FIC: Wisdom to Know the Difference, chapter 6
Part 7 of 11.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Wisdom to Know the Difference
byline: bipolypesca
Chapter 6
"‘Just agreed’?" Lex repeated. "What the hell?"
"I know." The other Lex walked forward, arms outstretched, and took Lex's shoulders in his hands. A discomfiting shiver ran over his skin at the notion of being touched by his future self. The other Lex smiled as if he knew. "All you can remember right now is the other timeline. It will be like that until you go home. Then you'll remember it all."
"The other timeline?"
Kal took a step forward, his smile slighter in deference to his concern for Lex's disorientation. "You did what you intended-or, rather, you will. You told me early so we could begin preparations."
"But- I- Do you-?" he looked from Kal to the younger Lex. "Do you mean that I've changed the future already? Just by intending to do it?"
"That's exactly what we mean," his own voice replied.
Lex rolled a shoulder in discomfort, wishing he didn't so prefer the silent, suffering double to this talkative version. "Could you not touch me, please?" he asked quietly and as politely as he could under the circumstances. "It feels-"
"-weird." His hands dropped to his sides, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "I remember. Now."
Kal gestured toward a table and three chairs that were oozing their way from the floor and Lex settled gratefully into one before it was completely formed. "This is strange for us, too. You see, from our point of view, we've just finished explaining everything to you that we're about to explain again."
"Well, I'm sorry," Lex automatically said, then realized he'd sounded sardonic and harsh. "I just mean... I don't understand why I don't remember. The last thing I remember was-"
"Kal can't remember the other timeline," the younger-looking Lex rushed in suddenly, "and you can't remember this one. When you go back to your own time, you'll remember both. But Kal..." here he paused and caught Lex's eyes with meaning that Lex couldn't have misunderstood even if it hadn't been coming from himself, "never will."
Slowly, Lex nodded, clearly grasping that he was to avoid mentioning the state of his future self in the previous timeline if at all possible.
Kal looked back and forth between them with some discomfort, plainly picking up on their unspoken communication, but apparently more bothered by the possibilities of its insinuation than by the secrecy itself, so he said nothing of it. "Why don't you ask a question to get us started?" he asked Lex gently. "That worked the first time around."
Lex's mind was spinning, his head pivoting this way and that as he took in the completeness of the room and how nothing appeared to have ever been destroyed in a rage of grief. "I, uh..." he trailed off for a while, eventually resting his head on his splayed fingertips and trying to think up something intelligent to ask. It came to him in a sudden burst. "What the hell am I still doing here?"
Kal and the other Lex both smiled with amusement.
"If I warned you about Cher-what's-his-name ahead of time, changed the future, then there was no reason for you to go back and get me, was there? Couldn't you just move the samples before he arrived?"
"I see the change hasn't had all that much effect on you after all," Kal said with a grin. "That's the same question you asked first before."
"I did tell Kal before Shiar-Da's arrival. In fact, in our time, right now, we haven't even met Shiar-Da yet."
"And we did intend to move the samples to a secure location before his arrival."
"You see, even though we now know what not to say to invoke his rage, we can't be certain to avoid it altogether."
"Imagine our surprise when we opened the containment chamber to relocate the samples only to find that they had already been compromised."
"Yes. Over a decade ago, due to a malfunctioning failsafe in the A.I.'s programming. So we got to work with the A.I. and started trying to find you."
"In the other timeline, all Shiar-Da did was accelerate what was going to end up happening to Lexx's cells anyway. When it was time, we wouldn't have had the replacements we needed. And, quite possibly, we wouldn't have had four months to invent time travel, find you, and have you end up deciding to change things before they happened."
"So, in a roundabout way, Shiar-Da's insanity might have actually saved my life."
Lex blinked in massive confusion-not only at the incredible story they told, but at the rapid fire way in which they told it, one picking up the other's thread and vice versa, so that Lex needed to listen the way one watched a tennis match. "Jesus, I don't understand any of this," he breathed helplessly.
"We know," Kal said, sympathetic and sincere. "But you will. Actually, we..." he glanced at his companion, "well, we had been hoping that your memory would change a while later than this."
Lex's head snapped up, his eyes narrowing. "Why?"
"In this timeline," his other self said, "you only just arrived here about half an hour ago."
"You see, you... haven't even been in the chamber once yet."
"Oh, g-! You mean I've got to get into that thing three more times?" Lex cried.
They shared a look, then gave Lex their best apologetic expressions. "The estimates in the other timeline were a bit..." he watched his other self turn his head slightly, wincing for Lex's benefit, "slapdash. It's going to take more than three sessions to get-"
"How many?"
Kal bit his lip. "Maybe more like six."
"Give or take."
Lex sat heavily back into his chair. He was beginning to seriously wonder if this was worth it. Sure, he'd gotten to see the future, but at what cost? He was going to have nightmares about that torture rack for the rest of his life.
"Lex, why don't you just let us put you out? It would be so much-"
"No," he insisted, cutting Kal's plea off. "I'm not going to be put under for a painless procedure. I am not... a child."
Kal unexpectedly turned on his companion, his eyes narrowing to slits. "God, was there ever a time that you weren't stubborn?"
The other Lex turned his head slightly away and scratched the back of his neck, looking mildly embarrassed. "Anyway..." he said through a sigh. "What do you say we get the first round out of the way? We can talk some more while the A.I. analyzes and purifies, hm?"
Lex threw his hands in the air dramatically. "Why the hell not? I'm already dizzy and confused and want to vomit, what's another harrowing experience?" He got to his feet, shaking his head and waving Kal off when he looked concerned and opened his mouth, most certainly to suggest waiting. "This must be a bit odd for you," he said instead, wishing intensely to change the subject, "having two of us in the same room. How will you keep us straight?"
He was only joking, so was a bit surprised when Kal answered, "It won't be so difficult. After all, you do... look a bit different," Lex looked up to find him sharing a meaningful glance with his counterpart, and he bit his cheek to avoid saying anything dry and caustic, "and you're dressed differently from one another and... well, Lexx doesn't even spell his name the same way."
Lex stopped in his tracks, not least because they were approaching the chamber and it was beginning to reach for him, making him slightly woozy. "What?" He turned to his double. "What do you mean you don't spell your name the same way?"
"He uses an extra X," Kal answered.
Lex gave his other self a perplexed look. "Why in the world would you do that?"
The other Lex-or, apparently, Lexx-shrugged. "It was the style at the time; I liked the way it looked on paper. It sort of stuck, so after it went out of vogue, I hung onto it."
Lex blinked with incomprehension. "It was ‘the style’ to add an X to the end of one's name?"
Kal chuckled. "No, it was the style to double the consonant at the end of your name."
"Assuming it ended in a consonant," Lexx added.
"Right. So if your name was Tom, you'd spell it T-O-M-M, and if your name was Clark, you'd spell it C-L-A-R-K-K-"
"Which, incidentally, looks idiotic on paper."
"-which explains why I never did it."
For a long time, Lex merely stared at the two of them, peering at their expressions very carefully and looking for any sign whatsoever that they were pulling his leg. Finally he said, with all seriousness, "That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard."
Lexx snorted. "It won't be."
"Honestly," Kal said, resuming their walk to the chamber, "you should hear about some of the fads he passed up."
Lex widened his eyes in incredulity and climbed into the chamber on his own, denying his terror with small talk. "I might like to, actually."
"A.I., prepare for the first gathering," Kal said casually.
"Or," Lexx suggested, "perhaps some of the fads he," he tilted his head toward Kal, "didn't pass up?"
"Now, that," Lex said, grinning despite himself as he secured his own restraint, "sounds interesting."
"What do you think?" Lexx asked Kal as the whir began above Lex's head. "Shall I start off with your pink period?"
Kal shot him a withering look that seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever. "You know what-" he broke off, apparently thinking better of what he'd wanted to say.
Lexx grinned at Lex. "There are pictures."
Lex only just managed to snort-quite loudly, as well-before the apparatus meant for his lungs entered his mouth and began to control his breathing. As the procedure continued, the couple-mainly his other self-kept him entertained (as well as his terror at bay) with little anecdotes of the collective world's ridiculousness in the form of fads, any or all of which might have been completely concocted strictly for his amusement. It was difficult to tell.
"I can't be sure," he said when the whirs wound down and Kal had helped him out of his restraint, "but that seemed to take less time than before."
Kal gave him a blank look.
"I-I mean, not before, but... other."
"Well, we've had more time to prepare," Lexx said. "I'm sure it probably is a little more efficient."
"That's good news. Listen, before my next," he glanced wryly behind him at the chamber disappearing into the wall, "charming procedure, is there a shower around here somewhere?"
"Yes," Kal said. "You can ask the A.I. for anything you need or want. A.I.," he directed, his voice a bit louder, "shower."
On the other side of the large open room, beyond where Lex had remembered the breakfast table in his other morning, a large, clear, enclosed crystal shower emerged from the floor. Next to it emerged a small opaque cupboard-also, of course, made of crystal. He wondered if his other self ever got sick of the monotony of this particular decorating scheme.
Lex stared at the shower. "Ah," he said meaninglessly. He looked at Kal.
Kal looked back at him, then at Lexx, who returned his gaze, and then looked at Lex.
Lex looked back at the shower and cleared his throat.
"Um..." Kal said uncertainly, "toiletries and towels are in the cupboard."
"Yes, I... gathered." He continued to stare at the shower. Awkwardly, he rocked on his feet.
Finally, blessedly, Lexx said, "Oh! A.I., opaque shower."
The shower immediately coloured from clear mottled ice to solid snow white.
"Ah!" Lex said again, this time with much meaning. He nodded toward Lexx. "Thank you."
As he headed for the enclosure, he could almost hear the two of them chuckling at one another in silence. "I realize," he called over his shoulder, "I don't have anything that both of you haven't seen before, but... humour me."
~
There was a partition inside the enclosure, one side of which was a shower, the other side of which was a room for drying and changing. He'd nearly asked if he could have his wrinkled clothes washed while he showered, only to look down and see they weren't wrinkled at all. He had them off by the time he realized he didn't feel he needed a shower, either, but went forward anyway. It only took a few perplexed minutes for him to grasp that if he'd just slipped into a different timeline where he'd only just arrived in the future, then he hadn't yet slept in his suit and had only taken a shower half a day ago in what would have been his morning. In essence, he had an entire day to live over again, and it was very discombobulating.
He walked out of the enclosure dressed and refreshed, but no less confused. "A hundred and fifty years later," he said, watching the shower sink into the floor, "people still use simple water showers like that?"
Lexx and Kal exchanged guilty looks. "Well... we're not supposed to," Kal said uncomfortably. "We were given special dispensation by the Earthen Resources Committee to access a small reserve of fresh water which we can use and recycle-"
"On account of we're ancient."
