And there's always a few years down the line...

The Meeting of the Two Bald Guys

A Required (Because Chloe Deserves It) Happy Ending.

A/N: nothing much changed here, just a little more emphasis on Chloe, to make up for some of the really cruel crap the show's so-called writers keep inflicting on her.

"I appreciate your making time to see me, Mr. President."

Lex Luthor considered the man in front of him. General Hammond stood at formal but not stiff attention with the ease of long practice, a man who could show respect without subservience, who carried power and authority without challenging others. Lex liked him immediately, and not just because he was bald.

"Have a seat, General. In fact, I've been looking forward to talking with you. Far more interesting than trying to straighten out the earth-bound disasters my predecessor's idiot military advisers have gotten us into."

Hammond gave him a glint of humor as he settled himself, in yet another version of that relaxed-but-on-duty poise that had first convinced Lex that he was dealing with an equal. "It takes a special kind of man to consider a galactic threat 'interesting.' Needless to say, I didn't consider your predecessor such a man."

"Well, he had the idiots' vote. Fortunately for all concerned, I own more of the voting infrastructure. Obviously even his rogue CIA and corporate whores didn't understand what it meant to try to out-underhand a Luthor." Lex made a self-deprecating gesture. Left unspoken was the unpleasant truth suspected by many for opposite reasons: that the former president and his handlers had been planning to install a family dynasty of corporate fascism, and the only one with any chance of stopping him was someone even more merciless in the ways of power. "But that's all blood under the bridge. What, exactly, do you need from me today?"

Hammond nodded. Straight and to the point. For all the ruthless Luthor reputation, he liked Lex. He understood what it was like to agonize in private and never be allowed to show it. He was used to having to make the hard choices himself. "I, or we, need your friend. Superman."

Lex's eyes hooded. "Superman is not exactly my friend."

"Clark Kent is. Or at least he was, once."

All the Luthor training couldn't prevent Lex's eyes from widening. "You know...?"

"Mr. President, I run Stargate. I make it my business to know what I need to know."

"Of course." Lex brought himself back to smooth control, and back to the topic at hand. He allowed himself a frown. "It's gotten that bad out there, has it?"

"It's certainly not getting any better."

Lex swiveled his chair away, thinking darkly of the implications.

What his briefings, both from Hammond and about him, had only hinted at, was a war on a scale to make Earth's long-feared planet-wide end-of-the-world scenarios, nuclear or biological or even nanotech, look like sandbox squabbles.

He was all too aware that they used the Stargate technology without understanding it, out of necessity, like a curious child poking a sharp object into a light socket as a desperate measure of last resort.

Yet despite the threat, his primary responsibility remained to a human populace still reeling under a burden of its former dictator-wanna-be's greed, a yoke that was likely to still cost millions more lives in pollution and starvation and idiotic brush wars before he could turn this ship of state around.

He also -- and Hammond knew it, though how he knew was a question Lex intended to indulge his suspicions on later -- had an ace in the hole.

A supremely powerful being, almost a god, who had been raised human.

Had Kal-El's little spaceship landed anywhere else in this entire galaxy except in front of the Kents...

Luthor or no, Lex shivered at the endlessly awful possibilities.

"Why don't you ask Clark yourself?" he said quietly. "You could explain it better than I could. And he's more likely to take it as a duty and an obligation, coming from you. From me, he'd call it high-handed glory-grabbing and fly off in a huff."

"I intend to, Mr. President. If nothing else, I owe him the courtesy of letting him know what he might be getting himself into. And besides," Hammond's lips twisted, "I need to warn him about triggering Jack's temper."

Lex snickered at that. He'd heard about the volatile head of SG-1 when he was looking for someone to take over the Columbian operation. From several people. Who couldn't decide whether they were more afraid of angering President Luthor with "unnecessary details," or not warning him.

"No, sir, what I needed to ask you is, can he be trusted? He's not human, after all."

Luthor or no, Lex blinked at him at the very idea. "Clark? Trusted? What, you think he could be turned on us? Garbage. He's more human than I am. He still flinches when you call him Kal-El. The most you have to worry about is him blushing when he's beating up some bad guy."

