Fic: Slave (to your Master be true) (complete)
Title: Slave (to your Master be true)
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark, Lex
Rating: R (for content / mindcontrol)
Spoilers: through the end of season 7
Word count: 4900+
Summary: Lex isn't sorry the Orb worked. He's only sorry that it was necessary.
Warnings: Un-beta'd. Darkfic-ish. Mindcontrol.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Comments: Yes, please! :)
Author's Note: And here we have a "benevolent Lex", all sad and sorrowful that the use of the Orb was a necessary act on his part.
This one didn't turn out quite as tight as the first, so, yeah. Sorry about that. (Maybe I'll come back and thoroughly edit it sometime.)
First in the series ("Master") is here on LJ and here on AO3.
Also posted to AO3 here.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex hadn't wanted to do it. Clark was like a brother to him. Lex loved Clark like a brother.
That was why he'd had to do it. It was necessary. It was the way of things; it was how it had to be.
Clark wasn't strong enough on his own. Clark didn't have control. Clark needed help.
Lex would give it to him.
(Help? Or control?)
--Both.
Clark had lost his powers at the start. Lex hadn't been sure why, exactly -- that shouldn't have happened.
He'd only determined later -- much later, after many, many talks with Clark -- that it must have been the meddling of the Jor-El AI in the Fortress.
After all, if Clark couldn't hear him, Lex couldn't control him.
(He'd forbidden Clark to do anything that would prevent him from hearing Lex.)
(Not without orders to the contrary.)
Jor-El-the-AI had taken (stolen?) Clark's powers -- perhaps thinking that this might also afford Clark some extra measure of protection, that perhaps Lex might not want him if Clark was only as useful as any baseline-human ever was; perhaps not, as the AI's programming was still inscrutible to Lex, though he had no doubt that he'd decipher its inner workings eventually. It had then collapsed the Fortress, so that Lex could not immediately reverse the procedure -- the Orb had, in essence, given him root level access to the Library contained therein, and anything controlled by the Fortress at the time he'd used the Orb on it (...including Clark at some level -- the thought of which still made Lex shudder).
Not satisfied with that, the AI had then whipped up a snowstorm that had spanned nearly the entirety of the northern polar hemisphere, and then teleported Lex hundreds of miles away, just for good measure. With the wind the storm had produced, Clark couldn't have heard a single word from Lex if he'd been standing right next to him with human-sensitivity hearing; Kryptonian hearing wouldn't have allowed Clark to hear Lex from where he'd been sent even if he'd still had his powers at the time.
(Lex would have considered it overkill ...if it had actually worked.)
The AI had been desperate.
(The AI wasn't stupid.)
The AI wasn't much of anything, now. Lex would have purged it completely, but its roots went too deep. It also had information wrapped up in it that was not duplicated elsewhere in the Library archives, which Lex thought might be useful to extract at some point before its eventual removal. Instead, he severed its control access to the vast majority of the Crystal Fortress' systems. Only Lex had full access to those systems now.
Lex had barely managed to survive the underkill the Fortress had directed his way... but at a price.
He'd been horribly frostbitten, and barely managed to make it back to society. He'd let himself wallow in pain and misery for a month, thinking that he'd lost Clark, because there had been no sign of him in the aftermath. Lex had known even then that Clark had lost his powers, because as Lex had held him during the Fortress collapse, one of the larger falling crystals had shattered nearby, and a single flying shard had cut across Clark's cheek.
Lex hadn't been much surprised that Clark's blood ran as red as any human being's. They weren't all that different, after all.
Lex had been surprised to find that Clark had survived the storm somehow, unscathed. (Nearly right under his nose, no less -- working under a trader with whom Lex's kitchen procurement staff had had ties.)
His cheek had healed. He'd somehow managed to survive without frostbite.
(Lex had sworn that story about the fisherman finding him and selling him into slavery was bullshit. Lex knew how far they'd been from the coast, and he knew about the footprint at the old site of the Fortress.)
Clark had then died and been saved. He'd had his powers returned.
Lex had been cursing him, calling his name, as he had watched the security feed from the Blackcreek facility. He'd watched helplessly as Green Arrow shot out his heart. He'd screamed and cried.
Lex had told him he had had no reason to be there. Told him how he should be here, not there, come here, damnit--
And then he had.
Lex had learned about Kryptonian 'superhearing'.
Lex had learned about Martians, and the 'fisherman', and the time Clark had spent in captivity.
Lex had learned about life after death.
Lex had learned a great many things.
Lex had demanded help, recompense, and Clark's face had twisted up, as his insides must have.
He hadn't said no.
He hadn't been able to.
Lex wasn't sure if he'd ever know if Clark had done it because he'd wanted to, or because Lex had wanted him to.
A single piece of knowledge, forever lost to him -- it made Lex maudlin when he was deep in his cups. (He indulged himself so rarely these days.)
Clark had wanted to leave, when he'd first come when Lex had called. He'd been scared -- and rightly so, if their positions had been reversed.
Lex had said no.
Clark had stayed.
Lex had gotten what he needed from him at the time -- his blood, for the healing serum -- and told him that was all he needed.
For now.
He'd told Clark that he could leave... but--
And then Lex had given him his first Rules.
1) No more lying (to Lex -- he could and would lie to others as needed, when and if Lex directed him to do so, or to otherwise comply with Lex's orders).
2) No more working against him. (Only actions that might be perceived as meddlesome would be allowed, and only when they furthered Lex's own purposes. This encompassed 'no murdering Lex in his sleep,' or any one of a number of similar multitudinous actions, which Lex had thought it best not to have to spell out explicitly, lest he create some loophole. This also encompassed all various and sundry elaborate forms of suicide on Clark's part, as Lex had made it clear that Clark was an integral part of his plans.)
3) No actions or inaction that would prevent Clark from hearing Lex (not without explicit orders to the contrary, on a case-to-case basis). (Lex wasn't about to let Clark slip his leash in such a gross manner. After all, what was the point of having control over Clark if he couldn't actually exert it? It followed from this that Clark was under no circumstances to tell anyone of Lex's current whereabouts or state of health.)
