Clark had thought that death would be a little more...less earth-like. Death shouldn't look the lab, should it? And if it did why was he looking down on the lab? How strange it was, especially because he was looking at his body and Chloe, as if from someone hovering above them.

And he was breathing.

Not him personally, but the body on the ground. So he wasn't dead. What was he? Why was he seeing the room like this?

Clark tried experimentally to move his feet, and was shocked to find that, while he moved forward, he didn't have feet. He didn't have a body. Yet, for some reason, he could still see everything. Apparently the serum hadn't killed him.

Chloe was sobbing over him, and that was hard to watch. Even in trying to fix the things he'd done he'd still caused pain to those he loved most. She was lying with his head in her lap, and she was gently carding through his hair. The way she was stroking made Clark wish he were there to feel it.

Had all of this really happened to him? Had he really been the guy who had joined the resistance, been captured by aliens five years later, been tossed in a truck, branded, ended up in a slave market, and been rescued by his erstwhile best friend? It didn't seem like it could really be him.

Clark willed himself to float forward just to see if he could. He was shocked when it was easier than physically trying to move. Was this just his spirit or something? Clark wasn't sure he knew, but at that point it didn't matter because the gas was flowing under the door.

He felt rather bad about it, but Clark willed himself away from Chloe. At first he thought he was going to hit the door, and it was a radical discovery when he simply floated through the door as if it were mere air.

Perhaps to him it was equivalent to that.

The gas had spread throughout the rest of the lab and had gone up to the upper levels of the warehouse. Clark followed it, watching its progress. It was slow to him, but he knew it was probably pretty fast for a gas.

His mind once again went back to the days of Smallvile and the time everyone had been forced to live their worst nightmare. His seemed rather dull now, but that might have been because he was neither in love with Lana, nor afraid of her reaction to him being an alien.

The gas finally spread out of the warehouse and into the outside air. It was now the early hours of the morning, perhaps five o'clock. This meant that a few aliens were out on patrol, but the streets weren't very crowded yet.

Clark watched the gas spread, finally reaching the first alien. Well, actually the second, but he didn't really want to count himself. He wondered if he'd looked like this alien did.

It looked curiously at the gas floating by it, even sniffing at it. Clark found himself "chuckling" slightly, if that was even possible without a body. But still, it was very funny. Why would you sniff an unknown gas?

Clark observed the alien's transition from stable and upright to obviously dizzy. He watched as it began to stagger around, finally collapsing to its knees, apparently in a state of delirium.

But the alien didn't stop breathing either, at least not yet.

Clark followed the gas's progress all the way to the capitol. The effect was the same on all the aliens. It was like they got a bad case of vertigo, became unaware of their surroundings, and then collapsed in a heap.

As the gas went into the capitol building, Clark did as well. It wound through the halls and, as Clark followed it, he found he was enjoying his matter-less state.

It took him a while, but he eventually found Lex's courtroom. Even without a body, he felt himself shivering when he saw it. Like Victoria, Lex was chained to a chair, albeit a lot more composed than she'd been.

And there was Lana.

Clark saw her, sitting front and center. As he did, he felt a clenching in the pit of his non-existent stomach. How could she have done all this to them? They were the people that had protected her, that had loved her. How could she have done it?

"The testimony is clear, Mr. Luthor," the alien said softly. From the threatening and blood-thirsty look on the creatures face, Clark could tell what it was thinking and probably had been thinking since the start of the trial. Lex would be found guilty.

Or would have.

The purple gas floated into the room, and the alien that had just spoken was the first to see it, because he was seated at the front of the room and was, therefore looking at the door. "It is obvious—what?" he asked slowly, looking at the gas.

That obviously wasn't the answer that Lana was looking for. Clark watched with immense satisfaction as she put a hand on her hip and pursed her lips angrily, watching the judge. "Sir-" she tried to say.

The alien waved his hand, gesturing for her to be quiet. Clark watched the look of confusion go to slight fear as the gas floated towards the front of the room.

Fear and horror erupted on Lex's face as soon as he saw what was in the air. Clark was unsure as to why at first, but then he realized that Lex had simply put two and two together. If the gas was released, he knew who had done it. That also meant he knew that Clark was dead...or whatever he was.

"Take Mr. Luthor back to his cell for now until we may ascertain what this unknown substance in the air is," the alien ordered in its native tongue.

