Fic: ...Clark Is Actually Pretty Ok With This, Thanks (Part 3, 1/3)
Title: ...Clark Is Actually Pretty Ok With This, Thanks (Part 3 -- Wherein Lois Attempts to Serve Lex a Reality Check)
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark, Lex
Rating: R (because it sort of has vague references to themes of BDSM *shrug*)
Spoilers: References season 6 and previous, general spoilers for early season 7 and all prior. Diverges at the end of Wrath (7x07) when Clark goes to talk to Lex.
Word count: 26,900+
Summary: What if Lex decided to be a little more... evil... at the end of Wrath? What if he decided to punish Clark, for Lana's transgression? ...What if Clark agreed to sacrifice himself for her sake? Would Clark break? Or would he... bend?
...Hey, that would be a totally crazy fic, am I right? --Unfortunately, this is not that. (Oops.) Here, Lex kind of goes the other route. You know, the whole brotherly-love one.
So, instead, you get Lex being pissed about Lana treating Clark like her own personal bitch, Clark's "sacrifice" isn't so much of one, and everybody else is left standing around scratching their heads while Lana ends up doing screechy-harpy things which we don't have to hear too much about -- you're welcome. (Chloe does, though. Feel sorry for Chloe, and send her emergency chocolate cake, stat.)
Warnings: Un-beta'd. Still an ungodly amount of Lois POV. A little character-bashing (Lois towards Lex, but, yeah, he kinda needs a bit of a reality check).
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Comments: Yes, please! :)
Author's Note: Lex still doesn't know what he's doing with the 'pet' BDSM stuff (what else is new?).
Like Part 2, this installment is kinda SRS BSNS for the sake of 'teh pl0t'. It should be a little lighter towards the end, but, yeah. I am slightly worried that this is trying to devolve into a Huge Ass Deal, because I caught myself researching episodes (and that never ends well for what are supposed to be 'frivolous' fics), so I'll try to be a little more off-the-cuff and not with the worrying so much from now on :)
The first part of this fic is here on LJ.
The second part of this fic starts here on LJ.
Also posted to AO3 here (includes all chapters to-date).
~*~*~*~*~*~
When he opened his eyes again, Clark was seated at his feet. Clark's head was resting against his knee, and his breathing was slow and even.
Lois squatted down in front of him and held out a rolled up paper cone.
"There was a vendor selling roasted nuts three corridors down," she said. Lex gingerly took it from her.
"It smells wonderful," he said, the aroma of almonds and cinnamon sugar filling his senses, mingling with the orange-cloves-and-cinnamon scent from the chair.
"Mm, tasted good, too," she said. "I could only eat about half."
She pulled over a leather-cloth beanbag chair and flopped across it, belly-down, staring across at Clark as he slept.
Lex smiled into the half-full cone of 'leftovers' and selected a few nuts.
They were still a bit warm, and tasted even better than they smelled, the light oil undercutting the bitterness of the almond -- having absorbed some of the sugar, it seemed.
"This seems like a place one could explore for days," Lex commented.
"One of the women apparently runs a small hotel here," Lois said, looking up at hm. "They have a few suites open."
"God," Lex let out a quiet laugh. He let his head fall back against the cushions behind his head again. "Have you ever been here before?" he had to ask. "Or anyplace like this?"
Lois was silent for a moment. "There's an underground mall in Atlanta that's a little like one area I think we passed by," she said. "And I've seen a steampunk rave where a lot of people dressed up in weird Victorian mechanical suits and dresses, but..." she shook her head. "It's kind of a weird hodgepodge, right?" she grinned.
"Like a children's book filled with a century's worth of magazine cutouts," Lex said, sighing.
"Clark's been asleep for about an hour," she said, shoving herself up and then bouncing up and turning to drop down heavily again onto the beanbag plush, face-up, staring at the ceiling. She'd been all elbows and knees doing so, a tomboyish grace.
"I went exploring a little," she said. "You guys looked like you could use the rest. Still do."
"Did we fall off the edge of the planet into another realm, yet?" Lex asked, amusedly.
"...You have a really weird way with words," Lois said, frowning up at him. "You seem a lot more relaxed, though, like you finally let go."
"I'm not sure what you think I was holding onto," he admitted. "But I feel like the fire went out," Lex said dazedly, blinking lazily at the ceiling and feeling like there was nothing in the universe he needed to do but rest. "I'm just... tired."
"...the fire went out?"
"It's always there, never goes away, almost." He sighed and closed his eyes again, the odd swirling patterns in the metal ceiling tiles making him slightly dizzy. "I don't know why."
"You guys were yelling pretty badly before you ran off."
"It was just an argument." He frowned. "It shouldn't have been any different. Doesn't make sense," he murmured. "Less than Clark ever does..." He blinked his eyes open again.
"What'd he say when he caught up to you?" Lois asked, pushing an arm under her head.
"He didn't. Not really. Just followed me until I was too tired to run, and then we walked back. I... got lost."
"In Metropolis?"
"I know," he said quietly, closing his eyes again. "It shouldn't have happened."
He heard a rustling noise, and felt the almond cone plucked loosely from his hand.
"You were freaking out. It happens," she said.
"Not to me."
"Mm," she said noncommitally. "...You know, I never would've thought Clark believed in aliens," she said.
"I think maybe he used to, until it got too ugly," Lex said, not really thinking too hard about what he was saying.
"Really? Why?"
"He has all the old classics, stored away in the Fortress. Asimov, Heinlein, Dick, Herbert, Clarke. Bradbury, Le Guin, Orwell, Niven. Gibbs, Wells, Card, Verne, and Vonnegut, all." Lex sighed. "He has a telescope, and knows all the stars and constellations by name, major and minor." He blinked open his eyes and looked down at Lane. "But I've never see him reread any of those books for pleasure, or look through that telescope up at the night sky and just dream, not once since I've known him."
Lex reached out and drew his fingers through Clark's soft hair, like a caress. "I think it was the meteor shower. I think it was the both of them. They ruined it for him. The meteor mutations, the deaths, all of it."
"What ruined it for you?"
"The strange visitors," he said with a twisted, painful smile. "For me... I used to read comic books, Warrior Angel, protector of the peace." He laughed, and it hurt, desperately bad inside, like something was tearing apart. "But in real life the heroes are never that good, and nothing is ever that black and white." He clenched his jaw against the pain, squeezed his eyes shut. "Everyone gets hurt, evil never suffers, and not one of the righteous ever, ever wins." The painful smile pushed its way across his face. "People are only saved to prolong their pain, and those who are used..." His hand twitched and he pulled it away from Clark's head, balled it up in a fist held against his chest. "...if they are truly unfortunate, they live to regret it."
"...Is that really what you believe?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "But nothing ever seems to get any better. The more I look, the more the door swings shut. Sometimes I feel like I'm on the wrong side of the wall, and there are too many walls."
He reached his hands up and scrubbed at his face, shaking his head slightly, trying to lift some of the mental fog. "I... I'm not even sure what I'm saying, anymore," Lex said. "I..." He shook his head again, sat up slightly, frowning. "Clark strongly says he disbelieves in aliens; he has always said so."
"What's the fire?"
"Anger," he replied absently, then blinked down at her.
"It'll come back," she said. He frowned at her.
"I know that; it always does. I just don't know why it leaves sometimes."
"It's probably because you're too emotionally numb to feel it right now."
Lex blinked at her. "Why would you think that?"
"I've known some guys who were like that, who only stopped when that happened."
Lex blinked at her again. 'There are other people who feel like-- like they're angry, all the time?"
"Well, yeah. Hell, a lot of them end up in the army. What, you thought you were the only one?"
...Actually, yes. He had.
"How do they fix it?" he asked.
Lois gave him a weird look. "Fix it?"
"It hurts."
Lois sat up and looked at him. "That's..." She frowned, and...
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Lois shook her head. "It's... nothing. Never mind." She tilted her head, tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear, and said, "Do you want me to ask around for you? ...How to 'fix' it?"
"If you wouldn't mind," he said, feeling a little less tense at the notion that perhaps something could be done, after all. He'd fairly given up, after the island.
"Okay, sure."
"Thank you," Lex told her.
She blinked up at him, then gave him a look. "Don't thank me yet; I might not hear anything useful."
"But at least you promised to try," he murmured, tapping Clark on the shoulder and saying his name a few times to wake him.
"We should go find those suites of yours and settle in for the night, I think," Lex said, slowly pushing himself up to stand once Clark had gotten up himself. "Did either of you find anything you liked?" he remembered to ask.
"Clark found a few things," Lois teased.
"Oh?"
Clark shrugged.
"Would you like to get them now, or tomorrow?" Lex asked him -- them -- both?
"Tomorrow," Lois said firmly, with a smile, "We can do a mix-and-match clothing run across stores for what we want to wear for the rest of the day tomorrow starting here first thing."
Clark blushed a little, and he and Lex trailed along behind, following Lois' meanderings down and around the hallways until she refound the lodgings she'd discovered earlier.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Ugh," Lois complained. "I knew I should've booked myself a room when I first saw the place!"
"I can't believe they're renting them so cheaply," Lex said, putting his credit card back in his wallet after signing. She felt kind of unlucky that he'd been 'first' in line before her, and that they hadn't found out until after he'd already purchased. If she'd gone first, she might've been able to talk Clark into staying with her and Lex finding somewhere else -- at which point, Lois could pick his brain at her leisure, without worrying about Luthor censoring him, or whether Clark might be self-censoring what he was telling her.
"My friends did the recommending, I'd damn well hope it'd be in my budget range."
"The lady dormer said it was big enough for three; you don't have to try and find someplace else," Clark said.
"I don't feel comfortable sleeping in the same room as him," Lois said, directing a thumb at Lex.
"But--" Clark frowned in confusion.
"If she won't be able to sleep, she won't be able to sleep, Clark," Lex said, pocketing the room key. "I'm hardly about to try and force her."
"Ok, but why?" Clark demanded as they walked past odd wrought-iron work embedded in painted drywall on the way down the narrow corridor to their room for the night.
"Clark--" Lex tried to cut him off.
"Look, she gave you the list of numbers for the other places, right?" Clark asked her. "At least come inside and call them from here, just in case?"
Lois sighed, but he did kind of have a point -- it would be faster than wandering all over, and she could book on the phone if one of the two or three places in the 'area' worked out. Apparently there were another two floors in the building, a bit different than these.
"If you can't find a place, then you can stay here, and we'll work something out."
"Hey," Lex protested.
"I'll pay you back," Clark said. "You've got the Penthouse nearby; she doesn't."
"Or somebody could be a gentleman and walk me to a cab, and I can find a place on the outside," she said.
When all was said and done, Lois came inside, sat down on a love seat, called around, and wasn't able to get a room.
"I still don't see why--"
"Clark!" she rolled her eyes.
"There's even two beds!" Lex was already sprawled out on the larger one. "I'll sleep next to Lex. Why don't you want to take the other one? It's not like any of us are changing clothes or anything."
"Because Lex is insane and I don't want to worry about waking up with my throat cut or something, ok?!" she said finally, exasperated.
Clark stared at her.
"Lex isn't insane," he said flatly.
"Matter of opinion," she heard the subject in question mutter face-down from the bed.
"Lex!" Clark turned and protested at him.
"I hear that rich insane people are just called 'eccentric' so we all don't go after you with the butter knives," he continued, not even bothering to turn his head to unmuffle his voice.
Clark grumbled incoherently and collapsed into a huge, rose-petal-patterned comfy chair.
"He went to Belle Reeve for a stint and everything, didn't he?" Lois pushed.
Clark's eyes snapped open and his head shot up. "What did you say?!" he demanded.
Lois blinked at him. Lex slowly pushed himself up and looked over at him as well.
"I said--" she started to repeat, unapologetically.
Clark shot to his feet, and Lois stopped talking, realizing that maybe she'd pushed a little too hard.
"Clark!" Lex barked out, and Clark flinched slightly and turned to him.
"It's fine," he told Clark. "Just... let it go."
"It's not fine, she--"
"I already told her everything," Lex said wearily, collapsing back down onto the bed, this time lying on his side.
"Well, then she obviously didn't get it," Clark said peevishly, frowning down at him. "Because she--"
And then Clark came to a screeching halt and rounded on her, eyes wide, and looking almost feral as his lips pulled back from his teeth.
"You're trying to use me as a corroborating witness to turn Lex into a story?!?" His voice went through three octaves on the last word.