Lex hadn't been stupid or suicidal, even subject to an ungodly level of pain that no amount morphine could much ease. He'd begun laying false trails and traps for anyone searching for him the moment he'd been conscious and aware enough to do so.
He'd always kept backups of all his research projects in the sublevel basements under the mansion. Down below, he had built up defenses far more capable than those of a mere castle under siege.
It was to those dark, secret rooms to which he had retreated to recuperate, and it was there that he talked Clark through the process of recreating, and then injecting him with, small quantities of the RL65 serum.
It was a lengthy process, and Clark inexperienced in such matters of science and chemistry.
Lex was patient.
Despite the pain, or perhaps in spite of it, Lex could be patient.
Patience was not always only its own reward. Lex was now whole once more (and without having suffered the worst of the debilitating aspects of the drug: the transient mental instability or the sense-overwhelming rage).
Lex had time now.
Lex had time and space to work within, now.
He'd always found those two quantities to be at a premium, but he came to find in the weeks and months ahead that he'd never fully appreciated what that might mean -- what a man could do, when given the abilty to think and plan, to do what was necessary.
Money was king when it came to worldly power that was visible to all, but with time and the space to work within sans interference from outside parties... all else came naturally.
Lex had made many decisions that first day, when Clark had come when he called. Even now, well after the fact, no longer wracked with debilitating pain, he saw those decisions to be as sound, meet, and right, as good as when he'd first made them.
Lex had decided that Clark should keep up appearances.
This had many tenets.
Lex didn't want anyone to know of anything to do with him from the collapse of the Fortress onwards -- this granted Lex the time and space to work without interference, which had proved invaluable, and still did. At first, he'd merely thought it a nice change from the status quo of usual gross visibility, but while it was no longer essential, he'd come to find he rather liked it, and now he was loathe to give it up without a very pressing reason.
It was rather easy to put his plans into motion when no-one realized that there was anything to defend against, or anyone to look for. It almost felt like cheating, but Lex didn't much mind. A level playing field was for the weak-minded; Lex would happily obtain any advantage he could get, and leave the decision upon whether eventual deployment would ever be necessary for later.
Lex wanted Clark to keep it to himself that the Orb had worked.
This was done for similar reasoning.
This also, however, had a marked consequence, which dovetailed nicely with another decision Lex had made:
Lex had decided to be as hands-off with Clark as possible.
After all, it wasn't Clark's fault that he'd been born Kryptonian.
It also wasn't Clark's fault that humanity faced many threats, both without and within.
Clark was a tool that Lex could use. Lex was not about to give him up, or over to others.
Lex neither needed, nor wanted, oversight for this. He knew Clark best. He was responsible for himself, his actions, and his life -- he had proven himself capable of being responsible for the lives of others many times over; he had been trained from birth to be.
(And, quite frankly, he trusted no-one other than himself to have both Clark's and humanity's best interests in mind. Power corrupted, after all. And absolute power...)
Clark was meant to rule humanity.
(Lex had heard it from his own lips, directly quoted from the Jor-El AI.)
(The news had not surprised him.)
Lex was not about to let that happen. Humanity should steer its own future; Lex had to take it back for them.
Lex was, and would be, Clark's liege-lord. Clark would be his subject. This would restore the power balance.
Lex had only ever really needed one loyal subject.
And now he had one.
Lex would be bound to Clark, as much as Clark was bound to him, in doing so. A liege-lord tended to have more responsibility to their subjects than they to him, simply because there were more of them. Protection, succor, all things from above, to those below. In return, one received loyalty, respect, and obedience in all things from those under their lord's protection.
This was pleasing to him.
This was the way it should be.
Clark should have come to him. So much could have been averted.
But he had not had Clark's trust, and so there had been tragedy, on a lesser, then grander scale.
This would not happen again.
Lex would command him, and he would obey. He would be truthful in all things, and put his trust in Lex, and someday he would regain Lex's trust in turn.
This was also meet, right, and good -- that Clark would be given a second chance. Lex had never granted anyone who had betrayed him such a boon; Clark would be the first. In many ways, Lex felt he deserved it; Lex had been given so many second chances himself, after all -- why begrudge Clark the same? After all, Clark was his, to do with as he saw fit. This was what Lex thought to be the best arrangement. It would suffice.
He would be a kind, but strict, ruler of this one man. Such generosity was required of great men, and Lex saw no reason for pettiness in this matter.
(Lex knew he spoke of medieval Europe, and not ancient Rome, when making such allusions. However, Lex did not mean to conquer and rule as Alexander of Macedonia had done so long ago, and thought that using a very militaristic society as a blueprint would send the wrong message to Clark. Medieval England, on the other hand, was known for its knights and chivalry.)
(Frankly, Lex felt that a little chivalric concern from Clark would be a nice change of pace, given the usual sort of interaction they'd had in the past.)
With Clark under Lex's control, it didn't matter what control Clark could exert over the rest of humanity -- Lex's interests overrode Clark's; Lex could make certain that humanity would be in control, and remain so.
Lex planned on living forever.
Clark would live forever, too.
Forever was as long as humanity existed.
Lex would see to it that the threats from without would not, could not destroy humanity. The threats from within... well, Lex did not see his race as needing coddling. They would either fix their own messes, or die trying. Either was acceptable to him.
After all, Lex did not imagine to set himself up as safeguarding humanity in such a manner -- what if one sort of change or another took the form of humanity evolving beyond itself? Lex wasn't about to stop something like that, but he wasnt entirely sure that he would recognize the signs, if and when they came.
Lex did not believe in non-interference, but he did believe in as little interference as possible.
It wasn't Clark's fault that he could be the method or the means by which humanity could be ground under the universe's heel.
That was no reason to justify twisting Clark into something that was only, merely a tool that Lex could use.
Lex would restrict Clark, but only so far. He did not want a cold, unfeeling automaton.
