Fic: Past Future Echoes (complete)
For the clexmas Bingo! Challenge.
Type: Postage Stamp
Prompts: Castle/Mansion, Anniversary, Tight Spaces/Trapped, Bad Day (and sort-of a quick mention of "Kryptonite, Pink/Purple/Other"; Flying/Floating and Imprisonment/Captivity are also incidental -- did I mention I love my bingo card? :)
Title: Past Future Echoes
Author:
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: pre-Clex
Rating: R (to be safe)
Spoilers: Everything (seasons 1-10), but especially the series finale
Word count: > 4,400
Summary: Some magicians think it's funny to take things way too literally. We won't name names.
Warnings: Un-beta'd. Any errors I blame on my imaginary friends, who -ought- to be perfectly capable of telling me if I'm writing them wrong. Silly boys. ...The rating is mostly for language, and somewhat for their situational responses (though personally I think it's within canon levels of crack :)
Author's Note: I felt like something short and "sweet" and not too serious, and this is the result. It's standalone, and I currently have no plans to expand this story 'verse. More notes at the end of the fic.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Superman sighed.
Lex Luthor glared.
"This is all your fault. Damn alien."
Superman sighed again. At least Luthor didn't shake his fist at him when he said it this time. He didn't even raise his voice above a quiet bellow, either, or pace more than a few feet, or fling further insults about his garish color scheme or his hair or even his cape. He'd been at it for two hours, so he was probably getting tired. Or maybe he just wasn't as committed to ranting and raving as he usually did if he only had an audience of one -- by comparison, that one time with the orange Kryptonite ray gun, when Lois had gotten used as bait and he'd gotten shrunk and stuffed in an aquarium right in front of her and the usual minions, Luthor had been at it in fine form for about five hours straight without breaking a sweat.
Then again, maybe it was just that there was more entertainment value in it for him to keep the torment going when he could pick up a mini-Kal-El and shake him around inside a plastic fishbowl every five minutes. He supposed he should count his blessings that no one had taken video of the incident and posted it all over the 'net. He'd been indestructible still, but too comparatively weak to get himself out, and it had been a bit embarrassing.
Lex came to a stop in front of him and glared down. From his seated position on the floor watching the President-Elect loom over him, the white suit seemed to softly glow in the moonlight streaming in through the gaping holes of what was left of the standing structure. There were only a few clouds overhead, a full moon out, and a gentle breeze took the edge off of the warm autumn air. It was an otherwise nice night.
Except, of course, for the electric-blue, twenty-foot-diameter barrier spell that was keeping him and his self-proclaimed nemesis from exiting the defunct library of the crumbling Luthor mansion. And, reflecting on the evening in a very Zen way, while it certainly could have been better, it also could have been much worse.
That landslide three townships over that had ultimately left him dripping in slowly-drying mud? Could have happened after getting caught in the barrier, instead of beforehand. He'd saved several hundred people from a slow suffocating death tonight. If he'd had to try and convince Luthor to play nice in order to get them both freed with something like that on the line... well, he wasn't sure they'd get out of this for days as it was, and Luthor didn't even have any incentive to keep him locked in with him, and every reason to want out. Looking down at himself and wiping at his face a little, he supposed he should also be grateful that at least some of the mud had come off during the high-speed flight there.
Superman tried again. "You know, if you would just say--"
"Don't be ridiculous," Luthor interrupted.
Superman waited for more ranting, but remarkably, Luthor just stood where he was, slid his hands into his pockets, and suddenly seemed to deem the surroundings worthy of being surveyed. Which he found a bit odd, but couldn't quite put his finger on why. It took him a minute to realize that as Superman he'd never actually been in the same room with Luthor without being watched intently for any significant period of time. Usually, Luthor never turned away from him enough that he wasn't able to keep track of him out of the corner of his eye, but with the way he was slowly swiveling his head around, it was clear that Superman was being, for the most part, ignored.
"Why didn't you ever clean the place up?" he asked.
"I didn't see any point in it. I had no reason to come back to Smallville." Lex didn't even glance at him as he trailed off, absently.
"Well, you're here now," Superman pointed out. And, honestly, for the life of him, he couldn't imagine why. Clark knew why he himself was there, though -- he'd heard a cry for help as he was headed back to Metropolis for a shower and a long soak, and had to put his plans on hold. He'd veered off his original course to Smallville, and seeing Luthor in the mansion with someone, he'd just darted in without thinking and pulled his onetime-friend-now-fulltime-enemy away from the other someone who had been doing the screaming. Who apparently wasn't being threatened at all, and had only been yelling just to get his attention. And then sprung the trap.
Zatanna still had a really nasty sense of humor. Magicians. One of these days he'd figure out a way to get even. Just as soon as he finally talked the Phantom Stranger, or Dr. Fate, or someone -- he didn't really care who -- into finding him a way to generally neutralize magic spells. He wasn't picky about the what or how. Even if it was some weird poultice or something and it took smelling like garlic and rotting fruit 24-7 for said immunity, he'd still do it. It would be so very worth it.