Lois flinched at the tonal range shift. "No, I--"
Clark looked irate.
"I just want to know what he was lying about!" Lois said, throwing her hands up then gesturing at the billionaire in question.
Lex sighed from the bed and rolled over, presenting his back to them both.
"I-- you--!" Clark sputtered.
"Oh for god's sake, Clark, just tell her your side of things, or don't," Lex said tiredly.
Clark glanced between Lex, then Lois, then Lex's back again, then threw up his hands and sat down on the side of the bed, saying, "Fine! Short version or long version?"
"How about both, in that order?" Lois asked.
"Fine." Clark said angrily. "Short version: Lionel is a jerk, and I wish he were dead."
Lois practically heard Lex's eyes shoot open from across the room. Lex slowly sat up and turned towards Clark, who was sitting on the edge of the bed and still glaring at Lois, arms crossed and fuming.
"Um..." Lois said.
"Clark..." Lex said, sounding a little strangled.
Clark turned to him, then nearly did a double-take and frowned. "Oh god, you're not still trying to earn his approval?!" he said in tones darkening straight down to pitch black.
"He's my father," Lex said, somewhat noncommitally.
"Well, he sure doesn't act like it."
"Clark, I can't just--!"
"--Yeah, actually, you can," Clark cut in. "If he doesn't treat you like a son, he doesn't deserve to be treated like a father!"
"That's easy for you to say, Clark," Lex said, voice dripping with scorn. "You had Jonathan."
Lois had to blink, because woah kid Luthor -- daddy issues, much? She'd heard envy like that before... from some of the angry guys in the army who'd been in foster care and gotten placed in families that had 'real' kids already -- not adopted -- once or twice. How the hell had he ended up like that as an only child?
"Yeah, it is," Clark said. "Jonathan treated me like a son, and he's my dad. If my so-called biological 'father' walked up to me on the street tomorrow and tried talking at me like he has been, I'd punch him in the face."
Lex stared at Clark in shock. Lois' eyebrows went up -- she knew Clark wasn't normally all that violent, and definitely not aggressive enough to throw the first punch under normal circumstances. Given Clark's repsonse, though, the guy had to be bad news.
"You--" Lex blinked once, twice, then shook himself and ran a hand over his head. "You know who your bio-dad is?" he said faintly. Clark winced away slightly. "Since when?!"
Well, that's a weird tack to take... Why'd he focus on that?
"It's... been a couple years," Clark finally admitted after a long silence, crossing and recrossing his arms. "It's not a great big... thing, or anything, exactly," he muttered.
"Why didn't you ever say anything?" Lex said, eyes wide.
Clark shrugged, shoulders hunched up defensively, and looked away. "He's not a nice guy. I don't like talking about it."
Lois glanced between the two of them.
"What about your bio-mom?" Lex asked, pulling his legs up under him and giving Clark his full attention.
Clark pulled a long face. "Kara knew her before she died. I... I've kind of been afraid to ask, I guess," he said quietly. "I don't really want to know, if it turns out she was anything like him."
Lex slowly sat back, stunned. "Jesus."
"Yeah, well," Clark shifted uncomfortably. "Whatever. Anyway, Lionel doesn't deserve you, for treating you like he does."
Lex blinked hard, and looked like he mentally had to shake that one off. "You know, Lionel likes you," Lex accused.
Oh wow. It gets worse. Lois shuddered.
"Yeah, well, I don't like him, and I don't have to!" Clark said hotly. "And he still keeps hitting on my mom!" he complained, angrily. "If mom didn't tell me she could take care of herself and get all angry that I-- ...well, I swear I'd just-- just--!" And with that pronouncement, Clark let out a low, extremely frustrated, bestial growl, flexing the fingers on both hands slowly like he was tearing into something... or someone.
Lex blinked at him.
"Uh..." Lois said. "Not to... interrupt, but... long version?" ...which was kind of a lie, because she really was trying to interrupt before Clark worked himself up any worse over his mom -- she'd always had a feeling that she was one of his weak points.
Clark turned away from Lex and back to face her, then shifted his shoulders back and forth like he was trying to work the tension out, glanced over his shoulder at Lex again, then sighed in frustration, ran his hands through his hair, turned back to look Lois in the eye, and began again. "Right, fine, whatever. Long version: Lionel murdered his parents, Lex found out, Lex was gonna send Lionel to jail for it, Lionel didn't want to go to jail, Lionel decided to 'solve' this by going with wiping the information out of Lex's brain by whatever means necessary, and he thought it'd be a great idea to try and Stepford Son Lex when he was in Belle Reeve while he was at it."
Lex went white.
"So he went and drugged Lex's scotch at the mansion, and Lex started to flip out because, duh, he was being drugged, and then Lionel pulled some crazy shit like having people with guns break into the mansion by the windows in the library and scare the shit out of Lex making like they were trying to kill him. And then clean almost everything up perfectly so that when Lex told people, and then they saw the room all looking just fine, they'd think he was delusional."
Lex made a quiet choking sound from behind Clark and covered his mouth, still pale as a sheet.
"Almost everything?" Lois asked faintly.
"Yeah. Almost." He hunched his shoulders and pulled his legs up onto the bed, like he was getting comfortable because this was going to take awhile. "When Lex told me, I believed him and went back there looking. I found a shard of stained glass stuck under a piece of furniture that couldn't have come from anyplace else but the window -- Lex doesn't have glass lamps, or anything, and nothing else looked broken. Plus, the shade matched the window colors. So I believed Lex when he said the window broke and all that stuff happened, because Lionel totally could've gotten it fixed that quickly and bought everybody off."
Clark scratched the back of his neck. "Um, I don't know if the second one got hallucinated though; I couldn't find anything there."
"But, yeah, Lex grabbed a gun and ran off after some other stuff happened, and I was kinda starting to have doubts because he'd apparently been seeing this psychiatrist that I hadn't even known about, and..." he glanced back and Lex, then looked away. "And... I shouldn't have doubted him." He bit his lip. "But I figured out that he was being drugged, and I tracked down who was drugging him at the mansion and how, and made him talk, and kind of worked my way back up the chain making people tell me who hired who, following the money trail--"
"You-- what?" Lois half-laughed, because she could hardly believe that.
Clark frowned at her. "What? I can be intimidating."
"You're a teddy bear!" Lois laughed.
"Hey -- I helped you get away from your dad's black-ops chopper-people when he first showed up in Smallville, didn't I? I can take care of myself!" Clark glared at her.
Lois opened her mouth to protest... but then she realized that she hadn't been anywhere near him at the bombed-out house or in the fields, and he would've had to have been able to hold his own, or else he wouldn't have been able to break away and escape along with her -- the General wouldn't have given orders to leave him out of the fighting -- he'd have had his guys grab him if they could, no kid gloves either.
And the General's guys weren't pushovers, either. She frowned at him.
"Anyway, I traced it back, but... it went bad. Lex showed up, we both almost got killed, and I..." He grimaced, then said, "I ended up freaking out and running away. And then Lionel's goons caught up with him and dragged him off to Belle Reeve, where I didn't see him for a month, because every time I went and asked to see him, and they said Lex didn't want to see me, I didn't realize that that was actually code for, 'Lex wants to see you, but Lionel doesn't want anybody seeing how he's making the doctors unnecessarily drug him to screw with his brain, so we're not gonna let you in'."
Lex looked like he was having trouble breathing for a moment.
"And when I finally got to see him..." Clark sighed and pulled his knees up to his chest, hugging them. "If I'd been smart, I wouldn't have gone to see him."
"...What?" Lex said faintly.
Clark turned and looked over his shoulder at him. "I should've just gotten you out right when they started stonewalling me, no waiting. Should've said 'to hell with it,' waited until dark, snuck in, and gotten you out right then. I should've known better, that Lionel would kill that doctor if Chloe and I tried to talk her out of continuing to mess with your head for Lionel. I didn't find out until two hours before the procedure that it'd been rescheduled, and that was Chloe's catch." Clark looked irate.
"And then those meteor freaks jumped me when I tried to get you out, when I should've done that first, when there's still been time, and they beat you up, and dragged me off downstairs... by the time I got back upstairs, it was too late!"
He ducked his head down. "And then you were recovering from the electroshock, and when you finally got out..." Clark looked about to cry. "I... I couldn't tell you, Lex, I... I just... --you wouldn't have believed me, you'd really thought you'd had a psychotic break, and... and you were so unsure and... and fragile and... Lionel was watching you all the time. I... I didn't have any evidence of anything, not the stuff he did to you, not whatever you had had on what he'd done to his parents, none of it. If I'd told you, Lionel would've found out, and you wouldn't have been able to-- everybody thought-- he'd have just sent you back to Belle Reeve on nothing but his say-so and if he did you might not have even fought him on it-- he might've killed you that time!" he cried out.
Lex reached over and pulled Clark to his chest in a sideways hug, and Clark began to sob, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should have-- I'm sorry," over and over again.
Lex closed his eyes and sighed out a breath. He started petting Clark's hair, rocking him, and he ducked his head to bring his mouth down by Clark's ear, whispering to him softly.
Lois watched as Clark slowly began to calm down, and she shifted uneasily on the edge of the loveseat.
...Clark had just corroborated Lex's story, and he'd made it sound even worse than Lex had.
Great. Either they're both insane, or... well, no, Clark's not insane.
But, jesus, the only alternative was that they were both lying, and there was no way Clark would lie about something like this. If he thought this was the truth...
...well, there might be the remotest possibility that Luthor could have screwed with his memories somehow.
But if Chloe says anything like the same thing as the two of them when I talk with her...
Fuck, Lois thought, as she watched Lex comfort Clark, until he slowly fell asleep in Lex's arms.
Eventually, he glanced up at her, still pale, then looked away quickly.
"You looked... surprised..." she said slowly.
"We never really..." Lex said hoarsely.
"...talked about it," Lois said sourly.
"No," Lex said. "Not like this." He looked haunted and hugged Clark a little closer, then stared down at him. "Nothing like this. I..." He looked frustrated. "I told him, once, after Lionel was put away -- though short-lived the accomplishment -- that Chloe had filled me in on the events that I couldn't remember, of when I was sent to Belle Reeve, and the 'why' of it. He... apologized for not breaking me out... but..." Lex slowly shook his head, not looking away from Clark, who he was all but clutching to him by this point.
She watched Lex shiver and pull inward on himself a little. "I never realized to what extent Lionel had... could... play mindgames with me."
"Doubting your own sanity?" she asked, watching him carefully.
Lex grimaced. "I... don't know." Then he seemed to decide something and looked up, staring her straight in the eyes, fully-aware and there like he hadn't completely been since yesterday when he'd been working off some real sleep.
"You want a quote, Lane?" he said intensely. "Here's one for you: I don't just believe in 'strange visitors', I know that there are intelligent homicidal would-be world-conquerors running around on the surface of this planet, and not just of the normal mean terrestrial variety."
"Repeat that to anyone in an attempt to bring about some end to me that might prevent me from doing anything to prevent such a planetary takeover, and I'll kill you myself," he said evenly.
Well, at least that's in character. Lois stared at him. She caught the slight shiver and the way he was stroking his hand through Clark's hair as he said it, though. The guy's a little unnerved. "...You believe in aliens and you don't think you might not be sane?"
"There are some instances that it could have been possible for Lionel to have set up just to screw with me, I will admit," Lex said quietly. "But some of them... there are limits to what the meteor rocks are capable of," he nearly whispered down into Clark's hair. "There are events that are explainable in no other way, that are absolutely beyond current human technological capabilities." He clenched his jaw, then glanced back up at her. "What do you know about Dark Thursday?"
"There was some kind of computer virus that took out the entire planetary power grid."
Lex frowned, and looked about to say something, but then paused a moment instead. "And the attack on the Pentagon that day?" he asked her carefully.
"What about it?" she said, her eyes narrowing.
Lex sighed. "Ask the General about the Department of Domestic Security and Project Starhawk sometime," he said, dropping his eyes.
"The-- wait, those kooks?" Lois' eyebrows went up.
"You've heard of them?" Lex asked, glancing up at her.
Lois frowned. "Yeah, I've heard about them. So you've got some alien-chaser friends, big whoop. They're just crazy, too." She rolled her eyes. "Next you're gonna be telling me you believe in remote viewing and ESP."
