Elseworlds (3/5) Conclusion
Post got too large, had to split again!
First Part
Second Part
Chloe scowled at the Daily Planet morning edition.
Front page of the Daily Planet. There was even a picture - but not of her. They hadn't even cited the article she'd written. She was only mentioned as the anonymous source.
Of course, she supposed it was kinda fair. She hadn't gathered all of the material herself. Most of it had come from Clark and her own anonymous source, the one she suspected to be the Batman.
But her article had been well-written, damn it.
"Something interesting?" Gabe Sullivan asked his daughter, munching on a sweet bun. He was used to surrendering the paper to her.
"They've got a suspected murderer in the Kent case," she said. "A detective from the MPD. An anonymous source handed them a tape with a conversation that clearly indicates him as the murderer."
"Thank God," Gabe said, slurping his coffee. "That park was on your way to school."
"They haven't arrested him yet," she pointed out. "He's on the run. It says here that Morgan Edge is wanted, too."
Her Dad's brows shot up. "Morgan Edge? That's quite a catch. They never could prove him anything."
Chloe grinned, taking it as a complement, even if it was given unwittingly.
"Gotta go," Gabe said, getting up. "Mr Luthor's busy again, which means I'm busy, too."
Chloe snorted at that. "You mean he's busy partying and you get to do all the work managing the company?"
He sent her a reproachful look. "He's a lot more competent than the papers give him credit," he groused before hurrying out of the kitchen.
"Bye, Dad!" she called after him. As Chloe sipped her coffee, she wondered about Clark. He hadn't called her, even though she had slipped him her number when he had visited her and he hadn't shown up again the night before. And the package with the tape that had been dropped on her windowsill had had Grey Ghost's signature, so it couldn't be from Clark.
*
The emergency light was blurry, as if Clark were looking through his dad's reading glasses. It danced in his vision, doubled and stretched and flickered mockingly at him, like a strobe light.
He didn't fell his legs and his hands anymore. His shirt was damp with cold sweat.
Luthor and the two bodyguards had left a long time ago.
The shadows in the far corners of the laboratory seemed to solidify and draw closer. They dripped from the ceiling, like huge drops of ink and landed on the edge of his table like dark, silent crows heralding winter.
He blinked. The crow turned into a different shape. It had small pointy ears, and arms, and leathery wings and a black face without eyes and mouth. It sat crouched on the metal table between Clark's legs, breathing with an ever so faint crackle of leather. The wings were a cape, spread out over Clark's legs and hanging down the sides of the table
The nightmarish figure bent forward and put a black-gloved hand on Clark's aching chest. With the other it nimbly undid the chain around his neck and pulled it off to put it inside a pouch on its belt.
Miraculously, the effects of the rock vanished instantly.
Clark drew a shuddering breath, filling his lungs with air. His vision cleared and he could see that the figure looming over him was a man, dressed from head to toe in black. He wore a cape, and a cowl that covered his face entirely, making it seem as if he were blind and mute. The spikes on its head looked more like horns than ears.
"Who - ?"
"I'm Batman," the figure growled.
Clark glanced at the ceiling. A square hole had appeared, probably a ventilation shaft.
"How -”
"No time," Batman rumbled, glancing at the security camera above the door. "Can you move?"
Clark nodded.
Without a word, Batman rose to his full height. He was tall, and his thighs and calves looked wiry, but without the cape he would have appeared lithe as an acrobat in the skin-tight suit. With the grace of a panther he jumped up and grasped the edge of the air vent and pulled himself up, vanishing in it with no more noise than the slight swish of his cape.
Clark sat up and tugged once at his cuffs. They broke easily. His strength was returning quickly, and although he still felt sick and thirsty, it was enough to get up and follow Batman. His jump wasn't as graceful and much noisier, but Batman was already ahead of him, crawling swiftly through the ventilation shaft. Clark made himself as small as possible, cursing his broad shoulders and followed him.
The shaft made a sharp right turn. They crawled over a couple of metal grilles, and Clark got glimpses of hallways and offices beneath. Then they came to an opening that led into what looked like an elevator shaft, only narrower and without the cables going up and down.
There was the whirring noise, like a fishing line being thrown, that Clark had heard in the park. Batman jumped into the shaft, holding onto the grappling line and swinging softly back and forth. Clark gulped as he saw that the shaft was swallowed by darkness beneath and above him.
Batman held out his free arm, though, so Clark gritted his teeth and leaned into the shaft bit by frightened bit, until he felt Batman's strong arm with his hand and latched onto it. Batman seized him around the waist and Clark threw his arm around the man's shoulders with a small yelp as his feet were pulled off the safe ground of the ventilation shaft and he, too, dangled over the abyss.
"You're too trusting," Batman's dark voice rasped in his ear, and suddenly, they were being pulled up the grappling line at a breathtaking speed, as if they were flying up the shaft into the darkness. Clark clung on for dear life.
When they stopped and Clark dared to open his eyes again, there was a sliver of night sky above, clouds lit orange by the city lights. The grappling hook was attached to the edge of an air vent. Clark reached for it and pulled himself up, glad to have firm ground under his feet again, even though they were on a roof high above the city, tall, glittering skyscrapers all around them, and, across from the street, the huge golden globe of the Daily Planet. Batman walked perilously close to the edge and raised the hand with the grappling gun attached to the wrist.
"You get over it once you do this," he said gruffly, but with a hint of humour.
"You want us to -”
"Now." The humour was gone, replaced by a steely command.
Clark stepped closer, and once again the Batman pulled him in and shot the grappling line across the chasm of the street. It vanished in the darkness, then pulled tight.
And then they jumped.
*
Three blocks down, Batman finally let them stop. Clark was still panting from fright. The caped man changed grappling lines in free fall, and what looked like a lot of fun in Spiderman cartoons was actually ten times more terrifying than that one time Clark had to ride in a rollercoaster.
It was also a little bit exhilarating. That moment when you swung upwards on the line, and then at the peak of the rise, right before you fell again, when you were completely weightless for a second, as if gravity had deserted you and you would just float away into the sky if you let go of the line - yeah, that was great.
Batman stood at the edge of the building, his cape flapping in the night air like dark wings. The sound of traffic rung up noisily from the depths of Metropolis. It still had to be early in the night. That it was night at all somehow surprised Clark. He had no concept of how much time had gone by since Phelan had captured him.
"Thanks," he said uneasily.
Batman turned around and walked over to him. "Don't," he said and reached up to his collarbone, where the armour that covered his chest went over to the thin material of the cowl and did something with his fingers that unfastened it.
Clark's breath caught as Batman started to pull the cowl off.
A head of red hair emerged and a pale, slightly damp face. Lex looked at him with a grave but unreadable expression.
"What," Clark stammered, not a question, just pure helplessness because none of this made sense.
A mirthless smirk tugged at Lex's lips and vanished again quickly. "Yes. Lex Luthor is Batman."
"You -”
"I'm sorry for what I did in the lab," Lex explained. "It was a necessary act to fool Edge."
"You work together with him," Clark accused, his voice found again. He realized that the only way to flee off the roof would be to jump - and this time without even a thin grappling line.
Lex appeared unmoved. "That is necessary as well. To be able to fight crime as the Batman, there are certain… deceptions that I must keep up. The papers must paint me as an irresponsible playboy. And the Metropolis' underworld must believe that I'm still my father's son, so they will continue to trust me enough to deal with me, like Edge. I told you already that he was very rich and that he was killed by a meteor. But he was also a criminal who murdered his own parents. I will never be like him."
Lex didn't sound exactly bitter, just grim and determined. Clark couldn't imagine what it felt like knowing that your father had done such horrible things. He remembered how Lex had talked about him that first day in the study - always a little remotely, but also a bit admiringly. Was this twisted family history enough to make you put on a scary leather costume and fight crime?
Lex went on explaining. "After Phelan murdered your parents, I discovered our families' connection. I intended to keep you out of it until I could get Phelan and Edge arrested, but then Phelan showed up with a piece of meteor rock and claimed to Edge that he could disable you with it."
"It wasn't you who told him?" Clark wanted to trust Lex, but part of him was still frightened of the man he'd seen in the laboratory. Even Batman wasn't quite as scary.
And Lex knew about Clark's powers…
Lex looked at him long and seriously, as if willing Clark to believe him. Hid did sound honest. "No. The lead box was only me testing Phelan's theory. It proved correct, but it wouldn't have mattered if you had stayed in the mansion that afternoon. I didn't expect you to leave before night and the afternoon would have been enough for me to get the evidence of Phelan's involvement to my contact and have him arrested. But you followed him, and instead of returning to his department, where they'd have arrested him, he took you to Edge. I had to change my plans then. The little impromptu act in the lab was for Edge's benefit. Now Phelan has gone undercover and Edge has probably already left the country. It's not what I hoped for, but at least he's out of my city."
"Why did you come to the lab as Batman? You wouldn't have had to reveal yourself to me."