Lex did not want a cold, unfeeling Kryptonian.
True, normal -- and thus rational and (presumably) sane -- Kryptonians, it seemed, had no capacity for human emotion and no impetus to lie.
Clark was capable of human emotion and lied frequently and compulsively.
Ergo, Clark was insane.
It was all right. Lex would take care of him.
Lex didn't begrudge Clark his insanity, but he did note that Zod had been rather emotional as well.
Lex could not help but draw parallels between them.
This was why Clark would always, always, always need to be watched.
Because there was always the threat of Clark's insanity -- his human-like sanity -- becoming even more unbalanced, tipping him over into behaviors that were not conducive to the survival of humanity.
Lex might, after much study, be able to help Clark in this -- to help him find a sane level ground of alien-insanity was a long-term goal years in the making, but Lex was thoroughly invested: he was 'in it for the long haul'.
Lex hoped that, someday, all those restrictions he had to enforce would become unnecessary, and Clark would no longer need those mental chains. Someday, Clark would simply never want to do such things; they would become distasteful, and an easily-discarded option.
(What need for chains, when the jailed restricted themselves of their own free will? Was such willingness not what allowed the wolves to walk freely among the sheep, and left the sheepdogs with no need to intervene? Was this not what humanity named 'reform'?)
For this reason, Lex called Clark to him once daily. He wanted as little disruption to Clark's life as possible, so it was only the once, and only inbetween the twilight hours after when he went out on his 'patrols' -- Lex would not begrudge him his messianic foibles at present, as allowing him to act on such tendencies in a controlled manner seemed to help calm him, mind, body, and soul -- and before his duties at the Daily Planet for the day.
It had become a ritual of sorts, begun from the first day of the rest of their lives. Lex would call him at the given time. Clark would come. Lex would ask after him -- what he had done previous. Clark would answer.
Lex would then ask after older, more esoteric knowledge -- not much, only a little at a time -- the better to digest it thoroughly.
Lex was slowly siphoning from Clark all his singular truths. He was draining him dry of every single small accumulated lie. (He excised from him every large one.) He learned, and learned, and learned.
He taught Clark to say, "I don't want to talk about this." (He did, anyway. Lex was just more gentle about drawing it out of him, as a reward.)
He taught Clark to say, "I'm not sure." (Lex then taught him new methods of thought, and how to approach learning what one does and does not know.)
He taught Clark to say, "I don't know." (And then Lex taught him how he could find out.)
('I don't know's tended not to last very long in Lex's presence.)
He restricted Clark. He did very little to prompt him to action. Power corrupts.
Knowledge is power. But abstaining oneself from using power -- from acting on it -- how then could it corrupt, when the corruption came from the use?
A lie of omission could be a terrible thing indeed; abstaining from sharing it, when an outcome hinged on the use of that knowledge, was criminal. Lex knew, however, that very few people other than himself could be bothered with the truths which Clark knew, and of the rest... Lex found them utterly untrustworthy.
The League.
The "Justice" League.
Lex knew every name.
Lex knew everything Clark knew about them.
Lex had taught Clark to draw, and then had Clark sketch for him the inner workings of the Watchtower system.
He'd had Clark supply him with passwords, data, and more.
Lex had hacked in himself, and now he knew more than Clark did himself.
Clark didn't need to know everything. That was a burden of the lord, not their subject.
Clark was his, and Clark oftentimes needed protecting from himself.
The Jor-El AI had gotten into his head. It had subverted him.
The programming was still there, though Clark had hardly knew it.
Lex had learned of it, after he'd had Clark retrieve the Crystal from Tess' LuthorCorp laboratories.
...Ah, Tess.
Poor Tess.
Lex had had to make a decision: LuthorCorp, or Clark.
The responsibility to the many, or to the one?
It had hardly been a choice at all -- no choice, really. Clark came first.
Lex's responsibility to the one was his responsibility to the many. A primary, overriding one.
Without proper control over Clark, what would LuthorCorp be, save ashes in the wind with the rest of humanity?
And so, his old duties fell to his half-sister, who could not be trusted with them, but was still more trusted than all others with whom he could have left the burden of the task.
It was saddening, but Lex had no room for regrets. It had been the correct choice. Clark's past, present, and future required Lex's full attention.
Lex needed Clark as humanly-sane as possible, and he needed him great, to become Great.
Clark had, in essence, been living in Lex's shadow, while Lex had tried to fight the battles from which Clark had run time and time again.
Lex knew now that Clark, and by extension the future of humanity, had survived by luck and a prayer on far too many occasions.
Clark needed to grow, to become more, to be able to fight his own battles, and win.
Lex knew all about winning. Lex could and would guide him in this.
Lex would remove Kal-El from existence, barring the way to Jor-El's self-fulfilling prophecy of doom, and allow Clark to soar to new heights.
(The one-time flight of Clark-as-Kal-El-the-soldier proved the insidious level of the AI's influence. How else could Clark have been unable to reproduce similar deeds, without having some psychological barriers installed in his mind? He'd first floated above his bed when he was fourteen, for god's sake, and other times since! It was only after that alien brainwashing and reprogramming that Clark had never flown again for any period of time. What furtherproof of ongoing mental meddling was required?)
Lex wrested what information he could from the Library in the Crystal -- which was quite a great deal, in fact -- all except the meddlesome, world-subjugating AI. He neither needed nor wanted any such thing in his own computer systems.
He spent his days inside the mansion walls, in planning, learning, and discovering things which Clark knew nothing about. He spent his nights focused on the things without: checking the state of the world, and his many little projects within it.
He spent his few hours with Clark most wisely, tracking Clark's thoughts, acts, and state of being.
He asked more questions than he gave him orders, or modified those already given.
He sometimes told Clark to sleep when he needed it, and Clark would stay.
He would sometimes whisper dreams in Clark's ear.
Lex was slowly learning the limits of his control over Clark.
There didn't seem to be any.
Lex had been careful in his orders, but grown even more careful as time progressed.
