Lights and Sound (1/1)
Lights and Sounds
I don’t own Smallville, Superman, Superboy, or Supergirl. Not that I wouldn’t mind owning Kon-El…
Author: Aloysha Star, with help from Dimitri Aidan, because he has the most dry and sarcastic writing style ever.
Rating: PG-13 ish
Warnings: Misuse of genetic materiel, X-over, comic spoilers, and of course Clex.
Notes: You know, this isn’t my fault. I blame it on whoever actually thought that having Lex make a clone using himself and (an unknowing) Clark as the donors (which has to be illegal! I’m pretty sure that getting a woman pregnant while she‘s comatose is illegal…) was an acceptable *cannon* idea. I mean…WTF? It’s a total mindfuck, assuming that your mind works likes mine does. Oh well. This had the potential to be seriously Cracktastic, but I went for ‘mocking various comic points’ instead. I could list them all but I don’t exactly remember all of them (or the issues they spanned, concerned, etc), sorry.
Summary: Strangest Family reunion ever. Featuring Crazy!Luthor, Frustrated!Superman, IdentiyIssues!Kon-El, and OnlySaneOneInTheBunch!Kara. Oh, and a confused Clark and oddly intrigued Lex.
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Lex was having a really bad day. His father was stirring things up, the Talon was losing money, and Clark, who had been playing to hang out for the night, would have to go home to help his mother get ready for something or other th nezt day. He and Clark had come back from the Talon, intending to grab something to eat in the kitchen and then look through his library for something to help Clark with his Greek History project before the teen went home. What they had found was four people, all looking slightly worse for wear, sitting at the island in his kitchen.
There had been some serious confusion as one of the people, a man who looked like Lex five or ten years down the line, had stood up and introduced himself as just that: Lex from the future. Clark had been kind enough to catch him before he passed out.
Thirty minutes had passed and Lex had more or less been filled in on his rather bleak looking future for the next thirty years, resulting in the mass murder of the human race; and yes, he was very pointedly ignoring the gleam of pride in Future Lex’s eyes as that part was mentioned. Lex wasn’t sure how he felt about that mass murder thing, but he had to admit he was rather well preserved for being from a post-apocalyptic world and all. He didn’t look to be in his fifties.
Maybe it was that super immune system of his… Age-defying. Pretty damn impressive. Not that Lex believed any of this crap of course. But if he had been he wouldn’t have minded that whole not growing old thing.
“So…you’re from the future, thirty years or so, and you’ve come back to stop me from destroying humanity in a fit of childish rage.” To say that Lex was skeptical was a gross understatement. The only thing keeping him from having these people dragged away was that the older Clark had already tossed his bodyguard through a table without so much as blinking and melted his cell phone into a pile of useless plastic and wiring.
Still, the guy claiming to be an older Clark didn’t look bad, considering that he’d spent twenty-five years trying to keep Lex from blowing a bunch of random shit up. It sounded like a cry for attention to him, but he didn’t say that. However Lex really didn’t see the point in the tights, underwear on the outside, spandex, or the cape.
Lex liked the other Clark-would-be, though he apparently wasn’t a Clark-would-be he was probably the most attractive person to ever threaten him with severe bodily harm and considering how often he was threatened; the jeans and the tight black shirt really did him justice. He dressed a lot better than Clark did, which wasn’t hard but still nice.
The fact the pretty blond girl next to him was floating did kind of give a moment’s pause as well. He wasn’t sure what he thought of the mini-skirt, tiny t-shirt, and cape look, but it kind of worked on her. It was funny though, he’d always assumed Batman had a lock on the cape thing, but apparently he was wrong.
“Yeah.”
“Right. And in this future you’re Clark’s as of yet undiscovered cousin, you’re a clone, Clark is Superman, the more or less indestructible protector of humanity, and I’m an evil scientist slash evil genius slash evil business man slash evil politician slash Superman’s evil arch nemesis.”
