposed to leave no memories, but Lex had mastered self-hypnosis years ago when he'd gotten bored with cocaine. Clark had never blamed him, at least not out loud. But Clark would always live with the memory of both his dad and his friend shooting at him.
Probably best not to let Clark know that he remembered his own weird glee at the semi-auto's bullets punching Clark backwards like so many high-speed ping-pong balls perfectly well.
"You didn't trust me," he repeated, hardening his voice as much as he could. "You LIED to me. Our whole friendship was built on a lie. Everything you ever said to me, everything I ever shared with you, it was all a lie. I gave you a dozen opportunities to tell me the truth, hints to let you know that I already knew some of it, reasons to let me into your life. And you only shut me out and pushed me away. Were you laughing at me the whole time, alien? Or did you just not give a damn?"
Clark's head jerked up as if he'd been shot. Well, no, Lex reflected. From the condition of the bullets he'd recovered, being shot didn't particularly seem to bother him. "I was NEVER laughing at you," he half-hissed, half-shouted. Good, Lex thought, at least he can be angry. That may make this a little easier.
Hah. I only wish.
"How can you think I didn't care?" Clark slammed his hand down on the nearest object, which collapsed in splinters. Lex marveled. He bet not many people got to see Clark lose his temper. "I had to keep my secret to protect YOU! You, and all my friends. Because if anyone found out about me, you'd be a target too. Just from being around me. People like Nixon and Hamilton would torture you, just to find out what you knew about me. Everyone I know is in danger, just because of who I am." His voice broke, and his head dropped. "I mean, what I am. What you called me."
Forget the meteorite fragment, Lex wanted to swallow hydrochloric acid for having said that one word. But it wasn't over yet. He wondered if it ever would be. "And that kept me from being able to help you. And that cost you everything."
"I'm sorry...." The pleading in Clark's voice nearly broke Lex.
It wasn't fair to hold Clark solely accountable. The kid was truly terrified. In ten minutes, he'd gone from being a nervous teenager living in secret on a farm to being an object of the hunt. Clark had probably never even READ a book about the Hunt. That does not change the fact, he told himself, in the stern controlled discipline of harshly ingrained habit, that Clark was going to have to live with the consequences of his actions, of any moment of carelessness in doing what came so naturally and easily to him -- of being an alien -- for the rest of his life.
Starting now. Being a superhuman kid was not the same as being a superhuman adult.
Lex wanted nothing more than to take the tall child in his arms and tell him it would be all right, spirit him away to somewhere safe, assure him that between Lex's monetary power and connections and Clark's abilities, no one could touch them. That everything would work out.
Lex did not move. He could not shield Clark with another lie.
Nothing would ever be "all right" again.
"If you had trusted me," he began, and was surprised at the weariness in his own voice. "We would not be having this conversation tonight. We would still have had years together. Good times. Playing pool. Teaching you about girls. Being friends. But Clark...." Lex ran his hand over his bald head, a gesture that spoke unconsciously but unavoidably of his history. "Sooner or later, we would have had to part ways anyway. Time passes. People change. I would take my," he put as much sneer into it as he could, "rightful place, in Luthor Corp. And you would move on. To become, well, whatever it is that you're going to be."
Clark's breath caught and held. Lex wondered idly how long he could hold it. The kid had been under thirty feet of water long enough to tear a car apart, unbuckle Lex, and bring him to the surface. The human record for breath-holding was probably better than that, but not by much, and not with the rip-the-car-apart factor involved.
"I'm sorry," Clark whispered again, but this time his head came up, and he met Lex's eyes.
Lex wondered how long he could hold his own breath. Because his diaphragm was not cooperating with the idea of voluntary, or even involuntary, breathing. He struggled to make a sound. "I am, too," he managed finally.
"We could have...." Clark offered, unsure of how to finish.
"We could have been great together," Lex interrupted him, drawing on his hated father's hated training, so necessary yet so destructive, a difference in their backgrounds between them that was far greater than their six years in age or their planet of origin. "Instead -- we'll have to be great apart."
Because you can't compromise. You can't hide in another's shadow. You can't just stop trying to do everything you can do. You are what you are, and you can't change that any more than you can change the fact that you're not a normal human.
And, all gods help me, I can't stop pushing the limits either. I am what I have been made, too. Compromise is out of the question.
"I guess so." Clark slumped. Lex had never seen him look so defeated, not after being hit by a bus, not even when he was poisoned by deadly remnants of his own planet. His own planet? Lex fought down a snort. Clark may not have been born on Earth, but he was every bit as much *of* Earth as Lex himself. Maybe more so. Lex's connection to Earth was money and elegant towers and cold stone castles. Clark's was land, and growing things, and open kitchens with the smell of baking grains, a hard-wired connection in all air-breathing animals reaching back beyond the beginning of either of their species.
"You'd better get going," Lex tried to say. He was pretty sure no sound came out of his paralyzed vocal cords, but Clark nodded, looking as exhausted as Lex felt. Surely that can't be, Lex thought. Clark could run from Smallville to Metropolis faster than his helicopter could make it (and he didn't think even his dad knew about THAT little tidbit; Lex had thrown the stopwatch and the camera and the flight logs all into the incinerator). He didn't get tired, did he?
Maybe, just like he heard words that weren't said out loud, he could share feelings that Lex thought were locked behind even the trained shields of a Luthor.
"Yeah." Definitely exhaustion in his voice, though he managed to speak out loud, unlike Lex. He turned those huge hazel-blue eyes, those thick expressive quirky eyebrows that nevertheless hid such secrets, worried and accepting at the same time, to his friend. "Lex ... thanks. For, for everything."
Lex worked very hard, with all the biofeedback training at his command, to keep from passing out or throwing up or bursting into tears. Of all the times for Clark to finally open himself up. If this was what truth cost, he would trade the entire family fortune not to have to go through it again.
Maybe I should have brought a gun instead of the box, so I could shoot myself now. Although Clark could probably have stopped me. That damn digital security camera was running at one thousand frames per second, if you believed the ad hype, and Clark was only on two of them. Lex scrubbed his eyes with his silk cuffs. No, kid, it's not going to be okay. But you'll make it. I have faith in you.
He took the small box out of his pocket and placed it, carefully, on the crate serving as a horizontal storage surface, aka table. "This was ... this was in case things went .. badly. I wouldn't open it if I were you." He managed a pitifully weak smirk. "Literally. Unintended choice of words, but all too appropriate. Since I'm not you. You know."
Clark glanced at the little cube, identifying it as lead in a tenth of a second, guessing why before the second was up. "More Saint Gregory's armor?" he said gently, redirecting the conversation. Lex's guilt tore at him. He was to blame for this awful turn of events, for not having trusted Lex enough to share what he had most wanted to. For allowing suspicion and self-pity to blanket him from what he could have had.
