Chapter Five
Disclaimer: I do not own Smallville.
There was a stunned silence.
"My father murdered his parents?" Lex asked, shocked. "I…really shouldn't be so surprised, I don't think. I've spent enough years around him to know what he's capable of. But still. Why would he even do that?"
"He needed the insurance money to start up LuthorCorp, him and Morgan Edge who is apparently some underworld criminal," Clark answered.
"If he's willing to kill his own parents…Do you have any idea how I manage to get my hands on this information?" Lex demanded.
"I don't actually know how you find this out," Clark admitted. "But be careful. When your father finds out that you know, he decides to drug your scotch to simulate a psychotic break and then sends you to Bell Reve where he uses electroshock therapy to erase the last seven weeks of your life."
"I…don't really know what to say to that," Lex admitted.
"You eventually find the information again and manage to get your father put in prison," Clark continued. "But after Chloe, you, and I testify at his bail hearing, I was kidnapped by the AI and gone all summer and your father attempted to kill both you and Chloe."
"Why kill me?" Chloe couldn't believe it. "I've met Mr. Luthor, like, once."
"He apparently moves to Smallville at some point to both investigate the strange happenings here and to annoy Lex," Clark explained. "And you manage to get your hands on a drug that forces everyone – except me – to tell you the truth and you get a confession from Mr. Luthor on tape. Lex survived because he has accelerated healing and Chloe's death was faked after the explosion blew up her safe house though I didn't really get the details."
"But he does get sent to prison, right?" Chloe asked, shaken.
"For awhile," Clark agreed. "He has some sort of terminal illness which, when he somehow manages to temporarily switch bodies with me, gets cured and then he decides to try and redeem himself. It doesn't last. Then he tries again and he might have even meant it but I don't know. He gets released from prison somehow and eventually ends up falling out of his LuthorCorp office."
"My father's not exactly the suicidal type," Lex pointed out. "He'd do anything to survive. I suspect foul play."
"You said that there were no witnesses and no evidence so no one really knows what happened," Clark informed him.
"I suppose that anyone who can pull off murdering my father in his own office wouldn't be stupid enough to get caught," Lex said quietly. "Did you happen to catch when this was?"
"Oh, six or seven years in the future, I think," Clark replied. "And who knows? All of this information I'm giving you guys has to change things so maybe even that gets changed."
"If it should be changed," Lex muttered.
Clark looked shocked. "How can you even say that? He's your father!"
"My father who you have just informed me is willing to have me institutionalized," Lex shot back, "for simply finding out about something I'm not supposed to know."
Clark frowned, knowing he was right. "At least he didn't kill you?"
"And it's not like I killed him," Lex said smoothly. "Was there anything else about my father or about anything else that I should know?"
"You did want me to give you a little romantic advice," Clark said awkwardly. "Not romantic advice as in me telling you what I think but as in me relating to you your own advice from the future."
"I wish I could have gotten romantic advice from my future self," Lana murmured.
Clark winced. "Sorry, Lana. I might have asked but I couldn't even see you because of the Kryptonite, remember?"
"No, it's fine," Lana assured him. "I survived somehow and I'm sure I'll survive again. Besides, now there's three less psychos that I'm going to date."
"It does sound like it's from a good source," Lex remarked. "Alright, let me hear it."
"This is probably more for our benefit than for yours since she has super pheromones which allows her to control all men around her – except me, again – but you shouldn't marry Desirée Atkins. Her real name is Allison Sanders and you meet her at some point around the start of my sophomore year on some business trip. She tells you that she's there to save you." Clark made a face to show what he thought of that. "She has a pattern of having someone interested in her kill someone who is standing in the way of her inheriting money and she'll try to get someone to kill you, too."
"Why would I marry her after I knew this?" Lex demanded.
"I don't know for sure that you would because I don't know how strong those pheromones are," Clark explained. "But in case you do, it will be up to Chloe, Lana, and I to deal with her."
"Why not me?" Pete asked, affronted.
"Because you're a male and human and so you'd be just as vulnerable to her as anyone," Clark replied. "And you don't like Lex anyway so she might have an easier time convincing you to kill him."
"Please," Pete scoffed. "Like I'd ever try to kill Lex."
Lex and Clark exchanged knowing glances but said nothing.