Two other aliens who were also in the room came forward and unchained Lex from the chair. Clark smiled as he realized they were looking a little bit woozy. Their fingers were not at all deft as they unchained Lex. And Lex, instead of looking relieved, looked downright frightened.

"What's going on?" Lana demanded. Her brow was furrowed with anger and immense frustration. Clark wondered what it would feel like to have worked so hard, only to loose everything. He loved karma.

The aliens holding Lex dropped to the ground with a muffled thud. "What's going on?" Lana demanded again, more loudly this time. To her displeasure no one answered. It wasn't like they could, as they were all—including the judge—unconscious.

"I'll tell you what's going on," Lex hissed, stepping towards her. Clark had never seen Lex look so utterly threatening in his entire life. The look in his eyes was something akin to what it should have been at Armageddon. "You were the catalyst that has evoked something deadly."

"Deadly?" she asked, her hands going to her mouth as if she could stop the flow of the poison air. Silly girl, Clark thought to himself as he floated easily above her. He'd long since discerned that he was invisible to the naked eye.

"Not to you, Lana," Lex spat. "But to aliens. Any alien."

She didn't seem to understand Lex's emphasis on the last words, but she did drop her hands from her mouth. "You were making this all along," she accused, stepping towards him.

It was a big mistake. Lex's jaw muscles tensed, and Clark was sure his hands were shaking. If Lex was showing that much outward emotion, Clark shuddered to think what he was thinking. "Congratulations, you're going to get to see everything that you've worked for go down the tubes. All of the aliens will be dead within the hour."

Her face paled until she was the color of a corpse. Clark was pretty sure that if Lex had his way that's what she'd be. "And it could have been avoided, Lana," he said, his voice becoming soft. "If you'd left Clark alone this wouldn't have happened."

"Clark? What's Clark got to do with this?" she asked. She crossed her arms across her chest and furrowed her brow, giving off the impression of discontent and confusion.

Lex laughed bitterly. "Practically everything. I had that serum for three years, but I only just got the antidote. I haven't tested it and I wasn't willing to disperse the gas that came from the serum until I was sure that the antidote would work."

Her eyes widened in realization. "Because Clark's an alien. He's dead then."

"If he is then I'll make sure you are too," Lex promised threateningly.

"He wouldn't want you to kill me." She was right, Clark knew. He didn't want her dead. He didn't want anyone dead. But that was war, and there was nothing he could do about it.

"I didn't want him to release that gas, so I guess we'd be even. Besides, he only did it because he knew I'd loose this trail—this trial that was your fault. Which makes Clark's decision directly your fault. Tell me, Lana, were you always this selfish?"

Lex was scary when he was like this. Clark was actually scared of the man in that room. He was scared of what he might do. Lex had never been like that to him, and Clark sincerely hoped he never would—if he even lived to find out.

"Are all the aliens really going to die?" she asked after a moment. Clark found himself thinking that was a very lame answer.

Judging by Lex's face, he seemed to think so too. "Yes," Lex replied. "Except for, hopefully, one."

As Lex turned to walk out the door of the courtroom, Clark felt something strange in the pit of his stomach. He might have had no body, but this feeling was so acute that he couldn't possibly have missed it. It was almost like he was...fading.

That thought was confirmed when his vision and view of the courtroom began to disappear. He was being pulled downward, faster than he should have been, and he scared. So, so, scared. As darkness closed over him he felt himself scream.

----------------------------------

He didn't feel anything for a while. It was like he was caught between death and life; he wasn't able to hear or see anything from either place, but he knew he wasn't in either life or death.

It was so peaceful there, and his mind drifted. He remembered Lana in Smallville. She'd always been beautiful, but Clark preferred the generally innocent girl of Smallville to the vicious Parana of the capitol and political life.

He didn't know why, but his mind drifted back to prom and that year he'd danced with her. She'd been...so beautiful. And a few days later meteors the meteors had fallen from the sky and killed what their life could have been. Had she already been on the path at that moment to become the traitor that she was now? Had the girl he'd held in his arms that night been the same girl who betrayed him and everyone he loved a few years later?

