SV Fic: "Still Two Fools" 3/9 (NC-17) - Clark/Lex, Mercy
Title: "Still Two Fools" 3/9 
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark/Lex, Mercy
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2,572, for this chapter
Spoilers/Warnings: Future fic, although some vague spoilers for S6.
Summary: Clark and Mercy team up to save Lex from his real arch-nemesis: marriage.
Still Two Fools
by Kantayra
Chapter Three
“You killed my robots.”
Lex always sounded so hurt when Clark destroyed his evil instruments of death that Clark felt the strange impulse to apologize. He repressed it, just like he repressed pretty much every strange impulse he had around Lex. And there were a lot of those.
“They were trying to kill me,” Clark insisted defensively, hovering several feet in the air over the rooftop garden of LexCorp Towers.
He’d dropped Mercy off only moments before, and now she was cradling her Evil Kryptonite Laser in her hands, looking around anxiously for Soon-To-Be Evil Wife #9.
“Mercy,” Lex’s voice sounded thoroughly pissed off, “I thought I gave you the day off.”
“Your mind has been taken over by nefarious powers beyond your control, sir,” Mercy informed him matter-of-factly, eyes surveying all the garden shrubs with a wary hunter’s eye.
Lex took that in stride, like this was an everyday conversation for the two of them. Knowing Lex and Mercy, it probably was. “You should know better than anyone the expense of producing free-range drones. And the factory will be backed up for the next three months with…er…” He cut off suddenly when he realized that Clark was listening.
“Yes, Boss,” Mercy agreed. “It was absolutely necessary in your defense.”
“I deployed those drones.”
“Your judgment has been compromised.” Mercy’s gun scanned the greenery coolly. “Where’s Vivian?”
“She’s asleep,” Lex answered, hands sunk casually into the pockets of his silk pajama pants. How Lex managed to look cool wearing purple pajamas and slippers was beyond Clark, but that was Lex.
“Excellent.” Mercy nodded to Clark. “I’ve got the Kryptonite. I take it you still have the restraints?”
Clark dangled the nth metal handcuffs from one finger. During his and Mercy's brainstorming session earlier, they'd concluded that nth was the material capable of holding the widest variety of crazed Lex-marrying sociopaths. Personally, Clark had his money on vampire. Lex hadn’t actually married a vampire yet, so the odds were good that he was due.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mercy,” Lex said in that infuriatingly calm voice, “Clark.” He rocked lazily back on his heels, and his gaze turned fully back to Clark.
“Who’s Clark?” Clark offered nervously. “It’s me, Superman.”
Mercy gave him a disgusted look.
“I’m in costume now!” he insisted defiantly.
Now Lex was looking at him like he was a complete idiot, too.
“I’m not Clark…” he protested weakly.
“He’s been doing this all evening, Boss,” Mercy commented.
“My condolences,” Lex sighed.
“Hey!” Clark glared at Mercy. “You’re supposed to be on my side!”
“No,” she corrected him, “I’m still on Lex’s side. I’ve just recruited you for the time being.”
Clark was starting to develop a headache. It was the natural result of being around Lex for more than two minutes at a time.
“You know, I was considering asking you to be my best man again,” Lex commented thoughtfully.
“That was Clark Kent, not me!”
“…But given the fact that you’ve already ducked out on me three times…”
“That time with Helen was an emergency,” Clark insisted. The times with Wife #7 and 8 had been intentional, however. Because, by that time, Clark had concluded that it was just hypocritical to be the best man at the wedding of his arch-nemesis and whatever crazed psychopath wanted to bring at end to The World As We Know It this time. After all, the only reason Clark had even attended Lex weddings four through six had been the convenience of thwarting Lex’s wives on the spot.
“…And then you destroyed all my robots…”
“I always do that,” Clark reminded him. “Your evil robots? Kind of suck.”
Lex’s eyes narrowed, and Clark realized belatedly that he’d really stepped in it this time. Lex was surprisingly sensitive about his evil robots. “That’s it. You’re off the guest list.”