Lex looked tired and halfway to offended. "They aren't my 'friends' -- far from it. But as for the rest..." He gave her a small, wry, quirky smile. "Ask Chloe to talk to you about Lana and one late Deputy Watts, and De Kretser syndrome, sometime." Then he glanced down at Clark, and began to lay him out carefully on the bed. "And one Ryan James, when Clark isn't around to be upset at the memory of his death." He gently ran a hand through Clark's hair once he'd settled him, and glanced up at her when he was done. "Some of those cases didn't even involve meteor rocks, if you can believe it," he smirked, though it looked like his heart wasn't really in it.
Lois glared at him. "There are still a lot of projects on the books that are stupid and never going to get anywhere."
"Unless you can think of a way that my father could manage to create visible, intangible, ghost-like beings that can inhabit human beings, possess and take control of their bodies, 'gift' them with inhuman speed, strength, and hovering flight, strengthen their skin to invulnerability against bullets, and then leave no trace of those abilities behind once that person is done being used by them..." he shook his head and rolled his eyes ceilingwards. "Or manage to fake all of those properties in real life outside of a controlled setting..." Lex snorted. "I'm going with aliens, given that I've actually seen or otherwise heard of spaceships in the vicinity at the time of occurrence for many of those instances, thank you."
You think that you've seen something like that and believe you weren't hallucinating?
But Lois kept that to herself. This was shaping up to be like some of her old 'assigned' stories for the Inquisitor. She'd 'interviewed' (talked to) loonies and liars and nervous wrecks alike. The former loved talking when they had a friendly ear -- they were after converts -- the problem was more gently keeping them on-topic and not rambling too far afield. Too much pressure or any imagined persecution would set them off. The liars, on the other hand, were smooth talkers, who wouldn't let a body off-topic and had an answer for everything, with a hungry glint in their eye.
The nervous ones were an entirely different story -- poor bastards on the edge of slipping down the long insanity slide, who had seen something but for whatever reason weren't going with the saner explanations for things. They tended to be very defensive and all over the place -- they were generally smart enough to realize that what they thought was off, and could generally tell when people didn't believe them, and would sometimes get very paranoid if someone who wasn't a 'believer' listened too nonjudgmentally for too long -- and rightfully so, because they were a step away from the loony bin if the wrong person heard them going off and let the men in the nice white suits know. They were nervous about talking, but still wanted to desperately. If anything, they wanted to even more badly than the loonies. They wanted to vent the stress they were feeling; they wanted it out of their heads, if only for a little while. They wanted someone to tell them that they weren't crazy, and that everything was going to be all right. The main difference was that they tended to relax and let a lot more slip if she managed to help them feel a little less crazy than they were afraid they were.
Luthor might be a liar, but Lois had a gut feeling that he actually really believed the vast majority of what he was saying, which was a little scary. However, he acted like a weird mixture of loonie and nervous-wreck combined. Lois figured that the trick with him was to be not too judgmental, but still jabbing and poking at his 'theories' somewhat, enough to keep him from getting suspicious about continuing to talk -- just not so hard that he clammed up and shut down.
Leading questions, but not too leading, because he's used to dealing with reporters, and I don't want him jumping back to Evil Suit mode. I guess I'll just have to play Little-Miss-'oh, I'm not a horribly-unfriendly ear who's gonna bite your head off, I promise to listen... are you going to tell me what you believe? you might even convince me...'
So what Lois said in response to Lex's description of his hallucinated enemy-of-choice was merely a flat: "...You believe in alien ghosts. On earth."
Lex sighed heavily. "No, I believe that what I -- and others in my employ -- have had the most difficulty in chasing down and capturing is a type of alien being that can best be described as a ghost-like entity when moving outside of a host body." Lex began massaging his temples. "There have been many more of them that have been perfectly solid while running around mass-murdering people, thank you."
Lois couldn't help but bark out a short laugh. "You... you've been trying to ghostbust aliens? Alienbust?"
Lex frowned at her. "No. Not in person; not much. I don't have the time to do it all myself; I've had to delegate quite a bit because I need to keep LuthorCorp running," he said, perfectly serious.
The grin slipped off of Lois' face and she stared at him. It was no longer funny.
"You're actually running around killing off--"
Lex grimaced and waved a hand. "I have people dedicated to tracking down current threats and... well, outright strangeness. I have others who I can send into the field to deal with them when they are of the mass-murdering variety. I have far more of the former than the latter." He rubbed at his eyes. "There's a great deal of satellite coverage and security footage to search when you're trying to find past and present events, let alone trace the possible connections between them."
"Ok, so. Just to be clear," Lois said slowly. "What you're telling me is that you have a worldwide spy network, your own personal cadre of wetwork agents in the field, and have been trying to create your own small army corps of superpowered soldiers, and you don't think this is going to make people nervous?"
Lex frowned at her. "It's not a spy network; I'm not trying to steal the secrets of any government or foreign nation." His eyes narrowed. "And I'm not trying to run my own assassination business, either. It's just surveillance and eyes on the ground to track strange circumstances and inexplicable events, and try to corral the worst offenders -- that's all."
"Come on, that's just... semantics -- it totally is! --All this crap you've been doing? It's right out of the supervillain's handbook for Steps On The Way To Overthrowing Your Government And Taking Over The World, Part 1!"
"Oh for god's sake, Lane! --I work with your father! Do you really think the General would let me do anything like that if he knew about it?"
"Does he?"
"Of course he does! I've asked for his input at many stages!"
Lois' mouth dropped. "You're fucking kidding me."
"I assure you, I am not."
"So what, you've actually had this conversation with him? He knows the whole stretch, and about all the --the 'alien stuff', too?"
Lex winced.
"Yeah, I didn't think so," Lois said matter-of-factly, crossing her arms. No way would the General believe in aliens. No way. I mean, really.
"Just because I haven't necessarily discussed the entire big picture and endgame with him, does not mean he does not approve of my methods and the internal checks and regulations against abuse of power I have put in place, or that he does not trust that I would not--"
"You've been sending people places to kill other people," she cut in. Because you feel like it, and because you can. What the hell happened to the police? The law? But she couldn't say that right now because that'd start an argument over vigilante justice and get off track -- his failings.
"Capture, mainly, if possible, but I don't want my people unnecessarily risking their lives when they're up against homicidal psychotic freaks of nature, either."
"Uh huh. And how many times have you actually pulled off a capture-not-kill?"
"Very few," he said acidly, almost angrily -- and sounding a little unhappy about it, though that was weird. "Most often because the targets in question either disappear and pop up elsewhere, surface as corpses before they can be subdued with nonlethal force, or murder my own people," he gritted out. "I shudder to think what would happen if any of the local authorities ever tried to deal with them on their own. We're woefully unprepared as a species to handle these threats, currently."
Lois frowned at him, because he sounded like he was contradicting himself. "If they're such a threat, who's killing these people off, then?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "I can guess that some of it is territorialism between the aliens, but it looks like there are at least a few unknown agents out there actively hunting down these things," his mouth twisted downwards, "Possibly for sport."
"Besides you."
"I've mainly been tracking them, and I'm not doing it for 'fun' -- it's a necessary thing," he repeated, irritated. "I try to only send in my people when it becomes apparent that the indigent population is wholly incapable of dealing with them in any capacity or are otherwise unable to drive them off on their own."
Lois wasn't sure whether to feel somewhat relieved that his approach wasn't 'shoot immediately, ask questions never' with freaky-humans or his so-called 'aliens' -- assuming he wasn't lying, anyway -- or annoyed that he was deliberately holding off jumping in to help when he saw a problem until the bodycount left in the wake of whatever lunatic mass-murderer-of-the-week he was tracking was heaped high enough to pass a certain threshhold. ...God, this was giving her a headache. "--And what about the ones you find that aren't all homicidal and everything?"
"There are very few of those, but I only have them tracked and watched. No contact of any sort. I'd rather not risk their feeling threatened and lashing out when they seem perfectly happy remaining non-hostile," he said. "Whether the tendency to 'live and let live' and just get along is uncommon in those other species or human-variants, or whether it's simply that much harder to find the anomalies when they aren't lighting up the region with strings of murder reports, is a question I'll leave to the theorists."
"Great. You've got your own little worldwide 'spy-police' setup, then," she said sarcastically. "You must be so proud." And I don't even want to think about how many laws that might be breaking... assuming you aren't bribing the regional politicians for amnesty, or to just look the other way. Stupid international politics. "How do you even get away with this with the locals?"
"Surprising as it may seem, when a village in a third-world country finds itself fighting off things that go bump in the night, or monsters unafraid to show themselves in the full light of day, they tend not to be too picky when a group of well-armed well-meaning individuals show up, look around, and ask if they would like some help," Lex said with a raised eyebrow. "Particularly when said group of individuals acts professionally and with courtesy, does not rape and pillage the locals, chases off only the source of their misfortune, and then leaves without demanding money, getting all preachy, or trying to force some regional change of one type or another."
"And what about the first-world countries, like, oh, I don't know --here?" Lois glowered. "You don't expect me to believe that the FBI and police just stand aside and let you do your thing."
Lex pulled a face, looking ill-at-ease. "Granted, it is more difficult to keep things quiet in cultures like ours where nearly everyone is a half-minute away from a Youtube upload of shaky video from a cameraphone. But most people outside of Smallville don't know that monsters or ghost-like beings actually exist. Oftentimes the police in those areas will simply assume whoever's on the end of the line is drunk or high, take the incident reports, file them, and forget them.... until they find the dead or mutilated bodies once it's too late. When groups of people start giving the same stories, is the point at which they start struggling and straining to fit it to a 'better' explanation, like mass hysteria, or poisonous mushrooms in the food that caused hallucinations, or gas line leaks."
He waved a hand. "I won't go into details of how I have my people work it out, because I'd rather you not find corroborating circumstantial evidence of what I've been doing. Sufice it to say that the most difficulty I find in those situations is, believe it or not, in making sure that those involved don't end up believing wrongful accusations that the help I am willing to provide is part of a cover up for some failed LuthorCorp project."
He glanced away. "Though I suppose it if came to it, it would be better for me to be accused of having created those monsters in a terrestrial fashion, rather than people discovering the truth. I'd like to try to avoid a mass panic in the general populace; I don't think anyone is ready for the idea of aliens among us, especially unfriendly humanoid ones that may sometimes be hard to distinguish from said general populace, that apparently also sometimes enjoy eating people."
He looked at her dead-on. "These things might be tough to track and even tougher to kill, but the real damage I'm worried about from these lesser aliens is the possibility of societal collapse. It's one thing to feel unsafe but have a clear enemy that is easy to spot. It's another to be looking at the people at your left and right, and wondering if they're one of the enemy, and being unable to tell."
"Psychological warfare," Lois said with a shiver. Take every bad alien movie in space, toss them onto an Earth's-surface backdrop, mix and stir and shake...
"Yes," Lex said grimly.
She was glad she knew he was out of his skull, because she'd probably be having nightmares otherwise.
...It made her wonder if he had nightmares about this stuff.
"So, really? You've never had any problems with any of the locals at all?" she said, looking at his askance.
"Ah, well." He coughed once, sounding a little embarrassed. "There was this one time in London."
"Oh?"
"Mm. Well, long-story-short..." he paused and ran a hand over his head. "My people heard rumors in London of a group of... worshippers, for lack of a better term, who were apparently really excited about having gotten their own 'in the flesh' visitation." He grimaced. "I was worried what might happen if an alien got some sort of cult following and gained a foothold in the region and, well... ah, it turns out it wasn't an alien..." He looked a little embarrassed.
"No?" Lois bit back a smile. "What was it?" she asked, expecting a funny story about gnarly root vegetables or a demonic face on a piece of toast or something.
"Well," he sounded a little strained. "Apparently, ah.... apparently demons actually do exist."
Lois blinked at him.
"I know," he said, throwing up his hands and looking almost pained. "Not only is magic real, but apparently it's not just a random, isolated thing lost to the mists of time and history. ...We actually, uh, got in a little bit of a scuffle with a few of the local practitioners who were there to shut down the worshippers and clean up the mess who, ah," he cleared his throat, "who weren't all that pleased to find a bunch of neophytes running around trying to deal with handling what they considered to be a situation that was effectively their job to suppress."
"You're shitting me."
Lex winced and shook his head. "I was a little horrified at the time--"
"You were there?"
