Fic: Frankenstein's Monster
Title: Frankenstein's Monster
Author: nicnac918
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Takes place post-series, but goes AU after 8x14 Requiem, so any of that is fair game
Word count: 1737
Summary: Sometimes you wake up and realize that the coma may have been the better option.
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit
AN: This was a gift for ctbn60 for the 2014 Clexmas Holiday Gift exchange for the prompt Clark as Lex's boss, which it totally fills... technically. Guys, I am not good with following prompts.
*~*~*~*~*
Lex returned to consciousness with the thought that flying up to a remote point in the Artic, alone, to perpetrate an attack with a weapon of completely unknown qualities against an alien who, in all honesty, very likely wasn’t in any way interested in subjecting humanity to his will, probably wasn’t, in retrospect, one of his better ideas. But no, that wasn’t quite right… other memories started to filter back to him, memories of being frost-bitten and near-death, desperate plans to save himself, Tess running LuthorCorp in his absence, and… a spy camera in her eye? So clearly the suicide mission to the North Pole wasn’t one of his worst ideas either. Not exactly a comforting thought.
“Hey, he’s awake,” said a familiar voice. Frighteningly familiar, given Lex’s scattered memories. “It’s a Christmas miracle. Welcome back to the land of the living, Frankenstein.”
Lex slowly opened his eyes, half-convinced that he was going to do so into an alternate universe, maybe one where Clark had been raised as his brother. Or maybe one where Clark was gay. (Lex was aware that these were somewhat conflicting and possibly unhealthy desires, but he still thought they were better than the time Clark had gotten the idea into his head that Lex picked out his one night stands on the basis of them reminding him of his mother.) However, when he did look around, he was greeted with the much too familiar sight of a Met Gen private room, white and sterile and with various bits of equipment gently humming. The flowers on the table were a new touch, however, as was Clark sitting at his bedside and smiling at him.
One point in favor of an alternate universe, then.
“Frankenstein was the name of the doctor, not the creation he brought to life,” Lex said, partially for lack of anything better to say, and partially as a test. If this were his Clark - well, not his per se, except in certain fantasies he no longer allowed himself to have and in the occasional dream they may or may not be coming from the ghost of his dead mother - and not some alternate Clark, or Clark being controlled by an outside force, then he’d find some arbitrary reason to disagree with Lex’s factual statement.
“But Frankenstein was the doctor’s last name, and since the creation was basically his son, it was the creation’s name too,” Clark countered. It was an disagreement , but a fairly well-reasoned one, which really didn’t offer any evidence as to what was going on.
“’Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster,’” Lex quoted, then shook his head. “You know, I don’t think that’s quite what they meant. Though, I suppose I’m still the monster either way.”
“You’re not a monster, Lex” Clark said, his voice a heavy sigh as though this were a long standing argument between the two of them. Which it was, but it usually went the other way around. “You’re just a person who found himself in a bad situation and made some bad choices. There are people that could have done better in your shoes, sure, but there are also a lot of people who could have done a lot worse.”
“Who are you, and what have you done with Clark Kent?” Lex demanded, and then immediately regretted it. There was cliché, and then there was just stupid.
Clark rolled his eyes, which for once was well-deserved. “I didn’t do anything to Clark, you did when you left me the majority of your estate, including controlling shares of LuthorCorp.” Ah, right, Lex never had gotten around to changing his will, had he? Well, if anyone asked, he could just pull a Lionel and claimed he had done it on purpose to teach Clark a lesson. “And that somehow resulted in me taking over as CEO for the last two years after Tess quit to go work for Oliver… and then the Kandorians… and then my mom and her underground chess organization, or whatever… and now with us at Watchtower. Your sister’s kind of flighty.” As though that were news to anyone.
Wait a second.
“Two years? What the hell happened to me?” Lex said. Yes, he had been in bad shape, but two years? As he recalled it, the projects to restore him had been going well, aside from that little issue with Lana stealing his nanosuit. In fact, the last thing he remembered was… being blown up.
Okay, maybe two years wasn’t completely unreasonable.
There was a brief awkward moment of silence where Clark got that old look on his face, the one that meant ‘I don’t want to lie to you, but I’m not sure if I can tell you the actual truth,’ or possibly ‘I want to lie to you, but I’m having trouble coming up with something more convincing than “metal fatigue,”’ Lex had never decided which. It was almost nostalgic, if it hadn’t been so annoying. Finally, Clark seemed to decide to avoid lying at all by asking, “How are you feeling?” and thus changing the subject with all the grace of a drunken elephant.