Given that Clark had been Lex’s arch-nemesis for years and years now, that wasn’t entirely unreasonable. Still, it would make things a lot more difficult. Clark straightened his posture to full Superman Mode and crossed his arms over his chest in an authoritative way. “We’re here to prevent you from making the biggest mistake of your life.” His voice boomed and echoed nicely through the neat little Japanese garden. “Er…for the ninth time.” Okay, so that last part made him sound kind of wishy-washy. But, in all fairness, it had taken him a while to figure out the pattern: anyone who married Lex was an automatic sociopath.
Lex affected a cool, disinterested expression. It was the one he always wore in courtrooms when he knew that, once again, plausible deniability was on his side. “In less than two minutes,” he informed them, his voice like ice, “another eighty drones will converge upon this location.”
Mercy looked nervous at that. “Sir, I don’t know how, but Vivian’s controlling you. If you’ll just let me run the Scenario 91 protocols…”
Clark had no clue what Scenario 91 protocols were, but he had his own methods. The best thing about situations where Lex was compromised was that they gave him a legitimate excuse to x-ray Lex from head to toe, with some noteworthy stops in between. Clark did a quick scan of Lex’s skeleton before checking out what was just beneath his clothes. After all, parasitic, mind-controlling organisms were often visible on the skin’s surface. To Clark’s knowledge, they weren’t often visible anywhere near the general vicinity of the subject’s ass, but it never hurt to be thorough in his investigation…
“…And stop x-raying me, Kal-El!” Lex snapped.
Clark felt his cheeks flush, and his vision instantly returned to normal. He had no idea how Lex could tell when he was doing that, but Lex always could.
Mercy gave Clark a knowing little smile, before hopefully quirking one eyebrow.
“No parasites,” Clark sighed dejectedly.
Mercy’s expression turned dour.
“As you can see,” Lex commented smoothly, running his hands down the front of his pajama top as if Clark’s intent surveillance had rumpled the fine silk, “I’m perfectly in my right mind.”
“You did promise that you would never get married again,” Clark reminded him. “About five wives ago, in fact.”
“Well, then, I obviously didn’t mean it,” Lex concluded.
“Four of those were evil and had taken over your brain.”
“This time must be the charm, then.” Lex sounded perfectly reasonable, but Clark caught a glimmer of blue-white iridescence in Lex’s eye. Glowing eyes meant only one thing, he’d learned: evil possession.
“Proper protocol,” Mercy insisted, “demands that you be physically separated from your fiancée for a duration of two weeks, to make sure any potential mind-control is dispelled.”
“Two weeks is out of the question,” Lex insisted. “I’ve already called my father to inform him that he’s not invited to the wedding. If I don’t act quickly, he’ll find a way to get past security and show up.”
Clark gulped. If Lex had already uninvited Lionel, they had to hurry. Normal, non-mind-controlled Lex always put off that onerous task until the last minute. “What do we do?” he hissed to Mercy, in what was a thoroughly doomed effort to keep Lex from hearing them.
“We?” she repeated in disbelief. “You’re the one who’s supposed to talk some sense into him.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Clark asked, baffled.
Mercy glared at him like the answer should be the most obvious thing in the universe. Lex’s eyes turned to him too, as if Lex had some inkling of what Mercy might have been thinking. Clark was at a complete and utter loss.
“We could always knock him out, and I could drag him back to the Fortress of Solitude. Let the AI fix whatever’s wrong with him,” Clark suggested hopefully.
He felt the faint burn of Kryptonite radiation at his back and turned to see that Mercy had her Evil Laser pointed right at him. “You’re not taking him anywhere near that place,” she hissed. “I’m not letting anyone control his mind, especially that brainwashing computer of yours.”
Oh, right. Mercy was Lex’s bodyguard still, wasn’t she? He probably shouldn’t have told her about that plan, then. And now the damage was done…
It occurred to Clark, not for the first time, that this would work a lot better if his only ally in this debacle was actually on his side.
They stood at a standstill for a moment, Mercy pointing her laser about menacingly, Clark debating how to get out of there without being shot, and Lex looking supremely confident about the whole affair. And then, to make matters worse, the subject of their debate arrived on scene.