"Well, given the possible far-reaching social consequences of the presence of a resident 'alien god' in a first-world country, it was what I considered a major incident, so yes," Lex explained. "But, well, it sort of worked out for the best. They effectively kicked us out citing 'unwanted, unwelcome, and unnecessary meddling in the area', but before they did, I was at least able to manage talking them into giving us enough information to help my people distinguish between the magical, mystical events and threats and everything else." He gave her a weak smile. "Mostly by a rather roundabout way of blackmail, promising to try to stay out of their way if they gave it to us, and implying somewhat the opposite if they didn't."
"Right." Lois gave him a look. "And there's a difference between demons and aliens."
"Well, yes." He got a bit of a faraway look. "Demons apparently travel here from completely different planes of existence. Those planes are connected to the earth, in a matter-of-speaking. Aliens, on the other hand, come from different planets in the same plane."
"What, like fairies and elves?" Lois snorted.
Lex blinked at her.
"What? When people think 'magic'..."
"...I will admit that at the time I was not thinking of pixie dust and butterfly wings. The creature we encountered was very much not... that," Lex said. Then he frowned. "You bring up a good point, though," he said, tapping his lips absently. "English folklore does refer to such creatures living 'under the hill' and a hierarchy of faerie courts. ...I wonder if that other realm is really just a portion of land on another plane of existence, and them another type of intelligent demon with an actual governing body. Hm." He looked pensive.
"Any of these 'magic guys' sign on to help you out with your 'alien problem'?" Lois couldn't help but to ask, feeling almost amused.
"Hm?" Lex said, refocusing on her from whatever he'd been thinking about. "Ah, no," he sighed, sounding a little disheartened. "They seemed rather uninterested in associating with a non-magic-user in a leadership role, let alone helping one out, and when I broached the topic of other threats, they seemed throughly disinclined to get involved in any way with 'normal' events that involved the uninitiated. I tried to broach the subject by asking if certain 'mythical' artifacts and species existed, to see what they would say, and they all laughed when I brought up aliens. I didn't press the matter further, because I didn't really think they'd believe me."
He paused a moment before adding, "Though I think I've begun to rebuild a few bridges, at least, as when we receive intelligence on those events we've identified as 'their problem', I've sent that data along to them for their edification. ...I still haven't managed to convince anyone to send along much practical knowledge on magic yet from their end, just the odd tidbit of information here and there, but I remain hopeful. The bits about salt and iron have been pretty damn effective so far. I've love to get my hands on a few tomes on magical history and theory." His hands seemed to be itching again.
"I thought you just said you were staying out of 'magical' things," Lois frowned.
"In England," Lex said. "--well, and most of the Isles. I've managed to poke a few of them into giving me regional contact information for a few other countries and continents, to pass along threat intel as well, but North America apparently has very few magically-inclined human beings, for whatever reason. The closest we have here are a scattering of native american shaman and one or two witches, apparently, and most of them are either currently in-training, or more spiritually inclined and not really of the fighting-sort. I've had to more-or-less take responsibility for the region in that regard."
"Great..." Lois muttered.
Lex shrugged. "I suppose it explains why Isobel got as far as she did -- Lana left France rather quickly after being possessed by her, before anyone could catch up to her, and the European types generally don't seem to care about magical problems once they leave their region. ...On the other hand, I had to work through a few rather disturbing conversations with the Chinese about her visit to Shanghai a few years back. They feel rather the opposite about that sort of thing -- they have more 'open' borders, but would rather blame the regions themselves when bad influences cross the borders; they expect others to solve their problems internally, as they do in turn." He winced.
Lois stared at him, then frowned and said, "You actually believe in magic?"
Lex frowned right back. "Didn't Chloe and Clark fill you in on how you were possessed by one of Isobel's coven that Halloween night three years ago?"
"What?" Lois frowned. "I thought that was a joke!"
"It's no joke," Lex said. "Lana was possessed for nearly a year. Nearly every time Isobel surfaced, someone was killed."
Lois stared at him, then shook her head.
"Just ask Clark to fill you in," Lex said tiredly. "He was more involved in the whole mess than Chloe was."
"What, I can't ask Lana?"
Lex sighed and rubbed at his eyes. "Lana's disinclined to talk about it in the first place, and secondly, she had blackouts when Isobel took control of her body -- she doesn't remember any of the time when Isobel was possessing her. Besides, if you ask Lana without a good reason for wanting to know otehr than curiosity, she'll know that you're asking because I brought it up and she'll just lie out of pure spite."
...Well, considering their fight the day before, he probably did have a point there. "So, what, you're really telling me that you think Lana was possessed by an alien space ghost witch?"
"No," Lex frowned, "Just a human ghost witch." Then he blinked. "Oh god, I hope there aren't any aliens that know magic. Just dealing with their innate abilities and advanced tech is bad enough," he said sounding horrified.
Lois rolled her eyes. "Maybe they'd just go one way or the other? Science or magic?"
"God, I hope so," Lex said, rubbing his forehead.
"Uh huh," Lois said, eyeing him. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry, at how completely seriously he was taking everything. Magic and aliens. Pfft. --What's next, Bigfoot? God, I'd probably end up with a lecture on evolutionary splits and who knows what else.
"So, what do you tell all these people who are working for you to get them to track down magic and aliens and crap?" Because, really, who would respond to that want ad, besides the really tinfoil hat kooks?
"I tell them the truth -- that we're searching for and cataloguing all possible terrestrial and extraterrestrial threats on earth."
"And they go for that?"
"Well, yes." Lex grimaced slightly. "...It's a bit odd actually. The new science and tech staff tend to start out huge skeptics, but by the time they're done looking over the sighting reports and the evidence... It's like watching a switch flip over in their brains. Some of them get rather fanatical about it all." He looked a little put-off. "I've had to put in place disconnects between some of the sections simply because I've started to become worried that if they talked to each other directly, they might decide to... well, mutiny and start running ops behind my back. I don't want the threat network getting away from me -- especially not the response teams."
"Mutiny?"
"...Sometimes I feel like the only conservative voice of reason and caution in the room when I'm directing things," he said sourly. "I've had to stop asking for opinions from the staff -- just opinion papers included the daily briefings -- because I'd start having to get into yelling matches during on-site meetings about how, no, doing the sorts of things that were being 'strongly suggested' would be too proactive and going too far." He started massaging his temples. "I can't lose control of that section. I need the intel, and I can't have a witch hunt. Alien hunt. Whatever," he muttered. "It'd be a bloodbath, one way or another."
Woah. Luthor has converts? Zealous converts? ...He has to be making all this up, right?
"But Lana said you have no evidence," Lois said, frowning, because if he really expected her to go down the rabbithole with him...
Well, ok -- she had been the one who had originally picked the suggested venue, and it was probably coincidence that the only open hotel room remaining looked like someone had decked it out with furniture out of a Lewis Carroll novel...
Lex looked irritated in the extreme, though, and he slipped off the side of the bed to pace, before abruptly sitting down at the edge of the loveseat farthest away from her, rubbing his arms surreptitiously, and seeming a little... nervous, almost.
Oh, for god's sake. I am dealing with a lunatic. Why am I surprised? "You really don't have any evidence," Lois said flatly. Then what did he supposedly show these people he says he's got working for him?
"I used to," he grumbled sideways at her. He dug the base of his palms into his eyes. "I... I don't have anything conclusive now. I had artifacts which I had tracked down at great personal expense, stolen. Records, wiped. Even lab analysis reports have gone inexplicably 'missing'." He held his hands over his face. "Not that paper records could serve as conclusive evidence, given how easily such might be written, changed, or otherwise faked, without the original test material to back up any claims."
He ground his teeth together. "I had the Black Ship that came down during the second meteor shower. --And no, I cannot claim after the fact that I know for certain that it was of alien origin, I can think of ways that that might have been faked, in retrospect. But it would have taken a tremendous amount of time and resources to do so."
"Which Lionel has."
"Yes," he gritted out, and Lois suddenly saw the problem.
"You're not even sure if half your evidence from before is half-baked, because he's taken screwing with your perception of reality to an art form before," --with the library thing. "You don't know if he might've been doing it again with some of this."
Lex grimaced and dropped his hands, stared down at the floor in front of him. "Yes," he said quietly. "I hadn't even considered the possibility before, but after what Clark just said..." He glanced up at Clark's prone, slumbering form, and looked pained and worried.
Lois blew out a breath. This is weird. The loonies never second-guessed themselves, and the nervous wrecks... well, they sometimes admitted to the possibility of being wrong, but they sure as hell never talked about what 'facts' they might be reassessing. They pretty much always focused on their 'truth' and shied away from everything else as 'too unexplainable' or 'possibly a cover up because of X' or 'not having reviewed the data themselves' or what-have-you.
Wow. "Ok," Lois said, mind racing, "How do you think this black ship could've been faked?" ...Had Lionel really done that? --What reason would Lionel have for something like that? Could this be some mixture of Lionel trying to drive Lex insane, and Lex being delusional enough to fill in the rest? Could he be having some kind of paranoid schitzophrenic visual and tactile hallucinations? ...It is possible that this is leftover from Belle Reeve -- or maybe because of the unnecessary shock treatment, if I believe the two of them?
"Might have been faked, not 'could'. I don't know how for certain," Lex sighed out, leaning back on the seat. He rubbed at his forehead, still not looking at her. "The lab reports I got back said that the substance the Ship was constructed from was of similar composition to the meteor rock. --The crystalline portions of it, not the surrounding ferrous ore. Lionel has been working with and mining the material for more than a decade, nearly two. There are other veins of the crystalline metal with differing coloring than green, such as red. Black can be made by heating green at very high temperatures." He sighed. "It might be possible to somehow work the raw material -- or one specific form of it that I may not be aware of as yet -- in such a way to produce a nearly frictionless surface of that coloration, with those properties."
"And that also kinda assumes that somebody hasn't been fucking with the lab reports, either."
"Yes." Lex agreed, running a hand over his head. "But I saw the Ship when it was outside of the warehouse where I was storing it, as well as in, and all the way in-between. It floated." He turned his head and looked at her. "If there was some way to have set up magnets... that could be faked, but not over that much distance, varying terrain, instrumentation..." He shook his head. "At the very least, my watch would have reacted to an EM field strong enough to float something that large and solid, with that much inertia, and I never noticed a constant field like that -- and believe me, I was paying attention."
"Not a constant field," Lois repeated, "But there was a field?" she picked up on.
"Sometimes," Lex said. "It was giving off odd signal-like waves that disrupted the security equipment the day it vanished from the warehouse I had had it stored and studied in. --And the surface was frictionless," he added. "Or very nearly so. That didn't need complex machinery to feel or test." He sighed again. "But the meteor rock is so strange... I suppose I can't dismiss the possibility that they might actually have such properties that might allow for a frictionless surface... or floating."
"What about the inside?"
"It... may not have an inside if it really was a fake; all I have are verbal reports to the contrary. It was closed when I got to the site. I couldn't get it open." He seemed to stifle a groan and his fingers twitched like they were itching to grasp something he couldn't reach.
How convenient. Lois frowned a little at him. "So, you're not sure."
"No." Lex glanced her, then away. "Not anymore."
"What about the... falling out of the sky part?" she couldn't help but ask, curious how he'd explain that one away, if he could, since the claim he was making was that he'd thought he'd actually gathered up something that had supposedly came from outer space.
"I did have it pulled out of a crater, but there are many materials and forms that are strong enough to, say, survive a drop from an airplane at high altitude," he said, waving it off. "And there are ways to 'bundle' a person up such that they could survive a fall in such a structure, even if they had a human-like frailty," he shook his head. "Not that those two did."
"Those two?"
He turned his head to look at her, rubbing his temple. "I ran into them briefly; I believe you did as well. Lana mentioned that she distracted them and pulled their attention away from you, tricking them into following her to the mansion." The latter was more of a question.
"Uh, she tricked a pair of pretty damn strong Ren Fair rejects who hurt Mr. Kent into dropping me and leaving, yeah," Lois frowned, absently rubbing her throat. "I mean, yeah, they looked and acted like a couple of space cases, asking about a Cal L., and yeah, they had superpowers, but..."
"They didn't look, dress, or speak in an outright alien manner. They even knew English. It isn't anything like conclusive evidence," Lex ended for her.
"Well, yeah." She was pretty impressed by the fact that he seemed to be doing a pretty good job of trying to be all logical about it, even though the idea of aliens on earth was completely insane and that was what he was going with.
"I know," he said, gesturing with his hands upwards and sounding aggrieved. He collapsed backwards farther into the soft cushioned back of the loveseat with a soft huff.