Lex didn't respond for awhile. Superman sighed again and shifted to a more comfortable seated position. Then Lex seemed to make up his mind about something, because he dropped down to a crouch in from of him, looking him straight in the eye.
It startled him a bit. He half-expected Kryptonite to make an appearance, despite the fact that X-ray vision earlier had shown no sign of the material or any blocking lead -- sudden movements on Luthor's part usually immediately preceded that special brand of pain -- but, a squatting Luthor sans-glowing-green-rock in front of him seemed to be the extent of it, whatever 'it' was. "Ah, yes?" he asked, hoping he didn't sound as tentative as he felt.
"I'm sorry."
Superman blinked. He never in a million years would have thought that Luthor would--! Then Clark opted to be surprised later, and quickly replied with an "I'm sorry, too!"
Alien and human both glanced around expectantly. Nothing. The nearly transparent blue shimmering wall silently continued to enclose them just as effectively as it had for the previous two hours.
Well, that didn't work.
Lex picked up a small piece of crumbled stone and threw it at the curved side of the barrier, then started cursing up a storm. The public face of Superman might frown at such behavior, but Clark couldn't help but be a little impressed at the inventiveness and broad vocabulary displayed as he listened to Lex work his way through English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, and Japanese before finally making his way back to English again.
"--no-good, lousy, so-called-'hero' catering bitch!" Finished with his defamation of Zatanna's character, or lack thereof, for the moment, he turned back to Superman and rounded on him next, eyes blazing. "And you should know better, pretending not to be in on it and thinking you can somehow 'reform' me through this trickery? I have far better things to do with my time than sit here and reminisce about the past with you! Namely, preparing LexCorp for operational effectiveness without me while I'm in office. Put your solar-powered brawn to good use for once, and excavate a passageway through the floor and out of here!"
"Digging through the floor won't help any, I looked -- the spell barrier's a sphere, not a dome; I don't see you as reformable; and why would I want to reminisce about anything with you? I don't exactly think fondly on your deathtraps, Luthor, in case you hadn't noticed."
Luthor stood back up and waved a hand at him casually. "Please, if I wanted you dead, I'd simply hand out free Kryptonite bullets on the street, tell everyone who you are, and watch the fireworks, Kent."
Clark's jaw dropped. "You-- I-- What?!?"
Lex did the Lexian equivalent of rolling his eyes, and turned back to him. "I said--"
"I heard what you-- you know who I am?!" And he realized belatedly that he probably should have protested that Lex had it wrong, and that Kent was undoubtedly at home in bed at his apartment and sound asleep right now -- like he should be -- but...
"Of course I do. It'd be a sad day that I couldn't remember the reasoning that led to why I was battling my own personal alien farmboy nemesis on the lifelong journey to greatness." And that smirk and the gleam in his eyes was pure mischief.
"You! But--! I thought Tess slapped you with that memory goo! That you couldn't remember anything!" And he'd decided a long long time ago, seven years past, not to feel bad about that. Assuming or hoping that Lex was capable of being an... honorable opponent?... and not make personal attacks against his family and friends in whatever war he wanted to further his, their, greatness, was just too much of a risk to try and jog his memory. To say nothing of what the League might've done to him if he'd tried -- they'd have thought he'd lost his mind. They probably would've been right, too.
Probably. Right.
And didn't this lovely little revelation just send fuck-all out the window.
The big jerk seemed to be enjoying it, too.
"Tess stumbled upon what was only a single part of a series of drug regimens for those Summerholt patients being released. That classification of drug was tailored to either inhibit or destroy cognitive recognition to various degrees, temporarily or permanently." Lex smile broadened as he warmed to the subject of his lecture, and Clark had an involuntary flashback to lazy afternoons in this very room, listening to the cadence of his voice as he eloquently related historic battles and quoted ancient philosophers, watching his hands float and flutter and sweep through the air.
"However, cognitive recognition mainly deals with specific memories and visual features -- the episodic memory of specific events. And that particular formula left the better part of my semantic memory intact -- it did not, in fact, wipe away the entirely of my declarative memory -- leaving all sorts of lovely facts and figures, and with them the most important things I knew and had learned, completely untouched." And he smiled a shark's grin, full of teeth. "Such as how Clark Kent is Kal-El and Kal-El is Kryptonian. And that Summerholt was the clearinghouse for all of Luthorcorp's memory research. That backup copies of all that research exist, where those files are stored, and how to access that information, antidote formulas and all." Lex tilted his head and looked at him with dark amusement. "Clark, you didn't really think I would be capable of taking up the reins of Luthorcorp, a global multinational corporation spanning twenty-three countries and employing hundreds of thousands of people, three days after a full and utterly complete memory wipe with no idea how to even tie my shoes, speak English, or do anything more complicated other than drooling and twitching, did you? Or should I feel flattered that you hold my intellect and my powers of recuperation in such high regard?"
"In my experience, most memory-loss effects aren't meant to leave people a blank slate capability- or personality-wise."
"Ah, but most memory-wiping techniques aren't instigated by my younger, sociopathic, half-Luthor sibling."
