apparently, I am still smoking the good stuff.
From yesterday: The beginning of the idea.
The rest of the idea: .
Lex is a meticulous planner. He's has had an extensive dossier on Reid for years now, and knows virtually every detail about him. Lex is also in possession of a sample of Reid's DNA, with which he has created a Reid clone. This faux!Reid has been on ice just waiting for the perfect moment to snatch Reid from his life.
That opportunity arises one afternoon when Reid's car stalls on some train tracks between Oakdale and Bay City. Lex's operatives swarm in, incapacitate Reid, spirit him away to the Kansas lab and stage an accident nobody could have survived. The paramedics are in Lex's employ, as are the transplant teams called in to harvest “Reid's” organs. (Except for the heart, of course, which will probably become relevant later.)
Reid wakes up groggy and disoriented in what appears to be an elegant hotel, albeit underground. After getting his bearings he examines the room, where he finds newspaper and video reports about his death. He wants to beat on the door, wants to yell and demand to know WTF, but stifles the urge. I think he yells out loud, knowing it will do no good but not caring. The yelling makes him feel - not better, but it's preferable to doing nothing.
Someone will knock on his door, a staff member, and inquire as to his comfort. Naturally, Reid will not give a damn and will attempt to shake down the man for information, any information, dammit. The only bit of information he is able to gain is that his host will be joining him for dinner (is this too cheesy?).
Back in Oakdale, things are proceeding pretty much as we saw onscreen. Luke is devastated, Katie is unable to grieve or rejoice properly, and nobody really ever gets around to asking how a man could sustain fatal injuries and still be able to donate all of his major organs.
Kansas. Lex and Reid. Lex, in his usual cool way, tells Reid how much of a genius Reid is and how much he's wanted to work with him for so long. Reid says he's aware of his genius, thank you very much, and he thought his “no” had been quite clear enough the first and second times the offer had been extended.
Lex says “so long as you're here, why don't you come take a look at the lab?” Reid is scientifically and medically curious enough to want to see it (note: he doesn't actually agree to go look, but instead refuses to answer.)
Once there, Reid is overwhelmed by 33.1; there is equipment he's only dreamed of having access to, and the scientific advancement is unparalleled. There are walls lined with tanks, each with a sleeping Lex clone floating in them - all appear to be about Lex's age.
As they walk, Lex explains to Reid about the very final glitch in the “recipe” for these clones - that is, how they deteriorate mentally. Lex has had psychiatrists and psychologists and geneticists and (insert other relevant doctors here) study the issue, but what he really needs is a world-class neurosurgeon. And I've just decided that the reveal is here - prior to this we don't know why exactly Lex needs Reid. Reid finds out the same time we do.
The story would start - a prologue - right on the train tracks, with Lex's team swooping in to grab Reid and stage the accident.
Reid will refuse to help Lex. It's sick and unethical, and he tells Lex he doesn't do well with being blackmailed -
Lex: “on the contrary, there are times you knuckle right under to baser methods, Dr. Oliver. I understand Damian Grimaldi's son was able to use such methods to great success not too long ago.”
Reid is instantly furious at the mention of Luke. Lex tells him not to worry - he can tell that Reid believes Lex is threatening Luke, but Lex mock-sorrowfully says that there are families even he is loathe to touch. Luciano Grimaldi is off-limits.
They continue walking. Lex asks if Reid would like to scrub in to observe a surgery some of his other surgeons are performing - Reid declines, but some big beefy guys step in and Lex mentions that Reid is going in and it's up to Reid if he'll do so voluntarily and in a sterile fashion. The doctor scrubs in and suits up, as does Lex, and they enter an OR in which the patient's skull is cracked wide open and some “deli slicers” are tinkering with the patient's brain. Reid can't help but move closer to see what they're doing, and as he does, he notices that the patient is only a child - barely a toddler, even.
Again Reid is outraged. He rails at Lex, how could you do this, this is sick, whatever it is that Reid would say, but in some form including the thought how can you tear open an innocent child?
To which Lex responds, “let me assure you, doctor Oliver, that is no innocent child.” Lex walks closer and places a gentle hand on the patient's torso. “This is me.”
Lex tells Reid that Lex can (and will) keep making clones, that he has (some number) of wee!Lexes, and they're just going to keep on getting sliced up and sacrificed until Lex has an answer to his problem. Reid looks at this tiny body on the table and is nauseated, and then he suddenly thinks of Jacob, his chubby little hands, and how warm he is when he falls asleep and the way he looks at Katie like she's his whole world, and Reid relents. He is still sick about it but he can't not do it, if only to try to spare these other little people/poor bastards.