"On account," Kal corrected, shooting Lexx a dry warning look, "of our contributions to the Coalition and..." he trailed off, then shrugged, "the... fact that we're ancient."
Lexx nodded once, apparently satisfied by the reluctant admission.
"I see." Which he didn't, but neither did he want to get any deeper into the details at the moment. Lexx and Kal turned back to the work they were undertaking with the A.I.'s computers when the subject seemed closed, and Lex walked around the room to amuse himself, strongly experiencing déjà vu. The sickbed that had been the centre of his experience in the other timeline, however, did not seem to exist, or to have ever existed. Where it once had stood, there was only smooth crystal floor, just like everywhere else.
Within a few minutes, he stopped at the large, blank crystal wall he had found pictures in before, and focussed on it, trying to will out the small splotches of colour he remembered.
But no matter how he stared, all he saw were ever darkening blues. He turned to ask a question of his hosts, but then remembered he need only ask the A.I. for what he wanted, and he turned back to the wall. "A.I.," when he spoke, his hosts turned toward him in curiousity just the same, "may I see the pictures in this wall, please?"
"How did-" Kal began to mutter to Lexx, but the rest was drowned out by the A.I.'s surprising response.
"Visitor Lex, your access is restricted. I am sorry, but you may not."
Lex blinked in astonishment at the rebuff. He turned to Kal and Lexx, and found Lexx finishing an explanation with, "...the other timeline."
"Sorry," he said to Lex, "but, honestly... would you want to live every pleasant moment as a rerun?" He offered a small, sympathetic smile with these wise words, which only irked Lex all the more.
He scowled his displeasure at the still blank wall. "I wouldn't mind a rerun of that one in Paris," he muttered petulantly, just loudly enough that he knew he could be heard, but quietly enough that if there was no response, he could pretend he hadn't meant to be.
There was a moment of silence, and he resisted looking over to them, though he couldn't see them even out of the corner of his eye. He managed to hold down his elation when Lexx dryly said, "A.I., allow visitor Lex access to memory Paris-18."
"Lexx, I must pro-"
"Oh, stuff your protests; just let him see it."
Slowly, the proper digital photo worked its way out of its crystal enclosure. Lex took a step closer, smiling only slightly to avoid looking too pleased with this small allowance. "I don't suppose I could get a copy of this," he asked wryly.
Lexx snorted. "I can't be certain, but I think that might actually cause a rip in the space/time continuum or something similarly catastrophic."
"When is this?" he asked. "Can you at least tell me that? With this technology, it can't have been too far into the future."
Again there was silence, but this time he did give in and look. He found the two of them with their arms crossed over their chests, shooting him dry looks. "I really don't think you should have any more details," Lexx said firmly.
Lex rolled his eyes back to the photo. "What will I do?" he muttered under his breath. "Request Venice instead?" He peered more deeply into it, tearing his eyes away from the main event of the kiss and embrace, and focussed instead on the scenery beyond the balcony. "Paris looks the same."
"Everything changes," Lexx said. "Except the old cities."
He nodded in agreement. Plainly visible were the Seine and the Louvre, and they looked just as he remembered them. In fact, as he peered even closer, he realized this particular view looked very familiar. "Hold on," he said suspiciously. "Isn't this the view from Quai Voltaire?" He turned to look at them. "In the 7th?"
Kal and Lexx shared a look, but they didn't respond.
"The Louvre looks unchanged," Lex went on, looking back at the picture. "And-" suddenly something caught his eye-something he was surprised he hadn't noticed before. A satisfied smile spread over his face. "I know when this is." He reached out and tapped a finger against the falu red mark on his own neck, which was surrounded by irritated skin. "That mark is fresh." He turned to smirk at them. "About a hundred and twenty-three years ago, wasn't it?"
Kal's eyes widened. His fingers went self-consciously to his mark while he turned to Lexx, hissing, "How did he-?"
"You told him," Lexx said softly, "in the other timeline."
Kal's jaw dropped. "Is there anything I didn't tell him?"
"You were... distracted." Lexx ignored the still shocked look Kal was shooting him and raised his voice. "A.I., remove visitor Lex's access to memory Paris-18."
Frowning, Lex watched it disappear into the crystal wall as he hurriedly etched the details into his mind.
"And, A.I., do try a little harder to stop me from doing stupid things in the future, will you?"
"I will do my best," she answered, her voice the perfect imitation of human wry indulgence.
"It's just a tattoo, then, isn't it?" Lex asked, approaching them from his place by the now vacant wall. "I suppose I had imagined something more," he shrugged, "alien. But from that skin irritation-"
"It's not a tattoo," Lexx interrupted. "It's permanent."
Lex's brow knitted in confusion. He looked from Lexx to Kal and back. "Tattoos are permanent."
"Tattoos fade. This... is permanent."
Lex searched his double's eyes, finding something more there than a discussion about how long a mark would last on one's skin, but he turned back to the display before Lex could decipher what exactly it was.
"Do you want some dinner?" Kal asked. "It's late here and we've already eaten, but I'm sure you're hungry."
"Oh, no. I just ate."
Kal looked at him curiously. "But it was the middle of the afternoon in Smallville when I brought you here. You'd only just eaten?"
Lex blinked, his memories all swirling together disconcertingly. "No, I... I had poached eggs."
Kal grimaced slightly. "Poached eggs at three in the afternoon?"
"No, no... the other timeline. You served me poached eggs."
Kal's head dipped slightly back in sudden understanding. "Well, Lex, you might remember that, but your body doesn't. The last time you ate in Smallville-that's really the last time you ate. Let us get you something."
"I'm really not, uh..." he shrugged. "I'll just get some juice."
Kal gestured toward the proper depression in the proper wall, but Lex was already headed toward it. "The dispenser-"
"I know."
There was a moment of silence behind him and then Kal muttered to Lexx, "I'm really starting to wish I could remember that other timeline."
Lex glanced behind him to find his other self pushing Kal's hair back, using the adjustment as an excuse to run his fingers through its length. "Don't worry. It really wasn't anything worth remembering."
Lex turned back to the dispenser, tilting his head slightly in silent but total agreement with Lexx's words. "A.I.," he said seriously, "I would like a twelve ounce glass of forty degree Fahrenheit nearly pulp-less orange juice-and before you ask me any facetious questions, please consider that I will remember this very clearly and you will have to live with me for over one hundred years while I will have access to all of your programming along with permission to alter it as I see fit."
A glass of orange juice quickly appeared, and Lex took it with no small measure of satisfaction. Sipping, he turned to find Kal's eyebrows reaching for his hairline while Lexx grinned with approval. "By the way," Lex said casually to Kal, "your double promised me a demonstration of your ability of flight, but he hadn't gotten around to it before the timeline changed."
Kal crossed his arms over his chest, obviously trying not to smile at Lex's rakishness, but not succeeding. "Oh, really?"
"Mm," he hummed into his juice, nodding. "And I do expect you'll be a gentlemen and step up to take his place."
"Sorry, Lex," he said, though he didn't sound it. "I'm too old to perform on cue."
Lex snorted and directed his conversation to his own double. "Do you remember all of this," he asked, "from my point of view?"
He nodded. "As it happens. I remember everything you can, and I remember being you and getting home from here and feeling a rush of memories regarding the part of this timeline that you can't yet recall-I even remember the headache that came with it." He shrugged. "But the time from now to when you leave is fuzzy, like a dream I can't quite remember. Every time anyone says or does anything, I'm instantly remembering it clearly as it was when I was you, as if it never should have been fuzzy at all. This entire experience is like constant déjà vu to me, only in reverse."
Lex started to settle himself into the same chair he'd been in on what felt to him to be the previous evening, then sidestepped it and chose a third chair that hadn't been there in that timeline. "That must be disconcerting," he said obligingly, though he was rather distracted by his own disconcertment.
"A bit," Lexx answered with a near laugh in his voice.
He settled in, expecting to need to amuse himself much as he had when Kal had been working the control board in the other timeline, and was surprised to find them both leave it without hesitation and approach him, smiling. Kal took the seat the first Kal had chosen, and Lexx the chair that had been offered to Lex, though it was positioned much more closely to Kal's now. There was a small smooth table between them and they all leaned on it slightly.
Lex watched them across the table, smirking internally at the strange familyesque picture they presented by sitting so close together. "So," he started, "tell me more about this Earthen Resources Committee. Are they like the EPA?"
"Well-"
"I think," Lexx interrupted Kal, "you have quite enough detail about the ruling bodies of the future."
Lex spread his hands. "But I have no detail at all."
"Precisely." Lexx leaned back in his chair, looking pleased with himself.
Lex bit his inner cheek. "All right... Well, what is it you do here?"
"Sorry?"
"You've been here eighty years? There's no one else here. Aren't you bored? Isn't it difficult to run LuthorCorp efficiently from so far away?"
Lexx and Kal shared a somewhat frozen look.
Lex blinked, less surprised than he might have expected he'd be. "Ah. Well. I... hope that was at least voluntary."
As he expected, they didn't offer any detail on what had happened to LuthorCorp. "We don't have time to get bored," Lexx said instead.
"We have too much work to do."
"Work? What kind of work do you do out here?"
"Mostly scientific," Lexx said. "Innovation."
"But what for? I understood you're cut off from the world."
Kal looked as though he was going to ask a question, then seemed to realize he already had his answer and said instead, "Physically, you might say we're cut off. But our..." he glanced at Lexx and they both smirked, "‘brain children,’ so to speak, still manage to make it out there in the world now and then."
"Obviously, we'd go crazy if we didn't have things to do."
"We still have many centuries ahead of us."
Lex sighed, squelching the urge to ask if one of them couldn't please tell a story at a time rather than splitting everything up by sentence. "What kind of innovations do you work on?" He raised a hand to halt the brush-off he felt coming. "I'm not asking for plans, formulae, and details. Just in general."
"At first it was big things," Lexx obligingly answered. "Cures for cancer, HIV, Alzheimer's, fibromyalgia. But once the cures started coming and it was found that-" he broke off, looked aside for a moment, then rephrased. "I mean that once... the proper connections were realized, disease was quickly wiped out, one condition after another. These days, our focus is on innovations for existing technology. We work on improving the irrigation systems, the weather control systems-"
"Interplanetary communication and travel," Kal interjected.
"-solar, oceanic, and tectonic stability..."
Lex was trying not to gape at the scope of the projects they rattled off so casually. "And these improvements, what? You sell them to the government?"
They laughed. "No one sells anything anymore, Lex," Kal said, shaking his head and grinning as if Lex was five and had asked if the moon was made of cheese. "We transmit our findings to the proper industrial segments, they test and research them, and augment the existing systems only with whatever is found to be both useful and feasible."
