DVD Commentary forastolat's "Moving On" Part 2
Part 1 of 3
Clark's POV, depressed pussycat that he is. He is between a rock and a hard place and, much as he knows what he wants, he doesn't know what to do about it to get there, so he mopes.
The Vorlon weren't exactly nice guys; their ships were run by enslaved Ygrathian engineers, who were chained to their posts, fed from tubes, and forced to work with electric shocks. They had a life expectancy of five years in servitude before they died of malnutrition and hopelessness. As they were led down the corridors to the command center, Clark stared miserably at their bent and dull grey-skinned forms. It didn't help any to remind himself that the Almeracians were slavers too, and Lex was probably doing the same kind of thing to the Idarians right now. It just made him feel more sick to his stomach. In addition to the fact that he is gunning for Lex and he hates it, Clark is a take-charge and fix things kinda guy, and his inability to punch out the Vorlons and free the Idarians is very frustrating for him, hence the nausea.
He didn't know what he was doing. He could still feel Lex's mouth on his collarbone, Lex's hands on his thighs, like he'd been branded. "Stay," Lex had said in the morning; just once, softly. Maybe if he had - except he'd known, even while Lex was asking, that it wasn't an offer to play nice. Lex never had before.
"We will come out of hyperspace outside Idaria Major," the Vorlon general was saying. "We will crush their first ring of defensive ships before they have time to mount a response. Then our sting fighters will attack the orbital battle stations while we eliminate the remaining warships." ...the best-laid plans of mice and Vorlons oft go awry.
"Very well," Vox Ghanai said. "Superman, Wonder Woman, if you will join myself and the other Lanterns, we can best assist with the attack on the battle stations."
"Fine," Clark said tiredly, and went to stand at the observation post. Clark's spent his entire life doing what others expected of him, using his vast powers to do the right thing. It's hard on him when there doesn't seem to be a right thing to do.
Diana was already there. "Are you all right?" she asked quietly. "I know this can't be easy for you."
"Lex started this," Clark said grimly. "He knew what he was getting into." Well, there is *that* for you to cling to, Clark.
Diana looked over at the Vorlon generals, who were talking among themselves, and at Maxima, who was standing a little way off, gripping the rail. "We have strange allies."
"No kidding," Clark said. He wished Batman were there. He'd pissed off the Vorlon leadership by systematically demolishing every point of their first five plans, until they'd threatened to leave the coalition entirely unless he was kicked out of the planning. He'd shrugged and gone, refusing to comment on the subsequent plans. And, as I pointed out before, never once coming up with any serious suggestions of his own.
"The short answer is you're going to lose," he'd said. "Luthor's not going to be beaten by committee." To be fair, on Justice League, they're always trying to make the point (for the kiddies) that cooperation is a the only way to succeed, "we're stronger together than apart", yadda-yadda-yadda; so Luthor has, in fact, been beaten by committee, several times.
"This was your idea in the first place!" John had said.
"No," Batman had said. "You wanted to stop him. I pointed out the options. I didn't suggest you take them." It's funny but, "You wanted to stop him" suggests that Bruce might actually have told them all to back off and leave Lex to his own devices.
The hyperspace streaks started to slow. A set of commands issued out over the shipwide intercom, in the guttural Vorlon language, and the chained engineers jerked and went sluggishly to work.
They came out with the Idarian homeworld hanging blue and gold in front of them, its white rings of frozen nitrogen sparkling. The Almeracian ships were lined up in a defensive formation, waiting for them.
"You're a little late," Lex said, his voice echoing over the intercom. A moment later, a big holographic projection of him fuzzed into view on the deck. He was seated - enthroned, really - on a command chair, heavy robes spilling off his shoulders and onto the floor.
"He knew we were coming?" Diana said, while the Vorlon generals shouted orders and their fleet pulled into a defensive knot.
"Did you miserable cowards really believe I would ever lead an army against Almerac?" Maxima said, turning around. She spat on the deck in front of the Vorlons. "I will rejoice in watching your destruction." Honestly? This is great character-development for Maxima. There's apparently something greater than Maxima's self-indulgent desire to be the prettiest princess with the biggest tiara (and harshes right cross); she loves her people and her planet, and told Lex about the approaching armada despite the fact that it means she'll never rule her world again. She also appears to have learned a measure of "sneaky" from Lex.
"Seize her!" the Vorlon general said. "Luthor can watch his queen die slowly before we destroy his fleet."
"Allow us to say a few words first," Lex said, and held his hand out to the side; a moment later, a tall Ygrathian female with healthy green skin and a gold torque-like necklace around her throat came onto the projection. One by one, the grey engineers slowly lifted their heads as she spoke, her hissing words going over the shipwide intercom, and then they looked at one another with their slit-pupilled eyes, and without a word turned back to their stations, their claws rattling against the keys.
"I have a bad feeling about this," John said. At this point, Clark has just enough time to think to himself that he's really glad he's invulnerable.
The ship blew up.
Clark woke up naked in a bedroom the size of a small country; Lex's robes were tossed carelessly over a chair in the corner. A servant poked his? many-eyed head in and offered him a cup of something almost like coffee and a pair of pajama pants. One of the things I like about this story is that the aliens whose civilizations are falling to the Lexian Empire aren't the usual Star Trek "let's put some putty on their noses and dress them in a leotard"-type aliens; they are aliens with tentacles, or carapaces, or a slew of eyes, or whatever, and their ways are strange and, well, *alien*, too. In their (multiple, many-colored) eyes, Lex isn't just an overlord, he's an *alien* overlord, which kinda cracks me up to think about. Lex is an evil alien overlord, which is the job Clark's father always had lined up for him (on SV).
Lex was in the next room over, giant three-dimensional starmaps projecting in the air around him. He turned them off as Clark came in, swiveling his chair around. "Morning."
"Are John and Diana-" Clark said.
"Fine," Lex said. "She's currently being kept under sedation, and we confiscated his ring, so they're probably not as comfortable as they could be, but they're healthy."
"Sedation?" Clark said. "You've got her drugged?"
See, I find sedation much more sensible and way less perverse than the canonical hand-encasing bondage gear the evil empires always trot out every time a superhero is taken captive on the Justice League cartoon.
"Oddly, I didn't think she'd stay put otherwise," Lex said. "She's a prisoner of war. So are you, for that matter."
"Sorry, I missed that, what with the complimentary chocolates and the silk pants," Clark said.
"You thought those were for your benefit?" Lex said, eyeing Clark up and down. I am struck dumb by the beauty of Lex's come-back.
Clark turned red. "I didn't realize I was that kind of prisoner, either." Clark, your life just went from heroic Space Opera to a sleazy bodice-ripper on the SciFi channel, and you ain't the male lead.
"I've mostly abolished slavery by now," Lex said, "but I might have to make an exception just this once. I always liked the idea of The Sheik."
"What?" Clark said, staring.
"It's a classic of pulp literature," Lex said.
"No!" Clark said. "You abolished slavery?" He's a really stand-up Evil Alien Overlord.
Lex raised his eyebrows. "Of course." When Clark kept staring at him, Lex tilted his head quizzically. "I'd be having a much harder time integrating the Idarians if I was marching half the population off in chains, Clark."
"Integrating them," Clark said, flatly. It's what the ancient Romans used to do, Clark; get with the program here.
"I'm not going to be able to do that much conquering with just the population of Almerac," Lex said. "Besides, smaller systems won't put up much resistance if they know being conquered by me basically means entry into a massive free-trade zone and protection by the most successful fleet in the galaxy. In fact, I've got a few offers of surrender from ones I haven't even invaded yet."
Clark sat down and put his head in his hands. This is the second time in the story Lex has caused poor Clark to sit down and put his head in his hands. The gesture has to do with Clark's powerlessness and frustration at the inability to affect change in Lex or in any given situation associated with Lex, helplessness being something Clark hasn't had a lot of experience with since he became Superman. In his current situation, Clark, for all his many superpowers, has pretty much been stripped of his ability to do anything. Everything has been taken out of his hands. Which is why the situation turns out to be so freeing for him.
"I am actually good at this, you know," Lex said.
Lex wasn't so much good at it as he was spectacular, Clark realized hollowly, as he watched from the palace roof that afternoon as Lex gave a stirring speech on the joint Idarian-Almeracian victory over the Vorlon to a crowd of wildly cheering subjects. A lot of the Idarians were clutching the new imperial flag in their tentacles, waving it enthusiastically in the air. Apparently, they'd been running a vicious border dispute with the Vorlon for the last three centuries and were perfectly willing to let Lex convince them that really, they hadn't so much been conquered as they had entered into an alliance with Almerac to beat the Vorlon at last.
It's been said that the best businessmen are the ones that make deals where everyone involved feels like they came out on top. I always wondered how Lionel got rich, because he seemed to specialize in making sure that he left a wake of angry people who felt they'd been screwed over behind him--all well and good if you're a corporate raider and don't need to worry about pissing people off, but not so great for someone who's supposed to be an industrialist in a stable business environment. Lex was always the better businessman on Smallville, or would have been if Lionel hadn't always gone in and dismantled the deals he set up. At any rate, while a book like The Art of War is about applying the rules of war to business, it seems that in this instance, Lex is applying the rules of business to war.
Afterwards, Clark went and sat in the gardens, trying to figure out what to do. The Vorlon didn't deserve to be saved, the Idarians didn't want to be saved, and the Ygrathians had been saved - by Lex. John and Diana were the only ones left to rescue, and he wasn't doing too well with that, either.
"That went reasonably well," Lex said, shedding his elaborate puffy-sleeved jacket as he came back from the post-speech ceremonies. "Any luck yet?" He sat down next to Clark and stretched his arm out along the back of the bench.
"No," Clark said bitterly. He'd criss-crossed the world twelve times so far and still had no idea where Diana and John were being kept. He was willing to bet that Lex wouldn't trust anyone but himself to keep an eye on them, no matter how good the prison, so he was reasonably sure they were still somewhere in the system, but if they were, Lex was keeping them under a few dozen layers of lead and a cloaking device.
Lex smiled. "Pity."
"Look, why won't you just let them go?" Clark said. "We can't do much against you without a fleet, and the Vorlon aren't going to be up for a rematch any time soon. We'll just go back to Earth."
Lex slid his hand up to curl around the back of Clark's neck. "What makes you think I want you to leave?"
Clark shivered; Lex's fingers were stroking gently at the side of his throat. "I can't-" he began, except his voice cracked and he had to start over. "I can't stay, Lex."
"I wasn't planning on making it an option," Lex said; he turned Clark's face gently towards him.
Clark couldn't help it; he leaned in for the kiss, his hand cupping Lex's head, except he couldn't do this either. He broke away and stood up. "I'm not going to sleep with you while you've got my friends locked up and drugged, Lex," he said.
Lex stretched out his legs. "You know, Clark, I'm willing to be reasonable if you are." He beckoned to one of the servants. "I'm happy to trade you their freedom."
Clark had the bad feeling he was watching the penny drop. "For what?"
"Yours," Lex said. The servant was bringing him a rolled-up sheet of the thin onion-skin Almeracian paper, full of tiny print and stamped with a big glittering holographic seal.
"I thought I was already a prisoner of war," Clark said, eyeing the parchment. "Not that you've been doing a great job of locking me up-"
"You're a little complicated to restrain without hauling out the kryptonite, and I feel our relationship's progressed beyond that," Lex said, earnestly.
"Glad to hear it," Clark said wryly.
Lex held out the contract. "That's why I want your parole instead."
Clark didn't take it. "My what?"
"In the old-fashioned sense," Lex said, waving a hand airily. "You promise to submit like a good little prisoner, I let your pals go."
"So you want, what, my word of honor that I'll help you conquer the galaxy in between giving you blowjobs?" Clark stumbled a little over blowjobs, and it came out sounding more uncertain than he'd intended, like he was waiting to be convinced.