(Why on earth am I writing a fix-it Luke/Reid story where Luke and Reid are APART for, like, the entire thing? This way does not lead to sexyfuntimes!)
OOOH. Unless Luke manages to find where Lex is keeping Reid holed up, and then they are trapped together....hm...that's probably a little too convenient. Big fan of the idea, though.
Also, I'm not sure I can tolerate the idea of having a fic involving Lex that does not, in some capacity, contain either Clark or Superman. Maybe this is all pre-Superman, though, and Clark has been very absent from Lex's life for quite a few years now.
What is Luke doing back in Oakdale? Perhaps...Chris starts to reject the heart, and none of the 'regular' transplant doctors can figure out why, exactly, and then...Luke overhears something, or snoops around and reads something incriminating, which leads him to discovering that the heart inside Chris is in fact from a clone of Reid and not from Reid himself? This is stretching credulity. Would Bob notice something hinky about the med records? Why would Lex's people leave such an obvious clue when they've planned the rest so carefully? Is it because the organs were all supposed to leave Oakdale? Possible.
Or. One of the docs who is on Lex's payroll develops a guilty conscience - cliché, I know - and shows up on Luke's doorstep one night to set him on the right path? Even if he just gets Luke on the trail of the Luthercorp cloning. Crap. If you investigate Lexcorp, you're either going to end up dead, or you are Lois Lane. I don't know that I want to go there. Though I do wonder how Lois and Katie would get along.
Oh lord, imagine if Luke did show up - another small town kid raised on a farm all up in Lex's business. Yikes. How would Lex react to that development?
Anyway. Back to Oakdale. By now Luke has figured out something is not right with the circumstances of Reid's death, and he obviously won't just let it lie. He'd turn to Lucinda first for help. I like the idea of her telling him “this isn't something I'd ever thought I'd tell you, dear, but this is the kind of thing you'll need your father's help to sort out.”
I feel like I'm ripping off rhiannonhero's RUH if I have Luke go to Damian in prison, but that's kind of where it leads. Lucinda, while crazy rich, is just too legitimate to be able to access the Luthors.
Though, hm. Lucinda could certainly afford the best medical examiners - geneticists - and if, while trying to secure their services, she and Luke discover that one or more of those top-of-their-field docs had gone missing/died under questionable circumstances in prior years, that's more than enough to pique Luke's curiosity. And if there is an informer to point Luke in the right direction, that person pretty much has to end up murdered.
I know less than nothing about the brain. In order to come up with a solution, would Reid need to collaborate with the other doctors working for Lex? Not that he'd want to, of course - he's Reid - but I think once Reid accepts that he is going to try to solve the issue, he'd want to do so as expediently as possible. (Don't think I've forgotten that the most logical thing for Lex to do once the defect is corrected is to have all the captive!doctors killed; of course Reid knows this too.)
So Reid is actively thinking of ways to survive and escape while making progress on the brain problem - just not too much progress.
Luke could be all devious and come up with a 'legitimate' business reason to call on Lex Luthor...which Lex would see right through, but would welcome anyway. Lex does enjoy his chess matches. Where would they meet - metropolis? Bay City? Chicago? - just not Smallville and not Oakdale. Man, would I love to work in some characters from Another World. Cass Winthrop, lawyer extraordinaire. Or Doctor Morgan Winthrop, but that's the same actor who played Dusty Donovan, and that'd make my brain hurt.
Focus, woman. Lex and Luke are meeting, ostensibly about...what the hell does Lexcorp DO, anyway? Luke's company does shipping, so there's that end of the deal. Man, that'd be some fun dialogue - veiled references to fathers, and jails, and kidnappings, and shootings, and wild days of excessive drug use and/or drinking. Buying one's way out of trouble. Falling in love with someone who seems unattainable.
I think when they sit down to dinner Luke would find a glass of Evian or club soda in front of him - Lex wouldn't say anything, but they'd both know it was Lex's way of mentioning-but-not-mentioning Luke's alcoholism and kidney failure. Which makes me want to have Luke drop something on Lex, because Luke has to own his Grimaldi....what, though?
Lucas? Whatever happened to that kid, anyway? Julian's death, Lionel's death, meteor rock experimentation, and mutants/cloning. I wonder if a reference to Julian's death - the real reason he died - would shake Lex up. (Not that he'd show it. Poker face, that one - a song that would totally NOT be on the soundtrack for this story.)