"Would you have trusted me without seeing this?" Lex asked seriously.
Clark glanced down and shook his head. "You were really scary back there."
Lex lowered his eyes with a self-depreciating smirk. "Fear is my weapon, Clark," he said in a tone of irony. Then he looked up again, his blue eyes hard in the glow of the traffic as he surveyed his city.
"There's another reason. I need you to help me find Phelan before he gets away. I let Edge slip away already. I won't let this murderer run free."
"I don't know how I could help you find Phelan. The city is huge," Clark said doubtfully.
Lex didn't answer. He pulled the cowl back over his head and fastened it. When he spoke, it was once more Batman's low, distorted growl.
"You found him once already."
"I just followed his car from the police department," Clark objected.
"But Phelan doesn't know that. He knows you have powers. He will believe it was you who found him."
Clark frowned, completely confused. "Uh… but it won't be me?"
"No need. I put a tracking device on him while I talked to him and Edge. But if you're with me when I track him down, he won't make the connection between Lex Luthor and the Batman."
Clark had a hard time following Lex's byzantine reasoning, but there was no time to question him. Batman raised his hand and fired the grappling hook at the building across the street, then extended his arm to Clark once more.
Clark could have refused. There was no reason to trust Lex Luthor. But Lex was going to lead him to Phelan. So he stepped into the cold embrace once more and jumped into the abyss.
*
The car parked in a tiny alley between fire escapes and trash cans looked unreal. It was so sleek and black that it appeared to absorb light instead of reflecting it and that made it ominous, like a living thing, a panther crouching and waiting for the kill.
It looked faster than most racing cars Clark had seen on television.
Batman slid behind the wheel with fluid grace and Clark hurried around the hood of the car to fold himself into the co-driver's seat. It wasn't butter-soft leather like in Lex's sports car that first night, but some hard, synthetic material, cold to the touch like armour. Lex pressed a button on the dashboard and what had looked at first like an expensive stereo unfolded and rearranged itself into a small screen that had a rough map of the city. A steady green dot sat in the centre, while a blinking red one moved along the river down by the docks.
It was way cooler than a James Bond movie.
"Is that Edge?" Clark asked, pointing at the moving red dot.
Batman nodded. He turned the key in the ignition and the car came to live with a deep, growling purr. Clark could feel it vibrate with power all around them. The tinted windshield lit up and became a little less opaque, and then, to Clark's surprise, turned into a transparent computer screen, showing at once the dark street and all kinds of information, like the map with the dots, their exact coordinates, the time, even the temperature, the relative location of the nearest police cars -
"Seatbelt," Batman ordered and stepped onto the gas.
*
Phelan's dot had stopped moving inside a factory building a few blocks away from the river. They parked next to the wire fence surrounding it. There were no guards, and in places the fence was torn. The floodlights that had once lit up the parking lot in front of the factory appeared to be broken.
"It's a LuthorCorp plant," Clark said in surprise when he spotted the rusty sign at the gate.
Lex nodded. "LuthorCorp plant number 2. It was shut down for safety reasons years ago."
"What does Phelan want here?"
Batman gave no answer. He turned off the engine and got out of the car. Clark followed him, just in time to see him climb up the fence and leap over it easily. The most amazing thing, though, was how silently Batman moved, more like a phantom than a man. No wonder the papers still doubted his existence.
Clark simply leapt over the fence in one big jump and jogged after Lex. Instead of going for the front door, Batman kept inside the deep shadows along the side of the factory building and eventually stopped at a smaller door that had probably once served as an entry for the maintenance people. Clark reached for the handle, but Lex put a hand on his arm and shook his head. He slipped something from his utility belt and started picking the lock - within less than thirty seconds, the door opened. Lex put the wire back into its pouch and took a pair of slim night-vision goggles from another one.
Together they slipped into the inky darkness of a corridor. Clark had no problem seeing in the dark, even without x-ray vision. When they reached another door and a staircase, Lex stopped, apparently considering their options. Clark decided that since Lex knew about his powers anyways - at least his strength and his invulnerability - it couldn't hurt to reveal one more power.
"If Phelan's in the building, I can see him," he whispered, his voice jumping a little at the confession. Batman turned towards him, unreadable beneath the cowl. Clark licked his lips and then squinted at the walls and started scanning the building.
Up front there were offices, but they were all deserted. Then there were a couple of control rooms and two large halls full of dismantled machinery and huge metal vats. There was no human skeleton visible, either. Clark frowned, and turned towards the staircase and finally, the basement. When he threw a glance at the elevator, though, and further down to the second basement level, he was surprised to find another huge hall, and, sitting in a control room, a human skeleton.
"He's in the second basement level," Clark announced.
Batman almost but not quite startled. "There is no second basement level. Plants One to Five all have the same layout."
Clark shrugged. "He's down there."
Batman stood frozen for a moment, then moved towards the stairs and down. As Clark followed him, he felt his throat turn dry again. In a few minutes, they'd face Phelan. Knowing that Phelan had meteor rocks made all of this much more dangerous, but Clark's decision stood - he would bring the man down, forever.
And if Clark used his speed, even Batman wouldn't be able to stop him.
But he might try. Lex stopped at the elevator door in the first basement level, but Clark speeded further along the corridor, past huge gas pipes, until he stood directly above the control room in the second basement level.
He heard the groan of metal as Batman managed to open the elevator door, then a sudden stillness. Lex had to have noticed Clark's absence.
Gritting his teeth, Clark balled his right hand to a fist and slammed it down onto the concrete floor. It shattered, and with the second punch, the floor around Clark gave and collapsed into the lower level in an avalanche of steel and concrete. Clark landed on his feet and as he straightened, found himself in a room full of computer panels and a couple of office chairs, with a glass wall looking out onto the production hall. The emergency light was on down here, a ghostly blue twilight.
Phelan stood behind one overturned chair, his gun pointing at Clark. He shot, once, then ran out of the room just as Clark's heat vision blasted the glass wall behind him, hot enough to start melting the glass immediately. Clark barely even felt the bullet bounce off his chest. He went after Phelan through the door and found himself on a platform leading to a metal walkway that stretched along the full length of the hall, permitting to look down on the production are and the big, open vats. Some of them were empty, dysfunctional like the rest of the facility, but on the far end of the hall, two were still filled with some liquid.
Behind him, Clark heard the flutter of the cape as Batman dropped down through the hole in the ceiling but it was only an afterthought, meaningless as everything but the pursuit. He didn't have to concentrate now, the fire was throbbing behind his retinas, throbbing like a pulse, like blood from a gunshot wound -
Phelan ran along the clattering metal walkway, then, when he came to the end, caught at a dead end several metres above the vats of chemical, he seized the railing and whirled around. His gaunt face was thrown into stark relief by the bluish light, his snarl like a hideous grin.
In one hand he held the gun, in the other a meteor rock, outstretched towards Clark like a talisman to ward off a demon.
Clark stopped, too. He was panting, not from exertion, not from the rock that was still at a safe distance, merely from excitement, or maybe fear. This was it. Phelan knew it.
"Don't!" Batman's voice rang out loud behind him, echoing off the walls like a whole swarm of thundering voices.
Now Phelan's snarl did turn into a grin. He pointed the gun higher, past Clark.
"A step closer and I'll shoot the Bat."
"He isn't worth it, Clark," Lex called out. "Once you've done this, there's no way back. Believe me. I've been where you are now."
Clark unclenched his fists and shot a blast of heat-vision in Phelan's direction. It missed the gun and hit the walkway instead. Phelan jerked away from it and his finger slipped on the trigger.
Clark saw the bullet float towards him and he reached up and plucked it out of the air, wincing as it bit him like an insect, a fluttering butterfly with teeth.
As the sound of the shot rang out and Phelan stared numbly at him, Clark opened his hand and let the flattened bullet slip from his palm like a penny. Phelan swallowed. He lowered the gun.
"You're a good kid, Clark. I know you won't do this," he called shakily. His voice sounded hollow in the large room. "I'll surrender myself to the police - hell, even to the Bat -”
"Shut up!" Clark yelled. "You think I won't do this? You think there's anything I wouldn't do right now?"
"No," Batman said, his low voice now closer to Clark's back. "There's nothing. You'd do anything. And you're justified. But once it's done, it's done. You can do this now, Clark, and get your revenge and walk away. But you'll always be a killer. And you'll know it, every day of your life, that you took a life once and that you could do it again."
Phelan nodded emphatically. "Yes! You don't want to be -”
"Shut up," Batman growled. Phelan's mouth snapped shut.
Clark just wanted it to be over. He didn't want to see Phelan anymore. He didn't want to listen to Batman saying all these things that Clark knew were true and that hurt, because there was now and there was the pain and the need for an end, but there was also the rest of Clark's life and Clark didn't want to be a murderer.