Saying goodbye to his parents was going to leave him sobbing in the hillsides until well past noon the next day. Saying goodbye to Lex -- his friend, his mental adversary and subtle psychological foil, his rival in power and best counterpart on this planet, the one person who might have understood what it was to be an alien, who had wanted only the truth from him in order to help him, whom he had failed with his reflexive paranoia -- was going to hurt until the end of time.
"No," said Lex, with the calm of the totally disconnected. "Just pieces of crap and leftovers off the shop floor. I welded the box myself, though. Didn't want anyone wondering what it was for."
Clark sucked in a breath. That was an admission he didn't think that a Luthor was allowed to make. Lamely, "I didn't ... realize you knew how to ... weld." Or that you would put your own personal effort into a, well, box.
"I'm not very good at it," Lex said, still with that deadly, distant calm. "See the line along the corner? Pitiful. Not all of us have heat vision, you know," he added reflectively. "Must have been tempting to use it in shop class."
Oh, stars and planets, was there ANYthing Lex didn't know? And had been keeping to himself, all along. Clark swallowed the turmoil in his stomach. Practically nothing could hurt worse than this.
Well, one thing.
Clark closed his eyes, bracing himself. He owed Lex something. He could never make proper restitution for all the lies, all that he had allowed to come between them. But perhaps there was one gesture of trust that could salvage something of the friendship they had enjoyed.
He owed Lex the truth, this time.
"Since you made it," he said with forced lightness, "I'll keep the box. But you should keep the contents."
Gritting his teeth, he opened the box.
"Clark, what are you -- ? Clark! Have you lost your mind?"
The pain was not actually as bad as he'd been expecting. Maybe because most of his capacity to feel pain had been drained out of him in the past twenty minutes. Twenty minutes? his number-oriented brain supplied. That was all?
His stomach cramped with poisoned sickness, hunching him over, but not before he took the shining shard out of the box with his bare fingers. That DID hurt. Like having his fingers burned to the bone, and the bone set on fire.
"Clark!" Lex jumped up and snatched at the box, but even hazy and half-blind with pain, Clark was still too fast and too determined for him. He set the terrible fragment down in front of Lex and stumbled back to the stairs, where he gave up trying to fight, gasping from the effort and the convulsive shock to his nerves, holding onto the railing against waves of weakness and dizziness just to stay on his feet. But his other hand still gripped the amateurishly made lead box.
"Clark...." Lex sat back down heavily. Wonderingly. He wasn't sure if he'd just been offered an enormous gift, or a deadly insult. He knew which it would have been from Lionel, but from the friend he had just called an alien....
"You're ... probably right. I should ... get going." Clark's ragged breathing and slumped dependency on the railing told Lex all too clearly that he was still much too dangerously close to the deadly shard, but was forcing himself to endure it for some reason. For a moment, even Lex's trained mind and active imagination was too paralyzed by what had just happened to imagine what.
Clark was waiting. Hurting, and in mortal jeopardy that would probably arrive before dawn, but waiting. For him?
There was an expression on the inhuman boy's face, a need and pain and longing in his eyes, that had nothing to do with physical torment.
The words "I never want to see you again" hung between them, as poisonous as the green light. Of course. Lex breathed out a long sigh. Of course Clark hadn't understood. Clark thought that he was the only one who endangered everyone around him. Clark and his damn unshakable martyr complex. As if he were to blame for everything that went wrong in the world from the day he arrived as a baby.
The irony was almost hysterical. Clark actually didn't see that it was his friendship with Lex that had put him -- Clark, not Lex -- in danger.
Names of god, did Clark know nothing about rich people and why they kept security forces and what kind of blackmails the Luthors had been subjected to?
Clark was too ill right now (Lex was a little ill himself, just seeing what Clark was willing to do to himself for the sake of what they had once shared), and dad's goons were too close, for him to go into explanations. Where dealing with Lionel required laconic care, Clark was more one for long discussions to hash out exactly what each phrase meant.
Except for the big giant lie that had finally torn them apart, Clark was always one for talking things out to the last detail. But Lex knew that he owed Clark something in return for what he'd just been given. An offer, at least, of hope.
"Clark," softly, not moving towards him, not threatening. "It's never safe to be friends with a Luthor. But if the time ever comes that you think that you can risk it -- come back to me?"
Clark nodded. Lex could tell that he regretted moving his head, from the expression of nausea that swam across his face, but he managed his voice. "I will."
And then he was gone, half falling down the stairs, speeding up as he got out of range and recovered. Lex figured he'd better beat feet out of here while Clark was trying to talk to his parents, before Jonathan went for his shotgun.
Maybe Jonathan would take a shotgun to dad's goons. Lex snickered, and made a mental note to call the police when he got back to the castle. Having Lionel's hired dorks try to explain to the authorities what they were doing there would be far more fun than bailing out Jonathan on yet another set of murder charges.
He picked up the little green crystal and stared at it. A piece of another planet. A reminder of a boy who had been his best friend.
In the end, Clark had handed him the truth, as much as he was able.
In the end, Lex knew he had given Clark only half the truth. He could have confronted Clark. He could have trusted more in Clark, and himself, by speaking up first. Something sick in him, in the Luthor upbringing, had made him tease, and toy, and demand that the younger boy make the first admission. Lex could have prevented this, if he had been honest enough and man enough to simply look Clark in the eye and tell him what he knew, ask about what he suspected.
(*I could have protected him....*)
Lex closed his hand on the green shard hard enough to make his palm bleed, and fought down a sob. Too late. What had been said and done could not be taken back or changed.
Maybe he'd start a meteorite collection.
He had the sinking feeling that it would be a very long time before they would meet as friends again.
"But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We all have truths -- are mine the same as yours?" - Jesus Christ, Superstar
(OK, so I'm a lifelong atheist, I still like good rock operas. So hit me with a green rock already. Just don't sue. I attract lawsuits like dogs do fleas as it is.)
Speaking of which, somebody else owns all the Smallville stuff. This is for wacko entertainment purposes only. No want no profits / problems / hate and discontent.
LuthorCorp penthouse, nightfall:
Lex threw the folder full of pictures and reports and computer disks on the desk after one quick skim. He hadn't even bothered to boot the disks. "You're crazy!"
"Son, I assure you, whatever your opinion of my machinations, even I would not go to such blatant lengths to fabricate such bizarre evidence for no good reason."
"Oh, you always have a good reason, all right. In this case, probably because Martha Kent refused to sleep with you. Or does it still burn you that Jonathan Kent took me in when you threw me out? The fact that your stupid power play with your other psychotically-groomed heir backfired on you," Lex took a swig of brandy and snorted at his own pun, "or in this case, did fire on you, is hardly the Kents' fault." His emphasis on Kents, plural, was as pointed as he could make it.