(aside: if they meet in Bay City, then Lucinda keeps Cass on retainer for any urgent legal business.)
Couldn't Luke and Lex arrive at some sort of agreement that once Reid completed his task for Lex, that Reid would be released to Luke? Not that it solves the “legally dead” issue even a little bit. Hm. Though people do come back from the dead fairly often in soap operas, natch.
Very cheesetastic: a nice little epilogue, with Holden and Lily kvetching over “Really? Cloning??” when Luke shows up at the farm with Reid in tow.
And here I was thinking there'd have to be this big jailbreak/escape scene. Maybe not. Though wouldn't Luke, Mr. Upstanding Citizen, balk at leaving all those clones, the tech, the other doctors? - at Lex's mercy?
Maybe that's where Clark gets brought in. He and Lois get an “anonymous” tip, but when they show up all traces of the lab have completely disappeared (because, come on, this IS Lex we're talking about.) However, the missing scientists return with cases of traumatic amnesia (artificially induced, from which they will never recover).
That's funny. Now that I have it mostly sorted out, it sounds boring to me.
Random Lines of Dialogue
Reid, to Lex: “Where is that flying, leotard-wearing freak who keeps you in line?”
Lex: “all love ever does is disrupt your focus and cripple your judgment.”
Damian: “Are you aware of how Lex Luthor's father died? Or, rather, how he was killed, and who his murderer was?” (clunky)
Lex: “there are precious few people of whom I am unable to dispose, and the number I am unwilling to is even smaller.”
variation of above
Reid: “Or are you unable to dispose of this one (person)?”
Lex: “There are precious few people I'm unable to dispose of.”
Reid: “Fine - you're unwilling, then?”
Lex (scoffing): “The number of people I'm unwilling to kill is even fewer.”
(argh! Why can't I make that line work??)
It's weird how this idea morphed on me. I really thought the climax was going to be the escape from Lex's clutches, but right now it looks like it's Reid's moral dilemma that's the thrust of the emotion. That and Luke's search for Reid. I still don't like how much they're apart, though, and I think putting in reunion sex would be porn simply for the sake of porn, which for some bizarre reason I don't approve of in this particular story. Geez. Who am I?
The rest of the idea: .
Lex is a meticulous planner. He's has had an extensive dossier on Reid for years now, and knows virtually every detail about him. Lex is also in possession of a sample of Reid's DNA, with which he has created a Reid clone. This faux!Reid has been on ice just waiting for the perfect moment to snatch Reid from his life.
That opportunity arises one afternoon when Reid's car stalls on some train tracks between Oakdale and Bay City. Lex's operatives swarm in, incapacitate Reid, spirit him away to the Kansas lab and stage an accident nobody could have survived. The paramedics are in Lex's employ, as are the transplant teams called in to harvest “Reid's” organs. (Except for the heart, of course, which will probably become relevant later.)
Reid wakes up groggy and disoriented in what appears to be an elegant hotel, albeit underground. After getting his bearings he examines the room, where he finds newspaper and video reports about his death. He wants to beat on the door, wants to yell and demand to know WTF, but stifles the urge. I think he yells out loud, knowing it will do no good but not caring. The yelling makes him feel - not better, but it's preferable to doing nothing.
Someone will knock on his door, a staff member, and inquire as to his comfort. Naturally, Reid will not give a damn and will attempt to shake down the man for information, any information, dammit. The only bit of information he is able to gain is that his host will be joining him for dinner (is this too cheesy?).
Back in Oakdale, things are proceeding pretty much as we saw onscreen. Luke is devastated, Katie is unable to grieve or rejoice properly, and nobody really ever gets around to asking how a man could sustain fatal injuries and still be able to donate all of his major organs.
Kansas. Lex and Reid. Lex, in his usual cool way, tells Reid how much of a genius Reid is and how much he's wanted to work with him for so long. Reid says he's aware of his genius, thank you very much, and he thought his “no” had been quite clear enough the first and second times the offer had been extended.
Lex says “so long as you're here, why don't you come take a look at the lab?” Reid is scientifically and medically curious enough to want to see it (note: he doesn't actually agree to go look, but instead refuses to answer.)
Once there, Reid is overwhelmed by 33.1; there is equipment he's only dreamed of having access to, and the scientific advancement is unparalleled. There are walls lined with tanks, each with a sleeping Lex clone floating in them - all appear to be about Lex's age.