Once, he had said something thoughtless.
Once.
He'd retracted it immediately.
He dreaded that he'd tie Clark up in knots, one day, caught between two conflicting orders while Lex was away all unawares, and so he'd started to keep detailed records of what he'd said, and when, and Clark's reactions.
He'd immediately started to see patterns in Clark's thoughts and actions, the results of even the slightest changes to orders.
There was an undercurrent of an unvoiced mental component to every command verbalized.
Lex hadn't been about to make changes to Clark's psyche itself -- certainly nothing that he could not undo if the need arose, and he could not undo what he did not know was taking place -- but it seemed that he'd had an unforseen impact, regardless.
Of course, he'd needed to extensively test such a thing.
It had been fairly simple, actually.
Lex had had Clark list off everything he believed he knew on a handful of highly topical matters.
Lex had then proceeded to relate to him the facts and opinions he conversely knew to be true, instead.
By the time Lex was done speaking, it had looked as though thinking through that newly-received knowledge was nearly causing Clark mental pain.
Clark had said that he didn't believe him.
Lex had informed him that it was the truth, and to deal with it.
And then he had watched as Clark had forcibly had to change his mind, right in front of him.
He had realized that, in a way, he had literally rewritten Clark's thought processes within his original mental framework.
Luckily, the League members shouldn't be deserving of his trust, and Clark must have been generally aware of this on some level (either this, or Jonathan's instilled paranoia ran far more deeply than Lex had expected) -- so no small loss, there.
Lex had made it a point thereafter to direct his nightly questions towards determining the pillars of Clark's mental framework -- he'd rather not cause a total mental collapse by accidentally knocking out a key support.
Not without replacing it with a suitable alternative, at least.
For the most part, though, Clark did seem relatively stable for the moment, and Lex did not want him to change too much. Lex could, and would, help him improve himself over time, of course, but not at the expense of his core personality.
After all, Clark was sane by any human standard, and Lex rather liked to keep him that way.
He was a person, and should be capable of making his own decisions in this regard.
And, of course, over time he would realize what needed to change within him, and Lex would gladly help him remove his internal inconsistencies and hypocrisies.
He would never impede anyone's desire to march towards rationality.
As Clark's self-improvement was underway, and progressing at a reasonable rate, so to did Lex's plans for humanity, and for Clark. Safety, at the expense of alien invaders, was most welcome.
(Clark, of course, was not an alien invader. He was one of them.)
(Lex had found it annoying that Clark had trouble believing this, but he would quietly, continually keep up his efforts to show him otherwise through action, not mere words. Baby steps.)
(It seemed Clark's alienness was one of his pillars, though a cracked and weak one. Lex worried about how Clark put humanity on a pedestal, without reason, as he knew emotion to be a fickle beast. Perhaps an inversion of the belief might be in order, to boost his self-esteem -- he surely needed it -- and then perhaps a leveling off. One racial image need not be considered subordinate to the other, after all.)
(Lex would have been more than happy to have worked with Clark as an equal in the past. It had been Clark who had rejected him, and forced him to seek alternative measures.)
To say that Lex had high hopes for Clark to someday be worthy of trust was a mere shadow of Lex's expectations, but it was a good first approximation of a start.
As Clark learned and grew, Lex believed that he would become capable of his trust in many things.
It was unfortunate that Clark had not been trustworthy from the start, or at any point. He had been a self-absorbed, whiny, incurious, backstabbing little jerk, but Lex had forgiven it at fourteen, and fifteen, and sixteen. He'd forgiven his rages, and accusations, and demands up until eighteen, and wondered when he would grow up. He'd begun to turn away, unable to continue his efforts to reach out to Clark, hoping to drag him into the light where he'd been certain that Clark would flourish and grow. He'd found it too painful, and he'd been too engrossed in the problem of the Kryptonian menace to spend his time incautiously.
When Clark had turned twenty-one, and shown no signs of maturity or willingness to have any sort of adult conversation with him about the realities of life on a planet being threatened with extinction from other alien species, Lex had given up.
Lex had regretted the decision, but only insofar that Clark had not let him in. Lex had done all he could.
And now, Lex was doing all he could. His very best, for Clark, and for the world. They both were.
(Admittedly, it was much easier, now that Lex knew what was going on and Clark was now incapable of lying to him.)
Lex may have had to become a monster, discarding or denying much of his morality as the price to pay for safety for the rest of his race, but he was not an unkind one. He could still choose. He was not required to take the easy way out. He did not have to enjoy dealing out death. He felt no need to force Clark to do things that would utterly break him.
These things, that which he knew were not necessary -- why do them?
So he didn't.
(For some reason, this seemed to make Clark nervous.)
Yes, Lex would forever and always be a monster, for what he had done before. (Clark knew this.) This did not, however, preclude him from acting as if he were still a man, no more than being of a different species precluded Clark from experiencing human emotion or feeling human empathy and pain.
In saving Clark, he no longer had to damn himself.
(Clark seemed incapable of understanding this. Lex would have to work with him on this.)
Lex was not worthy of being saved in return; Lex knew this. --In fact, this would be not only futile, but dangerous, as sometimes a monster can be fought with only another monster.
(This had been something else he had thought he would have to dissuade Clark of. Perhaps it might become a problem again in the future; in the past, it had been predominant in their interactions; at present, it luckily seemed not of great concern. Lex was enjoying the short peace accompanying this quite thoroughly.)
Of course, his being a monster now did not mean that he was no longer capable of enacting useful measures. Being a monster, he knew how other monsters fought. Having once been a man, he knew how men thought. He could reconcile the two. He could be great, without being terrible.
In turn, Clark could be good enough for the both of them.
He would be strong. He would not succumb to darkness, because Clark needed him. The rest of humanity needed them both, to defend them against the coming dark times.
He would be ready. He, and Clark. Lex would make sure of that.
Lex, and Clark, would be the heroes of legends unsung.
Lex liked it that way.