He wanted it to be that night again so he could pluck the bullets from the air -
"You're not just anybody," Batman said, now almost softly, a rasp that tickled Clark's back. "You have incredible gifts. You will shape the future of the world. But will you do it with blood on your hands or without?"
Gifts. How many times had Mom and Dad called them that?
Couldn't look at that murderer's face anymore. He turned away, staring off somewhere into the blue shadows. Now it was Lex he faced, tall and dark and masked, offering no comfort, only the truth.
"I just," Clark choked, words deserting him, all but need and pain gone.
"You can't," Batman said.
Clark didn't see Phelan raise the gun. He only saw Batman move, one fluid motion from seizing the bat-shaped throwing star at his belt to the arc of his arm and the hand flinging the weapon at Phelan. The shot rang and Clark whirled around, knowing that there'd never be another bullet he didn't catch, only to see the shot go wide and Phelan throwing himself out of the way of Batman's weapon and over the railing of the walkway.
He plunged into the vat beneath with a scream, an acid green chemical spilling all over the place and then nothing, not even the thrashing of limbs or bubbles of air rising to the surface after it smoothened.
The room was utterly silent. Only the reflections of the emergency light on the surface of the liquid danced on the ceiling and walls.
"He's dead," Clark breathed, more in shock than anything else.
Lex moved past him and stared over the railing down at the vat. His broad, wiry shoulders and the back of his neck had a bowed, heavy slant to them. "I’ve killed before."
Clark sucked in a startled breath. He thought of Lex telling him that his teacher was an assassin, and of Lex shaking Edge's hand. He thought of Chloe, too, claiming that the Batman stopped crimes. How far was he really willing to go?
"You… did?"
"I told you I've been where you are," Lex replied quietly. "After my mother's death, I vowed that I would never again fail to protect a life. I studied hard. I trained myself in every science that would help me to lead my company and fight crime in my city. When I was seventeen, I left the States to travel Asia and train with the best martial artists. It was… I learned things that changed me. I learned to channel my anger and fear into strength. I learned peace of mind, Clark, and I was almost ready to let my crusade go. But then the news reached me that my mother's murderer had been released from prison. I came back to Metropolis. I hunted him down, mercilessly, for hours, all through the night, until he was just a shivering wreck, begging me for mercy. And then I killed him."
The thought of Lex, hunting a man with the cold, clinical intensity Clark had seen in the laboratory and then killing him was chilling. How often had he done it again?
"And then?" Clark asked anxiously.
"I did a lot of the things that earned me my playboy reputation. You can't imagine half of the things I've done to make me forget that I wasn't worthy to be the city's protector. One morning I returned home and found Lady Shiva in my study."
"Lady Shiva?" Clark asked, baffled at the unexpected turn.
Lex inclined his head a little, as if he were glancing over his shoulder at Clark. "Sandra Woosan. Shiva is her… professional name. You met her. My teacher."
"The assassin?"
"Yes. She'd been hired to kill me by a business rival. But she had heard of my training in the martial arts. She offered me a fair fight."
"And you won."
Lex laughed, a low bark in the distorted voice of the Batman. "She broke off the fight after less than a minute and told me that I was the most disgusting piece of scum she had ever met, because I had more potential than any man she'd ever fought and yet I had no will to live. She said she was too good to serve as the instrument in my suicide. And then she offered to teach me. It made me realize that I may not be worthy to be a hero after what I've done. But that doesn't absolve me of my responsibility. I'm Batman. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't stop."
He turned away from the vat and the place where Phelan had fallen to his death and strode back towards the elevator, the cape billowing wide behind him. Clark followed, feeling the pull of Lex's intensity draw him in once again. The parts of Clark that were still a good, responsible son to Kansas farmers knew that Lex's angry, determined belief in his destiny as the city's protector made little sense, but the rest of him, the boy who had seen his parents die, who had slipped deep into the gaping spaces of the city and felt reality pulled out from under him, was grateful for the strength and the appeal of Lex's crusade.
As they left the cold cavern of the hall behind them, Clark felt the tightness in his belly lift a little.
As they climbed over the rubble of the fallen ceiling, he asked, "So why do you dress as a bat to fight crime?"
Back in the hall, unseen by the two of them, the piece of meteor rock slid off the edge of the walkway and plunged into the chemical vat.
*
Lex called the police from the car and gave them an anonymous tip as to where Phelan could be found. Then he asked, "Should I drop you off at the next police station?"
Clark glanced at the time display on the windshield screen. It was shortly after one a.m. But the thought of facing the police and answering questions about the murder, about tonight, about where he had been, the thought of having to come up with convincing lies about everything, made every muscle in his body tighten with fear. He remembered what it had been like to be questioned by the sheriff after his Dad found him strung up in the field because of the scarecrowing. He had hated the invasive questions, the looks he'd been given that made him feel guilty even though he was the victim.
"Could I… could I stay at the mansion until tomorrow morning?"
Lex turned towards him and pulled off the cowl. His red hair was tousled beneath, and he looked surprised, almost a little awkward. "It would certainly seem less suspicious if you came to the police after tomorrow's Daily Planet edition comes out," he said stiffly.
Clark lowered his eyes. His hands were dirty. His shirt and jeans still reeked of the sweat and fear from his hours spent in the laboratory. "Sorry. I don't want to be any trouble." He reached for the door handle. "I can run to the next police station."
The door locked with a click. Clark glanced at Lex and saw his hand on a button on the dashboard. His eyes widened.
"I thought after what happened with Edge and at the lab you'd be uncomfortable staying at the mansion," Lex said, still sounding at a loss.
Clark suppressed a sigh of relief. For a second, he'd been afraid that Lex had changed his mind and would want to take him back to the lab instead of sending him to the police. He shrugged, and tried on an uneasy smile. "It was just an act. I mean, you claiming I'm an alien should really have tipped me off, right?"
Lex's gaze jumped from Clark's eyes to his mouth, then wandered down his body and up to Clark's eyes again. His own were blue and unreadable, before they softened with regret as he turned away and ran a hand through his hair in a nervous gesture.
He put his gloved hands on the wheel. "No."
*
Mercifully, Lex drove like a maniac and the drive was short. He refused to explain himself and Clark was sitting on hot coals, dreading what was to come. Instead of parking in front of the castle, Lex drove around the side of the house and parked the car in the middle of a small tennis court. Clark was just about to point out that this was maybe not the best spot to park when a jolt when through the whole car and a square part of the court just about the size of the car started going down. They sunk through the floor into darkness until there was another jolt and Lex drove a few metres further and then really parked the car. In the rear window, Clark watched the elevator rise up again and become a regular part of the tennis court once more. Then it was pitch black.
Lex undid his seatbelt and got out of the car. Lights went on and revealed a dark, roughly hewn artificial cavern. Close by there were several doors in the wall, and a flight of steps lead up into dark shadows. There was a big screen and huge computer consoles nearby with a tall, comfortable looking chair in front of them. The other end of the cave was bathed in deep shadows. It smelled oddly. From time to time Clark heard a soft flapping or a high-pitched screech that sounded like bats echoing from that part of the cave.
Next to the black car stood another, similar one that looked as if it had been in an accident. There was a shiny black motorbike, and something smaller covered under a tarp.
Lex went to the computer console and pulled off his heavy gloves. The armour was made of Kevlar and leather and synthetic materials Clark couldn't name and had to weigh a ton. Just walking around in it had to be a hell of a work-out.
He entered a short string of numbers and letters into the computer, then walked over to the tarp-covered object. Clark kept close to him, anxious and awkward as he tried to glean something from Lex's face.
Lex seized the tarp and pulled it off the object. It wasn't larger than a bale of hay and had an odd shape, like an egg with fins. Clark couldn't tell if it was made of metal or plastic or something else entirely. He turned to Lex to glance at him insecurely, hoping for a different explanation than the one forming in his head.
"After discovering our families' connection and hearing about the fire on your farm, I went there to investigate. I found the metal tablet I showed you. And in the storm cellar, I found this."
"What is it?"
Lex raised his brows at the question. "It's a spaceship, Clark. It's of alien origin, just like the meteor rocks," he said. "Just like you."
"My parents never told me anything," Clark blurted out, his throat tight, making it sound like a sob.
"I assumed as much when you didn't recognize the tablet."
Clark remembered the strange object with the foreign signs on Lex's coffee table. He had never seen it before. His parents had had it the whole time and they never…
"I was only a baby… I don't remember anything…"
"I have no idea why your people would send an infant to Earth," Lex answered the question Clark hadn't voiced. "It's possible that you're a scout, or part of an attempt at colonization. Maybe you're a refugee or an experiment. Maybe you merely got lost."
Clark took a step back, then another. "I'm… I'm not even human."
"No. I think your parents kept it a secret for good reasons. Not even my mother seems to have known about this." Lex stepped closer and put a hand on Clark's upper arm, his eyes sincere as they met Clark's. "It's an incredible discovery. Maybe the greatest in the history of mankind. If I didn't know you, I would be tempted to exploit it in any way possible. But what I said still stands, Clark. I enjoy your company very much. I deeply respect your courage and inner strength. I thought you wouldn't want to have anything to do with me after the last few days, but if you do… I would like to adopt you."