As they walk, Lex explains to Reid about the very final glitch in the “recipe” for these clones - that is, how they deteriorate mentally. Lex has had psychiatrists and psychologists and geneticists and (insert other relevant doctors here) study the issue, but what he really needs is a world-class neurosurgeon. And I've just decided that the reveal is here - prior to this we don't know why exactly Lex needs Reid. Reid finds out the same time we do.
The story would start - a prologue - right on the train tracks, with Lex's team swooping in to grab Reid and stage the accident.
Reid will refuse to help Lex. It's sick and unethical, and he tells Lex he doesn't do well with being blackmailed -
Lex: “on the contrary, there are times you knuckle right under to baser methods, Dr. Oliver. I understand Damian Grimaldi's son was able to use such methods to great success not too long ago.”
Reid is instantly furious at the mention of Luke. Lex tells him not to worry - he can tell that Reid believes Lex is threatening Luke, but Lex mock-sorrowfully says that there are families even he is loathe to touch. Luciano Grimaldi is off-limits.
They continue walking. Lex asks if Reid would like to scrub in to observe a surgery some of his other surgeons are performing - Reid declines, but some big beefy guys step in and Lex mentions that Reid is going in and it's up to Reid if he'll do so voluntarily and in a sterile fashion. The doctor scrubs in and suits up, as does Lex, and they enter an OR in which the patient's skull is cracked wide open and some “deli slicers” are tinkering with the patient's brain. Reid can't help but move closer to see what they're doing, and as he does, he notices that the patient is only a child - barely a toddler, even.
Again Reid is outraged. He rails at Lex, how could you do this, this is sick, whatever it is that Reid would say, but in some form including the thought how can you tear open an innocent child?
To which Lex responds, “let me assure you, doctor Oliver, that is no innocent child.” Lex walks closer and places a gentle hand on the patient's torso. “This is me.”
Lex tells Reid that Lex can (and will) keep making clones, that he has (some number) of wee!Lexes, and they're just going to keep on getting sliced up and sacrificed until Lex has an answer to his problem. Reid looks at this tiny body on the table and is nauseated, and then he suddenly thinks of Jacob, his chubby little hands, and how warm he is when he falls asleep and the way he looks at Katie like she's his whole world, and Reid relents. He is still sick about it but he can't not do it, if only to try to spare these other little people/poor bastards.
(Why on earth am I writing a fix-it Luke/Reid story where Luke and Reid are APART for, like, the entire thing? This way does not lead to sexyfuntimes!)
OOOH. Unless Luke manages to find where Lex is keeping Reid holed up, and then they are trapped together....hm...that's probably a little too convenient. Big fan of the idea, though.
Also, I'm not sure I can tolerate the idea of having a fic involving Lex that does not, in some capacity, contain either Clark or Superman. Maybe this is all pre-Superman, though, and Clark has been very absent from Lex's life for quite a few years now.
What is Luke doing back in Oakdale? Perhaps...Chris starts to reject the heart, and none of the 'regular' transplant doctors can figure out why, exactly, and then...Luke overhears something, or snoops around and reads something incriminating, which leads him to discovering that the heart inside Chris is in fact from a clone of Reid and not from Reid himself? This is stretching credulity. Would Bob notice something hinky about the med records? Why would Lex's people leave such an obvious clue when they've planned the rest so carefully? Is it because the organs were all supposed to leave Oakdale? Possible.
Or. One of the docs who is on Lex's payroll develops a guilty conscience - cliché, I know - and shows up on Luke's doorstep one night to set him on the right path? Even if he just gets Luke on the trail of the Luthercorp cloning. Crap. If you investigate Lexcorp, you're either going to end up dead, or you are Lois Lane. I don't know that I want to go there. Though I do wonder how Lois and Katie would get along.
Oh lord, imagine if Luke did show up - another small town kid raised on a farm all up in Lex's business. Yikes. How would Lex react to that development?
Anyway. Back to Oakdale. By now Luke has figured out something is not right with the circumstances of Reid's death, and he obviously won't just let it lie. He'd turn to Lucinda first for help. I like the idea of her telling him “this isn't something I'd ever thought I'd tell you, dear, but this is the kind of thing you'll need your father's help to sort out.”
I feel like I'm ripping off rhiannonhero's RUH if I have Luke go to Damian in prison, but that's kind of where it leads. Lucinda, while crazy rich, is just too legitimate to be able to access the Luthors.