"No, of course not," Lex said. "Almerac does have laws on the treatment of prisoners of war, Clark."
"Such as?"
Lex turned the contract around and examined it. "Let's see. I can't breed you, I can't sell you, and I can't make you fight for me," he said.
"That's it?" Clark said. "What about torture?"
"No, torture is perfectly legal," Lex said. "So is using you for recreational sex, which is what you should be more worried about." He paused and added slyly, "Or not."
Clark blushed before he could help it; goddamn Lex, anyway. "You know, you could try making a pass at me like a normal guy instead of locking up my friends."
"You could try not invading me next time," Lex said pleasantly.
"You could try not conquering the galaxy next time!" Clark said.
"No, I really couldn't," Lex said. "Anyway, it's more fun this way." I love the tit-for-tat witty banter here: only these two guys, two of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, can snark at one another about taking over the galaxy the way other people cheerfully insult *their* significant other's taste in rock-and-roll or fav TV programs. They really are on another level of "normal" than the rest of us.
"For you, maybe," Clark said.
Lex wagged the contract at him. "Sign and it'll be more fun for you too."
"You can't seriously think I'll agree to be your slave."
"Prisoner of war," Lex corrected him, reproachfully.
"I'm really not seeing the difference here," Clark said.
"I have to ransom you if offered reasonable terms," Lex said.
Clark folded his arms. "Oh, well, if I can be ransomed."
"Granted, the current market value for a Kryptonian is about four industrialized star systems, so I wouldn't rely on it," Lex admitted. Damned collector's market!
Rolling his eyes, Clark said, "Oh, great."
"You'll also be freed as soon as a peace treaty is concluded with the Vorlon, since that's who you were fighting for," Lex said. "It's a very reasonable set of provisions. "
"I'll keep looking, thanks," Clark said dryly.
Lex shrugged, smiling. "Your loss."
Clark started using his x-ray vision more aggressively and discovered to his dismay that even though the Idarians were the model of civilization in public, there was plenty of violence between them in private, everything from domestic spats to murder. But whenever he landed at the scene of a fight to break it up, both participants - they only ever fought one-on-one-immediately stopped and huddled down into horrified balls, their eyestalks retracting almost into their heads and a low keening coming out of the breathing slits in their sides.
"How did they ever have an army?" Clark demanded, coming back to the palace exasperated after having spent three hours calming down the hysterical victim and the equally hysterical would-be murderer, both of whom seemed just as upset by his intrusion. I swear, this is like something you'd see on Farscape, it's just a perverse and cool thing that defines the alieness of an alien race.
"Please stop torturing my subjects," Lex said. "They're actually in less pain being stabbed than having someone watching them fight. It's some kind of neurological reaction. Have you found your friends yet?"
He was stretched out on the bed to read, wearing a loose white shirt and trousers made out of something that draped elegantly over his long legs. Clark glared at him, torn between hunger and resentment.
Staying chastely on one side of the bed hadn't been working very well. I'm glad Clark didn't try to do a Claudette Colbert and construct a wall by hanging a blanket over a rope down the middle, that would have been embarrassing. Lex didn't respect the invisible line Clark tried to imagine dividing the bed into separate halves; Lex would stay up late working, and reach over to run his fingers through Clark's hair, cup his cheek, touch his mouth: proprietary, and the worst part was how badly Clark wanted to be owned.
At first, Clark had tried staying away from the palace grounds, but the planet's weather control system "malfunctioned" and created a miniature hailstorm, five meters across, that followed him around the world and pelted him anytime he stopped moving. Then he'd tried sleeping in the gardens, but the palace guard dog-things-with six legs and four rows of teeth-woke him up by determinedly and uselessly gnawing on his head. I can see Lex now, giving the orders to his underlings on how to bedevil Clark, sniggering inside, but perfectly composed at face, only a slight smirk giving him away. After that, he moved to the bedroom floor, where one of the servants "accidentally" poured a tub of ice water on top of him, ten minutes after he'd finally gotten back to sleep.
He'd gotten up vengefully after that, dripping and cold, and climbed straight into bed, plastered himself over Lex and went to sleep, ignoring his complaints. Which had seemed like a great idea until he'd woken up warm and dry in a huddle of blankets with Lex's body under him and Lex's hands stroking his back. "Are you sure you don't want to give me your parole?" Lex murmured, and Clark had swallowed yes, anything, please, and dragged himself out of bed. They don't call him The Man of Steel for nothing. Of course, they also call him the B.D.A.
A week later, Lex moved his headquarters to the new front in the Drosian system, a desolate mining colony full of asteroids and gas giants and one dim, red dwarf star: but it produced more trinium than almost any other mine in the quadrant, and the Ygrathians' new and improved weapons system for the Idarian spaceships needed a lot of trinium.
The camp was on one of the larger asteroids, one with some shreds of atmosphere. The tiny red sun glowed through it like a distant, small coal. Clark felt weirdly sluggish. He'd thought this would be the perfect opportunity to find his friends and get out of here, since the other prisoners had to be on board one of the transferring ships, but he couldn't seem to get up the energy to search; instead he slept longer and longer hours, until one day he didn't even get out of bed, drifting in and out of a half-wakeful state.
Lex came in from a meeting halfway during the day and noticed him. Clark heard his voice, felt his hand, from a distance, but his head was too heavy to lift from the pillow. Sweet jebus, Lex; you didn't notice how droopy Clark had gotten for *how* long? For shame! I'd think you'd at least have noticed the sharp reduction in whinging.
He woke up somewhere else with an enormous yellow-white sun just rising, a humid mist clinging to his skin, feeling like he'd been sleeping for a month. "Are we there yet?" he asked drowsily, and Lex bent down and kissed him, hands cupping Clark's face tight.
"Tell me next time you're mysteriously collapsing, you idiot," Lex said savagely.
Clark was more interested in the kissing, the taste of Lex's mouth; he vaguely remembered there was a reason he hadn't been doing this, but it didn't seem all that important. It was no effort at all to pull Lex down into the bed with him. Lex said some things that Clark didn't listen to very much, because it was so- so- then the sun came pouring over the windowsill and Clark woke up the rest of the way.
"Where are we?" he said, baffled. "What-" He realized what he'd just been doing and sat up abruptly, turning red.
Lex glared up at him, furiously. He was wearing an elaborate array of interwoven shiny cords in alternating dark and light colors - or at least, he had been; it had mostly fallen apart into loose straps now, slipping off his shoulders and hanging loose around his wrists; his chest was bare. "Don't stop now," he said, dangerously.
Clark stared at Lex, the straps dark against his pale skin, and swallowed hard. "I didn't know what I was doing," he said weakly. He thought he was having one of *those* dreams.
Lex snarled wordlessly and dragged himself out of bed. He tried to reassemble the outfit for a moment before he gave up and dumped the whole tangled mess on the floor and stepped out of it, naked. "Ryeka!" Lex shouted, and a mandibled head with twelve faceted eyes poked down from above the window frame. Clark flinched back: it was like a cross between a giant spider and a praying mantis. "The damn thing came apart again," Lex said. ...and Lex is *totally* cool with the Shelob impersonator even unto the point of being casually crabby at it. He's also not too put out when it's crabby back at him.
The alien clattered in rapidly on twelve legs, and sat back onto half of them and busily used the rest to reweave the straps around Lex's body, chittering at him.
"It wasn't my fault," Lex snapped, glaring at Clark some more.
Clark said again, staring, "Lex, where are we?"
"The K'tlak Empire," Lex said. "They were the nearest place with a sun that provides the ideal spectrum of radiation for you, so I had to adjust the conquest schedule a little and leapfrog a couple of smaller systems." It's an even more ideal yellow sun than Earth's, for Clark, which is a nice touch. There are *better* places for him to be than on Sol III.
"Oh, thanks a lot," Clark said. "How many people did you kill in the process?"
Lex shrugged. "Wars have casualties, Clark. In this case, though, they've been having a four-way war of succession amongst themselves for the last two decades, so it's reasonably safe to say that overall my involvement is a net gain." Ryeka was finished, jittering back a few steps to examine its handiwork, adjusting a strap here and there, critically. "I've got to get going, or I'll be late for my own coronation. Care to attend?"
"No!" Clark said.
He did go outside, after Lex had gone; the sunlight felt unbelievably good on his skin, and he flew lazily until he caught up to noon and then followed it around the planet. It was beautiful, a solid green belt of jungle wrapped all around the equator, but full of sad ruins and refugees. Clark stopped to help several groups of Ygrathian engineers, who were digging wells for them; the K'tlak themselves were putting together shelters at top speed out of big stacks of dried fibers that the Idarians were dropping off in hovercraft. This is probably the first time these races have had the opportunity or the desire to work together, and they work together very well.
Big projection screens were showing the coronation ceremony at all the refugee camps. Trust Lex to make sure they got a dose of propaganda with their dinner, Clark thought bitterly, "You think dinner's for free?" (quote from City on the Edge of Forever) watching with folded arms while the high priest or whoever it was wove a dozen cords of silver and gold around Lex's arms. The K'tlak just clacked their mandibles approvingly.
He was feeling recovered by the time he made it once around the planet; more than recovered, actually, he realized, as he accidentally put on more speed than he'd intended, and shot himself right out of the atmosphere. The fleet was in orbit - it already looked bigger - and Clark took the chance to do another search: suddenly he could see through anything he wanted to, even the metals more dense than lead, and he felt like he could hold his breath forever.
None of it helped: Diana and John weren't on any of the ships at all. Clark darted back down to the planet and went through every Almeracian installation; then he searched the camps for good measure, and flew around the whole planet after and then burst into the coronation hall where Lex was still accepting oaths of fealty, for the second straight day. "Where did you put them?" Clark demanded.
Lex lifted an eyebrow. "You don't actually expect me to tell you, do you?"
"You know I can't just fly into hyperspace, so you might as well," Clark said. He was already trying to come up with some way to hitchhike out of the system on a trade ship - he'd seen some going back and forth from the spaceports. Lex probably had them stashed somewhere on Almerac. "Of course, if you have dumped them in some other system, they've probably escaped by now and just don't know where I am."
"Conquering the galaxy isn't exactly what you'd call quiet and unobtrusive, Clark," Lex said. "Trust me, they're safely locked up."
Clark folded his arms. "Fine. Tell me where they are, and if they aren't free already and I can't rescue them within a week, I'll give you my parole." Damon Runyon wrote: "One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider." Clark is about to end up with an earful of cider.
"Well, if you put it that way," Lex said immediately, leaving Clark with the sinking feeling he'd made a mistake, "where was it you were all planning to stick me - one of the 'ten thousand human-habitable asteroids in the Hlaian nebula'?" I hope Lex knows Clark protested that plan.
Clark was pretty sure there weren't any trade ships going to the Hlaian nebula. "And you expect me to believe they haven't gotten out of that?" he said, a little weakly. "The other Lanterns would track them down."
"Oh, I understand a few of them have tried," Lex said. "But even a Green Lantern can have a tough time searching ten thousand asteroids for a cloaked base while under attack by an Almeracian warlord."
"An Almeracian-" Clark stared.
"You understand, I really had to find a way to work with Maxima," Lex said sanctimoniously. "It was my responsibility as a parent." Isn't it nice that for the first time, Lex is working on his relationship with one of his ex-wives?
And now we segue to very cranky John Stewart's POV
"So you're just going to stay and what, climb into bed with Luthor? And I'm not talking metaphorically here!" John said, clenching his hand around the ring Clark had just handed back to him. I have a theory about John Stewart: he admires Superman; he likes the cut of his jib, the squareness of his jaw, the staunchness, the moral certainty, the purity... but John's not really Clark's biggest fan. It disconcerts John when Superman exhibits Clark's dithering and occasional weenie behaviour or anything Clark might do that could be fall into the "shades of gray" category, hence the rudeness he exhibits here. John has figured out that Clark is sekritly doing what he REALLY wants to do, rather than being a genuine martyr and Clark's perceived moral lapse pisses him off. "This is NOT my Superman! I want this loser to go away and MY Superman to return!" John is also in denial about it. "No way! NO WAY would my guy do that!"