He had more occupations than Barbie apparently and none of them had been anything except…well, evil. Not that Lex was at all aware of things dealing with Barbies because he had certainly been a GI Joe kind of boy, not a Barbie kind. He’d burned all of the pictures that might have proven otherwise and he’d dispose of anyone who tried to imply otherwise.
It wasn’t like it’d be the first time…
“Pretty much.” The girl said, eyeing him with something between curiosity and distaste, which was about par for the course with everyone he met. The only one who hadn’t looked at him that way, or with thinly veiled hate/disgust, had been Clark.
“And not only that, but I was president? And Pete Ross was my Vice-president?”
“I figured it was a surefire way to avoid being killed; Clark would never allow his friend to pick up my legacy and ruin his career like that.” The older Lex sniffed. “And I like to keep busy.”
“By destroying everyone around him.” Superman snapped, looking pretty damn cranky.
Luthor nodded agreeably. “Yes, which is why I had to take out all of humanity. After being president everyone had been exposed to me.”
“He destroys humanity?” Clark looked fairly adorable when he was confused. “Lex? Are you sure.”
“Yeah. Wipes most of them out with a few well placed bombs and then lets radiation poisoning and starvation do the rest.” The boy shook his eyes, blue eyes going dark. “It was terrible. He had us locked in his fortress and we couldn’t do anything but watch and wait. When he let us out it was impossible to do anything.”
“Huh.” Lex sat back in his chair, considering. It certainly sounded like something he’d thought about once or twice, but it usually centered on his father and Metropolis, not the world at large. Though he could see how humanity could get irksome after a while. “And then?”
“They talked it over somewhere away from ’innocent eyes and ears’,” Here Superman just shook his head, glaring at Luthor again. “And decided to come back in time to fix it. It’s pretty simple really.” The girl said, coming to rest on the ground finally. She sat down in the chair next to his Clark, smiling at him serenely. The teen just winced and drew back nervously.
“Well then…Supergirl you said it was?”
“Kara’s fine. This in Kon.”
“Kara.” He smiled at her but was rewarded with a slightly bemused blink. “If you don’t mind me asking why would I want to kill everyone?”
“Competition. You never quite manage to get into Clark’s pants-”
“What?” Clark’s voice raised a few octaves, becoming a squeak. Superman just closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Kara didn’t acknowledge it beyond a slight quirking of the lips.
“And I can only assume it has something to do with the fact he lied to you for years and years and years, plus you thought it was your destiny and that you‘d failed. That’s what you said anyway. It made you a little crazy and obsessive.”
“A little…” Superman muttered.
“And sexually frustrated.” Kon added lightly, leaning against Kara’s chair slightly. “You get married like three times and Bruce won’t sleep with you anymore after you go all evil. It’s against his morals, in spite of banging Selina Kyle.”
“He’s always been a bit of a hypocrite.” Luthor said with an uncaring wave of his hand.
“Can you believe he called us dysfunctional?” Kara rolled her eyes. “The only time he’s been functional is that world where he doesn’t really exist anymore and even then he wasn‘t really.”
“That wasn’t the only reason you know. Look at you three, you survived in an environment most species, human or otherwise, would perish in within days and there is nothing short of glowing green rocks that are pretty impossible to come by that can stop you! It was a public safety issue.”
“You destroyed the public Luthor.” Superman was wearing a long-suffering look and Lex had the feeling they’d been over this once or twice before.
Luthor shrugged. “For their safety.”
Lex arched an eyebrow, having lost the conversation at Bruce not sleeping with him anymore. He wasn’t sure he entirely believed that, but Bruce was…odd, at the best of time. He shook his head and looked at Clark who seemed to be unable to choose between horror and embarrassment. “Still this is rather unbelievable-”
“Like that locked room dedicated to Clark?” Kara asked, blue eyes wide and perfectly innocent. Clark made another noise, this one like a strangled cough, before putting a hand over his eyes.