Though, hm. Lucinda could certainly afford the best medical examiners - geneticists - and if, while trying to secure their services, she and Luke discover that one or more of those top-of-their-field docs had gone missing/died under questionable circumstances in prior years, that's more than enough to pique Luke's curiosity. And if there is an informer to point Luke in the right direction, that person pretty much has to end up murdered.
I know less than nothing about the brain. In order to come up with a solution, would Reid need to collaborate with the other doctors working for Lex? Not that he'd want to, of course - he's Reid - but I think once Reid accepts that he is going to try to solve the issue, he'd want to do so as expediently as possible. (Don't think I've forgotten that the most logical thing for Lex to do once the defect is corrected is to have all the captive!doctors killed; of course Reid knows this too.)
So Reid is actively thinking of ways to survive and escape while making progress on the brain problem - just not too much progress.
Luke could be all devious and come up with a 'legitimate' business reason to call on Lex Luthor...which Lex would see right through, but would welcome anyway. Lex does enjoy his chess matches. Where would they meet - metropolis? Bay City? Chicago? - just not Smallville and not Oakdale. Man, would I love to work in some characters from Another World. Cass Winthrop, lawyer extraordinaire. Or Doctor Morgan Winthrop, but that's the same actor who played Dusty Donovan, and that'd make my brain hurt.
Focus, woman. Lex and Luke are meeting, ostensibly about...what the hell does Lexcorp DO, anyway? Luke's company does shipping, so there's that end of the deal. Man, that'd be some fun dialogue - veiled references to fathers, and jails, and kidnappings, and shootings, and wild days of excessive drug use and/or drinking. Buying one's way out of trouble. Falling in love with someone who seems unattainable.
I think when they sit down to dinner Luke would find a glass of Evian or club soda in front of him - Lex wouldn't say anything, but they'd both know it was Lex's way of mentioning-but-not-mentioning Luke's alcoholism and kidney failure. Which makes me want to have Luke drop something on Lex, because Luke has to own his Grimaldi....what, though?
Lucas? Whatever happened to that kid, anyway? Julian's death, Lionel's death, meteor rock experimentation, and mutants/cloning. I wonder if a reference to Julian's death - the real reason he died - would shake Lex up. (Not that he'd show it. Poker face, that one - a song that would totally NOT be on the soundtrack for this story.)
(aside: if they meet in Bay City, then Lucinda keeps Cass on retainer for any urgent legal business.)
Couldn't Luke and Lex arrive at some sort of agreement that once Reid completed his task for Lex, that Reid would be released to Luke? Not that it solves the “legally dead” issue even a little bit. Hm. Though people do come back from the dead fairly often in soap operas, natch.
Very cheesetastic: a nice little epilogue, with Holden and Lily kvetching over “Really? Cloning??” when Luke shows up at the farm with Reid in tow.
And here I was thinking there'd have to be this big jailbreak/escape scene. Maybe not. Though wouldn't Luke, Mr. Upstanding Citizen, balk at leaving all those clones, the tech, the other doctors? - at Lex's mercy?
Maybe that's where Clark gets brought in. He and Lois get an “anonymous” tip, but when they show up all traces of the lab have completely disappeared (because, come on, this IS Lex we're talking about.) However, the missing scientists return with cases of traumatic amnesia (artificially induced, from which they will never recover).
That's funny. Now that I have it mostly sorted out, it sounds boring to me.
Random Lines of Dialogue
Reid, to Lex: “Where is that flying, leotard-wearing freak who keeps you in line?”
Lex: “all love ever does is disrupt your focus and cripple your judgment.”
Damian: “Are you aware of how Lex Luthor's father died? Or, rather, how he was killed, and who his murderer was?” (clunky)
Lex: “there are precious few people of whom I am unable to dispose, and the number I am unwilling to is even smaller.”
variation of above
Reid: “Or are you unable to dispose of this one (person)?”
Lex: “There are precious few people I'm unable to dispose of.”
Reid: “Fine - you're unwilling, then?”
Lex (scoffing): “The number of people I'm unwilling to kill is even fewer.”
(argh! Why can't I make that line work??)
It's weird how this idea morphed on me. I really thought the climax was going to be the escape from Lex's clutches, but right now it looks like it's Reid's moral dilemma that's the thrust of the emotion. That and Luke's search for Reid. I still don't like how much they're apart, though, and I think putting in reunion sex would be porn simply for the sake of porn, which for some bizarre reason I don't approve of in this particular story. Geez. Who am I?