Devil's Deal - the conclusion.
I was a bad person and wrote instead of studying. Well, I'm sure I'll regret it when the exam comes around, but I'm happy to have finished this fic now!
Title: Devil's Deal
Rating: (overall) NC-17
Pairing: Clex
Continuity: Smallville - JLU - DC, futurefic
Summary: Lex sells his soul to the devil to bring his son back from the dead.
Note: Dedicated to talitha78. Many, many thanks to averaird for being a wonderful beta!
Prequel drabbles: 10x100
Previous Parts:
Part Five: Company in Hell
Part Three: Peaceful
Part Two: Complications
Part One: The Deal
5 - Hide And Seek
Clark has the choice between the staircase and the door to his left. Since the guide is offering no advice, preferring to stand there telegraphing what seems to Clark an unbearably cocky and dubious expression with every line of the shrouded body, Clark finally turns towards the stairs, heading down. The guide follows without protest.
It's pitch black there at the bottom, like wading into an ink well, but the further Clark descends, the more it seems to him that he's walking into a completely different room, with the air cool and dry instead of the stifling stench in the mansion, and a smell like a hospital room, fear and pain and antiseptic stinging in his nose. The darkness dissolves, and the light that follows is harsh and cold, in hues of blue and green, like the sea under the Arctic ice.
Clark closes his eyes, knowing what he will find at the bottom of the stairs. Behind him, the guide's voice sounds suspicious, "Where are we going?"
Clark opens his eyes and the stairs are gone, together with the blessed dark. They're standing in an empty corridor where every surface seems to be glass or plastic or steel. There's no silence, because the room is filled with a constant hum of electricity.
"Belle Reve," Clark answers darkly to the guide's question. He doesn't want to revisit this place, and even less does he want to see Lex's memory of it. But now that he's here, it doesn't seem unlikely that this would be Lex's version of hell, and not some mythological purgatory. Unlike Clark, who has only stories to draw from, Lex has been through actual hell, through pain and fear and damnation. "It's a psychiatric facility. His father drugged him and put Lex in here when he was a young man. I'm… not really surprised if this is his version of hell."
"Why?" the guide asks after a pause and Clark isn't quite sure what the question's referring to. He heads towards the right, following his instinct. The corridor is deserted, and there are no doors anywhere.
"It's a bad place," Clark says. "They did horrible things to him here."
"And you knew about it?"
Clark wants to tell the guide to leave him alone. This is no one's business but his and Lex's and Clark wants it to stay buried in the depth of his memory. It's the past and he can't change it. Still, the guide is persistent, and Clark might yet need the help. "Yes. I tried to get him out, but it was too late."
"For what?"
Clark feels accused, and it annoys him. The guide wasn't there, doesn't know how frightened and confused Clark was, how it hurt in every fibre of Clark's body to wait and how wonderful it felt to rush in and save Lex and how terrible to fail. "They'd already erased his memory."
And other things. It startles him now how much Lex without a soul resembled Lex right after he was released from Belle Reve. Like they erased more than just Lex's memory. Overlooking the whole of their past, Clark begins to understand how long it really took for those parts of Lex to grow again, like tentative shoots of a crippled tree.
They round a corner, and suddenly, they're no longer alone. They've entered a large room full of people walking around dazedly and ranting to themselves, some of them sitting on plastic chairs or standing like hollow corpses, no life in their sunken eyes, some of them with fear stark on their nervous faces, some of them smiling in empty bliss. Not all of them wear prison scrubs, there are people in bright orange prison overalls, and even more modern grey ones, in handcuffs and straight jackets.
If anyone sees them, they're being ignored. Clark carefully steps further into the room. "Are they real?" he asks his guide in hushed tones.
The guide turns in this and that direction. "They hardly look real to me."
There's a spot of colour that catches Clark's attention. A counter, painted in gold and cheery colours, a faux Egyptian theme. A beautiful dark-haired woman with a ponytail is behind it, handing out steaming cups of tea to the patients with a false smile and soothing words. At first Clark thinks it's Helen Bryce, but then her features shift, like an optical illusion, and she becomes Victoria, Desiree, and for a small moment even Lana. Others follow, women Clark can hardly keep apart, women that Lex picked up and discarded like expensive dress-up dolls.
Another patient shuffles away with a steaming cup, and Clark sees the next person in the queue stepping forward.
He starts forward and breaks into a run. "Lex!" he calls out, but the bald figure turns away and walks off, vanishing in the crowd at a slow but steady pace. Clark dodges mental patients and prisoners, the guide hot at his heel, and he's panting by the time he reaches the counter. There's no sign of Lex.
"Tea?" a sweet voice asks. "It's good for your nerves."
Clark turns around. Lana stands there, smiling, wearing a pink headband. She's holding out a cup of tea. He takes it, too shocked to refuse. It's not her, he reminds himself. She's not real, he can do nothing for her.
But maybe she can help him. "Did you see where Lex went?"
She frowns, wrinkling her nose. "Lex?"
Clark raises the cup to his lips, but before he can drink, the guide grabs his wrist and pulls away the cup, throwing it furiously at the wall. It shatters, and the tea hisses like acid as it spills on the floor.
"Don't accept anything here! No food, no drink, no favours," the guide orders. "Everything comes at a price - don't take it if you don't know what the price is."
When Clark turns away, the woman behind the counter is Helen once more. He backs away, glad that he didn't drink. He spots another door and weaves through crowd towards it, still looking for Lex. "That was him. You see, it won't be that hard finding him," he tells the guide. "I can feel that we're close to him now."
*
Behind the door is another endlessly long hallway, and far, far ahead of them, Clark can see a tiny figure walking slowly away. He calls out, but there's no response, so he breaks into a run once more. There's a strange clicking noise as they come closer and finally Clark can see that the figure is walking with a stick, feeling his way like a blind man.
There's a dead end ahead. It's a room, the dirty concrete walls clashing with the sterile steel and glass of the asylum. There's a barred window, and in the window, a sliver of a moon, waning. Clark remembers this place, it's Lex's cell in prison at Stryker's Island, where he nearly died of cancer years ago.
The figure ahead turns. It's Lex, wearing dark shades and an untied straight jacket. He settles down slowly on the bench in the cell, like an old and hurting man, waiting for someone to come and pick him up for the very last time.
Before Clark reaches him, the corridor seals with a mirrored wall of glass. "No!" He shouts angrily. His own face stares back at him, sweaty and dishevelled. He has red blotches on his cheeks from running.
Clark pounds his fist against the glass. Damn it, he's powerless, he can't even break glass here. The red cape on his shoulders seems to mock him in the mirror. The guide stands a few steps behind him, head cocked critically to the side.
In a bout of frustrated anger, Clark rips the cape from his shoulders and wraps it around his fist. He throws himself against the glass wall as hard as he can, once twice, only the red in his eyes.
The wall cracks, then it shatters. Panting, Clark straightens up and shakes the shards out of the cape before wrapping it around himself again. It feels better now that he's earned it.
Behind the glass wall, the cell is still there, and Lex is still sitting on the bench. Clark feels joy well up in him and he climbs over the jagged edge of glass and hurries over to Lex, crouching before him.
"Who's there?" Lex asks. His voice sounds raw.
"Lex, it's me." The guide is still there, but Clark doesn't care any longer if his name is heard. "Clark. You're safe now."
"Safe?" Lex asks. His tone is brittle and bitter. "I'm blind. The rocks… the cancer took away my eyesight. No, it was the rocks. The rocks and the ring. I was shot…"
Clark seizes Lex's hands, and jerks back when he feels cold metal under his fingers. It's not a real hand.
"They're drugging me," Lex whispers, suddenly urgent. "They're making me rot inside."
He pulls away his hands from Clark and picks at his skin, right there at his wrist were metal becomes flesh and peels it away. There's no blood, just a dark liquid, like oil, but somehow shimmering silvery, and moving circuits underneath, growing like the crystals of the Fortress.
"You infected me," Lex hisses.
"Lex. You're confused. This isn't real. Your soul is in the underworld. I've come to take you back home." Clark reaches up to pull Lex's shades away, because he doesn't believe that Lex is really blind.
Lex freezes, but he let's Clark take them. "I'm not mad," he whispers. "I'm the only sane one in here."
His eyes are normal, just a bit feverish and too shiny. He stares past Clark. "They're mad!" he yells, and launches forward so quickly that he knocks Clark over. Clark hits the ground and grunts in surprise and then in pain as Lex jumps on him, kneeing his stomach then straddling his chest. He shakes Clark's shoulders. "They won't shut up," he snarls.
Above them, Clark can see people crowding in. Brainiac, in his Milton Fine guise. Zod, wearing Lex's body. Another Lex, grinning maniacally, showing off the kryptonite ring on his finger and the machine gun in his hand. Lionel, looking incredibly young to Clark's eyes, with his hair shorter and far less grizzled. A wild man with dreadlocks. More, legions of mad strangers, closing in on them. Lex's hands close around Clark's throat. If he's trying to strangle him then it's a clumsy, half-hearted attempt.
"I'm here to save you," Clark gasps, trying to pry the hands away without hurting Lex.
"I can help you, Lex," Brainiac says. "You have potential. You can be the smartest human in the world. No one and nothing will ever confuse you again."
"You're nothing. You're scum," Zod growls.
"Don't go with him, Lex," demands Lionel. "You don't need anyone but yourself."
"Just give in to it," the Lex with the gun grins. "It's a whole lot better on the other side of madness."
"Hey, man," the dread-locked guy says. "It's eat or be eaten."
"Stop confusing me!" Lex yells, and jumps off Clark. The crowd parts, and like smoke they dissipate as Lex tears through them, bolting from Clark. A door that wasn't there a moment before falls shut behind him, and Clark can't hear the sound of steps from the other side.
"Lex!" he shouts. Too late. Always too late. Why can't he be fast enough, soon enough, just once in his life when it comes to Lex? Clark gets to his feet, rubbing his neck.
The guide steps away from the wall. "Do you still think he's worth all the trouble?"
Climbing to his feet, Clark sends a glare into the guide's direction. "I'm not giving Lex up now when he needs my help the most."
"It didn't look like he wanted your help."
"Lex was confused. He doesn't know what's best for him sometimes."
"He seemed to have no lack of people telling him what's best," the guide remarks.
Clark heads for the door Lex passed through. He's worried, it won't be easy to convince Lex to come with him if he's like this, frantic and paranoid. The door doesn't belong into this cell. It's a dark wooden, gothic-looking one, with carvings of leaves and fruit in the wood. It looks expensive, but worn, like time has scratched at it with a hundred tiny hands. It opens with a creak and Clark enters another hallway, this one broad and dim, with wood panelling and a carpet running along the middle of the floor. It's very quiet and the windows somewhat further down show that it's the middle of the night outside.
Clark lets go of the door, but the guide follows before it can fall shut.
"Have you ever been to this place?" the guide asks apropos of nothing after a second.
Clark shakes his head. "No. Doesn't look like something out of my imagination, either. What's that smell?"
"Bergamot," the guide says, as if bergamot is somehow offensive, then amends in an exasperated tone, "or it could just be the dust."
Yeah, this place is dusty, and sort of musty. Like a school library where no one ever goes. But that other smell is there, too. Clark starts walking down the hallway. It's deserted. There are paintings on the wall, and once a case with pinned butterflies. If it's a museum, it's a boring one.