Clark sighed and ran a hand through his hair. 'Point,' he thought, though he wouldn't dream of saying so out loud. Sometimes he almost wished he hadn't glanced over at Luthorcorp after taking care of fending off Apocalypse, noticed said female bleeding out on the floor, and been able to race Mercy to the hospital in time. And 'almost' bore a pretty strong resemblance to 'absolutely' some days. Her intermittent hookups and breakups with Emil, her decision to go Watchtower full-time, and her resultant aggressive forays into League politics regardless of her ethical swings, or mood swings, at any point in time didn't exactly help matters, either. Neither did her seasonal borderline-terrorista gunslinging shoot-first-ask-questions-never forays into the field. Frankly, on the whole he preferred an irate Lex sporting Kryptonite lasers over a cranky Tess on a crusade. At least his fellow heroes would consider it socially acceptable to just pick up Lex, yell at him, and shake him until he stopped what he was doing if he was being an ass. He had the feeling that if he tried that with Tess he'd end up shot and bleeding -- probably by her -- and everybody would say that he deserved it. It wasn't a wonder that it gave him headaches.
But he was feeling a little cheeky now, still reeling from trying to reconcile the implications of Lex having his memories intact all this time with his behavior from the last seven years up 'til now, and they didn't seem to be going anywhere soon, so hell, why not? --He dropped the more 'polite' Superman persona, looked up, and snarked, "Which one?"
That garnered him a startled laugh, and Clark couldn't help but grin.
"I'm going to tell him you said that," Lex cautioned, tongue-in-cheek.
"That's fine, so long as you don't tell her I said that," he shot back.
"Mmm, I love it when you just hand me good blackmail material," Lex grinned. But while the tone spoke of trouble, his demeanor said the opposite. And, god, how long had it been since they'd teased each other for the hell of it?
Lex's eyes caught and held his, and they slowly sobered as the time passed. Finally, Lex sighed -- an actual, tired, honest-to-god sigh -- and said, "Well, how long do you think it will take?"
And Clark knew what he was asking, since they'd both tried their various and sundry communications devices much earlier in their mutual entrapment and neither had been able to punch a signal through the magical interference. --How long until someone noticed he was gone, thought he was missing in action, actually came looking for him, found him, then found and coerced a magic user into breaking this damn thing? "The League or Lois? I really have no idea. ...You?"
Lex grimaced. "I didn't tell anyone where I was going."
"Why?"
Lex looked a little put out, then cooly gathered himself up as Mr. Luthor again. It bespoke of a very loud 'If you don't know, it's none of your damn business,' with a side order of, 'Go to hell.'
Well, if he was going to go back to the status quo, Clark opted for Superman to fight this one out. "Look, that should have worked. Zatanna wouldn't lie about how to break a spell if she wanted us to stay stuck, she'd just laugh and not say anything at all."
"Oh, really? Well, then, how else does one 'kiss and make up,' or do magic users and aliens do it diff--- what?"
"Ah." Oh, this was not good. This was the opposite of good. This was pure, 100% unadulterated evil -- and he should know, he'd encountered that before! He hated magic, and he hated magicians. Both now took first and second place on his shit-list, above Brainiac even, and that was saying something. One way or another he was probably going to die in here, either literally or from embarrassment, or possibly both, and life sucked, and, just, argh. He fought the urge to get up and pull a Luthor -- march back and forth waving his arms around like a maniac while screaming a lot.
"What." Lex asked levelly, and it came out as an order: tell me now or else. Clark grimaced and felt himself start to mentally dig in his heels, but he stopped, tried to think of clouds and sky, blew out a breath and decided to explain anyway. Sometimes being contrary for the sake of pure contrariness just didn't help matters.
"Zatanna has this... thing. About kisses. And me." He sighed. "And, uh, kisses and me." Lex's gazed on him dispassionately.
"So it is your fault," he said darkly. "What did you do?"
"I didn't--! Lois has this... she gets really jealous if I kiss anybody not her. And when that happens she tends to overreact and do" -- crazy -- "stuff to get even. And, unfortunately, Zatanna knows this."
Lex crouched back down in front of him again. "...And?"
Clark grimaced. "Zatanna and Lois may not be getting along very well right now." And that was the understatement of the century -- they hadn't invited her to the Lane-Kent wedding, take 23, and she was put out, despite the fact that they'd finally given up on a ceremony and it had just been an appointment at the courthouse. And, not only that, but they'd still gotten interrupted and been kept from tying the knot yet again. So, she really hadn't missed anything at all. Unfortunately, due to Lois' bad mood and frustrated outburst at a time when she should've been trying to smooth ruffled magical feathers, Zatanna had loudly and publicly decided that she was going to be really offended by the unintentional, nonexistent slight. At the time, Clark had been worried that she was going to be gunning for Lois.
Well, this was certainly one way to do it. And was his arch-nemesis really the only person he knew who was both capable and willing to keep things professional?
"So your pretty petty little magic user locks you away from your fiance. How exactly are you supposed to be able to break this with a kiss if she's on the outside and you're stuck in here?" 'And how the hell did you manage to drag me into this?' was the unspoken question.