Definitely not an alternate universe. Damn, Lex had really been pulling for a gay Clark.
“Clearheaded,” Lex answered, not entirely truthfully, since they definitely had him on something. But it was still a hell of a lot less as compared to the last time he was cognizant, for a relative definition of the term, given some of the decisions he had made at the time, of his surroundings, and he wasn’t in any pain at all anymore, so claiming clearheadness wasn’t entirely a lie either. Besides, what were a few lies between friends like them? “Now, what the hell happened me?”
Clark sighed, but didn’t try to lie or dodge the question again, which was a point in his favor (Lex was grading on the basis on past performance). “Do you remember the project you started to clone replacement body-parts for yourself?”
“Yes,” said Lex. “I started it after the… incident at the Artic.”
“Yeah, well it turns out Dr. Donovan who was running the project was actually kind of really insane. You hire way too many crazy people, by the way. Anyways, after you died he got it into his head that he could just replace all your body parts. He apparently had a lot of trouble with your heart, which is weird, since you’d think the brain would be a lot harder, but he did manage it eventually. And here you are.”
Lex closed his eyes briefly and took in a breath. “So when you called me Frankenstein, you meant that literally.”
“More or less,” Clark agreed.
Fucking fantastic. “What now then?”
“The official story is you weren’t ever actually dead, just a comatose John Doe in some little Russian hospital. I finally managed to track you down and brought you back here and had you undeclared dead. I’ve already worked it out with the lawyers and had your entire estate returned to you, minus any growth I made while you were gone and with a couple of replacement items of comparable value. Conner may have crashed a car… or five.”
“Conner?” Just who the hell was Clark letting drive his cars?
“Turns out that, in addition to your DNA, somebody gave Dr. Donovan a sample of my blood to play around with,” said Clark. Huh. Lex had done that, hadn’t he? “Despite his difficulty with a purely human heart, he had no trouble at all making an alien-human hybrid baby, and now we have a teenaged genetic love-child.”
“I’m a father?” That was… something. Not a bad thing, but he wasn’t sure it was a good thing either, not after the whole mess with Lana. Granted, it was his own fault for deciding to continue faking her pregnancy after finding out she wasn’t pregnant at all, just had gotten a false positive on a pregnancy test, but it had still been something of a roller coaster.
Clark gave a bitter sort of smile and replied, “When I called you Frankenstein, I meant that literally.” There was a moment, and then Clark’s smile softened into something more genuine. “Conner’s a really great kid. He’s really looking forward to meeting you.”
“He wants to meet me? When?” Lex asked, definitely not panicking at all.
Clark grinned, not convinced by Lex’s admittedly unconvincing show of calm. “In a few hours. The doctors expected you to wake up any time now, so he’s been stopping by every day after school.” Which meant Lex had a few hours to get used to the fact that he had been dead for two years before being revived by a madman who had clearly seen too many horror movies, and now had a teenaged son with another man, who was also an alien, and with whom Lex had never had any sort of romantic or sexual relationship with (outside of his fantasy life).
“Oh, and one other thing, before the doctors come in and chase me off so they can do their tests and whatnot,” Clark said, and Lex briefly considered the merits of attempting to strangle someone who was invulnerable. “Once you’ve gotten better I’m going to resign my position as CEO of LuthorCorp and have you reinstated in the position instead.”
“That’s not exactly how it works,” Lex said. Of course he wasn’t worried about it, making it about the only thing that he wasn’t worried about, as among the belongs Clark had just returned to him Lex had 45% of the outstanding LuthorCorp shares. That was a large enough percentage that the company would honor most any request from him, within reason.
“I know, but since between the two of us we own the majority of the company’s stock I figured we could make it happen.”
“The two of us?” Lex echoed. Since when did Clark own stock?
The look on Clark’s face was entirely too innocent for Lex’s taste. “Did I forget to mention the 3-for-1 stock split? So, after I returned your estate to you, with the same number of LuthorCorp stock you owned before you died, you now own 15% of the company, making you the second largest stockholder after me, with 40%. So, in a way, once you take up your job again, I’ll be your new boss.”
Well, fuck.