"Adopt me." It was like a dream, like everything that had happened since Clark got into Lex's car that strange night. The thought seemed impossible to grasp.
Lex's expression grew grave and sad. "I can't replace your parents, Clark. I'm hardly suitable as a role-model. I know you would rather live with a real family, in a real home, that with a rich eccentric who risks his life every night -”
Clark shook his head, dumbly searching for words to express what he felt. "I… Lex, no. I don't want to live with people who don't know… about me. And I… I enjoy your company, too," he added shyly.
A soft, real smile broke through Lex's grave expression. "If you want to live here, nothing will stand in the way of that."
Clark would live in a castle, with servants, and no animals to wake him in the morning, with a rich eccentric who sparred with hired assassins and dressed up as a bat at night to go and risk his life…
"I want to," Clark said. "But only under one condition."
"Anything," Lex promised readily.
"I want to join the Batman. I want to fight crime with you." And protect you, and catch all the bullets that come your way. The thought of protecting a whole city was terrifying to Clark, but a single life, yes, that he could do.
Lex's ease vanished instantly from his features to be replaced with a steely tightness around his eyes and lips. "You're fifteen."
Clark tried the look that had always worked on his Mom and sometimes on his Dad. "Come on. I'm fifteen and super-strong and invulnerable. I can shoot fire from my eyes, I can -”
"You can break bones with your little finger. All it takes is one miss, one slip, one moment of inattention, and you could seriously hurt someone."
Clark couldn't believe that he was having the Football conversation about running around at night and foiling crime. It made him want to laugh at the same time that it drove tears into his eyes. "I've had these powers since I was a little kid. I can control myself!"
"No," Lex said, and Clark shoulders sagged in defeat. With an angry swish of the cape, Lex turned away and stalked over to the flight of stairs. "If you want to join me, you'll have to train."
Clark's head snapped up in surprise. He wiped his eyes and with a grin, bounded up the stairs after Lex.
*
"Hey! How are you holding up?"
Clark was surprised by Chloe's wide grin and even more surprised to be pulled into a tight hug. He'd been questioned and had long, excruciating talks with police psychologists, doctors social workers and lawyers, but none of them had done more than shaken his hand. Lex had visited him at the group home for children every day, but Lex wasn't exactly the tactile sort, either. He wondered how Chloe had ferreted out where Clark was and how she had gotten access. Lex had money and lawyers, of course, but Chloe didn't.
"Okay," he said with a shrug as she let him go. "How did you find me?"
Her grin turned sly. "Trade secret. I was way worried about you, though! Why didn't you call me?"
"Things got busy," Clark evaded. "And I'd have to ask to be allowed to phone in this place…"
Her bright smile fell. "Sucks here, huh? Hey, I could ask my Dad if we could adopt you! He always says he'd love another kid!"
Clark smiled at the unexpected offer. He wondered if Mr Sullivan would really want another kid or if Chloe would just pressure him into it. She seemed like the kind of daughter who could. "Thanks, I've already got someone who's going to adopt me."
There was something in her smile he couldn't quite read. Disappointment, maybe. "It was worth a try. Someone back home in Hicksville?"
"Lex Luthor," Clark said honestly. It'd be all over the papers once it was made official anyway.
"Lex Luthor?" Chloe sputtered. "The Lex Luthor? Of LuthorCorp? My dad's boss?"
Clark nodded. He wondered what he signed up for. Everyone reacted more or less like that when they heard Lex was going to adopt him. "He's got his lawyers working full time, I guess I'll be out of here in a couple of days."
"I bet." Her eyes were wide, then narrowed. "How come Metropolis's most notorious billionaire playboy suddenly wants to adopt - oh God, don't tell me he's your rich friend?"
Clark flushed. Lex had sent him more clothes, and while it was okay to wear them in Lex's mansion or out in the city, it felt really uncomfortable here in the children’s home where everyone was wearing cheap off-the-rack clothes. On the other hand, it made him kind of an outsider, which Clark preferred. He didn't feel ready to make any new contacts now.
"Yeah, kinda."
"Okay, I'll stop with the questions for now, but you're not off the hook. I want to hear the full story behind this one day. So… shame that Phelan got away, isn't it?"
Clark almost corrected her - the police hadn't found Phelan's body, but he had seen the man die - then in the last moment remembered that he couldn't tell her anything about the Batman, so he just nodded. Wow, this was going to be difficult if he and Chloe stayed friends. Which she kinda seemed to assume.
A friend. Clark had never had a real friend before. Unless you counted Lex, but Lex was… different. More like a brother, Clark guessed, or a weird uncle. And soon, when Clark started his training, his partner in crime fighting.
Clark realized that he had things to look forward to. Being Batman's partner. Being Chloe's friend - maybe he could go to the same school as her, if Lex let him. Any school would be better than Smallville High. Part of him rebelled at the thought that there'd be anything good in life despite his parents' death, but he couldn't help wanting these things - and needing them, too.
Chloe stayed until dinner was served in the common room and Clark had to attend. They talked about her Dad's work at LuthorCorp, about her highschool paper, about life in Metropolis and life on a farm. Clark hadn't been there since the fire. He'd go back for the funeral, but he never wanted to live there again. Every house, every face, every sound and smell would always remind him of his parents. The meteor rocks poisoning the landscape and the Smallville freaks would always remind him of how he'd arrived there and what he was. Clark didn't want to remember, just yet. Maybe he would want to, once home was Metropolis, once he had passed whatever training Lex would devise for him.
But for now, he needed to look forward instead of back.
*
Epilogue: Six months later
Chloe shivered and hugged her coat tighter around herself. It was freezing and the rain didn't help. Clark, the old wuss, had opted out of this by saying that Lex would kill him if he missed curfew. The guy just had no journalistic instinct, but Chloe was okay with that. She didn't need a rival, she needed someone to boss around and write boring articles about the cafeteria menu. But seriously, curfew! This wasn't about curfew - this was about meeting the Batman himself.
Chloe's obsession with Metropolis's mysterious vigilante had a simple cause. She suspected that Batman had slipped her information for a long time - as GreyGhost, her anonymous internet source. She had mapped his appearances all over the city. She knew how he operated, what technology he used, she even had figured out the route of his nightly patrol.
And that was where she was staked out now, on top of the one skyscraper she had managed to get access to, in the freezing rain, hoping that he'd finally appear so she could snap her picture and possibly get a word or two out of him. When she heard the chink of metal on metal, she ducked lower behind the base of the Daily Planet globe.
There was the sound of the monofilament line that she had imagined many times but never actually heard. Her breath quickened and she just had to try and look -
It wasn't Batman who landed on the edge of the building with a soft leap. Or at least it didn't look like him. This was a tall young man with dark hair plastered to his shoulders and a handsome face half-hidden by a black domino mask. He wore a skin-tight outfit of some dark, rain-slick material with a V-shaped stripe of red on his chest and a blue utility belt with a yellow buckle - almost cheery colours, compared to the Batman's black on black.
"Hey, I think I'm getting the hang of this!" he called over his shoulder and to Chloe's horror, jumped onto the edge of the roof and balanced along it. "Look, no fear!"
There was the clang of boots on metal, and Chloe stifled a gasp behind her mask as she realized that someone else had landed on top of the golden Daily Planet globe. She'd put on the mask in case Batman wasn't GreyGhost - she didn't want him to know who she was, in case it was avoidable, not until she knew who he was.
"Stop fooling around," a dark voice growled from above. With a fluttering noise, the Batman jumped down, right in front of her.
Even while she was close to having a heart-attack, Chloe raised the camera and shot photo after photo. It was pure instinct, stronger than the scream wedged tight in her throat.
The Batman whirled around, and she was surprised to see that he was not actually that huge, the young man in the domino mask was taller and broader around the chest. Batman lunged forward and grabbed the camera from her.
In that second, the other guy appeared by his side, as if out of thin air. "Wow, looks like we have a fan."
God, she knew she'd regret the cowl. It had seemed funny at the time but now it really, really wasn't.
Close up, the looming shadow of the Batman was terrifying.
"What do you call yourself, 'Batgirl'?" Batman's partner asked.
Fed up with it, she pulled the cowl down. "I'm a reporter. Chloe Sullivan of the Daily Planet. Um, intern." Yeah, really smooth.
Both of them stilled. Batman made an odd sound low in his throat that might have been a chuckle. The guy in the domino mask stared down at her with an open mouth.
She glared at him. "And what do you call yourself? A little colourful for a bat, aren't we? Bird of Paradise, maybe? Or Red Robin?"
There was something familiar about that thoughtful grin. Something awfully familiar. "That doesn't sound so bad. What do you think, Batman? Is 'Robin' better than 'Nightwing'?"