"...Lois may have made some comments recently about you within Zatanna's hearing." 'And you two have been feuding lately,' he thought. 'With both of the two of them, separately,' he mentally added.
"...Oh dear God, you cannot be serious."
"Maybe she thinks that you and Lois will end up" -- going homicidal -- "breaking your Cold War standoff and one of you will end up solving one of the other of her problems for her?"
"Divide and conquer?" Lex murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Uh, something like that."
Lex grimaced, then looked away and frowned, then finally rolled back onto his heels before leaning forward into Clark's personal space. He looked a little tense, yet resigned somehow. "Fine, we'll worry about that later." Clark didn't know what to make of this.
"Wha--mmph!"
Clark was stunned for the first... well, he wasn't sure how long, but when the shock wore off he shoved Lex off of him onto the floor, hard, and leaped bolt upright.
"OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL!" Clark gritted his teeth, grabbed him up off the floor by his shoulders, and could not for the life of him remember why he didn't shake Lex until he rattled when he acted completely fucking insane.
"Make up!"
"You, you--!"
"Make for --up! Look up damn you!" Lex yelled back. "Unless you want to--"
Whoosh of air, as Clark finally saw the rapidly shrinking hole in the top of the sphere, scooped Lex up in his arms bridal style, and got them the hell out of dodge.
"--do that again." Lex took stock of the situation, nodded, and pointed. "Put me down over there," he gritted out.
Clark guessed Lex must still have issues with heights. They weren't that high up, though.
He took his time getting them down for the hell of it.
Once they were within a foot of the floor, Lex shoved away from him and smoothed down his suit. "You're welcome," he sneered, as though Clark should have been satisfied with his solution.
"...And you couldn't have just gone with a peck on the cheek why?!?"
Lex finished swiping a gloved finger down Clark's left cheek before the action even registered, then showed him the collected grit rubbed between index finger and thumb. "Mud," he replied, as if that was a perfectly reasonable explanation, as he stood there in his no-longer-white suit, now completely ruined from having been picked up and held against Superman's muddy chest. Right. He figured he could either complain about how he could've let him scrub off his cheek and try that first, or how maybe he could have given Lex a peck on the cheek instead since Lex hadn't been covered in mud, and have it devolve into an argument about whether that would've worked or not and maybe required escalation anyway... or just head home to a nice warm bath and a soft bed and try not to think about it. Hmmm, tough decision!
"I'm leaving now," Clark grated out.
"Then go," Luthor replied dismissively.
Superman took off, but then paused and turned three feet off the ground and folded his arms, as he realized he ought to at least make some effort on this front, given the League's anti-Luthor stance. "...You do realize that I could mind-whammy you right?" Clark put out there. At a frown from Lex, he added, "I can do this Kiss of Lethe thing. Steal certain memories away. I could make you forget." And, oddly, Lex seemed to have no fear of that, despite his various bouts with memory loss and his recurring obsession to regain them intact. Did he really think Superman wouldn't do it?
"Ah, but then you'd have to kiss me again. Wouldn't Lois be angry?" Lex ended, saccharine-sweetly. And he smiled a Cheshire Cat smile.
"I didn't kiss you the first time!" Clark shot back.
"Hmm," said Lex.
Well, that was just great. Lex knew him better than he knew himself. Or could play him against his own morals well enough that it might as well be the same thing. He tried not to visibly twitch in frustration.
"I won't tell if you won't," Lex offered, "...but I can't speak for your magician-witch."
And if that wasn't tempting... The only problem was, Clark wasn't willing to kiss Zatanna either, though for vastly different reasons than not wanting to kiss Lex.
And what he wouldn't give to not have been subject to Zatanna's nonsense in the first place. This wouldn't have happened if Lex hadn't been off on his own, otherwise she never would've been able to get at him, and why had he been here without even the most basic Kryptonite precautions today anyway? "On this day of all days..." Clark murmured, glancing off to the side.
~*~*~*~
"...you're each spending it alone? Do you know what I saw when I looked into this place while I was scrying? You two really need to remember what's important and work things out. So you both can just stay right here until you kiss and make up!" Zatanna had admonished. " Lleps etavitca!"
~*~*~*~
Seven years ago this day, a planet full of hellfire and brimstone had almost crashed into the Earth. Tess had nearly died. Mirror-Lionel had died, and Darkseid had been beaten back. He'd thought Lex had lost his memory for good. He'd realized Lex was alive. Lex had declared his undying nemesis-hood to him, and he had in return promised to always stop him when he went too far.
Lex knew who he was, had known for years, could remember everything, had never really forgotten, and Clark-as-Superman had, in all honesty, sometimes felt more secure in his screwed up twisted relationship with Luthor, such as it was, than he did with many of his own colleagues, even on the worst of the bad days. Though today seemed to have difficulty deciding which sort of day it wanted to be. But even if he couldn't trust him outright, he knew the things that Lex would and would not do, and where all the lines were that they each would and would not cross. This far and no farther, and he could write a book detailing the given expectations and outcomes when they interacted during their various fights. And that, oddly enough, was a sort of trust. At least he knew where he stood with him. And he had a hunch that Lex felt similarly, as well. And when he thought about it, he could live with that.