“Lex?” an eerily haunting voice cooed.
Clark caught his first glimpse of Soon-To-Be Evil Wife #9. She was petite, pretty, and blonde. That last one caused him to do a double-take. Because, yeah, if Lex was engaged to a blonde, clearly the world was ending. Lex didn’t do blonde; it was like a law of physics or something.
“Vivian.” Lex held out one arm, and the blonde instantly curled up against his side, looking about anxiously.
“What’s happening?” Vivian, it seemed, had simpering down to an art form.
Mercy’s eyes narrowed. “Step away from my boss,” she ordered, laser pointed in Vivian’s direction menacingly.
“Lex?” Vivian simpered some more.
Clark felt the sudden, irrational urge to strangle her. Lex did not need some helpless little child to hang off of him; he needed someone strong, independent, able to match his own power and keep him in check. Lex needed an equal, and this woman certainly wasn’t it.
“Drop the gun, Mercy,” Lex ordered.
Mercy twitched slightly, like it was causing her deep psychological damage not to obey Lex’s every insane whim. “I’m sorry, sir.” Clark was almost proud of how strong she sounded.
“I-I know you don’t like me,” Vivian continued to cling to Lex’s chest like she’d gotten talons into him and was never letting him go, “but don’t you want Lex to be happy?” She fluttered long, dark eyelashes up and down over huge, baby-blue eyes.
Mercy snorted in distaste.
Clark, however, fought back a tear, suddenly overcome with emotion. “Mercy…” he practically pleaded. Because it was so true, he realized. Lex was all alone in the world, and Lex deserved to be loved so much. Anyone who really loved Lex would let him go, let him finally be happy and…
“Kal-El!” Mercy slapped him across the face. It didn’t hurt, but then Mercy swore and cradled her hand, and Clark’s knee-jerk concern that he’d accidentally hurt someone took over.
“Huh?” He blinked. He finally noticed then that wide blue eyes had focused on him in an unnerving way that made it look like Vivian was trying to look right through him.
“Stop being so damn susceptible!” Mercy snapped angrily, still clutching her hand.
“The two of you,” Lex consulted his watch - and only Lex would wear a ten-thousand dollar watch to bed, “have exactly forty-two seconds before the back-up drones arrive.”
“We’re not leaving without you, Boss,” Mercy insisted stubbornly.
“Please,” Vivian cooed, blue eyes beseeching Clark once more. He had the strangest sensation that her eyes were pulling him in, drowning him, until he couldn’t think or feel anything else. “If you really love him, you have to let him go…”
For one perfect moment, Clark and Lex’s eyes met, and Clark saw something deep and vulnerable in Lex, like Clark’s decision right then mattered more than anything else in the world.
“No way in-” Mercy began.
Clark snatched her up and had flown them back to his apartment by the time she got out:
“-Hell!”
***
“You.”
Clark fell to the ground behind the refrigerator, covering the back of his neck with his hands in the duck-and-cover position.
“Are.”
The Evil Kryptonite Laser sliced through his kitchen cabinets, sending a wave of nausea through him, and he barely had time to scramble for the door to the bedroom.
“An.”
There was a loud smashing sound from the living room. Glass tinkled, and then there was a second smash, and everything was perfectly quiet for a moment.
“Idiot!”
Another round of smashing began and then, just as quickly, settled down.
Clark dared to peer around the corner of his bedroom doorway, keeping low to the ground in case the Evil Kryptonite Laser was still in play. The kitchen was clear. From the living room, he could hear a pulse slowing down from a sudden influx of frustrated adrenaline. He risked getting to his feet, crossing the kitchen, and looking warily into the living room.
“Mercy?”
Mercy had slid to the floor against the far wall, her semi-automatic resting limply in her lap. She was studying it in an almost disbelieving way, like she couldn’t imagine why she’d just tried to blow up half his apartment with it. Around her lay the shattered remains of Clark’s lamp. Given the way she’d been eyeing it earlier, he’d suspected it wouldn’t survive the second act.
“Are you not homicidal now?”
Mercy snorted derisively, which was as close to normal as she ever got. “Why on earth did you fly us out of there?” she demanded, still angry as hell but at least in check this time.