"...I think I'm starting to see why you might be so angry all the damn time," Lois said, watching him.
Lex let out a soft, pained laugh.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Next piece of part 3 is here.
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark, Lex
Rating: R (because it sort of has vague references to themes of BDSM *shrug*)
Spoilers: References season 6 and previous, general spoilers for early season 7 and all prior. Diverges at the end of Wrath (7x07) when Clark goes to talk to Lex.
Word count: 26,900+
Summary: What if Lex decided to be a little more... evil... at the end of Wrath? What if he decided to punish Clark, for Lana's transgression? ...What if Clark agreed to sacrifice himself for her sake? Would Clark break? Or would he... bend?
...Hey, that would be a totally crazy fic, am I right? --Unfortunately, this is not that. (Oops.) Here, Lex kind of goes the other route. You know, the whole brotherly-love one.
So, instead, you get Lex being pissed about Lana treating Clark like her own personal bitch, Clark's "sacrifice" isn't so much of one, and everybody else is left standing around scratching their heads while Lana ends up doing screechy-harpy things which we don't have to hear too much about -- you're welcome. (Chloe does, though. Feel sorry for Chloe, and send her emergency chocolate cake, stat.)
Warnings: Un-beta'd. Still an ungodly amount of Lois POV. A little character-bashing (Lois towards Lex, but, yeah, he kinda needs a bit of a reality check).
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Comments: Yes, please! :)
Author's Note: Lex still doesn't know what he's doing with the 'pet' BDSM stuff (what else is new?).
Like Part 2, this installment is kinda SRS BSNS for the sake of 'teh pl0t'. It should be a little lighter towards the end, but, yeah. I am slightly worried that this is trying to devolve into a Huge Ass Deal, because I caught myself researching episodes (and that never ends well for what are supposed to be 'frivolous' fics), so I'll try to be a little more off-the-cuff and not with the worrying so much from now on :)
The first part of this fic is here on LJ.
The second part of this fic starts here on LJ.
Also posted to AO3 here (includes all chapters to-date).
~*~*~*~*~*~
When he opened his eyes again, Clark was seated at his feet. Clark's head was resting against his knee, and his breathing was slow and even.
Lois squatted down in front of him and held out a rolled up paper cone.
"There was a vendor selling roasted nuts three corridors down," she said. Lex gingerly took it from her.
"It smells wonderful," he said, the aroma of almonds and cinnamon sugar filling his senses, mingling with the orange-cloves-and-cinnamon scent from the chair.
"Mm, tasted good, too," she said. "I could only eat about half."
She pulled over a leather-cloth beanbag chair and flopped across it, belly-down, staring across at Clark as he slept.
Lex smiled into the half-full cone of 'leftovers' and selected a few nuts.
They were still a bit warm, and tasted even better than they smelled, the light oil undercutting the bitterness of the almond -- having absorbed some of the sugar, it seemed.
"This seems like a place one could explore for days," Lex commented.
"One of the women apparently runs a small hotel here," Lois said, looking up at hm. "They have a few suites open."
"God," Lex let out a quiet laugh. He let his head fall back against the cushions behind his head again. "Have you ever been here before?" he had to ask. "Or anyplace like this?"
Lois was silent for a moment. "There's an underground mall in Atlanta that's a little like one area I think we passed by," she said. "And I've seen a steampunk rave where a lot of people dressed up in weird Victorian mechanical suits and dresses, but..." she shook her head. "It's kind of a weird hodgepodge, right?" she grinned.
"Like a children's book filled with a century's worth of magazine cutouts," Lex said, sighing.
"Clark's been asleep for about an hour," she said, shoving herself up and then bouncing up and turning to drop down heavily again onto the beanbag plush, face-up, staring at the ceiling. She'd been all elbows and knees doing so, a tomboyish grace.
"I went exploring a little," she said. "You guys looked like you could use the rest. Still do."
"Did we fall off the edge of the planet into another realm, yet?" Lex asked, amusedly.
"...You have a really weird way with words," Lois said, frowning up at him. "You seem a lot more relaxed, though, like you finally let go."
"I'm not sure what you think I was holding onto," he admitted. "But I feel like the fire went out," Lex said dazedly, blinking lazily at the ceiling and feeling like there was nothing in the universe he needed to do but rest. "I'm just... tired."
"...the fire went out?"
"It's always there, never goes away, almost." He sighed and closed his eyes again, the odd swirling patterns in the metal ceiling tiles making him slightly dizzy. "I don't know why."
"You guys were yelling pretty badly before you ran off."
"It was just an argument." He frowned. "It shouldn't have been any different. Doesn't make sense," he murmured. "Less than Clark ever does..." He blinked his eyes open again.
"What'd he say when he caught up to you?" Lois asked, pushing an arm under her head.
"He didn't. Not really. Just followed me until I was too tired to run, and then we walked back. I... got lost."
"In Metropolis?"
"I know," he said quietly, closing his eyes again. "It shouldn't have happened."
He heard a rustling noise, and felt the almond cone plucked loosely from his hand.
"You were freaking out. It happens," she said.
"Not to me."
"Mm," she said noncommitally. "...You know, I never would've thought Clark believed in aliens," she said.
"I think maybe he used to, until it got too ugly," Lex said, not really thinking too hard about what he was saying.
"Really? Why?"
"He has all the old classics, stored away in the Fortress. Asimov, Heinlein, Dick, Herbert, Clarke. Bradbury, Le Guin, Orwell, Niven. Gibbs, Wells, Card, Verne, and Vonnegut, all." Lex sighed. "He has a telescope, and knows all the stars and constellations by name, major and minor." He blinked open his eyes and looked down at Lane. "But I've never see him reread any of those books for pleasure, or look through that telescope up at the night sky and just dream, not once since I've known him."
Lex reached out and drew his fingers through Clark's soft hair, like a caress. "I think it was the meteor shower. I think it was the both of them. They ruined it for him. The meteor mutations, the deaths, all of it."
"What ruined it for you?"
"The strange visitors," he said with a twisted, painful smile. "For me... I used to read comic books, Warrior Angel, protector of the peace." He laughed, and it hurt, desperately bad inside, like something was tearing apart. "But in real life the heroes are never that good, and nothing is ever that black and white." He clenched his jaw against the pain, squeezed his eyes shut. "Everyone gets hurt, evil never suffers, and not one of the righteous ever, ever wins." The painful smile pushed its way across his face. "People are only saved to prolong their pain, and those who are used..." His hand twitched and he pulled it away from Clark's head, balled it up in a fist held against his chest. "...if they are truly unfortunate, they live to regret it."
"...Is that really what you believe?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "But nothing ever seems to get any better. The more I look, the more the door swings shut. Sometimes I feel like I'm on the wrong side of the wall, and there are too many walls."
He reached his hands up and scrubbed at his face, shaking his head slightly, trying to lift some of the mental fog. "I... I'm not even sure what I'm saying, anymore," Lex said. "I..." He shook his head again, sat up slightly, frowning. "Clark strongly says he disbelieves in aliens; he has always said so."
"What's the fire?"
"Anger," he replied absently, then blinked down at her.
"It'll come back," she said. He frowned at her.
"I know that; it always does. I just don't know why it leaves sometimes."
"It's probably because you're too emotionally numb to feel it right now."
Lex blinked at her. "Why would you think that?"
"I've known some guys who were like that, who only stopped when that happened."
Lex blinked at her again. 'There are other people who feel like-- like they're angry, all the time?"
"Well, yeah. Hell, a lot of them end up in the army. What, you thought you were the only one?"
...Actually, yes. He had.
"How do they fix it?" he asked.
Lois gave him a weird look. "Fix it?"
"It hurts."
Lois sat up and looked at him. "That's..." She frowned, and...
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Lois shook her head. "It's... nothing. Never mind." She tilted her head, tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear, and said, "Do you want me to ask around for you? ...How to 'fix' it?"
"If you wouldn't mind," he said, feeling a little less tense at the notion that perhaps something could be done, after all. He'd fairly given up, after the island.
"Okay, sure."
"Thank you," Lex told her.
She blinked up at him, then gave him a look. "Don't thank me yet; I might not hear anything useful."
"But at least you promised to try," he murmured, tapping Clark on the shoulder and saying his name a few times to wake him.
"We should go find those suites of yours and settle in for the night, I think," Lex said, slowly pushing himself up to stand once Clark had gotten up himself. "Did either of you find anything you liked?" he remembered to ask.
"Clark found a few things," Lois teased.
"Oh?"
Clark shrugged.
"Would you like to get them now, or tomorrow?" Lex asked him -- them -- both?
"Tomorrow," Lois said firmly, with a smile, "We can do a mix-and-match clothing run across stores for what we want to wear for the rest of the day tomorrow starting here first thing."
Clark blushed a little, and he and Lex trailed along behind, following Lois' meanderings down and around the hallways until she refound the lodgings she'd discovered earlier.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Ugh," Lois complained. "I knew I should've booked myself a room when I first saw the place!"
"I can't believe they're renting them so cheaply," Lex said, putting his credit card back in his wallet after signing. She felt kind of unlucky that he'd been 'first' in line before her, and that they hadn't found out until after he'd already purchased. If she'd gone first, she might've been able to talk Clark into staying with her and Lex finding somewhere else -- at which point, Lois could pick his brain at her leisure, without worrying about Luthor censoring him, or whether Clark might be self-censoring what he was telling her.
"My friends did the recommending, I'd damn well hope it'd be in my budget range."
"The lady dormer said it was big enough for three; you don't have to try and find someplace else," Clark said.
"I don't feel comfortable sleeping in the same room as him," Lois said, directing a thumb at Lex.
"But--" Clark frowned in confusion.
"If she won't be able to sleep, she won't be able to sleep, Clark," Lex said, pocketing the room key. "I'm hardly about to try and force her."
"Ok, but why?" Clark demanded as they walked past odd wrought-iron work embedded in painted drywall on the way down the narrow corridor to their room for the night.
"Clark--" Lex tried to cut him off.
"Look, she gave you the list of numbers for the other places, right?" Clark asked her. "At least come inside and call them from here, just in case?"
Lois sighed, but he did kind of have a point -- it would be faster than wandering all over, and she could book on the phone if one of the two or three places in the 'area' worked out. Apparently there were another two floors in the building, a bit different than these.
"If you can't find a place, then you can stay here, and we'll work something out."
"Hey," Lex protested.
"I'll pay you back," Clark said. "You've got the Penthouse nearby; she doesn't."
"Or somebody could be a gentleman and walk me to a cab, and I can find a place on the outside," she said.
When all was said and done, Lois came inside, sat down on a love seat, called around, and wasn't able to get a room.
"I still don't see why--"
"Clark!" she rolled her eyes.
"There's even two beds!" Lex was already sprawled out on the larger one. "I'll sleep next to Lex. Why don't you want to take the other one? It's not like any of us are changing clothes or anything."
"Because Lex is insane and I don't want to worry about waking up with my throat cut or something, ok?!" she said finally, exasperated.
Clark stared at her.
"Lex isn't insane," he said flatly.
"Matter of opinion," she heard the subject in question mutter face-down from the bed.
"Lex!" Clark turned and protested at him.
"I hear that rich insane people are just called 'eccentric' so we all don't go after you with the butter knives," he continued, not even bothering to turn his head to unmuffle his voice.
Clark grumbled incoherently and collapsed into a huge, rose-petal-patterned comfy chair.
"He went to Belle Reeve for a stint and everything, didn't he?" Lois pushed.
Clark's eyes snapped open and his head shot up. "What did you say?!" he demanded.
Lois blinked at him. Lex slowly pushed himself up and looked over at him as well.
"I said--" she started to repeat, unapologetically.
Clark shot to his feet, and Lois stopped talking, realizing that maybe she'd pushed a little too hard.
"Clark!" Lex barked out, and Clark flinched slightly and turned to him.
"It's fine," he told Clark. "Just... let it go."
"It's not fine, she--"
"I already told her everything," Lex said wearily, collapsing back down onto the bed, this time lying on his side.
"Well, then she obviously didn't get it," Clark said peevishly, frowning down at him. "Because she--"
And then Clark came to a screeching halt and rounded on her, eyes wide, and looking almost feral as his lips pulled back from his teeth.
"You're trying to use me as a corroborating witness to turn Lex into a story?!?" His voice went through three octaves on the last word.
Lois flinched at the tonal range shift. "No, I--"
Clark looked irate.
