Fic: (Things Fall Apart and) We All Fall Down (complete)
Title: (Things Fall Apart and) We All Fall Down
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark, Lex
Rating: PG
Spoilers: up through season 7 through 7x16; starts diverging about halfway through season 7's "Descent"
Word count: 4500+
Summary: Lex may have made the wrong choice, proving himself a little bit insane.
Warnings: Un-beta'd.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Comments: Yes, please! :)
Author's Note: Kind of a riff off of an idea that poked me in the brain after writing Part 3 of "...Clark is Actually Ok With This, Thanks". Not really related in any way, shape, or form.
Also posted to AO3 here.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex stared down Lionel over the barrel of a gun.
He had the key, he had everything he'd ever needed from the man.
...Well, that wasn't quite true.
But he had what he (thought) he (wanted) needed from him, and when he looked at the old fool, he felt almost pity.
His finger tensed on the trigger...
...and then relaxed...
...because did he really need to shoot the man? Lionel had no power over him, now.
He backed up a step, two, gun still at the ready, then shot out the window.
He watched Lionel cringe and beg, and he just...
-- ...simply... --
...turned and walked out of the office, long strides. Because he could. Because he didn't (want) need to.
He should have known better than to turn his back on an enemy, even one as seemingly toothless and pathetic as Lionel.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex angrily stalked out of his office in the Daily Planet, going down, down, down thirty floors and then one more.
He didn't bother to accost his father again -- the keychain was empty, he'd never tell his own son -- and he never would have let it leave his person unless he thought himself in grave danger of dying.
Even Lex hadn't known whether he'd pull the trigger or not when he confronted Lionel in that fortieth floor office.
Not until he hadn't.
As Lex refused to believe that his father knew him better than he himself did, when he hit sea level he started rummaging through Chloe's desk, despite her protests.
When he found the key, he ignored her protests of innocence and ignorance -- how could she claim to be either of those things, (associating) working with Lionel for the second time, now? -- as he folded it into a fist and clutched it to his chest.
He closed his eyes and shivered for a moment. He finally had what he (needed) wanted.
Then he head the unmistakable sound of the click of a hammer pulling back on a gun.
He opened his eyes and turned slowly.
Chloe was standing off to the side, looking a little shocked.
-- turn, turn --
Lionel was standing in front of him with a gun pointed at his chest.
Again, Lex stared down Lionel over the barrel of a gun.
...Frankly, he preferred it pointed the other way around.
"Give me the key," Lionel demanded evenly.
"Are you going to shoot me?" Lex asked with a small, growing smile. This was so macabre.
"Give me the key, son!" Lionel repeated even more forcefully, straightening his gun arm.
But Lionel wasn't holding out his palm for anything, just keeping the gun trained on him, which meant...
"Which one, dad?" he asked quietly, all mock innocence.
He saw the flash of greed in Lionel's eyes, and he no longer felt like smiling.
"These aren't for you," he told Lionel.
"It has always been mine," Lionel told him. "Give it to me now."
"Or what?" Lex laughed. "You'll shoot me and take it?!"
"Lionel!" Chloe shouted. "Don't!"
Lionel fired.
Lex felt a hit to his chest.
He flew backwards, fell, and his head exploded in pain.
Darkness.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex came to on the floor, blearily opening his eyes and trying to focus. He blinked away bright and dark spots in his vision.
He slowly, awkwardly levered himself up on an elbow and touched the back of his head. His fingers came away bloody.
He glanced to the side and saw the bloody smear down the wood, along the side of the desk behind him.
He determined that he must have smashed the back of his head against the side of the desk behind him.
He wasn't having too much difficulty breathing and only felt a vague overall ache right at his sternum, which was odd for having been shot in the chest.
-- ...shouldn't it hurt more? dying usually did... --
He started to check himself over with his left hand, then realized that getting additional blood on his shirt probably wasn't a good idea, would make it harder to find the wound, so he sat up dizzily and used his right hand instead.
...No blood.
No bullet holes, either.
He slowly began to realize that the 'ringing' in his ears and underwater roaring wasn't actually that -- it was shouting in his general vicinity.
He looked up, dazed, to see Clark shaking his father by the lapels, half-strangling him.
Lex tilted his head slightly and blinked.
The voices began to resolve a little more clearly.
Chloe was yelling at Clark to 'let Lionel go!'
He noted abstractly that his father's feet were dangling a good two, maybe three inches off of the floor.
Then he realized that if both his hands were empty, then he wasn't holding Lionel's key.
He dropped his head and glanced around.
The key was only a good foot or so away, so he just leaned forward a bit and picked it up using his left hand.
He got a little blood on it.
He poked around in his pockets for a clean white handkerchief.
He kept himself busy wiping off his fingers, wiping off the key -- ...carefully, carefully... -- thoroughly, and then with folding the white cloth into a smaller square. He leaned forward, bending over slightly, and gingerly applied it to the back of his head right-handed, bracing himself somewhat-upright with his left hand against the floor, fisted around the second key -- (Lionel's, now) his key -- still.
He was staring down at the floor, keeping gentle pressure to the wound, when (something?) someone squatted down in front of him.
He raised his head slowly and looked up into Clark's eyes.
"You ok?" he asked.
"No," Lex said, eyes narrowing. "You shoved me into a desk."
It was obvious it was him, really -- who else would do that?
"Sorry," Clark said, totally unrepentant.
"No, you aren't," Lex voiced unnecessarily -- it wasn't as if they didn't (both/all/already) know.
He let his head drop again, checked his white-now-becoming-red cloth square, grimaced, and reapplied it. Under his breath, he said, "I knew I should have shot him."
"What?" Clark said, sounding a little shocked.
Lex glanced up at him darkly with narrowed eyes. "I said, I knew I should have shot him," he enunciated loudly and clearly, motioning at Lionel with his fist.