~*~*~*~*~*~
AN2: Next in the series is here.
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark, Lex
Rating: R (for content / mindcontrol)
Spoilers: through the end of season 7
Word count: 4900+
Summary: Lex isn't sorry the Orb worked. He's only sorry that it was necessary.
Warnings: Un-beta'd. Darkfic-ish. Mindcontrol.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Comments: Yes, please! :)
Author's Note: And here we have a "benevolent Lex", all sad and sorrowful that the use of the Orb was a necessary act on his part.
This one didn't turn out quite as tight as the first, so, yeah. Sorry about that. (Maybe I'll come back and thoroughly edit it sometime.)
First in the series ("Master") is here on LJ and here on AO3.
Also posted to AO3 here.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex hadn't wanted to do it. Clark was like a brother to him. Lex loved Clark like a brother.
That was why he'd had to do it. It was necessary. It was the way of things; it was how it had to be.
Clark wasn't strong enough on his own. Clark didn't have control. Clark needed help.
Lex would give it to him.
(Help? Or control?)
--Both.
Clark had lost his powers at the start. Lex hadn't been sure why, exactly -- that shouldn't have happened.
He'd only determined later -- much later, after many, many talks with Clark -- that it must have been the meddling of the Jor-El AI in the Fortress.
After all, if Clark couldn't hear him, Lex couldn't control him.
(He'd forbidden Clark to do anything that would prevent him from hearing Lex.)
(Not without orders to the contrary.)
Jor-El-the-AI had taken (stolen?) Clark's powers -- perhaps thinking that this might also afford Clark some extra measure of protection, that perhaps Lex might not want him if Clark was only as useful as any baseline-human ever was; perhaps not, as the AI's programming was still inscrutible to Lex, though he had no doubt that he'd decipher its inner workings eventually. It had then collapsed the Fortress, so that Lex could not immediately reverse the procedure -- the Orb had, in essence, given him root level access to the Library contained therein, and anything controlled by the Fortress at the time he'd used the Orb on it (...including Clark at some level -- the thought of which still made Lex shudder).
Not satisfied with that, the AI had then whipped up a snowstorm that had spanned nearly the entirety of the northern polar hemisphere, and then teleported Lex hundreds of miles away, just for good measure. With the wind the storm had produced, Clark couldn't have heard a single word from Lex if he'd been standing right next to him with human-sensitivity hearing; Kryptonian hearing wouldn't have allowed Clark to hear Lex from where he'd been sent even if he'd still had his powers at the time.
(Lex would have considered it overkill ...if it had actually worked.)
The AI had been desperate.
(The AI wasn't stupid.)
The AI wasn't much of anything, now. Lex would have purged it completely, but its roots went too deep. It also had information wrapped up in it that was not duplicated elsewhere in the Library archives, which Lex thought might be useful to extract at some point before its eventual removal. Instead, he severed its control access to the vast majority of the Crystal Fortress' systems. Only Lex had full access to those systems now.
Lex had barely managed to survive the underkill the Fortress had directed his way... but at a price.
He'd been horribly frostbitten, and barely managed to make it back to society. He'd let himself wallow in pain and misery for a month, thinking that he'd lost Clark, because there had been no sign of him in the aftermath. Lex had known even then that Clark had lost his powers, because as Lex had held him during the Fortress collapse, one of the larger falling crystals had shattered nearby, and a single flying shard had cut across Clark's cheek.
Lex hadn't been much surprised that Clark's blood ran as red as any human being's. They weren't all that different, after all.
Lex had been surprised to find that Clark had survived the storm somehow, unscathed. (Nearly right under his nose, no less -- working under a trader with whom Lex's kitchen procurement staff had had ties.)
His cheek had healed. He'd somehow managed to survive without frostbite.
(Lex had sworn that story about the fisherman finding him and selling him into slavery was bullshit. Lex knew how far they'd been from the coast, and he knew about the footprint at the old site of the Fortress.)
Clark had then died and been saved. He'd had his powers returned.
Lex had been cursing him, calling his name, as he had watched the security feed from the Blackcreek facility. He'd watched helplessly as Green Arrow shot out his heart. He'd screamed and cried.
Lex had told him he had had no reason to be there. Told him how he should be here, not there, come here, damnit--
And then he had.
Lex had learned about Kryptonian 'superhearing'.
Lex had learned about Martians, and the 'fisherman', and the time Clark had spent in captivity.
Lex had learned about life after death.
Lex had learned a great many things.
Lex had demanded help, recompense, and Clark's face had twisted up, as his insides must have.
He hadn't said no.
He hadn't been able to.
Lex wasn't sure if he'd ever know if Clark had done it because he'd wanted to, or because Lex had wanted him to.
A single piece of knowledge, forever lost to him -- it made Lex maudlin when he was deep in his cups. (He indulged himself so rarely these days.)
Clark had wanted to leave, when he'd first come when Lex had called. He'd been scared -- and rightly so, if their positions had been reversed.
Lex had said no.
Clark had stayed.
Lex had gotten what he needed from him at the time -- his blood, for the healing serum -- and told him that was all he needed.
For now.
He'd told Clark that he could leave... but--
And then Lex had given him his first Rules.
1) No more lying (to Lex -- he could and would lie to others as needed, when and if Lex directed him to do so, or to otherwise comply with Lex's orders).
2) No more working against him. (Only actions that might be perceived as meddlesome would be allowed, and only when they furthered Lex's own purposes. This encompassed 'no murdering Lex in his sleep,' or any one of a number of similar multitudinous actions, which Lex had thought it best not to have to spell out explicitly, lest he create some loophole. This also encompassed all various and sundry elaborate forms of suicide on Clark's part, as Lex had made it clear that Clark was an integral part of his plans.)
3) No actions or inaction that would prevent Clark from hearing Lex (not without explicit orders to the contrary, on a case-to-case basis). (Lex wasn't about to let Clark slip his leash in such a gross manner. After all, what was the point of having control over Clark if he couldn't actually exert it? It followed from this that Clark was under no circumstances to tell anyone of Lex's current whereabouts or state of health.)