"I just want to know what he was lying about!" Lois said, throwing her hands up then gesturing at the billionaire in question.
Lex sighed from the bed and rolled over, presenting his back to them both.
"I-- you--!" Clark sputtered.
"Oh for god's sake, Clark, just tell her your side of things, or don't," Lex said tiredly.
Clark glanced between Lex, then Lois, then Lex's back again, then threw up his hands and sat down on the side of the bed, saying, "Fine! Short version or long version?"
"How about both, in that order?" Lois asked.
"Fine." Clark said angrily. "Short version: Lionel is a jerk, and I wish he were dead."
Lois practically heard Lex's eyes shoot open from across the room. Lex slowly sat up and turned towards Clark, who was sitting on the edge of the bed and still glaring at Lois, arms crossed and fuming.
"Um..." Lois said.
"Clark..." Lex said, sounding a little strangled.
Clark turned to him, then nearly did a double-take and frowned. "Oh god, you're not still trying to earn his approval?!" he said in tones darkening straight down to pitch black.
"He's my father," Lex said, somewhat noncommitally.
"Well, he sure doesn't act like it."
"Clark, I can't just--!"
"--Yeah, actually, you can," Clark cut in. "If he doesn't treat you like a son, he doesn't deserve to be treated like a father!"
"That's easy for you to say, Clark," Lex said, voice dripping with scorn. "You had Jonathan."
Lois had to blink, because woah kid Luthor -- daddy issues, much? She'd heard envy like that before... from some of the angry guys in the army who'd been in foster care and gotten placed in families that had 'real' kids already -- not adopted -- once or twice. How the hell had he ended up like that as an only child?
"Yeah, it is," Clark said. "Jonathan treated me like a son, and he's my dad. If my so-called biological 'father' walked up to me on the street tomorrow and tried talking at me like he has been, I'd punch him in the face."
Lex stared at Clark in shock. Lois' eyebrows went up -- she knew Clark wasn't normally all that violent, and definitely not aggressive enough to throw the first punch under normal circumstances. Given Clark's repsonse, though, the guy had to be bad news.
"You--" Lex blinked once, twice, then shook himself and ran a hand over his head. "You know who your bio-dad is?" he said faintly. Clark winced away slightly. "Since when?!"
Well, that's a weird tack to take... Why'd he focus on that?
"It's... been a couple years," Clark finally admitted after a long silence, crossing and recrossing his arms. "It's not a great big... thing, or anything, exactly," he muttered.
"Why didn't you ever say anything?" Lex said, eyes wide.
Clark shrugged, shoulders hunched up defensively, and looked away. "He's not a nice guy. I don't like talking about it."
Lois glanced between the two of them.
"What about your bio-mom?" Lex asked, pulling his legs up under him and giving Clark his full attention.
Clark pulled a long face. "Kara knew her before she died. I... I've kind of been afraid to ask, I guess," he said quietly. "I don't really want to know, if it turns out she was anything like him."
Lex slowly sat back, stunned. "Jesus."
"Yeah, well," Clark shifted uncomfortably. "Whatever. Anyway, Lionel doesn't deserve you, for treating you like he does."
Lex blinked hard, and looked like he mentally had to shake that one off. "You know, Lionel likes you," Lex accused.
Oh wow. It gets worse. Lois shuddered.
"Yeah, well, I don't like him, and I don't have to!" Clark said hotly. "And he still keeps hitting on my mom!" he complained, angrily. "If mom didn't tell me she could take care of herself and get all angry that I-- ...well, I swear I'd just-- just--!" And with that pronouncement, Clark let out a low, extremely frustrated, bestial growl, flexing the fingers on both hands slowly like he was tearing into something... or someone.
Lex blinked at him.
"Uh..." Lois said. "Not to... interrupt, but... long version?" ...which was kind of a lie, because she really was trying to interrupt before Clark worked himself up any worse over his mom -- she'd always had a feeling that she was one of his weak points.
Clark turned away from Lex and back to face her, then shifted his shoulders back and forth like he was trying to work the tension out, glanced over his shoulder at Lex again, then sighed in frustration, ran his hands through his hair, turned back to look Lois in the eye, and began again. "Right, fine, whatever. Long version: Lionel murdered his parents, Lex found out, Lex was gonna send Lionel to jail for it, Lionel didn't want to go to jail, Lionel decided to 'solve' this by going with wiping the information out of Lex's brain by whatever means necessary, and he thought it'd be a great idea to try and Stepford Son Lex when he was in Belle Reeve while he was at it."
Lex went white.
"So he went and drugged Lex's scotch at the mansion, and Lex started to flip out because, duh, he was being drugged, and then Lionel pulled some crazy shit like having people with guns break into the mansion by the windows in the library and scare the shit out of Lex making like they were trying to kill him. And then clean almost everything up perfectly so that when Lex told people, and then they saw the room all looking just fine, they'd think he was delusional."
Lex made a quiet choking sound from behind Clark and covered his mouth, still pale as a sheet.
"Almost everything?" Lois asked faintly.
"Yeah. Almost." He hunched his shoulders and pulled his legs up onto the bed, like he was getting comfortable because this was going to take awhile. "When Lex told me, I believed him and went back there looking. I found a shard of stained glass stuck under a piece of furniture that couldn't have come from anyplace else but the window -- Lex doesn't have glass lamps, or anything, and nothing else looked broken. Plus, the shade matched the window colors. So I believed Lex when he said the window broke and all that stuff happened, because Lionel totally could've gotten it fixed that quickly and bought everybody off."
Clark scratched the back of his neck. "Um, I don't know if the second one got hallucinated though; I couldn't find anything there."
"But, yeah, Lex grabbed a gun and ran off after some other stuff happened, and I was kinda starting to have doubts because he'd apparently been seeing this psychiatrist that I hadn't even known about, and..." he glanced back and Lex, then looked away. "And... I shouldn't have doubted him." He bit his lip. "But I figured out that he was being drugged, and I tracked down who was drugging him at the mansion and how, and made him talk, and kind of worked my way back up the chain making people tell me who hired who, following the money trail--"
"You-- what?" Lois half-laughed, because she could hardly believe that.
Clark frowned at her. "What? I can be intimidating."
"You're a teddy bear!" Lois laughed.
"Hey -- I helped you get away from your dad's black-ops chopper-people when he first showed up in Smallville, didn't I? I can take care of myself!" Clark glared at her.
Lois opened her mouth to protest... but then she realized that she hadn't been anywhere near him at the bombed-out house or in the fields, and he would've had to have been able to hold his own, or else he wouldn't have been able to break away and escape along with her -- the General wouldn't have given orders to leave him out of the fighting -- he'd have had his guys grab him if they could, no kid gloves either.
And the General's guys weren't pushovers, either. She frowned at him.
"Anyway, I traced it back, but... it went bad. Lex showed up, we both almost got killed, and I..." He grimaced, then said, "I ended up freaking out and running away. And then Lionel's goons caught up with him and dragged him off to Belle Reeve, where I didn't see him for a month, because every time I went and asked to see him, and they said Lex didn't want to see me, I didn't realize that that was actually code for, 'Lex wants to see you, but Lionel doesn't want anybody seeing how he's making the doctors unnecessarily drug him to screw with his brain, so we're not gonna let you in'."
Lex looked like he was having trouble breathing for a moment.
"And when I finally got to see him..." Clark sighed and pulled his knees up to his chest, hugging them. "If I'd been smart, I wouldn't have gone to see him."
"...What?" Lex said faintly.
Clark turned and looked over his shoulder at him. "I should've just gotten you out right when they started stonewalling me, no waiting. Should've said 'to hell with it,' waited until dark, snuck in, and gotten you out right then. I should've known better, that Lionel would kill that doctor if Chloe and I tried to talk her out of continuing to mess with your head for Lionel. I didn't find out until two hours before the procedure that it'd been rescheduled, and that was Chloe's catch." Clark looked irate.
"And then those meteor freaks jumped me when I tried to get you out, when I should've done that first, when there's still been time, and they beat you up, and dragged me off downstairs... by the time I got back upstairs, it was too late!"
He ducked his head down. "And then you were recovering from the electroshock, and when you finally got out..." Clark looked about to cry. "I... I couldn't tell you, Lex, I... I just... --you wouldn't have believed me, you'd really thought you'd had a psychotic break, and... and you were so unsure and... and fragile and... Lionel was watching you all the time. I... I didn't have any evidence of anything, not the stuff he did to you, not whatever you had had on what he'd done to his parents, none of it. If I'd told you, Lionel would've found out, and you wouldn't have been able to-- everybody thought-- he'd have just sent you back to Belle Reeve on nothing but his say-so and if he did you might not have even fought him on it-- he might've killed you that time!" he cried out.
Lex reached over and pulled Clark to his chest in a sideways hug, and Clark began to sob, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should have-- I'm sorry," over and over again.
Lex closed his eyes and sighed out a breath. He started petting Clark's hair, rocking him, and he ducked his head to bring his mouth down by Clark's ear, whispering to him softly.
Lois watched as Clark slowly began to calm down, and she shifted uneasily on the edge of the loveseat.
...Clark had just corroborated Lex's story, and he'd made it sound even worse than Lex had.
Great. Either they're both insane, or... well, no, Clark's not insane.
But, jesus, the only alternative was that they were both lying, and there was no way Clark would lie about something like this. If he thought this was the truth...
...well, there might be the remotest possibility that Luthor could have screwed with his memories somehow.
But if Chloe says anything like the same thing as the two of them when I talk with her...
Fuck, Lois thought, as she watched Lex comfort Clark, until he slowly fell asleep in Lex's arms.
Eventually, he glanced up at her, still pale, then looked away quickly.
"You looked... surprised..." she said slowly.
"We never really..." Lex said hoarsely.
"...talked about it," Lois said sourly.
"No," Lex said. "Not like this." He looked haunted and hugged Clark a little closer, then stared down at him. "Nothing like this. I..." He looked frustrated. "I told him, once, after Lionel was put away -- though short-lived the accomplishment -- that Chloe had filled me in on the events that I couldn't remember, of when I was sent to Belle Reeve, and the 'why' of it. He... apologized for not breaking me out... but..." Lex slowly shook his head, not looking away from Clark, who he was all but clutching to him by this point.
She watched Lex shiver and pull inward on himself a little. "I never realized to what extent Lionel had... could... play mindgames with me."
"Doubting your own sanity?" she asked, watching him carefully.
Lex grimaced. "I... don't know." Then he seemed to decide something and looked up, staring her straight in the eyes, fully-aware and there like he hadn't completely been since yesterday when he'd been working off some real sleep.
"You want a quote, Lane?" he said intensely. "Here's one for you: I don't just believe in 'strange visitors', I know that there are intelligent homicidal would-be world-conquerors running around on the surface of this planet, and not just of the normal mean terrestrial variety."
"Repeat that to anyone in an attempt to bring about some end to me that might prevent me from doing anything to prevent such a planetary takeover, and I'll kill you myself," he said evenly.
Well, at least that's in character. Lois stared at him. She caught the slight shiver and the way he was stroking his hand through Clark's hair as he said it, though. The guy's a little unnerved. "...You believe in aliens and you don't think you might not be sane?"
"There are some instances that it could have been possible for Lionel to have set up just to screw with me, I will admit," Lex said quietly. "But some of them... there are limits to what the meteor rocks are capable of," he nearly whispered down into Clark's hair. "There are events that are explainable in no other way, that are absolutely beyond current human technological capabilities." He clenched his jaw, then glanced back up at her. "What do you know about Dark Thursday?"
"There was some kind of computer virus that took out the entire planetary power grid."
Lex frowned, and looked about to say something, but then paused a moment instead. "And the attack on the Pentagon that day?" he asked her carefully.
"What about it?" she said, her eyes narrowing.
Lex sighed. "Ask the General about the Department of Domestic Security and Project Starhawk sometime," he said, dropping his eyes.
"The-- wait, those kooks?" Lois' eyebrows went up.
"You've heard of them?" Lex asked, glancing up at her.
Lois frowned. "Yeah, I've heard about them. So you've got some alien-chaser friends, big whoop. They're just crazy, too." She rolled her eyes. "Next you're gonna be telling me you believe in remote viewing and ESP."