"And then, as a favour to us, they transmit their findings and decisions back to us so we can follow progress and plan our next projects accordingly."
Lex opened his mouth to ask what, exactly, was in it for them if they didn't get paid and didn't receive public recognition, but had a sinking feeling he'd only be laughed at once again. "So people do know that you're here," he said instead. "Do they ever come to see you? I mean, the world must view you as immortal. Surely they're curious."
Kal nodded. "We had a lot of visitors in the beginning. But these days, people have so many interesting journeys to choose from, ways to find adventure... I don't think we've had a visitor here in-what?" he looked to Lexx.
"Must have been four years."
"Yeah," Kal nodded, seeming to look back in time. "Four years. And before that, nearly a decade."
"Do you enjoy it when visitors come?"
Kal shrugged. "Sure. We're always happy to invite someone new into our home." He leaned forward onto the table with a sigh.
Lex didn't miss one of his hands sliding under the table to graze the back of Lexx's on his thigh, but said nothing, only trying not to stare at the strangeness of it.
"But you have to understand," Kal went on, "we're very separated from society. We have no connection to the people of this time, nothing in common with them. For the most part, those who come here do so only to ask us about our past-about the past. It gives us an excuse to reminisce, but that can become tiring after a few days-not only for us, but for the guest as well. We have a hard time identifying or sympathizing with the ‘troubles’ the current population complains of-"
"They have no idea what a real problem is," Lexx muttered.
"-so after their questions are asked, they tend to move on."
"Usually to the North Pole."
Kal chuckled softly. "Yes, we're sort of the unofficial side stop whenever someone on the northern continent gets it in their heads to walk to the North Pole."
"Like that's a challenge anymore."
"Mm. Which might explain why no one's been by in so long."
Lex watched them carefully. "It sounds lonely. Like maybe you're bored with your lives."
"Oh, not at all. Lex... we're bored with the world. Out there..." Kal shook his head and sighed, "there's nothing for us out there."
"Bunch of whining, overprivileged-"
"Lexx."
Lex joined his double in biting his cheek, feeling somehow responsible for his other self's grousing.
"But in here... in here, we're happy. As the years go by, we get to watch humanity achieve things that most men we used to know could only dream about because they would never live long enough to see it. We watched man take his first step on Mars. We watched the governments of the world merge into the Earthen Cooperative. We watched Earth join its first Intergalactic Coalition."
"What a disaster that was."
"Well, yes. But the point is... most men can only read about history and dream about the future. We're able to watch the future become history."
"I wouldn't give it up," Lexx said, smiling. "I pray for every second of that millennium I've got coming to me."
Lex watched Kal's hand tighten on Lexx's under the table. "Longer than that. We'll find even better ways as time goes on."
A little chill went up Lex's spine. He was barely able to reconcile the thought of life for a hundred and fifty years. A millennium was beyond the ability of his imagination. But beyond even that? "So this is really what you want? To be together... forever... here."
As if they'd only just considered it, the two of them looked around, then back at one another. Some silent communication took place.
"Well," Kal looked back at Lex. "Maybe not here. Everyone wants a change now and then."
"We have property all over the planet."
"Not so much property-"
"Well, we had property. And as everything changed, it was agreed to allow us exclusive access whenever we want."
"There are quite a few special dispensations allotted when you're expected to outlive everyone else."
Lexx leaned forward conspiratorially. "In other words, it's because we're ancient."
Kal rolled his eyes silently as Lexx sat back in his chair, smirking.
"And now that you mention it, I have been thinking lately that I miss the seasons."
Kal looked at his companion in mild surprise. "You haven't said anything."
"Well, I don't particularly care for what they've done to most of the areas we have property in."
"Lexx, you don't particularly care for what they've done anywhere."
Lexx looked at him stonily. "They have no sense of style, Kal. It's all," he waved a hand vaguely, "flat. I'm telling you, these people are mortally terrified of texture." He sighed and looked around again. "I suppose this hunk of ice would look a little out of place in a temperate zone, hm?"
Kal chuckled. "Maybe we could get it to disguise itself. If-"
"Kal-El," came the female voice from everywhere, "Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van designed me with the most elegant of Kryptonian architecture in mind. To attempt to change-"
Kal sighed loudly with irritation. "A.I., I'm going to write a programme. And that programme is going to be permanently seared into your reasoning centre. And it is going to be very aptly named Anti-Eavesdropping Protocol Priority 1-A." He paused, but no answer was forthcoming. Slowly, he looked at Lexx. "You hear that?"
"Mm." He nodded seriously. "Wounded silence."
Lex's heart was thankfully slowing, having jumped into top speed at the sudden and unexpected sound of the A.I.'s voice. He shook his head, chuckling to himself at the easy interaction of these two men who were to be the future versions of himself and of Clark. In some ways, they reminded him of earlier, easier times when he could have called Clark his best friend; but in most other ways, they struck him as impossible. The thought of he and Clark the way they were seemed to preclude any possibility of them ever becoming like that, whether it be fifteen years, a hundred and fifty years, or a thousand years away.
He shook his head again, his lips pulling into a slight frown, and sipped at his orange juice. When he glanced up, he found Kal gazing at Lexx curiously while he stared into Lex as if he could plainly see everything he was thinking. Realizing that impression was perfectly accurate, Lex struggled not to shift in his seat, feeling exposed and uncomfortable. Lexx averted his eyes to the smoothness of the table.
"Well," Kal sighed, breaking the awkward silence, "this analyzation is going to take all night. I think I'll turn in. Good night, Lex." As Lex nodded in response, Kal rose from his chair and bent slightly over to speak quietly to his companion. "You coming?"
"Soon."
Lex glanced up, not sure exactly what he'd expected to see, and found Kal brushing his cheek just barely against Lexx's temple, the both of them briefly closing their eyes as if this tiny gesture brought them great pleasure. Heavily, he padded back toward the bed chamber, doing something to his outfit near the collar, which Lex assumed was where the fastener must have been. "A.I.," he called just before he disappeared around the corner, "prepare a sleeping surface for visitor Lex."
He watched across the room as a surface about the size of a double bed rose out of the floor, and then a blanket and pillow much like those he'd seen on the master bed seeped out of the top of the crystal mattress. He wasn't sure why the sight of it made him want to scowl, but scowl he did nonetheless.
He sipped regularly at his drink to mask it, though he did know how pointless it was to do since the man across from him had once scowled just the same.
"It won't always be like this, you know," he said softly.
Lex sighed and put his glass down. "I'm sure," he said as cheerily as he could manage. "A millennium is a long time. I'm certain many things will change."
"You know that's not what I mean."
Expressionlessly, Lex met his double's steady gaze. "What won't always be like what?" He smiled politely.
"Your life. Empty."
For a moment, Lex struggled to look innocently confused, then gave up the pointless game and leaned back heavily into his chair. He stared at his own distorted reflection in the crystal floor.
Lexx leaned forward onto the table and sighed, his voice filled with sympathy. "It won't always feel like... clinging to a rock face where there are no grips, having no choice but to jam in your spikes, destroying pieces of its beauty just in order to hold on."
A sneer crawled across Lex's face.
"I know. You hate me for pointing it out. But just don't forget I'm you."
Lex swallowed down his bitterness, doing his best to meet his double's gaze without sign of the anger and sense of injustice that were suddenly burning through him. "How did it happen?" he asked, speaking so quietly that his whisper was almost lost by the room. "What was the moment?"
Lexx watched him for a long, still few seconds, then finally sighed. "In the other timeline, Kal was distraught... distracted. He gave you far too much information."
"Just the same, I have it," Lex insisted. "Fifteen years? There has to be some way-"
"You shouldn't seek any further details, nor should you act on the ones you have already learned." He leaned forward and laid his hand over Lex's. Lex struggled not to pull away. "Lex... you can't change anything. All will be as it's meant to be."
He spread his hands, mostly to break their odd connection. "All right. But why can't it be just a little sooner?"
"Because events build on events. They're not all about who you are or what you do. You must wait for it all to happen before the moment will be right."
"All what?" He scooted forward in his chair. "What exactly happens?"
Lexx's lips thinned. "The things that happen to a man in fifteen years of life."
Lex sighed harshly, looking away in frustration.
"I'm not going to give you the details you want no matter how you press me. But please understand that there is a time for everything and your time will come." He shrugged, his expression empathetic. "Just... be patient."
Lex met his gaze hard. "I am not a patient man."
Unfettered, Lexx smiled slightly. "Yes you are. When you need to be."
As Lex sighed, biting back a sarcastic comment, his double rose to his feet. "Look, I hate that thing," he pointed over his shoulder, "so I know you will, too. Would you like to sleep with us?"
Lex's head jerked upright, his eyes wide with shock. "Excuse me?" He scoffed incredulously. "That would be a bit awkward, wouldn't it?"
Lexx shrugged. "I don't think so. I'm certainly used to sleeping with myself..." he smirked when Lex rolled his eyes, "and don't worry about Clark. He won't mind."
"Clark?" That gave him pause and he wondered for a moment if he was confusing his timelines. "But I thought you called him Kal."
"Oh. Well, old habits. I use both names. I knew him as Clark for nearly forty years..." he trailed off and shook his head, grinning, "but I've known him as Kal for over a century. You'd think that would be enough, but every now and then a ‘Clark’ still sneaks in." He shrugged. "I'm connected to the past. To you. I suppose I always will be. I fell for him when he was ‘Clark,’ after all."
Lex averted his eyes. "I wouldn't know."
His face began to burn when Lexx laughed without pretense. "Who do you think you're kidding? I'm you, Lex. You think I've managed to forget how long I've loved him?"
Lex sneered at his own light reflection in the floor, bitterness chasing embarrassment away. "I thought... I thought maybe I loved him."
"You knew. And you were right. So now there's antagonism and you try to bury those feelings under a layer of righteousness, of anger and disappointment, and something you want to call hate when you know it isn't. But you do love him, it is there, and the more you try to fight it, the angrier you'll get." He sighed. "But you already know that. And so this is pointless."
Lex had nothing to say to any of this, unwilling to agree, and yet knowing how idiotic it was to argue with someone who'd already lived his life. Instead, he backtracked on their conversation, pretending it hadn't happened. "Why doesn't he use ‘Clark’ anymore?" he asked casually.
He glanced up to find Lexx giving him a knowing look, his head turned slightly, and Lex fully expected him to say he knew very well the answer to the question he was asking. But then his face went slack, an almost painful memory flashing across his eyes, and he suddenly softened. "Because," he said quietly, and cleared his throat, "the Clark Kent persona had to die. It had lasted long enough-he wasn't aging, and people were starting to ask what kind of skin cream he used." They shared a smile. "People already knew what was happening to me, but that wasn't associated with Clark Kent or the life Clark Kent was leading, and Kal didn't want it to become that way because-well, for various reasons, some related to my personal safety. He had no choice but to stage his death."
