Twisting the Twilight Zone 2010 Story: Of Late I Think of Smallville
Of Late I Think of Smallville
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Gen
Rating: G
Genre: Drama, Twilight Zone-style creepiness
Summary: Lex Luthor, years after Smallville, finds himself back in Season One.
“I can't do this anymore.”
“I understand it's a taxing job,” said Lex Luthor, leaning back in his desk chair. “But LexCorp needs all the good researchers we can find. Are you sure you wouldn't like to reconsider?” He looked down at the young biologist's resignation letter in his hands.
“Ah, yes. I mean, I'm sure.”
Lex looked away regretfully. “I'm sorry to hear that. You will, of course, remember the confidentiality agreement you signed?”
“Of course!”
“Good, good.” Lex reached for the intercom on his desk. “Dr. Sarfeld is resigning. Please escort him out.” He smiled thinly at the biologist. “It's just procedure.”
“Of course.” The researcher headed for the door, practically running. There was something about Lex's smile that did not inspire confidence.
Lex waited until he was gone and then hit the intercom again. “And make sure there's no meteor dust on him when they find the body. No need to give the police any strange theories.”
He stood up without waiting for a reply.
-
Lex Luthor, a man whom life has abused and tormented, who has thrown away every good thing Chance ever offered him, whose only meaningful relationships have been with his enemies. Thirty years ago, he came to a town named Smallville full of hope and good intentions, and six years later he left a broken man. He's clinging to his sanity by the tips of his fingernails, and he lives in the constant fear that one day he'll let go.
Lex Luthor, who has thrown away every good thing Chance offered him, and who is about to be offered one last try - in the Twilight Zone.
-
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Most people in 33.1, after a time, talked. To the people in the cell next to them, to themselves, and to people who had never existed.
Kali had only spoken her name since they found her. The staff of 33.1, a group sorely in need of any balm to their consciences, felt they'd done her a favour. She'd been starving on the streets, and if 33.1 was not the most pleasant facility, then at least they fed their inmates and gave them a place to sleep.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
People had tried to stop the regular tapping, but they hadn't succeeded, although they found it hard to describe, afterwards, just why. Nor had anyone figured out specifically what her power was. She tested positive for the distinctive mutation caused by the meteors, but that was all they knew.
There was something odd about her eyes, too. Hypnotic, the reports said. Lex didn't find them hypnotic, but they were a surprisingly pale colour. He couldn't remember if he'd ever seen quite such a shade before, but it was hauntingly familiar. He leaned closer, through the bars of her cell. It wasn't his father's eyes they reminded him of, he thought. Maybe Desiree's? Or Clark's. Maybe that was it. He pressed his face against the bars. No, Clark had darker eyes, wide and soft and so, so inviting -
“Alexander Luthor,” said Kali, and Lex jerked his gaze away from hers, realizing he'd been drawn in. He backed up a few steps.
“Lex Luthor,” said Kali again. “You have not made yourself happy, Lex Luthor.”
“What?” said Lex, still a little thrown, focussing on the cell wall behind her to avoid her eyes.
“You are not happy. You long for the road you never walked, and for the bridges you burned recklessly.” She leaned closer. “I can give you the chance you dream of, Lex.”
“You're insane,” said Lex bluntly. “Not in quite the manner I'd assumed, but insane nonetheless.”
“Just answer me this, Lex,” she said. “If you could do it all over again, would you?”
Lex tried to turn away and found his eyes trapped by that terrible blue gaze.
“Answer me, Lex, and I'll let you go.”
“Yes, I would,” Lex said. It might have been the truth, but it was also the answer he believed most likely to make her let him go.
As usual, he was wrong.
She reached out between the bars - Lex realized too late he'd stepped far beyond the safe distance he himself required for employees - and touched his arm gently.
And then the old familiar blankness of unconsciousness flooded Lex's mind.
-
“Lex?”
Lex blinked up blearily at the face above him. It always took awhile for everything to settle back into focus after unconsciousness.
When he finally managed to focus his eyes, he got to his feet at quickly as he could while preserving his dignity. Superman was staring down at him, not in his uniform but not in his glasses either.
“Are you okay, Lex? You kind of passed out there.”