Lex hadn't been stupid or suicidal, even subject to an ungodly level of pain that no amount morphine could much ease. He'd begun laying false trails and traps for anyone searching for him the moment he'd been conscious and aware enough to do so.
He'd always kept backups of all his research projects in the sublevel basements under the mansion. Down below, he had built up defenses far more capable than those of a mere castle under siege.
It was to those dark, secret rooms to which he had retreated to recuperate, and it was there that he talked Clark through the process of recreating, and then injecting him with, small quantities of the RL65 serum.
It was a lengthy process, and Clark inexperienced in such matters of science and chemistry.
Lex was patient.
Despite the pain, or perhaps in spite of it, Lex could be patient.
Patience was not always only its own reward. Lex was now whole once more (and without having suffered the worst of the debilitating aspects of the drug: the transient mental instability or the sense-overwhelming rage).
Lex had time now.
Lex had time and space to work within, now.
He'd always found those two quantities to be at a premium, but he came to find in the weeks and months ahead that he'd never fully appreciated what that might mean -- what a man could do, when given the abilty to think and plan, to do what was necessary.
Money was king when it came to worldly power that was visible to all, but with time and the space to work within sans interference from outside parties... all else came naturally.
Lex had made many decisions that first day, when Clark had come when he called. Even now, well after the fact, no longer wracked with debilitating pain, he saw those decisions to be as sound, meet, and right, as good as when he'd first made them.
Lex had decided that Clark should keep up appearances.
This had many tenets.
Lex didn't want anyone to know of anything to do with him from the collapse of the Fortress onwards -- this granted Lex the time and space to work without interference, which had proved invaluable, and still did. At first, he'd merely thought it a nice change from the status quo of usual gross visibility, but while it was no longer essential, he'd come to find he rather liked it, and now he was loathe to give it up without a very pressing reason.
It was rather easy to put his plans into motion when no-one realized that there was anything to defend against, or anyone to look for. It almost felt like cheating, but Lex didn't much mind. A level playing field was for the weak-minded; Lex would happily obtain any advantage he could get, and leave the decision upon whether eventual deployment would ever be necessary for later.
Lex wanted Clark to keep it to himself that the Orb had worked.
This was done for similar reasoning.
This also, however, had a marked consequence, which dovetailed nicely with another decision Lex had made:
Lex had decided to be as hands-off with Clark as possible.
After all, it wasn't Clark's fault that he'd been born Kryptonian.
It also wasn't Clark's fault that humanity faced many threats, both without and within.
Clark was a tool that Lex could use. Lex was not about to give him up, or over to others.
Lex neither needed, nor wanted, oversight for this. He knew Clark best. He was responsible for himself, his actions, and his life -- he had proven himself capable of being responsible for the lives of others many times over; he had been trained from birth to be.
(And, quite frankly, he trusted no-one other than himself to have both Clark's and humanity's best interests in mind. Power corrupted, after all. And absolute power...)
Clark was meant to rule humanity.
(Lex had heard it from his own lips, directly quoted from the Jor-El AI.)
(The news had not surprised him.)
Lex was not about to let that happen. Humanity should steer its own future; Lex had to take it back for them.
Lex was, and would be, Clark's liege-lord. Clark would be his subject. This would restore the power balance.
Lex had only ever really needed one loyal subject.
And now he had one.
Lex would be bound to Clark, as much as Clark was bound to him, in doing so. A liege-lord tended to have more responsibility to their subjects than they to him, simply because there were more of them. Protection, succor, all things from above, to those below. In return, one received loyalty, respect, and obedience in all things from those under their lord's protection.
This was pleasing to him.
This was the way it should be.
Clark should have come to him. So much could have been averted.
But he had not had Clark's trust, and so there had been tragedy, on a lesser, then grander scale.
This would not happen again.
Lex would command him, and he would obey. He would be truthful in all things, and put his trust in Lex, and someday he would regain Lex's trust in turn.
This was also meet, right, and good -- that Clark would be given a second chance. Lex had never granted anyone who had betrayed him such a boon; Clark would be the first. In many ways, Lex felt he deserved it; Lex had been given so many second chances himself, after all -- why begrudge Clark the same? After all, Clark was his, to do with as he saw fit. This was what Lex thought to be the best arrangement. It would suffice.
He would be a kind, but strict, ruler of this one man. Such generosity was required of great men, and Lex saw no reason for pettiness in this matter.
(Lex knew he spoke of medieval Europe, and not ancient Rome, when making such allusions. However, Lex did not mean to conquer and rule as Alexander of Macedonia had done so long ago, and thought that using a very militaristic society as a blueprint would send the wrong message to Clark. Medieval England, on the other hand, was known for its knights and chivalry.)
(Frankly, Lex felt that a little chivalric concern from Clark would be a nice change of pace, given the usual sort of interaction they'd had in the past.)
With Clark under Lex's control, it didn't matter what control Clark could exert over the rest of humanity -- Lex's interests overrode Clark's; Lex could make certain that humanity would be in control, and remain so.
Lex planned on living forever.
Clark would live forever, too.
Forever was as long as humanity existed.
Lex would see to it that the threats from without would not, could not destroy humanity. The threats from within... well, Lex did not see his race as needing coddling. They would either fix their own messes, or die trying. Either was acceptable to him.
After all, Lex did not imagine to set himself up as safeguarding humanity in such a manner -- what if one sort of change or another took the form of humanity evolving beyond itself? Lex wasn't about to stop something like that, but he wasnt entirely sure that he would recognize the signs, if and when they came.
Lex did not believe in non-interference, but he did believe in as little interference as possible.
It wasn't Clark's fault that he could be the method or the means by which humanity could be ground under the universe's heel.
That was no reason to justify twisting Clark into something that was only, merely a tool that Lex could use.
Lex would restrict Clark, but only so far. He did not want a cold, unfeeling automaton.