Silence.
Lex watched Clark's eyes flick downwards to his clenched fist.
They narrowed for a moment.
There was a pause, then Clark looked back up at him.
"What's that?" he asked, not very lightly, and sounding very much like he knew exactly what it was.
"It's mine," Lex said evenly.
"No, it's--"
"--Shut up, dad," Lex loudly cut him off. He didn't take his eyes off of Clark.
Clark... oh, it almost made him laugh. Clark looked like he was considering jumping him and wresting it away from him, prying it out of his fist by overpowering force.
Idiot. It would be much easier for Clark to just slam his head into the desk again, dazing him, and grab it when his fingers automatically loosened.
Clark had never been one for strategic thinking, though.
Lex should know -- he'd tried to teach Clark chess. Thinking ahead wasn't Clark's strong suit. Clark tended to focus too much on the now, and only seemed to have an impetus to do something when being directly pressured or attacked.
"It is mine," Lex repeated.
"Do you know what it's for?" Clark asked him, squatting there, not looking the least bit uncomfortable. Just... perched there. Waiting. (...for what?)
"It's for opening a lockbox. Finding a weapon," Lex told him, as if Clark didn't already know. (...did he?)
"Do you know what the weapon does?"
"It'll let me control Kalel."
Clark sat there, watching him.
He didn't ask who or what a 'Kalel' was, or express confusion, or distress, or anything of the sort.
Lex's eyes narrowed.
After awhile, Clark finally asked him, "Do you know who Kal-El is?"
"Clark--! What--?!" Chloe shot out, shocked.
"Son, don't--" Lionel cautioned, though to whom -- Clark? himself? -- Lex couldn't tell.
He didn't take his eyes off of Clark.
He thought it through.
...granted, not very well, mind you, because he was fairly certain that he had a concussion.
The easy response was to get angry that Clark had ended up asking 'who' after all, as a 'who' generally expressed the asker's ignorance.
But that was a 'who'.
The true response was... equal measures of excitement and dread to be carefully hidden behind a blank mask, because Clark had asked 'do you know who', which generally indicated no ignorance at all on the asker's part -- and fuck if it wasn't a completely deranged time for Clark to start fessing up to knowing more than he said (lied about).
The easy answer would be 'Yes; he's an alien menace," because the two aliens from the Black Ship had been looking for a man like them, and they were aliens.
But that was a 'what'.
The true answer was: "No," he didn't know who.
"I am," said Clark.
There was a moment of dead silence.
"...I see," said Lex, even though he didn't, (not) really.
And then there was an explosion of noise from the other two, crashing in waves around them both.
After awhile, Lex finally couldn't take it and stopped staring straight into Clark's eyes by the simple expedient measure of closing his own.
He breathed out and opened his eyes as he slowly rose to his full height -- dizzy, dizzy -- but Clark remained still (crouching) below him. Clark's eyes didn't rise as he did, either.
"I think I'm going to go to the hospital now," Lex informed anyone who might care, and he slowly walked away, fist still clenching his prize, hand still holding cloth to headwound, leaving the two nattering pests buzzing away noisily in the basement of the newspaper building, about and around, Clark still crouching, unmoved and unmoving.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex had himself examined at Metropolis General, had his head bandaged to help contain the bleeding until it stopped -- head wounds bleed like a bitch on the rag, kid, avoid 'em both -- and then drove himself -- unwise, unwise, brakes could be cut, bombs could be set, bad things happened to him in cars -- away from Metropolis towards the mansion in Smallvile.
He stopped at Belle Reeve.
It was quiet in the cell where he was sitting on the low, padded cot jutting out from the wall. It was one of the newer ones with basic amenities -- bed, chair, desk, toilet and washbasin with a curtain to hide it from view -- for meteor freaks that were not quite as psychotic as the rest, or who had at least learned how to curb their baser instincts and behave from time to time.
It also had some of the more advanced features built-in -- soundproof, bulletproof, power dampeners built into the wall.
The last was important and why he was here, sitting on the cot, with the dampeners turned on to max setting.
He needed to know if he felt any different.
He didn't.
So, he probably wasn't a meteor freak, hadn't gone (completely) insane.
...He was having trouble deciding whether having not shot his father was grounds for insanity.
But he'd wanted to, so badly, at the time.
And if Clark hadn't been there...
...well, he'd be dead, but he'd have shot his father after if he'd survived long enough to do so. He'd always been one for returning a favor promptly when given.
At this point, however, he was considering premeditated murder.
...which was a little different than before. When he'd pulled the gun in LuthorCorp Towers it had been because he was (nervous, afraid) sick and tired of getting the runaround from Lionel. He'd absolutely needed (wanted) the key, and had thought it would go badly without the physical threat to back up his demands and keep Lionel in line.
The confrontation in the basement of the Daily Planet all but proved him right in that, at least.
Hence, his subsequent trip out of town -- well away from his father -- and a nice, quiet stay in a well-lit cell where no-one would bother him if he decided to rage it out (but too tired to, really).
He tilted his head back and sagged farther down against the wall, nearly slouching -- a gentleman must always exhibit good posture, young sir -- as he stared up at the ceiling lights. They didn't even hummmm softly like the usual fluorescents.
The door was shut, and it was quiet.
Dead quiet.
Dead.
He should be dead. Again.
...Was Clark really Kalel?
-- but he seems so human --
Or was this just another lie in a long line of lies, stringing back to the very first one?
-- did I really hit him with my car?--
Why was Clark helping (trying) to keep him alive, when so many others had died?
-- he saved my life again, but why? --
Did Clark have plans for him, beyond what had happened with Zod?
-- are Kalel and Zod working together? --
What did Clark -- Kalel -- want from him?