"Status quo, Lex Luthor?"
"I don't see why not, Kal-El," he returned.
Superman nodded. He turned in midair to go.
"...except, there is one small problem."
He stifled a groan. "What's that?" Superman asked, turning back and crossing his arms. He should've known the rules of the game were about to change, with everything out in the open once again. He also knew better than to think that Lex's use of his name earlier was anything other than intentional, and Lex never did anything intentionally without multiple reasons and several backup plans. Hell, these days, unintentional seemed to have been stricken from his vocabulary.
Though intentional did not always mean planned well in advance. If there was one thing Lex was good at, it was recognizing the potential in something and taking advantage, if not downright exploiting it.
"I'm going to be in office soon. Given that the result of the working relationship you've had with the White House in the past has been... generally beneficial," he admitted, "it would be a shame if our personal differences caused unnecessary friction in a delicate situation or during a time of crisis," he ended on an almost self-deprecating note.
Clark couldn't help but smile a little ruefully. "I'm sure we can figure something out that doesn't involve you trying to force me to carry out executive kill orders for you, or me needing to smash through the White House air defenses and secret service every week to get at you. We've worked together against a common threat before."
"Yes, we have. I look forward to it."
Superman nodded and once more turned to go, but as a parting shot: "Lex?"
"Yes?"
"Happy Anniversary."
Clark didn't need to turn around to hear the soft sigh or see the slight smile that passed across Lex's face, so he didn't. He wondered how many years previously that Lex had come here alone, unarmed, in an affirmation of what they were, and what he wanted them to be. As he soared higher into the sky, headed for the stratosphere, his super hearing picked up one last thing before he tuned into the nighttime noises of the city and away from his small town home.
"Cognatus meus et frater meus, scutum meum consortium, et ductor meus," he heard Lex murmur as he strode off into the darker corners of the mansion, footsteps echoing in abandoned, but not forgotten, corridors.
'One of these days, I'm going to learn Latin,' Clark promised himself. 'And then I bet Lex and I are going to have a very interesting conversation.'
~*~*~*~*~*~
Author's Note 2: Feedback and concrit happily welcomed!
Author's Note 3: Ok, I admit freely that I got a little silly with Lex's parting comment :) I used an online translator for the Latin; it should read:
"My kinsman and my brother,
My shield-mate and my guide"
It's not anything from a Roman military text or Greek philosopher, unfortunately I'm not that well-read! *laughs* If you want to interpret the ending as some good and proper Clex crack, go ahead and Google it -- they're song lyrics(!).
Author's Note 4: Tangents to what happened in this story, but that I recalled when writing this and prompted the "Kiss of Lethe" comment: "Achilles' Heel" by X-parrot (link) and "Every Time" by Romany (link). Thoughts of Lucas and Lex (mostly) getting along ok tend to remind me of "Project Perdiccas" by Claire (link).
Type: Postage Stamp
Prompts: Castle/Mansion, Anniversary, Tight Spaces/Trapped, Bad Day (and sort-of a quick mention of "Kryptonite, Pink/Purple/Other"; Flying/Floating and Imprisonment/Captivity are also incidental -- did I mention I love my bingo card? :)
Title: Past Future Echoes
Author:
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: pre-Clex
Rating: R (to be safe)
Spoilers: Everything (seasons 1-10), but especially the series finale
Word count: > 4,400
Summary: Some magicians think it's funny to take things way too literally. We won't name names.
Warnings: Un-beta'd. Any errors I blame on my imaginary friends, who -ought- to be perfectly capable of telling me if I'm writing them wrong. Silly boys. ...The rating is mostly for language, and somewhat for their situational responses (though personally I think it's within canon levels of crack :)
Author's Note: I felt like something short and "sweet" and not too serious, and this is the result. It's standalone, and I currently have no plans to expand this story 'verse. More notes at the end of the fic.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Superman sighed.
Lex Luthor glared.
"This is all your fault. Damn alien."
Superman sighed again. At least Luthor didn't shake his fist at him when he said it this time. He didn't even raise his voice above a quiet bellow, either, or pace more than a few feet, or fling further insults about his garish color scheme or his hair or even his cape. He'd been at it for two hours, so he was probably getting tired. Or maybe he just wasn't as committed to ranting and raving as he usually did if he only had an audience of one -- by comparison, that one time with the orange Kryptonite ray gun, when Lois had gotten used as bait and he'd gotten shrunk and stuffed in an aquarium right in front of her and the usual minions, Luthor had been at it in fine form for about five hours straight without breaking a sweat.
Then again, maybe it was just that there was more entertainment value in it for him to keep the torment going when he could pick up a mini-Kal-El and shake him around inside a plastic fishbowl every five minutes. He supposed he should count his blessings that no one had taken video of the incident and posted it all over the 'net. He'd been indestructible still, but too comparatively weak to get himself out, and it had been a bit embarrassing.