“There were more drones coming,” he insisted defensively.
“We didn’t have any trouble taking out the first twenty or so.”
“And there was no way of getting to Vivian without hitting Lex.”
“Oh, ye of little faith…”
“A-And…” Clark sniffed. “Lex wanted me to go!” The sniffles turned into out-and-out sobs.
“Oh, god!” Mercy exclaimed in wide-eyed horror as Clark collapsed into a whimpering puddle in the kitchen doorway.
The worst part was that Clark knew he was being an idiot, knew Vivian had used some form of telepathic manipulation on him, knew that she was still controlling him even now and making him act like a hopeless moron. But he couldn’t stop. Because Lex was in love with Vivian, and he was going to marry her, and there was nothing Clark could do to stop it, and he shouldn’t even want to stop it because, after all Lex had been through, the ninth time had to be the charm, right? Right?
“Uh…” Mercy looked as horrified as he’d ever seen her when he looked up at her through tear-stained eyes. “Knock it off?” she ventured hopefully.
“I…can’t!” he exclaimed in frustration.
“She’s controlling you,” Mercy reminded him, “bending you to her will the same way she did Lex.” She considered for a moment. “She must’ve banked on my being in love with Lex and tried to use it against me.” She snorted. “Big mistake. Unfortunately, you got caught in the fall-out.”
Still sobbing softly that Lex was lost to him forever, Clark managed to glare at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” And then a fresh round of misery overtook him, and he buried his face in his hands once more.
“Oh, for crying out…” Mercy let out a frustrated grunt and then eyed the Evil Kryptonite Laser in her lap in a very disturbing way. “If you let Vivian’s ridiculous powers of emo beat you, I swear to god…”
“What are you…?” Clark began, wide-eyed.
“It worked last time.” Mercy said thoughtfully. “Sort of…”
“No! Don’t you-”
She pistol-butted him right in the forehead.
The last thought Clark had before the world went black was that he knew he hated that thing for a reason.
More insanity to come, obviously. Feedback is always appreciated. :D
Chapter Four
All Chapters
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark/Lex, Mercy
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 2,572, for this chapter
Spoilers/Warnings: Future fic, although some vague spoilers for S6.
Summary: Clark and Mercy team up to save Lex from his real arch-nemesis: marriage.
Still Two Fools
by Kantayra
Chapter Three
“You killed my robots.”
Lex always sounded so hurt when Clark destroyed his evil instruments of death that Clark felt the strange impulse to apologize. He repressed it, just like he repressed pretty much every strange impulse he had around Lex. And there were a lot of those.
“They were trying to kill me,” Clark insisted defensively, hovering several feet in the air over the rooftop garden of LexCorp Towers.
He’d dropped Mercy off only moments before, and now she was cradling her Evil Kryptonite Laser in her hands, looking around anxiously for Soon-To-Be Evil Wife #9.
“Mercy,” Lex’s voice sounded thoroughly pissed off, “I thought I gave you the day off.”
“Your mind has been taken over by nefarious powers beyond your control, sir,” Mercy informed him matter-of-factly, eyes surveying all the garden shrubs with a wary hunter’s eye.
Lex took that in stride, like this was an everyday conversation for the two of them. Knowing Lex and Mercy, it probably was. “You should know better than anyone the expense of producing free-range drones. And the factory will be backed up for the next three months with…er…” He cut off suddenly when he realized that Clark was listening.
“Yes, Boss,” Mercy agreed. “It was absolutely necessary in your defense.”
“I deployed those drones.”
“Your judgment has been compromised.” Mercy’s gun scanned the greenery coolly. “Where’s Vivian?”
“She’s asleep,” Lex answered, hands sunk casually into the pockets of his silk pajama pants. How Lex managed to look cool wearing purple pajamas and slippers was beyond Clark, but that was Lex.
“Excellent.” Mercy nodded to Clark. “I’ve got the Kryptonite. I take it you still have the restraints?”