"Then you meet Dr. Helen Bryce who I'm going to have to warn my parents not to trust even though for some reason they did last time," Clark said slowly. "She causes a lot of problems. Apparently you met her when you threw up on her or something a few years back in Metropolis after drinking too much. You two get over your bad first impression and started dating. She marries you and then was paid by someone – Morgan Edge, I think – to kill you so she sabotages your honeymoon plane and leaves you stranded on a deserted island all summer. I would have tried to save you but that was the summer I was out of my mind myself and in Metropolis."
"Should I start looking into joining a convent, too?" Lex wondered aloud.
"I think for men it's a monastery," Lana corrected him.
"Sure," Lex agreed with a lazy smile. "But a convent would be so much more fun."
"And that would defeat the purpose of joining a convent in the first place," Chloe said dryly.
"I don't think so," Lex said innocently.
"Then my senior year you have a string of one-night stands that, while I don't approve of them in the slightest and feel that they are morally wrong, really don't turn serious until one of them ends in murder," Clark told him.
"How does that happen?" Lex asked, disturbed. "It's like I can't do anything without homicide getting involved."
"There's a woman named Shannon Bell who you should absolutely not sleep with under any circumstances," Clark said urgently. "I guess she didn't get the memo that you were looking for a one-night stand because even though you sent her diamond earrings, she didn't bother trying to talk to you again and either finding out from you that you weren't interested or not being able to reach you and realizing that way. She broke up with her fiancé because she thought you two could have a relationship but you didn't. Then to make matters worse you didn't recognize her and had another one-night stand with her so she decided to frame you for the murder of a second one-night stand girl. Just don't sleep with her, okay? It seems like it would make that whole situation much easier."
"So Lex got someone killed and ruined someone else's life and turned her into a murderer because he just had to sleep around," Pete said disgustedly.
"I really don't think that's fair," Chloe objected. "Lots of people have one-night stands. Sometimes people go out to bars or clubs for the sole purpose of finding one. Diamond earrings are far better than most people get out of it and I'm sure Lex never meant to lead anyone on – but just to be safe, don't say anything about the future. If someone took one night of sex with a stranger to mean that she should throw away her fiancé without any indication that she could have more with this stranger then not only do I doubt she cared all that much about her fiancé but it really isn't Lex's fault. This woman is clearly unstable and probably an idiot, to boot."
"Thank you, Chloe," Lex said, a little surprised by her defense. He sighed. "If I were a normal person, I could just have anonymous one-night stands without having to worry about this kind of thing…"
"Well, moving on," Clark said awkwardly. He really didn't believe in sex for any reason but love but he didn't want to start judging Lex for choices he'd made in the past or might make in the future and start a fight. "This last instruction is a bit odd. If you ever find that someone that you're in a relationship with is pregnant then make sure that she is, in fact, actually pregnant and not just given hormones to make it appear that she's pregnant before you marry her or she will blame you and turn into a – and I quote – 'vengeful psychopath.'"
"My father's work?" Lex asked, blinking.
"Probably," Clark agreed. "Though I didn't ask. I wasn't really sure that I wanted to know."
"Neither am I," Lex admitted. "But that is sound advice, I suppose. And I thought that paternity suits were the only pregnancy-related scams I might have to worry about. Do you know who the woman in question was?"
"I'm sorry," Clark apologized. "You never said. But since she apparently didn't turn on you until after she found out about the fake pregnancy and thought it was you, I guess her identity isn't the important part."
"I suppose not," Lex conceded. "Still, it would be nice to know. Am I happily married in your future as well?"
"No," Clark told him. "I'm sorry."
"What are you apologizing for?" Lex asked him teasingly. "Have you been sabotaging my love life or something?"
"It's nice to know that at least one of us will have a successful dating history," Pete said smugly.
"Or maybe you just can't find anyone to date," Lex said innocently.
"Lex!" Clark complained.
"Or maybe it's because he moves out of the area and so actually lives among normal people," Lex offered.
"Oh, I should tell you about the buy-out!" Clark exclaimed.
"Buy-out?" Lex repeats. "That sounds promising."
"Very soon we're going to meet a boy named Ryan who can read minds. Except, of course-"
"Yours," Chloe interrupted. "Does anything affect you?"
"Witchcraft does as does hypnotism," Clark replied. "And the different kinds of Kryptonite definitely do."
"There are different kinds?" Lana asked, surprised.
Clark nodded and ticked them off on his fingers. "Green for pain, red for no inhibitions, blue for temporary loss of powers, gold for permanent loss of powers, silver for paranoia, black for a literal split personality, gemstone for persuasion, and clear for neutralized."