"This is not about Jonathan and Martha," Lionel said quietly. "Whatever I think of their quaint and naive ways, they are still human beings. Of this Earth. That -- creature they took in, that you have allowed to associate with you, that has poisoned your mind, is not."
Lex went very still. Then he turned on his father with the controlled terrifying speed of a panther, empty brandy glass held somewhere between being held out for a refill and being thrown with deadly force. At Lionel. "If you call Clark a 'creature' again, you will regret it."
"Threats, son?" Lionel gave him a smile that would have frozen helium.
"Am I supposed to say 'no, that's a promise?' Come, dad. You taught me better than that. Machiavelli was an amateur, after all. Just one with a good PR agent." He considered, and refilled his glass. "Yes. That is a threat. And one I am working on improving even as we speak." He rounded on Lionel again, and made a short stabbing motion as if to actually throw the filled glass. At Lionel.
"Clark Kent saved my life. Clark Kent stood up for me when half the town was ready to crucify me. And, I might add, the reason they hate ME is because of YOU. Clark Kent is one of the few people who not only does not want anything from me, but he refuses to ask for favors even when his family is in dire straits and I could give them what they need without even picking up the phone. Clark Kent talks to me when no one else will. Clark Kent LISTENS to me. Clark Kent is a friend. Clark Kent is probably the only real friend I've ever had, not to mention the best friend ANYone could ever have. He's loyal, and brave, and decent, and kind, and thoughtful. If Clark Kent is from another planet, then this sorry planet needs a lot more like him. If Clark Kent is an alien, then so am I, twice over, according to every one in this town. And you, dad, do not even have any of the redeeming features of Darth Vader."
Lex considered tossing his glass over his shoulder and stomping out. No, that would be childish, the easy way out. To win against his father, he needed to stand his ground. He leaned back against the desk, folded his arms, and took a very small sip of brandy, so as not to interfere with his deliberate shark's smile.
For once, Lionel did not chide him or brush him off. Lionel stared at him, very seriously. "You can prove it to yourself," Lionel said in a voice of chilled steel. "Take one of the gold bars from the vault. Offer it to the family. They're applying for a third mortgage just to be able to buy animal feed. They should jump at the money represented by a thousand dollars of gold. But they'll refuse."
Lex stared at him. "You ARE crazy. Or have you gone senile, dad? Maybe I should have the doctor come check you out. Yes, I can see it now, LexCorp donates a new assisted-care facility for Alzheimer's, named after its most prominent resident..."
That shot hurt, Lex could tell. The thought of getting old, losing his power, terrified Lionel. The thought of losing his mind and his edge was his worst nightmare. Lex saw fear and anger warring in Lionel's usually so-controlled expression, violating Lionel's own cardinal rule about never giving your opponent a clue to weakness.
"Oh," Lionel hissed, "suppose you explain to me why someone would turn down gold."
Lex slammed his glass down on the marble edging of the table, shattering it. "You stupid, arrogant, forever-blind-in-the-head idiot! Jonathan Kent wouldn't even accept a new truck he desperately needed to work the farm with when his old one was falling apart, after his son pulled me back from drowning! I've offered to help them out a hundred times, in a hundred ways, and the only one they ever accepted was when I mucked out the barn!"
That shot hurt Lionel even worse -- Lex had never actually seen Lionel go pale before. The very thought of his son, cleaning a barn! It made Lex giddy with this newfound power over his father. "Some people can't be BOUGHT, dad. Maybe you should get a different shrink. One who can explain that to you."
Oh, that got the best flinch yet. Did Lionel really not believe that Lex knew about his psychiatrist? Hah, maybe the old boy really was losing it. Otherwise he would never have let slip what he said next.
"The gold is impregnated with meteorite radiation, Lex. That's the only reason they wouldn't take it. Otherwise it would be the answer to their prayers."
Lex fought down a surge of sheer fury. Then he changed his mind and decided to use it, though he rechanneled its cause. "You really have gone senile, old man," he said in as gentle a voice as his white-hot anger allowed him. "You haven't heard a word I said about the Kents. They wouldn't accept a Susan B Anthony dollar from you. But radioactive gold? You were the one who insisted on hiring scientists to investigate the meteorites, and every one of them came to a bad end. The radiation dose from the first strike left me a bald freak while I was still in elementary school, which seems to upset you more than it does me, any more.
"There are so many problems caused by meteorite craziness around here that people are actually inclined to blame them first, instead of the mutagenic garbage your factory spewed out while you paid off the least competent and most crooked of the EPA inspectors, though I myself doubt that rocks from outer space cause nearly as much damage as benzene and PCBs in the water and acid in the air.
"And you contaminated a load of gold with that poison? Where are you going to store it? Or sell it, for that matter? Last I looked, Fort Knox does not have a lead vault. Or were you simply planning on leaving it to me to clean up, like you do all your other problems and messes?"
"The meteorites," Lionel said thickly, as if he were breathing poisoned air himself, "are the only thing that can stop the alien invaders."
Lex stared at him for one solid minute. He gave himself an extra ten seconds on the count. Then he threw back his head and howled with laughter.
"You -- " gasp -- "think Clark -- " wheeze -- "Kent -- " snort -- "is a -- " bwhahahahaha -- "an alien -- " wipe tears from eyes -- "INVADER?" Whahahaha.... "A h-high-school B-average stu-student," ghahaha, "who f-falls on his ass in f-front of his girlfriend," Clark's clumsiness was legendary, "bent on ta-taking over the world...." Lex folded double at the image, holding both arms crossed over his abdomen to keep from rupturing his diaphragm with belly guffaws.
Lionel took six fast steps toward him and shook him by the shoulders, straightening him. When Lex kept giggling, Lionel slapped him.
Lex sobered instantly -- the laughter had been manufactured, after all -- and slapped Lionel back. Hard. Lionel stepped back, eyes wide with shock.
"You -- "
"That was not a threat, dad. That was a promise."
Lionel looked into eyes so much like his own, eyes gone cold and mean. "This is not a joke, son. These -- things -- that are invading our planet are dangerous. You've seen -- " he gestured at the folder scattered over the desk -- "What even one young one can do."
Lex ignored the desk entirely and took one step forward, getting into Lionel's space, his fist clenched and arm tight. "I don't know what your obsession with Clark is, except that he and his parents are more family to me than you ever were. But if you threaten him, or his parents, or his friends, or anyone in this entire town, for that matter, ever again, I will not just take LuthorCorp away from you, and Metropolis away from you, I will sadly and soberly and scientifically tell the nice men in white coats that you and your friends in the tinfoil tri-cornered beanie hats think that Smallville, Kansas, is the staging site for an alien invasion."