“Err.” Lex was temporarily speechless. How the hell could she know about that? Unless someone on his staff had informed her…but they couldn’t know what was inside. That room was damn near impossible to get into without proper access codes and the key, the only copy of which was safely in Lex’s pocket. A glance at Luthor found him smirking fondly as if remembering something. “Well, for the sake of things, tell me something I don’t know.”
“He’s an alien.” Kara inclined her head at Clark, who seemed to have settled on horror. She reached over and patter his knee in what Lex assumed was to be comfort. “I think it’s a bit past trying to keep that under wraps, you know?”
Lex snorted. “I said tell me something I don’t know, not something obvious.”
Well, alien wasn’t obvious, he would have gone for meteor mutant if he’d been pressed on the manner, but alien was certainly just as reasonable…well, maybe not just as reasonable, but reasonable enough.
Luthor looked pensive for a moment then smiled slightly. “You have a fondness for billionaires and their wards, though I’d be more careful around Roy. He’s a risky lay. You‘ll never find someone quite as flexible as Dick, and-”
“You’ve been around haven’t you?” Kara asked with a raised eyebrow.
Lex shrugged. “We travel in the same circles and it ensures discreetion. Telling would make us look bad, so we don’t.”
Clark sat up abruptly, looking as if he’d had a revelation. “Why the hell did you blow up the world if you already knew what I was? That‘s the stupidest thing-”
“I didn’t blow up anything yet.” Lex pointed out with a shrug. It had probably been the principal of the matter. Lex believed in principals after all and a man had to stick by them, come hell or wiping out the entire human race. Just knowing wasn’t the same as Clark trusting him.
“And now hopefully you won’t.” Superman said, tone the sound equitant of Clark‘s ‘Pleasepleaseplease‘ look. He smiled wanly.
“Probably not, if you don’t think straying from my pre-determined path will plunge the universe into chaos and horror.”
“You’d probably like it.” Kon said blithely. Kara shoved him lightly as Superman answered.
“I doubt it. Worst case scenario it does nothing except create two separate universes, one where we fix things and one where we don’t, but I don’t think it works like that.”
Luthor shook his head. “No, I’m positive the timeline will just alter…I don’t think alternate universes work like that. Infinite possibilities but only one timeline for each, so when that timeline is altered the universe is altered, period.”
Lex decided that made as much sense as anything and nodded slowly, before asking the obvious question. “So what happens to you four?”
“We vanish as the timeline changes itself, making it so that we, as we are, never existed.” Luthor said while reaching up to rub at the back of his head, a nervous gesture Lex knew well. “Or maybe go back to the future and find things changed and get smacked with an entire new life’s worth of memories, causing severe brain hemorrhaging. Or the three of us go back, still suffer the brain hemorrhaging, and he doesn‘t exist.”
A gesture at Kon accompanied this. Kon blinked slowly then frowned. “You didn’t mention that part before.”
“We thought you’d protest.” Luthor said, smiling wickedly. “…I can’t imagine a reason for your continued existence.”
“Not again.” Kon muttered, raking a hand through his hair.
“Well there’s really no point in Lex becoming Clark’s baby daddy now, is there?” Kara said, head tilted off to the side.
“Kara!”
“My what?!”
“His what?”
Luthor laughed and Kon continued to look miserable. Apparently this wasn’t the first time he’d been told there was no reason for him to be alive. Lex understood that, he’d heard it from a great many people a great many times.
“I thought you said he was a clone.” Lex said finally, once Clark was done choking and looking scandalized. Really, it wasn’t that horrible a prospect…except that Lex had been checking him out earlier, and that was just sick and wrong. But, on that same vein of thought, this entire…intervention, as it were, was pretty wrong. Everything in Smallville was pretty wrong, as a general rule.
“A clone of myself and Superman.”
Lex twitched. “Then he isn’t really a clone anymore than you and I are, since he was created using two separate DNA strands.” And he’d thought his father was bad, that was just…harsh.