The End (for now)
First Part
Second Part
Chloe scowled at the Daily Planet morning edition.
Front page of the Daily Planet. There was even a picture - but not of her. They hadn't even cited the article she'd written. She was only mentioned as the anonymous source.
Of course, she supposed it was kinda fair. She hadn't gathered all of the material herself. Most of it had come from Clark and her own anonymous source, the one she suspected to be the Batman.
But her article had been well-written, damn it.
"Something interesting?" Gabe Sullivan asked his daughter, munching on a sweet bun. He was used to surrendering the paper to her.
"They've got a suspected murderer in the Kent case," she said. "A detective from the MPD. An anonymous source handed them a tape with a conversation that clearly indicates him as the murderer."
"Thank God," Gabe said, slurping his coffee. "That park was on your way to school."
"They haven't arrested him yet," she pointed out. "He's on the run. It says here that Morgan Edge is wanted, too."
Her Dad's brows shot up. "Morgan Edge? That's quite a catch. They never could prove him anything."
Chloe grinned, taking it as a complement, even if it was given unwittingly.
"Gotta go," Gabe said, getting up. "Mr Luthor's busy again, which means I'm busy, too."
Chloe snorted at that. "You mean he's busy partying and you get to do all the work managing the company?"
He sent her a reproachful look. "He's a lot more competent than the papers give him credit," he groused before hurrying out of the kitchen.
"Bye, Dad!" she called after him. As Chloe sipped her coffee, she wondered about Clark. He hadn't called her, even though she had slipped him her number when he had visited her and he hadn't shown up again the night before. And the package with the tape that had been dropped on her windowsill had had Grey Ghost's signature, so it couldn't be from Clark.
*
The emergency light was blurry, as if Clark were looking through his dad's reading glasses. It danced in his vision, doubled and stretched and flickered mockingly at him, like a strobe light.
He didn't fell his legs and his hands anymore. His shirt was damp with cold sweat.
Luthor and the two bodyguards had left a long time ago.
The shadows in the far corners of the laboratory seemed to solidify and draw closer. They dripped from the ceiling, like huge drops of ink and landed on the edge of his table like dark, silent crows heralding winter.
He blinked. The crow turned into a different shape. It had small pointy ears, and arms, and leathery wings and a black face without eyes and mouth. It sat crouched on the metal table between Clark's legs, breathing with an ever so faint crackle of leather. The wings were a cape, spread out over Clark's legs and hanging down the sides of the table
The nightmarish figure bent forward and put a black-gloved hand on Clark's aching chest. With the other it nimbly undid the chain around his neck and pulled it off to put it inside a pouch on its belt.
Miraculously, the effects of the rock vanished instantly.
Clark drew a shuddering breath, filling his lungs with air. His vision cleared and he could see that the figure looming over him was a man, dressed from head to toe in black. He wore a cape, and a cowl that covered his face entirely, making it seem as if he were blind and mute. The spikes on its head looked more like horns than ears.
"Who - ?"
"I'm Batman," the figure growled.
Clark glanced at the ceiling. A square hole had appeared, probably a ventilation shaft.
"How -”
"No time," Batman rumbled, glancing at the security camera above the door. "Can you move?"
Clark nodded.
Without a word, Batman rose to his full height. He was tall, and his thighs and calves looked wiry, but without the cape he would have appeared lithe as an acrobat in the skin-tight suit. With the grace of a panther he jumped up and grasped the edge of the air vent and pulled himself up, vanishing in it with no more noise than the slight swish of his cape.
Clark sat up and tugged once at his cuffs. They broke easily. His strength was returning quickly, and although he still felt sick and thirsty, it was enough to get up and follow Batman. His jump wasn't as graceful and much noisier, but Batman was already ahead of him, crawling swiftly through the ventilation shaft. Clark made himself as small as possible, cursing his broad shoulders and followed him.
The shaft made a sharp right turn. They crawled over a couple of metal grilles, and Clark got glimpses of hallways and offices beneath. Then they came to an opening that led into what looked like an elevator shaft, only narrower and without the cables going up and down.
There was the whirring noise, like a fishing line being thrown, that Clark had heard in the park. Batman jumped into the shaft, holding onto the grappling line and swinging softly back and forth. Clark gulped as he saw that the shaft was swallowed by darkness beneath and above him.
Batman held out his free arm, though, so Clark gritted his teeth and leaned into the shaft bit by frightened bit, until he felt Batman's strong arm with his hand and latched onto it. Batman seized him around the waist and Clark threw his arm around the man's shoulders with a small yelp as his feet were pulled off the safe ground of the ventilation shaft and he, too, dangled over the abyss.
"You're too trusting," Batman's dark voice rasped in his ear, and suddenly, they were being pulled up the grappling line at a breathtaking speed, as if they were flying up the shaft into the darkness. Clark clung on for dear life.
When they stopped and Clark dared to open his eyes again, there was a sliver of night sky above, clouds lit orange by the city lights. The grappling hook was attached to the edge of an air vent. Clark reached for it and pulled himself up, glad to have firm ground under his feet again, even though they were on a roof high above the city, tall, glittering skyscrapers all around them, and, across from the street, the huge golden globe of the Daily Planet. Batman walked perilously close to the edge and raised the hand with the grappling gun attached to the wrist.
"You get over it once you do this," he said gruffly, but with a hint of humour.
"You want us to -”
"Now." The humour was gone, replaced by a steely command.
Clark stepped closer, and once again the Batman pulled him in and shot the grappling line across the chasm of the street. It vanished in the darkness, then pulled tight.
And then they jumped.
*
Three blocks down, Batman finally let them stop. Clark was still panting from fright. The caped man changed grappling lines in free fall, and what looked like a lot of fun in Spiderman cartoons was actually ten times more terrifying than that one time Clark had to ride in a rollercoaster.
It was also a little bit exhilarating. That moment when you swung upwards on the line, and then at the peak of the rise, right before you fell again, when you were completely weightless for a second, as if gravity had deserted you and you would just float away into the sky if you let go of the line - yeah, that was great.
Batman stood at the edge of the building, his cape flapping in the night air like dark wings. The sound of traffic rung up noisily from the depths of Metropolis. It still had to be early in the night. That it was night at all somehow surprised Clark. He had no concept of how much time had gone by since Phelan had captured him.
"Thanks," he said uneasily.
Batman turned around and walked over to him. "Don't," he said and reached up to his collarbone, where the armour that covered his chest went over to the thin material of the cowl and did something with his fingers that unfastened it.
Clark's breath caught as Batman started to pull the cowl off.
A head of red hair emerged and a pale, slightly damp face. Lex looked at him with a grave but unreadable expression.
"What," Clark stammered, not a question, just pure helplessness because none of this made sense.
A mirthless smirk tugged at Lex's lips and vanished again quickly. "Yes. Lex Luthor is Batman."
"You -”
"I'm sorry for what I did in the lab," Lex explained. "It was a necessary act to fool Edge."
"You work together with him," Clark accused, his voice found again. He realized that the only way to flee off the roof would be to jump - and this time without even a thin grappling line.
Lex appeared unmoved. "That is necessary as well. To be able to fight crime as the Batman, there are certain… deceptions that I must keep up. The papers must paint me as an irresponsible playboy. And the Metropolis' underworld must believe that I'm still my father's son, so they will continue to trust me enough to deal with me, like Edge. I told you already that he was very rich and that he was killed by a meteor. But he was also a criminal who murdered his own parents. I will never be like him."
Lex didn't sound exactly bitter, just grim and determined. Clark couldn't imagine what it felt like knowing that your father had done such horrible things. He remembered how Lex had talked about him that first day in the study - always a little remotely, but also a bit admiringly. Was this twisted family history enough to make you put on a scary leather costume and fight crime?
Lex went on explaining. "After Phelan murdered your parents, I discovered our families' connection. I intended to keep you out of it until I could get Phelan and Edge arrested, but then Phelan showed up with a piece of meteor rock and claimed to Edge that he could disable you with it."
"It wasn't you who told him?" Clark wanted to trust Lex, but part of him was still frightened of the man he'd seen in the laboratory. Even Batman wasn't quite as scary.
And Lex knew about Clark's powers…
Lex looked at him long and seriously, as if willing Clark to believe him. Hid did sound honest. "No. The lead box was only me testing Phelan's theory. It proved correct, but it wouldn't have mattered if you had stayed in the mansion that afternoon. I didn't expect you to leave before night and the afternoon would have been enough for me to get the evidence of Phelan's involvement to my contact and have him arrested. But you followed him, and instead of returning to his department, where they'd have arrested him, he took you to Edge. I had to change my plans then. The little impromptu act in the lab was for Edge's benefit. Now Phelan has gone undercover and Edge has probably already left the country. It's not what I hoped for, but at least he's out of my city."
"Why did you come to the lab as Batman? You wouldn't have had to reveal yourself to me."