Lex looked tired and halfway to offended. "They aren't my 'friends' -- far from it. But as for the rest..." He gave her a small, wry, quirky smile. "Ask Chloe to talk to you about Lana and one late Deputy Watts, and De Kretser syndrome, sometime." Then he glanced down at Clark, and began to lay him out carefully on the bed. "And one Ryan James, when Clark isn't around to be upset at the memory of his death." He gently ran a hand through Clark's hair once he'd settled him, and glanced up at her when he was done. "Some of those cases didn't even involve meteor rocks, if you can believe it," he smirked, though it looked like his heart wasn't really in it.
Lois glared at him. "There are still a lot of projects on the books that are stupid and never going to get anywhere."
"Unless you can think of a way that my father could manage to create visible, intangible, ghost-like beings that can inhabit human beings, possess and take control of their bodies, 'gift' them with inhuman speed, strength, and hovering flight, strengthen their skin to invulnerability against bullets, and then leave no trace of those abilities behind once that person is done being used by them..." he shook his head and rolled his eyes ceilingwards. "Or manage to fake all of those properties in real life outside of a controlled setting..." Lex snorted. "I'm going with aliens, given that I've actually seen or otherwise heard of spaceships in the vicinity at the time of occurrence for many of those instances, thank you."
You think that you've seen something like that and believe you weren't hallucinating?
But Lois kept that to herself. This was shaping up to be like some of her old 'assigned' stories for the Inquisitor. She'd 'interviewed' (talked to) loonies and liars and nervous wrecks alike. The former loved talking when they had a friendly ear -- they were after converts -- the problem was more gently keeping them on-topic and not rambling too far afield. Too much pressure or any imagined persecution would set them off. The liars, on the other hand, were smooth talkers, who wouldn't let a body off-topic and had an answer for everything, with a hungry glint in their eye.
The nervous ones were an entirely different story -- poor bastards on the edge of slipping down the long insanity slide, who had seen something but for whatever reason weren't going with the saner explanations for things. They tended to be very defensive and all over the place -- they were generally smart enough to realize that what they thought was off, and could generally tell when people didn't believe them, and would sometimes get very paranoid if someone who wasn't a 'believer' listened too nonjudgmentally for too long -- and rightfully so, because they were a step away from the loony bin if the wrong person heard them going off and let the men in the nice white suits know. They were nervous about talking, but still wanted to desperately. If anything, they wanted to even more badly than the loonies. They wanted to vent the stress they were feeling; they wanted it out of their heads, if only for a little while. They wanted someone to tell them that they weren't crazy, and that everything was going to be all right. The main difference was that they tended to relax and let a lot more slip if she managed to help them feel a little less crazy than they were afraid they were.
Luthor might be a liar, but Lois had a gut feeling that he actually really believed the vast majority of what he was saying, which was a little scary. However, he acted like a weird mixture of loonie and nervous-wreck combined. Lois figured that the trick with him was to be not too judgmental, but still jabbing and poking at his 'theories' somewhat, enough to keep him from getting suspicious about continuing to talk -- just not so hard that he clammed up and shut down.
Leading questions, but not too leading, because he's used to dealing with reporters, and I don't want him jumping back to Evil Suit mode. I guess I'll just have to play Little-Miss-'oh, I'm not a horribly-unfriendly ear who's gonna bite your head off, I promise to listen... are you going to tell me what you believe? you might even convince me...'
So what Lois said in response to Lex's description of his hallucinated enemy-of-choice was merely a flat: "...You believe in alien ghosts. On earth."
Lex sighed heavily. "No, I believe that what I -- and others in my employ -- have had the most difficulty in chasing down and capturing is a type of alien being that can best be described as a ghost-like entity when moving outside of a host body." Lex began massaging his temples. "There have been many more of them that have been perfectly solid while running around mass-murdering people, thank you."
Lois couldn't help but bark out a short laugh. "You... you've been trying to ghostbust aliens? Alienbust?"
Lex frowned at her. "No. Not in person; not much. I don't have the time to do it all myself; I've had to delegate quite a bit because I need to keep LuthorCorp running," he said, perfectly serious.
The grin slipped off of Lois' face and she stared at him. It was no longer funny.
"You're actually running around killing off--"
Lex grimaced and waved a hand. "I have people dedicated to tracking down current threats and... well, outright strangeness. I have others who I can send into the field to deal with them when they are of the mass-murdering variety. I have far more of the former than the latter." He rubbed at his eyes. "There's a great deal of satellite coverage and security footage to search when you're trying to find past and present events, let alone trace the possible connections between them."
"Ok, so. Just to be clear," Lois said slowly. "What you're telling me is that you have a worldwide spy network, your own personal cadre of wetwork agents in the field, and have been trying to create your own small army corps of superpowered soldiers, and you don't think this is going to make people nervous?"
Lex frowned at her. "It's not a spy network; I'm not trying to steal the secrets of any government or foreign nation." His eyes narrowed. "And I'm not trying to run my own assassination business, either. It's just surveillance and eyes on the ground to track strange circumstances and inexplicable events, and try to corral the worst offenders -- that's all."
"Come on, that's just... semantics -- it totally is! --All this crap you've been doing? It's right out of the supervillain's handbook for Steps On The Way To Overthrowing Your Government And Taking Over The World, Part 1!"
"Oh for god's sake, Lane! --I work with your father! Do you really think the General would let me do anything like that if he knew about it?"
"Does he?"
"Of course he does! I've asked for his input at many stages!"
Lois' mouth dropped. "You're fucking kidding me."
"I assure you, I am not."
"So what, you've actually had this conversation with him? He knows the whole stretch, and about all the --the 'alien stuff', too?"
Lex winced.
"Yeah, I didn't think so," Lois said matter-of-factly, crossing her arms. No way would the General believe in aliens. No way. I mean, really.
"Just because I haven't necessarily discussed the entire big picture and endgame with him, does not mean he does not approve of my methods and the internal checks and regulations against abuse of power I have put in place, or that he does not trust that I would not--"
"You've been sending people places to kill other people," she cut in. Because you feel like it, and because you can. What the hell happened to the police? The law? But she couldn't say that right now because that'd start an argument over vigilante justice and get off track -- his failings.
"Capture, mainly, if possible, but I don't want my people unnecessarily risking their lives when they're up against homicidal psychotic freaks of nature, either."
"Uh huh. And how many times have you actually pulled off a capture-not-kill?"
"Very few," he said acidly, almost angrily -- and sounding a little unhappy about it, though that was weird. "Most often because the targets in question either disappear and pop up elsewhere, surface as corpses before they can be subdued with nonlethal force, or murder my own people," he gritted out. "I shudder to think what would happen if any of the local authorities ever tried to deal with them on their own. We're woefully unprepared as a species to handle these threats, currently."
Lois frowned at him, because he sounded like he was contradicting himself. "If they're such a threat, who's killing these people off, then?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "I can guess that some of it is territorialism between the aliens, but it looks like there are at least a few unknown agents out there actively hunting down these things," his mouth twisted downwards, "Possibly for sport."
"Besides you."
"I've mainly been tracking them, and I'm not doing it for 'fun' -- it's a necessary thing," he repeated, irritated. "I try to only send in my people when it becomes apparent that the indigent population is wholly incapable of dealing with them in any capacity or are otherwise unable to drive them off on their own."
Lois wasn't sure whether to feel somewhat relieved that his approach wasn't 'shoot immediately, ask questions never' with freaky-humans or his so-called 'aliens' -- assuming he wasn't lying, anyway -- or annoyed that he was deliberately holding off jumping in to help when he saw a problem until the bodycount left in the wake of whatever lunatic mass-murderer-of-the-week he was tracking was heaped high enough to pass a certain threshhold. ...God, this was giving her a headache. "--And what about the ones you find that aren't all homicidal and everything?"
"There are very few of those, but I only have them tracked and watched. No contact of any sort. I'd rather not risk their feeling threatened and lashing out when they seem perfectly happy remaining non-hostile," he said. "Whether the tendency to 'live and let live' and just get along is uncommon in those other species or human-variants, or whether it's simply that much harder to find the anomalies when they aren't lighting up the region with strings of murder reports, is a question I'll leave to the theorists."
"Great. You've got your own little worldwide 'spy-police' setup, then," she said sarcastically. "You must be so proud." And I don't even want to think about how many laws that might be breaking... assuming you aren't bribing the regional politicians for amnesty, or to just look the other way. Stupid international politics. "How do you even get away with this with the locals?"
"Surprising as it may seem, when a village in a third-world country finds itself fighting off things that go bump in the night, or monsters unafraid to show themselves in the full light of day, they tend not to be too picky when a group of well-armed well-meaning individuals show up, look around, and ask if they would like some help," Lex said with a raised eyebrow. "Particularly when said group of individuals acts professionally and with courtesy, does not rape and pillage the locals, chases off only the source of their misfortune, and then leaves without demanding money, getting all preachy, or trying to force some regional change of one type or another."
"And what about the first-world countries, like, oh, I don't know --here?" Lois glowered. "You don't expect me to believe that the FBI and police just stand aside and let you do your thing."
Lex pulled a face, looking ill-at-ease. "Granted, it is more difficult to keep things quiet in cultures like ours where nearly everyone is a half-minute away from a Youtube upload of shaky video from a cameraphone. But most people outside of Smallville don't know that monsters or ghost-like beings actually exist. Oftentimes the police in those areas will simply assume whoever's on the end of the line is drunk or high, take the incident reports, file them, and forget them.... until they find the dead or mutilated bodies once it's too late. When groups of people start giving the same stories, is the point at which they start struggling and straining to fit it to a 'better' explanation, like mass hysteria, or poisonous mushrooms in the food that caused hallucinations, or gas line leaks."
He waved a hand. "I won't go into details of how I have my people work it out, because I'd rather you not find corroborating circumstantial evidence of what I've been doing. Sufice it to say that the most difficulty I find in those situations is, believe it or not, in making sure that those involved don't end up believing wrongful accusations that the help I am willing to provide is part of a cover up for some failed LuthorCorp project."
He glanced away. "Though I suppose it if came to it, it would be better for me to be accused of having created those monsters in a terrestrial fashion, rather than people discovering the truth. I'd like to try to avoid a mass panic in the general populace; I don't think anyone is ready for the idea of aliens among us, especially unfriendly humanoid ones that may sometimes be hard to distinguish from said general populace, that apparently also sometimes enjoy eating people."
He looked at her dead-on. "These things might be tough to track and even tougher to kill, but the real damage I'm worried about from these lesser aliens is the possibility of societal collapse. It's one thing to feel unsafe but have a clear enemy that is easy to spot. It's another to be looking at the people at your left and right, and wondering if they're one of the enemy, and being unable to tell."
"Psychological warfare," Lois said with a shiver. Take every bad alien movie in space, toss them onto an Earth's-surface backdrop, mix and stir and shake...
"Yes," Lex said grimly.
She was glad she knew he was out of his skull, because she'd probably be having nightmares otherwise.
...It made her wonder if he had nightmares about this stuff.
"So, really? You've never had any problems with any of the locals at all?" she said, looking at his askance.
"Ah, well." He coughed once, sounding a little embarrassed. "There was this one time in London."
"Oh?"
"Mm. Well, long-story-short..." he paused and ran a hand over his head. "My people heard rumors in London of a group of... worshippers, for lack of a better term, who were apparently really excited about having gotten their own 'in the flesh' visitation." He grimaced. "I was worried what might happen if an alien got some sort of cult following and gained a foothold in the region and, well... ah, it turns out it wasn't an alien..." He looked a little embarrassed.
"No?" Lois bit back a smile. "What was it?" she asked, expecting a funny story about gnarly root vegetables or a demonic face on a piece of toast or something.
"Well," he sounded a little strained. "Apparently, ah.... apparently demons actually do exist."
Lois blinked at him.
"I know," he said, throwing up his hands and looking almost pained. "Not only is magic real, but apparently it's not just a random, isolated thing lost to the mists of time and history. ...We actually, uh, got in a little bit of a scuffle with a few of the local practitioners who were there to shut down the worshippers and clean up the mess who, ah," he cleared his throat, "who weren't all that pleased to find a bunch of neophytes running around trying to deal with handling what they considered to be a situation that was effectively their job to suppress."
"You're shitting me."
Lex winced and shook his head. "I was a little horrified at the time--"
"You were there?"
"Well, given the possible far-reaching social consequences of the presence of a resident 'alien god' in a first-world country, it was what I considered a major incident, so yes," Lex explained. "But, well, it sort of worked out for the best. They effectively kicked us out citing 'unwanted, unwelcome, and unnecessary meddling in the area', but before they did, I was at least able to manage talking them into giving us enough information to help my people distinguish between the magical, mystical events and threats and everything else." He gave her a weak smile. "Mostly by a rather roundabout way of blackmail, promising to try to stay out of their way if they gave it to us, and implying somewhat the opposite if they didn't."