It didn't matter, because Chloe was the better catch. She had been even at that time, but Clark had been blinded by routine and by what he'd been sure he'd wanted. Once the war had started those blinders had come off. Apparently once your life hung in the balance—once you knew that every day could be your last—you made different choices. Usually they were more thought out and better.

Pete had been gone by then, and Clark remembered how relived he'd been when they'd reunited after the aliens invaded. Lex may have been his best friend, but so was Pete. He had needed Pete just as much as he had needed Lex. Pete and Lex had been like night and day, but Clark had needed them both equally.

He'd needed all of the people who stuck by him during the war. His parents had been with him at first, and he remembered when his father had disappeared. They hadn't known if he'd been dead or not, at least not for sure—but his mother had known. Maybe there was a connection after being married that long. Clark would never know, but his mother had wasted away before his eyes, finally dieing.

It was the hardest thing that Clark had ever had to watch.

Clark's oblivion was interrupted by something poking at his skin. It was the prick of that needle that told Clark for sure that he wasn't dead. For a moment after he felt nothing, but slowly his hearing began to return. It still felt as though he were hearing the noise from the opposite end of a tunnel, but it was certainly better than nothing.

"He can't be dead." That sounded like Chloe. Was he in the lab?

"He's got a pulse, but I—Chloe, I just don't know." He'd never heard Lex sound that worried in his life. At least, he was pretty sure this was part of his life.

"Are all the other aliens dead?" Clark heard Chloe ask, though she sounded tired. Or maybe she'd just seen too much.

"If they're not they will be within the next few hours," Lex answered her, but Clark didn't think it sounded like Lex thought he'd won a victory at all. Quite the contrary, actually. Clark wondered if he was really so important that he inciting such feelings.

"How long until we know if the antidote worked or not?" she asked. She seemed so worried, and Clark desperately wanted to remove that feeling from her.

"It's never been tested, Chloe. There's absolutely no way that I can tell. What did he do, anyway?"

"Is that your way of asking why he did this?"

"Yes." Lex always had been blunt, at least at times like this.

"He saw that you'd been caught on the news. You know he blames himself for all of this. He thinks the meteor shower was his fault."

It was his fault, at least in his opinion. There was no other viable person it could have been. He'd caused this, and no matter how they tried to shift the blame off his shoulders it just wasn't going to work.

"He's got a messiah complex bigger than Canada," Lex said with a large sigh. "So basically it all overwhelmed him? The guilt, I mean."

There was a soft stroking of his hair that Clark absolutely loved. It had to be Chloe, because in the rare times Lex had touched him in that manner it had been a very different feeling. Most people wouldn't have thought so, but a friend versus a lover was light-years apart as far as even a simple touch went.

"I think so," he heard Chloe reply.

And was it his imagination, or did he feel life coming back into his limbs? He determinedly tried to move his fingers and was met with stabbing pain, but he could have sworn he felt a little bit of movement. And he was no stranger to pain, nor was he afraid of it. He could fight the paralysis even if it meant that he had to fight pain again.

He made a fresh attempt to move his fingers, and this time the pain was less, and he was sure he'd moved a little more. He did it again, and again, and again. Eventually the pain dulled to something like you get after you've slept on one of your limbs and cut off its blood supply. It was almost tingly.

"He just moved his hand," Clark heard Chloe say sharply, almost as if she didn't dare to hope that he had.

"Are you sure?" he heard Lex reply.

He knew he had to move it again, had to let them know he was functioning. He curled his fingers in.

"Clark," he heard Lex say, "if you can hear me, please move your hand.

Clark forced his hand to move again. Was there really a possibility that he might be alright? Did stories like his really have happy endings?

"He can hear us," Chloe whispered. "Clark, please, Clark. Fight this!"

There was more life returning to his limbs by the minute. Though the process was slow, he could feel it as surely as he'd been able to feel the wind in winter when he'd gone outside to feed the cows. He fought to open his eyes.

That took a little more doing and a good five minutes, but finally he was able to force them open. His sight was so unfocused at first, and everything swirled in a great blur of color. He heard Chloe and Lex's fervent words of encouragement and praise, as well as Chloe's choking sobs.

His eyes focused after a little bit more blinking. Sight was a wonder when you'd thought you'd never see again. It was something he wasn't sure he'd ever get over.