"Would you have trusted me without seeing this?" Lex asked seriously.
Clark glanced down and shook his head. "You were really scary back there."
Lex lowered his eyes with a self-depreciating smirk. "Fear is my weapon, Clark," he said in a tone of irony. Then he looked up again, his blue eyes hard in the glow of the traffic as he surveyed his city.
"There's another reason. I need you to help me find Phelan before he gets away. I let Edge slip away already. I won't let this murderer run free."
"I don't know how I could help you find Phelan. The city is huge," Clark said doubtfully.
Lex didn't answer. He pulled the cowl back over his head and fastened it. When he spoke, it was once more Batman's low, distorted growl.
"You found him once already."
"I just followed his car from the police department," Clark objected.
"But Phelan doesn't know that. He knows you have powers. He will believe it was you who found him."
Clark frowned, completely confused. "Uh… but it won't be me?"
"No need. I put a tracking device on him while I talked to him and Edge. But if you're with me when I track him down, he won't make the connection between Lex Luthor and the Batman."
Clark had a hard time following Lex's byzantine reasoning, but there was no time to question him. Batman raised his hand and fired the grappling hook at the building across the street, then extended his arm to Clark once more.
Clark could have refused. There was no reason to trust Lex Luthor. But Lex was going to lead him to Phelan. So he stepped into the cold embrace once more and jumped into the abyss.
*
The car parked in a tiny alley between fire escapes and trash cans looked unreal. It was so sleek and black that it appeared to absorb light instead of reflecting it and that made it ominous, like a living thing, a panther crouching and waiting for the kill.
It looked faster than most racing cars Clark had seen on television.
Batman slid behind the wheel with fluid grace and Clark hurried around the hood of the car to fold himself into the co-driver's seat. It wasn't butter-soft leather like in Lex's sports car that first night, but some hard, synthetic material, cold to the touch like armour. Lex pressed a button on the dashboard and what had looked at first like an expensive stereo unfolded and rearranged itself into a small screen that had a rough map of the city. A steady green dot sat in the centre, while a blinking red one moved along the river down by the docks.
It was way cooler than a James Bond movie.
"Is that Edge?" Clark asked, pointing at the moving red dot.
Batman nodded. He turned the key in the ignition and the car came to live with a deep, growling purr. Clark could feel it vibrate with power all around them. The tinted windshield lit up and became a little less opaque, and then, to Clark's surprise, turned into a transparent computer screen, showing at once the dark street and all kinds of information, like the map with the dots, their exact coordinates, the time, even the temperature, the relative location of the nearest police cars -
"Seatbelt," Batman ordered and stepped onto the gas.
*
Phelan's dot had stopped moving inside a factory building a few blocks away from the river. They parked next to the wire fence surrounding it. There were no guards, and in places the fence was torn. The floodlights that had once lit up the parking lot in front of the factory appeared to be broken.
"It's a LuthorCorp plant," Clark said in surprise when he spotted the rusty sign at the gate.
Lex nodded. "LuthorCorp plant number 2. It was shut down for safety reasons years ago."
"What does Phelan want here?"
Batman gave no answer. He turned off the engine and got out of the car. Clark followed him, just in time to see him climb up the fence and leap over it easily. The most amazing thing, though, was how silently Batman moved, more like a phantom than a man. No wonder the papers still doubted his existence.
Clark simply leapt over the fence in one big jump and jogged after Lex. Instead of going for the front door, Batman kept inside the deep shadows along the side of the factory building and eventually stopped at a smaller door that had probably once served as an entry for the maintenance people. Clark reached for the handle, but Lex put a hand on his arm and shook his head. He slipped something from his utility belt and started picking the lock - within less than thirty seconds, the door opened. Lex put the wire back into its pouch and took a pair of slim night-vision goggles from another one.
Together they slipped into the inky darkness of a corridor. Clark had no problem seeing in the dark, even without x-ray vision. When they reached another door and a staircase, Lex stopped, apparently considering their options. Clark decided that since Lex knew about his powers anyways - at least his strength and his invulnerability - it couldn't hurt to reveal one more power.
"If Phelan's in the building, I can see him," he whispered, his voice jumping a little at the confession. Batman turned towards him, unreadable beneath the cowl. Clark licked his lips and then squinted at the walls and started scanning the building.
Up front there were offices, but they were all deserted. Then there were a couple of control rooms and two large halls full of dismantled machinery and huge metal vats. There was no human skeleton visible, either. Clark frowned, and turned towards the staircase and finally, the basement. When he threw a glance at the elevator, though, and further down to the second basement level, he was surprised to find another huge hall, and, sitting in a control room, a human skeleton.
"He's in the second basement level," Clark announced.
Batman almost but not quite startled. "There is no second basement level. Plants One to Five all have the same layout."
Clark shrugged. "He's down there."
Batman stood frozen for a moment, then moved towards the stairs and down. As Clark followed him, he felt his throat turn dry again. In a few minutes, they'd face Phelan. Knowing that Phelan had meteor rocks made all of this much more dangerous, but Clark's decision stood - he would bring the man down, forever.
And if Clark used his speed, even Batman wouldn't be able to stop him.
But he might try. Lex stopped at the elevator door in the first basement level, but Clark speeded further along the corridor, past huge gas pipes, until he stood directly above the control room in the second basement level.
He heard the groan of metal as Batman managed to open the elevator door, then a sudden stillness. Lex had to have noticed Clark's absence.
Gritting his teeth, Clark balled his right hand to a fist and slammed it down onto the concrete floor. It shattered, and with the second punch, the floor around Clark gave and collapsed into the lower level in an avalanche of steel and concrete. Clark landed on his feet and as he straightened, found himself in a room full of computer panels and a couple of office chairs, with a glass wall looking out onto the production hall. The emergency light was on down here, a ghostly blue twilight.
Phelan stood behind one overturned chair, his gun pointing at Clark. He shot, once, then ran out of the room just as Clark's heat vision blasted the glass wall behind him, hot enough to start melting the glass immediately. Clark barely even felt the bullet bounce off his chest. He went after Phelan through the door and found himself on a platform leading to a metal walkway that stretched along the full length of the hall, permitting to look down on the production are and the big, open vats. Some of them were empty, dysfunctional like the rest of the facility, but on the far end of the hall, two were still filled with some liquid.
Behind him, Clark heard the flutter of the cape as Batman dropped down through the hole in the ceiling but it was only an afterthought, meaningless as everything but the pursuit. He didn't have to concentrate now, the fire was throbbing behind his retinas, throbbing like a pulse, like blood from a gunshot wound -
Phelan ran along the clattering metal walkway, then, when he came to the end, caught at a dead end several metres above the vats of chemical, he seized the railing and whirled around. His gaunt face was thrown into stark relief by the bluish light, his snarl like a hideous grin.
In one hand he held the gun, in the other a meteor rock, outstretched towards Clark like a talisman to ward off a demon.
Clark stopped, too. He was panting, not from exertion, not from the rock that was still at a safe distance, merely from excitement, or maybe fear. This was it. Phelan knew it.
"Don't!" Batman's voice rang out loud behind him, echoing off the walls like a whole swarm of thundering voices.
Now Phelan's snarl did turn into a grin. He pointed the gun higher, past Clark.
"A step closer and I'll shoot the Bat."
"He isn't worth it, Clark," Lex called out. "Once you've done this, there's no way back. Believe me. I've been where you are now."
Clark unclenched his fists and shot a blast of heat-vision in Phelan's direction. It missed the gun and hit the walkway instead. Phelan jerked away from it and his finger slipped on the trigger.
Clark saw the bullet float towards him and he reached up and plucked it out of the air, wincing as it bit him like an insect, a fluttering butterfly with teeth.
As the sound of the shot rang out and Phelan stared numbly at him, Clark opened his hand and let the flattened bullet slip from his palm like a penny. Phelan swallowed. He lowered the gun.
"You're a good kid, Clark. I know you won't do this," he called shakily. His voice sounded hollow in the large room. "I'll surrender myself to the police - hell, even to the Bat -”
"Shut up!" Clark yelled. "You think I won't do this? You think there's anything I wouldn't do right now?"
"No," Batman said, his low voice now closer to Clark's back. "There's nothing. You'd do anything. And you're justified. But once it's done, it's done. You can do this now, Clark, and get your revenge and walk away. But you'll always be a killer. And you'll know it, every day of your life, that you took a life once and that you could do it again."
Phelan nodded emphatically. "Yes! You don't want to be -”
"Shut up," Batman growled. Phelan's mouth snapped shut.
Clark just wanted it to be over. He didn't want to see Phelan anymore. He didn't want to listen to Batman saying all these things that Clark knew were true and that hurt, because there was now and there was the pain and the need for an end, but there was also the rest of Clark's life and Clark didn't want to be a murderer.
He wanted it to be that night again so he could pluck the bullets from the air -
"You're not just anybody," Batman said, now almost softly, a rasp that tickled Clark's back. "You have incredible gifts. You will shape the future of the world. But will you do it with blood on your hands or without?"