Lex did not want a cold, unfeeling Kryptonian.
True, normal -- and thus rational and (presumably) sane -- Kryptonians, it seemed, had no capacity for human emotion and no impetus to lie.
Clark was capable of human emotion and lied frequently and compulsively.
Ergo, Clark was insane.
It was all right. Lex would take care of him.
Lex didn't begrudge Clark his insanity, but he did note that Zod had been rather emotional as well.
Lex could not help but draw parallels between them.
This was why Clark would always, always, always need to be watched.
Because there was always the threat of Clark's insanity -- his human-like sanity -- becoming even more unbalanced, tipping him over into behaviors that were not conducive to the survival of humanity.
Lex might, after much study, be able to help Clark in this -- to help him find a sane level ground of alien-insanity was a long-term goal years in the making, but Lex was thoroughly invested: he was 'in it for the long haul'.
Lex hoped that, someday, all those restrictions he had to enforce would become unnecessary, and Clark would no longer need those mental chains. Someday, Clark would simply never want to do such things; they would become distasteful, and an easily-discarded option.
(What need for chains, when the jailed restricted themselves of their own free will? Was such willingness not what allowed the wolves to walk freely among the sheep, and left the sheepdogs with no need to intervene? Was this not what humanity named 'reform'?)
For this reason, Lex called Clark to him once daily. He wanted as little disruption to Clark's life as possible, so it was only the once, and only inbetween the twilight hours after when he went out on his 'patrols' -- Lex would not begrudge him his messianic foibles at present, as allowing him to act on such tendencies in a controlled manner seemed to help calm him, mind, body, and soul -- and before his duties at the Daily Planet for the day.
It had become a ritual of sorts, begun from the first day of the rest of their lives. Lex would call him at the given time. Clark would come. Lex would ask after him -- what he had done previous. Clark would answer.
Lex would then ask after older, more esoteric knowledge -- not much, only a little at a time -- the better to digest it thoroughly.
Lex was slowly siphoning from Clark all his singular truths. He was draining him dry of every single small accumulated lie. (He excised from him every large one.) He learned, and learned, and learned.
He taught Clark to say, "I don't want to talk about this." (He did, anyway. Lex was just more gentle about drawing it out of him, as a reward.)
He taught Clark to say, "I'm not sure." (Lex then taught him new methods of thought, and how to approach learning what one does and does not know.)
He taught Clark to say, "I don't know." (And then Lex taught him how he could find out.)
('I don't know's tended not to last very long in Lex's presence.)
He restricted Clark. He did very little to prompt him to action. Power corrupts.
Knowledge is power. But abstaining oneself from using power -- from acting on it -- how then could it corrupt, when the corruption came from the use?
A lie of omission could be a terrible thing indeed; abstaining from sharing it, when an outcome hinged on the use of that knowledge, was criminal. Lex knew, however, that very few people other than himself could be bothered with the truths which Clark knew, and of the rest... Lex found them utterly untrustworthy.
The League.
The "Justice" League.
Lex knew every name.
Lex knew everything Clark knew about them.
Lex had taught Clark to draw, and then had Clark sketch for him the inner workings of the Watchtower system.
He'd had Clark supply him with passwords, data, and more.
Lex had hacked in himself, and now he knew more than Clark did himself.
Clark didn't need to know everything. That was a burden of the lord, not their subject.
Clark was his, and Clark oftentimes needed protecting from himself.
The Jor-El AI had gotten into his head. It had subverted him.
The programming was still there, though Clark had hardly knew it.
Lex had learned of it, after he'd had Clark retrieve the Crystal from Tess' LuthorCorp laboratories.
...Ah, Tess.
Poor Tess.
Lex had had to make a decision: LuthorCorp, or Clark.
The responsibility to the many, or to the one?
It had hardly been a choice at all -- no choice, really. Clark came first.
Lex's responsibility to the one was his responsibility to the many. A primary, overriding one.
Without proper control over Clark, what would LuthorCorp be, save ashes in the wind with the rest of humanity?
And so, his old duties fell to his half-sister, who could not be trusted with them, but was still more trusted than all others with whom he could have left the burden of the task.
It was saddening, but Lex had no room for regrets. It had been the correct choice. Clark's past, present, and future required Lex's full attention.
Lex needed Clark as humanly-sane as possible, and he needed him great, to become Great.
Clark had, in essence, been living in Lex's shadow, while Lex had tried to fight the battles from which Clark had run time and time again.
Lex knew now that Clark, and by extension the future of humanity, had survived by luck and a prayer on far too many occasions.
Clark needed to grow, to become more, to be able to fight his own battles, and win.
Lex knew all about winning. Lex could and would guide him in this.
Lex would remove Kal-El from existence, barring the way to Jor-El's self-fulfilling prophecy of doom, and allow Clark to soar to new heights.
(The one-time flight of Clark-as-Kal-El-the-soldier proved the insidious level of the AI's influence. How else could Clark have been unable to reproduce similar deeds, without having some psychological barriers installed in his mind? He'd first floated above his bed when he was fourteen, for god's sake, and other times since! It was only after that alien brainwashing and reprogramming that Clark had never flown again for any period of time. What furtherproof of ongoing mental meddling was required?)
Lex wrested what information he could from the Library in the Crystal -- which was quite a great deal, in fact -- all except the meddlesome, world-subjugating AI. He neither needed nor wanted any such thing in his own computer systems.
He spent his days inside the mansion walls, in planning, learning, and discovering things which Clark knew nothing about. He spent his nights focused on the things without: checking the state of the world, and his many little projects within it.
He spent his few hours with Clark most wisely, tracking Clark's thoughts, acts, and state of being.
He asked more questions than he gave him orders, or modified those already given.
He sometimes told Clark to sleep when he needed it, and Clark would stay.
He would sometimes whisper dreams in Clark's ear.
Lex was slowly learning the limits of his control over Clark.
There didn't seem to be any.
Lex had been careful in his orders, but grown even more careful as time progressed.