-- why all the lies, why not just tell me? --
Why did he say that he was Kalel in front of Lionel?
-- why would he trust Lionel over me?!? --
Was Clark really Kalel?
...Well, Lex knew of one way to find out.
Lex leaned forward, pushed off of his knees, and stood.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex knew he was taking a big risk, but he was going to see this through, anyway.
He drove up to the town cemetery, parked, and walked from there, the better to mask his approach. Clark had mentioned before how the engine noise sounded distinctive to him.
-- that doesn't mean he won't still hear you coming, idiot --
He was aware of the sound emanating from every piece of gravel that crunched underfoot. The screech of the barn door as he had to slide it open a few inches farther was almost unbearably loud.
-- to hell with it --
He slid the barn door entirely shut behind him, and found a chain to shove through the handles as a very, very ineffectual measure against alien strength, but it would possibly hold Lana and whoever else might be in the lit farmhouse at bay for a minute or two.
He walked across the dirt floor and up the wooden staircase, step by step.
He spied Clark before he reached the landing.
Clark was sitting on the floor in front of the couch, leaning back against it. He looked tired.
He watched Lex as he finished making his way up to the loft.
Lex slid his hands into his coat pockets and stared down at Clark intently with a narrow, focused gaze.
There was a long silence as they studied each other.
"...Did you want something?" Clark finally asked, shattering the country quiet.
A country-quiet night near farm fields with a open loft window tended to have a lot of bug noises and a few lowing cows punctuating it. So maybe it wasn't shattering so much as tromping underfoot.
"Yes," Lex said. "I think I do."
"What do you want?" Clark sounded thoroughly uncurious. Was that normal for aliens?
-- is lack of curiosity the lighter side of alien arrogance? --
"An answer to a rather simple question," Lex said. "How much of a liar are you?"
Clark scowled and stood to face him. "What?" he said, sounding angry, as if he had any right to be, after everything.
"Color me curious, and consider my interest peaked," Lex rattled off, a tossaway bit of noise to help distract the man he was facing down as he pulled his hands out of his pockets -- quick and easy motion, don't get caught up on the lining -- and held out a green-crystal meteor rock in the palm of his hand towards Clark.
Clark collapsed.
...Huh.
Clark lay softly groaning on the floor as Lex walked around the wooden coffee table towards him slowly.
Lex came to a stop about a foot from him, and just cradled the rock in his hand above him.
Clark looked like a wreck, sweating and twitching, hunched in on himself, turning a slight very unhealthy tinge of grey-green.
He hadn't collapsed immediately, like a puppet with his strings cut -- he'd managed to stay upright and try to lean away before he went down. He hadn't managed to stagger far enough away from Lex, though, to get out of the disabling zone of meteor rock radiation, though.
Lex slowly squatted down next to Clark and stared. It looked like his veins were...
He held out the rock near Clark neck and moved it closer to his head, watching the veins writhe under his skin -- wormy strings of lies, burrowed deep under, close enough to the surface that the rot could be seen, but not wholly grasped -- both starting to turn a necrotic grey.
He pulled the rock back again and Clark almost collapsed in relief -- or as near to it as he could while still... under the influence.
Clark wasn't faking this.
...This had been the sort of thing he'd expected to see with Fine, though not really in the details of it. He wondered now what he had; he couldn't remember now, not with this living imagery burned into the back of his skull, and Lana hadn't been very descriptive of the Disciples' reactions, after all.
"Does it hurt?" Lex asked unnecessarily -- of course it did, he could see that, he wasn't so completely blind, was he? -- but it was something to say, squatting there in front of Clark with the rock almost dangling from his hand.
"Yes," Clark managed to gasp out.
Lex didn't much like the way Clark was looking at him.
Clark was looking at him like his life was over.
Like Lex was going to do something horrible to him.
Lex couldn't think of anything horrible enough to warrant that sort of look from Clark, utter, pure despair and resignation, not even tempered by anger, as though that addition would be pointless.
"What happens if I move this farther away?" Lex asked, absently gesturing with the rock in his hand. At silence from Clark, he added, "Do you get better? Less ill?"
"...Yes."
"How quickly?"
"...Very."
"How far?"
"...Across ...the room." He looked like he was starting to have trouble breathing. He closed his eyes and croaked out, "I don't... I don't get much better... until it's far enough away."
Clark didn't even look hopeful. It seemed he assumed that Lex was merely gathering information.
...Well, it was true.
Lex watched Clark for awhile, then casually tossed the rock out the open loft window.
Clark jerked and gasped, his eyes flying open.
He shoved himself upright in a rush, and watching him return to his normal healthy golden-toned hue, the grey seeming to vaporize away off of and out of his skin, was like -- now you see it... now you don't -- watching a magic trick.
And then the back of Lex's head hit hard wood for the second time that night.
He saw stars for a moment, and then Clark was above him, pinning him down, hands holding arms at the wrists at his side, held down against the hard wooden planks that passed for a floor.
Clark was sweating a little again, and then started looking confused and nervous. Lex felt the start of tremors through his fingers.
"Oh, can you feel that, this close?" Lex asked him, moving his tongue carefully behind his teeth.
Clark stared down at him, then his eyes went wide and he started to arch back further, but it was too late.
Lex spat the small meteor rock -- about the size of the one in Lana's necklace, don't you think? -- out of his mouth up at Clark, grateful he hadn't accidentally swallowed it.
It flew up, hit Clark in the neck, and then got caught in his flannel shirt.
Clark fell to the side as Lex pushed the man -- alien -- up off of him and over. He straddled him and effectively reversed their roles.
He took his time carefully unbuttoning Clark's shirt as Clark weakly, spasmodically tried to slap at his hands and arms -- trying to get to the rock to get it off him, no doubt.