He settled back, looked for his glass, discovered its remains, shrugged, took the bottle from the bar, settled back, and swigged from it straight. "For that matter, Roswell might sue you for interfering with their tourist trade." Holding the bottle, he smirked at his father, and dangled it from his fingers as if he would let it drop.
Not that Lionel cared about even a six hundred dollar bottle of brandy, but the servants would certainly gossip when they had to clean the rug.
Lionel was ghost-pale. "You. Wouldn't. Dare."
Lex felt himself flush, and it felt good. It was the dark red of anger heating his hairless-ape skin, not the pink of embarrassment, and he reveled in it. He contemplated dropping the bottle just to make a point. Nah. That would be alcohol abuse. He raised it and drank from it again instead.
"I would say 'try me,' dad, but that would be a waste of time, don't you think?" He set the bottle down on the desk, delicately. "What could you do to stop me? You raised your heir. Live with it."
Lionel glared at him with all the hatred locked in whatever heart or soul he had left. "Very well, then. Give your 'friend' a CHEAP gift. One of those tacky little meteorite souvenirs from a roadside stand. Though I daresay what rumors it will start, that Lex Luthor is reduced to buying tourist crap."
"Probably that you're planning another takeover, which will really do wonders for productivity and purchase prices around here."
"I am serious, Lex!" Lionel's voice was hoarse. It made Lex snicker.
"Really? You sound more like a candidate for the funny farm every minute, to me and to any Freudian head doctor. Classic paranoid schizophrenia, complete with delusions. Metropolis General's entire psychiatric wing will have a field day." Lex retrieved the bottle and gestured dramatically. "Alas, poor Lionel...." He took another swig. "Oh, and just imagine the headlines in the Inquisitor."
Lionel was so mad he was actually trembling. Lex watched with fascination, wondering just how far he could push it. "Your little pet abomination can't touch the meteorites. The alien loses his powers just from being near them. I saw it collapse when it entered the room when those thugs of yours opened the vault. And Martha knew about its weakness." Lionel was even more infuriated at the memory. He'd actually liked Martha, and she had been a traitor to the human race all along. "When she put the gold back into the vault, it was fine again. You don't have to believe me. Prove it to yourself. Just hand it any of the rocks off the side of the road."
" 'Powers.' You are very far gone, dad." There was so much more he could say, and oh, so very much he wanted to say! But the only way to get the best of Lionel was to be minimalist, because anything he said might give the old man ammunition, might let something slip, and would definitely be used against him.
Instead of arguing, Lex picked up the bottle and contemplated it, then deliberately tipped it upside down, pouring it all over the desk, tilting his head clinically at the thick flow of expensive liquid all over the marble and wood, the plush carpet, the paper and photos and disks. He smiled. He'd always wanted to do this anyway, and never really had the proper audience or occasion.
He rummaged in his pocket, found a stray $50, and took the decorative lighter from the desk. No one in the entire extended household smoked, not even the janitor or gardener, so he could only imagine it was there for some ostentatious purpose, like to show off the stupid presidential seal embossed on its gold side.
He lit the $50 and dropped it into the puddle of brandy, which burned with a satisfying blue flame, just as it had done in those awful drinks he used to order just for the hell of it and never drink. "Don't tell me. The aliens can't bend their pinkie fingers, either? And they turn into lizards or werewolves or cats or whatever when they do the wild thing? All those old sci-fi type shows run together in my poor young bald head, though no doubt you remember all of the worst of them from when you a poor abused child yourself," damn if that didn't get another flinch, "and hiding from the monsters under your bed. Is that the fantasy life you've retreated into now? The psychiatrists will definitely be fascinated. And forget the Inquisitor, you'll be famous in the UFO circles. Probably on the front cover of the Weekly World UFO Report."
"Lex!"
"Oh, don't be such a big baby. The sprinklers will go off any second. Unless you've been bribing the fire department too."
"Lex. It's not your friend. It's not from Earth. You can still get close enough to it to stop it. To poison it. Take the gold. Please. It may be our last chance. If you don't believe me," Lionel swallowed, "Then just try. See what happens."
"Do or do not, there is no try," Lex sing-songed. "Oh, wait, that was an alien too. Maybe if I got my ears bobbed? It would go well with the bald look, don't you think?" He decided to give up drinking and devote all his pursuit of pleasure into messing with the old man's head. It was so much more satisfying.
His dad, the powerful Lionel Luthor, was afraid! He, young condescended-to heir Lex, could finally frighten the vicious old bastard who had made his life a living hell since the day he could talk. It was better than brandy any day.
The sprinklers did indeed go off at that moment, putting out the fire, sogging the carpet, ruining what was left of the desk and the papers and photos. He picked up the disks, hefting them, toying with them like cards, wondering if a sprinkling had done them enough damage. Lionel took a step toward him, and his head snapped up.
"I warned you," he said, voice suddenly as depthless cold as Antarctic desert snow, "not to call Clark anything other than a friend. Ever again." The drenching had washed all the playfulness out of him. "And, dad?" Softly, dangerously. "If the meteorites are poisonous to anyone -- it's because you touched them."
And at that he did make his exit, light-hearted and nearly light-headed.
But not for long.
In fact, by the time the Ferrari made it to the Kent farm, minus a side mirror where he'd sideswiped a mailbox when he dodged oncoming traffic at very nearly the engine's rated capacity, he was seething.
The Ferrari was fast, but nothing outran a radio wave or telephone call.
He banged into the kitchen to discover the Kent family clearing up after dinner. Normalcy incorporated. Like the small town in "Small Town," so unremarkable on the surface, so mind-bendingly weird in the details. Two organic farmers who raised corn and chickens and cows for slaughter and one alien refugee.
Lex sagged. He might not have beaten a radio wave, but he'd beaten his father. He'd been in time, for once.
"Don't you ever knock, Lex?" Jonathan said irritably. Predictably. Normal gruff farmer, normal in a small town.
"We weren't expecting you , Lex," said Martha, apologetically. "Would you like something to eat? I can warm something up."
Lex held himself upright by sheer force of will. Typical hospitality from a typical cheery farm wife. Not what you expect from a woman harboring an alien invader who could destroy entire cities with his bare hands, that no weapon could stop. Probably even a nuclear bomb wouldn't do more than knock Clark on his kiester any more, Lex thought resignedly. Well, there was one weapon, but be damned if he'd do that to his friend unless he absolutely had to.
Clark met his eyes, blue-hazel to blue-gray. A kid's eyes. A teenager's guileless concern. Eyes that could see through concrete as if it were glass and melt steel at a glance. "You okay, Lex? You look like a pony that's been rode hard and put away wet." So normal. So, so backwoods hick unimpressive!