Clark dangled the nth metal handcuffs from one finger. During his and Mercy's brainstorming session earlier, they'd concluded that nth was the material capable of holding the widest variety of crazed Lex-marrying sociopaths. Personally, Clark had his money on vampire. Lex hadn’t actually married a vampire yet, so the odds were good that he was due.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mercy,” Lex said in that infuriatingly calm voice, “Clark.” He rocked lazily back on his heels, and his gaze turned fully back to Clark.
“Who’s Clark?” Clark offered nervously. “It’s me, Superman.”
Mercy gave him a disgusted look.
“I’m in costume now!” he insisted defiantly.
Now Lex was looking at him like he was a complete idiot, too.
“I’m not Clark…” he protested weakly.
“He’s been doing this all evening, Boss,” Mercy commented.
“My condolences,” Lex sighed.
“Hey!” Clark glared at Mercy. “You’re supposed to be on my side!”
“No,” she corrected him, “I’m still on Lex’s side. I’ve just recruited you for the time being.”
Clark was starting to develop a headache. It was the natural result of being around Lex for more than two minutes at a time.
“You know, I was considering asking you to be my best man again,” Lex commented thoughtfully.
“That was Clark Kent, not me!”
“…But given the fact that you’ve already ducked out on me three times…”
“That time with Helen was an emergency,” Clark insisted. The times with Wife #7 and 8 had been intentional, however. Because, by that time, Clark had concluded that it was just hypocritical to be the best man at the wedding of his arch-nemesis and whatever crazed psychopath wanted to bring at end to The World As We Know It this time. After all, the only reason Clark had even attended Lex weddings four through six had been the convenience of thwarting Lex’s wives on the spot.
“…And then you destroyed all my robots…”
“I always do that,” Clark reminded him. “Your evil robots? Kind of suck.”
Lex’s eyes narrowed, and Clark realized belatedly that he’d really stepped in it this time. Lex was surprisingly sensitive about his evil robots. “That’s it. You’re off the guest list.”
Given that Clark had been Lex’s arch-nemesis for years and years now, that wasn’t entirely unreasonable. Still, it would make things a lot more difficult. Clark straightened his posture to full Superman Mode and crossed his arms over his chest in an authoritative way. “We’re here to prevent you from making the biggest mistake of your life.” His voice boomed and echoed nicely through the neat little Japanese garden. “Er…for the ninth time.” Okay, so that last part made him sound kind of wishy-washy. But, in all fairness, it had taken him a while to figure out the pattern: anyone who married Lex was an automatic sociopath.
Lex affected a cool, disinterested expression. It was the one he always wore in courtrooms when he knew that, once again, plausible deniability was on his side. “In less than two minutes,” he informed them, his voice like ice, “another eighty drones will converge upon this location.”
Mercy looked nervous at that. “Sir, I don’t know how, but Vivian’s controlling you. If you’ll just let me run the Scenario 91 protocols…”
Clark had no clue what Scenario 91 protocols were, but he had his own methods. The best thing about situations where Lex was compromised was that they gave him a legitimate excuse to x-ray Lex from head to toe, with some noteworthy stops in between. Clark did a quick scan of Lex’s skeleton before checking out what was just beneath his clothes. After all, parasitic, mind-controlling organisms were often visible on the skin’s surface. To Clark’s knowledge, they weren’t often visible anywhere near the general vicinity of the subject’s ass, but it never hurt to be thorough in his investigation…
“…And stop x-raying me, Kal-El!” Lex snapped.
Clark felt his cheeks flush, and his vision instantly returned to normal. He had no idea how Lex could tell when he was doing that, but Lex always could.
Mercy gave Clark a knowing little smile, before hopefully quirking one eyebrow.
“No parasites,” Clark sighed dejectedly.
Mercy’s expression turned dour.
“As you can see,” Lex commented smoothly, running his hands down the front of his pajama top as if Clark’s intent surveillance had rumpled the fine silk, “I’m perfectly in my right mind.”
“You did promise that you would never get married again,” Clark reminded him. “About five wives ago, in fact.”
“Well, then, I obviously didn’t mean it,” Lex concluded.
“Four of those were evil and had taken over your brain.”