He got ahold of the rock and slid it down to the center of Clark's bared chest, held it there and kept it steady, cupping a palm over it.
"This stuff really isn't good for you, is it?" Lex breathed out with only half his usual focus -- think you might be bleeding again from the same wound, boy? that's not good -- as he grabbed Clark's right arm with his free hand and slammed it down against the floor.
Clark managed to get his left arm up and over his chest, and then wrap his hand around Lex's right wrist. He tried to tug Lex away, but he had no strength in his grasp or his pull.
"Lex..." Clark nearly pleaded, the fight going out of him as he let go of Lex's hand, his arm just laying there half-sprawled across his chest like he was sprawled across the loft floor.
"You don't seem quite as bad off as you used to be around Lana's necklace," Lex said, making conversation. He was more focused on noting that it seemed that there tended to be an immediate effect dependent on the amount of rock, and a corresponding amount of pain and degradation, which abruptly halted after a particular point, though.
He wondered if Clark would continually slowly get worse than he was, or whether his body could hold up against some basic small amount at some point.
...if it could, it would have to be even less than this small piece. Clark's head fell back, and his continuing small struggling movements were getting progressively weaker and weaker. They seemed more about trying to squirm away from the rock somehow than having anything to do with Lex, per se.
-- why am I still calling him Clark? he's Kalel, isn't he? --
"Do you prefer Clark or Kalel?" Lex asked.
"...W-what?" Clark stuttered, looking up at him with shocky, dull eyes.
"Do you prefer--" Lex sighed and tried again. "What is your name?"
"Clark," the alien said, sounding confused.
"Why did you say your name was Kalel?" he asked mildly, his face a mask. He had a feeling that an accusation at the possible lie at this point would be counterproductive, whereas framing it in a different manner would be...
"It's my Kryptonian name."
...more fruitful.
Wonderful. And now Lex knew that these things called themselves Kryptonians, as after wanting to recreate 'Krypton', which Zod had haphazardly informed him of via Lana's later testimony.
"Clark," he said quietly, letting the name roll around on his tongue. "Are you lying to me abut who you are?"
He'd never seen Clark looked so shocked.
"Wh--why would I lie?" he said, in complete and utter pained confusion, twisting under Lex. His eyes went little wide and he tried to draw himself back as Lex let go of his right arm and brought his hand forward. Clark didn't get very far though, not when Lex increased the pressure of his other palm at his chest. Lex slipped his fingers deep into Clark's hair and got a firm hold, and Clark flinched slightly.
"I could think of a few reasons," Lex said
"I-- I'm not..." Clark said looking really scared. "I-- who else would I...?"
"Well, you could be Zod," Lex put out there. "It seems odd that an alien conqueror would talk about himself in the third person when the other aliens never did."
Clark made a collection of strangled sounds. It took Lex a minute to realize that that had more to do with what he'd said than the meteor rock on Clark's chest.
"Fine, fine, you're Kalel," Lex granted him. After all, it looked like he was having the same type of reaction Lex himself had had when he'd admitted he'd been possessed by an alien ghost on Dark Thursday, and found himself not having been believed, either. "If I let you up, what will you do?" he then asked.
Clark stared up at him.
"Are you going to try and kill me?" Lex elaborated.
"N-no!"
Hm. Clark looked shocked and pale enough -- beyond that creeping outwards from the edges of the necrotic tissue -- that he was almost definitely telling the truth.
He was a horrid liar (horrid at lying) anyway.
"What about injuring me?" Lex pressed. "You jumped me before when I tossed it away--"
"I... won't. ...I'm sorry," Clark said quietly underneath him.
Oddly enough, Clark didn't look like he thought Lex would let him up at all, which is probably why Lex did.
Clark looked at him with an incredible amount of confusion as Lex slipped the small stone into the small lead-lined pouch in his pocket that had previously held the larger rock.
And then he got jumped again.
Lex gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut... and waited for a hit that never came.
Instead he felt fingers at the back of his scalp, and got a worried-looking Clark staring past his face.
"You're bleeding!" Clark said.
"I was before after you jumped me the first time tonight," Lex murmured, putting up with the -- hands-all-over, body close-too-close -- sudden proximity.
He could almost feel the body heat radiating away from the skin of Clark's bare chest.
He absolutely could feel the warmth of his fingers.
-- he could crush your skull with no more effort than it takes you to pop a grape --
Lex regulated his breathing.
Suddenly, Clark was gone.
Just--
GONE
--and back again, in a rush of hot-cold-warm air.
He had a first-aid kit with him.
Lex fought the urge to giggle.
He waited until Clark was done removing the old bandage, cleaning and redressing his head wound, before asking, "Why didn't you move that quickly before?"
Clark pulled away, sitting back on his heels, and frowned at him.
"You watched me coming up the stairs to the loft," Lex pointed out. "You could have easily jumped out the window."
Clark looked at him like the thought had never occurred to him.
Then he tuned his head and frowned at the window.
Then he turned back to Lex.
"But... it's a window," he said finally, as though jumping out of one just wasn't right somehow.
"I... guess I could have run past you, since you didn't have the meteor rock out yet?" Clark added, scratching his head absently.
"Wouldn't that be more dangerous?" Lex asked him, sliding back a little bit and leaning back against the bottom of the couch.
"Than jumping out a window?" Clark gave him a weird look.
"Aren't you supposed to be practically invulnerable?" Lex asked him.
"I-- well, yeah, but--"
Lex blinked at him.
"Clark," he asked carefully, licking his lips. "I'm going to ask you something, and it's very important that you answer me honestly, frankly, and truthfully, all right?"
Clark straightened a little and looked at him trepidatiously.
Then the young alien squared his shoulders and steeled himself before nodding, once.
"Are you afraid of heights?"
The look on Clark's face said it all.