Clark swallowed the impulse to tell him to go to hell. "It can't be that much worse than being in bed with the Vorlon." Oh, god, I hope he's speaking metaphorically! He turned and walked away from the open door of the prison cell.
"Goddamnit," he heard John muttering behind him.
And let's be honest, John's not at his best after getting beaten up and tossed in jail for as long as he's been incarcerated (not sure how much time has passed). He's stung that he and/or his team members couldn't free him and Wonder Woman; instead they are being freed at Luthor's generous behest and by Clark doing something that totally freaks John out.
Diana caught him halfway down the hall. "You can't really mean to enslave yourself to Luthor!" No offense, Princess, but I don't see either you or John offering to stay in your cells so that Clark won't have to do the dirty deed.
"I'm not going to fight for him, if that's what you're asking," Clark said. "I'm not turning traitor here, whatever John thinks." Sadly, though Wonder Woman is genuinely concerned for Clark, I think this is over her head; she's clueless about the emotional depths of what the hell is going on here. I think she honestly believes Clark is selling himself to free them, rather than using them as an excuse to stay, and she feels awful about it.?
"He's worried for you, and so am I," she said, gripping his arm. "What do you think Luthor is going to do to you if you keep this devil's bargain?"
"I'm going to fuck you," Lex said. And Lex inadvertently answers Wonder Woman's question. This is a nice piece of sit-com change-of-scene rejoinder... that said, OMIGOD, NOW I HAVE TO COMMENT ON PORN! EEK!
He put one hand on the back of Clark's neck and bent him over the desk. Clark went down without resistance, already shivering with anticipation; Here's the thing. I think that intellectually, Clark... er, okay, maybe "intellectually" isn't the right word for the Smallville version of Clark, but when Clark thinks about it, he feels he should be the Alpha dog by virtue of the myriad of superpowers he possesses, or at the very least he feels he should want to be the alpha dog. Unfortunately, emotionally and personality-wise, he's really not that guy. After all, aside from occasionally looming over a bad guy, usually to get him to stop doing teh very bad things, Clark never uses his powers to, say, push anyone around. He uses them to *help* people, which is lovely but not very Alpha dog of him. It's canon that he tries very hard to meet whatever violence he finds with an *equal* and opposite response. He's a guy who can punch an asteroid to powder, but will punch out a criminal just barely hard enough to make the idiot stop swinging. Clark is also the kind of guy who, canonically, does all the housework and cooking in his home: he also runs errands and fetches coffee for Lois. And she *knows* he's Superman, so it's canon that she feels comfortable as the alpha personality in that relationship, too. the freshly signed parole contract crumpled underneath his chest, wet ink smearing on his skin. Nice! Lex's words are literally written right on Clark's body, marking him as Lex's property. Also, Lex has been waiting so long, he cannot put the anticipation of the deed off even a second longer - the ink's not even dry before he pounces!
"Hold still," Lex said, his voice low and smoky, and slid two fingers into him, slick and ring-heavy; the smooth cool bands brushed against Clark's skin, warming with the heat of his body.
Clark clung to the far side of the desk, gulping for breath, spreading his legs wider as Lex worked his way into him; the polished metal was squeezing slowly out between his fingers like clay. I don't know about you, but this is the most con non-con I've ever seen. If this non-con was any more con, Clark would be screaming, "beat me, whip me, make me write bad checks!" He'd be fumbling around in the desk drawer, looking for the checkbook. The silk pants were puddled around his ankles. Lex's outfits are described in glorious and sometimes hysterically funny detail, Clark's not so much, which leads me to believe he's been wandering about on these weird alien planets mostly wearing nothing but a pair of silk pants... which, although it's not mentioned, I'm willing to bet are purple. Lex wasn't even taking off his clothes: the ceremonial garb of Khitanwe was a long, translucent robe that opened down the front, and the thick, jewel-encrusted edges lapped at Clark's thighs with every slow, generous thrust.
"Oh, God," Clark said, and pressed his forehead to the cool surface of the desk; Lex was moving into him more seriously now.
"See," Lex said, panting, "Tell me this isn't more fun."
"I'd-I'd be having even more fun," Clark said, struggling for breath, "if you hadn't just decapitated the previous owner of that robe," though really, the wobble in his voice made it sound a lot less authoritative.
"God-King Zherak purged more people than Stalin, and for a special twist he ate some of them," Lex said. "Stop complaining. His subjects already have." What's the opposite of "Lex suffers by comparison"?
Clark felt he ought to argue that some more, but Lex nudged him forward and got a better angle, and the ability to form complete sentences deserted him.
From there, Lex headed the fleet to the Xakanxa system: he was looking to ensure supply, and Xakanxa was an agricultural powerhouse, a dozen nations spread over eight planets with virtually every climate and soil type represented. They exported food to most of the quadrant.
But thanks to some kind of new gravity-based weapon one of the Xakanxa superpowers had been testing to use on the others Jesus, doesn't Lex ever take over any peaceful, innocent civilizations?, two of the small moons of the largest inhabited planet had just collided, exploding, and the Almeracian fleet came into the system to find a cloud of asteroids and dust spiraling inwards towards the forty billion inhabitants. The surface already looked like a war zone, and all the ships of the system were out in space, struggling to deflect the largest asteroids before they hit.
Clark took one look in horror and was out the nearest airlock, just in time to stop a final desperate kamikaze attempt to knock away an asteroid almost a mile across. He darted in front of the ship and caught the front edge of the tumbling rock, straining wildly as it spun him around, but finally the asteroid slowed and stopped, and he gave it a heave towards the sun. And he did it wearing the silk pants, I'm assuming, which makes me very very happy.
The ship blinked its lights at him gratefully. Clark raised a hand and went after a flurry of twelve smaller ones just about to enter the atmosphere.
What occurred to me here is that Clark got to help out and save people from a disaster, and he didn't have to hide behind a one-dimensional superhero character that he'd created in order to do it. He was *himself*. He can always be himself, he never has to be Superman or even the version of Clark Kent that is the dweeby reporter in ill-fitting clothes and ugly glasses who trips over stuff.
When he staggered back on board Lex's flagship, thirty-seven hours later, the immediate orbital space was clear and the Xakanxa had all become citizens of the Greater Almeracian Empire without a shot fired. I think what just happened here is that Clark won this planetary system for Lex--thus giving him the agricultural powerhouse he needed to fuel his war machine. Thanks, honey! Lex put him to bed with a glass of warm milk - actually the juice from a small green berry that was farmed on the fourth planet of the system, but the taste was almost identical-and let him sleep around the clock. Because taking over the galaxy for your boyfriend can be very tiring.
When Clark woke up, they were already on their way out of the system. The Ygrathian engineers had knocked the bugs out of the gravity weapon and were busily mounting it on all the ships of the fleet. "It's actually pretty impressive, now that it works. We cleared out the rest of the debris in a couple of hours," Lex said, handing Clark a bowl of things that looked like brussel sprouts and tasted like rocky road ice cream, complete with chewy marshmallow center. "Go ahead, they're healthy."
Clark devoured them all in about three minutes; he was starving. "Any more?" he said hopefully.
Lex rang for dinner and, bemused, watched him go through four heaping plates of food. "I haven't seen you eat like that since you were sixteen."
"I had a hard day," Clark said, and beamed at the Xakanxa cook, who had just brought him another milkshake. Clark appears to have gotten over his wiggins about aliens and alien worlds. He polished it off in one long gulp, set the glass down, and went for Lex, who was saying, "Your metabolism is ridiculous. It practically violates the laws of-" and made an undignified yelp of surprise as Clark blurred them across the room to the bed.
"I don't remember this from when you were sixteen," Lex said, breathlessly. Clark happily tore away his clothes-buttery leather, paper thin and skin-tight, formalwear for Xakanxa-and pressed him down into the mattress with kisses.
Lex put his hands into Clark's hair, gripping tight, and murmured encouragement as Clark kissed his throat, the line of his jaw, the open wings of his collarbone. The oil was on the bedside table; Clark slicked himself up and pushed Lex's thighs apart. "God," Lex said, and lay back, breathing deeply, his legs curling around Clark's hips. Well, that's... um, that argues a certain equality in the relationship. I guess. ::slinks away::
Lex had a translucent three-dimensional starmap of the Milky Way that someone had sent him as tribute, showing the Greater Almeracian Empire in brilliant green, an expanding sphere already big enough to stand out on the galactic plane. Except it wasn't quite a sphere; there was a small donut-hole shape missing out of the middle, and Clark couldn't figure out why Lex hadn't completed his perfect set until the Vorlon ambassador arrived for Lex's daily audience.
"It is most unfortunate that you have not seen fit to send an emissary in answer to our invitation," the ambassador said, eyeing the hissing Ygrathians in Lex's council room uneasily. "However, as all nations know, the Vorlon are peace-loving above all-" It's interesting to me that the Vorlon are using how "peace-loving" they are as a come-on to Lex - the ambassador isn't strutting his race's ability as warriors (which Lex could use, if the Vorlon offered to fight *for* him), but his race's ability to make peace. Lex's rep as a benevolent dictator means that alien races have to prove their cooperative "works and plays well with others" tendency over their ability to kick ass. the Ygrathians hissed even louder- "and we have chosen to overlook this small and trivial slight, which we are sure was not intentional, and I have been sent to you to open peace talks."
"Thanks for the thought," Lex said, "but I really don't have time for peace talks right now. Next!"
"You have not even heard our suggestion of terms!" the ambassador protested loudly, as he was frog-marched out of the room by the K'tlak honor guard. The doors closed behind him.
"So when exactly are you planning to resolve things with the Vorlon?" Clark said, casually. When hell freezes over, sweetie.
Lex leaned back in his throne and waved a hand idly. "I've got more important things to worry about. The Melkani are going to be tricky."
The Melkani were a rigid, militaristic society with a fixation on order as intense as the day was long - and their day lasted sixty-three hours. They wouldn't even trade with anyone who didn't follow, precisely, their ninety-eight point set of specific guidelines for the behavior of alien visitors, which probably would have left them completely isolated, except that their drone class produced a weird iridescent liquid that hardened into strands stronger than titanium and flexible enough to tie into knots, worth more than virtually any other raw material in the open galactic market.
Lex used an offer of exclusive contracts to lure in a dozen or so interstellar traders who'd managed to successfully negotiate with the Melkani and interrogated them for a week; then he took the fleet into the system.
"Put us in orbit," Lex said, "and let me know when the Melkani call."
"Exalted Lord," one of the traders said tentatively, "they will not call. The Melkani never call first. They must be approached-"
Lex said, "I don't think so." Make them play on YOUR home field and you have the edge in controlling the action. That certainly goes equally well as a rule of business and a rule of war.
The fleet sat in orbit. Melkani ships occasionally came out of the atmosphere and flew back and forth from their colonies on the moons. "No, don't radio them," Lex said, when his officers called in. "Don't take any action." I'm getting the Captain Kirk vibe! Are you getting the Captain Kirk vibe?
"So, you're basically sitting here playing a giant game of chicken?" Clark said. "Don't you think this could take a while?"
Lex tossed his tablet computer onto the bedside table and grinned at Clark. "Did you have someplace else important to be?" And like Captain Kirk, in addition to playing giant games of chicken with alien races, Lex also gets to seduce the gorgeous alien on his down-time. He reached over and slid his hand down Clark's belly. Aided and abetted by the fact that Clark is still wearing nothing but the silk pants, no doubt. If you think about it, he really doesn't need shoes or clothing to protect him from the outside world. I don't think he's quite going the way of Doctor Manhattan, but seems that earth culture's "petty" concerns, mores, and expectations aren't quite his highest priority anymore.