“This time must be the charm, then.” Lex sounded perfectly reasonable, but Clark caught a glimmer of blue-white iridescence in Lex’s eye. Glowing eyes meant only one thing, he’d learned: evil possession.
“Proper protocol,” Mercy insisted, “demands that you be physically separated from your fiancée for a duration of two weeks, to make sure any potential mind-control is dispelled.”
“Two weeks is out of the question,” Lex insisted. “I’ve already called my father to inform him that he’s not invited to the wedding. If I don’t act quickly, he’ll find a way to get past security and show up.”
Clark gulped. If Lex had already uninvited Lionel, they had to hurry. Normal, non-mind-controlled Lex always put off that onerous task until the last minute. “What do we do?” he hissed to Mercy, in what was a thoroughly doomed effort to keep Lex from hearing them.
“We?” she repeated in disbelief. “You’re the one who’s supposed to talk some sense into him.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Clark asked, baffled.
Mercy glared at him like the answer should be the most obvious thing in the universe. Lex’s eyes turned to him too, as if Lex had some inkling of what Mercy might have been thinking. Clark was at a complete and utter loss.
“We could always knock him out, and I could drag him back to the Fortress of Solitude. Let the AI fix whatever’s wrong with him,” Clark suggested hopefully.
He felt the faint burn of Kryptonite radiation at his back and turned to see that Mercy had her Evil Laser pointed right at him. “You’re not taking him anywhere near that place,” she hissed. “I’m not letting anyone control his mind, especially that brainwashing computer of yours.”
Oh, right. Mercy was Lex’s bodyguard still, wasn’t she? He probably shouldn’t have told her about that plan, then. And now the damage was done…
It occurred to Clark, not for the first time, that this would work a lot better if his only ally in this debacle was actually on his side.
They stood at a standstill for a moment, Mercy pointing her laser about menacingly, Clark debating how to get out of there without being shot, and Lex looking supremely confident about the whole affair. And then, to make matters worse, the subject of their debate arrived on scene.
“Lex?” an eerily haunting voice cooed.
Clark caught his first glimpse of Soon-To-Be Evil Wife #9. She was petite, pretty, and blonde. That last one caused him to do a double-take. Because, yeah, if Lex was engaged to a blonde, clearly the world was ending. Lex didn’t do blonde; it was like a law of physics or something.
“Vivian.” Lex held out one arm, and the blonde instantly curled up against his side, looking about anxiously.
“What’s happening?” Vivian, it seemed, had simpering down to an art form.
Mercy’s eyes narrowed. “Step away from my boss,” she ordered, laser pointed in Vivian’s direction menacingly.
“Lex?” Vivian simpered some more.
Clark felt the sudden, irrational urge to strangle her. Lex did not need some helpless little child to hang off of him; he needed someone strong, independent, able to match his own power and keep him in check. Lex needed an equal, and this woman certainly wasn’t it.
“Drop the gun, Mercy,” Lex ordered.
Mercy twitched slightly, like it was causing her deep psychological damage not to obey Lex’s every insane whim. “I’m sorry, sir.” Clark was almost proud of how strong she sounded.
“I-I know you don’t like me,” Vivian continued to cling to Lex’s chest like she’d gotten talons into him and was never letting him go, “but don’t you want Lex to be happy?” She fluttered long, dark eyelashes up and down over huge, baby-blue eyes.
Mercy snorted in distaste.
Clark, however, fought back a tear, suddenly overcome with emotion. “Mercy…” he practically pleaded. Because it was so true, he realized. Lex was all alone in the world, and Lex deserved to be loved so much. Anyone who really loved Lex would let him go, let him finally be happy and…
“Kal-El!” Mercy slapped him across the face. It didn’t hurt, but then Mercy swore and cradled her hand, and Clark’s knee-jerk concern that he’d accidentally hurt someone took over.
“Huh?” He blinked. He finally noticed then that wide blue eyes had focused on him in an unnerving way that made it look like Vivian was trying to look right through him.
“Stop being so damn susceptible!” Mercy snapped angrily, still clutching her hand.