The guide's footsteps behind him are the only sound, and even they seem hesitant. Clark turns around to ask where they should go next and that's when he sees a pale little figure, ducking behind some curtains. The guide has stilled a few feet behind Clark, looking there as well. Carefully, Clark moves closer. "Who's there?"
No answer. There's a pair of small, polished shoes peeking out from under the curtain. A child. Clark gently tugs at the curtain, lifting it away. It's heavy and soft, like velvet or brocade. Behind it stands a little boy, thin and short, pressed to the wall, not breathing.
It's Lex, but only the bald head gives it away. He's barely ten, Clark thinks, and his eyes are so wide and colourless, and he looks like the frailest, most frightened child Clark has ever seen. Clark can't comprehend that this is Lex. Lex was never scared of anything. Confused, yes, and worried, but never scared. It's weird that Lex's soul takes the shape of a scared little boy - it didn't seem like it was fear that he was missing without a soul.
Clark crouches down. "Hey. It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."
"You're wearing a cape," Lex whispers. "Are you a superhero?"
Clark doesn't think he's being recognized. It hurts, but not as much as it would if this were the grown-up version. "Yes. I'm Superman."
"You're a liar," little Lex informs him. He's getting bolder. "Or you're an idiot."
"Lex?" Clark asks.
"Are you a reporter?"
Clark almost says yes, but catches Lex's meaning in the last second. "No. I'm a friend."
"I don't know you."
"Not yet."
Lex frowns. He could always be distracted with a good mystery. "You mean we're going to be friends? I don't think so."
"Lex, how old do you think you are?"
"Eleven."
"You're fifty-two. This place isn't real. You've forgotten some things, I think."
"I know this place isn't real." Lex is starting to look scared again. "But there's no one here. I can't find the way out. I can't even find the light-switch."
"Do you remember how you got here?"
"I think I ran from someone… the others maybe."
"The others?"
"The other boys. Ollie Queen's friends. He has lots. You're from the future? And you're my friend there?"
Friend. How in the world is Clark going to explain to an eleven-year-old that he and Lex have been to each other just about everything two people can be to each other? That Clark loves him, but that he isn't sure if Lex loves him back?
"I've known you for a long time, Lex. I met you when you were twenty-one." Oh, forget this. "Yes, we're friends."
"What if you're still lying to me?" Lex asks sadly. "You said you're a superhero."
"Well, I save people. That's what heroes do, don't they?"
Lex is as stubborn a child as he is a man, and petulant on top. "But you don't have any powers."
"You don't need powers to be a hero. The best hero I know is just a man. He doesn't have any powers at all. Hey, and, uh, Alexander the Great didn't have any superpowers, either!"
"Yeah, but he had an army," Lex says. "And a kingdom. And lots of resources. If I had an army, I wouldn't be lost in the dark. I wouldn't need anybody. My Dad would have to let me wear a wig."
"I think you look good without hair."
"But you're a liar," Lex says, and slips out from behind the curtain, past Clark, walking towards the next door. "And I can't trust you." He doesn't even seem to see the guide as he hurries past him. "If I had superpowers, no one would be allowed to tell stupid lies like that!"
He slams the door shut behind him so hard it shakes in the frame. The guide gives a low laugh. "Sweet kid, wasn't he?"
"Oh, shut up," Clark grouses and rips the door open, only to stare blankly.
It's a place that looks not unlike the League's watchtower, although someone seems to have taken great care to make it look sinister and imposing, without giving much regard to functionality. That, in Clark's experience, makes it a villain's lair, but he can't for his life remember any place that looked like this.
Cautiously he steps into the winding corridor.
"Horrible interior design," the guide says, and Clark silently agrees. This doesn't look like one of Lex's places. The first door to the left is locked, but there's a tiny window that shows a barren cell. There's a steel table with restraints in the centre, and strapped to the table, a huge ape with a bleeding shot wound in the shoulder. Blood is dripping on the tiled floor. Clark has always had a hard time telling gorillas apart, even walking, talking ones, but he thinks that it's Gorilla Grodd, whom Lex shot when he took over the Legion of Doom.
He swallows and walks on, trying not to hard to think of the gruesome sight. Grodd was still breathing.
The next door lies straight ahead if them and it looks a lot like an elevator door. It opens with a hiss as they approach, revealing a huge hall behind. They're on an upper level, with a gangway spanning the whole of the room ahead of them, and below there are cages and cubicles wall to wall, steaming vats of liquid and people hurrying everywhere. It's as noisy as a factory, and in between machine sounds and human voices, Clark hears screams that don't sound human at all.
In one cubicle, a secretary sits calmly at a desk, and right in front of her, three men in white lab-coats are dissecting what looks like the body of a child. In the next room, workers are putting together a huge, gleaming weapon, and now and then, one of them breaks down, writhing on the floor in agony as if poisoned as the others step over his body to continue their work, compassionless as drones. On the opposite wall, above everything else, a woman is shackled to wall ceiling as if crucified. She's pale and beautiful and her dark, almost purplish hair seems to melt with her flowing black gown. Light seems to fall from her eyes like tears, the only clear light source in this hellish place.
On the other end of the walkway, beneath the crucified woman, Clark spots Lex, grown-up once more, with Mercy Graves at his back, trailing him like Clark is followed by the guide. Her blonde hair is pulled back in a tight pony-tail and she's wearing the old driver's uniform that she used to wear before she exchanged it for an executive's smart clothing.
Ignoring the fact that she's pulling a gun on them, Clark makes his way across the walkway. It creaks dangerously under his feet, swaying a little, so Clark looks straight ahead instead of down. As he comes closer, he recognizes the crucified woman, or at least for a moment he does: it's Tala, the witch Lex seduced and then sacrificed to bring Brainiac back to life in the fiasco that ended in raising Darkseid from the dead.
Mercy steps in front of Lex, her gun pointing straight at Clark's chest. "Not a step closer, Superman," she yells.
"If you get killed here, you stay dead," the guide murmurs close behind him.
Clark raises his hands a little in a pacifying gesture. "Lex, I'm here to talk!"
"Too bad," Lex replies. "I'm here to act." He's wearing a white silk suit that shimmers like pearl in the light that spills from Tala's eyes, and a white tie, even white shoes. Only his gloves are black as coal.
"This isn't real!" Clark shouts back. "This is hell! You've sold your soul to the devil, Lex."
Lex runs a hand over the railing of the walkway, looking down on the infernal scene below with an eerie, satisfied smile. "I made a good deal."
"You remember?" Clark takes a step closer and Mercy's face hardens.
"Every single lesson," Lex snarls, suddenly not calm any longer. He stares at Clark with a hatred that is only mitigated by disdain. There's colour in his face, it looks almost sunburnt, and his eyes seem to glow with manic fever. "Life's a jungle. There's predators and prey. But I'm going to be the fire that burns it down and turns it into fertile soil!"
Clark stares. "This isn't him."
"You preferred the scared little boy, didn't you?" the guide mocks softly. "I think this looks a lot more like the real Lex Luthor. He's an angry man. And he can take care of himself."
Clark is getting angry, too. Maybe that's a sign that this is the real Lex after all, for some reason stuck in his manic villain stage, just as he was stuck as a child a moment ago. In that phase Lex was always the easiest to deal with when they had a common enemy to fight.
"This is a trick," Clark says. "The devil is working with Darkseid. They're trying to destroy you."
Lex sneers at him. "Mercy, please."
She mirrors his sneer, all teeth. "It's a pleasure, Sir."
The shot rings in Clark's ears as he's knocked down by the guide. His head hits the railing and he yelps in pain, then confusion takes over and it feels as if the walkway is swaying and someone is kicking him in the stomach, punching him in the face - no, someone is, that's Lex on top of him, his face distorted in rage and suddenly Clark believes that he can die in this place.
Another punch, and Clark tastes blood as his lip is split, and his vision is blurry with tears. He tries to escape, to shield himself with his arm, when suddenly something under him gives and the world tilts. Lex stumbles and plunges down with a furious yell and Clark follows him helpless until he finds purchase in the last second, one hand gripping the twisted railing, the other holding on tightly to Lex's hand.
All he can do for a moment is squeeze his eyes shut and ride out the pain and vertigo. Then he opens them slowly and dares to look down.
The hand he's holding on to isn't Lex's. It's the guide's hand, and Lex is down on the floor, scrambling back to his feet as nimbly as a cat. The guide's white mask is as blank as ever, but Clark can feel the terror in the body he's holding, and even though the guide must be dead and can't die in this place, Clark can't bring himself to let go.
"The cape," Clark presses through clenched teeth. The guide reaches up, stretching and twisting, and finally gets a hold of the red fabric, but it's too late. The red fabric slips from Clark's shoulders just as his fingers slip on the rail and they both lose their purchase and fall.
Clark comes down awkwardly, twisting his ankle, while the guide catches the momentum in a roll and stands again a moment later. Clark grips his hurting ankle and grits his teeth in pain. How can a few tendons and bones hurt that damn much? Clark has been beaten to death and it didn't hurt like this!
The cape flutters after them, slow and elegant and as a tumbling flag, and sticks to a glass tube filled with a greenish liquid, covering it almost completely.
Lex bares his teeth at them and lunges for Mercy gun that lies on the floor a few feet away from them. He's faster than the guide, and presses the trigger before he can properly take aim. So instead of Clark, the bullet hits the cape, going through it like only kryptonite can, and cracks the glass of the tube. Liquid spills out, and the cape slips to the ground, baring the contents.
A body floats in the tube, that of a child. It's a little boy, no older than eight, with a shock of dark hair drifting in the green water. The guide staggers backwards as if struck by a bullet as well. Clark gasps a moment later.
"Kon," he whispers, although he isn't sure. So young. The little face so round, soft as in sleep. No sign of life.
"I will own you," Lex's voice rings loudly through the room, echoing off the glass cases that suddenly surround them like a forest. Some of them are like a museum exhibition, pictures and artefacts, like the creepy room Lex had kept so many years ago, but far more extensive, from plaid shirts to scraps of blue fabric, from a lock of dark hair, to a big photo of Clark in glasses, bent over his laptop at the Planet. Over there, Lana lies in a glass coffin like Snow White, a tiny baby in her arms, and one is filled to the brim with meteor rocks, another with Kryptonian technology. And writing, writing, everywhere Clark looks, every question Lex has ever asked, every lie he has ever been told scribbled on paper.
"This is hell?" Lex exclaims. "Then I'll own you here rather than serve you in heaven, Clark!"
He's waving the gun around madly, and Clark stills, suddenly suspicious. This Lex is wrong. Lex never admitted things this easily. Driven to his limits, yes, Lex would slip into sudden destructive rage, but normally, he'd either be cold or falsely sincere, pretending not to care or to want the best for anyone.
And Lex never spouted clichés like that with such conviction, either. This Lex is as flat as the soulless Lex Clark left behind.
Something's foul.
Clark needs to test his suspicions. But how can he do that? How do you prove the absence of a soul?
The way he did it the first time.
He struggles to his feet, raising his hands to placate. He limps a step towards Lex, watching the motion of the gun careful, but paying even closer attention to Lex's face.
"I'm not your enemy," Clark says.
"But I'm yours," Lex hisses.