So hidden. So hard, to keep such a secret. So much set apart from everyone, never daring to relax for a second. Lex swallowed. And he'd thought covering up for his own escapades as a teen had been a tough row to hoe.
He almost giggled at his simile. Hanging around with backwoods hick farm aliens was rubbing off on his vocabulary. "I'm sorry, Mr. Kent, Mrs. Kent. Clark, can I talk to you for a minute? It won't take but a minute, but it's important."
Clark gave his parents a puzzled, wary look. "Sure, Lex." He rose, careful. His parents returned the wary look, but nodded for him to go with his friend.
Lex almost choked. Such normal teenage behavior. Well, for a respectful and well-behaved teenager. That alone should have tipped anybody off that Clark wasn't normal.
They wandered out to the barn loft together. Lex looked up at the sky occasionally, wondering. What did Clark see at night when he looked out into the mysteries, thinking about who had sent him here? Right now, Clark looked straight ahead as they walked, or at his feet. Lex didn't blame him for being nervous. "Can I talk to you in private" almost never led to anything good. The silence between them, given their usual easy chatter, was deafening.
Inside the loft, Lex looked around with professional suspicious scrutiny. The windows were open, but that didn't mean anything. Electronics, distance lenses, gun-focus microphones, and Lionel had probably bugged the damn place from one end to the other anyway. His thugs had managed to infiltrate Lex's own office. The Kent farm would have been, literally, child's play.
He sighed, and flopped down on a well-worn couch. "Well, if someone is going to listen in on us, they're going to listen no matter where we go. Cutting to the chase, bottom line and all that, I've got some very bad news, and some very very very bad news."
Clark went pale. Lex studied the reaction with interest. He hadn't realized that it was possible for Clark to lose blood flow to his extremities, except when he was around the radioactive rocks. Those bullet-proof blood vessels apparently reacted just like a normal human's under emotional stress. "Let me try the just very bad news first," Clark said, controlling his voice with difficulty.
"The very bad news is that my father is on to you."
Clark folded as if his legs had turned to water, as if he were about to faint. He collapsed to the floor on his butt. "What ... what are you ...
Lex cut him off with an impatient gesture. "The space ship in the storm cellar? Christ on a crossed computer node, Clark, throwing a lousy tarp over a space ship does not hide it from plain sight! And picking up a tractor with one hand out in the middle of a plowed open field on a Saturday afternoon was just plain stupid. You could have maybe waited until it was dark? Or at least used two hands and tried to make it look like it was an effort! And I realize you were under duress when you were being blackmailed, but did you really have no clue how fast a digital security camera is? Do you use that high-speed head of yours for anything except hair? You'd have been better off sticking around at normal speed and facing the cops.
"And dear old dad's cleaning staff found the bullets you left on the floor. Buy a vowel, Clark; at least clean up the evidence!"
Clark went so green that Lex looked around automatically for a meteorite rock. No, the kid had climbed up here by himself with no sign of illness. So much for invulnerability. Words and fear could cripple him as effectively as the radiation.
"How ... did ... you...." Clark's harsh whisper choked off.
"Clark, when you ripped the top off my Porsche to get me out, you left a hand print. Okay, so you were in a hurry. Did it not occur to you to use, like, the door? Or your fist? It wasn't difficult to match your glove size, especially YOUR glove size, especially since you were the only one on the scene. This is SMALLville. And you left a you-sized dent in the front fender and hood where I hit you. I had to beat them both out myself with a hammer before forensics got hold of it."
"Oh." Clark bent over, hiding his face in his hands, trying to curl his long frame into a ball. "Oh ... no...."
Lex felt a little sick himself. He'd bluffed his dad down and given him other fronts to concentrate on, at least for a little while, for whatever that was worth. He'd done a fair job destroying the evidence he'd been presented, but no doubt there were copies. Which reminded him. He dug the disks out and all but threw them at Clark.
"You might want to take a look at those some day and see what else the old man has seen, aside from the fact that he was faking his blindness when you crashed through the top of the LuthorCorp tower and ran straight into the vault room, and boy, didn't you think THAT one through. There are other reasons for looking through walls besides Lana, you know? He wanted me to 'give' you one of the gold bars with that refined insanity melted into it, as if your dad wouldn't shoot me on the spot just for coming onto your property with anything that glows green."
Lex suppressed a shiver. He'd seen Clark stagger and turn sickly pale from only a few seconds' exposure to Lana's idiotic meteorite-chip necklace when he was all the way across the room. He'd seen Clark folded in helpless agony from a cruddy little bit of meteor-laced ink in a tattoo. The separated-out atoms and molecules turning millions of dollars of gold into so much radioactive trash would probably be incurably deadly to him just about on contact. Lionel really did hate Clark that much. Why?
Insight suddenly blazed through him. Lionel was terrified of Clark, too. Of course. Someone with Clark's strength could be a serious challenge to the empire that was Lionel's life and reason for living. All that Lionel had ... and a clodding farm boy could take it away from him, with one hand, without hardly trying.
Damn Clark for his carelessness with the gun in front of Lionel, for his stupid swaggering kid's challenge to the dangerous old man. Although that had been the red rock's fault. Lex was going to have to slap some sense into the kid. Lex snorted to himself. As if he could. Maybe with a .44. Maybe not even then.
The alien invader who was going to take over the planet was rocking back and forth, head on his knees, like a small scared kid. As well he might, Lex thought sourly, and steeled himself to be brutal. "The very very very bad news," he hissed, in a voice hard-trained to match the threatening whisper of a sword being drawn, the quiet snick of a gun being taken off safety, "Is that I'm pretty unhappy with you, too."
Clark looked up. Lex almost lost it. The pain, the trust and hope and fear, the friendship longed for and relied on and betrayed by lies, his sheer open needy vulnerability.... Innocence, being lost for all time. It made Lex want to take the little lead box and its contents, that he had hastily grabbed before Lionel could catch him, out of his pocket and HIT Clark with it. Death by slow radiation torture couldn't possibly hurt any worse than what went through his gut at Clark's expression.
"Dammit, Clark, why didn't you TELL me?"
Clark swallowed and tried to speak, and failed. Lex felt his stomach twist again. Alien, schmalien. The kid in front of him was just a child, a teenager who had never gotten in worse trouble than forgetting his homework or being late, whose skin could bounce bullets but had never so much as smoked a joint, much less done some of the things Lex had done before he was old enough to vote. And he was about to be forced into the very worst rite of growing up that even Lex had never been through.
Lex tightened his lips. Other kids had done it, though, and they weren't impervious to the dangers of the streets. He was going to have to brutalize Clark to get that through his head, and he didn't have a lot of time.