Gifts. How many times had Mom and Dad called them that?
Couldn't look at that murderer's face anymore. He turned away, staring off somewhere into the blue shadows. Now it was Lex he faced, tall and dark and masked, offering no comfort, only the truth.
"I just," Clark choked, words deserting him, all but need and pain gone.
"You can't," Batman said.
Clark didn't see Phelan raise the gun. He only saw Batman move, one fluid motion from seizing the bat-shaped throwing star at his belt to the arc of his arm and the hand flinging the weapon at Phelan. The shot rang and Clark whirled around, knowing that there'd never be another bullet he didn't catch, only to see the shot go wide and Phelan throwing himself out of the way of Batman's weapon and over the railing of the walkway.
He plunged into the vat beneath with a scream, an acid green chemical spilling all over the place and then nothing, not even the thrashing of limbs or bubbles of air rising to the surface after it smoothened.
The room was utterly silent. Only the reflections of the emergency light on the surface of the liquid danced on the ceiling and walls.
"He's dead," Clark breathed, more in shock than anything else.
Lex moved past him and stared over the railing down at the vat. His broad, wiry shoulders and the back of his neck had a bowed, heavy slant to them. "I’ve killed before."
Clark sucked in a startled breath. He thought of Lex telling him that his teacher was an assassin, and of Lex shaking Edge's hand. He thought of Chloe, too, claiming that the Batman stopped crimes. How far was he really willing to go?
"You… did?"
"I told you I've been where you are," Lex replied quietly. "After my mother's death, I vowed that I would never again fail to protect a life. I studied hard. I trained myself in every science that would help me to lead my company and fight crime in my city. When I was seventeen, I left the States to travel Asia and train with the best martial artists. It was… I learned things that changed me. I learned to channel my anger and fear into strength. I learned peace of mind, Clark, and I was almost ready to let my crusade go. But then the news reached me that my mother's murderer had been released from prison. I came back to Metropolis. I hunted him down, mercilessly, for hours, all through the night, until he was just a shivering wreck, begging me for mercy. And then I killed him."
The thought of Lex, hunting a man with the cold, clinical intensity Clark had seen in the laboratory and then killing him was chilling. How often had he done it again?
"And then?" Clark asked anxiously.
"I did a lot of the things that earned me my playboy reputation. You can't imagine half of the things I've done to make me forget that I wasn't worthy to be the city's protector. One morning I returned home and found Lady Shiva in my study."
"Lady Shiva?" Clark asked, baffled at the unexpected turn.
Lex inclined his head a little, as if he were glancing over his shoulder at Clark. "Sandra Woosan. Shiva is her… professional name. You met her. My teacher."
"The assassin?"
"Yes. She'd been hired to kill me by a business rival. But she had heard of my training in the martial arts. She offered me a fair fight."
"And you won."
Lex laughed, a low bark in the distorted voice of the Batman. "She broke off the fight after less than a minute and told me that I was the most disgusting piece of scum she had ever met, because I had more potential than any man she'd ever fought and yet I had no will to live. She said she was too good to serve as the instrument in my suicide. And then she offered to teach me. It made me realize that I may not be worthy to be a hero after what I've done. But that doesn't absolve me of my responsibility. I'm Batman. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't stop."
He turned away from the vat and the place where Phelan had fallen to his death and strode back towards the elevator, the cape billowing wide behind him. Clark followed, feeling the pull of Lex's intensity draw him in once again. The parts of Clark that were still a good, responsible son to Kansas farmers knew that Lex's angry, determined belief in his destiny as the city's protector made little sense, but the rest of him, the boy who had seen his parents die, who had slipped deep into the gaping spaces of the city and felt reality pulled out from under him, was grateful for the strength and the appeal of Lex's crusade.
As they left the cold cavern of the hall behind them, Clark felt the tightness in his belly lift a little.
As they climbed over the rubble of the fallen ceiling, he asked, "So why do you dress as a bat to fight crime?"
Back in the hall, unseen by the two of them, the piece of meteor rock slid off the edge of the walkway and plunged into the chemical vat.
*
Lex called the police from the car and gave them an anonymous tip as to where Phelan could be found. Then he asked, "Should I drop you off at the next police station?"
Clark glanced at the time display on the windshield screen. It was shortly after one a.m. But the thought of facing the police and answering questions about the murder, about tonight, about where he had been, the thought of having to come up with convincing lies about everything, made every muscle in his body tighten with fear. He remembered what it had been like to be questioned by the sheriff after his Dad found him strung up in the field because of the scarecrowing. He had hated the invasive questions, the looks he'd been given that made him feel guilty even though he was the victim.
"Could I… could I stay at the mansion until tomorrow morning?"
Lex turned towards him and pulled off the cowl. His red hair was tousled beneath, and he looked surprised, almost a little awkward. "It would certainly seem less suspicious if you came to the police after tomorrow's Daily Planet edition comes out," he said stiffly.
Clark lowered his eyes. His hands were dirty. His shirt and jeans still reeked of the sweat and fear from his hours spent in the laboratory. "Sorry. I don't want to be any trouble." He reached for the door handle. "I can run to the next police station."
The door locked with a click. Clark glanced at Lex and saw his hand on a button on the dashboard. His eyes widened.
"I thought after what happened with Edge and at the lab you'd be uncomfortable staying at the mansion," Lex said, still sounding at a loss.
Clark suppressed a sigh of relief. For a second, he'd been afraid that Lex had changed his mind and would want to take him back to the lab instead of sending him to the police. He shrugged, and tried on an uneasy smile. "It was just an act. I mean, you claiming I'm an alien should really have tipped me off, right?"
Lex's gaze jumped from Clark's eyes to his mouth, then wandered down his body and up to Clark's eyes again. His own were blue and unreadable, before they softened with regret as he turned away and ran a hand through his hair in a nervous gesture.
He put his gloved hands on the wheel. "No."
*
Mercifully, Lex drove like a maniac and the drive was short. He refused to explain himself and Clark was sitting on hot coals, dreading what was to come. Instead of parking in front of the castle, Lex drove around the side of the house and parked the car in the middle of a small tennis court. Clark was just about to point out that this was maybe not the best spot to park when a jolt when through the whole car and a square part of the court just about the size of the car started going down. They sunk through the floor into darkness until there was another jolt and Lex drove a few metres further and then really parked the car. In the rear window, Clark watched the elevator rise up again and become a regular part of the tennis court once more. Then it was pitch black.
Lex undid his seatbelt and got out of the car. Lights went on and revealed a dark, roughly hewn artificial cavern. Close by there were several doors in the wall, and a flight of steps lead up into dark shadows. There was a big screen and huge computer consoles nearby with a tall, comfortable looking chair in front of them. The other end of the cave was bathed in deep shadows. It smelled oddly. From time to time Clark heard a soft flapping or a high-pitched screech that sounded like bats echoing from that part of the cave.
Next to the black car stood another, similar one that looked as if it had been in an accident. There was a shiny black motorbike, and something smaller covered under a tarp.
Lex went to the computer console and pulled off his heavy gloves. The armour was made of Kevlar and leather and synthetic materials Clark couldn't name and had to weigh a ton. Just walking around in it had to be a hell of a work-out.
He entered a short string of numbers and letters into the computer, then walked over to the tarp-covered object. Clark kept close to him, anxious and awkward as he tried to glean something from Lex's face.
Lex seized the tarp and pulled it off the object. It wasn't larger than a bale of hay and had an odd shape, like an egg with fins. Clark couldn't tell if it was made of metal or plastic or something else entirely. He turned to Lex to glance at him insecurely, hoping for a different explanation than the one forming in his head.
"After discovering our families' connection and hearing about the fire on your farm, I went there to investigate. I found the metal tablet I showed you. And in the storm cellar, I found this."
"What is it?"
Lex raised his brows at the question. "It's a spaceship, Clark. It's of alien origin, just like the meteor rocks," he said. "Just like you."
"My parents never told me anything," Clark blurted out, his throat tight, making it sound like a sob.
"I assumed as much when you didn't recognize the tablet."
Clark remembered the strange object with the foreign signs on Lex's coffee table. He had never seen it before. His parents had had it the whole time and they never…
"I was only a baby… I don't remember anything…"
"I have no idea why your people would send an infant to Earth," Lex answered the question Clark hadn't voiced. "It's possible that you're a scout, or part of an attempt at colonization. Maybe you're a refugee or an experiment. Maybe you merely got lost."
Clark took a step back, then another. "I'm… I'm not even human."
"No. I think your parents kept it a secret for good reasons. Not even my mother seems to have known about this." Lex stepped closer and put a hand on Clark's upper arm, his eyes sincere as they met Clark's. "It's an incredible discovery. Maybe the greatest in the history of mankind. If I didn't know you, I would be tempted to exploit it in any way possible. But what I said still stands, Clark. I enjoy your company very much. I deeply respect your courage and inner strength. I thought you wouldn't want to have anything to do with me after the last few days, but if you do… I would like to adopt you."