"I love you, Lex. I wish I had realized sooner how much I love you." And he's sincere, because even if this isn't Lex, the words are true. If it is Lex, then Clark wants him to know this.
Lex's face stays blank. "I don't care."
It's not that Lex would never do this. But Clark has listened to him pretend too many times not to know when it's all just a big fat lie. The truth is always in the gestures, the action, the looks, rather than Lex's cold words.
But Lex remains utterly impassive until suddenly, he unfreezes and bolts, running away through his forest of secrets.
Clark starts after him and yelps when he treads too hard on his injured ankle. He goes on nonetheless, sweat breaking all over his body, his throat tight with pain. Suddenly, the guide is at his side and seizes his right arm, steadying him. Together they're more awkward, stumbling as if tied at the waist, but much faster.
The room narrows around him and the walls that draw closer are painted in black and white, symbols and images, alien and human. Before them, the wall parts in a shimmer of light, and Clark thinks he sees Lex step through it, a dark silhouette with a blinding halo. He pushes onward, harder than he thought possible, and suddenly his steps become lighter and the light wraps around him with soothing tendrils, embracing them whole.
It feels like flying, right before they drop to the ground on the other side. They're still in the caves, although the paintings on the wall are now exclusively Kryptonian letters and numbers, something that looks like a computer code to Clark, drawn in swirls and spirals on the rough brown walls.
"That was a clever ruse," the guide says as they gingerly pick themselves off the ground. Clark's foot is throbbing, but the hot sharp burn of pain is receding. Clark is pretty sure twisted ankles don't normally work that way. "He didn't see that coming."
"Didn't see what?"
"Your little act just now. I almost believed you."
Clark straightens and draws away from the guide. He's ready to yell at this point, but forces himself to stay calm. 'Choose your battles' is one of the things his Dad always said that still hold true, even for Superman.
"It was the truth," he replies, his anger tightly controlled. It's his Superman voice, the one that intimidates anyone with half a brain or less than godlike powers. "I'm here because I love Lex. That's your answer. I'm saving him and not thousands of others because I love him. If you can't handle that, I'll go manage on my own."
He crosses his arms and stands straight even though his foot hurts. It's strange, but he was always surest of his feelings for Lex, be they good or bad ones, when confronted about them by others. The guide stares at him through the chalk-white mask.
"Love him," the wispy, far-away voice repeats. Then it laughs, a hard bark. "After thirty years you suddenly decide you love him."
"Yes," Clark snaps and limps around the guide, further into the caves, following the writing on the wall. There's only one was to go now, forward. Behind them is a solid wall. "It took me years to figure it out, but the feeling was always there. And I know he loved me too, in the beginning, even if he doesn't anymore."
"Oh, you know it, do you?"
Clark doesn't deign that with an answer. The guide seems determined to follow him, so there is no point in arguing. A few steps further the air gets warmer, and seems to vibrate and hum, a golden sound, like bees, like a huge bell constantly ringing.
"This is the end," Lex's voice sounds from ahead. Clark perks up and walks faster, rounding the next corner. The caves stop abruptly there, widening into a boundless room, a giant chasm behind a small cliff. The chasm is filled with light, radiant living light that's full of stars, from here to eternity.
At the edge of the cliff stands Lex with his back to the abyss. Clark has to shield his eyes to look at him.
"This is the end, Clark," Lex repeats. "And the beginning. This is the source."
"No," Clark cries. "This isn't the source, Lex. This is the underworld!"
"You don't understand. I was there once, so I am there forever. I've seen the truth, Clark. I've been the truth. There's no point in bringing me back."
Approaching Lex feels like flying close to the sun, like sinking into a furnace. Clark squints against the blaze and advances, step for step. "I've come farther than any human ever has, Clark. All the sacrifices I've made, all the things I did, they all brought me here. I'm right where I want to be."
Clark decides to try a different approach. "You came back the last time." He reaches out and finds Lex's shoulder, clad in the silky white suit.
"I wanted nothing more than to go back," Lex says, softly and intimately. "I would have taken my life to go back if you hadn't chosen that year to get yourself killed. I only stayed because I had to take care of things. But I'm here now. You don't need me. Go back, Clark."
Lex starts to draw back, towards the abyss, and Clark lunges forward, wrapping his arms around him. They're still strong, even without his powers, strong enough to capture Lex and hold on.
"I need you."
"You don't need anyone," Lex says. "You're just afraid of letting go."
And he takes another step back, pulling Clark with him, and Lex is right, Clark is more afraid of letting go than he is of holding on. Lex falls, into the core of the furnace, and Clark clings to him, falling with him.
In his arms, Lex dissolves to light, intangible, ephemeral, gone.
Clark falls, and it's a good thing that Clark's falls always end with waking. No fall can kill him, and neither can this. Clark simply can't believe it will.
It takes the breath from his lungs, though, and for some time, he lies dazed and confused on a dusty wooden floor. It smells a bit like an old attic and fresh paint. When he opens his eyes, the room he's in is bathed in bright, friendly light that falls in through a small square window high on the wall and a half-open door. The walls are painted white, but almost every inch is covered in scraggly black handwriting. In one place someone started to paint it over with white, and the brush still lies dripping with paint on a pile of newspapers. The one on the top is the Daily Planet, a headline Clark will never forget, even if he has never seen it fresh out of print - only in class cases and pinned to cubicle walls at the Planet.
"Death of Superman," it proclaims. Under the brush will be a picture of Clark, or what is left of him, spread out on a pile of rubble that's still dark with blood. He turns away, studies the scribbled walls. A jumble of letters and numbers, not all of them human numbers, equations and formulae and proofs. Clark can't follow them.
"Are you done playing Janet yet?" someone inquires from behind him. Clark turns around. The guide seems to have walked in through the half open door. The ragged cloak looks a little singed.
"Janet?" he asks the guide.
"The tale of Thomas the Rhymer. Janet wants her man back, but she has to hold on to him as the faeries make him change into vicious animals."
"Never heard of it," Clark shrugged. "How did it end?"
"It turns out the thing she's holding on to was a beast all along that the faeries had enchanted. The real Thomas remained hidden from her in the faerie realm."
"Aren't fairy-tales supposed to end happily?"
"I guess Janet liked playing the hero more than she liked using her brains. She'd have realized that if the faeries can turn her man into a beast, then they can also turn something else into him."
"You're saying this isn’t Lex?"
"I'm just telling you the story. You asked for it."
Clark frowns and goes over to the door to open it further. Beyond it is an oval room with white walls and parquet floor, a fire-place and a grandfather clock. Three French windows overlook a green lawn and one of them is ajar, letting in a breeze that moves the white curtains and the two flags by the window.
Behind the massive desk of the President of the United States sits Lex, reading a thick folder. He puts it down as Clark and the guide slowly enter, with exactly the same patient, welcoming expression he used to have for Clark at the mansion when they were still friends.
He's no longer wearing the white suit, but a more conservative charcoal one together with a blue tie. Everything about him radiates calm and competence. Even Clark's impressed.
"Clark," Lex says, his enunciation clear and meaningful as ever. There's emotion in his voice, but distanced, buried under respect. "Have a seat."
"You know me, Lex, I prefer standing," Clark replies, not unfriendly. His audiences with Lex as President were hostile staring contests, each of them clad in their full regalia, flaunting their worldly power, wary of the balance they had found. But in the end, the balance held and they behaved like professionals. Clark doesn't quite know how he managed to stay so impersonal then. Maybe it was the fact that Lex was acting in an office, which gave him a similar kind of emotional armour as the cape gave Clark.
Lex's nod is polite. He ignores the guide entirely, as if unable to see him, even when the guide takes a seat in one of the chairs along the oval wall. Instead Lex glances around the office, running his hands over the desk in a theatrical gesture. "What does it say about a man, Clark, when this is his consolation prize? I think it makes him a very successful man, don't you?"
"Consolation prize?" Clark asks. He's decided to take this conversation slower than the others, let Lex lead the way. Maybe then Lex will be more approachable.
"Frankly, Clark, you and I know that this isn't what I want. Not anymore. I had better things. For a while I was, for all intents and purposes, a god. I still am one of the smartest people on the planet. I don't have to limit myself to Earth. This is what I am supposed to want, what every rich kid is supposed to want, but I always wanted other things more. I wanted knowledge. I wanted you. I wanted to be a father. But can never keep the things I want."
"For someone who didn't want this you did - do a pretty good job." Clark gives him an encouraging smile.
Lex returns the smile without much feeling. "I've never liked people doing their jobs badly. You always do your job picture perfect, don't you? Always there at the right moment, always saving the day. You never slip. You never fail."
Clark sighs. "I do, Lex. All the time. I'm doing it right now, I think."
Lex raises his brows. "You're Clark Kent. You can do anything."
"I'm trying to save you," Clark admits. "But it doesn't work."
Leaning back in his chair, Lex looks sceptical. "Why would I need saving? Haven't I proved at least, if nothing else, that I don't need you?"
"But you do, right now. You've done something very selfless, and it got you into a tight spot. I'm trying to help you out, but your enemies are confusing you. This is an illusion, Lex."
With a frown, Lex studies the fireplace, the moving curtains, the flag. He curls his fingers around the glass on the desk before him and drinks. It's red wine instead of golden liquor. "You're saying I'm not President."
"You were. Until two years ago. Can't you remember anything? There was a crisis. You had to go underground. A lot of people died. Kon died. He saved the world. Don't you remember?"
Lex's lips twist into a bitter smirk. "You know me, Clark. I have a spotty memory. Maybe I don't want to remember."
"Kon is alive again," Clark says gently. "You made it possible. But it cost you a lot. It's what brought you here."
"And you?" Lex gives him a tired look, then sighs in exasperation. "Don't tell me. You're here to save me. I have my pride, Clark. If it was anyone but you I'd tell you to go to hell."
Clark lowers his eyes and smiles at Lex's choice of words. "It's kind of where we are already."
Lex laughs. "Not bad for hell. I always knew evil would pay off one day."
"But it's the good intentions that brought him here. Aren't you going to remind him of that?" the guide asks. "He seems to have forgotten."
Lex gets up as if no one has said anything and straightens his suit. "You know the way back, I presume?"
The guide gets up as well and turns to Clark. "Well, Janet? What road leads back from faerie?"
Clark glances from one to the other. Something's going on here and he doesn't get it. The guide seemed a little hostile towards Lex from the start, but never left Clark's side. But now the muffled voice is vibrant with hostility. Maybe it's because Clark and Lex will return to the world of the living and the guide will be left behind. Clark rises and goes to stand close by the guide. He wishes he could just take off that featureless mask and see who's behind it. He has a feeling the answer is so close, so obvious, but still completely out of reach.
"You helped me a lot. I wish I could do something for you as well."
"Unlike him, I have no compunctions to tell you to go to hell," the guide retorts and turns away. "The faster you're gone, the faster I can go back to getting myself out of this."
Lex pays no attention to the conversation. He walks over to one of the doors purposefully and presses the handle. Beyond it is not another room, but open countryside - brown, harvested fields, a clear sky, corn like a dark green sea in the distance. A narrow road winds before them.
They stepped out and when Clark turns, the door is gone as well as the room they were in a moment before. He takes a deep breath of crisp autumn air, revelling in the sun on his face. It feels warm, utterly real. Soon he'll be back under the sun.
"When we're back, I'd like things to change," Clark tells Lex as they walk side by side.