Lex nodded, already having figured out for himself that would have been necessary, though many of the details escaped his understanding. He supposed that was indeed the point of making them so vague.
"Come sleep with us."
Lex shook his head quickly, rising to his feet. "I don't think-"
"You remember how comfortable the bed was in the other timeline?"
"Yes, but-"
"I want you to take that comfort, change it to discomfort, and multiply it by ten."
Lex raised an eyebrow.
Lexx pointed back at the newly raised bed platform. "I'm not kidding."
"Can't I just... ask the A.I. to make it more comfortable?"
Lexx laughed with apparent delight. "Oh, sure! It only took two years to get the bed right. And you know how helpful the A.I. can be about getting things the way you want them." He eyed Lex's orange juice pointedly.
Lex wavered slightly.
"Come on." With no further encouragement, Lexx turned his back and headed for the bed chamber.
Lex stood his ground, eying the separate bed critically. He couldn't have said what made him follow his double, the thought of sleeping next to himself doing little to calm his already frayed nerves, but he did follow.
When he stepped around the crystal wall that separated the bed chamber from the rest of the rooms and saw Kal already under the blanket and sound asleep, his own reasoning suddenly became very clear to him.
After removing his boots, Lexx stood by the empty side of the bed, messing about with his collar much as Kal had done. Then, to Lex's surprise, the entire leatherlike outfit he wore suddenly fell apart at its white stitching seams and puddled around his feet. He was clad in a black undershirt and shorts, smirking at the surprise on Lex's face. "Technology," he said by way of explanation. "Did you want to sleep next to him?"
Lex's eyes widened and he took a step back. "No."
The corner of Lexx's mouth curled upward. "Sure you do."
"I... wouldn't want him to wake up and think I was you. You sleep next to him."
With a shrug, Lexx slid into his side of the bed with a sigh, leaving plenty of room for Lex to climb in after him.
Lex uncertainly took another half-step back, wondering at how strange the two of them looked lying together on the same surface. They looked as though they belonged together, and yet as if they should not, by any stretch of the imagination, have been together.
"You can feel free to try out the visitor's bed. But I promise you'll be back in here within the hour."
Lex winced at the normal volume of his voice, the room picking it up and echoing it easily. "Aren't you worried to wake him up?" he whispered.
Lexx blinked. "Kal?" He grinned widely. "Kal?" He turned and looked down at his sleeping companion. "Hey, Kal," he said in a slightly louder than conversational tone. "A huge spaceship just landed and fifty Kryptonians walked out. Want to go say hello?"
Kal continued to breathe regularly, his eyelids moving rapidly with REM sleep.
Lexx looked back to Lex meaningfully.
"Ah." With a sigh, Lex mentally prodded himself to be a little less uptight, and slid his shoes off. He climbed into the bed and pulled the blanket over his chest, lying on his back.
"A.I., provide a third pillow with specifications Lexx-981." There was silence for a brief moment as the pillow bloomed under Lex's head.
"Nine hundred eighty-one?" Lex asked.
Lexx chuckled quietly. "Two years. I wasn't kidding."
A small smile crossed Lex's face, and then his brow furrowed in consideration. "I feel like I just got up."
"I know. But your body doesn't. You'll be asleep before you know it."
Lex turned to look at him curiously. "Do you remember that?"
"Not yet."
He paused, thinking. "If the pillow has a specification, then I assume the mattress does, too."
"Mm."
"Then why couldn't you just...?" He trailed off as Lexx met his gaze without evasion.
"You didn't want to sleep alone," he said simply.
Lex swallowed hard and stared at the ceiling once again.
Lexx sighed, peering at the side of his face. "I wish there was something I could do for you. Some way to take away the pain I know you're feeling-the pain that's yet to come. But I can't. You're my past. I'm your future. And in between, that pain exists and is built upon. I'm so sorry. I can only tell you that I swear he's worth it."
"I... I believe that."
"I know you do."
"I don't want to be like this. Bitter, and..." he turned to meet his double's gaze, "having to mar the face of my life just in order to keep living. But it's just that... I seem to be on this spiral, and like most spirals, it's only heading down."
"I know. But it will change. You will change. In time."
Before he knew what was happening or had time to protest, Lexx's arms were wrapping around his back. Lex froze, holding his breath. "I'm fine," he said tightly.
A soft laugh burst from Lexx's lips. "God, I was so stiff. Relax. The world isn't going to end if you give yourself a hug."
Lex's face began to burn, a sensation normally foreign to him that was becoming distressingly familiar the longer he was here. His other self was shuffling closer to him and soon had him wrapped securely in his arms, their faces in the crook of one another's necks.
Eyes wide open, Lex stared at the side of Kal's face, where he laid there sound asleep, unaware of what was happening right beside him. He would have thought it would feel very strange to be hugged by a future version of himself, but it was only the thought of it that was strange. With Lexx's familiar bald head out of his field of vision, he had no physical way to know the other man wasn't just that-some other man. Since Lexx's body reflected a younger Lex than Lex's own did, they were not perfect matches. Lex had lost some definition over the past few years. Apparently more than he'd thought he had, he realized with a wry twist to his lips.
He was running fingers over his double's arm almost unconsciously, feeling out the differences, when his hand suddenly stilled. "Oh, my god," he blurted. "You have hair on your arms."
Lexx chuckled, pulling away to his own pillow. "Yes. It's the treatments, I think. It grew in nearly seventy years ago. I kept hoping for something a little higher up," he looked upward toward his hairline, "but no luck there."
Lex was unable to joke, his mouth still hanging slack. "Legs? Chest?"
"I'm afraid not," Lexx shrugged. "But, uh..." In a roundabout way, he glanced downward and away, expressing himself mutely with his eyebrows.
Lex's eyes deadened. "You're kidding."
Smiling slightly, he shook his head. "Only a dusting-nearly as light as on my arms. But still."
After he thought about it for a moment, Lex winced rather sharply. "Red?"
"No," Lexx said with a laugh. "Brown-auburn, I guess. Do you... do you want-?"
"Oh, god, no."
He laughed more clearly. "I thought not."
Kal made a muttering sound and both Lex and Lexx jumped as an errant arm came slapping over Lexx's chest. Lex's eyebrows arched, but before either of them were able to say a thing, Kal had wrapped Lexx in a tight embrace and cuddled up to his back, flattening his nose and lips against Lexx's neck.
Lex was surprised at such an overt expression of affection considering the length of time they'd apparently been together. But the expression on his other self's face-as if stoic acceptance and wry irritation were having a fistfight-convinced him it wasn't the norm.
"Kal." Lexx shrugged a shoulder firmly. "Kal."
Kal only mumbled and held him more tightly.
Lexx turned as well as he could, pressed the heel of his hand to Kal's shoulder, and gave a great heave. "Christ, you're like a furnace!"
Mumbling something that sounded like it might have been apologetic, Kal shifted around to his other side and fell still again.
Lexx's expression showed plain exasperation when he glanced back at Lex and shook his head.
"Is it like that every night?"
"Only recently." He grunted as he yanked their half of the blanket back, which Kal had managed to tangle around his legs during his attack and retreat. "He gets like this-" the blanket suddenly came free, and he plopped onto his back, "-when he's nervous. He'll be better once the gatherings are complete." With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the blanket over them both, muttering, "If I don't kill him before then."
Lex smirked, though he wasn't sure his other self could see him even from the corner of his eye, and then there was a long silence.
Eventually, Lexx's brow furrowed as he stared at the ceiling, and he asked, rather out of the blue, "What's the name of your butler?"
"My... butler?"
"Yeah." Lexx looked at him curiously. "What's his name?"
"Uh... Caldwell?"
"Caldwell!" Apparently excited by this news, Lexx poked him hard in the shoulder. "That's it!" He laughed, shaking his head-at what, Lex didn't know. "You know, I've been trying to think of that man's name on and off for the last three years. I could never think of it!"
"Oh." Lex struggled for something intelligent to add to this revelation. "Kal couldn't remember?"
"He has an eidetic memory. I'm sure it's in there somewhere."
Lex blinked with surprise at this revelation. "He ha- Oh. Well, so... why didn't you ask him?"
"And give him the satisfaction? I don't think so." He sighed happily. "Caldwell... how could I forget that? He's a good man, Caldwell. A very good man."
Lex peered at the side of his double's face curiously. "Is he? Why? What did he do?"
Lexx gave him a look Lex was beginning to become exceedingly used to and loathe the sight of. He slammed his head back into his pillow with a frustrated sigh.
"You know, it's strange," Lexx said quietly. "I have to admit that I was both looking forward to and not looking forward to meeting you. Kal was right when he tried to tell me how angry I was then, but I didn't believe him. I suppose we soften ourselves in our own memories."
Lex swallowed, feeling uncomfortably exposed. He tried to cover it with a quiet, flippant laugh. "Am I so bad?"
"I remember that life; you have every reason. It's just that after so much time has passed, the difference between who I was and who I've become is rather more glaring than I'd expected it to be."
Lex almost didn't respond, almost just let it go. But finally, he whispered, "I don't want to wait fifteen years to become someone else."
"I know you don't. But there is no choice; you can't change it."
"I bet that I can."
Suddenly, his arm was gripped tightly, surprising him, and Lexx was hovering over him, his eyes burning into Lex's own. "Well, get your damn chips off the table, because you're betting with my life."
"I don't want to damage your life!" Lex protested. "I simply want it a little sooner!"
"Well, good luck," Lexx growled sardonically. "Because the more you try to convince Clark that this is the way things are supposed to be, the farther away you'll push him." He paused, searching Lex's eyes. "Think about who Clark is right now-and think about who he thinks you are. You know that I'm right."
Lex held his gaze for several seconds longer, then jerked angrily away, knowing what he said was true.
"Get it out of your mind, Lex," he said, shaking his head and sounding weary as he settled back down to his pillow. "You'll be a lot better off if you just accept things the way they're going to be."
Lex crossed his arms over his chest, sighing sharply at the ceiling but saying nothing.
"Besides," Lexx gazed at the side of his face, "it's not as if the next fifteen years are going to be hell." Lex met his smiling eyes. "You're going to have a lot of fun being... well, yourself."
Though he wasn't certain exactly what was in that smirk, Lex could imagine. He found himself smirking back until Lexx said good-night and turned on his side, quickly falling still.
Listening to his double's deep breaths, Lex fell slowly to sleep, certain there must be some way that he could bring this future to himself more quickly than it was intended to arrive, and determined to find it.
~ ~ ~
To be continued...