"I could have protected you, if I had just known a little sooner," he forced himself to say, still using that trained, deadly, false voice. "I knew within a month of meeting you that you weren't normal, maybe not even human. You wear the fact that you have secrets all over your face. But I didn't know what to look for, what to cover for, what mistakes you'd made and when. If I had known, I could have derailed my father's investigations, redirected them, planted false evidence. I could have helped you, dammit, if I'd only known how and what and why!
"I wouldn't have had to kill Nixon. Do you know how much suspicion that caused? I murdered a man in cold blood. Yes, he was about to kill your dad. And if I had told the cops that, they would have asked why he was about to kill your dad. So instead I told them that he had threatened me. Not you or your family. Me. Just another Luthor headline, of course. And I retrieved your jacket, the one with the meteorite in it, before the cops got there, to keep anyone from asking why your dad took time out while he had broken ribs and a concussion to pull your jacket off. I burned the jacket and the meteorites in the plant incinerator, since I wasn't sure if the jacket would still be contaminated. Where the hell did you think all that went?"
Clark's face was so pale that Lex surreptitiously checked to make sure the lead box in his pocket was still closed. "Lex...."
"Shut up. I left dear old dad with the impression that I was going to have him exposed and committed as a conspiracy nut, so he's busy with damage control right now, but by morning he's going to have a goon or ten out here with green-rock weapons. You had better make your goodbyes short, and pack light, and head out somewhere other than Metropolis. If you find some way to get in touch with me in a few weeks, that can't be traced, I can get you out of the country, but for ghod's sake don't get your picture on the news anywhere."
Lex took out his wallet (next to that little lead box, and oh, the temptation, just this one last time), rummaged through various compartments, and tossed the few hundred in cash he'd had lying around at Clark. "Don't tell your parents where you're going. They'll do something stupid like try to call you."
"What if ... your dad ... if my parents...."
"If dad tries to have them tortured?" Lex said so easily it shocked even him. Clark went, if possible, even paler. "I'll keep surveillance on them. I would dearly love to have a headline about Lionel Luthor extorting a couple of farmers."
"Lex...." Clark stood, shakily, and Lex fingered his box again. Nope, still closed. The shakes and the paleness and the choking voice were a purely human reaction to shock, to fear. And not just fear for himself, but for his parents.
Human.
"What about you?" Clark barely breathed. "Won't you get in trouble?"
Fear for Lex?
Lex buried that thought in a solid stainless steel lock box in his mind, and added a few mental meteorites to keep him from going near it again. Clark was worried about him. Clark cared about him.
If both of them were very lucky, he would never see Clark again. Clark was the only thing Lionel could still hold over him or hurt him with.
"I hope I never see you again," Lex said in a voice that was almost a cat's hunting rumble. He meant it, too, but not the way it sounded. "So I just want you to answer that one question before you go. Why? Didn't. You. TELL! Me?"
Clark folded over again, looking so sick that Lex automatically checked his pocket once more. "I wanted to," he said miserably. "I was afraid...."
Adrenaline anger pounded through Lex's veins like a sudden injection of one of the more illegal drugs. It hurt. He went dizzy with the blood pressure spike, sick to his stomach from the glandular biochemical overload of fury. He wondered in a distant corner of his mind if this was what the green poison felt like to Clark. He'd seen the awful pictures taken by those psychos Nixon and Phelan, of Clark's veins standing out while Clark was trapped and helpless, blood vessels swollen from the lethal allergen, curled up and convulsing as his body tried desperately to reject the killing toxin. That image was all that kept him from screaming at Clark. Of course the kid was afraid.
That knowledge didn't make it any easier to keep from being madder than he'd ever been in his life.
"You were afraid. Of ME? After all we'd been through together? You saved my life, I saved yours, I went into that damn field where I nearly died as a kid, only because I THOUGHT I heard you. I killed for you, and you put yourself through hell for me a couple of times over, do you think I didn't see how bad it hurt you to even be near Jenkins? Do you think I'm STUPID, Clark?" There, that was an insult worthy of a Luthor, Lex thought bitterly. "Don't ever underestimate me like that again," the deadly reflexive voice lashed out before he could stop it. "You'll regret it." He got himself back under control, barely. "You were afraid of me? Or you didn't trust me?"
Clark's breathing broke on a sob. He was beginning to get it all through his head, Lex decided. That he was going to have to leave. That he could no longer hide in his parents' house for safety. That childhood was over.
Welcome to the club, Clark, Lex thought, but did not say. In retrospect, he understood that it might have saved them both a lot of pain to tell Clark that Lex had gone through this too, this realization that the world was a bitter and unsafe place after all, even when you had retreated to the sanctuary of home, that Lex had been put through similar torment since he was two himself.
Perhaps the worst mistake of his life was not making an effort that would have been as easy as picking up a car was for Clark, a motion of two feet: not reaching out and putting his hand on his former best friend's shoulder.
"I wasn't," Clark managed, choking as if he had a meteor rock stuck in his throat, "afraid .. of YOU."
Oh. Oh, stars and planets and destruction and hellfire and damnation. Lex turned away, fighting the burning liquid in his eyes. Maybe he should open the little box after all. Yes. And swallow the fragment inside. And hope it would kill him or mutate him into something without emotions. At least keep Clark away from him. Anything to keep from ever having to meet Clark's eyes again.
Clark was afraid, all right. Of everything. Of TOUCHING anything, or anyone. Clark was afraid of himself. Clark had been afraid of himself probably since the third day after he'd landed on this fragile planet and begun to discover his unnatural strength. Discovered how different he was from all the people around him. How badly he could hurt them with a casual wave of his hand. How he could never be one of them. That all the people he had ever cared for, he did not dare ever get close to.
Power versus power, Lex thought, with the tingle of the ancient instinctive alpha male desire to fight and defeat, to possess and command. His own power, hard won, daily fought for, ultimately not really wanted because of the price to his soul.
Against Clark's power, inborn, unable to be renounced, as much a part of him as his skin, not really wanted because it made him less than human even as it made him more. Lex wanted to dominate that power, with every fiber in his body. To own, and to protect. It terrified him, too, even as he understood that he could never let it go.
It was giddying to the primal fight-or-flight hormonal rush. It was strange and uncomfortable to a young man who thought of himself as civilized. It was horrifying, mortifying, to think of himself that way, to think of Clark as a caveman challenger against whom he would surely always lose in a fair fight.
Only Clark could ever challenge him. Only Clark could ever hurt him. Only Clark could ever be his equal. His counterpart. His friend.
Or his enemy.
"Then it was because you didn't trust me," Lex whispered, silk on steel. Below the trained voice was the laceration of his soul, blood wrapped in lace, hurt without reason or logic but untouchable agony nonetheless.
"I can't .. can't trust .. anybody."
Lex felt his stomach drop out. If the meteorite's effect on Clark was worse than this feeling, he didn't want to know it. "Not even your parents?" he demanded in cold anger, twisting the knife, in himself as well as Clark.