“The two of you,” Lex consulted his watch - and only Lex would wear a ten-thousand dollar watch to bed, “have exactly forty-two seconds before the back-up drones arrive.”
“We’re not leaving without you, Boss,” Mercy insisted stubbornly.
“Please,” Vivian cooed, blue eyes beseeching Clark once more. He had the strangest sensation that her eyes were pulling him in, drowning him, until he couldn’t think or feel anything else. “If you really love him, you have to let him go…”
For one perfect moment, Clark and Lex’s eyes met, and Clark saw something deep and vulnerable in Lex, like Clark’s decision right then mattered more than anything else in the world.
“No way in-” Mercy began.
Clark snatched her up and had flown them back to his apartment by the time she got out:
“-Hell!”
***
“You.”
Clark fell to the ground behind the refrigerator, covering the back of his neck with his hands in the duck-and-cover position.
“Are.”
The Evil Kryptonite Laser sliced through his kitchen cabinets, sending a wave of nausea through him, and he barely had time to scramble for the door to the bedroom.
“An.”
There was a loud smashing sound from the living room. Glass tinkled, and then there was a second smash, and everything was perfectly quiet for a moment.
“Idiot!”
Another round of smashing began and then, just as quickly, settled down.
Clark dared to peer around the corner of his bedroom doorway, keeping low to the ground in case the Evil Kryptonite Laser was still in play. The kitchen was clear. From the living room, he could hear a pulse slowing down from a sudden influx of frustrated adrenaline. He risked getting to his feet, crossing the kitchen, and looking warily into the living room.
“Mercy?”
Mercy had slid to the floor against the far wall, her semi-automatic resting limply in her lap. She was studying it in an almost disbelieving way, like she couldn’t imagine why she’d just tried to blow up half his apartment with it. Around her lay the shattered remains of Clark’s lamp. Given the way she’d been eyeing it earlier, he’d suspected it wouldn’t survive the second act.
“Are you not homicidal now?”
Mercy snorted derisively, which was as close to normal as she ever got. “Why on earth did you fly us out of there?” she demanded, still angry as hell but at least in check this time.
“There were more drones coming,” he insisted defensively.
“We didn’t have any trouble taking out the first twenty or so.”
“And there was no way of getting to Vivian without hitting Lex.”
“Oh, ye of little faith…”
“A-And…” Clark sniffed. “Lex wanted me to go!” The sniffles turned into out-and-out sobs.
“Oh, god!” Mercy exclaimed in wide-eyed horror as Clark collapsed into a whimpering puddle in the kitchen doorway.
The worst part was that Clark knew he was being an idiot, knew Vivian had used some form of telepathic manipulation on him, knew that she was still controlling him even now and making him act like a hopeless moron. But he couldn’t stop. Because Lex was in love with Vivian, and he was going to marry her, and there was nothing Clark could do to stop it, and he shouldn’t even want to stop it because, after all Lex had been through, the ninth time had to be the charm, right? Right?
“Uh…” Mercy looked as horrified as he’d ever seen her when he looked up at her through tear-stained eyes. “Knock it off?” she ventured hopefully.
“I…can’t!” he exclaimed in frustration.
“She’s controlling you,” Mercy reminded him, “bending you to her will the same way she did Lex.” She considered for a moment. “She must’ve banked on my being in love with Lex and tried to use it against me.” She snorted. “Big mistake. Unfortunately, you got caught in the fall-out.”
Still sobbing softly that Lex was lost to him forever, Clark managed to glare at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?” And then a fresh round of misery overtook him, and he buried his face in his hands once more.
“Oh, for crying out…” Mercy let out a frustrated grunt and then eyed the Evil Kryptonite Laser in her lap in a very disturbing way. “If you let Vivian’s ridiculous powers of emo beat you, I swear to god…”
“What are you…?” Clark began, wide-eyed.
“It worked last time.” Mercy said thoughtfully. “Sort of…”
“No! Don’t you-”
She pistol-butted him right in the forehead.
The last thought Clark had before the world went black was that he knew he hated that thing for a reason.
More insanity to come, obviously. Feedback is always appreciated. :D
Chapter Four
All Chapters