"Right." Lois gave him a look. "And there's a difference between demons and aliens."
"Well, yes." He got a bit of a faraway look. "Demons apparently travel here from completely different planes of existence. Those planes are connected to the earth, in a matter-of-speaking. Aliens, on the other hand, come from different planets in the same plane."
"What, like fairies and elves?" Lois snorted.
Lex blinked at her.
"What? When people think 'magic'..."
"...I will admit that at the time I was not thinking of pixie dust and butterfly wings. The creature we encountered was very much not... that," Lex said. Then he frowned. "You bring up a good point, though," he said, tapping his lips absently. "English folklore does refer to such creatures living 'under the hill' and a hierarchy of faerie courts. ...I wonder if that other realm is really just a portion of land on another plane of existence, and them another type of intelligent demon with an actual governing body. Hm." He looked pensive.
"Any of these 'magic guys' sign on to help you out with your 'alien problem'?" Lois couldn't help but to ask, feeling almost amused.
"Hm?" Lex said, refocusing on her from whatever he'd been thinking about. "Ah, no," he sighed, sounding a little disheartened. "They seemed rather uninterested in associating with a non-magic-user in a leadership role, let alone helping one out, and when I broached the topic of other threats, they seemed throughly disinclined to get involved in any way with 'normal' events that involved the uninitiated. I tried to broach the subject by asking if certain 'mythical' artifacts and species existed, to see what they would say, and they all laughed when I brought up aliens. I didn't press the matter further, because I didn't really think they'd believe me."
He paused a moment before adding, "Though I think I've begun to rebuild a few bridges, at least, as when we receive intelligence on those events we've identified as 'their problem', I've sent that data along to them for their edification. ...I still haven't managed to convince anyone to send along much practical knowledge on magic yet from their end, just the odd tidbit of information here and there, but I remain hopeful. The bits about salt and iron have been pretty damn effective so far. I've love to get my hands on a few tomes on magical history and theory." His hands seemed to be itching again.
"I thought you just said you were staying out of 'magical' things," Lois frowned.
"In England," Lex said. "--well, and most of the Isles. I've managed to poke a few of them into giving me regional contact information for a few other countries and continents, to pass along threat intel as well, but North America apparently has very few magically-inclined human beings, for whatever reason. The closest we have here are a scattering of native american shaman and one or two witches, apparently, and most of them are either currently in-training, or more spiritually inclined and not really of the fighting-sort. I've had to more-or-less take responsibility for the region in that regard."
"Great..." Lois muttered.
Lex shrugged. "I suppose it explains why Isobel got as far as she did -- Lana left France rather quickly after being possessed by her, before anyone could catch up to her, and the European types generally don't seem to care about magical problems once they leave their region. ...On the other hand, I had to work through a few rather disturbing conversations with the Chinese about her visit to Shanghai a few years back. They feel rather the opposite about that sort of thing -- they have more 'open' borders, but would rather blame the regions themselves when bad influences cross the borders; they expect others to solve their problems internally, as they do in turn." He winced.
Lois stared at him, then frowned and said, "You actually believe in magic?"
Lex frowned right back. "Didn't Chloe and Clark fill you in on how you were possessed by one of Isobel's coven that Halloween night three years ago?"
"What?" Lois frowned. "I thought that was a joke!"
"It's no joke," Lex said. "Lana was possessed for nearly a year. Nearly every time Isobel surfaced, someone was killed."
Lois stared at him, then shook her head.
"Just ask Clark to fill you in," Lex said tiredly. "He was more involved in the whole mess than Chloe was."
"What, I can't ask Lana?"
Lex sighed and rubbed at his eyes. "Lana's disinclined to talk about it in the first place, and secondly, she had blackouts when Isobel took control of her body -- she doesn't remember any of the time when Isobel was possessing her. Besides, if you ask Lana without a good reason for wanting to know otehr than curiosity, she'll know that you're asking because I brought it up and she'll just lie out of pure spite."
...Well, considering their fight the day before, he probably did have a point there. "So, what, you're really telling me that you think Lana was possessed by an alien space ghost witch?"
"No," Lex frowned, "Just a human ghost witch." Then he blinked. "Oh god, I hope there aren't any aliens that know magic. Just dealing with their innate abilities and advanced tech is bad enough," he said sounding horrified.
Lois rolled her eyes. "Maybe they'd just go one way or the other? Science or magic?"
"God, I hope so," Lex said, rubbing his forehead.
"Uh huh," Lois said, eyeing him. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry, at how completely seriously he was taking everything. Magic and aliens. Pfft. --What's next, Bigfoot? God, I'd probably end up with a lecture on evolutionary splits and who knows what else.
"So, what do you tell all these people who are working for you to get them to track down magic and aliens and crap?" Because, really, who would respond to that want ad, besides the really tinfoil hat kooks?
"I tell them the truth -- that we're searching for and cataloguing all possible terrestrial and extraterrestrial threats on earth."
"And they go for that?"
"Well, yes." Lex grimaced slightly. "...It's a bit odd actually. The new science and tech staff tend to start out huge skeptics, but by the time they're done looking over the sighting reports and the evidence... It's like watching a switch flip over in their brains. Some of them get rather fanatical about it all." He looked a little put-off. "I've had to put in place disconnects between some of the sections simply because I've started to become worried that if they talked to each other directly, they might decide to... well, mutiny and start running ops behind my back. I don't want the threat network getting away from me -- especially not the response teams."
"Mutiny?"
"...Sometimes I feel like the only conservative voice of reason and caution in the room when I'm directing things," he said sourly. "I've had to stop asking for opinions from the staff -- just opinion papers included the daily briefings -- because I'd start having to get into yelling matches during on-site meetings about how, no, doing the sorts of things that were being 'strongly suggested' would be too proactive and going too far." He started massaging his temples. "I can't lose control of that section. I need the intel, and I can't have a witch hunt. Alien hunt. Whatever," he muttered. "It'd be a bloodbath, one way or another."
Woah. Luthor has converts? Zealous converts? ...He has to be making all this up, right?
"But Lana said you have no evidence," Lois said, frowning, because if he really expected her to go down the rabbithole with him...
Well, ok -- she had been the one who had originally picked the suggested venue, and it was probably coincidence that the only open hotel room remaining looked like someone had decked it out with furniture out of a Lewis Carroll novel...
Lex looked irritated in the extreme, though, and he slipped off the side of the bed to pace, before abruptly sitting down at the edge of the loveseat farthest away from her, rubbing his arms surreptitiously, and seeming a little... nervous, almost.
Oh, for god's sake. I am dealing with a lunatic. Why am I surprised? "You really don't have any evidence," Lois said flatly. Then what did he supposedly show these people he says he's got working for him?
"I used to," he grumbled sideways at her. He dug the base of his palms into his eyes. "I... I don't have anything conclusive now. I had artifacts which I had tracked down at great personal expense, stolen. Records, wiped. Even lab analysis reports have gone inexplicably 'missing'." He held his hands over his face. "Not that paper records could serve as conclusive evidence, given how easily such might be written, changed, or otherwise faked, without the original test material to back up any claims."
He ground his teeth together. "I had the Black Ship that came down during the second meteor shower. --And no, I cannot claim after the fact that I know for certain that it was of alien origin, I can think of ways that that might have been faked, in retrospect. But it would have taken a tremendous amount of time and resources to do so."
"Which Lionel has."
"Yes," he gritted out, and Lois suddenly saw the problem.
"You're not even sure if half your evidence from before is half-baked, because he's taken screwing with your perception of reality to an art form before," --with the library thing. "You don't know if he might've been doing it again with some of this."
Lex grimaced and dropped his hands, stared down at the floor in front of him. "Yes," he said quietly. "I hadn't even considered the possibility before, but after what Clark just said..." He glanced up at Clark's prone, slumbering form, and looked pained and worried.
Lois blew out a breath. This is weird. The loonies never second-guessed themselves, and the nervous wrecks... well, they sometimes admitted to the possibility of being wrong, but they sure as hell never talked about what 'facts' they might be reassessing. They pretty much always focused on their 'truth' and shied away from everything else as 'too unexplainable' or 'possibly a cover up because of X' or 'not having reviewed the data themselves' or what-have-you.
Wow. "Ok," Lois said, mind racing, "How do you think this black ship could've been faked?" ...Had Lionel really done that? --What reason would Lionel have for something like that? Could this be some mixture of Lionel trying to drive Lex insane, and Lex being delusional enough to fill in the rest? Could he be having some kind of paranoid schitzophrenic visual and tactile hallucinations? ...It is possible that this is leftover from Belle Reeve -- or maybe because of the unnecessary shock treatment, if I believe the two of them?
"Might have been faked, not 'could'. I don't know how for certain," Lex sighed out, leaning back on the seat. He rubbed at his forehead, still not looking at her. "The lab reports I got back said that the substance the Ship was constructed from was of similar composition to the meteor rock. --The crystalline portions of it, not the surrounding ferrous ore. Lionel has been working with and mining the material for more than a decade, nearly two. There are other veins of the crystalline metal with differing coloring than green, such as red. Black can be made by heating green at very high temperatures." He sighed. "It might be possible to somehow work the raw material -- or one specific form of it that I may not be aware of as yet -- in such a way to produce a nearly frictionless surface of that coloration, with those properties."
"And that also kinda assumes that somebody hasn't been fucking with the lab reports, either."
"Yes." Lex agreed, running a hand over his head. "But I saw the Ship when it was outside of the warehouse where I was storing it, as well as in, and all the way in-between. It floated." He turned his head and looked at her. "If there was some way to have set up magnets... that could be faked, but not over that much distance, varying terrain, instrumentation..." He shook his head. "At the very least, my watch would have reacted to an EM field strong enough to float something that large and solid, with that much inertia, and I never noticed a constant field like that -- and believe me, I was paying attention."
"Not a constant field," Lois repeated, "But there was a field?" she picked up on.
"Sometimes," Lex said. "It was giving off odd signal-like waves that disrupted the security equipment the day it vanished from the warehouse I had had it stored and studied in. --And the surface was frictionless," he added. "Or very nearly so. That didn't need complex machinery to feel or test." He sighed again. "But the meteor rock is so strange... I suppose I can't dismiss the possibility that they might actually have such properties that might allow for a frictionless surface... or floating."
"What about the inside?"
"It... may not have an inside if it really was a fake; all I have are verbal reports to the contrary. It was closed when I got to the site. I couldn't get it open." He seemed to stifle a groan and his fingers twitched like they were itching to grasp something he couldn't reach.
How convenient. Lois frowned a little at him. "So, you're not sure."
"No." Lex glanced her, then away. "Not anymore."
"What about the... falling out of the sky part?" she couldn't help but ask, curious how he'd explain that one away, if he could, since the claim he was making was that he'd thought he'd actually gathered up something that had supposedly came from outer space.
"I did have it pulled out of a crater, but there are many materials and forms that are strong enough to, say, survive a drop from an airplane at high altitude," he said, waving it off. "And there are ways to 'bundle' a person up such that they could survive a fall in such a structure, even if they had a human-like frailty," he shook his head. "Not that those two did."
"Those two?"
He turned his head to look at her, rubbing his temple. "I ran into them briefly; I believe you did as well. Lana mentioned that she distracted them and pulled their attention away from you, tricking them into following her to the mansion." The latter was more of a question.
"Uh, she tricked a pair of pretty damn strong Ren Fair rejects who hurt Mr. Kent into dropping me and leaving, yeah," Lois frowned, absently rubbing her throat. "I mean, yeah, they looked and acted like a couple of space cases, asking about a Cal L., and yeah, they had superpowers, but..."
"They didn't look, dress, or speak in an outright alien manner. They even knew English. It isn't anything like conclusive evidence," Lex ended for her.
"Well, yeah." She was pretty impressed by the fact that he seemed to be doing a pretty good job of trying to be all logical about it, even though the idea of aliens on earth was completely insane and that was what he was going with.
"I know," he said, gesturing with his hands upwards and sounding aggrieved. He collapsed backwards farther into the soft cushioned back of the loveseat with a soft huff.
"...I think I'm starting to see why you might be so angry all the damn time," Lois said, watching him.
Lex let out a soft, pained laugh.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Next piece of part 3 is here.