~*~*~*~*~*~
AN2: Sequel is here.
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark, Lex
Rating: PG
Spoilers: up through season 7 through 7x16; starts diverging about halfway through season 7's "Descent"
Word count: 4500+
Summary: Lex may have made the wrong choice, proving himself a little bit insane.
Warnings: Un-beta'd.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Comments: Yes, please! :)
Author's Note: Kind of a riff off of an idea that poked me in the brain after writing Part 3 of "...Clark is Actually Ok With This, Thanks". Not really related in any way, shape, or form.
Also posted to AO3 here.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex stared down Lionel over the barrel of a gun.
He had the key, he had everything he'd ever needed from the man.
...Well, that wasn't quite true.
But he had what he (thought) he (wanted) needed from him, and when he looked at the old fool, he felt almost pity.
His finger tensed on the trigger...
...and then relaxed...
...because did he really need to shoot the man? Lionel had no power over him, now.
He backed up a step, two, gun still at the ready, then shot out the window.
He watched Lionel cringe and beg, and he just...
-- ...simply... --
...turned and walked out of the office, long strides. Because he could. Because he didn't (want) need to.
He should have known better than to turn his back on an enemy, even one as seemingly toothless and pathetic as Lionel.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex angrily stalked out of his office in the Daily Planet, going down, down, down thirty floors and then one more.
He didn't bother to accost his father again -- the keychain was empty, he'd never tell his own son -- and he never would have let it leave his person unless he thought himself in grave danger of dying.
Even Lex hadn't known whether he'd pull the trigger or not when he confronted Lionel in that fortieth floor office.
Not until he hadn't.
As Lex refused to believe that his father knew him better than he himself did, when he hit sea level he started rummaging through Chloe's desk, despite her protests.
When he found the key, he ignored her protests of innocence and ignorance -- how could she claim to be either of those things, (associating) working with Lionel for the second time, now? -- as he folded it into a fist and clutched it to his chest.
He closed his eyes and shivered for a moment. He finally had what he (needed) wanted.
Then he head the unmistakable sound of the click of a hammer pulling back on a gun.
He opened his eyes and turned slowly.
Chloe was standing off to the side, looking a little shocked.
-- turn, turn --
Lionel was standing in front of him with a gun pointed at his chest.
Again, Lex stared down Lionel over the barrel of a gun.
...Frankly, he preferred it pointed the other way around.
"Give me the key," Lionel demanded evenly.
"Are you going to shoot me?" Lex asked with a small, growing smile. This was so macabre.
"Give me the key, son!" Lionel repeated even more forcefully, straightening his gun arm.
But Lionel wasn't holding out his palm for anything, just keeping the gun trained on him, which meant...
"Which one, dad?" he asked quietly, all mock innocence.
He saw the flash of greed in Lionel's eyes, and he no longer felt like smiling.
"These aren't for you," he told Lionel.
"It has always been mine," Lionel told him. "Give it to me now."
"Or what?" Lex laughed. "You'll shoot me and take it?!"
"Lionel!" Chloe shouted. "Don't!"
Lionel fired.
Lex felt a hit to his chest.
He flew backwards, fell, and his head exploded in pain.
Darkness.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex came to on the floor, blearily opening his eyes and trying to focus. He blinked away bright and dark spots in his vision.
He slowly, awkwardly levered himself up on an elbow and touched the back of his head. His fingers came away bloody.
He glanced to the side and saw the bloody smear down the wood, along the side of the desk behind him.
He determined that he must have smashed the back of his head against the side of the desk behind him.
He wasn't having too much difficulty breathing and only felt a vague overall ache right at his sternum, which was odd for having been shot in the chest.
-- ...shouldn't it hurt more? dying usually did... --
He started to check himself over with his left hand, then realized that getting additional blood on his shirt probably wasn't a good idea, would make it harder to find the wound, so he sat up dizzily and used his right hand instead.
...No blood.
No bullet holes, either.
He slowly began to realize that the 'ringing' in his ears and underwater roaring wasn't actually that -- it was shouting in his general vicinity.
He looked up, dazed, to see Clark shaking his father by the lapels, half-strangling him.
Lex tilted his head slightly and blinked.
The voices began to resolve a little more clearly.
Chloe was yelling at Clark to 'let Lionel go!'
He noted abstractly that his father's feet were dangling a good two, maybe three inches off of the floor.
Then he realized that if both his hands were empty, then he wasn't holding Lionel's key.
He dropped his head and glanced around.
The key was only a good foot or so away, so he just leaned forward a bit and picked it up using his left hand.
He got a little blood on it.
He poked around in his pockets for a clean white handkerchief.
He kept himself busy wiping off his fingers, wiping off the key -- ...carefully, carefully... -- thoroughly, and then with folding the white cloth into a smaller square. He leaned forward, bending over slightly, and gingerly applied it to the back of his head right-handed, bracing himself somewhat-upright with his left hand against the floor, fisted around the second key -- (Lionel's, now) his key -- still.
He was staring down at the floor, keeping gentle pressure to the wound, when (something?) someone squatted down in front of him.
He raised his head slowly and looked up into Clark's eyes.
"You ok?" he asked.
"No," Lex said, eyes narrowing. "You shoved me into a desk."
It was obvious it was him, really -- who else would do that?
"Sorry," Clark said, totally unrepentant.
"No, you aren't," Lex voiced unnecessarily -- it wasn't as if they didn't (both/all/already) know.
He let his head drop again, checked his white-now-becoming-red cloth square, grimaced, and reapplied it. Under his breath, he said, "I knew I should have shot him."
"What?" Clark said, sounding a little shocked.
Lex glanced up at him darkly with narrowed eyes. "I said, I knew I should have shot him," he enunciated loudly and clearly, motioning at Lionel with his fist.