It was at this point Lex noticed he was standing in the castle in Smallville. “Why did you bring me here?” Lex snapped. Kali must have been working with the alien. And, of course, her power was to transport other people. Why had he allowed himself to step so close to her cell?
Superman looked around the room, confused. “Lex?” he asked again.
“Yes?”
“You live here, Lex. It's me, Clark.”
If that was how he wanted to play it . . . “Why aren't you wearing your glasses today, Clark? Something you want to tell me?”
Clark just looked confused.
Before Lex could dig himself deeper into the pit of miscommunication, his cell phone rang. Backing up a few steps from Clark, Lex reached into his pocket and answered the phone.
“Who is this? Lane, if that's you, I - ”
“You don't have time for your own father anymore?”
Lex's mind had just registered Lionel's voice before Lex's hands had pushed the off button and tossed the phone across the room, taking out several extremely expensive glasses on the way.
Clark stared at it. “Who was that? You look like you've seen a ghost.”
“How many stories does a man have to fall before he stays dead?” Lex said, distractedly.
“What?”
“That was my father,” Lex said.
Clark made a face. “What did he say?”
Lex shook his head. Clark didn't seem to understand. “It was my father. Lionel Luthor.”
“He doesn't usually shake you this badly, though.” Clark stepped closer, putting a hand on Lex's shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Lex stared down at the hand. As far as he could remember, Clark hadn't touched him gently since the day Lex had sent those mutants to his house. The fact that he was doing it now -
Lex felt an awful suspicion creep up on him, and he raised his left hand to his eyes. He saw human flesh, real and not marred by cancer. Looking further down at himself, he realized he was dressed in a sweatshirt and pants, not the white suit he'd been wearing before. How long had it been since he'd dressed that casually for anything except sleep?
“Clark?” he said uncertainly.
“Are you okay, Lex?” Clark repeated.
It was as if the last decade - probably more - had been nothing but a bad dream. Maybe, Lex thought wildly, that was all it had been. Some sort of after affect of Cassandra Carver's touch, perhaps.
“Lex?”
“I'm fine, Clark,” he said, distantly. “I've just received some rather unsettling news.”
“What happened?” Clark asked.
“Clark.” Lex turned to him and grabbed his shoulders. “I told you once I'd rather not go through life following a roadmap. What would you do if you knew what was going to happen? Would you try to change it?”
Clark frowned at him. “I guess that would depend on what was going to happen.”
Lex took a deep breath. “Let's take another route. What if you went back in time and met someone you knew was going to be evil. What would you do?”
Clark's frown deepened. “What, are you taking a poll?”
“Answer the question,” Lex said. He removed his left hand from Clark's shoulder and flexed it, revelling in the sensation. His prosthetic responded to his thoughts, but it felt numb and cold, a lump of metal and leather where his hand should have been.
“I guess I wouldn't do anything. I mean, what if you went back to your own time and found out you'd made the Nazis win or something like that?”
“What if it was you?” Lex put his hand back on Clark's shoulder. He could feel Clark's inhuman warmth seeping into his skin, the flannel soft under Lex's newly-flesh hand. “If I knew you were going to be some kind of monster, what should I do?”
Clark stiffened. “What happened, Lex? How do you know all this stuff?”
“How do I know that you've ever been anything else?” Lex said, stepping closer to Clark until he was nearly hugging him.
“Lex!” Clark said, obviously horrified at the thought.
“That you've ever been human,” Lex said relentlessly, and somewhere along the line it's ceased to be a metaphor for Clark's opinions of him and become all too real. The truth is, he doesn't know what Clark is. In his heart he believes Clark is exactly what he claims to be: a good person who only wants to help people.
The trouble is, he believed that about his mother, too. Amanda, Desiree, Helen; all of them killers. He's willing to bet that Duncan believed that about him, too. And he was wrong, and it cost Duncan his life, and Lex Julian's.
If Lex was wrong about Clark, it won't be just a single life. Even a powerful world leader gone insane could only cause so much trouble for so long, but there were very few limits to what Clark could do to the world. He could murder entire countries in seconds, and there would be nothing anyone could do to stop him. Lex didn't delude himself that kryptonite would be any real protection against a Superman gone wrong.