"No, no." Hammond made an impatient gesture. "Sir. I'm not questioning his loyalty. I'm questioning his commitment. You're the only one who would know if he can be trusted to carry through when the going gets really ... unpleasant.

"I've had good people beside me before. I never questioned their loyalty. But some of them -- didn't make it. Mentally. They just couldn't handle what was asked of them. And Mr. President," Hammond leaned forward, all the hard discipline of his long work showing in his lined face, "As badly as we need him, I refuse to risk breaking him if he isn't up to it. He can do so much good just staying here. If he can't take it -- out there, and yes, it's bad -- then I'll have wasted a resource that can't be replaced."

Yeesh, and Lex thought he was cold. Clark. Nothing but a resource.

A resource that couldn't be replaced. Lex's blink stayed closed just a fraction of a second too long.

"Clark still beats himself up over every puppy he can't save," Lex said evenly. "But he can take it. He's taken far worse. He's let himself be tortured rather than give up anything more than a defiant look, and for the sake of things" -- and lives, which Lex was not going to admit, not even to Hammond -- "I'd hand over without a second thought. I'd like to punch Superman with a green rock sometimes, but I'd trust Clark with my life. Hell, I've done that a dozen times. I'd trust Clark with Earth."

Hammond gave him a professionally skeptical look. "How about with the rest of the galaxy?"

Lex returned that look serenely, secure in his position of power and knowledge, secure in his understanding and trust of the man he could never afford to admit publicly to being his most important friend. "If they earn it."

Hammond sighed. "I can't promise that. Even some of our allies are dimwitted creeps." That was not exactly the phrase he used, but that was how Lex's PR transcriber wrote it, in the interests of keeping the presidential files non-x-rated. "But maybe I can give him a reason to hope for it. A ... friend of a friend, as it were."

Lex smirked to hide the glint of triumph in his eyes. He'd actually been waiting for this. Hammond had given him the opening he'd scripted for himself in those hopes he'd never dared to voice outside of the silence of his own dreams.

If any human had ever earned the right to his respect and favor, it was someone his family had wronged so terribly as a child -- and who had forgiven him, and gone on.

For that matter, Stargate had wronged her too, in more ways than one. Here was the first installment payment on making up for a few things.

"Please do call Colonel Carter in. I sent for that reporter that keeps giving me such a hard time as soon as I knew you were coming."

"You..." There were not many people who could make Hammond stare in disbelief. "How did you...?"

"I'm the president. I make it my business to know what I need to know." Lex touched his desk com-panel. "Commander Jefferson, is Ms. Sullivan here yet?"

"She just decked one of the guards," Janice Jefferson, his exec, said tiredly. "They're holding her at gunpoint, awaiting your orders. Are you sure we don't need kryptonite on that one?"

"Good lord, no. Haven't you read the Smallville files? She might turn into something even more dangerous. Send her up. Tell the guards to keep at least ten feet away from her, or she'll take their guns away and beat up another one." In a mock-apologetic tone, to Hammond, "Chloe just got back from Israel. She tends to hit first and ask questions later anyway."

"Then mother and daughter ought to get right along." Hammond turned to the door to gesture to his own aide. "Colonel, I apologize for keeping you cooling your heels. The president and I had some delicate information to discuss."

"I understand that, sir, of course," Samantha Carter said stiffly. "But I'm still not sure why I'm here. It's not as if Mr. Luthor couldn't provide all the bodyguards that you ... you..."

The door had shoved open again behind her, and Chloe was in full rant. "Lex Luthor, the next time one of your goons tries to search me starting at my breasts, I'm going to ... I'm..."

Lex made a note to commit this camera scene to the archives. Chloe was speechless.

"Chloe...?"

"M-mom?"

"General," the president said smoothly, "Why don't we head down the hall for a brandy? I think the Oval Office is going to be on privacy circuit for at least an hour or so."

Hammond snorted, pleased. Still, even the scene they were trying not to intrude on was less important than the reason for his visit in the first place. "And your ... friend?"