Silence.
Lex watched Clark's eyes flick downwards to his clenched fist.
They narrowed for a moment.
There was a pause, then Clark looked back up at him.
"What's that?" he asked, not very lightly, and sounding very much like he knew exactly what it was.
"It's mine," Lex said evenly.
"No, it's--"
"--Shut up, dad," Lex loudly cut him off. He didn't take his eyes off of Clark.
Clark... oh, it almost made him laugh. Clark looked like he was considering jumping him and wresting it away from him, prying it out of his fist by overpowering force.
Idiot. It would be much easier for Clark to just slam his head into the desk again, dazing him, and grab it when his fingers automatically loosened.
Clark had never been one for strategic thinking, though.
Lex should know -- he'd tried to teach Clark chess. Thinking ahead wasn't Clark's strong suit. Clark tended to focus too much on the now, and only seemed to have an impetus to do something when being directly pressured or attacked.
"It is mine," Lex repeated.
"Do you know what it's for?" Clark asked him, squatting there, not looking the least bit uncomfortable. Just... perched there. Waiting. (...for what?)
"It's for opening a lockbox. Finding a weapon," Lex told him, as if Clark didn't already know. (...did he?)
"Do you know what the weapon does?"
"It'll let me control Kalel."
Clark sat there, watching him.
He didn't ask who or what a 'Kalel' was, or express confusion, or distress, or anything of the sort.
Lex's eyes narrowed.
After awhile, Clark finally asked him, "Do you know who Kal-El is?"
"Clark--! What--?!" Chloe shot out, shocked.
"Son, don't--" Lionel cautioned, though to whom -- Clark? himself? -- Lex couldn't tell.
He didn't take his eyes off of Clark.
He thought it through.
...granted, not very well, mind you, because he was fairly certain that he had a concussion.
The easy response was to get angry that Clark had ended up asking 'who' after all, as a 'who' generally expressed the asker's ignorance.
But that was a 'who'.
The true response was... equal measures of excitement and dread to be carefully hidden behind a blank mask, because Clark had asked 'do you know who', which generally indicated no ignorance at all on the asker's part -- and fuck if it wasn't a completely deranged time for Clark to start fessing up to knowing more than he said (lied about).
The easy answer would be 'Yes; he's an alien menace," because the two aliens from the Black Ship had been looking for a man like them, and they were aliens.
But that was a 'what'.
The true answer was: "No," he didn't know who.
"I am," said Clark.
There was a moment of dead silence.
"...I see," said Lex, even though he didn't, (not) really.
And then there was an explosion of noise from the other two, crashing in waves around them both.
After awhile, Lex finally couldn't take it and stopped staring straight into Clark's eyes by the simple expedient measure of closing his own.
He breathed out and opened his eyes as he slowly rose to his full height -- dizzy, dizzy -- but Clark remained still (crouching) below him. Clark's eyes didn't rise as he did, either.
"I think I'm going to go to the hospital now," Lex informed anyone who might care, and he slowly walked away, fist still clenching his prize, hand still holding cloth to headwound, leaving the two nattering pests buzzing away noisily in the basement of the newspaper building, about and around, Clark still crouching, unmoved and unmoving.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex had himself examined at Metropolis General, had his head bandaged to help contain the bleeding until it stopped -- head wounds bleed like a bitch on the rag, kid, avoid 'em both -- and then drove himself -- unwise, unwise, brakes could be cut, bombs could be set, bad things happened to him in cars -- away from Metropolis towards the mansion in Smallvile.
He stopped at Belle Reeve.
It was quiet in the cell where he was sitting on the low, padded cot jutting out from the wall. It was one of the newer ones with basic amenities -- bed, chair, desk, toilet and washbasin with a curtain to hide it from view -- for meteor freaks that were not quite as psychotic as the rest, or who had at least learned how to curb their baser instincts and behave from time to time.
It also had some of the more advanced features built-in -- soundproof, bulletproof, power dampeners built into the wall.
The last was important and why he was here, sitting on the cot, with the dampeners turned on to max setting.
He needed to know if he felt any different.
He didn't.
So, he probably wasn't a meteor freak, hadn't gone (completely) insane.
...He was having trouble deciding whether having not shot his father was grounds for insanity.
But he'd wanted to, so badly, at the time.
And if Clark hadn't been there...
...well, he'd be dead, but he'd have shot his father after if he'd survived long enough to do so. He'd always been one for returning a favor promptly when given.
At this point, however, he was considering premeditated murder.
...which was a little different than before. When he'd pulled the gun in LuthorCorp Towers it had been because he was (nervous, afraid) sick and tired of getting the runaround from Lionel. He'd absolutely needed (wanted) the key, and had thought it would go badly without the physical threat to back up his demands and keep Lionel in line.
The confrontation in the basement of the Daily Planet all but proved him right in that, at least.
Hence, his subsequent trip out of town -- well away from his father -- and a nice, quiet stay in a well-lit cell where no-one would bother him if he decided to rage it out (but too tired to, really).
He tilted his head back and sagged farther down against the wall, nearly slouching -- a gentleman must always exhibit good posture, young sir -- as he stared up at the ceiling lights. They didn't even hummmm softly like the usual fluorescents.
The door was shut, and it was quiet.
Dead quiet.
Dead.
He should be dead. Again.
...Was Clark really Kalel?
-- but he seems so human --
Or was this just another lie in a long line of lies, stringing back to the very first one?
-- did I really hit him with my car?--
Why was Clark helping (trying) to keep him alive, when so many others had died?
-- he saved my life again, but why? --
Did Clark have plans for him, beyond what had happened with Zod?
-- are Kalel and Zod working together? --
What did Clark -- Kalel -- want from him?
-- why all the lies, why not just tell me? --
Why did he say that he was Kalel in front of Lionel?