"I'm willing to compromise," Lex answers placidly enough for Clark to gather up the rest of his courage.
"I want something more than just peaceful coexistence," he ventures. "I'd like us to be friends again. I'd like to take you to Smallville and have a family dinner. You, me, Mom, Kon. I think it would do him good to see that we're not enemies anymore."
"If your mother wants me in her house, I'm more than open to your suggestion," Lex agrees.
The road has reached a small copse of trees that hides what lies beyond. The sun's just descending behind the tops of the trees, the golden light filtering through the yellowing leaves.
Clark gets even more optimistic. "We could work together, Lex. Together we could tackle problems that I can't resolve with my powers."
"I always thought so."
It almost seems too easy, but then Clark pushes his suspicion away. It hasn't been easy. It has been a long and hard and painful road, not just in hell, but in the thirty years before. He and Lex deserve this.
They round the copse, yellow leaves tumbling through the air around them. A small smile plays on Lex's lips. "I know where we are," he says, just as the last bit of road comes into view.
The trees have hidden a river that dried out years ago, but is still running strongly here. The murky water gleams cheerfully in the sunlight, and the bridge seems broad and welcoming. Clark glances down at the muddy stripe of sand down by the river and smiles. The place where Clark brought Lex to life once will be the place where he brings him back a second time. For once the symmetry of their lives will be beautiful rather than frightening.
As they step onto the bridge, the other side of the river starts to blur and recede. Mist rises from the green water, shrouding the other shore, climbing high as a wall, crawling up Clark's legs like icy vines of ivy. He shivers.
There's something like a footfall behind them, a multitude of whispers.
"Don't turn around," Lex commands. "Don't look behind you."
"Clark," the guide calls.
Clark stops. Too easy. This is the bridge where Lex died. This is where Clark's human life ended. This is a river of pain, of secrets, of death.
"You can only cross this bridge by dying," the guide's voice rings from behind them, echoing Clark's thoughts.
Lex turns around and grips Clark's shoulder. "Don't hesitate now, Clark. We're almost there."
"You said not to look back," Clark breathes as Lex's eyes wander over Clark's shoulder to what lies behind him.
"Yes. Now walk. It's only a few more steps."
Clark remains rooted to the spot. Lex sighs impatiently. "I wish you'd trust me, just once in your life."
"You drank wine. In the office. Isn't it dangerous to accept food or drink in this place?"
"It doesn't seem to have harmed me."
"And I thought this place was shaped by my memory and expectations. Then why did I see places that I have never been to?"
"Finally you're thinking like a reporter. Go on, ask the questions," the guide demands.
Lex's face twists in anger. "You're overstepping your boundaries!” he shouts over Clark's shoulder.
Clark's head shoots up in surprise. "I thought you couldn't see him!"
"Oh, I won't be seeing him much longer," Lex snarls. He charges past Clark, throwing himself at the guide. Clark jumps around as well, the warning forgotten. The other side of the river has become invisible as well. No light dances on the river now, the water is dark and deep. Lex evades a punch by the guide, and grabs the rag-clad arm with inhuman swiftness. He twists, throwing the guide at the railing and grabs the hooded head, banging it against the metal violently. The mask cracks but doesn't break. Blood oozes through the fractures and the guide slumps in apparent defeat, only to kick viciously at Lex's shin a second later. Lex doesn't yell. He only growls like an angered beast, and seizes the cloak of rags, throwing the guide over the railing in one big heave. There's a splash and for a moment, bubbles rise to the surface, but then the water smoothes as if nothing has ever disturbed it. Clark runs over to the railing and stares down. The guide doesn't come up again.
"What did you do that for?" he whispers.
"He overstepped his boundaries," Lex replies cryptically, brushing off his hands. He moves closer to Clark, touching his shoulder gently. "Now come."
Clark takes a shaky breath. He looks into Lex's clear blue eyes as Lex's hand moves to his cheek.
"Are you Lex Luthor?" he asks.
Lex frowns. "Don't you trust me?"
They cannot lie, Clark remembers. And the guide was forbidden to tell the truth. They hid him in plain sight -
Clark shies away from the warm hand on his cheek and twists around. The railing when he gripped it burns like hot irons, and he feels his palms blister. With a yell, Clark jumps over the railing and hits the water. It wells up and closes over his head, heavy and cold, and fills his nose, his throat, his lungs, dragging him down. He lets it, pushing further down even as life seeps out of his body, thrashing with his arms and legs. There is no ground, no muddy river bed, no wreck of a car. A mask floats past Clark, bone-white and cracked. His vision dances with bright spots as the last bit of breath presses out of his lungs and escapes him.
There's silence and the river tugging at him with gentle, insistent hands. Clark lets himself be twisted and turned around and closes his eyes as the river embraces him, clinging to him like a dying man.
It feels a lot like flying.
*
"Oh my god! Oh damn, I'm so sorry! I fucked up! I didn't know he would jump!"
Clark blinks and brushes the water out of his face. It doesn't stop, though and he realizes that it's pouring, the sky raining ever new water down on him. He pushes up on his elbow and stares with the panicked, wide-eyed face of a boy with dark hair plastered to his forehead, drenched from head to toe.
"Kon," Clark croaks and twists around to cough up more water. Next to him on the muddy shore lies Lex, pale and unconscious and just as wet. Clark crawls over to him anxiously, cradling the bald head in his hands and gasping with relief when he realizes that he can hear Lex's heart-beat, faint but getting stronger. He has his powers back. He's back in the world of the living.
A faint trickle of blood runs down Lex's nose. It looks like he received a vicious punch not long ago.
"He was behaving totally inconspicuous for days after you left," Kon babbles. "But then this freak weather started - rain in Smallville! And you didn't even blow clouds over here! It's like hell froze over or something - sorry, didn't mean to swear! Anyways, as soon as the rain started he hopped into his car and drove here. I was worried, you know, thought he might go after Aunt Martha, but he just stopped at the bridge. I really didn't think he'd jump! Since when is Lex Luthor suicidal?"
"Calm down," Clark says. "You did okay. You pulled us out, right?"
"Yeah, of course! Where did you come from anyways?"
"I jumped in after him," Clark says, not caring that it sounds mad. Colour is returning to Lex's cheeks. His eyes crack open and he blinks in confusion up at Clark. Then he tries to lift his head. "Where - ?"
"The river. Smallville," Clark supplies. Lex groans and slumps back onto the sand.
"Of course."
"You were the guide, right?"
"Sure took you long enough."
"Sorry. Why did they let you do that?"
"They didn't let me. They forced me to do it so they could play that sick game of theirs. I wasn't allowed to tell the truth, but I was allowed to lie. The tale of Thomas the Rhymer doesn't end that way at all. And if you'd paid attention you'd have realized that all of these places came from my imagination, not yours."
Clark beams at Lex's annoyed expression. "Darkseid is going to be pissed. I saved your soul, Lex!"
"Don't remind me," Lex mutters darkly. Then he opens his eyes again and turns his head to look at Kon. "You didn't involve him in this, did you?" he asks with a hint of threat in his voice. Clark's beam grows a few shades brighter in spite of it. This is his Lex.
"No. I just told him to look after Metropolis and your soulless self."
"Soulless?" Kon gawks, staring at Lex. "What's up with you two? This is absolutely freaky, you know? You're being civil with each other or something!"
Lex sits up with a remarkable amount of dignity for man soaked in muddy water and shivering from the cold. "The appearances are deceiving."
Kon narrows his blue eyes at them, looking from Clark to Lex and back. "Wait a moment. Didn't you to the underworld to save someone? It was him, wasn't it?"
Clark nods. He knew Lex didn't want Kon to know, but the last thing they need is more lies in this family. "He made a deal with some devil to bring you back. You don't have to worry about it now, everything's okay."
Lex stands, his legs shaky but his face hard as steel. "I'm no longer President, Clark. Public opinion doesn't matter much to me."
Clark rolls his eyes at the prelude to another threat, even though he knows how dangerous Lex can be. "Lex. So he knows you love him enough to do this for him. That isn't a bad thing, you know?"
Lex crosses his arms, probably against the cold, and turns away. Clark gets to his feet and grimaces at his muddy jeans, then shuffles after Lex. "You're wet and freezing. Let's go home. My Mom would never turn you away in that condition."
"I don't like your bizarro versions," Kon complains from behind them. "I'm seriously thinking about calling in the Titans. Robin is going to figure out what's messing with your heads."
Clark laughs, free and happy. "You can invite him for dinner tomorrow, kid. Tonight I want it to be just family."
*
Lex sits on the couch, dry and in too big clothes. He's defiantly put away the blanket Martha forced him to wear around his shoulders while he ate his soup and is cradling a steaming cup of coffee now. The rain is still pattering against the windowpanes. It's almost dark outside. Kon is helping Clark's Mom with the dishes. Clark can hear the low murmur of their voices drift into the living room. She's telling him about the past.
Clark sits down next to Lex at a distance that's closer than polite but further than intimate. Lex glances up at him.
"I meant all the things I said, even if it wasn't really you I talked to down there," Clark begins. "I want us to be friends again."
"That's a dangerous idea."
"We can handle dangerous."
"Oh, I'm not afraid of it," Lex says, smirking into his coffee. "I just thought your other friends might object."
"You said the same while you were without a soul," Clark remembers fondly. "There's something I need to tell you, though, and you might not want to be friends anymore afterwards."
"You supply of secrets is apparently endless."
"You were… gentler without a soul. Much more open to affection," Clark explains hesitantly. "Jesus. It feels like I used you. We had sex."
Lex stares at him. He doesn't look particularly enraged, so Clark starts to worry.
"I'm waiting for you to blush," Lex informs him.
Clark leans back on the couch and glowers at Lex, even though he's tentatively starting to feel relief. The longing for the intimacy they shared will always be there, but he can keep it at bay for their friendship's sake.
"I'm not a teenager anymore. I can talk about sex. We had sex. It's something people do -”
"I'm going to crush that bastard. I'm going to find a way to buy up hell or something and make him regret this," Lex hisses. Clark's eyes widen in alarm.
"Lex?"
"Darkseid. He's responsible for this. I can't remember!"
"Us having - ?"
Clark's question is muffled by Lex's lips, pressing against his with the full force of the rage he apparently felt. Clark opens up in surprise, more than happy to take the brunt of Lex's anger. A second later, Lex is straddling him, pushing Clark's shoulders down on the backrest of the couch. His eyes gleam. "I think I have a new arch-enemy."
"Huh?" Clark says intelligently, trying to push up and regain Lex's lips, but coming up short. So he has to lick under Lex's chin and his throat. Lex grimaces oddly, as if he might be ticklish there.
"Darkseid. He's going down!"
There are a number of things Clark might point out, such as the fact that Darkseid is already pretty much down, or that he is already Clark's enemy. Instead he slips his hands under Lex's too big borrowed shirt and runs them possessively over his warm sides, up to the firm shoulders and down to Lex's hipbones, pulling him closer.
"I could bring him back just to destroy him again," Lex muses, then gasps as he makes contact with Clark's crotch.
"Bad idea," Clark mumbles against his collarbone.
"Good idea," Lex growls and grinds down.
There's a yelp. Both of them wince as the living room door slams shut.
"Oh dear," Clark can hear his mother say in the kitchen. Lex buries his head in the crook of Clark's neck.