Feedback isn't actually Love. But it's as close as you and I are going to get without making a deeper commitment that I feel neither of us is really ready for.
bipolypesca
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Wisdom to Know the Difference
byline: bipolypesca
Chapter 6
"‘Just agreed’?" Lex repeated. "What the hell?"
"I know." The other Lex walked forward, arms outstretched, and took Lex's shoulders in his hands. A discomfiting shiver ran over his skin at the notion of being touched by his future self. The other Lex smiled as if he knew. "All you can remember right now is the other timeline. It will be like that until you go home. Then you'll remember it all."
"The other timeline?"
Kal took a step forward, his smile slighter in deference to his concern for Lex's disorientation. "You did what you intended-or, rather, you will. You told me early so we could begin preparations."
"But- I- Do you-?" he looked from Kal to the younger Lex. "Do you mean that I've changed the future already? Just by intending to do it?"
"That's exactly what we mean," his own voice replied.
Lex rolled a shoulder in discomfort, wishing he didn't so prefer the silent, suffering double to this talkative version. "Could you not touch me, please?" he asked quietly and as politely as he could under the circumstances. "It feels-"
"-weird." His hands dropped to his sides, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "I remember. Now."
Kal gestured toward a table and three chairs that were oozing their way from the floor and Lex settled gratefully into one before it was completely formed. "This is strange for us, too. You see, from our point of view, we've just finished explaining everything to you that we're about to explain again."
"Well, I'm sorry," Lex automatically said, then realized he'd sounded sardonic and harsh. "I just mean... I don't understand why I don't remember. The last thing I remember was-"
"Kal can't remember the other timeline," the younger-looking Lex rushed in suddenly, "and you can't remember this one. When you go back to your own time, you'll remember both. But Kal..." here he paused and caught Lex's eyes with meaning that Lex couldn't have misunderstood even if it hadn't been coming from himself, "never will."
Slowly, Lex nodded, clearly grasping that he was to avoid mentioning the state of his future self in the previous timeline if at all possible.
Kal looked back and forth between them with some discomfort, plainly picking up on their unspoken communication, but apparently more bothered by the possibilities of its insinuation than by the secrecy itself, so he said nothing of it. "Why don't you ask a question to get us started?" he asked Lex gently. "That worked the first time around."
Lex's mind was spinning, his head pivoting this way and that as he took in the completeness of the room and how nothing appeared to have ever been destroyed in a rage of grief. "I, uh..." he trailed off for a while, eventually resting his head on his splayed fingertips and trying to think up something intelligent to ask. It came to him in a sudden burst. "What the hell am I still doing here?"
Kal and the other Lex both smiled with amusement.
"If I warned you about Cher-what's-his-name ahead of time, changed the future, then there was no reason for you to go back and get me, was there? Couldn't you just move the samples before he arrived?"
"I see the change hasn't had all that much effect on you after all," Kal said with a grin. "That's the same question you asked first before."
"I did tell Kal before Shiar-Da's arrival. In fact, in our time, right now, we haven't even met Shiar-Da yet."
"And we did intend to move the samples to a secure location before his arrival."
"You see, even though we now know what not to say to invoke his rage, we can't be certain to avoid it altogether."
"Imagine our surprise when we opened the containment chamber to relocate the samples only to find that they had already been compromised."
"Yes. Over a decade ago, due to a malfunctioning failsafe in the A.I.'s programming. So we got to work with the A.I. and started trying to find you."
"In the other timeline, all Shiar-Da did was accelerate what was going to end up happening to Lexx's cells anyway. When it was time, we wouldn't have had the replacements we needed. And, quite possibly, we wouldn't have had four months to invent time travel, find you, and have you end up deciding to change things before they happened."
"So, in a roundabout way, Shiar-Da's insanity might have actually saved my life."
Lex blinked in massive confusion-not only at the incredible story they told, but at the rapid fire way in which they told it, one picking up the other's thread and vice versa, so that Lex needed to listen the way one watched a tennis match. "Jesus, I don't understand any of this," he breathed helplessly.
"We know," Kal said, sympathetic and sincere. "But you will. Actually, we..." he glanced at his companion, "well, we had been hoping that your memory would change a while later than this."
Lex's head snapped up, his eyes narrowing. "Why?"
"In this timeline," his other self said, "you only just arrived here about half an hour ago."
"You see, you... haven't even been in the chamber once yet."
"Oh, g-! You mean I've got to get into that thing three more times?" Lex cried.
They shared a look, then gave Lex their best apologetic expressions. "The estimates in the other timeline were a bit..." he watched his other self turn his head slightly, wincing for Lex's benefit, "slapdash. It's going to take more than three sessions to get-"
"How many?"
Kal bit his lip. "Maybe more like six."
"Give or take."
Lex sat heavily back into his chair. He was beginning to seriously wonder if this was worth it. Sure, he'd gotten to see the future, but at what cost? He was going to have nightmares about that torture rack for the rest of his life.
"Lex, why don't you just let us put you out? It would be so much-"
"No," he insisted, cutting Kal's plea off. "I'm not going to be put under for a painless procedure. I am not... a child."
Kal unexpectedly turned on his companion, his eyes narrowing to slits. "God, was there ever a time that you weren't stubborn?"
The other Lex turned his head slightly away and scratched the back of his neck, looking mildly embarrassed. "Anyway..." he said through a sigh. "What do you say we get the first round out of the way? We can talk some more while the A.I. analyzes and purifies, hm?"
Lex threw his hands in the air dramatically. "Why the hell not? I'm already dizzy and confused and want to vomit, what's another harrowing experience?" He got to his feet, shaking his head and waving Kal off when he looked concerned and opened his mouth, most certainly to suggest waiting. "This must be a bit odd for you," he said instead, wishing intensely to change the subject, "having two of us in the same room. How will you keep us straight?"
He was only joking, so was a bit surprised when Kal answered, "It won't be so difficult. After all, you do... look a bit different," Lex looked up to find him sharing a meaningful glance with his counterpart, and he bit his cheek to avoid saying anything dry and caustic, "and you're dressed differently from one another and... well, Lexx doesn't even spell his name the same way."
Lex stopped in his tracks, not least because they were approaching the chamber and it was beginning to reach for him, making him slightly woozy. "What?" He turned to his double. "What do you mean you don't spell your name the same way?"
"He uses an extra X," Kal answered.
Lex gave his other self a perplexed look. "Why in the world would you do that?"
The other Lex-or, apparently, Lexx-shrugged. "It was the style at the time; I liked the way it looked on paper. It sort of stuck, so after it went out of vogue, I hung onto it."
Lex blinked with incomprehension. "It was ‘the style’ to add an X to the end of one's name?"
Kal chuckled. "No, it was the style to double the consonant at the end of your name."
"Assuming it ended in a consonant," Lexx added.
"Right. So if your name was Tom, you'd spell it T-O-M-M, and if your name was Clark, you'd spell it C-L-A-R-K-K-"
"Which, incidentally, looks idiotic on paper."
"-which explains why I never did it."
For a long time, Lex merely stared at the two of them, peering at their expressions very carefully and looking for any sign whatsoever that they were pulling his leg. Finally he said, with all seriousness, "That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard."
Lexx snorted. "It won't be."
"Honestly," Kal said, resuming their walk to the chamber, "you should hear about some of the fads he passed up."
Lex widened his eyes in incredulity and climbed into the chamber on his own, denying his terror with small talk. "I might like to, actually."
"A.I., prepare for the first gathering," Kal said casually.
"Or," Lexx suggested, "perhaps some of the fads he," he tilted his head toward Kal, "didn't pass up?"
"Now, that," Lex said, grinning despite himself as he secured his own restraint, "sounds interesting."
"What do you think?" Lexx asked Kal as the whir began above Lex's head. "Shall I start off with your pink period?"
Kal shot him a withering look that seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever. "You know what-" he broke off, apparently thinking better of what he'd wanted to say.
Lexx grinned at Lex. "There are pictures."
Lex only just managed to snort-quite loudly, as well-before the apparatus meant for his lungs entered his mouth and began to control his breathing. As the procedure continued, the couple-mainly his other self-kept him entertained (as well as his terror at bay) with little anecdotes of the collective world's ridiculousness in the form of fads, any or all of which might have been completely concocted strictly for his amusement. It was difficult to tell.
"I can't be sure," he said when the whirs wound down and Kal had helped him out of his restraint, "but that seemed to take less time than before."
Kal gave him a blank look.
"I-I mean, not before, but... other."
"Well, we've had more time to prepare," Lexx said. "I'm sure it probably is a little more efficient."
"That's good news. Listen, before my next," he glanced wryly behind him at the chamber disappearing into the wall, "charming procedure, is there a shower around here somewhere?"
"Yes," Kal said. "You can ask the A.I. for anything you need or want. A.I.," he directed, his voice a bit louder, "shower."
On the other side of the large open room, beyond where Lex had remembered the breakfast table in his other morning, a large, clear, enclosed crystal shower emerged from the floor. Next to it emerged a small opaque cupboard-also, of course, made of crystal. He wondered if his other self ever got sick of the monotony of this particular decorating scheme.
Lex stared at the shower. "Ah," he said meaninglessly. He looked at Kal.
Kal looked back at him, then at Lexx, who returned his gaze, and then looked at Lex.
Lex looked back at the shower and cleared his throat.
"Um..." Kal said uncertainly, "toiletries and towels are in the cupboard."
"Yes, I... gathered." He continued to stare at the shower. Awkwardly, he rocked on his feet.
Finally, blessedly, Lexx said, "Oh! A.I., opaque shower."
The shower immediately coloured from clear mottled ice to solid snow white.
"Ah!" Lex said again, this time with much meaning. He nodded toward Lexx. "Thank you."
As he headed for the enclosure, he could almost hear the two of them chuckling at one another in silence. "I realize," he called over his shoulder, "I don't have anything that both of you haven't seen before, but... humour me."
~
There was a partition inside the enclosure, one side of which was a shower, the other side of which was a room for drying and changing. He'd nearly asked if he could have his wrinkled clothes washed while he showered, only to look down and see they weren't wrinkled at all. He had them off by the time he realized he didn't feel he needed a shower, either, but went forward anyway. It only took a few perplexed minutes for him to grasp that if he'd just slipped into a different timeline where he'd only just arrived in the future, then he hadn't yet slept in his suit and had only taken a shower half a day ago in what would have been his morning. In essence, he had an entire day to live over again, and it was very discombobulating.
He walked out of the enclosure dressed and refreshed, but no less confused. "A hundred and fifty years later," he said, watching the shower sink into the floor, "people still use simple water showers like that?"
Lexx and Kal exchanged guilty looks. "Well... we're not supposed to," Kal said uncomfortably. "We were given special dispensation by the Earthen Resources Committee to access a small reserve of fresh water which we can use and recycle-"
"On account of we're ancient."
