Chapter Fifty

"All right," Lois got up and started pacing. "Before we move forward with a game plan, I think we should establish the timeline. So, real Julian from Earth Prime…"

"Why is your Earth Prime?" Chloe asked.

"It's mine. I knew about it first. As I was saying, Julian gets kidnapped by Lucas, rescued by Lex…"

"Excuse me," Lex interjected, "I am the Lex Luthor here. Do not refer to that charlatan with my name."

"Fine. Alternate Lex." Lois smiled. "Alex rescues Julian only for his brother to go into a coma. He uses device X in an attempt to revive him only to discover it opened a wormhole instead of…whatever it was supposed to do. Those details are still sketchy."

"Yeah. Why not?" Pete breathed out.

"Alex sees Julian, except he's our Clark Kent and decides he'll take him as a replacement," Chloe finished.

"I'm not so sure." Lex said. "My security team informed me of a look-alike a year and a half ago."

Johnathan stood up abruptly. "Why didn't you say anything!"

"Mr. Kent, I had no reason to believe the target was Clark. I thought it was someone who had undergone plastic surgery for corporate sabotage. My security team was working on following him, but he always seemed to disappear into thin air, and we could never anticipate when or where he would show up. But the question remains, if Alex was here when Julian first fell ill, why wait a year to take Clark?"

"Julian died," Lois smacked her forehead. "He died. I saw the security footage. And then, hey…" Lois frowned, "someone that looked like Julian or Clark was at Metropolis General for the rest of the year. It couldn't have been a dead body. Alex froze his dead brother. That's just next level obsession, right there."

"So, a look alike. Don't suppose you have a Tina on your Earth?" Pete asked.

"Tina Greer? Why say her name?"

"Certain people got infected by the meteors that came down. Tina was one of them and she gained the ability to morph her body into looking like other people." Chloe explained. She looked over at Lana and could see her tense up.

"Like Lex Luthor, or Alex, trying to rob a bank?"

"Yeah."

"That happened on my Earth, too! I remember that story. And Tina was at Cadmus. I know Alex talked with her; I just couldn't hear the audio. All right, so Alex makes a deal with Tina to look like Julian and be comatose in a hospital for a few months. And then…oh! Was there a fire at your Miller Homestead the day Julian, I mean Clark, disappeared?"

"On it." Chloe took out her phone.

Lois kept pacing. "If my hunch is right, comatose Tina, looking like Julian, gets moved to the Luthor mansion. Alex wakes her up, takes her to this Earth and she looks like Lucas. They recreate the accident Julian had for Clark which is why he had 'memories' of it."

"Got it. Yes, the Miller Homestead caught on fire. The date though is the day after for some reason."

"Because the fire department was at the mansion that night." Lex said. "A fire caused by my doppelganger as a distraction, no doubt."

"You never mentioned that," Lana said.

Lex shrugged. "It was a small fire in the stables; empty for years. Kitchen staff saw it and called it in. No one was hurt, thankfully; no real damage. But I didn't see the connection to Clark's disappearance, so I didn't say anything."

"Next question." Lois bounced on her feet. "Clark got black teeth, didn't he?"

"Yeah. The day he disappeared." Lana said. "But what's that got to do with anything?"

"Loomis Dental Gel 2000, baby!" Lois whooped and jumped up and down. "I know this is a bad situation and I shouldn't be this excited, but this has been really annoying. You see, Alex got a sleeping potion from a wizard. And it had a teeth whitening spell in it. And all this time, I've been asking, when could Julian, or Clark's, teeth been blackened?" Lois followed with a quick explanation of how the sleeping potion worked.

"A wizard?" Pete asked. "I'm out."

"Oh, sure. Other dimensions: fine. Wizards, you draw the line." Chloe quipped.

"To finish," Lana said, "Clark drinks coffee that has the sleeping potion and Dental Gel in it. Alex and Tina then get him after he leaves the Talon, take him to the Miller Homestead, recreate the accident, and then take him to your Earth?"

"Sounds about right." Lois said. "Then he wakes up in my Earth where everyone he knew and loved calls him Julian."

"Messed. Up." Pete glared daggers at Lex.

"Not. Me." Lex said through clenched teeth.

"He couldn't tell?" Martha said quietly. "He couldn't tell it wasn't me?"

"Mrs. Kent," Lex said gently, "Clark had no way of knowing. He was placed in an oubliette. A prison void of bars. The entire world he was in acted as evidence of what Alex was telling him was true."

"Clark fought." Lois offered. "He fought for you. Clark sought out Chloe to help him figure out what happened. He asked you guys to remember him."

"As a Luthor." Johnathan hung his head. "Um…do you know…did he tell you, about, what I, or what my other self, said? Or…um…" Martha put a hand on Johnathan's shoulder as he closed his eyes in dread.

"I never saw anything." Lois lied as she remembered Clark leaving the barn with tears in his eyes. "It sounded like you were very…civil."

"How did you get here?" Lex asked.

"Ummm…not too sure. Actually, who am I kidding, it's this thing." Lois motioned to the thick bracelet on her wrist. "I'm just not sure how, exactly."

"May I?"

"Just don't touch anything. I don't have a manual." Lois held out her wrist for Lex.

"Uh, Lois," Pete asked, "what about me?"

"You're his friend here, aren't you?"

"Yeah." Pete hung his head. "But I'm not there, am I?"

Lois didn't see a way around this. "No."

Pete looked crushed.

"Where am I?" Lana asked.

"Not in Smallville." Lois's gaze went to Chloe who was silently gazing at pictures on Lois's phone. If Lois had to guess, her other cousin was looking at the photo she took of Julian/Clark kissing her Chloe at the Spring Formal. Chloe's eyes were starting to tear up.

"So, Clark chose to date her. And not me." Chloe looked at Lois with tear filled eyes. "Are we really that different?"

"No!" With her free hand Lois reached out to Chloe. "When I first met Julian, who I know now is Clark, he was looking for you, because he believed you would help him. And you did. You, I mean my Chloe, gave him a theory of astral projection instead of alternate dimensions, but anyone could make that mistake."

"Well, this plan we need to get Clark back better happen soon." Lex lifted the bracelet which displayed the countdown. "I think you only have twenty minutes left."

Fun fact: the first title I had for this story was Oubliette. I changed it because Oubliette had a darker tone and I really tried to keep this light. I know kidnapping and gaslighting are dark topics and wrong. But I do like the moments I write about with Clark and Alex; like the cookie scene, Julian day, Alex's birthday party, and one I haven't posted yet. So Big Brother still had some menace to it but sounded lighter. I got this idea in the first place because I was wondering how Clark could be Lex's adoptive brother without the influence of Lionel.