"Dad once -- shot me. It was the -- the flower drug. And he knew he -- he knew he couldn't really hurt me. Not that way, anyway. But he .. he didn't even hesitate. Like I wasn't ... wasn't...."
Wasn't his own son. Wasn't human. Wasn't loved, wasn't anything that mattered. Wasn't a real person. Just a lab rat, an insect, an obstacle. A thing. Lex briefly contemplated beating the living crap out of Jonathan. Aside from the fact that the rangy farmer could have put Lex into traction with one hand, it was a highly appealing image. Yes, the nicodemus drug caused craziness. He had copies of the pictures of Lana in her underwear on the pool diving board. Whee-hoo! But for your own father to turn a shotgun on you.... Even Lionel had never gone that far.
He wondered if they would ever be able to look back and laugh on Jonathan's tendency to turn shotguns on people.
Of course, Lex wasn't exactly innocent in that department either, and the gun he'd tried to cut Clark in half with had been considerably more powerful than the farmer's shotgun. The mind-control handshake, he'd later learned, was supposed to leave no memories, but Lex had mastered self-hypnosis years ago when he'd gotten bored with cocaine. Clark had never blamed him, at least not out loud. But Clark would always live with the memory of both his dad and his friend shooting at him.
Probably best not to let Clark know that he remembered his own weird glee at the semi-auto's bullets punching Clark backwards like so many high-speed ping-pong balls perfectly well.
"You didn't trust me," he repeated, hardening his voice as much as he could. "You LIED to me. Our whole friendship was built on a lie. Everything you ever said to me, everything I ever shared with you, it was all a lie. I gave you a dozen opportunities to tell me the truth, hints to let you know that I already knew some of it, reasons to let me into your life. And you only shut me out and pushed me away. Were you laughing at me the whole time, alien? Or did you just not give a damn?"
Clark's head jerked up as if he'd been shot. Well, no, Lex reflected. From the condition of the bullets he'd recovered, being shot didn't particularly seem to bother him. "I was NEVER laughing at you," he half-hissed, half-shouted. Good, Lex thought, at least he can be angry. That may make this a little easier.
Hah. I only wish.
"How can you think I didn't care?" Clark slammed his hand down on the nearest object, which collapsed in splinters. Lex marveled. He bet not many people got to see Clark lose his temper. "I had to keep my secret to protect YOU! You, and all my friends. Because if anyone found out about me, you'd be a target too. Just from being around me. People like Nixon and Hamilton would torture you, just to find out what you knew about me. Everyone I know is in danger, just because of who I am." His voice broke, and his head dropped. "I mean, what I am. What you called me."
Forget the meteorite fragment, Lex wanted to swallow hydrochloric acid for having said that one word. But it wasn't over yet. He wondered if it ever would be. "And that kept me from being able to help you. And that cost you everything."
"I'm sorry...." The pleading in Clark's voice nearly broke Lex.
It wasn't fair to hold Clark solely accountable. The kid was truly terrified. In ten minutes, he'd gone from being a nervous teenager living in secret on a farm to being an object of the hunt. Clark had probably never even READ a book about the Hunt. That does not change the fact, he told himself, in the stern controlled discipline of harshly ingrained habit, that Clark was going to have to live with the consequences of his actions, of any moment of carelessness in doing what came so naturally and easily to him -- of being an alien -- for the rest of his life.
Starting now. Being a superhuman kid was not the same as being a superhuman adult.
Lex wanted nothing more than to take the tall child in his arms and tell him it would be all right, spirit him away to somewhere safe, assure him that between Lex's monetary power and connections and Clark's abilities, no one could touch them. That everything would work out.
Lex did not move. He could not shield Clark with another lie.
Nothing would ever be "all right" again.
"If you had trusted me," he began, and was surprised at the weariness in his own voice. "We would not be having this conversation tonight. We would still have had years together. Good times. Playing pool. Teaching you about girls. Being friends. But Clark...." Lex ran his hand over his bald head, a gesture that spoke unconsciously but unavoidably of his history. "Sooner or later, we would have had to part ways anyway. Time passes. People change. I would take my," he put as much sneer into it as he could, "rightful place, in Luthor Corp. And you would move on. To become, well, whatever it is that you're going to be."
Clark's breath caught and held. Lex wondered idly how long he could hold it. The kid had been under thirty feet of water long enough to tear a car apart, unbuckle Lex, and bring him to the surface. The human record for breath-holding was probably better than that, but not by much, and not with the rip-the-car-apart factor involved.
"I'm sorry," Clark whispered again, but this time his head came up, and he met Lex's eyes.
Lex wondered how long he could hold his own breath. Because his diaphragm was not cooperating with the idea of voluntary, or even involuntary, breathing. He struggled to make a sound. "I am, too," he managed finally.
"We could have...." Clark offered, unsure of how to finish.
"We could have been great together," Lex interrupted him, drawing on his hated father's hated training, so necessary yet so destructive, a difference in their backgrounds between them that was far greater than their six years in age or their planet of origin. "Instead -- we'll have to be great apart."
Because you can't compromise. You can't hide in another's shadow. You can't just stop trying to do everything you can do. You are what you are, and you can't change that any more than you can change the fact that you're not a normal human.
And, all gods help me, I can't stop pushing the limits either. I am what I have been made, too. Compromise is out of the question.
"I guess so." Clark slumped. Lex had never seen him look so defeated, not after being hit by a bus, not even when he was poisoned by deadly remnants of his own planet. His own planet? Lex fought down a snort. Clark may not have been born on Earth, but he was every bit as much *of* Earth as Lex himself. Maybe more so. Lex's connection to Earth was money and elegant towers and cold stone castles. Clark's was land, and growing things, and open kitchens with the smell of baking grains, a hard-wired connection in all air-breathing animals reaching back beyond the beginning of either of their species.
"You'd better get going," Lex tried to say. He was pretty sure no sound came out of his paralyzed vocal cords, but Clark nodded, looking as exhausted as Lex felt. Surely that can't be, Lex thought. Clark could run from Smallville to Metropolis faster than his helicopter could make it (and he didn't think even his dad knew about THAT little tidbit; Lex had thrown the stopwatch and the camera and the flight logs all into the incinerator). He didn't get tired, did he?
Maybe, just like he heard words that weren't said out loud, he could share feelings that Lex thought were locked behind even the trained shields of a Luthor.
"Yeah." Definitely exhaustion in his voice, though he managed to speak out loud, unlike Lex. He turned those huge hazel-blue eyes, those thick expressive quirky eyebrows that nevertheless hid such secrets, worried and accepting at the same time, to his friend. "Lex ... thanks. For, for everything."