Lex came to a stop in front of him and glared down. From his seated position on the floor watching the President-Elect loom over him, the white suit seemed to softly glow in the moonlight streaming in through the gaping holes of what was left of the standing structure. There were only a few clouds overhead, a full moon out, and a gentle breeze took the edge off of the warm autumn air. It was an otherwise nice night.
Except, of course, for the electric-blue, twenty-foot-diameter barrier spell that was keeping him and his self-proclaimed nemesis from exiting the defunct library of the crumbling Luthor mansion. And, reflecting on the evening in a very Zen way, while it certainly could have been better, it also could have been much worse.
That landslide three townships over that had ultimately left him dripping in slowly-drying mud? Could have happened after getting caught in the barrier, instead of beforehand. He'd saved several hundred people from a slow suffocating death tonight. If he'd had to try and convince Luthor to play nice in order to get them both freed with something like that on the line... well, he wasn't sure they'd get out of this for days as it was, and Luthor didn't even have any incentive to keep him locked in with him, and every reason to want out. Looking down at himself and wiping at his face a little, he supposed he should also be grateful that at least some of the mud had come off during the high-speed flight there.
Superman tried again. "You know, if you would just say--"
"Don't be ridiculous," Luthor interrupted.
Superman waited for more ranting, but remarkably, Luthor just stood where he was, slid his hands into his pockets, and suddenly seemed to deem the surroundings worthy of being surveyed. Which he found a bit odd, but couldn't quite put his finger on why. It took him a minute to realize that as Superman he'd never actually been in the same room with Luthor without being watched intently for any significant period of time. Usually, Luthor never turned away from him enough that he wasn't able to keep track of him out of the corner of his eye, but with the way he was slowly swiveling his head around, it was clear that Superman was being, for the most part, ignored.
"Why didn't you ever clean the place up?" he asked.
"I didn't see any point in it. I had no reason to come back to Smallville." Lex didn't even glance at him as he trailed off, absently.
"Well, you're here now," Superman pointed out. And, honestly, for the life of him, he couldn't imagine why. Clark knew why he himself was there, though -- he'd heard a cry for help as he was headed back to Metropolis for a shower and a long soak, and had to put his plans on hold. He'd veered off his original course to Smallville, and seeing Luthor in the mansion with someone, he'd just darted in without thinking and pulled his onetime-friend-now-fulltime-enemy away from the other someone who had been doing the screaming. Who apparently wasn't being threatened at all, and had only been yelling just to get his attention. And then sprung the trap.
Zatanna still had a really nasty sense of humor. Magicians. One of these days he'd figure out a way to get even. Just as soon as he finally talked the Phantom Stranger, or Dr. Fate, or someone -- he didn't really care who -- into finding him a way to generally neutralize magic spells. He wasn't picky about the what or how. Even if it was some weird poultice or something and it took smelling like garlic and rotting fruit 24-7 for said immunity, he'd still do it. It would be so very worth it.
Lex didn't respond for awhile. Superman sighed again and shifted to a more comfortable seated position. Then Lex seemed to make up his mind about something, because he dropped down to a crouch in from of him, looking him straight in the eye.
It startled him a bit. He half-expected Kryptonite to make an appearance, despite the fact that X-ray vision earlier had shown no sign of the material or any blocking lead -- sudden movements on Luthor's part usually immediately preceded that special brand of pain -- but, a squatting Luthor sans-glowing-green-rock in front of him seemed to be the extent of it, whatever 'it' was. "Ah, yes?" he asked, hoping he didn't sound as tentative as he felt.
"I'm sorry."
Superman blinked. He never in a million years would have thought that Luthor would--! Then Clark opted to be surprised later, and quickly replied with an "I'm sorry, too!"
Alien and human both glanced around expectantly. Nothing. The nearly transparent blue shimmering wall silently continued to enclose them just as effectively as it had for the previous two hours.
Well, that didn't work.
Lex picked up a small piece of crumbled stone and threw it at the curved side of the barrier, then started cursing up a storm. The public face of Superman might frown at such behavior, but Clark couldn't help but be a little impressed at the inventiveness and broad vocabulary displayed as he listened to Lex work his way through English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, and Japanese before finally making his way back to English again.
"--no-good, lousy, so-called-'hero' catering bitch!" Finished with his defamation of Zatanna's character, or lack thereof, for the moment, he turned back to Superman and rounded on him next, eyes blazing. "And you should know better, pretending not to be in on it and thinking you can somehow 'reform' me through this trickery? I have far better things to do with my time than sit here and reminisce about the past with you! Namely, preparing LexCorp for operational effectiveness without me while I'm in office. Put your solar-powered brawn to good use for once, and excavate a passageway through the floor and out of here!"
"Digging through the floor won't help any, I looked -- the spell barrier's a sphere, not a dome; I don't see you as reformable; and why would I want to reminisce about anything with you? I don't exactly think fondly on your deathtraps, Luthor, in case you hadn't noticed."
Luthor stood back up and waved a hand at him casually. "Please, if I wanted you dead, I'd simply hand out free Kryptonite bullets on the street, tell everyone who you are, and watch the fireworks, Kent."