"I'm calling the Titans!" Kon yells.
Title: Devil's Deal
Rating: (overall) NC-17
Pairing: Clex
Continuity: Smallville - JLU - DC, futurefic
Summary: Lex sells his soul to the devil to bring his son back from the dead.
Note: Dedicated to talitha78. Many, many thanks to averaird for being a wonderful beta!
Prequel drabbles: 10x100
Previous Parts:
Part Five: Company in Hell
Part Three: Peaceful
Part Two: Complications
Part One: The Deal
5 - Hide And Seek
Clark has the choice between the staircase and the door to his left. Since the guide is offering no advice, preferring to stand there telegraphing what seems to Clark an unbearably cocky and dubious expression with every line of the shrouded body, Clark finally turns towards the stairs, heading down. The guide follows without protest.
It's pitch black there at the bottom, like wading into an ink well, but the further Clark descends, the more it seems to him that he's walking into a completely different room, with the air cool and dry instead of the stifling stench in the mansion, and a smell like a hospital room, fear and pain and antiseptic stinging in his nose. The darkness dissolves, and the light that follows is harsh and cold, in hues of blue and green, like the sea under the Arctic ice.
Clark closes his eyes, knowing what he will find at the bottom of the stairs. Behind him, the guide's voice sounds suspicious, "Where are we going?"
Clark opens his eyes and the stairs are gone, together with the blessed dark. They're standing in an empty corridor where every surface seems to be glass or plastic or steel. There's no silence, because the room is filled with a constant hum of electricity.
"Belle Reve," Clark answers darkly to the guide's question. He doesn't want to revisit this place, and even less does he want to see Lex's memory of it. But now that he's here, it doesn't seem unlikely that this would be Lex's version of hell, and not some mythological purgatory. Unlike Clark, who has only stories to draw from, Lex has been through actual hell, through pain and fear and damnation. "It's a psychiatric facility. His father drugged him and put Lex in here when he was a young man. I'm… not really surprised if this is his version of hell."
"Why?" the guide asks after a pause and Clark isn't quite sure what the question's referring to. He heads towards the right, following his instinct. The corridor is deserted, and there are no doors anywhere.
"It's a bad place," Clark says. "They did horrible things to him here."
"And you knew about it?"
Clark wants to tell the guide to leave him alone. This is no one's business but his and Lex's and Clark wants it to stay buried in the depth of his memory. It's the past and he can't change it. Still, the guide is persistent, and Clark might yet need the help. "Yes. I tried to get him out, but it was too late."
"For what?"
Clark feels accused, and it annoys him. The guide wasn't there, doesn't know how frightened and confused Clark was, how it hurt in every fibre of Clark's body to wait and how wonderful it felt to rush in and save Lex and how terrible to fail. "They'd already erased his memory."
And other things. It startles him now how much Lex without a soul resembled Lex right after he was released from Belle Reve. Like they erased more than just Lex's memory. Overlooking the whole of their past, Clark begins to understand how long it really took for those parts of Lex to grow again, like tentative shoots of a crippled tree.
They round a corner, and suddenly, they're no longer alone. They've entered a large room full of people walking around dazedly and ranting to themselves, some of them sitting on plastic chairs or standing like hollow corpses, no life in their sunken eyes, some of them with fear stark on their nervous faces, some of them smiling in empty bliss. Not all of them wear prison scrubs, there are people in bright orange prison overalls, and even more modern grey ones, in handcuffs and straight jackets.
If anyone sees them, they're being ignored. Clark carefully steps further into the room. "Are they real?" he asks his guide in hushed tones.
The guide turns in this and that direction. "They hardly look real to me."
There's a spot of colour that catches Clark's attention. A counter, painted in gold and cheery colours, a faux Egyptian theme. A beautiful dark-haired woman with a ponytail is behind it, handing out steaming cups of tea to the patients with a false smile and soothing words. At first Clark thinks it's Helen Bryce, but then her features shift, like an optical illusion, and she becomes Victoria, Desiree, and for a small moment even Lana. Others follow, women Clark can hardly keep apart, women that Lex picked up and discarded like expensive dress-up dolls.
Another patient shuffles away with a steaming cup, and Clark sees the next person in the queue stepping forward.
He starts forward and breaks into a run. "Lex!" he calls out, but the bald figure turns away and walks off, vanishing in the crowd at a slow but steady pace. Clark dodges mental patients and prisoners, the guide hot at his heel, and he's panting by the time he reaches the counter. There's no sign of Lex.
"Tea?" a sweet voice asks. "It's good for your nerves."
Clark turns around. Lana stands there, smiling, wearing a pink headband. She's holding out a cup of tea. He takes it, too shocked to refuse. It's not her, he reminds himself. She's not real, he can do nothing for her.
But maybe she can help him. "Did you see where Lex went?"
She frowns, wrinkling her nose. "Lex?"
Clark raises the cup to his lips, but before he can drink, the guide grabs his wrist and pulls away the cup, throwing it furiously at the wall. It shatters, and the tea hisses like acid as it spills on the floor.
"Don't accept anything here! No food, no drink, no favours," the guide orders. "Everything comes at a price - don't take it if you don't know what the price is."
When Clark turns away, the woman behind the counter is Helen once more. He backs away, glad that he didn't drink. He spots another door and weaves through crowd towards it, still looking for Lex. "That was him. You see, it won't be that hard finding him," he tells the guide. "I can feel that we're close to him now."
*
Behind the door is another endlessly long hallway, and far, far ahead of them, Clark can see a tiny figure walking slowly away. He calls out, but there's no response, so he breaks into a run once more. There's a strange clicking noise as they come closer and finally Clark can see that the figure is walking with a stick, feeling his way like a blind man.
There's a dead end ahead. It's a room, the dirty concrete walls clashing with the sterile steel and glass of the asylum. There's a barred window, and in the window, a sliver of a moon, waning. Clark remembers this place, it's Lex's cell in prison at Stryker's Island, where he nearly died of cancer years ago.
The figure ahead turns. It's Lex, wearing dark shades and an untied straight jacket. He settles down slowly on the bench in the cell, like an old and hurting man, waiting for someone to come and pick him up for the very last time.
Before Clark reaches him, the corridor seals with a mirrored wall of glass. "No!" He shouts angrily. His own face stares back at him, sweaty and dishevelled. He has red blotches on his cheeks from running.
Clark pounds his fist against the glass. Damn it, he's powerless, he can't even break glass here. The red cape on his shoulders seems to mock him in the mirror. The guide stands a few steps behind him, head cocked critically to the side.
In a bout of frustrated anger, Clark rips the cape from his shoulders and wraps it around his fist. He throws himself against the glass wall as hard as he can, once twice, only the red in his eyes.
The wall cracks, then it shatters. Panting, Clark straightens up and shakes the shards out of the cape before wrapping it around himself again. It feels better now that he's earned it.
Behind the glass wall, the cell is still there, and Lex is still sitting on the bench. Clark feels joy well up in him and he climbs over the jagged edge of glass and hurries over to Lex, crouching before him.
"Who's there?" Lex asks. His voice sounds raw.
"Lex, it's me." The guide is still there, but Clark doesn't care any longer if his name is heard. "Clark. You're safe now."
"Safe?" Lex asks. His tone is brittle and bitter. "I'm blind. The rocks… the cancer took away my eyesight. No, it was the rocks. The rocks and the ring. I was shot…"
Clark seizes Lex's hands, and jerks back when he feels cold metal under his fingers. It's not a real hand.
"They're drugging me," Lex whispers, suddenly urgent. "They're making me rot inside."
He pulls away his hands from Clark and picks at his skin, right there at his wrist were metal becomes flesh and peels it away. There's no blood, just a dark liquid, like oil, but somehow shimmering silvery, and moving circuits underneath, growing like the crystals of the Fortress.
"You infected me," Lex hisses.
"Lex. You're confused. This isn't real. Your soul is in the underworld. I've come to take you back home." Clark reaches up to pull Lex's shades away, because he doesn't believe that Lex is really blind.
Lex freezes, but he let's Clark take them. "I'm not mad," he whispers. "I'm the only sane one in here."
His eyes are normal, just a bit feverish and too shiny. He stares past Clark. "They're mad!" he yells, and launches forward so quickly that he knocks Clark over. Clark hits the ground and grunts in surprise and then in pain as Lex jumps on him, kneeing his stomach then straddling his chest. He shakes Clark's shoulders. "They won't shut up," he snarls.
Above them, Clark can see people crowding in. Brainiac, in his Milton Fine guise. Zod, wearing Lex's body. Another Lex, grinning maniacally, showing off the kryptonite ring on his finger and the machine gun in his hand. Lionel, looking incredibly young to Clark's eyes, with his hair shorter and far less grizzled. A wild man with dreadlocks. More, legions of mad strangers, closing in on them. Lex's hands close around Clark's throat. If he's trying to strangle him then it's a clumsy, half-hearted attempt.
"I'm here to save you," Clark gasps, trying to pry the hands away without hurting Lex.
"I can help you, Lex," Brainiac says. "You have potential. You can be the smartest human in the world. No one and nothing will ever confuse you again."
"You're nothing. You're scum," Zod growls.
"Don't go with him, Lex," demands Lionel. "You don't need anyone but yourself."
"Just give in to it," the Lex with the gun grins. "It's a whole lot better on the other side of madness."
"Hey, man," the dread-locked guy says. "It's eat or be eaten."
"Stop confusing me!" Lex yells, and jumps off Clark. The crowd parts, and like smoke they dissipate as Lex tears through them, bolting from Clark. A door that wasn't there a moment before falls shut behind him, and Clark can't hear the sound of steps from the other side.
"Lex!" he shouts. Too late. Always too late. Why can't he be fast enough, soon enough, just once in his life when it comes to Lex? Clark gets to his feet, rubbing his neck.
The guide steps away from the wall. "Do you still think he's worth all the trouble?"
Climbing to his feet, Clark sends a glare into the guide's direction. "I'm not giving Lex up now when he needs my help the most."
"It didn't look like he wanted your help."
"Lex was confused. He doesn't know what's best for him sometimes."
"He seemed to have no lack of people telling him what's best," the guide remarks.
Clark heads for the door Lex passed through. He's worried, it won't be easy to convince Lex to come with him if he's like this, frantic and paranoid. The door doesn't belong into this cell. It's a dark wooden, gothic-looking one, with carvings of leaves and fruit in the wood. It looks expensive, but worn, like time has scratched at it with a hundred tiny hands. It opens with a creak and Clark enters another hallway, this one broad and dim, with wood panelling and a carpet running along the middle of the floor. It's very quiet and the windows somewhat further down show that it's the middle of the night outside.
Clark lets go of the door, but the guide follows before it can fall shut.
"Have you ever been to this place?" the guide asks apropos of nothing after a second.
Clark shakes his head. "No. Doesn't look like something out of my imagination, either. What's that smell?"
"Bergamot," the guide says, as if bergamot is somehow offensive, then amends in an exasperated tone, "or it could just be the dust."
Yeah, this place is dusty, and sort of musty. Like a school library where no one ever goes. But that other smell is there, too. Clark starts walking down the hallway. It's deserted. There are paintings on the wall, and once a case with pinned butterflies. If it's a museum, it's a boring one.