"Someone should write that down," Pete said. "No, wait. That could be dangerous. But we definitely need to remember that."
"Lex said that the red one was probably the most dangerous one because I kept all my powers but lost all of my morals," Clark confided. "And that the class ring will be red Kryptonite so I shouldn't order it. And that Alicia Baker gave me red Kryptonite and convinced me to marry her in Vegas. Red Kryptonite just sounds…horrible."
"I'll agree," Lana said, looking stricken.
"I just need to be careful not to accidentally let her see me using my powers like I apparently did last time even if she did make sure to show Chloe my powers so she'd know," Clark said seriously. "I meet her on the elevator on an economics fieldtrip to LuthorCorp Plaza junior year so I should both take the stairs. We were the only ones in the elevator and the elevator goes plummeting to the ground but she can teleport anyway so she should be fine. She sounded really disturbed and was ultimately murdered by someone named Tim so I'll need to keep an eye on that later."
"What were you saying about Ryan?" Lex inquired.
"Well, he can read minds and his evil stepparents are trying to use him to commit criminal activities," Clark explained. "Then later he gets sick, imprisoned, and dies because his aunt can't pay his medical bills so we should look into that. But that's not quite yet. Around the time Ryan shows up, your dad offers to let you come back to Metropolis and you decide not to go. He…does not react well to that and a couple of months later inspects the plant, tells you you did a wonderful job, then tries to force the issue by closing down the entire plant and saying it's all your fault."
"He can't!" Chloe hissed. "My father works there!"
"That reminds me, if you're going to go up against Mr. Luthor then keep in mind he can have your father fired and blacklisted," Clark said helpfully. "Unless Lex can manage to do something about that but he didn't last time."
Chloe turned to glare at him.
"I'm sure I had a good reason," Lex defended himself. "But I really don't know what happened, so…"
"And to be fair, this happened after you saw Lana and I kissing and decided to work with Mr. Luthor to find out my secret in exchange for a column at the Daily Planet," Clark said disapprovingly. "Then you went back on your word."
"Chloe, you sold Clark out for a column? To Mr. Luthor?" Pete sounded horrified. "Because he kissed somebody?"
"I…" Chloe trailed off, appalled. "I don't know what to say. I can't believe I'd do that. I really can't."
"You did," Clark confirmed grimly. "But you paid for it and we apparently worked past it. Just don't do anything so stupid now, okay? Mr. Luthor doesn't mess around."
"But he apparently becomes a good guy later," Lex muttered disbelievingly.
"We could really bond over our mutual hatred of your evil father, couldn't we?" Pete asked speculatively. "I stick around and the two of us can team up to remind Clark how horrible he is."
Lex's lips twitched. "Sounds like a plan."
"So anyway, you use your mother's inheritance and organize the employees into a buyout, forming LexCorp. LexCorp, by the way, is what you rename LuthorCorp as in the future. You might want to start preparing for that now," Clark advised.
"I'm finding it a bit horrifying that I had no idea the lengths to which my father could sink," Lex said, shaking his head.
"I think that that might actually cover everything on your fro-" Clark started to say. "No, wait. Julian."
Lex froze. "Julian?"
"You didn't kill him, Lex," Clark said earnestly. "You repressed the memory of your mother smothering him to protect him from your father and you took the blame because you knew what he would do to your mother if he knew but as his only heir you'd be okay."
"Who's Julian?" Pete wondered.
"My little brother," Lex said shortly. "Are…are you sure?"
"You told me so yourself and you seemed pretty sure," Clark replied. "Would you lie to yourself?"
Lex shook his head. "Not about Julian, no."
"Your half-brother Lucas is apparently a sociopathic idiot so you said not to bother with him and your half-sister Tess really wasn't happy about some cameras you use to spy on her so don't do that and do make more of an effort to keep her on your side," Clark told him. "And I'm also supposed to tell you that 'For all he tore up Warrior Angel, he grew up to practice his very own form of green vigilantism.' Whatever that means."
"Some sort of environmentalist?" Lana asked blankly.
"I know exactly who I was talking about," Lex said, surprised. "But not what the 'green vigilantism' means. You might be right, Lana, but why that would concern me to the point where I felt the need to tell my past self is beyond me."
"What about me?" Chloe asked, almost unsure if she wanted to know.
"Well, everyone was very concerned about you for a few years because no one from the future had ever heard of you," Clark began. "And they had heard of literally everyone else I came across. I never did find out why you were the exception…"
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