"On account," Kal corrected, shooting Lexx a dry warning look, "of our contributions to the Coalition and..." he trailed off, then shrugged, "the... fact that we're ancient."
Lexx nodded once, apparently satisfied by the reluctant admission.
"I see." Which he didn't, but neither did he want to get any deeper into the details at the moment. Lexx and Kal turned back to the work they were undertaking with the A.I.'s computers when the subject seemed closed, and Lex walked around the room to amuse himself, strongly experiencing déjà vu. The sickbed that had been the centre of his experience in the other timeline, however, did not seem to exist, or to have ever existed. Where it once had stood, there was only smooth crystal floor, just like everywhere else.
Within a few minutes, he stopped at the large, blank crystal wall he had found pictures in before, and focussed on it, trying to will out the small splotches of colour he remembered.
But no matter how he stared, all he saw were ever darkening blues. He turned to ask a question of his hosts, but then remembered he need only ask the A.I. for what he wanted, and he turned back to the wall. "A.I.," when he spoke, his hosts turned toward him in curiousity just the same, "may I see the pictures in this wall, please?"
"How did-" Kal began to mutter to Lexx, but the rest was drowned out by the A.I.'s surprising response.
"Visitor Lex, your access is restricted. I am sorry, but you may not."
Lex blinked in astonishment at the rebuff. He turned to Kal and Lexx, and found Lexx finishing an explanation with, "...the other timeline."
"Sorry," he said to Lex, "but, honestly... would you want to live every pleasant moment as a rerun?" He offered a small, sympathetic smile with these wise words, which only irked Lex all the more.
He scowled his displeasure at the still blank wall. "I wouldn't mind a rerun of that one in Paris," he muttered petulantly, just loudly enough that he knew he could be heard, but quietly enough that if there was no response, he could pretend he hadn't meant to be.
There was a moment of silence, and he resisted looking over to them, though he couldn't see them even out of the corner of his eye. He managed to hold down his elation when Lexx dryly said, "A.I., allow visitor Lex access to memory Paris-18."
"Lexx, I must pro-"
"Oh, stuff your protests; just let him see it."
Slowly, the proper digital photo worked its way out of its crystal enclosure. Lex took a step closer, smiling only slightly to avoid looking too pleased with this small allowance. "I don't suppose I could get a copy of this," he asked wryly.
Lexx snorted. "I can't be certain, but I think that might actually cause a rip in the space/time continuum or something similarly catastrophic."
"When is this?" he asked. "Can you at least tell me that? With this technology, it can't have been too far into the future."
Again there was silence, but this time he did give in and look. He found the two of them with their arms crossed over their chests, shooting him dry looks. "I really don't think you should have any more details," Lexx said firmly.
Lex rolled his eyes back to the photo. "What will I do?" he muttered under his breath. "Request Venice instead?" He peered more deeply into it, tearing his eyes away from the main event of the kiss and embrace, and focussed instead on the scenery beyond the balcony. "Paris looks the same."
"Everything changes," Lexx said. "Except the old cities."
He nodded in agreement. Plainly visible were the Seine and the Louvre, and they looked just as he remembered them. In fact, as he peered even closer, he realized this particular view looked very familiar. "Hold on," he said suspiciously. "Isn't this the view from Quai Voltaire?" He turned to look at them. "In the 7th?"
Kal and Lexx shared a look, but they didn't respond.
"The Louvre looks unchanged," Lex went on, looking back at the picture. "And-" suddenly something caught his eye-something he was surprised he hadn't noticed before. A satisfied smile spread over his face. "I know when this is." He reached out and tapped a finger against the falu red mark on his own neck, which was surrounded by irritated skin. "That mark is fresh." He turned to smirk at them. "About a hundred and twenty-three years ago, wasn't it?"
Kal's eyes widened. His fingers went self-consciously to his mark while he turned to Lexx, hissing, "How did he-?"
"You told him," Lexx said softly, "in the other timeline."
Kal's jaw dropped. "Is there anything I didn't tell him?"
"You were... distracted." Lexx ignored the still shocked look Kal was shooting him and raised his voice. "A.I., remove visitor Lex's access to memory Paris-18."
Frowning, Lex watched it disappear into the crystal wall as he hurriedly etched the details into his mind.
"And, A.I., do try a little harder to stop me from doing stupid things in the future, will you?"
"I will do my best," she answered, her voice the perfect imitation of human wry indulgence.
"It's just a tattoo, then, isn't it?" Lex asked, approaching them from his place by the now vacant wall. "I suppose I had imagined something more," he shrugged, "alien. But from that skin irritation-"
"It's not a tattoo," Lexx interrupted. "It's permanent."
Lex's brow knitted in confusion. He looked from Lexx to Kal and back. "Tattoos are permanent."
"Tattoos fade. This... is permanent."
Lex searched his double's eyes, finding something more there than a discussion about how long a mark would last on one's skin, but he turned back to the display before Lex could decipher what exactly it was.
"Do you want some dinner?" Kal asked. "It's late here and we've already eaten, but I'm sure you're hungry."
"Oh, no. I just ate."
Kal looked at him curiously. "But it was the middle of the afternoon in Smallville when I brought you here. You'd only just eaten?"
Lex blinked, his memories all swirling together disconcertingly. "No, I... I had poached eggs."
Kal grimaced slightly. "Poached eggs at three in the afternoon?"
"No, no... the other timeline. You served me poached eggs."
Kal's head dipped slightly back in sudden understanding. "Well, Lex, you might remember that, but your body doesn't. The last time you ate in Smallville-that's really the last time you ate. Let us get you something."
"I'm really not, uh..." he shrugged. "I'll just get some juice."
Kal gestured toward the proper depression in the proper wall, but Lex was already headed toward it. "The dispenser-"
"I know."
There was a moment of silence behind him and then Kal muttered to Lexx, "I'm really starting to wish I could remember that other timeline."
Lex glanced behind him to find his other self pushing Kal's hair back, using the adjustment as an excuse to run his fingers through its length. "Don't worry. It really wasn't anything worth remembering."
Lex turned back to the dispenser, tilting his head slightly in silent but total agreement with Lexx's words. "A.I.," he said seriously, "I would like a twelve ounce glass of forty degree Fahrenheit nearly pulp-less orange juice-and before you ask me any facetious questions, please consider that I will remember this very clearly and you will have to live with me for over one hundred years while I will have access to all of your programming along with permission to alter it as I see fit."
A glass of orange juice quickly appeared, and Lex took it with no small measure of satisfaction. Sipping, he turned to find Kal's eyebrows reaching for his hairline while Lexx grinned with approval. "By the way," Lex said casually to Kal, "your double promised me a demonstration of your ability of flight, but he hadn't gotten around to it before the timeline changed."
Kal crossed his arms over his chest, obviously trying not to smile at Lex's rakishness, but not succeeding. "Oh, really?"
"Mm," he hummed into his juice, nodding. "And I do expect you'll be a gentlemen and step up to take his place."
"Sorry, Lex," he said, though he didn't sound it. "I'm too old to perform on cue."
Lex snorted and directed his conversation to his own double. "Do you remember all of this," he asked, "from my point of view?"
He nodded. "As it happens. I remember everything you can, and I remember being you and getting home from here and feeling a rush of memories regarding the part of this timeline that you can't yet recall-I even remember the headache that came with it." He shrugged. "But the time from now to when you leave is fuzzy, like a dream I can't quite remember. Every time anyone says or does anything, I'm instantly remembering it clearly as it was when I was you, as if it never should have been fuzzy at all. This entire experience is like constant déjà vu to me, only in reverse."
Lex started to settle himself into the same chair he'd been in on what felt to him to be the previous evening, then sidestepped it and chose a third chair that hadn't been there in that timeline. "That must be disconcerting," he said obligingly, though he was rather distracted by his own disconcertment.
"A bit," Lexx answered with a near laugh in his voice.
He settled in, expecting to need to amuse himself much as he had when Kal had been working the control board in the other timeline, and was surprised to find them both leave it without hesitation and approach him, smiling. Kal took the seat the first Kal had chosen, and Lexx the chair that had been offered to Lex, though it was positioned much more closely to Kal's now. There was a small smooth table between them and they all leaned on it slightly.
Lex watched them across the table, smirking internally at the strange familyesque picture they presented by sitting so close together. "So," he started, "tell me more about this Earthen Resources Committee. Are they like the EPA?"
"Well-"
"I think," Lexx interrupted Kal, "you have quite enough detail about the ruling bodies of the future."
Lex spread his hands. "But I have no detail at all."
"Precisely." Lexx leaned back in his chair, looking pleased with himself.
Lex bit his inner cheek. "All right... Well, what is it you do here?"
"Sorry?"
"You've been here eighty years? There's no one else here. Aren't you bored? Isn't it difficult to run LuthorCorp efficiently from so far away?"
Lexx and Kal shared a somewhat frozen look.
Lex blinked, less surprised than he might have expected he'd be. "Ah. Well. I... hope that was at least voluntary."
As he expected, they didn't offer any detail on what had happened to LuthorCorp. "We don't have time to get bored," Lexx said instead.
"We have too much work to do."
"Work? What kind of work do you do out here?"
"Mostly scientific," Lexx said. "Innovation."
"But what for? I understood you're cut off from the world."
Kal looked as though he was going to ask a question, then seemed to realize he already had his answer and said instead, "Physically, you might say we're cut off. But our..." he glanced at Lexx and they both smirked, "‘brain children,’ so to speak, still manage to make it out there in the world now and then."
"Obviously, we'd go crazy if we didn't have things to do."
"We still have many centuries ahead of us."
Lex sighed, squelching the urge to ask if one of them couldn't please tell a story at a time rather than splitting everything up by sentence. "What kind of innovations do you work on?" He raised a hand to halt the brush-off he felt coming. "I'm not asking for plans, formulae, and details. Just in general."
"At first it was big things," Lexx obligingly answered. "Cures for cancer, HIV, Alzheimer's, fibromyalgia. But once the cures started coming and it was found that-" he broke off, looked aside for a moment, then rephrased. "I mean that once... the proper connections were realized, disease was quickly wiped out, one condition after another. These days, our focus is on innovations for existing technology. We work on improving the irrigation systems, the weather control systems-"
"Interplanetary communication and travel," Kal interjected.
"-solar, oceanic, and tectonic stability..."
Lex was trying not to gape at the scope of the projects they rattled off so casually. "And these improvements, what? You sell them to the government?"
They laughed. "No one sells anything anymore, Lex," Kal said, shaking his head and grinning as if Lex was five and had asked if the moon was made of cheese. "We transmit our findings to the proper industrial segments, they test and research them, and augment the existing systems only with whatever is found to be both useful and feasible."