Lex worked very hard, with all the biofeedback training at his command, to keep from passing out or throwing up or bursting into tears. Of all the times for Clark to finally open himself up. If this was what truth cost, he would trade the entire family fortune not to have to go through it again.
Maybe I should have brought a gun instead of the box, so I could shoot myself now. Although Clark could probably have stopped me. That damn digital security camera was running at one thousand frames per second, if you believed the ad hype, and Clark was only on two of them. Lex scrubbed his eyes with his silk cuffs. No, kid, it's not going to be okay. But you'll make it. I have faith in you.
He took the small box out of his pocket and placed it, carefully, on the crate serving as a horizontal storage surface, aka table. "This was ... this was in case things went .. badly. I wouldn't open it if I were you." He managed a pitifully weak smirk. "Literally. Unintended choice of words, but all too appropriate. Since I'm not you. You know."
Clark glanced at the little cube, identifying it as lead in a tenth of a second, guessing why before the second was up. "More Saint Gregory's armor?" he said gently, redirecting the conversation. Lex's guilt tore at him. He was to blame for this awful turn of events, for not having trusted Lex enough to share what he had most wanted to. For allowing suspicion and self-pity to blanket him from what he could have had.
Saying goodbye to his parents was going to leave him sobbing in the hillsides until well past noon the next day. Saying goodbye to Lex -- his friend, his mental adversary and subtle psychological foil, his rival in power and best counterpart on this planet, the one person who might have understood what it was to be an alien, who had wanted only the truth from him in order to help him, whom he had failed with his reflexive paranoia -- was going to hurt until the end of time.
"No," said Lex, with the calm of the totally disconnected. "Just pieces of crap and leftovers off the shop floor. I welded the box myself, though. Didn't want anyone wondering what it was for."
Clark sucked in a breath. That was an admission he didn't think that a Luthor was allowed to make. Lamely, "I didn't ... realize you knew how to ... weld." Or that you would put your own personal effort into a, well, box.
"I'm not very good at it," Lex said, still with that deadly, distant calm. "See the line along the corner? Pitiful. Not all of us have heat vision, you know," he added reflectively. "Must have been tempting to use it in shop class."
Oh, stars and planets, was there ANYthing Lex didn't know? And had been keeping to himself, all along. Clark swallowed the turmoil in his stomach. Practically nothing could hurt worse than this.
Well, one thing.
Clark closed his eyes, bracing himself. He owed Lex something. He could never make proper restitution for all the lies, all that he had allowed to come between them. But perhaps there was one gesture of trust that could salvage something of the friendship they had enjoyed.
He owed Lex the truth, this time.
"Since you made it," he said with forced lightness, "I'll keep the box. But you should keep the contents."
Gritting his teeth, he opened the box.
"Clark, what are you -- ? Clark! Have you lost your mind?"
The pain was not actually as bad as he'd been expecting. Maybe because most of his capacity to feel pain had been drained out of him in the past twenty minutes. Twenty minutes? his number-oriented brain supplied. That was all?
His stomach cramped with poisoned sickness, hunching him over, but not before he took the shining shard out of the box with his bare fingers. That DID hurt. Like having his fingers burned to the bone, and the bone set on fire.
"Clark!" Lex jumped up and snatched at the box, but even hazy and half-blind with pain, Clark was still too fast and too determined for him. He set the terrible fragment down in front of Lex and stumbled back to the stairs, where he gave up trying to fight, gasping from the effort and the convulsive shock to his nerves, holding onto the railing against waves of weakness and dizziness just to stay on his feet. But his other hand still gripped the amateurishly made lead box.
"Clark...." Lex sat back down heavily. Wonderingly. He wasn't sure if he'd just been offered an enormous gift, or a deadly insult. He knew which it would have been from Lionel, but from the friend he had just called an alien....
"You're ... probably right. I should ... get going." Clark's ragged breathing and slumped dependency on the railing told Lex all too clearly that he was still much too dangerously close to the deadly shard, but was forcing himself to endure it for some reason. For a moment, even Lex's trained mind and active imagination was too paralyzed by what had just happened to imagine what.
Clark was waiting. Hurting, and in mortal jeopardy that would probably arrive before dawn, but waiting. For him?
There was an expression on the inhuman boy's face, a need and pain and longing in his eyes, that had nothing to do with physical torment.
The words "I never want to see you again" hung between them, as poisonous as the green light. Of course. Lex breathed out a long sigh. Of course Clark hadn't understood. Clark thought that he was the only one who endangered everyone around him. Clark and his damn unshakable martyr complex. As if he were to blame for everything that went wrong in the world from the day he arrived as a baby.
The irony was almost hysterical. Clark actually didn't see that it was his friendship with Lex that had put him -- Clark, not Lex -- in danger.
Names of god, did Clark know nothing about rich people and why they kept security forces and what kind of blackmails the Luthors had been subjected to?
Clark was too ill right now (Lex was a little ill himself, just seeing what Clark was willing to do to himself for the sake of what they had once shared), and dad's goons were too close, for him to go into explanations. Where dealing with Lionel required laconic care, Clark was more one for long discussions to hash out exactly what each phrase meant.
Except for the big giant lie that had finally torn them apart, Clark was always one for talking things out to the last detail. But Lex knew that he owed Clark something in return for what he'd just been given. An offer, at least, of hope.
"Clark," softly, not moving towards him, not threatening. "It's never safe to be friends with a Luthor. But if the time ever comes that you think that you can risk it -- come back to me?"
Clark nodded. Lex could tell that he regretted moving his head, from the expression of nausea that swam across his face, but he managed his voice. "I will."
And then he was gone, half falling down the stairs, speeding up as he got out of range and recovered. Lex figured he'd better beat feet out of here while Clark was trying to talk to his parents, before Jonathan went for his shotgun.
Maybe Jonathan would take a shotgun to dad's goons. Lex snickered, and made a mental note to call the police when he got back to the castle. Having Lionel's hired dorks try to explain to the authorities what they were doing there would be far more fun than bailing out Jonathan on yet another set of murder charges.
He picked up the little green crystal and stared at it. A piece of another planet. A reminder of a boy who had been his best friend.
In the end, Clark had handed him the truth, as much as he was able.
In the end, Lex knew he had given Clark only half the truth. He could have confronted Clark. He could have trusted more in Clark, and himself, by speaking up first. Something sick in him, in the Luthor upbringing, had made him tease, and toy, and demand that the younger boy make the first admission. Lex could have prevented this, if he had been honest enough and man enough to simply look Clark in the eye and tell him what he knew, ask about what he suspected.
(*I could have protected him....*)
Lex closed his hand on the green shard hard enough to make his palm bleed, and fought down a sob. Too late. What had been said and done could not be taken back or changed.
Maybe he'd start a meteorite collection.
He had the sinking feeling that it would be a very long time before they would meet as friends again.