"N-no," Clark said, urgently, and pulled Lex down. ...and there's his highest priority, right there.
After a week, a terse radio message from the planet demanded their identification. Lex smiled like a shark and didn't answer it. Instead, he ordered his fleet to divide up into sections and perform battle maneuvers. "I want all crews to have some experience with our new gravity weapon," Lex said, and set them to vaporizing the cloud of asteroids in orbit around the system's gas giant, a monster twelve times the size of Jupiter. In a couple of days, the giant planet had a set of beautiful rings that made it look like an oversized Saturn instead.
The Melkani radioed again and requested their identification. Lex replied, saying that their failure to follow protocol was shameful, and closed the channel. Then he had one of his new pet traders come into the system, ostensibly to pick up a shipment of the Melkani ichor. The Melkani paid the trader a very large amount of money for the fake set of "official Almeracian protocols" that Lex had drawn up. The protocols had four hundred and eleven separate points, to be performed at specific times throughout a negotiation, and one particularly important feature which could only be determined by thorough analysis of the entire document: the negotiations invariably ended either in a merger or in outright war. Man, 411 points has gotta be pushing the Melkani's buttons like whoa! Lex is out-Melkani-ing the Melkanies!
"It's possible that I got a little over-enthusiastic about this," Lex said, two weeks later, when they'd just reached item one hundred and twenty-four.
Clark, who was spending his days relaxing in a Melkani hive-palace by the sea while Lex spent his in hot, crowded, underground chambers full of lawyers, put on the sunglasses some of the K'tlak had made for him. "You have to put up with these little inconveniences when you're conquering the galaxy, Lex," he said piously. "Thanks, X'ilrda," he added, taking the drink from their Xakanxa cook. "Want a daiquiri?" He held it out to Lex. Again, this is an interesting contrast to the Clark Kent who used to be thrown by the whole being-on-another-planet thing. When Clark moved from Smallville to Metropolis, the big city was strange and scary, but he got used to it and became a Metropolitan. Now, he's left Terra, aka "Smallplanet", by all rights a back-water rock in a desolate corner of the galaxy, and, where he used to find being on another planet something that threw him off balance, he's become quite comfortable. He's becoming a citizen of the galaxy.
Lex glared at him and stalked back to the negotiations.
There wasn't anything in the way of crime among the Melkani at all, but the tidal effects of the massive gas giant nearby meant they got regular minor earthquakes. They rarely got hurt or killed, their hard-shelled bodies and six legs well-adapted to the regular shaking, but they were almost ridiculously ecstatic when Clark helped them clear up property damage. They loved straight lines and mathematically precise curves, and one piece of debris on a street would literally stop all of them in their tracks as they tried to move it away, even if it was made out of lead or titanium and couldn't be removed without heavy equipment.
"You could probably get them to move things along a lot faster if you just offered them some extra bulldozers," Clark is, once again, helping Lex take over the galaxy. They make a fantastic team. Clark said, throwing back his wet hair as he stepped out of the perfectly circular garden pond; he'd been rinsing dust off in the waterfall-mechanically controlled, with a flow of precisely 42.4 liters per second.
"Hm," Lex said, thoughtfully, and disappeared again.
Clark lay down to doze and dry off in the sun. A hand on his shoulder woke him; without opening his eyes, he said sleepily, "So how is it going? Up to one hundred and thirty-eight yet?"
"Clark," Diana said, and he sat up. "Why. Are. You. People. HERE?!"
"Come on, we haven't got a lot of time," John said. He was standing a few steps away at the edge of the balcony, scanning the horizon through a pair of telescoping binoculars he'd generated with his ring. So, John; are you and Diana turning yourselves in for incarceration as a trade to free Clark? Because I'm not sure that's how it works, but it is nice of you to offer. /sarcasm
"I'm sorry it's taken us so long," Diana said. "Luthor's security net has been almost impossible to penetrate-every time we've gotten close, he's moved to a new location and changed all his procedures again. Are you all right?" She sounded a little dubious, looking him up and down; Clark glanced down at himself and realized he wasn't wearing anything but the towel he'd wrapped around his waist when he got out of the pool. He blushed. Clark, you're next to a pool; a towel is better than a pair of silk pants in this situation, trust me on this one.
"I'm fine," he said hastily, "but what are you guys doing?"
"Rescuing you!" John said. "Did you think we were just going to leave you?" "Look, fella; I'm giving you one more chance to start acting like my old buddy Superman again and stop freaking me the fuck out!"
"We have to go at once," Diana said. "Our window isn't more than five minutes long; then we'll be detected."
Frozen, his stomach clenching, Clark blurted, "I can't." They stared at him, and he groped desperately. "I can't," he said. "I-I gave my parole to have you guys set free, I can't just let you guys rescue me. I could fly out of here on my own any time I wanted to, if I was going to just break my word."
Imagine, if you will, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo cracking open Princess Leia's cell on the Deathstar. "We're here to rescue you!" Luke blurts out. "I'm not going anywhere with you guys, I gave my word!" says the cinnamon-bun-headed one. Can you imagine what Han Solo's response might be? "You have got to be kidding me," John said. "You're going to just stay here sitting on your ass drinking mai tais and being Luthor's-" I wonder what would have happened if John had been allowed to finish that sentence.
"Enough," Diana said sharply, cutting him off. "Clark, we're not going to argue with you; we don't have time. If you're choosing to stay with Luthor-"
"I'm choosing to keep my word," Clark said. He tried to believe it wasn't just an excuse. Which means he knows it is.
"Fine," John said, flatly. "We're out of here. Have a nice life." "Yeah, you just go and *be* that stupid Clark guy. *mutter, mutter* I *hate* that Clark guy." He projected a bubble around them and it rose rapidly away, up into the atmosphere, vanishing into space.
Clark sank down on the chair and covered his face with his hands. This is the third time Clark performs the dropping-his-head-into-his-hands maneuver in this story. The first two times, the cause of his dismay was Lex. This time, in a neat reversal, the cause is his friends, whom he wishes would be a little less pro-active about rescuing him.
Lex came sauntering back in fifteen minutes later, triumphant. "We're at two hundred and seventy-nine, for the price of a few thousand Idarian hydraulic lifters," he said. "Bring me that daiquiri."
Clark got up and caught Lex's face and kissed him, hard.
"Or that works," Lex said, and ran his hand along Clark's waist under the edge of the towel, letting it slip to the ground.
Clark was at the spaceport fixing some damage from another earthquake, with an audience of rapt Melkani Why not, the plot is better than what we've been getting on Smallville for the past few years. I wonder if the Melkani write grammatically-correct fanfic about The Gloriously Anal-retentive Alien Overlord and The Tall Pink Order-Bringer!, when a crew member from one of the alien trading ships sidled up to him nervously and said, "Forgive me for troubling you, Most Noble Lord-" Think how desperate this poor bastard had to be even just to walk up to Clark this way.
"Um, I'm not," Clark said, appalled. And he'd thought 'Superman' was bad. "I'm just-" he flailed for a label, then gave up and just went on hastily. "It's fine. What's wrong?"
The alien-he was from some species Clark had never seen, with three eyes in red, blue, and green all in a row across the front edge of his platter-shaped head-waved his three arms in an anxious sort of way and said, "I am from Trwi, a lovely system-we are a people who are peaceful, hard-working, resourceful-"
"Yes?" Clark said, a little baffled.
"Unfortunately we are under the domination of the Yldng, who are cruel, unrelenting, violent," and this is why Lex never gets to take over any peaceful, innocent civilizations - they've all been taken over already! the Trwi said. "If Most Exalted Luthor would consider to assist us-"
"I think you might want to get your government's approval before inviting Lex in to take over," Clark said.
"I was Under-Minister of Interstellar Diplomacy before we were conquered," the Trwi said sadly. "The Commander-in-Chief was killed during the defense, the Minister of Justice was put to death, and our Queen drank poison." "Dude, I *am* the government."
"Oh," Clark said.
He took the Trwi to see Lex at dinner. Lex frowned and pulled out his tablet, looking over his schedule thoughtfully. Lex carries his Galactic Take-over Schedule around with him, so it's always handy. "It's a little off the beaten path," he said. "I wasn't planning to bother with the territories on the rim for a while, and there are at least ten potentially hostile systems between that and the rest of the empire."
The Trwi wrung all three of his hands together. "Lex!" Clark said, reproachfully.
Lex raised an eyebrow. "Clark, if you're going to be mad at me for not conquering people now-"
"This would be liberating," Clark said.
"Sure," Lex said dryly. "All right, Clark, I'll conquer them early, just for you."
The Yldng had been brutal occupiers, but they fled before the assembled armada of the Grand Empire - Lex had a timetable for when he could graduate it to the Galactic Empire - and Lex sailed into the capitol city to wild cheering. There was one small snag; the Trwi had three genders, and only females could rule officially. However, they proved happy to just pay that requirement lip service; Lex was crowned Queen the next day. We already knew Lex was a drama queen, so this is not a stretch.
"Don't even start," Lex said, coming back from the coronation in the tall jeweled headdress with its long, glitter-dusted veil and the big loops on either side that looked almost exactly like earrings.
Clark said brightly, "Of course not, Your Majesty," and tossed a long necklace of big, cottony magenta-colored poufs around Lex's neck: they were seed pods, something like dandelion fluff. He'd noticed it in the pile of tribute, sent from a small rainforest community on the northern continent, and had picked it out, grinning; it looked like next cousin to a feather boa.
The glam effect was a little undercut by Lex's murderous glare. Clark belatedly realized that it might not have been the best idea when Lex carefully lifted off the headdress, took off the necklace of fluffy poufs, and ran it slowly through his hand, smiling dangerously.
"Why don't you take off your clothes and go lie down," Lex said.
"Um, I was going to go fly a patrol," Clark said, eyeing the fluff a little worriedly.
"Allow me to make it a royal command," Lex said.
Clark kept finding pink bits of fluff in unexpected places for the next month. Ack! TMI, dude.
While he helped the Trwi with rebuilding, Clark found out about the massive slave marketplace on Ryga Minor, one of the main centers of the galactic trade. "I'm not running a mission here," Lex said, but he conquered the planet anyway, and let Clark rip apart the whole complex. They really are a great team.
Most of the slavers had fled and taken a handful of their best stock with them when the Almeracian Fleet had appeared on the horizon, but when Clark broke open the horrible lower pens, he found thousands and thousands of Senga children, penned up, hungry, and crying for their parents.
They had been sold off to slavers by the Hrysk Dominion, an interstellar empire slightly larger than Lex's and considerably older, with an enormous army much more unified than the polyglot Almeracian Fleet. They assimilated planets with a simple system: they sold off any young children, worked the adults to death in forced-labor camps, and resettled some of their own species' constantly increasing population on the planet instead. They didn't seem to mind that they were living in the homes of the dead. Here's my question: if Lex were to conquer the Hrysk, who are really just *that* bad, what the hell would he do with them? I don't see him committing genocide even of a race that was itself committing genocide!
"You're big enough to worry them," Clark said desperately. "You could at least get them to sell you the parents. Move them-"
"Resettle an entire planetary population?" Lex said. "There are at least four billion of them left even if the Hrysk have already killed off half. It's not feasible. And I can't fight them for just this one planet. Once we start, it's all in, and it would be a bad idea right now. I don't have the kind of leverage that would let us negotiate - it would just be an all-out war, and the odds aren't in our favor."
Clark didn't say anything. He couldn't ask Lex to start a war, not even for this, but he thought about the desperate, hollow faces of the Senga children, the millions more to be sold or slaughtered, and felt sick.
Lex looked at him. "On the other hand," he said, "if I win, that accelerates the rest of my schedule by five years. It might be a gamble worth taking."