The guide's footsteps behind him are the only sound, and even they seem hesitant. Clark turns around to ask where they should go next and that's when he sees a pale little figure, ducking behind some curtains. The guide has stilled a few feet behind Clark, looking there as well. Carefully, Clark moves closer. "Who's there?"
No answer. There's a pair of small, polished shoes peeking out from under the curtain. A child. Clark gently tugs at the curtain, lifting it away. It's heavy and soft, like velvet or brocade. Behind it stands a little boy, thin and short, pressed to the wall, not breathing.
It's Lex, but only the bald head gives it away. He's barely ten, Clark thinks, and his eyes are so wide and colourless, and he looks like the frailest, most frightened child Clark has ever seen. Clark can't comprehend that this is Lex. Lex was never scared of anything. Confused, yes, and worried, but never scared. It's weird that Lex's soul takes the shape of a scared little boy - it didn't seem like it was fear that he was missing without a soul.
Clark crouches down. "Hey. It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."
"You're wearing a cape," Lex whispers. "Are you a superhero?"
Clark doesn't think he's being recognized. It hurts, but not as much as it would if this were the grown-up version. "Yes. I'm Superman."
"You're a liar," little Lex informs him. He's getting bolder. "Or you're an idiot."
"Lex?" Clark asks.
"Are you a reporter?"
Clark almost says yes, but catches Lex's meaning in the last second. "No. I'm a friend."
"I don't know you."
"Not yet."
Lex frowns. He could always be distracted with a good mystery. "You mean we're going to be friends? I don't think so."
"Lex, how old do you think you are?"
"Eleven."
"You're fifty-two. This place isn't real. You've forgotten some things, I think."
"I know this place isn't real." Lex is starting to look scared again. "But there's no one here. I can't find the way out. I can't even find the light-switch."
"Do you remember how you got here?"
"I think I ran from someone… the others maybe."
"The others?"
"The other boys. Ollie Queen's friends. He has lots. You're from the future? And you're my friend there?"
Friend. How in the world is Clark going to explain to an eleven-year-old that he and Lex have been to each other just about everything two people can be to each other? That Clark loves him, but that he isn't sure if Lex loves him back?
"I've known you for a long time, Lex. I met you when you were twenty-one." Oh, forget this. "Yes, we're friends."
"What if you're still lying to me?" Lex asks sadly. "You said you're a superhero."
"Well, I save people. That's what heroes do, don't they?"
Lex is as stubborn a child as he is a man, and petulant on top. "But you don't have any powers."
"You don't need powers to be a hero. The best hero I know is just a man. He doesn't have any powers at all. Hey, and, uh, Alexander the Great didn't have any superpowers, either!"
"Yeah, but he had an army," Lex says. "And a kingdom. And lots of resources. If I had an army, I wouldn't be lost in the dark. I wouldn't need anybody. My Dad would have to let me wear a wig."
"I think you look good without hair."
"But you're a liar," Lex says, and slips out from behind the curtain, past Clark, walking towards the next door. "And I can't trust you." He doesn't even seem to see the guide as he hurries past him. "If I had superpowers, no one would be allowed to tell stupid lies like that!"
He slams the door shut behind him so hard it shakes in the frame. The guide gives a low laugh. "Sweet kid, wasn't he?"
"Oh, shut up," Clark grouses and rips the door open, only to stare blankly.
It's a place that looks not unlike the League's watchtower, although someone seems to have taken great care to make it look sinister and imposing, without giving much regard to functionality. That, in Clark's experience, makes it a villain's lair, but he can't for his life remember any place that looked like this.
Cautiously he steps into the winding corridor.
"Horrible interior design," the guide says, and Clark silently agrees. This doesn't look like one of Lex's places. The first door to the left is locked, but there's a tiny window that shows a barren cell. There's a steel table with restraints in the centre, and strapped to the table, a huge ape with a bleeding shot wound in the shoulder. Blood is dripping on the tiled floor. Clark has always had a hard time telling gorillas apart, even walking, talking ones, but he thinks that it's Gorilla Grodd, whom Lex shot when he took over the Legion of Doom.
He swallows and walks on, trying not to hard to think of the gruesome sight. Grodd was still breathing.
The next door lies straight ahead if them and it looks a lot like an elevator door. It opens with a hiss as they approach, revealing a huge hall behind. They're on an upper level, with a gangway spanning the whole of the room ahead of them, and below there are cages and cubicles wall to wall, steaming vats of liquid and people hurrying everywhere. It's as noisy as a factory, and in between machine sounds and human voices, Clark hears screams that don't sound human at all.
In one cubicle, a secretary sits calmly at a desk, and right in front of her, three men in white lab-coats are dissecting what looks like the body of a child. In the next room, workers are putting together a huge, gleaming weapon, and now and then, one of them breaks down, writhing on the floor in agony as if poisoned as the others step over his body to continue their work, compassionless as drones. On the opposite wall, above everything else, a woman is shackled to wall ceiling as if crucified. She's pale and beautiful and her dark, almost purplish hair seems to melt with her flowing black gown. Light seems to fall from her eyes like tears, the only clear light source in this hellish place.
On the other end of the walkway, beneath the crucified woman, Clark spots Lex, grown-up once more, with Mercy Graves at his back, trailing him like Clark is followed by the guide. Her blonde hair is pulled back in a tight pony-tail and she's wearing the old driver's uniform that she used to wear before she exchanged it for an executive's smart clothing.
Ignoring the fact that she's pulling a gun on them, Clark makes his way across the walkway. It creaks dangerously under his feet, swaying a little, so Clark looks straight ahead instead of down. As he comes closer, he recognizes the crucified woman, or at least for a moment he does: it's Tala, the witch Lex seduced and then sacrificed to bring Brainiac back to life in the fiasco that ended in raising Darkseid from the dead.
Mercy steps in front of Lex, her gun pointing straight at Clark's chest. "Not a step closer, Superman," she yells.
"If you get killed here, you stay dead," the guide murmurs close behind him.
Clark raises his hands a little in a pacifying gesture. "Lex, I'm here to talk!"
"Too bad," Lex replies. "I'm here to act." He's wearing a white silk suit that shimmers like pearl in the light that spills from Tala's eyes, and a white tie, even white shoes. Only his gloves are black as coal.
"This isn't real!" Clark shouts back. "This is hell! You've sold your soul to the devil, Lex."
Lex runs a hand over the railing of the walkway, looking down on the infernal scene below with an eerie, satisfied smile. "I made a good deal."
"You remember?" Clark takes a step closer and Mercy's face hardens.
"Every single lesson," Lex snarls, suddenly not calm any longer. He stares at Clark with a hatred that is only mitigated by disdain. There's colour in his face, it looks almost sunburnt, and his eyes seem to glow with manic fever. "Life's a jungle. There's predators and prey. But I'm going to be the fire that burns it down and turns it into fertile soil!"
Clark stares. "This isn't him."
"You preferred the scared little boy, didn't you?" the guide mocks softly. "I think this looks a lot more like the real Lex Luthor. He's an angry man. And he can take care of himself."
Clark is getting angry, too. Maybe that's a sign that this is the real Lex after all, for some reason stuck in his manic villain stage, just as he was stuck as a child a moment ago. In that phase Lex was always the easiest to deal with when they had a common enemy to fight.
"This is a trick," Clark says. "The devil is working with Darkseid. They're trying to destroy you."
Lex sneers at him. "Mercy, please."
She mirrors his sneer, all teeth. "It's a pleasure, Sir."
The shot rings in Clark's ears as he's knocked down by the guide. His head hits the railing and he yelps in pain, then confusion takes over and it feels as if the walkway is swaying and someone is kicking him in the stomach, punching him in the face - no, someone is, that's Lex on top of him, his face distorted in rage and suddenly Clark believes that he can die in this place.
Another punch, and Clark tastes blood as his lip is split, and his vision is blurry with tears. He tries to escape, to shield himself with his arm, when suddenly something under him gives and the world tilts. Lex stumbles and plunges down with a furious yell and Clark follows him helpless until he finds purchase in the last second, one hand gripping the twisted railing, the other holding on tightly to Lex's hand.
All he can do for a moment is squeeze his eyes shut and ride out the pain and vertigo. Then he opens them slowly and dares to look down.
The hand he's holding on to isn't Lex's. It's the guide's hand, and Lex is down on the floor, scrambling back to his feet as nimbly as a cat. The guide's white mask is as blank as ever, but Clark can feel the terror in the body he's holding, and even though the guide must be dead and can't die in this place, Clark can't bring himself to let go.
"The cape," Clark presses through clenched teeth. The guide reaches up, stretching and twisting, and finally gets a hold of the red fabric, but it's too late. The red fabric slips from Clark's shoulders just as his fingers slip on the rail and they both lose their purchase and fall.
Clark comes down awkwardly, twisting his ankle, while the guide catches the momentum in a roll and stands again a moment later. Clark grips his hurting ankle and grits his teeth in pain. How can a few tendons and bones hurt that damn much? Clark has been beaten to death and it didn't hurt like this!
The cape flutters after them, slow and elegant and as a tumbling flag, and sticks to a glass tube filled with a greenish liquid, covering it almost completely.
Lex bares his teeth at them and lunges for Mercy gun that lies on the floor a few feet away from them. He's faster than the guide, and presses the trigger before he can properly take aim. So instead of Clark, the bullet hits the cape, going through it like only kryptonite can, and cracks the glass of the tube. Liquid spills out, and the cape slips to the ground, baring the contents.
A body floats in the tube, that of a child. It's a little boy, no older than eight, with a shock of dark hair drifting in the green water. The guide staggers backwards as if struck by a bullet as well. Clark gasps a moment later.
"Kon," he whispers, although he isn't sure. So young. The little face so round, soft as in sleep. No sign of life.
"I will own you," Lex's voice rings loudly through the room, echoing off the glass cases that suddenly surround them like a forest. Some of them are like a museum exhibition, pictures and artefacts, like the creepy room Lex had kept so many years ago, but far more extensive, from plaid shirts to scraps of blue fabric, from a lock of dark hair, to a big photo of Clark in glasses, bent over his laptop at the Planet. Over there, Lana lies in a glass coffin like Snow White, a tiny baby in her arms, and one is filled to the brim with meteor rocks, another with Kryptonian technology. And writing, writing, everywhere Clark looks, every question Lex has ever asked, every lie he has ever been told scribbled on paper.
"This is hell?" Lex exclaims. "Then I'll own you here rather than serve you in heaven, Clark!"
He's waving the gun around madly, and Clark stills, suddenly suspicious. This Lex is wrong. Lex never admitted things this easily. Driven to his limits, yes, Lex would slip into sudden destructive rage, but normally, he'd either be cold or falsely sincere, pretending not to care or to want the best for anyone.
And Lex never spouted clichés like that with such conviction, either. This Lex is as flat as the soulless Lex Clark left behind.
Something's foul.
Clark needs to test his suspicions. But how can he do that? How do you prove the absence of a soul?
The way he did it the first time.
He struggles to his feet, raising his hands to placate. He limps a step towards Lex, watching the motion of the gun careful, but paying even closer attention to Lex's face.
"I'm not your enemy," Clark says.
"But I'm yours," Lex hisses.
"I love you, Lex. I wish I had realized sooner how much I love you." And he's sincere, because even if this isn't Lex, the words are true. If it is Lex, then Clark wants him to know this.