“We prefer not to go there.” Superman muttered, shooting a slightly evil look in Luthor’s direction. If the man felt he’d done something wrong it certainly wasn’t showing, since all he did was snort darkly. “It’s more…comfortable this way.”
Clark just stared then sat back in his chair with a groan. “So I grow up to be a terrible father. That’s encouraging.”
“It’s a lot more complex than that-” Superman started but Kon interrupted.
“No, he has a point. You treat Kara like she’s the end all and be all, but you just shipped me off to Smallville without a thought. You know, in that alternate future the Titans and me went to Lex was a good father…apparently. He had a statue.”
“Don’t compare me to Luthor! Letting you stay with my parents is hardly something I’d do without a thought; I did the best I could considering that I’d ‘come back from the dead’, no one believed I was who I said I was, and suddenly had half a dozen guys claiming to be, the least of which was a teenage clone I didn’t sign off on only to be told he wasn‘t my clone at all only to then find out he was half my clone.” Superman looked both sullen and annoyed. “Excuse me if I wasn’t ecstatic to find out Luthor had gone on another one of his ‘crazy benders’, stolen my DNA, combined it with his, and grown a kid with the intent of using him to kill everyone, it wasn‘t exactly something I was planning for.”
Everyone was struck silent, though Lex imagined he and Clark for different reasons than the others. Somehow he gathered Superman was the type for random emotional outbursts but, in his opinion, he seemed entitled.
He’d stolen his DNA?
Kon shuffled his feet for a moment then nodded. “Okay. You could have said that you know.”
“You stole his DNA?” Lex stared at himself, not anywhere near amused for the first time. All the other stuff he had understood, but this was just… Well, he was pretty sure that in some instances such a thing would count as rape. All instances, really, but he supposed in a legal sense it would have been fairly uncharted territory, even thirty years in the future.
Though, for the record, he did wonder how the hell he’d develop that sort of technology. Not just the successful cloning, but also the successful combining of male DNA from a human and male DNA from a non-human. Did that mean that Clark’s species was totally compatible on a genetic level with humans, or was it a donkey and horse comparison, where the offspring would end up sterile.
He was half tempted to ask but figured that’d be a touchy subject. He sincerely hoped his older counterpart would have, if nothing else, figured away around the sterility problem. It was bad enough he went around raping people of genetic material and building children and then setting them loose on others, there was no reason to make it even worse for the poor kid. Still, it was damn fascinating. He wondered if Kon would offer a blood sample and…
“I’m a prick.” Lex muttered, frowning thoughtfully.
“And you didn’t have to kill billions of people to figure it out so you‘re ahead of the curve. Congratulations.”
Lex offered Superman a sardonic smile, surprised when the man offered a genuine one in return. Then again, why not? He wasn’t psychotic yet and it wasn’t like he and Clark hadn’t gotten along at some point…that point being right now.
A look at Clark found him with his face buried in his hands. He was probably just a little bit traumatized. Lex could sympathize; if all of this wasn’t so interesting from a scientific point of view he’d probably be popping a few pills right about now and breaking out the good brandy. He’d probably do it soon anyway.
“Come on, I think we’re done here.” Superman announced. Before Lex could blink he was on the other side of the room and next to Luthor, who’d chosen to stand by himself near the fireplace. Luthor sneered at him but nodded and started towards the doors of Lex’s office. “We’ll see ourselves out, we know the way.”
Lex nodded and without realizing it reached up to rub the back of his head. He stopped halfway, fingers flexing, then put his hand down. He needed to find a new nervous habit.
Kara stood then leaned down to whisper something to Clark whose head jerked up, green eyes wide in surprise. She smiled and, with a quick kiss to his forehead, floated after Luthor and Superman. Kon shoved his hands into his pockets and with a half smile at Clark, turned to follow her. Moving with what could only be super speed (the lying bastard a part of Lex‘s brain muttered) Clark was up and crushing him in a hug. Lex could only imagine the bemused/panicked expression Kon had to be wearing, considering his relationship with Superman.