The president smirked and pointed upwards. "Yes, he's watching. Them instead of us, I imagine, though he does tend to get distracted. No, I never got around to lining the White House with lead. And yes, NORAD is having fits right now. I've tried for years to get the concept of restricted space and fire-control radar through the flying brat's head."

Hammond put a hand over his eyes and shook his head. Lex treated Superman's tendency to be less than properly concerned over things that couldn't affect him as ... well, as a friend would. Of course. "I suppose we could just offer to use him as a shooting target for distraction purposes. None of the Goa'uld know about kryptonite. I hope. Though Felger probably knows. I should just let Jack shoot him."

For a tenth of a second, Lex though Hammond was talking about Jack shooting Clark, and gave him a sharp look. "Oh, you mean Felger. Never mind, I already have someone working on putting his brain into cold storage."

"Thank you. I hate to waste resources. But I swear it's like dealing with a two-year-old who has access to a bright-red button."

Lex made a huge exaggerated sigh. "There's a reason why our codename files often refer to Superman as Clueless, too."

The two men shared a chuckle as they entered Lex's private office to watch the mother and daughter reunion on the private circuit, and the cameras trained on the "flying brat" for his reaction.

Neither gave a damn about intruding on their subordinates' privacy, because they both knew they would need every scrap of information, every advantage, they could get, in the battles to come.

(And neither was about to pass up the chance to see Chloe's reaction when Samantha told her who had ordered that false trail about her mother being committed to a mental hospital when Chloe got too close to Stargate. Hammond was still on the warpath about HOW Chloe had tracked her mother so far, and had not paid enough attention at the time to the casual cruelty O'Neil had done to a left-behind teenager. Well, O'Neil was about to more than meet his match. Probably Teal'C would be content to just watch.)

All is fair in love and war, and the prize for this war was the survival of the human race, or maybe the whole galaxy. Luthor and Hammond had both sold their souls in order to protect their friends, long ago, for the greater good of the people they had chosen to take responsibility for.

It was a bond between the two most powerful people on Earth, each saddled with powers they could wield only with the trembling touch of butterfly's wings, each knowing that chaos and literal hell awaited any tiniest misstep.

"Maybe we could convince Ms. Sullivan to join the Stargate team."

"After she's beaten O'Neil to component molecules? She'll probably insist on it. Heh, that would be one way to snare Clark in for certain."

"It might at least make him more amenable to undergoing proper training... She doesn't have a death wish, does she? From some of her dispatches, Sam was convinced she was suicidal."

"No. Well, except when it comes to Clark. She can't stand Superman, her cousin can't stand Clark, and both of them know he's the same person. So what do they do? Fight about it between themselves. Standing out in the middle of a mortar barrage without a flak jacket is her way of taunting Lois."

But Lex's pensive sigh was at purely mundane matters as they settled back before the bank of monitors, swirling his glass uninterestedly.

You'd think the President of the United States could at least get some decent brandy.

Author's note: yes, the presidential cats (blame LaCasta!) are watching the screens too. Http/ www. Fanfiction. net / s / 1603592 / 6 / (What ELSE would Lex's cats be named, except the Furies? heh )

Alecto: Mrrrl. About time the humans got their act together. They could have done this kitten-ages ago. We need to teach them to communicate.

Tisiphone: Fhrrrr. Humans aren't smart enough to learn proper communication. Not to mention the alien. Bastet knows we've tried to teach them often enough. And the older one here doesn't even smell like cats. Let's fix that.

Megaera: Mew? Look at the claw-resistant one. We can't even jump on him and scratch his clothes when he's flying. That's just not right.

The cute, cuddly-looking tiny tabbies (Allie and Tissy) and little long-hair (Meggie) wandered in as if to sniff curiously at the snacks the two men were absently stoking themselves with while working on critical matters of the survival of the planet and the universe. Lex had forgotten to warn the chef's crew not to bring in cheese when he had official visitors.

Hammond sent the bill for a new uniform directly to the White House.