Part 3 of 3
Clark's POV, depressed pussycat that he is. He is between a rock and a hard place and, much as he knows what he wants, he doesn't know what to do about it to get there, so he mopes.
The Vorlon weren't exactly nice guys; their ships were run by enslaved Ygrathian engineers, who were chained to their posts, fed from tubes, and forced to work with electric shocks. They had a life expectancy of five years in servitude before they died of malnutrition and hopelessness. As they were led down the corridors to the command center, Clark stared miserably at their bent and dull grey-skinned forms. It didn't help any to remind himself that the Almeracians were slavers too, and Lex was probably doing the same kind of thing to the Idarians right now. It just made him feel more sick to his stomach. In addition to the fact that he is gunning for Lex and he hates it, Clark is a take-charge and fix things kinda guy, and his inability to punch out the Vorlons and free the Idarians is very frustrating for him, hence the nausea.
He didn't know what he was doing. He could still feel Lex's mouth on his collarbone, Lex's hands on his thighs, like he'd been branded. "Stay," Lex had said in the morning; just once, softly. Maybe if he had - except he'd known, even while Lex was asking, that it wasn't an offer to play nice. Lex never had before.
"We will come out of hyperspace outside Idaria Major," the Vorlon general was saying. "We will crush their first ring of defensive ships before they have time to mount a response. Then our sting fighters will attack the orbital battle stations while we eliminate the remaining warships." ...the best-laid plans of mice and Vorlons oft go awry.
"Very well," Vox Ghanai said. "Superman, Wonder Woman, if you will join myself and the other Lanterns, we can best assist with the attack on the battle stations."
"Fine," Clark said tiredly, and went to stand at the observation post. Clark's spent his entire life doing what others expected of him, using his vast powers to do the right thing. It's hard on him when there doesn't seem to be a right thing to do.
Diana was already there. "Are you all right?" she asked quietly. "I know this can't be easy for you."
"Lex started this," Clark said grimly. "He knew what he was getting into." Well, there is *that* for you to cling to, Clark.
Diana looked over at the Vorlon generals, who were talking among themselves, and at Maxima, who was standing a little way off, gripping the rail. "We have strange allies."
"No kidding," Clark said. He wished Batman were there. He'd pissed off the Vorlon leadership by systematically demolishing every point of their first five plans, until they'd threatened to leave the coalition entirely unless he was kicked out of the planning. He'd shrugged and gone, refusing to comment on the subsequent plans. And, as I pointed out before, never once coming up with any serious suggestions of his own.
"The short answer is you're going to lose," he'd said. "Luthor's not going to be beaten by committee." To be fair, on Justice League, they're always trying to make the point (for the kiddies) that cooperation is a the only way to succeed, "we're stronger together than apart", yadda-yadda-yadda; so Luthor has, in fact, been beaten by committee, several times.
"This was your idea in the first place!" John had said.
"No," Batman had said. "You wanted to stop him. I pointed out the options. I didn't suggest you take them." It's funny but, "You wanted to stop him" suggests that Bruce might actually have told them all to back off and leave Lex to his own devices.
The hyperspace streaks started to slow. A set of commands issued out over the shipwide intercom, in the guttural Vorlon language, and the chained engineers jerked and went sluggishly to work.
They came out with the Idarian homeworld hanging blue and gold in front of them, its white rings of frozen nitrogen sparkling. The Almeracian ships were lined up in a defensive formation, waiting for them.
"You're a little late," Lex said, his voice echoing over the intercom. A moment later, a big holographic projection of him fuzzed into view on the deck. He was seated - enthroned, really - on a command chair, heavy robes spilling off his shoulders and onto the floor.
"He knew we were coming?" Diana said, while the Vorlon generals shouted orders and their fleet pulled into a defensive knot.
"Did you miserable cowards really believe I would ever lead an army against Almerac?" Maxima said, turning around. She spat on the deck in front of the Vorlons. "I will rejoice in watching your destruction." Honestly? This is great character-development for Maxima. There's apparently something greater than Maxima's self-indulgent desire to be the prettiest princess with the biggest tiara (and harshes right cross); she loves her people and her planet, and told Lex about the approaching armada despite the fact that it means she'll never rule her world again. She also appears to have learned a measure of "sneaky" from Lex.
"Seize her!" the Vorlon general said. "Luthor can watch his queen die slowly before we destroy his fleet."
"Allow us to say a few words first," Lex said, and held his hand out to the side; a moment later, a tall Ygrathian female with healthy green skin and a gold torque-like necklace around her throat came onto the projection. One by one, the grey engineers slowly lifted their heads as she spoke, her hissing words going over the shipwide intercom, and then they looked at one another with their slit-pupilled eyes, and without a word turned back to their stations, their claws rattling against the keys.
"I have a bad feeling about this," John said. At this point, Clark has just enough time to think to himself that he's really glad he's invulnerable.
The ship blew up.
Clark woke up naked in a bedroom the size of a small country; Lex's robes were tossed carelessly over a chair in the corner. A servant poked his? many-eyed head in and offered him a cup of something almost like coffee and a pair of pajama pants. One of the things I like about this story is that the aliens whose civilizations are falling to the Lexian Empire aren't the usual Star Trek "let's put some putty on their noses and dress them in a leotard"-type aliens; they are aliens with tentacles, or carapaces, or a slew of eyes, or whatever, and their ways are strange and, well, *alien*, too. In their (multiple, many-colored) eyes, Lex isn't just an overlord, he's an *alien* overlord, which kinda cracks me up to think about. Lex is an evil alien overlord, which is the job Clark's father always had lined up for him (on SV).
Lex was in the next room over, giant three-dimensional starmaps projecting in the air around him. He turned them off as Clark came in, swiveling his chair around. "Morning."
"Are John and Diana-" Clark said.
"Fine," Lex said. "She's currently being kept under sedation, and we confiscated his ring, so they're probably not as comfortable as they could be, but they're healthy."
"Sedation?" Clark said. "You've got her drugged?"
See, I find sedation much more sensible and way less perverse than the canonical hand-encasing bondage gear the evil empires always trot out every time a superhero is taken captive on the Justice League cartoon.
"Oddly, I didn't think she'd stay put otherwise," Lex said. "She's a prisoner of war. So are you, for that matter."
"Sorry, I missed that, what with the complimentary chocolates and the silk pants," Clark said.
"You thought those were for your benefit?" Lex said, eyeing Clark up and down. I am struck dumb by the beauty of Lex's come-back.
Clark turned red. "I didn't realize I was that kind of prisoner, either." Clark, your life just went from heroic Space Opera to a sleazy bodice-ripper on the SciFi channel, and you ain't the male lead.
"I've mostly abolished slavery by now," Lex said, "but I might have to make an exception just this once. I always liked the idea of The Sheik."
"What?" Clark said, staring.
"It's a classic of pulp literature," Lex said.
"No!" Clark said. "You abolished slavery?" He's a really stand-up Evil Alien Overlord.
Lex raised his eyebrows. "Of course." When Clark kept staring at him, Lex tilted his head quizzically. "I'd be having a much harder time integrating the Idarians if I was marching half the population off in chains, Clark."
"Integrating them," Clark said, flatly. It's what the ancient Romans used to do, Clark; get with the program here.
"I'm not going to be able to do that much conquering with just the population of Almerac," Lex said. "Besides, smaller systems won't put up much resistance if they know being conquered by me basically means entry into a massive free-trade zone and protection by the most successful fleet in the galaxy. In fact, I've got a few offers of surrender from ones I haven't even invaded yet."
Clark sat down and put his head in his hands. This is the second time in the story Lex has caused poor Clark to sit down and put his head in his hands. The gesture has to do with Clark's powerlessness and frustration at the inability to affect change in Lex or in any given situation associated with Lex, helplessness being something Clark hasn't had a lot of experience with since he became Superman. In his current situation, Clark, for all his many superpowers, has pretty much been stripped of his ability to do anything. Everything has been taken out of his hands. Which is why the situation turns out to be so freeing for him.
"I am actually good at this, you know," Lex said.
Lex wasn't so much good at it as he was spectacular, Clark realized hollowly, as he watched from the palace roof that afternoon as Lex gave a stirring speech on the joint Idarian-Almeracian victory over the Vorlon to a crowd of wildly cheering subjects. A lot of the Idarians were clutching the new imperial flag in their tentacles, waving it enthusiastically in the air. Apparently, they'd been running a vicious border dispute with the Vorlon for the last three centuries and were perfectly willing to let Lex convince them that really, they hadn't so much been conquered as they had entered into an alliance with Almerac to beat the Vorlon at last.
It's been said that the best businessmen are the ones that make deals where everyone involved feels like they came out on top. I always wondered how Lionel got rich, because he seemed to specialize in making sure that he left a wake of angry people who felt they'd been screwed over behind him--all well and good if you're a corporate raider and don't need to worry about pissing people off, but not so great for someone who's supposed to be an industrialist in a stable business environment. Lex was always the better businessman on Smallville, or would have been if Lionel hadn't always gone in and dismantled the deals he set up. At any rate, while a book like The Art of War is about applying the rules of war to business, it seems that in this instance, Lex is applying the rules of business to war.
Afterwards, Clark went and sat in the gardens, trying to figure out what to do. The Vorlon didn't deserve to be saved, the Idarians didn't want to be saved, and the Ygrathians had been saved - by Lex. John and Diana were the only ones left to rescue, and he wasn't doing too well with that, either.
"That went reasonably well," Lex said, shedding his elaborate puffy-sleeved jacket as he came back from the post-speech ceremonies. "Any luck yet?" He sat down next to Clark and stretched his arm out along the back of the bench.
"No," Clark said bitterly. He'd criss-crossed the world twelve times so far and still had no idea where Diana and John were being kept. He was willing to bet that Lex wouldn't trust anyone but himself to keep an eye on them, no matter how good the prison, so he was reasonably sure they were still somewhere in the system, but if they were, Lex was keeping them under a few dozen layers of lead and a cloaking device.
Lex smiled. "Pity."
"Look, why won't you just let them go?" Clark said. "We can't do much against you without a fleet, and the Vorlon aren't going to be up for a rematch any time soon. We'll just go back to Earth."
Lex slid his hand up to curl around the back of Clark's neck. "What makes you think I want you to leave?"
Clark shivered; Lex's fingers were stroking gently at the side of his throat. "I can't-" he began, except his voice cracked and he had to start over. "I can't stay, Lex."
"I wasn't planning on making it an option," Lex said; he turned Clark's face gently towards him.
Clark couldn't help it; he leaned in for the kiss, his hand cupping Lex's head, except he couldn't do this either. He broke away and stood up. "I'm not going to sleep with you while you've got my friends locked up and drugged, Lex," he said.
Lex stretched out his legs. "You know, Clark, I'm willing to be reasonable if you are." He beckoned to one of the servants. "I'm happy to trade you their freedom."
Clark had the bad feeling he was watching the penny drop. "For what?"
"Yours," Lex said. The servant was bringing him a rolled-up sheet of the thin onion-skin Almeracian paper, full of tiny print and stamped with a big glittering holographic seal.
"I thought I was already a prisoner of war," Clark said, eyeing the parchment. "Not that you've been doing a great job of locking me up-"
"You're a little complicated to restrain without hauling out the kryptonite, and I feel our relationship's progressed beyond that," Lex said, earnestly.
"Glad to hear it," Clark said wryly.
Lex held out the contract. "That's why I want your parole instead."
Clark didn't take it. "My what?"
"In the old-fashioned sense," Lex said, waving a hand airily. "You promise to submit like a good little prisoner, I let your pals go."
"So you want, what, my word of honor that I'll help you conquer the galaxy in between giving you blowjobs?" Clark stumbled a little over blowjobs, and it came out sounding more uncertain than he'd intended, like he was waiting to be convinced.