Once released Kon took a step back then more or less vanished before their eyes. When he was sure they were gone Lex got up, shut the doors, and made a beeline for the liquor cabinet.
This was entirely too ‘Back to the Future’ for his tastes, except their future selves weren’t following the set ‘never encounter your past self’ rule. But, since nothing had imploded or unraveled into nothingness he was assuming that it wasn’t a big deal beyond drastically changing the future, the very thing they’d come to do.
“We really shouldn’t let him cease to exist.” Clark said after a few long moments in which Lex was fixing himself a much-needed drink. He nearly spilled the brandy at that and turned to stare at Clark, who had sat back down and was now very much not looking in his general direction.
“Huh.” Lex walked back over, two glasses in hand. One was filled and the other only had a small amount; the second he handed to Clark who just stared. “I think even underage aliens would need a drink after that.”
At least he didn’t have to worry about liver or kidney damage. If nuking the world didn’t kill him and neither did the fallout from it he doubted his mild alcoholism would be the death of him. Score one thing in favor of knowing the future.
“So? What’re we going to do?”
“Make sure you get a better costume. Maybe black and red, but not spandex. Spandex is evil.”
“You’re evil.”
“I was…will be evil. I can only assume, with your penchant for saving me, that you’d never let such a thing occur now that you are forewarned.” Lex muttered dismissively as he finally claimed a seat on the edge of his desk. “I’m going to do some more research into genetics and the time travel theorem and figure out how all of this was even possible…it’s amazing Clark, amazing.”
“You’re geeking out on me.”
“Absolutely. And you! You‘re nearly unstoppable in the future and if we can understand early on what it is that makes you so unique I could-”
“Control me?” Clark’s tone was dark, unusually so. Lex blinked slightly, taken aback.
“Help you. I admit, the idea of one, or three, people have absolute power is scary and I could see why I‘d want to stop that, but if we work together we could do amazing things…for good, stop looking at me like that. You meet an evil version of me and all of a sudden you start looking all suspicious. Have you heard of the Titans, in Jump City? I wonder-”
“Yeah, I have, but Lex-
He stared at his drink, effectively tuning Clark out. “I don’t imagine Kon is really as powerful as you and Kara though, being half-Luthor. What was I on when I thought that would be a good idea, diluting something so powerful and-”
“Lex-”
“Just a second Clark. It doesn’t make sense, if I wanted to control him what good is my DNA in that aim, since it’s obvious there was no fraternal attachment formed? Anything I could have done could surely have been done with the use of a telepath or brainwashing even if he was full…whatever you are…what are you?”
“I…Kryptonian, I guess.”
“Right. Well, if he was full blooded he’d be of more use to me and a better match for you…unless it somehow stabilized the process or-”
He heard Clark’s annoyed sigh but wasn’t really aware of it until he could feel Clark’s annoyance in the form of a slightly awkward, but still very welcome, kiss. It was wet and warm and he could tell that Clark’s experience still hovered somewhere around ’none’. He didn’t respond for a moment, trying to find a clear place for his glass, and then reached up to bury his fingers in thick dark hair and pull him a little closer. He helped Clark even it out, slow down, and when he broke away to breathe (maybe Clark didn’t need to breathe like he did…did he need to at all?) figuring out his future self’s motivations seemed slightly less important.
“Clark…not to protest or ruin the moment, but-”
Clark blushed for a moment, green eyes darting to look at a point beyond Lex. “Kara did say that never getting into my pants was part of the reason you went evil and I figure-”
Lex held up a hand to stop him. “Sounds good to me. In order to make sure I don’t become evil it stands to reason I’ll have to get you into bed frequently and its best to start as soon as possible to…”
“Be sure no evil sneaks in.”
Clark was really brilliant sometimes.