-- why would he trust Lionel over me?!? --
Was Clark really Kalel?
...Well, Lex knew of one way to find out.
Lex leaned forward, pushed off of his knees, and stood.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex knew he was taking a big risk, but he was going to see this through, anyway.
He drove up to the town cemetery, parked, and walked from there, the better to mask his approach. Clark had mentioned before how the engine noise sounded distinctive to him.
-- that doesn't mean he won't still hear you coming, idiot --
He was aware of the sound emanating from every piece of gravel that crunched underfoot. The screech of the barn door as he had to slide it open a few inches farther was almost unbearably loud.
-- to hell with it --
He slid the barn door entirely shut behind him, and found a chain to shove through the handles as a very, very ineffectual measure against alien strength, but it would possibly hold Lana and whoever else might be in the lit farmhouse at bay for a minute or two.
He walked across the dirt floor and up the wooden staircase, step by step.
He spied Clark before he reached the landing.
Clark was sitting on the floor in front of the couch, leaning back against it. He looked tired.
He watched Lex as he finished making his way up to the loft.
Lex slid his hands into his coat pockets and stared down at Clark intently with a narrow, focused gaze.
There was a long silence as they studied each other.
"...Did you want something?" Clark finally asked, shattering the country quiet.
A country-quiet night near farm fields with a open loft window tended to have a lot of bug noises and a few lowing cows punctuating it. So maybe it wasn't shattering so much as tromping underfoot.
"Yes," Lex said. "I think I do."
"What do you want?" Clark sounded thoroughly uncurious. Was that normal for aliens?
-- is lack of curiosity the lighter side of alien arrogance? --
"An answer to a rather simple question," Lex said. "How much of a liar are you?"
Clark scowled and stood to face him. "What?" he said, sounding angry, as if he had any right to be, after everything.
"Color me curious, and consider my interest peaked," Lex rattled off, a tossaway bit of noise to help distract the man he was facing down as he pulled his hands out of his pockets -- quick and easy motion, don't get caught up on the lining -- and held out a green-crystal meteor rock in the palm of his hand towards Clark.
Clark collapsed.
...Huh.
Clark lay softly groaning on the floor as Lex walked around the wooden coffee table towards him slowly.
Lex came to a stop about a foot from him, and just cradled the rock in his hand above him.
Clark looked like a wreck, sweating and twitching, hunched in on himself, turning a slight very unhealthy tinge of grey-green.
He hadn't collapsed immediately, like a puppet with his strings cut -- he'd managed to stay upright and try to lean away before he went down. He hadn't managed to stagger far enough away from Lex, though, to get out of the disabling zone of meteor rock radiation, though.
Lex slowly squatted down next to Clark and stared. It looked like his veins were...
He held out the rock near Clark neck and moved it closer to his head, watching the veins writhe under his skin -- wormy strings of lies, burrowed deep under, close enough to the surface that the rot could be seen, but not wholly grasped -- both starting to turn a necrotic grey.
He pulled the rock back again and Clark almost collapsed in relief -- or as near to it as he could while still... under the influence.
Clark wasn't faking this.
...This had been the sort of thing he'd expected to see with Fine, though not really in the details of it. He wondered now what he had; he couldn't remember now, not with this living imagery burned into the back of his skull, and Lana hadn't been very descriptive of the Disciples' reactions, after all.
"Does it hurt?" Lex asked unnecessarily -- of course it did, he could see that, he wasn't so completely blind, was he? -- but it was something to say, squatting there in front of Clark with the rock almost dangling from his hand.
"Yes," Clark managed to gasp out.
Lex didn't much like the way Clark was looking at him.
Clark was looking at him like his life was over.
Like Lex was going to do something horrible to him.
Lex couldn't think of anything horrible enough to warrant that sort of look from Clark, utter, pure despair and resignation, not even tempered by anger, as though that addition would be pointless.
"What happens if I move this farther away?" Lex asked, absently gesturing with the rock in his hand. At silence from Clark, he added, "Do you get better? Less ill?"
"...Yes."
"How quickly?"
"...Very."
"How far?"
"...Across ...the room." He looked like he was starting to have trouble breathing. He closed his eyes and croaked out, "I don't... I don't get much better... until it's far enough away."
Clark didn't even look hopeful. It seemed he assumed that Lex was merely gathering information.
...Well, it was true.
Lex watched Clark for awhile, then casually tossed the rock out the open loft window.
Clark jerked and gasped, his eyes flying open.
He shoved himself upright in a rush, and watching him return to his normal healthy golden-toned hue, the grey seeming to vaporize away off of and out of his skin, was like -- now you see it... now you don't -- watching a magic trick.
And then the back of Lex's head hit hard wood for the second time that night.
He saw stars for a moment, and then Clark was above him, pinning him down, hands holding arms at the wrists at his side, held down against the hard wooden planks that passed for a floor.
Clark was sweating a little again, and then started looking confused and nervous. Lex felt the start of tremors through his fingers.
"Oh, can you feel that, this close?" Lex asked him, moving his tongue carefully behind his teeth.
Clark stared down at him, then his eyes went wide and he started to arch back further, but it was too late.
Lex spat the small meteor rock -- about the size of the one in Lana's necklace, don't you think? -- out of his mouth up at Clark, grateful he hadn't accidentally swallowed it.
It flew up, hit Clark in the neck, and then got caught in his flannel shirt.
Clark fell to the side as Lex pushed the man -- alien -- up off of him and over. He straddled him and effectively reversed their roles.
He took his time carefully unbuttoning Clark's shirt as Clark weakly, spasmodically tried to slap at his hands and arms -- trying to get to the rock to get it off him, no doubt.
He got ahold of the rock and slid it down to the center of Clark's bared chest, held it there and kept it steady, cupping a palm over it.