Lex's face stays blank. "I don't care."
It's not that Lex would never do this. But Clark has listened to him pretend too many times not to know when it's all just a big fat lie. The truth is always in the gestures, the action, the looks, rather than Lex's cold words.
But Lex remains utterly impassive until suddenly, he unfreezes and bolts, running away through his forest of secrets.
Clark starts after him and yelps when he treads too hard on his injured ankle. He goes on nonetheless, sweat breaking all over his body, his throat tight with pain. Suddenly, the guide is at his side and seizes his right arm, steadying him. Together they're more awkward, stumbling as if tied at the waist, but much faster.
The room narrows around him and the walls that draw closer are painted in black and white, symbols and images, alien and human. Before them, the wall parts in a shimmer of light, and Clark thinks he sees Lex step through it, a dark silhouette with a blinding halo. He pushes onward, harder than he thought possible, and suddenly his steps become lighter and the light wraps around him with soothing tendrils, embracing them whole.
It feels like flying, right before they drop to the ground on the other side. They're still in the caves, although the paintings on the wall are now exclusively Kryptonian letters and numbers, something that looks like a computer code to Clark, drawn in swirls and spirals on the rough brown walls.
"That was a clever ruse," the guide says as they gingerly pick themselves off the ground. Clark's foot is throbbing, but the hot sharp burn of pain is receding. Clark is pretty sure twisted ankles don't normally work that way. "He didn't see that coming."
"Didn't see what?"
"Your little act just now. I almost believed you."
Clark straightens and draws away from the guide. He's ready to yell at this point, but forces himself to stay calm. 'Choose your battles' is one of the things his Dad always said that still hold true, even for Superman.
"It was the truth," he replies, his anger tightly controlled. It's his Superman voice, the one that intimidates anyone with half a brain or less than godlike powers. "I'm here because I love Lex. That's your answer. I'm saving him and not thousands of others because I love him. If you can't handle that, I'll go manage on my own."
He crosses his arms and stands straight even though his foot hurts. It's strange, but he was always surest of his feelings for Lex, be they good or bad ones, when confronted about them by others. The guide stares at him through the chalk-white mask.
"Love him," the wispy, far-away voice repeats. Then it laughs, a hard bark. "After thirty years you suddenly decide you love him."
"Yes," Clark snaps and limps around the guide, further into the caves, following the writing on the wall. There's only one was to go now, forward. Behind them is a solid wall. "It took me years to figure it out, but the feeling was always there. And I know he loved me too, in the beginning, even if he doesn't anymore."
"Oh, you know it, do you?"
Clark doesn't deign that with an answer. The guide seems determined to follow him, so there is no point in arguing. A few steps further the air gets warmer, and seems to vibrate and hum, a golden sound, like bees, like a huge bell constantly ringing.
"This is the end," Lex's voice sounds from ahead. Clark perks up and walks faster, rounding the next corner. The caves stop abruptly there, widening into a boundless room, a giant chasm behind a small cliff. The chasm is filled with light, radiant living light that's full of stars, from here to eternity.
At the edge of the cliff stands Lex with his back to the abyss. Clark has to shield his eyes to look at him.
"This is the end, Clark," Lex repeats. "And the beginning. This is the source."
"No," Clark cries. "This isn't the source, Lex. This is the underworld!"
"You don't understand. I was there once, so I am there forever. I've seen the truth, Clark. I've been the truth. There's no point in bringing me back."
Approaching Lex feels like flying close to the sun, like sinking into a furnace. Clark squints against the blaze and advances, step for step. "I've come farther than any human ever has, Clark. All the sacrifices I've made, all the things I did, they all brought me here. I'm right where I want to be."
Clark decides to try a different approach. "You came back the last time." He reaches out and finds Lex's shoulder, clad in the silky white suit.
"I wanted nothing more than to go back," Lex says, softly and intimately. "I would have taken my life to go back if you hadn't chosen that year to get yourself killed. I only stayed because I had to take care of things. But I'm here now. You don't need me. Go back, Clark."
Lex starts to draw back, towards the abyss, and Clark lunges forward, wrapping his arms around him. They're still strong, even without his powers, strong enough to capture Lex and hold on.
"I need you."
"You don't need anyone," Lex says. "You're just afraid of letting go."
And he takes another step back, pulling Clark with him, and Lex is right, Clark is more afraid of letting go than he is of holding on. Lex falls, into the core of the furnace, and Clark clings to him, falling with him.
In his arms, Lex dissolves to light, intangible, ephemeral, gone.
Clark falls, and it's a good thing that Clark's falls always end with waking. No fall can kill him, and neither can this. Clark simply can't believe it will.
It takes the breath from his lungs, though, and for some time, he lies dazed and confused on a dusty wooden floor. It smells a bit like an old attic and fresh paint. When he opens his eyes, the room he's in is bathed in bright, friendly light that falls in through a small square window high on the wall and a half-open door. The walls are painted white, but almost every inch is covered in scraggly black handwriting. In one place someone started to paint it over with white, and the brush still lies dripping with paint on a pile of newspapers. The one on the top is the Daily Planet, a headline Clark will never forget, even if he has never seen it fresh out of print - only in class cases and pinned to cubicle walls at the Planet.
"Death of Superman," it proclaims. Under the brush will be a picture of Clark, or what is left of him, spread out on a pile of rubble that's still dark with blood. He turns away, studies the scribbled walls. A jumble of letters and numbers, not all of them human numbers, equations and formulae and proofs. Clark can't follow them.
"Are you done playing Janet yet?" someone inquires from behind him. Clark turns around. The guide seems to have walked in through the half open door. The ragged cloak looks a little singed.
"Janet?" he asks the guide.
"The tale of Thomas the Rhymer. Janet wants her man back, but she has to hold on to him as the faeries make him change into vicious animals."
"Never heard of it," Clark shrugged. "How did it end?"
"It turns out the thing she's holding on to was a beast all along that the faeries had enchanted. The real Thomas remained hidden from her in the faerie realm."
"Aren't fairy-tales supposed to end happily?"
"I guess Janet liked playing the hero more than she liked using her brains. She'd have realized that if the faeries can turn her man into a beast, then they can also turn something else into him."
"You're saying this isn’t Lex?"
"I'm just telling you the story. You asked for it."
Clark frowns and goes over to the door to open it further. Beyond it is an oval room with white walls and parquet floor, a fire-place and a grandfather clock. Three French windows overlook a green lawn and one of them is ajar, letting in a breeze that moves the white curtains and the two flags by the window.
Behind the massive desk of the President of the United States sits Lex, reading a thick folder. He puts it down as Clark and the guide slowly enter, with exactly the same patient, welcoming expression he used to have for Clark at the mansion when they were still friends.
He's no longer wearing the white suit, but a more conservative charcoal one together with a blue tie. Everything about him radiates calm and competence. Even Clark's impressed.
"Clark," Lex says, his enunciation clear and meaningful as ever. There's emotion in his voice, but distanced, buried under respect. "Have a seat."
"You know me, Lex, I prefer standing," Clark replies, not unfriendly. His audiences with Lex as President were hostile staring contests, each of them clad in their full regalia, flaunting their worldly power, wary of the balance they had found. But in the end, the balance held and they behaved like professionals. Clark doesn't quite know how he managed to stay so impersonal then. Maybe it was the fact that Lex was acting in an office, which gave him a similar kind of emotional armour as the cape gave Clark.
Lex's nod is polite. He ignores the guide entirely, as if unable to see him, even when the guide takes a seat in one of the chairs along the oval wall. Instead Lex glances around the office, running his hands over the desk in a theatrical gesture. "What does it say about a man, Clark, when this is his consolation prize? I think it makes him a very successful man, don't you?"
"Consolation prize?" Clark asks. He's decided to take this conversation slower than the others, let Lex lead the way. Maybe then Lex will be more approachable.
"Frankly, Clark, you and I know that this isn't what I want. Not anymore. I had better things. For a while I was, for all intents and purposes, a god. I still am one of the smartest people on the planet. I don't have to limit myself to Earth. This is what I am supposed to want, what every rich kid is supposed to want, but I always wanted other things more. I wanted knowledge. I wanted you. I wanted to be a father. But can never keep the things I want."
"For someone who didn't want this you did - do a pretty good job." Clark gives him an encouraging smile.
Lex returns the smile without much feeling. "I've never liked people doing their jobs badly. You always do your job picture perfect, don't you? Always there at the right moment, always saving the day. You never slip. You never fail."
Clark sighs. "I do, Lex. All the time. I'm doing it right now, I think."
Lex raises his brows. "You're Clark Kent. You can do anything."
"I'm trying to save you," Clark admits. "But it doesn't work."
Leaning back in his chair, Lex looks sceptical. "Why would I need saving? Haven't I proved at least, if nothing else, that I don't need you?"
"But you do, right now. You've done something very selfless, and it got you into a tight spot. I'm trying to help you out, but your enemies are confusing you. This is an illusion, Lex."
With a frown, Lex studies the fireplace, the moving curtains, the flag. He curls his fingers around the glass on the desk before him and drinks. It's red wine instead of golden liquor. "You're saying I'm not President."
"You were. Until two years ago. Can't you remember anything? There was a crisis. You had to go underground. A lot of people died. Kon died. He saved the world. Don't you remember?"
Lex's lips twist into a bitter smirk. "You know me, Clark. I have a spotty memory. Maybe I don't want to remember."
"Kon is alive again," Clark says gently. "You made it possible. But it cost you a lot. It's what brought you here."
"And you?" Lex gives him a tired look, then sighs in exasperation. "Don't tell me. You're here to save me. I have my pride, Clark. If it was anyone but you I'd tell you to go to hell."
Clark lowers his eyes and smiles at Lex's choice of words. "It's kind of where we are already."
Lex laughs. "Not bad for hell. I always knew evil would pay off one day."
"But it's the good intentions that brought him here. Aren't you going to remind him of that?" the guide asks. "He seems to have forgotten."
Lex gets up as if no one has said anything and straightens his suit. "You know the way back, I presume?"
The guide gets up as well and turns to Clark. "Well, Janet? What road leads back from faerie?"
Clark glances from one to the other. Something's going on here and he doesn't get it. The guide seemed a little hostile towards Lex from the start, but never left Clark's side. But now the muffled voice is vibrant with hostility. Maybe it's because Clark and Lex will return to the world of the living and the guide will be left behind. Clark rises and goes to stand close by the guide. He wishes he could just take off that featureless mask and see who's behind it. He has a feeling the answer is so close, so obvious, but still completely out of reach.
"You helped me a lot. I wish I could do something for you as well."
"Unlike him, I have no compunctions to tell you to go to hell," the guide retorts and turns away. "The faster you're gone, the faster I can go back to getting myself out of this."
Lex pays no attention to the conversation. He walks over to one of the doors purposefully and presses the handle. Beyond it is not another room, but open countryside - brown, harvested fields, a clear sky, corn like a dark green sea in the distance. A narrow road winds before them.
They stepped out and when Clark turns, the door is gone as well as the room they were in a moment before. He takes a deep breath of crisp autumn air, revelling in the sun on his face. It feels warm, utterly real. Soon he'll be back under the sun.
"When we're back, I'd like things to change," Clark tells Lex as they walk side by side.
"I'm willing to compromise," Lex answers placidly enough for Clark to gather up the rest of his courage.