Lex had never met anyone he trusted more than Clark. He'd bet his life on the fact that Clark would never do anything to him that he didn't deserve. He couldn't bet six billion lives on it, though.
Clark was gone, faster than Lex could follow.
If Clark had wanted that, Lex would have been dead before he had a chance to notice his eyes glowing.
The road out of Smallville was gloomy at this time of night, and, with Lex's car safety record, he probably shouldn't have been driving. Especially not drunk. Still, though, he trusted that his luck will hold. He hasn't died yet, has he?
He turned on the radio.
Oh, you'll take the high road and I'll take the low road . . .
He had to go to Metropolis. He might as well start making preparations as best he can - kryptonite, red lamps, lead shielding. He'll probably have a better chance now, when Clark thinks he's his friend. It won't last long, but if all goes well, Lex won't need long.
. . . but me and my true love will never meet again -
He should probably deal with his father first. Not sloppily, like he did last time. Or, at any rate, like he had been told he did last time. He couldn't remember anything from after his possession by Zod until he woke up in the streets of Metropolis. He didn't know what happened, but he's pretty certain he knows who to blame, and it's not Zod.
. . . on the bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomond.
Those aren't the right words. Lex scowled at the radio and turned it off.
And then Clark appeared right in front of Lex's car. Lex slammed on the brakes, stopping just inches before his friend. He didn't want to destroy the car, after all.
He got out and walked over to Clark.
“What are you doing?” he asked. Clark could have killed him doing that, but just then Lex was finding it difficult to get angry with him.
“Looking for you,” Clark said. “Where were you going?”
Lex gestured at the horizon. “Metropolis.”
Clark laughed. “You're going the wrong way. That's Smallville.” He shook his head. “You shouldn't be driving drunk, Lex.”
“Smallville?” Lex stared in that direction.
“Yes, Smallville, Lex.” Clark frowned. “How drunk are you?”
“I couldn't have gotten turned around,” Lex muttered.
“You must have. You're only a few miles outside of Smallville.”
Lex stared at him, a trapped sense of horror rising in him. “I have to - ” he broke off and got in the car. Clark stepped out of the way, barely in time before Lex hit the gas.
The dark fields flew before him as he raced for Metropolis. He kept his eyes ahead of him, following the signs that gave the distance to Metropolis . . .
. . . and then Clark was there on the side of the road. Lex let his gaze fall on him for a second, and when he looked up, he could see the outskirts of Smallville on the horizon.
He got out of the car.
“It's not real,” he said, numbly.
“It is, Lex,” said Clark, putting a hand on Lex's shoulder. “It's the best reality you're going to find. I'm here. Lana's here. Your father isn't. What more do you want?”
“I have to stop you,” Lex told him. “I can't let you live.”
“You don't have to, Lex,” Clark said. “The other me, the one you're worried about - he's not here. I am, and you know I'll never hurt anyone.”
It was an insidious way of thinking. He couldn't't escape this vision, and so he was absolved of all responsibility to the other world. He could just live here, safe with Clark.
“I know,” Lex said, and hugged Clark.
-
The church is small and mostly empty, to everyone's surprise. Clark Kent and his wife, Lois, sit uncomfortably in the front row. On one side of them is Lucas, and on the other side Lana Lang. Clark is not speaking to either of them, but he's worried that Lois might be if they don't get out there as soon as the service is finished, and even if he and Lex had hardly been friends, in the end, it would still be disrespectful to Lex to have a fistfight at his funeral.
“So, what happened to him?” Lucas asked.
“One of his victims got her own back,” Lana said.
“One of the mutants he'd kidnapped killed him,” Lois said, at exactly the same moment. She glared at Lana.
“It - it didn't hurt him,” Clark told Lucas, partly to distract Lois and partly because he wants to assure himself of that. “He was hallucinating. He probably never knew what hit him.” Clark looked away. “He looked happy, though.”
-
Lex Luthor, a man whom life has abused and tormented, who has thrown away every good thing Chance ever offered him, whose only meaningful relationships have been with his enemies. Two days ago, he went back to a town named Smallville full of bitterness and pain, and he'll spend the rest of eternity there.
Lex Luthor, living out his second chance - in the Twilight Zone.