"This stuff really isn't good for you, is it?" Lex breathed out with only half his usual focus -- think you might be bleeding again from the same wound, boy? that's not good -- as he grabbed Clark's right arm with his free hand and slammed it down against the floor.
Clark managed to get his left arm up and over his chest, and then wrap his hand around Lex's right wrist. He tried to tug Lex away, but he had no strength in his grasp or his pull.
"Lex..." Clark nearly pleaded, the fight going out of him as he let go of Lex's hand, his arm just laying there half-sprawled across his chest like he was sprawled across the loft floor.
"You don't seem quite as bad off as you used to be around Lana's necklace," Lex said, making conversation. He was more focused on noting that it seemed that there tended to be an immediate effect dependent on the amount of rock, and a corresponding amount of pain and degradation, which abruptly halted after a particular point, though.
He wondered if Clark would continually slowly get worse than he was, or whether his body could hold up against some basic small amount at some point.
...if it could, it would have to be even less than this small piece. Clark's head fell back, and his continuing small struggling movements were getting progressively weaker and weaker. They seemed more about trying to squirm away from the rock somehow than having anything to do with Lex, per se.
-- why am I still calling him Clark? he's Kalel, isn't he? --
"Do you prefer Clark or Kalel?" Lex asked.
"...W-what?" Clark stuttered, looking up at him with shocky, dull eyes.
"Do you prefer--" Lex sighed and tried again. "What is your name?"
"Clark," the alien said, sounding confused.
"Why did you say your name was Kalel?" he asked mildly, his face a mask. He had a feeling that an accusation at the possible lie at this point would be counterproductive, whereas framing it in a different manner would be...
"It's my Kryptonian name."
...more fruitful.
Wonderful. And now Lex knew that these things called themselves Kryptonians, as after wanting to recreate 'Krypton', which Zod had haphazardly informed him of via Lana's later testimony.
"Clark," he said quietly, letting the name roll around on his tongue. "Are you lying to me abut who you are?"
He'd never seen Clark looked so shocked.
"Wh--why would I lie?" he said, in complete and utter pained confusion, twisting under Lex. His eyes went little wide and he tried to draw himself back as Lex let go of his right arm and brought his hand forward. Clark didn't get very far though, not when Lex increased the pressure of his other palm at his chest. Lex slipped his fingers deep into Clark's hair and got a firm hold, and Clark flinched slightly.
"I could think of a few reasons," Lex said
"I-- I'm not..." Clark said looking really scared. "I-- who else would I...?"
"Well, you could be Zod," Lex put out there. "It seems odd that an alien conqueror would talk about himself in the third person when the other aliens never did."
Clark made a collection of strangled sounds. It took Lex a minute to realize that that had more to do with what he'd said than the meteor rock on Clark's chest.
"Fine, fine, you're Kalel," Lex granted him. After all, it looked like he was having the same type of reaction Lex himself had had when he'd admitted he'd been possessed by an alien ghost on Dark Thursday, and found himself not having been believed, either. "If I let you up, what will you do?" he then asked.
Clark stared up at him.
"Are you going to try and kill me?" Lex elaborated.
"N-no!"
Hm. Clark looked shocked and pale enough -- beyond that creeping outwards from the edges of the necrotic tissue -- that he was almost definitely telling the truth.
He was a horrid liar (horrid at lying) anyway.
"What about injuring me?" Lex pressed. "You jumped me before when I tossed it away--"
"I... won't. ...I'm sorry," Clark said quietly underneath him.
Oddly enough, Clark didn't look like he thought Lex would let him up at all, which is probably why Lex did.
Clark looked at him with an incredible amount of confusion as Lex slipped the small stone into the small lead-lined pouch in his pocket that had previously held the larger rock.
And then he got jumped again.
Lex gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut... and waited for a hit that never came.
Instead he felt fingers at the back of his scalp, and got a worried-looking Clark staring past his face.
"You're bleeding!" Clark said.
"I was before after you jumped me the first time tonight," Lex murmured, putting up with the -- hands-all-over, body close-too-close -- sudden proximity.
He could almost feel the body heat radiating away from the skin of Clark's bare chest.
He absolutely could feel the warmth of his fingers.
-- he could crush your skull with no more effort than it takes you to pop a grape --
Lex regulated his breathing.
Suddenly, Clark was gone.
Just--
GONE
--and back again, in a rush of hot-cold-warm air.
He had a first-aid kit with him.
Lex fought the urge to giggle.
He waited until Clark was done removing the old bandage, cleaning and redressing his head wound, before asking, "Why didn't you move that quickly before?"
Clark pulled away, sitting back on his heels, and frowned at him.
"You watched me coming up the stairs to the loft," Lex pointed out. "You could have easily jumped out the window."
Clark looked at him like the thought had never occurred to him.
Then he tuned his head and frowned at the window.
Then he turned back to Lex.
"But... it's a window," he said finally, as though jumping out of one just wasn't right somehow.
"I... guess I could have run past you, since you didn't have the meteor rock out yet?" Clark added, scratching his head absently.
"Wouldn't that be more dangerous?" Lex asked him, sliding back a little bit and leaning back against the bottom of the couch.
"Than jumping out a window?" Clark gave him a weird look.
"Aren't you supposed to be practically invulnerable?" Lex asked him.
"I-- well, yeah, but--"
Lex blinked at him.
"Clark," he asked carefully, licking his lips. "I'm going to ask you something, and it's very important that you answer me honestly, frankly, and truthfully, all right?"
Clark straightened a little and looked at him trepidatiously.
Then the young alien squared his shoulders and steeled himself before nodding, once.
"Are you afraid of heights?"
The look on Clark's face said it all.
~*~*~*~*~*~
AN2: Sequel is here.