"And then, as a favour to us, they transmit their findings and decisions back to us so we can follow progress and plan our next projects accordingly."
Lex opened his mouth to ask what, exactly, was in it for them if they didn't get paid and didn't receive public recognition, but had a sinking feeling he'd only be laughed at once again. "So people do know that you're here," he said instead. "Do they ever come to see you? I mean, the world must view you as immortal. Surely they're curious."
Kal nodded. "We had a lot of visitors in the beginning. But these days, people have so many interesting journeys to choose from, ways to find adventure... I don't think we've had a visitor here in-what?" he looked to Lexx.
"Must have been four years."
"Yeah," Kal nodded, seeming to look back in time. "Four years. And before that, nearly a decade."
"Do you enjoy it when visitors come?"
Kal shrugged. "Sure. We're always happy to invite someone new into our home." He leaned forward onto the table with a sigh.
Lex didn't miss one of his hands sliding under the table to graze the back of Lexx's on his thigh, but said nothing, only trying not to stare at the strangeness of it.
"But you have to understand," Kal went on, "we're very separated from society. We have no connection to the people of this time, nothing in common with them. For the most part, those who come here do so only to ask us about our past-about the past. It gives us an excuse to reminisce, but that can become tiring after a few days-not only for us, but for the guest as well. We have a hard time identifying or sympathizing with the ‘troubles’ the current population complains of-"
"They have no idea what a real problem is," Lexx muttered.
"-so after their questions are asked, they tend to move on."
"Usually to the North Pole."
Kal chuckled softly. "Yes, we're sort of the unofficial side stop whenever someone on the northern continent gets it in their heads to walk to the North Pole."
"Like that's a challenge anymore."
"Mm. Which might explain why no one's been by in so long."
Lex watched them carefully. "It sounds lonely. Like maybe you're bored with your lives."
"Oh, not at all. Lex... we're bored with the world. Out there..." Kal shook his head and sighed, "there's nothing for us out there."
"Bunch of whining, overprivileged-"
"Lexx."
Lex joined his double in biting his cheek, feeling somehow responsible for his other self's grousing.
"But in here... in here, we're happy. As the years go by, we get to watch humanity achieve things that most men we used to know could only dream about because they would never live long enough to see it. We watched man take his first step on Mars. We watched the governments of the world merge into the Earthen Cooperative. We watched Earth join its first Intergalactic Coalition."
"What a disaster that was."
"Well, yes. But the point is... most men can only read about history and dream about the future. We're able to watch the future become history."
"I wouldn't give it up," Lexx said, smiling. "I pray for every second of that millennium I've got coming to me."
Lex watched Kal's hand tighten on Lexx's under the table. "Longer than that. We'll find even better ways as time goes on."
A little chill went up Lex's spine. He was barely able to reconcile the thought of life for a hundred and fifty years. A millennium was beyond the ability of his imagination. But beyond even that? "So this is really what you want? To be together... forever... here."
As if they'd only just considered it, the two of them looked around, then back at one another. Some silent communication took place.
"Well," Kal looked back at Lex. "Maybe not here. Everyone wants a change now and then."
"We have property all over the planet."
"Not so much property-"
"Well, we had property. And as everything changed, it was agreed to allow us exclusive access whenever we want."
"There are quite a few special dispensations allotted when you're expected to outlive everyone else."
Lexx leaned forward conspiratorially. "In other words, it's because we're ancient."
Kal rolled his eyes silently as Lexx sat back in his chair, smirking.
"And now that you mention it, I have been thinking lately that I miss the seasons."
Kal looked at his companion in mild surprise. "You haven't said anything."
"Well, I don't particularly care for what they've done to most of the areas we have property in."
"Lexx, you don't particularly care for what they've done anywhere."
Lexx looked at him stonily. "They have no sense of style, Kal. It's all," he waved a hand vaguely, "flat. I'm telling you, these people are mortally terrified of texture." He sighed and looked around again. "I suppose this hunk of ice would look a little out of place in a temperate zone, hm?"
Kal chuckled. "Maybe we could get it to disguise itself. If-"
"Kal-El," came the female voice from everywhere, "Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van designed me with the most elegant of Kryptonian architecture in mind. To attempt to change-"
Kal sighed loudly with irritation. "A.I., I'm going to write a programme. And that programme is going to be permanently seared into your reasoning centre. And it is going to be very aptly named Anti-Eavesdropping Protocol Priority 1-A." He paused, but no answer was forthcoming. Slowly, he looked at Lexx. "You hear that?"
"Mm." He nodded seriously. "Wounded silence."
Lex's heart was thankfully slowing, having jumped into top speed at the sudden and unexpected sound of the A.I.'s voice. He shook his head, chuckling to himself at the easy interaction of these two men who were to be the future versions of himself and of Clark. In some ways, they reminded him of earlier, easier times when he could have called Clark his best friend; but in most other ways, they struck him as impossible. The thought of he and Clark the way they were seemed to preclude any possibility of them ever becoming like that, whether it be fifteen years, a hundred and fifty years, or a thousand years away.
He shook his head again, his lips pulling into a slight frown, and sipped at his orange juice. When he glanced up, he found Kal gazing at Lexx curiously while he stared into Lex as if he could plainly see everything he was thinking. Realizing that impression was perfectly accurate, Lex struggled not to shift in his seat, feeling exposed and uncomfortable. Lexx averted his eyes to the smoothness of the table.
"Well," Kal sighed, breaking the awkward silence, "this analyzation is going to take all night. I think I'll turn in. Good night, Lex." As Lex nodded in response, Kal rose from his chair and bent slightly over to speak quietly to his companion. "You coming?"
"Soon."
Lex glanced up, not sure exactly what he'd expected to see, and found Kal brushing his cheek just barely against Lexx's temple, the both of them briefly closing their eyes as if this tiny gesture brought them great pleasure. Heavily, he padded back toward the bed chamber, doing something to his outfit near the collar, which Lex assumed was where the fastener must have been. "A.I.," he called just before he disappeared around the corner, "prepare a sleeping surface for visitor Lex."
He watched across the room as a surface about the size of a double bed rose out of the floor, and then a blanket and pillow much like those he'd seen on the master bed seeped out of the top of the crystal mattress. He wasn't sure why the sight of it made him want to scowl, but scowl he did nonetheless.
He sipped regularly at his drink to mask it, though he did know how pointless it was to do since the man across from him had once scowled just the same.
"It won't always be like this, you know," he said softly.
Lex sighed and put his glass down. "I'm sure," he said as cheerily as he could manage. "A millennium is a long time. I'm certain many things will change."
"You know that's not what I mean."
Expressionlessly, Lex met his double's steady gaze. "What won't always be like what?" He smiled politely.
"Your life. Empty."
For a moment, Lex struggled to look innocently confused, then gave up the pointless game and leaned back heavily into his chair. He stared at his own distorted reflection in the crystal floor.
Lexx leaned forward onto the table and sighed, his voice filled with sympathy. "It won't always feel like... clinging to a rock face where there are no grips, having no choice but to jam in your spikes, destroying pieces of its beauty just in order to hold on."
A sneer crawled across Lex's face.
"I know. You hate me for pointing it out. But just don't forget I'm you."
Lex swallowed down his bitterness, doing his best to meet his double's gaze without sign of the anger and sense of injustice that were suddenly burning through him. "How did it happen?" he asked, speaking so quietly that his whisper was almost lost by the room. "What was the moment?"
Lexx watched him for a long, still few seconds, then finally sighed. "In the other timeline, Kal was distraught... distracted. He gave you far too much information."
"Just the same, I have it," Lex insisted. "Fifteen years? There has to be some way-"
"You shouldn't seek any further details, nor should you act on the ones you have already learned." He leaned forward and laid his hand over Lex's. Lex struggled not to pull away. "Lex... you can't change anything. All will be as it's meant to be."
He spread his hands, mostly to break their odd connection. "All right. But why can't it be just a little sooner?"
"Because events build on events. They're not all about who you are or what you do. You must wait for it all to happen before the moment will be right."
"All what?" He scooted forward in his chair. "What exactly happens?"
Lexx's lips thinned. "The things that happen to a man in fifteen years of life."
Lex sighed harshly, looking away in frustration.
"I'm not going to give you the details you want no matter how you press me. But please understand that there is a time for everything and your time will come." He shrugged, his expression empathetic. "Just... be patient."
Lex met his gaze hard. "I am not a patient man."
Unfettered, Lexx smiled slightly. "Yes you are. When you need to be."
As Lex sighed, biting back a sarcastic comment, his double rose to his feet. "Look, I hate that thing," he pointed over his shoulder, "so I know you will, too. Would you like to sleep with us?"
Lex's head jerked upright, his eyes wide with shock. "Excuse me?" He scoffed incredulously. "That would be a bit awkward, wouldn't it?"
Lexx shrugged. "I don't think so. I'm certainly used to sleeping with myself..." he smirked when Lex rolled his eyes, "and don't worry about Clark. He won't mind."
"Clark?" That gave him pause and he wondered for a moment if he was confusing his timelines. "But I thought you called him Kal."
"Oh. Well, old habits. I use both names. I knew him as Clark for nearly forty years..." he trailed off and shook his head, grinning, "but I've known him as Kal for over a century. You'd think that would be enough, but every now and then a ‘Clark’ still sneaks in." He shrugged. "I'm connected to the past. To you. I suppose I always will be. I fell for him when he was ‘Clark,’ after all."
Lex averted his eyes. "I wouldn't know."
His face began to burn when Lexx laughed without pretense. "Who do you think you're kidding? I'm you, Lex. You think I've managed to forget how long I've loved him?"
Lex sneered at his own light reflection in the floor, bitterness chasing embarrassment away. "I thought... I thought maybe I loved him."
"You knew. And you were right. So now there's antagonism and you try to bury those feelings under a layer of righteousness, of anger and disappointment, and something you want to call hate when you know it isn't. But you do love him, it is there, and the more you try to fight it, the angrier you'll get." He sighed. "But you already know that. And so this is pointless."
Lex had nothing to say to any of this, unwilling to agree, and yet knowing how idiotic it was to argue with someone who'd already lived his life. Instead, he backtracked on their conversation, pretending it hadn't happened. "Why doesn't he use ‘Clark’ anymore?" he asked casually.
He glanced up to find Lexx giving him a knowing look, his head turned slightly, and Lex fully expected him to say he knew very well the answer to the question he was asking. But then his face went slack, an almost painful memory flashing across his eyes, and he suddenly softened. "Because," he said quietly, and cleared his throat, "the Clark Kent persona had to die. It had lasted long enough-he wasn't aging, and people were starting to ask what kind of skin cream he used." They shared a smile. "People already knew what was happening to me, but that wasn't associated with Clark Kent or the life Clark Kent was leading, and Kal didn't want it to become that way because-well, for various reasons, some related to my personal safety. He had no choice but to stage his death."