"No, of course not," Lex said. "Almerac does have laws on the treatment of prisoners of war, Clark."
"Such as?"
Lex turned the contract around and examined it. "Let's see. I can't breed you, I can't sell you, and I can't make you fight for me," he said.
"That's it?" Clark said. "What about torture?"
"No, torture is perfectly legal," Lex said. "So is using you for recreational sex, which is what you should be more worried about." He paused and added slyly, "Or not."
Clark blushed before he could help it; goddamn Lex, anyway. "You know, you could try making a pass at me like a normal guy instead of locking up my friends."
"You could try not invading me next time," Lex said pleasantly.
"You could try not conquering the galaxy next time!" Clark said.
"No, I really couldn't," Lex said. "Anyway, it's more fun this way." I love the tit-for-tat witty banter here: only these two guys, two of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, can snark at one another about taking over the galaxy the way other people cheerfully insult *their* significant other's taste in rock-and-roll or fav TV programs. They really are on another level of "normal" than the rest of us.
"For you, maybe," Clark said.
Lex wagged the contract at him. "Sign and it'll be more fun for you too."
"You can't seriously think I'll agree to be your slave."
"Prisoner of war," Lex corrected him, reproachfully.
"I'm really not seeing the difference here," Clark said.
"I have to ransom you if offered reasonable terms," Lex said.
Clark folded his arms. "Oh, well, if I can be ransomed."
"Granted, the current market value for a Kryptonian is about four industrialized star systems, so I wouldn't rely on it," Lex admitted. Damned collector's market!
Rolling his eyes, Clark said, "Oh, great."
"You'll also be freed as soon as a peace treaty is concluded with the Vorlon, since that's who you were fighting for," Lex said. "It's a very reasonable set of provisions. "
"I'll keep looking, thanks," Clark said dryly.
Lex shrugged, smiling. "Your loss."
Clark started using his x-ray vision more aggressively and discovered to his dismay that even though the Idarians were the model of civilization in public, there was plenty of violence between them in private, everything from domestic spats to murder. But whenever he landed at the scene of a fight to break it up, both participants - they only ever fought one-on-one-immediately stopped and huddled down into horrified balls, their eyestalks retracting almost into their heads and a low keening coming out of the breathing slits in their sides.
"How did they ever have an army?" Clark demanded, coming back to the palace exasperated after having spent three hours calming down the hysterical victim and the equally hysterical would-be murderer, both of whom seemed just as upset by his intrusion. I swear, this is like something you'd see on Farscape, it's just a perverse and cool thing that defines the alieness of an alien race.
"Please stop torturing my subjects," Lex said. "They're actually in less pain being stabbed than having someone watching them fight. It's some kind of neurological reaction. Have you found your friends yet?"
He was stretched out on the bed to read, wearing a loose white shirt and trousers made out of something that draped elegantly over his long legs. Clark glared at him, torn between hunger and resentment.
Staying chastely on one side of the bed hadn't been working very well. I'm glad Clark didn't try to do a Claudette Colbert and construct a wall by hanging a blanket over a rope down the middle, that would have been embarrassing. Lex didn't respect the invisible line Clark tried to imagine dividing the bed into separate halves; Lex would stay up late working, and reach over to run his fingers through Clark's hair, cup his cheek, touch his mouth: proprietary, and the worst part was how badly Clark wanted to be owned.
At first, Clark had tried staying away from the palace grounds, but the planet's weather control system "malfunctioned" and created a miniature hailstorm, five meters across, that followed him around the world and pelted him anytime he stopped moving. Then he'd tried sleeping in the gardens, but the palace guard dog-things-with six legs and four rows of teeth-woke him up by determinedly and uselessly gnawing on his head. I can see Lex now, giving the orders to his underlings on how to bedevil Clark, sniggering inside, but perfectly composed at face, only a slight smirk giving him away. After that, he moved to the bedroom floor, where one of the servants "accidentally" poured a tub of ice water on top of him, ten minutes after he'd finally gotten back to sleep.
He'd gotten up vengefully after that, dripping and cold, and climbed straight into bed, plastered himself over Lex and went to sleep, ignoring his complaints. Which had seemed like a great idea until he'd woken up warm and dry in a huddle of blankets with Lex's body under him and Lex's hands stroking his back. "Are you sure you don't want to give me your parole?" Lex murmured, and Clark had swallowed yes, anything, please, and dragged himself out of bed. They don't call him The Man of Steel for nothing. Of course, they also call him the B.D.A.
A week later, Lex moved his headquarters to the new front in the Drosian system, a desolate mining colony full of asteroids and gas giants and one dim, red dwarf star: but it produced more trinium than almost any other mine in the quadrant, and the Ygrathians' new and improved weapons system for the Idarian spaceships needed a lot of trinium.
The camp was on one of the larger asteroids, one with some shreds of atmosphere. The tiny red sun glowed through it like a distant, small coal. Clark felt weirdly sluggish. He'd thought this would be the perfect opportunity to find his friends and get out of here, since the other prisoners had to be on board one of the transferring ships, but he couldn't seem to get up the energy to search; instead he slept longer and longer hours, until one day he didn't even get out of bed, drifting in and out of a half-wakeful state.
Lex came in from a meeting halfway during the day and noticed him. Clark heard his voice, felt his hand, from a distance, but his head was too heavy to lift from the pillow. Sweet jebus, Lex; you didn't notice how droopy Clark had gotten for *how* long? For shame! I'd think you'd at least have noticed the sharp reduction in whinging.
He woke up somewhere else with an enormous yellow-white sun just rising, a humid mist clinging to his skin, feeling like he'd been sleeping for a month. "Are we there yet?" he asked drowsily, and Lex bent down and kissed him, hands cupping Clark's face tight.
"Tell me next time you're mysteriously collapsing, you idiot," Lex said savagely.
Clark was more interested in the kissing, the taste of Lex's mouth; he vaguely remembered there was a reason he hadn't been doing this, but it didn't seem all that important. It was no effort at all to pull Lex down into the bed with him. Lex said some things that Clark didn't listen to very much, because it was so- so- then the sun came pouring over the windowsill and Clark woke up the rest of the way.
"Where are we?" he said, baffled. "What-" He realized what he'd just been doing and sat up abruptly, turning red.
Lex glared up at him, furiously. He was wearing an elaborate array of interwoven shiny cords in alternating dark and light colors - or at least, he had been; it had mostly fallen apart into loose straps now, slipping off his shoulders and hanging loose around his wrists; his chest was bare. "Don't stop now," he said, dangerously.
Clark stared at Lex, the straps dark against his pale skin, and swallowed hard. "I didn't know what I was doing," he said weakly. He thought he was having one of *those* dreams.
Lex snarled wordlessly and dragged himself out of bed. He tried to reassemble the outfit for a moment before he gave up and dumped the whole tangled mess on the floor and stepped out of it, naked. "Ryeka!" Lex shouted, and a mandibled head with twelve faceted eyes poked down from above the window frame. Clark flinched back: it was like a cross between a giant spider and a praying mantis. "The damn thing came apart again," Lex said. ...and Lex is *totally* cool with the Shelob impersonator even unto the point of being casually crabby at it. He's also not too put out when it's crabby back at him.
The alien clattered in rapidly on twelve legs, and sat back onto half of them and busily used the rest to reweave the straps around Lex's body, chittering at him.
"It wasn't my fault," Lex snapped, glaring at Clark some more.
Clark said again, staring, "Lex, where are we?"
"The K'tlak Empire," Lex said. "They were the nearest place with a sun that provides the ideal spectrum of radiation for you, so I had to adjust the conquest schedule a little and leapfrog a couple of smaller systems." It's an even more ideal yellow sun than Earth's, for Clark, which is a nice touch. There are *better* places for him to be than on Sol III.
"Oh, thanks a lot," Clark said. "How many people did you kill in the process?"
Lex shrugged. "Wars have casualties, Clark. In this case, though, they've been having a four-way war of succession amongst themselves for the last two decades, so it's reasonably safe to say that overall my involvement is a net gain." Ryeka was finished, jittering back a few steps to examine its handiwork, adjusting a strap here and there, critically. "I've got to get going, or I'll be late for my own coronation. Care to attend?"
"No!" Clark said.
He did go outside, after Lex had gone; the sunlight felt unbelievably good on his skin, and he flew lazily until he caught up to noon and then followed it around the planet. It was beautiful, a solid green belt of jungle wrapped all around the equator, but full of sad ruins and refugees. Clark stopped to help several groups of Ygrathian engineers, who were digging wells for them; the K'tlak themselves were putting together shelters at top speed out of big stacks of dried fibers that the Idarians were dropping off in hovercraft. This is probably the first time these races have had the opportunity or the desire to work together, and they work together very well.
Big projection screens were showing the coronation ceremony at all the refugee camps. Trust Lex to make sure they got a dose of propaganda with their dinner, Clark thought bitterly, "You think dinner's for free?" (quote from City on the Edge of Forever) watching with folded arms while the high priest or whoever it was wove a dozen cords of silver and gold around Lex's arms. The K'tlak just clacked their mandibles approvingly.
He was feeling recovered by the time he made it once around the planet; more than recovered, actually, he realized, as he accidentally put on more speed than he'd intended, and shot himself right out of the atmosphere. The fleet was in orbit - it already looked bigger - and Clark took the chance to do another search: suddenly he could see through anything he wanted to, even the metals more dense than lead, and he felt like he could hold his breath forever.
None of it helped: Diana and John weren't on any of the ships at all. Clark darted back down to the planet and went through every Almeracian installation; then he searched the camps for good measure, and flew around the whole planet after and then burst into the coronation hall where Lex was still accepting oaths of fealty, for the second straight day. "Where did you put them?" Clark demanded.
Lex lifted an eyebrow. "You don't actually expect me to tell you, do you?"
"You know I can't just fly into hyperspace, so you might as well," Clark said. He was already trying to come up with some way to hitchhike out of the system on a trade ship - he'd seen some going back and forth from the spaceports. Lex probably had them stashed somewhere on Almerac. "Of course, if you have dumped them in some other system, they've probably escaped by now and just don't know where I am."
"Conquering the galaxy isn't exactly what you'd call quiet and unobtrusive, Clark," Lex said. "Trust me, they're safely locked up."
Clark folded his arms. "Fine. Tell me where they are, and if they aren't free already and I can't rescue them within a week, I'll give you my parole." Damon Runyon wrote: "One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider." Clark is about to end up with an earful of cider.
"Well, if you put it that way," Lex said immediately, leaving Clark with the sinking feeling he'd made a mistake, "where was it you were all planning to stick me - one of the 'ten thousand human-habitable asteroids in the Hlaian nebula'?" I hope Lex knows Clark protested that plan.
Clark was pretty sure there weren't any trade ships going to the Hlaian nebula. "And you expect me to believe they haven't gotten out of that?" he said, a little weakly. "The other Lanterns would track them down."
"Oh, I understand a few of them have tried," Lex said. "But even a Green Lantern can have a tough time searching ten thousand asteroids for a cloaked base while under attack by an Almeracian warlord."
"An Almeracian-" Clark stared.
"You understand, I really had to find a way to work with Maxima," Lex said sanctimoniously. "It was my responsibility as a parent." Isn't it nice that for the first time, Lex is working on his relationship with one of his ex-wives?
And now we segue to very cranky John Stewart's POV
"So you're just going to stay and what, climb into bed with Luthor? And I'm not talking metaphorically here!" John said, clenching his hand around the ring Clark had just handed back to him. I have a theory about John Stewart: he admires Superman; he likes the cut of his jib, the squareness of his jaw, the staunchness, the moral certainty, the purity... but John's not really Clark's biggest fan. It disconcerts John when Superman exhibits Clark's dithering and occasional weenie behaviour or anything Clark might do that could be fall into the "shades of gray" category, hence the rudeness he exhibits here. John has figured out that Clark is sekritly doing what he REALLY wants to do, rather than being a genuine martyr and Clark's perceived moral lapse pisses him off. "This is NOT my Superman! I want this loser to go away and MY Superman to return!" John is also in denial about it. "No way! NO WAY would my guy do that!"