Chloe was indeed crying, and Lex looked so relived. Clark was surprised Lex hadn't died from showing so much emotion, as he usually tried to hide or at least mask his feelings. The next thing Clark wanted to do was smile, because he wanted so desperately to reassure them.

"Keep fighting, Clark, you've got it," Lex muttered to him, hand on his shoulder with a warm comforting pressure. Chloe's hand was still in his hair, stroking gently. The feel of it was almost erotic to Clark, and he wondered if his scalp was a hot spot of his.

After a little more time elapsed he was finally able to pull off smiling. As he regained more and more of his facial movement the rest of his body slowly began to follow. It was almost like he was thawing out. Maybe this was the slower version of what Brendan Nash had done to his victims in Clark's senior year when he'd brought them all to that replica of the school.

By the time he had control of his arms and legs, both Chloe and Lex had helped him up. "Don't you ever do that again," Lex rebuked him seriously. "Do you know how I'd have felt if you'd died?"

"You know I didn't have an option," Clark shot back, though his voice was rather weak, as his vocal cords were still getting used to being able to move again.

"Really, Clark, I thought you were passed the age when Lex had to keep his dangerous chemicals locked up so that you couldn't get into them," Chloe joked. She hadn't stopped smiling since she'd seen that Clark was alright. If there were a textbook definition of relief, Clark thought he'd seen it in her.

Lex and Chloe helped him out of the lab, for which Clark was very thankful, as he never wanted to see the place again. After all, how many people want to see the place where they almost died? Couple that with the fact that being dissected in a lab was a life long fear of his, those things made the lab a place he really didn't desire to be.

The bed was softer than Clark remembered as Lex and Chloe helped him down on it. Had he really just made love with Chloe on it the previous night? He smiled, bliss washing over him. It was like his nerves had been heightened, and the feel of a soft bed under them tickled them into something like euphoria.

"Are all the aliens dead?" he asked after a few minutes.

"They should be now," Lex replied. He and Chloe had simply been sitting on the edge of the bed, watching and waiting until Clark was ready to talk.

"And Lana?" he added, his tone darkening. He didn't really want to talk about her, and, yet, he had to know.

"I don't know. I left the courthouse to come find you. I figured it would be easier to track her down later than it would be to bring you back to life."

"That's appreciated," Clark said with a weak laugh. Still, he really didn't like the prospect of having to hunt Lana down. He actually really didn't like the prospect of having to see her again at all. To look into her face, knowing that she'd betrayed them all; it wasn't something he wanted to do.

It was something he'd have to do.

"But you have no idea where she is now?" Clark asked after a slight pause. Lana wasn't someone he really wanted to loose track of, at least not in the present day and age.

"I don't suspect that it will really matter, Clark," Lex replied. "If the aliens are dead then so is her power."

That made quite a lot of sense, Clark realized. Lana had gotten her power through others, and those means were always a wild card; you might have loads of sway when those people were at the top, but if you depended on someone other than yourself then they could fail at any time, leaving you with no way to fix that. Everything you had was riding on the decisions of others.

"But I—Lex, I just can't—I've got to finish things," he said finally as frustration washed over him at his inability to express his feelings.

Chloe didn't understand what he was saying. Clark could see that clearly on her face, and he didn't begrudge her blindness of the subject. Lex understood, possibly because he'd been in the same situation. And while Lex and Clark's mannerisms weren't at all the same, parts of their base nature were.

You didn't ever back down from a challenge.

And you met those who wanted to take you down.

Lex only nodded and shook his head at Chloe when she made a motion to protest. Clark was thankful, because he really didn't want to explain.

"Can you walk?" Lex asked him after a moment.

Clark forced himself to sit up. He'd be weak, but he'd drag himself if he had to. This was not something he could avoid.

"I'll bring him back, I promise," Lex told Chloe, a small smile on his lips. Such humor was so very Lex, and sometimes Clark had to wonder just how Lex had become like that.

Chloe had only nodded, but had looked much less than thrilled. Still, she didn't say anything and Clark appreciated that. There was absolutely no need to make things harder than they already were. And they were pretty hard already.

Lex carefully helped him up and towards the door of the room. He kept careful pressure on Clark's back, almost like he was judging if Clark was planning on falling. As they went out the last thing Clark saw was Chloe, her face slightly worried. That, Clark realized, was what someone looked like who knew that a person they loved was going to be unavoidably hurt.