"Adopt me." It was like a dream, like everything that had happened since Clark got into Lex's car that strange night. The thought seemed impossible to grasp.
Lex's expression grew grave and sad. "I can't replace your parents, Clark. I'm hardly suitable as a role-model. I know you would rather live with a real family, in a real home, that with a rich eccentric who risks his life every night -”
Clark shook his head, dumbly searching for words to express what he felt. "I… Lex, no. I don't want to live with people who don't know… about me. And I… I enjoy your company, too," he added shyly.
A soft, real smile broke through Lex's grave expression. "If you want to live here, nothing will stand in the way of that."
Clark would live in a castle, with servants, and no animals to wake him in the morning, with a rich eccentric who sparred with hired assassins and dressed up as a bat at night to go and risk his life…
"I want to," Clark said. "But only under one condition."
"Anything," Lex promised readily.
"I want to join the Batman. I want to fight crime with you." And protect you, and catch all the bullets that come your way. The thought of protecting a whole city was terrifying to Clark, but a single life, yes, that he could do.
Lex's ease vanished instantly from his features to be replaced with a steely tightness around his eyes and lips. "You're fifteen."
Clark tried the look that had always worked on his Mom and sometimes on his Dad. "Come on. I'm fifteen and super-strong and invulnerable. I can shoot fire from my eyes, I can -”
"You can break bones with your little finger. All it takes is one miss, one slip, one moment of inattention, and you could seriously hurt someone."
Clark couldn't believe that he was having the Football conversation about running around at night and foiling crime. It made him want to laugh at the same time that it drove tears into his eyes. "I've had these powers since I was a little kid. I can control myself!"
"No," Lex said, and Clark shoulders sagged in defeat. With an angry swish of the cape, Lex turned away and stalked over to the flight of stairs. "If you want to join me, you'll have to train."
Clark's head snapped up in surprise. He wiped his eyes and with a grin, bounded up the stairs after Lex.
*
"Hey! How are you holding up?"
Clark was surprised by Chloe's wide grin and even more surprised to be pulled into a tight hug. He'd been questioned and had long, excruciating talks with police psychologists, doctors social workers and lawyers, but none of them had done more than shaken his hand. Lex had visited him at the group home for children every day, but Lex wasn't exactly the tactile sort, either. He wondered how Chloe had ferreted out where Clark was and how she had gotten access. Lex had money and lawyers, of course, but Chloe didn't.
"Okay," he said with a shrug as she let him go. "How did you find me?"
Her grin turned sly. "Trade secret. I was way worried about you, though! Why didn't you call me?"
"Things got busy," Clark evaded. "And I'd have to ask to be allowed to phone in this place…"
Her bright smile fell. "Sucks here, huh? Hey, I could ask my Dad if we could adopt you! He always says he'd love another kid!"
Clark smiled at the unexpected offer. He wondered if Mr Sullivan would really want another kid or if Chloe would just pressure him into it. She seemed like the kind of daughter who could. "Thanks, I've already got someone who's going to adopt me."
There was something in her smile he couldn't quite read. Disappointment, maybe. "It was worth a try. Someone back home in Hicksville?"
"Lex Luthor," Clark said honestly. It'd be all over the papers once it was made official anyway.
"Lex Luthor?" Chloe sputtered. "The Lex Luthor? Of LuthorCorp? My dad's boss?"
Clark nodded. He wondered what he signed up for. Everyone reacted more or less like that when they heard Lex was going to adopt him. "He's got his lawyers working full time, I guess I'll be out of here in a couple of days."
"I bet." Her eyes were wide, then narrowed. "How come Metropolis's most notorious billionaire playboy suddenly wants to adopt - oh God, don't tell me he's your rich friend?"
Clark flushed. Lex had sent him more clothes, and while it was okay to wear them in Lex's mansion or out in the city, it felt really uncomfortable here in the children’s home where everyone was wearing cheap off-the-rack clothes. On the other hand, it made him kind of an outsider, which Clark preferred. He didn't feel ready to make any new contacts now.
"Yeah, kinda."
"Okay, I'll stop with the questions for now, but you're not off the hook. I want to hear the full story behind this one day. So… shame that Phelan got away, isn't it?"
Clark almost corrected her - the police hadn't found Phelan's body, but he had seen the man die - then in the last moment remembered that he couldn't tell her anything about the Batman, so he just nodded. Wow, this was going to be difficult if he and Chloe stayed friends. Which she kinda seemed to assume.
A friend. Clark had never had a real friend before. Unless you counted Lex, but Lex was… different. More like a brother, Clark guessed, or a weird uncle. And soon, when Clark started his training, his partner in crime fighting.
Clark realized that he had things to look forward to. Being Batman's partner. Being Chloe's friend - maybe he could go to the same school as her, if Lex let him. Any school would be better than Smallville High. Part of him rebelled at the thought that there'd be anything good in life despite his parents' death, but he couldn't help wanting these things - and needing them, too.
Chloe stayed until dinner was served in the common room and Clark had to attend. They talked about her Dad's work at LuthorCorp, about her highschool paper, about life in Metropolis and life on a farm. Clark hadn't been there since the fire. He'd go back for the funeral, but he never wanted to live there again. Every house, every face, every sound and smell would always remind him of his parents. The meteor rocks poisoning the landscape and the Smallville freaks would always remind him of how he'd arrived there and what he was. Clark didn't want to remember, just yet. Maybe he would want to, once home was Metropolis, once he had passed whatever training Lex would devise for him.
But for now, he needed to look forward instead of back.
*
Epilogue: Six months later
Chloe shivered and hugged her coat tighter around herself. It was freezing and the rain didn't help. Clark, the old wuss, had opted out of this by saying that Lex would kill him if he missed curfew. The guy just had no journalistic instinct, but Chloe was okay with that. She didn't need a rival, she needed someone to boss around and write boring articles about the cafeteria menu. But seriously, curfew! This wasn't about curfew - this was about meeting the Batman himself.
Chloe's obsession with Metropolis's mysterious vigilante had a simple cause. She suspected that Batman had slipped her information for a long time - as GreyGhost, her anonymous internet source. She had mapped his appearances all over the city. She knew how he operated, what technology he used, she even had figured out the route of his nightly patrol.
And that was where she was staked out now, on top of the one skyscraper she had managed to get access to, in the freezing rain, hoping that he'd finally appear so she could snap her picture and possibly get a word or two out of him. When she heard the chink of metal on metal, she ducked lower behind the base of the Daily Planet globe.
There was the sound of the monofilament line that she had imagined many times but never actually heard. Her breath quickened and she just had to try and look -
It wasn't Batman who landed on the edge of the building with a soft leap. Or at least it didn't look like him. This was a tall young man with dark hair plastered to his shoulders and a handsome face half-hidden by a black domino mask. He wore a skin-tight outfit of some dark, rain-slick material with a V-shaped stripe of red on his chest and a blue utility belt with a yellow buckle - almost cheery colours, compared to the Batman's black on black.
"Hey, I think I'm getting the hang of this!" he called over his shoulder and to Chloe's horror, jumped onto the edge of the roof and balanced along it. "Look, no fear!"
There was the clang of boots on metal, and Chloe stifled a gasp behind her mask as she realized that someone else had landed on top of the golden Daily Planet globe. She'd put on the mask in case Batman wasn't GreyGhost - she didn't want him to know who she was, in case it was avoidable, not until she knew who he was.
"Stop fooling around," a dark voice growled from above. With a fluttering noise, the Batman jumped down, right in front of her.
Even while she was close to having a heart-attack, Chloe raised the camera and shot photo after photo. It was pure instinct, stronger than the scream wedged tight in her throat.
The Batman whirled around, and she was surprised to see that he was not actually that huge, the young man in the domino mask was taller and broader around the chest. Batman lunged forward and grabbed the camera from her.
In that second, the other guy appeared by his side, as if out of thin air. "Wow, looks like we have a fan."
God, she knew she'd regret the cowl. It had seemed funny at the time but now it really, really wasn't.
Close up, the looming shadow of the Batman was terrifying.
"What do you call yourself, 'Batgirl'?" Batman's partner asked.
Fed up with it, she pulled the cowl down. "I'm a reporter. Chloe Sullivan of the Daily Planet. Um, intern." Yeah, really smooth.
Both of them stilled. Batman made an odd sound low in his throat that might have been a chuckle. The guy in the domino mask stared down at her with an open mouth.
She glared at him. "And what do you call yourself? A little colourful for a bat, aren't we? Bird of Paradise, maybe? Or Red Robin?"
There was something familiar about that thoughtful grin. Something awfully familiar. "That doesn't sound so bad. What do you think, Batman? Is 'Robin' better than 'Nightwing'?"
The End (for now)