"I want something more than just peaceful coexistence," he ventures. "I'd like us to be friends again. I'd like to take you to Smallville and have a family dinner. You, me, Mom, Kon. I think it would do him good to see that we're not enemies anymore."
"If your mother wants me in her house, I'm more than open to your suggestion," Lex agrees.
The road has reached a small copse of trees that hides what lies beyond. The sun's just descending behind the tops of the trees, the golden light filtering through the yellowing leaves.
Clark gets even more optimistic. "We could work together, Lex. Together we could tackle problems that I can't resolve with my powers."
"I always thought so."
It almost seems too easy, but then Clark pushes his suspicion away. It hasn't been easy. It has been a long and hard and painful road, not just in hell, but in the thirty years before. He and Lex deserve this.
They round the copse, yellow leaves tumbling through the air around them. A small smile plays on Lex's lips. "I know where we are," he says, just as the last bit of road comes into view.
The trees have hidden a river that dried out years ago, but is still running strongly here. The murky water gleams cheerfully in the sunlight, and the bridge seems broad and welcoming. Clark glances down at the muddy stripe of sand down by the river and smiles. The place where Clark brought Lex to life once will be the place where he brings him back a second time. For once the symmetry of their lives will be beautiful rather than frightening.
As they step onto the bridge, the other side of the river starts to blur and recede. Mist rises from the green water, shrouding the other shore, climbing high as a wall, crawling up Clark's legs like icy vines of ivy. He shivers.
There's something like a footfall behind them, a multitude of whispers.
"Don't turn around," Lex commands. "Don't look behind you."
"Clark," the guide calls.
Clark stops. Too easy. This is the bridge where Lex died. This is where Clark's human life ended. This is a river of pain, of secrets, of death.
"You can only cross this bridge by dying," the guide's voice rings from behind them, echoing Clark's thoughts.
Lex turns around and grips Clark's shoulder. "Don't hesitate now, Clark. We're almost there."
"You said not to look back," Clark breathes as Lex's eyes wander over Clark's shoulder to what lies behind him.
"Yes. Now walk. It's only a few more steps."
Clark remains rooted to the spot. Lex sighs impatiently. "I wish you'd trust me, just once in your life."
"You drank wine. In the office. Isn't it dangerous to accept food or drink in this place?"
"It doesn't seem to have harmed me."
"And I thought this place was shaped by my memory and expectations. Then why did I see places that I have never been to?"
"Finally you're thinking like a reporter. Go on, ask the questions," the guide demands.
Lex's face twists in anger. "You're overstepping your boundaries!” he shouts over Clark's shoulder.
Clark's head shoots up in surprise. "I thought you couldn't see him!"
"Oh, I won't be seeing him much longer," Lex snarls. He charges past Clark, throwing himself at the guide. Clark jumps around as well, the warning forgotten. The other side of the river has become invisible as well. No light dances on the river now, the water is dark and deep. Lex evades a punch by the guide, and grabs the rag-clad arm with inhuman swiftness. He twists, throwing the guide at the railing and grabs the hooded head, banging it against the metal violently. The mask cracks but doesn't break. Blood oozes through the fractures and the guide slumps in apparent defeat, only to kick viciously at Lex's shin a second later. Lex doesn't yell. He only growls like an angered beast, and seizes the cloak of rags, throwing the guide over the railing in one big heave. There's a splash and for a moment, bubbles rise to the surface, but then the water smoothes as if nothing has ever disturbed it. Clark runs over to the railing and stares down. The guide doesn't come up again.
"What did you do that for?" he whispers.
"He overstepped his boundaries," Lex replies cryptically, brushing off his hands. He moves closer to Clark, touching his shoulder gently. "Now come."
Clark takes a shaky breath. He looks into Lex's clear blue eyes as Lex's hand moves to his cheek.
"Are you Lex Luthor?" he asks.
Lex frowns. "Don't you trust me?"
They cannot lie, Clark remembers. And the guide was forbidden to tell the truth. They hid him in plain sight -
Clark shies away from the warm hand on his cheek and twists around. The railing when he gripped it burns like hot irons, and he feels his palms blister. With a yell, Clark jumps over the railing and hits the water. It wells up and closes over his head, heavy and cold, and fills his nose, his throat, his lungs, dragging him down. He lets it, pushing further down even as life seeps out of his body, thrashing with his arms and legs. There is no ground, no muddy river bed, no wreck of a car. A mask floats past Clark, bone-white and cracked. His vision dances with bright spots as the last bit of breath presses out of his lungs and escapes him.
There's silence and the river tugging at him with gentle, insistent hands. Clark lets himself be twisted and turned around and closes his eyes as the river embraces him, clinging to him like a dying man.
It feels a lot like flying.
*
"Oh my god! Oh damn, I'm so sorry! I fucked up! I didn't know he would jump!"
Clark blinks and brushes the water out of his face. It doesn't stop, though and he realizes that it's pouring, the sky raining ever new water down on him. He pushes up on his elbow and stares with the panicked, wide-eyed face of a boy with dark hair plastered to his forehead, drenched from head to toe.
"Kon," Clark croaks and twists around to cough up more water. Next to him on the muddy shore lies Lex, pale and unconscious and just as wet. Clark crawls over to him anxiously, cradling the bald head in his hands and gasping with relief when he realizes that he can hear Lex's heart-beat, faint but getting stronger. He has his powers back. He's back in the world of the living.
A faint trickle of blood runs down Lex's nose. It looks like he received a vicious punch not long ago.
"He was behaving totally inconspicuous for days after you left," Kon babbles. "But then this freak weather started - rain in Smallville! And you didn't even blow clouds over here! It's like hell froze over or something - sorry, didn't mean to swear! Anyways, as soon as the rain started he hopped into his car and drove here. I was worried, you know, thought he might go after Aunt Martha, but he just stopped at the bridge. I really didn't think he'd jump! Since when is Lex Luthor suicidal?"
"Calm down," Clark says. "You did okay. You pulled us out, right?"
"Yeah, of course! Where did you come from anyways?"
"I jumped in after him," Clark says, not caring that it sounds mad. Colour is returning to Lex's cheeks. His eyes crack open and he blinks in confusion up at Clark. Then he tries to lift his head. "Where - ?"
"The river. Smallville," Clark supplies. Lex groans and slumps back onto the sand.
"Of course."
"You were the guide, right?"
"Sure took you long enough."
"Sorry. Why did they let you do that?"
"They didn't let me. They forced me to do it so they could play that sick game of theirs. I wasn't allowed to tell the truth, but I was allowed to lie. The tale of Thomas the Rhymer doesn't end that way at all. And if you'd paid attention you'd have realized that all of these places came from my imagination, not yours."
Clark beams at Lex's annoyed expression. "Darkseid is going to be pissed. I saved your soul, Lex!"
"Don't remind me," Lex mutters darkly. Then he opens his eyes again and turns his head to look at Kon. "You didn't involve him in this, did you?" he asks with a hint of threat in his voice. Clark's beam grows a few shades brighter in spite of it. This is his Lex.
"No. I just told him to look after Metropolis and your soulless self."
"Soulless?" Kon gawks, staring at Lex. "What's up with you two? This is absolutely freaky, you know? You're being civil with each other or something!"
Lex sits up with a remarkable amount of dignity for man soaked in muddy water and shivering from the cold. "The appearances are deceiving."
Kon narrows his blue eyes at them, looking from Clark to Lex and back. "Wait a moment. Didn't you to the underworld to save someone? It was him, wasn't it?"
Clark nods. He knew Lex didn't want Kon to know, but the last thing they need is more lies in this family. "He made a deal with some devil to bring you back. You don't have to worry about it now, everything's okay."
Lex stands, his legs shaky but his face hard as steel. "I'm no longer President, Clark. Public opinion doesn't matter much to me."
Clark rolls his eyes at the prelude to another threat, even though he knows how dangerous Lex can be. "Lex. So he knows you love him enough to do this for him. That isn't a bad thing, you know?"
Lex crosses his arms, probably against the cold, and turns away. Clark gets to his feet and grimaces at his muddy jeans, then shuffles after Lex. "You're wet and freezing. Let's go home. My Mom would never turn you away in that condition."
"I don't like your bizarro versions," Kon complains from behind them. "I'm seriously thinking about calling in the Titans. Robin is going to figure out what's messing with your heads."
Clark laughs, free and happy. "You can invite him for dinner tomorrow, kid. Tonight I want it to be just family."
*
Lex sits on the couch, dry and in too big clothes. He's defiantly put away the blanket Martha forced him to wear around his shoulders while he ate his soup and is cradling a steaming cup of coffee now. The rain is still pattering against the windowpanes. It's almost dark outside. Kon is helping Clark's Mom with the dishes. Clark can hear the low murmur of their voices drift into the living room. She's telling him about the past.
Clark sits down next to Lex at a distance that's closer than polite but further than intimate. Lex glances up at him.
"I meant all the things I said, even if it wasn't really you I talked to down there," Clark begins. "I want us to be friends again."
"That's a dangerous idea."
"We can handle dangerous."
"Oh, I'm not afraid of it," Lex says, smirking into his coffee. "I just thought your other friends might object."
"You said the same while you were without a soul," Clark remembers fondly. "There's something I need to tell you, though, and you might not want to be friends anymore afterwards."
"You supply of secrets is apparently endless."
"You were… gentler without a soul. Much more open to affection," Clark explains hesitantly. "Jesus. It feels like I used you. We had sex."
Lex stares at him. He doesn't look particularly enraged, so Clark starts to worry.
"I'm waiting for you to blush," Lex informs him.
Clark leans back on the couch and glowers at Lex, even though he's tentatively starting to feel relief. The longing for the intimacy they shared will always be there, but he can keep it at bay for their friendship's sake.
"I'm not a teenager anymore. I can talk about sex. We had sex. It's something people do -”
"I'm going to crush that bastard. I'm going to find a way to buy up hell or something and make him regret this," Lex hisses. Clark's eyes widen in alarm.
"Lex?"
"Darkseid. He's responsible for this. I can't remember!"
"Us having - ?"
Clark's question is muffled by Lex's lips, pressing against his with the full force of the rage he apparently felt. Clark opens up in surprise, more than happy to take the brunt of Lex's anger. A second later, Lex is straddling him, pushing Clark's shoulders down on the backrest of the couch. His eyes gleam. "I think I have a new arch-enemy."
"Huh?" Clark says intelligently, trying to push up and regain Lex's lips, but coming up short. So he has to lick under Lex's chin and his throat. Lex grimaces oddly, as if he might be ticklish there.
"Darkseid. He's going down!"
There are a number of things Clark might point out, such as the fact that Darkseid is already pretty much down, or that he is already Clark's enemy. Instead he slips his hands under Lex's too big borrowed shirt and runs them possessively over his warm sides, up to the firm shoulders and down to Lex's hipbones, pulling him closer.
"I could bring him back just to destroy him again," Lex muses, then gasps as he makes contact with Clark's crotch.
"Bad idea," Clark mumbles against his collarbone.
"Good idea," Lex growls and grinds down.
There's a yelp. Both of them wince as the living room door slams shut.
"Oh dear," Clark can hear his mother say in the kitchen. Lex buries his head in the crook of Clark's neck.
"I'm calling the Titans!" Kon yells.