Once, he had said something thoughtless.
Once.
He'd retracted it immediately.
He dreaded that he'd tie Clark up in knots, one day, caught between two conflicting orders while Lex was away all unawares, and so he'd started to keep detailed records of what he'd said, and when, and Clark's reactions.
He'd immediately started to see patterns in Clark's thoughts and actions, the results of even the slightest changes to orders.
There was an undercurrent of an unvoiced mental component to every command verbalized.
Lex hadn't been about to make changes to Clark's psyche itself -- certainly nothing that he could not undo if the need arose, and he could not undo what he did not know was taking place -- but it seemed that he'd had an unforseen impact, regardless.
Of course, he'd needed to extensively test such a thing.
It had been fairly simple, actually.
Lex had had Clark list off everything he believed he knew on a handful of highly topical matters.
Lex had then proceeded to relate to him the facts and opinions he conversely knew to be true, instead.
By the time Lex was done speaking, it had looked as though thinking through that newly-received knowledge was nearly causing Clark mental pain.
Clark had said that he didn't believe him.
Lex had informed him that it was the truth, and to deal with it.
And then he had watched as Clark had forcibly had to change his mind, right in front of him.
He had realized that, in a way, he had literally rewritten Clark's thought processes within his original mental framework.
Luckily, the League members shouldn't be deserving of his trust, and Clark must have been generally aware of this on some level (either this, or Jonathan's instilled paranoia ran far more deeply than Lex had expected) -- so no small loss, there.
Lex had made it a point thereafter to direct his nightly questions towards determining the pillars of Clark's mental framework -- he'd rather not cause a total mental collapse by accidentally knocking out a key support.
Not without replacing it with a suitable alternative, at least.
For the most part, though, Clark did seem relatively stable for the moment, and Lex did not want him to change too much. Lex could, and would, help him improve himself over time, of course, but not at the expense of his core personality.
After all, Clark was sane by any human standard, and Lex rather liked to keep him that way.
He was a person, and should be capable of making his own decisions in this regard.
And, of course, over time he would realize what needed to change within him, and Lex would gladly help him remove his internal inconsistencies and hypocrisies.
He would never impede anyone's desire to march towards rationality.
As Clark's self-improvement was underway, and progressing at a reasonable rate, so to did Lex's plans for humanity, and for Clark. Safety, at the expense of alien invaders, was most welcome.
(Clark, of course, was not an alien invader. He was one of them.)
(Lex had found it annoying that Clark had trouble believing this, but he would quietly, continually keep up his efforts to show him otherwise through action, not mere words. Baby steps.)
(It seemed Clark's alienness was one of his pillars, though a cracked and weak one. Lex worried about how Clark put humanity on a pedestal, without reason, as he knew emotion to be a fickle beast. Perhaps an inversion of the belief might be in order, to boost his self-esteem -- he surely needed it -- and then perhaps a leveling off. One racial image need not be considered subordinate to the other, after all.)
(Lex would have been more than happy to have worked with Clark as an equal in the past. It had been Clark who had rejected him, and forced him to seek alternative measures.)
To say that Lex had high hopes for Clark to someday be worthy of trust was a mere shadow of Lex's expectations, but it was a good first approximation of a start.
As Clark learned and grew, Lex believed that he would become capable of his trust in many things.
It was unfortunate that Clark had not been trustworthy from the start, or at any point. He had been a self-absorbed, whiny, incurious, backstabbing little jerk, but Lex had forgiven it at fourteen, and fifteen, and sixteen. He'd forgiven his rages, and accusations, and demands up until eighteen, and wondered when he would grow up. He'd begun to turn away, unable to continue his efforts to reach out to Clark, hoping to drag him into the light where he'd been certain that Clark would flourish and grow. He'd found it too painful, and he'd been too engrossed in the problem of the Kryptonian menace to spend his time incautiously.
When Clark had turned twenty-one, and shown no signs of maturity or willingness to have any sort of adult conversation with him about the realities of life on a planet being threatened with extinction from other alien species, Lex had given up.
Lex had regretted the decision, but only insofar that Clark had not let him in. Lex had done all he could.
And now, Lex was doing all he could. His very best, for Clark, and for the world. They both were.
(Admittedly, it was much easier, now that Lex knew what was going on and Clark was now incapable of lying to him.)
Lex may have had to become a monster, discarding or denying much of his morality as the price to pay for safety for the rest of his race, but he was not an unkind one. He could still choose. He was not required to take the easy way out. He did not have to enjoy dealing out death. He felt no need to force Clark to do things that would utterly break him.
These things, that which he knew were not necessary -- why do them?
So he didn't.
(For some reason, this seemed to make Clark nervous.)
Yes, Lex would forever and always be a monster, for what he had done before. (Clark knew this.) This did not, however, preclude him from acting as if he were still a man, no more than being of a different species precluded Clark from experiencing human emotion or feeling human empathy and pain.
In saving Clark, he no longer had to damn himself.
(Clark seemed incapable of understanding this. Lex would have to work with him on this.)
Lex was not worthy of being saved in return; Lex knew this. --In fact, this would be not only futile, but dangerous, as sometimes a monster can be fought with only another monster.
(This had been something else he had thought he would have to dissuade Clark of. Perhaps it might become a problem again in the future; in the past, it had been predominant in their interactions; at present, it luckily seemed not of great concern. Lex was enjoying the short peace accompanying this quite thoroughly.)
Of course, his being a monster now did not mean that he was no longer capable of enacting useful measures. Being a monster, he knew how other monsters fought. Having once been a man, he knew how men thought. He could reconcile the two. He could be great, without being terrible.
In turn, Clark could be good enough for the both of them.
He would be strong. He would not succumb to darkness, because Clark needed him. The rest of humanity needed them both, to defend them against the coming dark times.
He would be ready. He, and Clark. Lex would make sure of that.
Lex, and Clark, would be the heroes of legends unsung.
Lex liked it that way.
~*~*~*~*~*~
AN2: Next in the series is here.