Lex nodded, already having figured out for himself that would have been necessary, though many of the details escaped his understanding. He supposed that was indeed the point of making them so vague.
"Come sleep with us."
Lex shook his head quickly, rising to his feet. "I don't think-"
"You remember how comfortable the bed was in the other timeline?"
"Yes, but-"
"I want you to take that comfort, change it to discomfort, and multiply it by ten."
Lex raised an eyebrow.
Lexx pointed back at the newly raised bed platform. "I'm not kidding."
"Can't I just... ask the A.I. to make it more comfortable?"
Lexx laughed with apparent delight. "Oh, sure! It only took two years to get the bed right. And you know how helpful the A.I. can be about getting things the way you want them." He eyed Lex's orange juice pointedly.
Lex wavered slightly.
"Come on." With no further encouragement, Lexx turned his back and headed for the bed chamber.
Lex stood his ground, eying the separate bed critically. He couldn't have said what made him follow his double, the thought of sleeping next to himself doing little to calm his already frayed nerves, but he did follow.
When he stepped around the crystal wall that separated the bed chamber from the rest of the rooms and saw Kal already under the blanket and sound asleep, his own reasoning suddenly became very clear to him.
After removing his boots, Lexx stood by the empty side of the bed, messing about with his collar much as Kal had done. Then, to Lex's surprise, the entire leatherlike outfit he wore suddenly fell apart at its white stitching seams and puddled around his feet. He was clad in a black undershirt and shorts, smirking at the surprise on Lex's face. "Technology," he said by way of explanation. "Did you want to sleep next to him?"
Lex's eyes widened and he took a step back. "No."
The corner of Lexx's mouth curled upward. "Sure you do."
"I... wouldn't want him to wake up and think I was you. You sleep next to him."
With a shrug, Lexx slid into his side of the bed with a sigh, leaving plenty of room for Lex to climb in after him.
Lex uncertainly took another half-step back, wondering at how strange the two of them looked lying together on the same surface. They looked as though they belonged together, and yet as if they should not, by any stretch of the imagination, have been together.
"You can feel free to try out the visitor's bed. But I promise you'll be back in here within the hour."
Lex winced at the normal volume of his voice, the room picking it up and echoing it easily. "Aren't you worried to wake him up?" he whispered.
Lexx blinked. "Kal?" He grinned widely. "Kal?" He turned and looked down at his sleeping companion. "Hey, Kal," he said in a slightly louder than conversational tone. "A huge spaceship just landed and fifty Kryptonians walked out. Want to go say hello?"
Kal continued to breathe regularly, his eyelids moving rapidly with REM sleep.
Lexx looked back to Lex meaningfully.
"Ah." With a sigh, Lex mentally prodded himself to be a little less uptight, and slid his shoes off. He climbed into the bed and pulled the blanket over his chest, lying on his back.
"A.I., provide a third pillow with specifications Lexx-981." There was silence for a brief moment as the pillow bloomed under Lex's head.
"Nine hundred eighty-one?" Lex asked.
Lexx chuckled quietly. "Two years. I wasn't kidding."
A small smile crossed Lex's face, and then his brow furrowed in consideration. "I feel like I just got up."
"I know. But your body doesn't. You'll be asleep before you know it."
Lex turned to look at him curiously. "Do you remember that?"
"Not yet."
He paused, thinking. "If the pillow has a specification, then I assume the mattress does, too."
"Mm."
"Then why couldn't you just...?" He trailed off as Lexx met his gaze without evasion.
"You didn't want to sleep alone," he said simply.
Lex swallowed hard and stared at the ceiling once again.
Lexx sighed, peering at the side of his face. "I wish there was something I could do for you. Some way to take away the pain I know you're feeling-the pain that's yet to come. But I can't. You're my past. I'm your future. And in between, that pain exists and is built upon. I'm so sorry. I can only tell you that I swear he's worth it."
"I... I believe that."
"I know you do."
"I don't want to be like this. Bitter, and..." he turned to meet his double's gaze, "having to mar the face of my life just in order to keep living. But it's just that... I seem to be on this spiral, and like most spirals, it's only heading down."
"I know. But it will change. You will change. In time."
Before he knew what was happening or had time to protest, Lexx's arms were wrapping around his back. Lex froze, holding his breath. "I'm fine," he said tightly.
A soft laugh burst from Lexx's lips. "God, I was so stiff. Relax. The world isn't going to end if you give yourself a hug."
Lex's face began to burn, a sensation normally foreign to him that was becoming distressingly familiar the longer he was here. His other self was shuffling closer to him and soon had him wrapped securely in his arms, their faces in the crook of one another's necks.
Eyes wide open, Lex stared at the side of Kal's face, where he laid there sound asleep, unaware of what was happening right beside him. He would have thought it would feel very strange to be hugged by a future version of himself, but it was only the thought of it that was strange. With Lexx's familiar bald head out of his field of vision, he had no physical way to know the other man wasn't just that-some other man. Since Lexx's body reflected a younger Lex than Lex's own did, they were not perfect matches. Lex had lost some definition over the past few years. Apparently more than he'd thought he had, he realized with a wry twist to his lips.
He was running fingers over his double's arm almost unconsciously, feeling out the differences, when his hand suddenly stilled. "Oh, my god," he blurted. "You have hair on your arms."
Lexx chuckled, pulling away to his own pillow. "Yes. It's the treatments, I think. It grew in nearly seventy years ago. I kept hoping for something a little higher up," he looked upward toward his hairline, "but no luck there."
Lex was unable to joke, his mouth still hanging slack. "Legs? Chest?"
"I'm afraid not," Lexx shrugged. "But, uh..." In a roundabout way, he glanced downward and away, expressing himself mutely with his eyebrows.
Lex's eyes deadened. "You're kidding."
Smiling slightly, he shook his head. "Only a dusting-nearly as light as on my arms. But still."
After he thought about it for a moment, Lex winced rather sharply. "Red?"
"No," Lexx said with a laugh. "Brown-auburn, I guess. Do you... do you want-?"
"Oh, god, no."
He laughed more clearly. "I thought not."
Kal made a muttering sound and both Lex and Lexx jumped as an errant arm came slapping over Lexx's chest. Lex's eyebrows arched, but before either of them were able to say a thing, Kal had wrapped Lexx in a tight embrace and cuddled up to his back, flattening his nose and lips against Lexx's neck.
Lex was surprised at such an overt expression of affection considering the length of time they'd apparently been together. But the expression on his other self's face-as if stoic acceptance and wry irritation were having a fistfight-convinced him it wasn't the norm.
"Kal." Lexx shrugged a shoulder firmly. "Kal."
Kal only mumbled and held him more tightly.
Lexx turned as well as he could, pressed the heel of his hand to Kal's shoulder, and gave a great heave. "Christ, you're like a furnace!"
Mumbling something that sounded like it might have been apologetic, Kal shifted around to his other side and fell still again.
Lexx's expression showed plain exasperation when he glanced back at Lex and shook his head.
"Is it like that every night?"
"Only recently." He grunted as he yanked their half of the blanket back, which Kal had managed to tangle around his legs during his attack and retreat. "He gets like this-" the blanket suddenly came free, and he plopped onto his back, "-when he's nervous. He'll be better once the gatherings are complete." With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the blanket over them both, muttering, "If I don't kill him before then."
Lex smirked, though he wasn't sure his other self could see him even from the corner of his eye, and then there was a long silence.
Eventually, Lexx's brow furrowed as he stared at the ceiling, and he asked, rather out of the blue, "What's the name of your butler?"
"My... butler?"
"Yeah." Lexx looked at him curiously. "What's his name?"
"Uh... Caldwell?"
"Caldwell!" Apparently excited by this news, Lexx poked him hard in the shoulder. "That's it!" He laughed, shaking his head-at what, Lex didn't know. "You know, I've been trying to think of that man's name on and off for the last three years. I could never think of it!"
"Oh." Lex struggled for something intelligent to add to this revelation. "Kal couldn't remember?"
"He has an eidetic memory. I'm sure it's in there somewhere."
Lex blinked with surprise at this revelation. "He ha- Oh. Well, so... why didn't you ask him?"
"And give him the satisfaction? I don't think so." He sighed happily. "Caldwell... how could I forget that? He's a good man, Caldwell. A very good man."
Lex peered at the side of his double's face curiously. "Is he? Why? What did he do?"
Lexx gave him a look Lex was beginning to become exceedingly used to and loathe the sight of. He slammed his head back into his pillow with a frustrated sigh.
"You know, it's strange," Lexx said quietly. "I have to admit that I was both looking forward to and not looking forward to meeting you. Kal was right when he tried to tell me how angry I was then, but I didn't believe him. I suppose we soften ourselves in our own memories."
Lex swallowed, feeling uncomfortably exposed. He tried to cover it with a quiet, flippant laugh. "Am I so bad?"
"I remember that life; you have every reason. It's just that after so much time has passed, the difference between who I was and who I've become is rather more glaring than I'd expected it to be."
Lex almost didn't respond, almost just let it go. But finally, he whispered, "I don't want to wait fifteen years to become someone else."
"I know you don't. But there is no choice; you can't change it."
"I bet that I can."
Suddenly, his arm was gripped tightly, surprising him, and Lexx was hovering over him, his eyes burning into Lex's own. "Well, get your damn chips off the table, because you're betting with my life."
"I don't want to damage your life!" Lex protested. "I simply want it a little sooner!"
"Well, good luck," Lexx growled sardonically. "Because the more you try to convince Clark that this is the way things are supposed to be, the farther away you'll push him." He paused, searching Lex's eyes. "Think about who Clark is right now-and think about who he thinks you are. You know that I'm right."
Lex held his gaze for several seconds longer, then jerked angrily away, knowing what he said was true.
"Get it out of your mind, Lex," he said, shaking his head and sounding weary as he settled back down to his pillow. "You'll be a lot better off if you just accept things the way they're going to be."
Lex crossed his arms over his chest, sighing sharply at the ceiling but saying nothing.
"Besides," Lexx gazed at the side of his face, "it's not as if the next fifteen years are going to be hell." Lex met his smiling eyes. "You're going to have a lot of fun being... well, yourself."
Though he wasn't certain exactly what was in that smirk, Lex could imagine. He found himself smirking back until Lexx said good-night and turned on his side, quickly falling still.
Listening to his double's deep breaths, Lex fell slowly to sleep, certain there must be some way that he could bring this future to himself more quickly than it was intended to arrive, and determined to find it.
~ ~ ~
To be continued...
Feedback isn't actually Love. But it's as close as you and I are going to get without making a deeper commitment that I feel neither of us is really ready for.
bipolypesca