Clark's jaw dropped. "You-- I-- What?!?"
Lex did the Lexian equivalent of rolling his eyes, and turned back to him. "I said--"
"I heard what you-- you know who I am?!" And he realized belatedly that he probably should have protested that Lex had it wrong, and that Kent was undoubtedly at home in bed at his apartment and sound asleep right now -- like he should be -- but...
"Of course I do. It'd be a sad day that I couldn't remember the reasoning that led to why I was battling my own personal alien farmboy nemesis on the lifelong journey to greatness." And that smirk and the gleam in his eyes was pure mischief.
"You! But--! I thought Tess slapped you with that memory goo! That you couldn't remember anything!" And he'd decided a long long time ago, seven years past, not to feel bad about that. Assuming or hoping that Lex was capable of being an... honorable opponent?... and not make personal attacks against his family and friends in whatever war he wanted to further his, their, greatness, was just too much of a risk to try and jog his memory. To say nothing of what the League might've done to him if he'd tried -- they'd have thought he'd lost his mind. They probably would've been right, too.
Probably. Right.
And didn't this lovely little revelation just send fuck-all out the window.
The big jerk seemed to be enjoying it, too.
"Tess stumbled upon what was only a single part of a series of drug regimens for those Summerholt patients being released. That classification of drug was tailored to either inhibit or destroy cognitive recognition to various degrees, temporarily or permanently." Lex smile broadened as he warmed to the subject of his lecture, and Clark had an involuntary flashback to lazy afternoons in this very room, listening to the cadence of his voice as he eloquently related historic battles and quoted ancient philosophers, watching his hands float and flutter and sweep through the air.
"However, cognitive recognition mainly deals with specific memories and visual features -- the episodic memory of specific events. And that particular formula left the better part of my semantic memory intact -- it did not, in fact, wipe away the entirely of my declarative memory -- leaving all sorts of lovely facts and figures, and with them the most important things I knew and had learned, completely untouched." And he smiled a shark's grin, full of teeth. "Such as how Clark Kent is Kal-El and Kal-El is Kryptonian. And that Summerholt was the clearinghouse for all of Luthorcorp's memory research. That backup copies of all that research exist, where those files are stored, and how to access that information, antidote formulas and all." Lex tilted his head and looked at him with dark amusement. "Clark, you didn't really think I would be capable of taking up the reins of Luthorcorp, a global multinational corporation spanning twenty-three countries and employing hundreds of thousands of people, three days after a full and utterly complete memory wipe with no idea how to even tie my shoes, speak English, or do anything more complicated other than drooling and twitching, did you? Or should I feel flattered that you hold my intellect and my powers of recuperation in such high regard?"
"In my experience, most memory-loss effects aren't meant to leave people a blank slate capability- or personality-wise."
"Ah, but most memory-wiping techniques aren't instigated by my younger, sociopathic, half-Luthor sibling."
Clark sighed and ran a hand through his hair. 'Point,' he thought, though he wouldn't dream of saying so out loud. Sometimes he almost wished he hadn't glanced over at Luthorcorp after taking care of fending off Apocalypse, noticed said female bleeding out on the floor, and been able to race Mercy to the hospital in time. And 'almost' bore a pretty strong resemblance to 'absolutely' some days. Her intermittent hookups and breakups with Emil, her decision to go Watchtower full-time, and her resultant aggressive forays into League politics regardless of her ethical swings, or mood swings, at any point in time didn't exactly help matters, either. Neither did her seasonal borderline-terrorista gunslinging shoot-first-ask-questions-never forays into the field. Frankly, on the whole he preferred an irate Lex sporting Kryptonite lasers over a cranky Tess on a crusade. At least his fellow heroes would consider it socially acceptable to just pick up Lex, yell at him, and shake him until he stopped what he was doing if he was being an ass. He had the feeling that if he tried that with Tess he'd end up shot and bleeding -- probably by her -- and everybody would say that he deserved it. It wasn't a wonder that it gave him headaches.
But he was feeling a little cheeky now, still reeling from trying to reconcile the implications of Lex having his memories intact all this time with his behavior from the last seven years up 'til now, and they didn't seem to be going anywhere soon, so hell, why not? --He dropped the more 'polite' Superman persona, looked up, and snarked, "Which one?"
That garnered him a startled laugh, and Clark couldn't help but grin.
"I'm going to tell him you said that," Lex cautioned, tongue-in-cheek.
"That's fine, so long as you don't tell her I said that," he shot back.
"Mmm, I love it when you just hand me good blackmail material," Lex grinned. But while the tone spoke of trouble, his demeanor said the opposite. And, god, how long had it been since they'd teased each other for the hell of it?
Lex's eyes caught and held his, and they slowly sobered as the time passed. Finally, Lex sighed -- an actual, tired, honest-to-god sigh -- and said, "Well, how long do you think it will take?"
And Clark knew what he was asking, since they'd both tried their various and sundry communications devices much earlier in their mutual entrapment and neither had been able to punch a signal through the magical interference. --How long until someone noticed he was gone, thought he was missing in action, actually came looking for him, found him, then found and coerced a magic user into breaking this damn thing? "The League or Lois? I really have no idea. ...You?"