Clark swallowed the impulse to tell him to go to hell. "It can't be that much worse than being in bed with the Vorlon." Oh, god, I hope he's speaking metaphorically! He turned and walked away from the open door of the prison cell.
"Goddamnit," he heard John muttering behind him.
And let's be honest, John's not at his best after getting beaten up and tossed in jail for as long as he's been incarcerated (not sure how much time has passed). He's stung that he and/or his team members couldn't free him and Wonder Woman; instead they are being freed at Luthor's generous behest and by Clark doing something that totally freaks John out.
Diana caught him halfway down the hall. "You can't really mean to enslave yourself to Luthor!" No offense, Princess, but I don't see either you or John offering to stay in your cells so that Clark won't have to do the dirty deed.
"I'm not going to fight for him, if that's what you're asking," Clark said. "I'm not turning traitor here, whatever John thinks." Sadly, though Wonder Woman is genuinely concerned for Clark, I think this is over her head; she's clueless about the emotional depths of what the hell is going on here. I think she honestly believes Clark is selling himself to free them, rather than using them as an excuse to stay, and she feels awful about it.?
"He's worried for you, and so am I," she said, gripping his arm. "What do you think Luthor is going to do to you if you keep this devil's bargain?"
"I'm going to fuck you," Lex said. And Lex inadvertently answers Wonder Woman's question. This is a nice piece of sit-com change-of-scene rejoinder... that said, OMIGOD, NOW I HAVE TO COMMENT ON PORN! EEK!
He put one hand on the back of Clark's neck and bent him over the desk. Clark went down without resistance, already shivering with anticipation; Here's the thing. I think that intellectually, Clark... er, okay, maybe "intellectually" isn't the right word for the Smallville version of Clark, but when Clark thinks about it, he feels he should be the Alpha dog by virtue of the myriad of superpowers he possesses, or at the very least he feels he should want to be the alpha dog. Unfortunately, emotionally and personality-wise, he's really not that guy. After all, aside from occasionally looming over a bad guy, usually to get him to stop doing teh very bad things, Clark never uses his powers to, say, push anyone around. He uses them to *help* people, which is lovely but not very Alpha dog of him. It's canon that he tries very hard to meet whatever violence he finds with an *equal* and opposite response. He's a guy who can punch an asteroid to powder, but will punch out a criminal just barely hard enough to make the idiot stop swinging. Clark is also the kind of guy who, canonically, does all the housework and cooking in his home: he also runs errands and fetches coffee for Lois. And she *knows* he's Superman, so it's canon that she feels comfortable as the alpha personality in that relationship, too. the freshly signed parole contract crumpled underneath his chest, wet ink smearing on his skin. Nice! Lex's words are literally written right on Clark's body, marking him as Lex's property. Also, Lex has been waiting so long, he cannot put the anticipation of the deed off even a second longer - the ink's not even dry before he pounces!
"Hold still," Lex said, his voice low and smoky, and slid two fingers into him, slick and ring-heavy; the smooth cool bands brushed against Clark's skin, warming with the heat of his body.
Clark clung to the far side of the desk, gulping for breath, spreading his legs wider as Lex worked his way into him; the polished metal was squeezing slowly out between his fingers like clay. I don't know about you, but this is the most con non-con I've ever seen. If this non-con was any more con, Clark would be screaming, "beat me, whip me, make me write bad checks!" He'd be fumbling around in the desk drawer, looking for the checkbook. The silk pants were puddled around his ankles. Lex's outfits are described in glorious and sometimes hysterically funny detail, Clark's not so much, which leads me to believe he's been wandering about on these weird alien planets mostly wearing nothing but a pair of silk pants... which, although it's not mentioned, I'm willing to bet are purple. Lex wasn't even taking off his clothes: the ceremonial garb of Khitanwe was a long, translucent robe that opened down the front, and the thick, jewel-encrusted edges lapped at Clark's thighs with every slow, generous thrust.
"Oh, God," Clark said, and pressed his forehead to the cool surface of the desk; Lex was moving into him more seriously now.
"See," Lex said, panting, "Tell me this isn't more fun."
"I'd-I'd be having even more fun," Clark said, struggling for breath, "if you hadn't just decapitated the previous owner of that robe," though really, the wobble in his voice made it sound a lot less authoritative.
"God-King Zherak purged more people than Stalin, and for a special twist he ate some of them," Lex said. "Stop complaining. His subjects already have." What's the opposite of "Lex suffers by comparison"?
Clark felt he ought to argue that some more, but Lex nudged him forward and got a better angle, and the ability to form complete sentences deserted him.
From there, Lex headed the fleet to the Xakanxa system: he was looking to ensure supply, and Xakanxa was an agricultural powerhouse, a dozen nations spread over eight planets with virtually every climate and soil type represented. They exported food to most of the quadrant.
But thanks to some kind of new gravity-based weapon one of the Xakanxa superpowers had been testing to use on the others Jesus, doesn't Lex ever take over any peaceful, innocent civilizations?, two of the small moons of the largest inhabited planet had just collided, exploding, and the Almeracian fleet came into the system to find a cloud of asteroids and dust spiraling inwards towards the forty billion inhabitants. The surface already looked like a war zone, and all the ships of the system were out in space, struggling to deflect the largest asteroids before they hit.
Clark took one look in horror and was out the nearest airlock, just in time to stop a final desperate kamikaze attempt to knock away an asteroid almost a mile across. He darted in front of the ship and caught the front edge of the tumbling rock, straining wildly as it spun him around, but finally the asteroid slowed and stopped, and he gave it a heave towards the sun. And he did it wearing the silk pants, I'm assuming, which makes me very very happy.
The ship blinked its lights at him gratefully. Clark raised a hand and went after a flurry of twelve smaller ones just about to enter the atmosphere.
What occurred to me here is that Clark got to help out and save people from a disaster, and he didn't have to hide behind a one-dimensional superhero character that he'd created in order to do it. He was *himself*. He can always be himself, he never has to be Superman or even the version of Clark Kent that is the dweeby reporter in ill-fitting clothes and ugly glasses who trips over stuff.
When he staggered back on board Lex's flagship, thirty-seven hours later, the immediate orbital space was clear and the Xakanxa had all become citizens of the Greater Almeracian Empire without a shot fired. I think what just happened here is that Clark won this planetary system for Lex--thus giving him the agricultural powerhouse he needed to fuel his war machine. Thanks, honey! Lex put him to bed with a glass of warm milk - actually the juice from a small green berry that was farmed on the fourth planet of the system, but the taste was almost identical-and let him sleep around the clock. Because taking over the galaxy for your boyfriend can be very tiring.
When Clark woke up, they were already on their way out of the system. The Ygrathian engineers had knocked the bugs out of the gravity weapon and were busily mounting it on all the ships of the fleet. "It's actually pretty impressive, now that it works. We cleared out the rest of the debris in a couple of hours," Lex said, handing Clark a bowl of things that looked like brussel sprouts and tasted like rocky road ice cream, complete with chewy marshmallow center. "Go ahead, they're healthy."
Clark devoured them all in about three minutes; he was starving. "Any more?" he said hopefully.
Lex rang for dinner and, bemused, watched him go through four heaping plates of food. "I haven't seen you eat like that since you were sixteen."
"I had a hard day," Clark said, and beamed at the Xakanxa cook, who had just brought him another milkshake. Clark appears to have gotten over his wiggins about aliens and alien worlds. He polished it off in one long gulp, set the glass down, and went for Lex, who was saying, "Your metabolism is ridiculous. It practically violates the laws of-" and made an undignified yelp of surprise as Clark blurred them across the room to the bed.
"I don't remember this from when you were sixteen," Lex said, breathlessly. Clark happily tore away his clothes-buttery leather, paper thin and skin-tight, formalwear for Xakanxa-and pressed him down into the mattress with kisses.
Lex put his hands into Clark's hair, gripping tight, and murmured encouragement as Clark kissed his throat, the line of his jaw, the open wings of his collarbone. The oil was on the bedside table; Clark slicked himself up and pushed Lex's thighs apart. "God," Lex said, and lay back, breathing deeply, his legs curling around Clark's hips. Well, that's... um, that argues a certain equality in the relationship. I guess. ::slinks away::
Lex had a translucent three-dimensional starmap of the Milky Way that someone had sent him as tribute, showing the Greater Almeracian Empire in brilliant green, an expanding sphere already big enough to stand out on the galactic plane. Except it wasn't quite a sphere; there was a small donut-hole shape missing out of the middle, and Clark couldn't figure out why Lex hadn't completed his perfect set until the Vorlon ambassador arrived for Lex's daily audience.
"It is most unfortunate that you have not seen fit to send an emissary in answer to our invitation," the ambassador said, eyeing the hissing Ygrathians in Lex's council room uneasily. "However, as all nations know, the Vorlon are peace-loving above all-" It's interesting to me that the Vorlon are using how "peace-loving" they are as a come-on to Lex - the ambassador isn't strutting his race's ability as warriors (which Lex could use, if the Vorlon offered to fight *for* him), but his race's ability to make peace. Lex's rep as a benevolent dictator means that alien races have to prove their cooperative "works and plays well with others" tendency over their ability to kick ass. the Ygrathians hissed even louder- "and we have chosen to overlook this small and trivial slight, which we are sure was not intentional, and I have been sent to you to open peace talks."
"Thanks for the thought," Lex said, "but I really don't have time for peace talks right now. Next!"
"You have not even heard our suggestion of terms!" the ambassador protested loudly, as he was frog-marched out of the room by the K'tlak honor guard. The doors closed behind him.
"So when exactly are you planning to resolve things with the Vorlon?" Clark said, casually. When hell freezes over, sweetie.
Lex leaned back in his throne and waved a hand idly. "I've got more important things to worry about. The Melkani are going to be tricky."
The Melkani were a rigid, militaristic society with a fixation on order as intense as the day was long - and their day lasted sixty-three hours. They wouldn't even trade with anyone who didn't follow, precisely, their ninety-eight point set of specific guidelines for the behavior of alien visitors, which probably would have left them completely isolated, except that their drone class produced a weird iridescent liquid that hardened into strands stronger than titanium and flexible enough to tie into knots, worth more than virtually any other raw material in the open galactic market.
Lex used an offer of exclusive contracts to lure in a dozen or so interstellar traders who'd managed to successfully negotiate with the Melkani and interrogated them for a week; then he took the fleet into the system.
"Put us in orbit," Lex said, "and let me know when the Melkani call."
"Exalted Lord," one of the traders said tentatively, "they will not call. The Melkani never call first. They must be approached-"
Lex said, "I don't think so." Make them play on YOUR home field and you have the edge in controlling the action. That certainly goes equally well as a rule of business and a rule of war.
The fleet sat in orbit. Melkani ships occasionally came out of the atmosphere and flew back and forth from their colonies on the moons. "No, don't radio them," Lex said, when his officers called in. "Don't take any action." I'm getting the Captain Kirk vibe! Are you getting the Captain Kirk vibe?
"So, you're basically sitting here playing a giant game of chicken?" Clark said. "Don't you think this could take a while?"
Lex tossed his tablet computer onto the bedside table and grinned at Clark. "Did you have someplace else important to be?" And like Captain Kirk, in addition to playing giant games of chicken with alien races, Lex also gets to seduce the gorgeous alien on his down-time. He reached over and slid his hand down Clark's belly. Aided and abetted by the fact that Clark is still wearing nothing but the silk pants, no doubt. If you think about it, he really doesn't need shoes or clothing to protect him from the outside world. I don't think he's quite going the way of Doctor Manhattan, but seems that earth culture's "petty" concerns, mores, and expectations aren't quite his highest priority anymore.
"N-no," Clark said, urgently, and pulled Lex down. ...and there's his highest priority, right there.
After a week, a terse radio message from the planet demanded their identification. Lex smiled like a shark and didn't answer it. Instead, he ordered his fleet to divide up into sections and perform battle maneuvers. "I want all crews to have some experience with our new gravity weapon," Lex said, and set them to vaporizing the cloud of asteroids in orbit around the system's gas giant, a monster twelve times the size of Jupiter. In a couple of days, the giant planet had a set of beautiful rings that made it look like an oversized Saturn instead.
The Melkani radioed again and requested their identification. Lex replied, saying that their failure to follow protocol was shameful, and closed the channel. Then he had one of his new pet traders come into the system, ostensibly to pick up a shipment of the Melkani ichor. The Melkani paid the trader a very large amount of money for the fake set of "official Almeracian protocols" that Lex had drawn up. The protocols had four hundred and eleven separate points, to be performed at specific times throughout a negotiation, and one particularly important feature which could only be determined by thorough analysis of the entire document: the negotiations invariably ended either in a merger or in outright war. Man, 411 points has gotta be pushing the Melkani's buttons like whoa! Lex is out-Melkani-ing the Melkanies!
"It's possible that I got a little over-enthusiastic about this," Lex said, two weeks later, when they'd just reached item one hundred and twenty-four.
Clark, who was spending his days relaxing in a Melkani hive-palace by the sea while Lex spent his in hot, crowded, underground chambers full of lawyers, put on the sunglasses some of the K'tlak had made for him. "You have to put up with these little inconveniences when you're conquering the galaxy, Lex," he said piously. "Thanks, X'ilrda," he added, taking the drink from their Xakanxa cook. "Want a daiquiri?" He held it out to Lex. Again, this is an interesting contrast to the Clark Kent who used to be thrown by the whole being-on-another-planet thing. When Clark moved from Smallville to Metropolis, the big city was strange and scary, but he got used to it and became a Metropolitan. Now, he's left Terra, aka "Smallplanet", by all rights a back-water rock in a desolate corner of the galaxy, and, where he used to find being on another planet something that threw him off balance, he's become quite comfortable. He's becoming a citizen of the galaxy.
Lex glared at him and stalked back to the negotiations.
There wasn't anything in the way of crime among the Melkani at all, but the tidal effects of the massive gas giant nearby meant they got regular minor earthquakes. They rarely got hurt or killed, their hard-shelled bodies and six legs well-adapted to the regular shaking, but they were almost ridiculously ecstatic when Clark helped them clear up property damage. They loved straight lines and mathematically precise curves, and one piece of debris on a street would literally stop all of them in their tracks as they tried to move it away, even if it was made out of lead or titanium and couldn't be removed without heavy equipment.
"You could probably get them to move things along a lot faster if you just offered them some extra bulldozers," Clark is, once again, helping Lex take over the galaxy. They make a fantastic team. Clark said, throwing back his wet hair as he stepped out of the perfectly circular garden pond; he'd been rinsing dust off in the waterfall-mechanically controlled, with a flow of precisely 42.4 liters per second.
"Hm," Lex said, thoughtfully, and disappeared again.
Clark lay down to doze and dry off in the sun. A hand on his shoulder woke him; without opening his eyes, he said sleepily, "So how is it going? Up to one hundred and thirty-eight yet?"
"Clark," Diana said, and he sat up. "Why. Are. You. People. HERE?!"
"Come on, we haven't got a lot of time," John said. He was standing a few steps away at the edge of the balcony, scanning the horizon through a pair of telescoping binoculars he'd generated with his ring. So, John; are you and Diana turning yourselves in for incarceration as a trade to free Clark? Because I'm not sure that's how it works, but it is nice of you to offer. /sarcasm
"I'm sorry it's taken us so long," Diana said. "Luthor's security net has been almost impossible to penetrate-every time we've gotten close, he's moved to a new location and changed all his procedures again. Are you all right?" She sounded a little dubious, looking him up and down; Clark glanced down at himself and realized he wasn't wearing anything but the towel he'd wrapped around his waist when he got out of the pool. He blushed. Clark, you're next to a pool; a towel is better than a pair of silk pants in this situation, trust me on this one.
"I'm fine," he said hastily, "but what are you guys doing?"
"Rescuing you!" John said. "Did you think we were just going to leave you?" "Look, fella; I'm giving you one more chance to start acting like my old buddy Superman again and stop freaking me the fuck out!"
"We have to go at once," Diana said. "Our window isn't more than five minutes long; then we'll be detected."
Frozen, his stomach clenching, Clark blurted, "I can't." They stared at him, and he groped desperately. "I can't," he said. "I-I gave my parole to have you guys set free, I can't just let you guys rescue me. I could fly out of here on my own any time I wanted to, if I was going to just break my word."
Imagine, if you will, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo cracking open Princess Leia's cell on the Deathstar. "We're here to rescue you!" Luke blurts out. "I'm not going anywhere with you guys, I gave my word!" says the cinnamon-bun-headed one. Can you imagine what Han Solo's response might be? "You have got to be kidding me," John said. "You're going to just stay here sitting on your ass drinking mai tais and being Luthor's-" I wonder what would have happened if John had been allowed to finish that sentence.
"Enough," Diana said sharply, cutting him off. "Clark, we're not going to argue with you; we don't have time. If you're choosing to stay with Luthor-"
"I'm choosing to keep my word," Clark said. He tried to believe it wasn't just an excuse. Which means he knows it is.
"Fine," John said, flatly. "We're out of here. Have a nice life." "Yeah, you just go and *be* that stupid Clark guy. *mutter, mutter* I *hate* that Clark guy." He projected a bubble around them and it rose rapidly away, up into the atmosphere, vanishing into space.
Clark sank down on the chair and covered his face with his hands. This is the third time Clark performs the dropping-his-head-into-his-hands maneuver in this story. The first two times, the cause of his dismay was Lex. This time, in a neat reversal, the cause is his friends, whom he wishes would be a little less pro-active about rescuing him.
Lex came sauntering back in fifteen minutes later, triumphant. "We're at two hundred and seventy-nine, for the price of a few thousand Idarian hydraulic lifters," he said. "Bring me that daiquiri."
Clark got up and caught Lex's face and kissed him, hard.
"Or that works," Lex said, and ran his hand along Clark's waist under the edge of the towel, letting it slip to the ground.
Clark was at the spaceport fixing some damage from another earthquake, with an audience of rapt Melkani Why not, the plot is better than what we've been getting on Smallville for the past few years. I wonder if the Melkani write grammatically-correct fanfic about The Gloriously Anal-retentive Alien Overlord and The Tall Pink Order-Bringer!, when a crew member from one of the alien trading ships sidled up to him nervously and said, "Forgive me for troubling you, Most Noble Lord-" Think how desperate this poor bastard had to be even just to walk up to Clark this way.
"Um, I'm not," Clark said, appalled. And he'd thought 'Superman' was bad. "I'm just-" he flailed for a label, then gave up and just went on hastily. "It's fine. What's wrong?"
The alien-he was from some species Clark had never seen, with three eyes in red, blue, and green all in a row across the front edge of his platter-shaped head-waved his three arms in an anxious sort of way and said, "I am from Trwi, a lovely system-we are a people who are peaceful, hard-working, resourceful-"
"Yes?" Clark said, a little baffled.
"Unfortunately we are under the domination of the Yldng, who are cruel, unrelenting, violent," and this is why Lex never gets to take over any peaceful, innocent civilizations - they've all been taken over already! the Trwi said. "If Most Exalted Luthor would consider to assist us-"
"I think you might want to get your government's approval before inviting Lex in to take over," Clark said.
"I was Under-Minister of Interstellar Diplomacy before we were conquered," the Trwi said sadly. "The Commander-in-Chief was killed during the defense, the Minister of Justice was put to death, and our Queen drank poison." "Dude, I *am* the government."
"Oh," Clark said.
He took the Trwi to see Lex at dinner. Lex frowned and pulled out his tablet, looking over his schedule thoughtfully. Lex carries his Galactic Take-over Schedule around with him, so it's always handy. "It's a little off the beaten path," he said. "I wasn't planning to bother with the territories on the rim for a while, and there are at least ten potentially hostile systems between that and the rest of the empire."
The Trwi wrung all three of his hands together. "Lex!" Clark said, reproachfully.
Lex raised an eyebrow. "Clark, if you're going to be mad at me for not conquering people now-"
"This would be liberating," Clark said.
"Sure," Lex said dryly. "All right, Clark, I'll conquer them early, just for you."
The Yldng had been brutal occupiers, but they fled before the assembled armada of the Grand Empire - Lex had a timetable for when he could graduate it to the Galactic Empire - and Lex sailed into the capitol city to wild cheering. There was one small snag; the Trwi had three genders, and only females could rule officially. However, they proved happy to just pay that requirement lip service; Lex was crowned Queen the next day. We already knew Lex was a drama queen, so this is not a stretch.
"Don't even start," Lex said, coming back from the coronation in the tall jeweled headdress with its long, glitter-dusted veil and the big loops on either side that looked almost exactly like earrings.
Clark said brightly, "Of course not, Your Majesty," and tossed a long necklace of big, cottony magenta-colored poufs around Lex's neck: they were seed pods, something like dandelion fluff. He'd noticed it in the pile of tribute, sent from a small rainforest community on the northern continent, and had picked it out, grinning; it looked like next cousin to a feather boa.
The glam effect was a little undercut by Lex's murderous glare. Clark belatedly realized that it might not have been the best idea when Lex carefully lifted off the headdress, took off the necklace of fluffy poufs, and ran it slowly through his hand, smiling dangerously.
"Why don't you take off your clothes and go lie down," Lex said.
"Um, I was going to go fly a patrol," Clark said, eyeing the fluff a little worriedly.
"Allow me to make it a royal command," Lex said.
Clark kept finding pink bits of fluff in unexpected places for the next month. Ack! TMI, dude.
While he helped the Trwi with rebuilding, Clark found out about the massive slave marketplace on Ryga Minor, one of the main centers of the galactic trade. "I'm not running a mission here," Lex said, but he conquered the planet anyway, and let Clark rip apart the whole complex. They really are a great team.
Most of the slavers had fled and taken a handful of their best stock with them when the Almeracian Fleet had appeared on the horizon, but when Clark broke open the horrible lower pens, he found thousands and thousands of Senga children, penned up, hungry, and crying for their parents.
They had been sold off to slavers by the Hrysk Dominion, an interstellar empire slightly larger than Lex's and considerably older, with an enormous army much more unified than the polyglot Almeracian Fleet. They assimilated planets with a simple system: they sold off any young children, worked the adults to death in forced-labor camps, and resettled some of their own species' constantly increasing population on the planet instead. They didn't seem to mind that they were living in the homes of the dead. Here's my question: if Lex were to conquer the Hrysk, who are really just *that* bad, what the hell would he do with them? I don't see him committing genocide even of a race that was itself committing genocide!
"You're big enough to worry them," Clark said desperately. "You could at least get them to sell you the parents. Move them-"
"Resettle an entire planetary population?" Lex said. "There are at least four billion of them left even if the Hrysk have already killed off half. It's not feasible. And I can't fight them for just this one planet. Once we start, it's all in, and it would be a bad idea right now. I don't have the kind of leverage that would let us negotiate - it would just be an all-out war, and the odds aren't in our favor."
Clark didn't say anything. He couldn't ask Lex to start a war, not even for this, but he thought about the desperate, hollow faces of the Senga children, the millions more to be sold or slaughtered, and felt sick.
Lex looked at him. "On the other hand," he said, "if I win, that accelerates the rest of my schedule by five years. It might be a gamble worth taking."
Part 3 of 3