Lex grimaced. "I didn't tell anyone where I was going."
"Why?"
Lex looked a little put out, then cooly gathered himself up as Mr. Luthor again. It bespoke of a very loud 'If you don't know, it's none of your damn business,' with a side order of, 'Go to hell.'
Well, if he was going to go back to the status quo, Clark opted for Superman to fight this one out. "Look, that should have worked. Zatanna wouldn't lie about how to break a spell if she wanted us to stay stuck, she'd just laugh and not say anything at all."
"Oh, really? Well, then, how else does one 'kiss and make up,' or do magic users and aliens do it diff--- what?"
"Ah." Oh, this was not good. This was the opposite of good. This was pure, 100% unadulterated evil -- and he should know, he'd encountered that before! He hated magic, and he hated magicians. Both now took first and second place on his shit-list, above Brainiac even, and that was saying something. One way or another he was probably going to die in here, either literally or from embarrassment, or possibly both, and life sucked, and, just, argh. He fought the urge to get up and pull a Luthor -- march back and forth waving his arms around like a maniac while screaming a lot.
"What." Lex asked levelly, and it came out as an order: tell me now or else. Clark grimaced and felt himself start to mentally dig in his heels, but he stopped, tried to think of clouds and sky, blew out a breath and decided to explain anyway. Sometimes being contrary for the sake of pure contrariness just didn't help matters.
"Zatanna has this... thing. About kisses. And me." He sighed. "And, uh, kisses and me." Lex's gazed on him dispassionately.
"So it is your fault," he said darkly. "What did you do?"
"I didn't--! Lois has this... she gets really jealous if I kiss anybody not her. And when that happens she tends to overreact and do" -- crazy -- "stuff to get even. And, unfortunately, Zatanna knows this."
Lex crouched back down in front of him again. "...And?"
Clark grimaced. "Zatanna and Lois may not be getting along very well right now." And that was the understatement of the century -- they hadn't invited her to the Lane-Kent wedding, take 23, and she was put out, despite the fact that they'd finally given up on a ceremony and it had just been an appointment at the courthouse. And, not only that, but they'd still gotten interrupted and been kept from tying the knot yet again. So, she really hadn't missed anything at all. Unfortunately, due to Lois' bad mood and frustrated outburst at a time when she should've been trying to smooth ruffled magical feathers, Zatanna had loudly and publicly decided that she was going to be really offended by the unintentional, nonexistent slight. At the time, Clark had been worried that she was going to be gunning for Lois.
Well, this was certainly one way to do it. And was his arch-nemesis really the only person he knew who was both capable and willing to keep things professional?
"So your pretty petty little magic user locks you away from your fiance. How exactly are you supposed to be able to break this with a kiss if she's on the outside and you're stuck in here?" 'And how the hell did you manage to drag me into this?' was the unspoken question.
"...Lois may have made some comments recently about you within Zatanna's hearing." 'And you two have been feuding lately,' he thought. 'With both of the two of them, separately,' he mentally added.
"...Oh dear God, you cannot be serious."
"Maybe she thinks that you and Lois will end up" -- going homicidal -- "breaking your Cold War standoff and one of you will end up solving one of the other of her problems for her?"
"Divide and conquer?" Lex murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Uh, something like that."
Lex grimaced, then looked away and frowned, then finally rolled back onto his heels before leaning forward into Clark's personal space. He looked a little tense, yet resigned somehow. "Fine, we'll worry about that later." Clark didn't know what to make of this.
"Wha--mmph!"
Clark was stunned for the first... well, he wasn't sure how long, but when the shock wore off he shoved Lex off of him onto the floor, hard, and leaped bolt upright.
"OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL!" Clark gritted his teeth, grabbed him up off the floor by his shoulders, and could not for the life of him remember why he didn't shake Lex until he rattled when he acted completely fucking insane.
"Make up!"
"You, you--!"
"Make for --up! Look up damn you!" Lex yelled back. "Unless you want to--"
Whoosh of air, as Clark finally saw the rapidly shrinking hole in the top of the sphere, scooped Lex up in his arms bridal style, and got them the hell out of dodge.
"--do that again." Lex took stock of the situation, nodded, and pointed. "Put me down over there," he gritted out.
Clark guessed Lex must still have issues with heights. They weren't that high up, though.
He took his time getting them down for the hell of it.
Once they were within a foot of the floor, Lex shoved away from him and smoothed down his suit. "You're welcome," he sneered, as though Clark should have been satisfied with his solution.
"...And you couldn't have just gone with a peck on the cheek why?!?"
Lex finished swiping a gloved finger down Clark's left cheek before the action even registered, then showed him the collected grit rubbed between index finger and thumb. "Mud," he replied, as if that was a perfectly reasonable explanation, as he stood there in his no-longer-white suit, now completely ruined from having been picked up and held against Superman's muddy chest. Right. He figured he could either complain about how he could've let him scrub off his cheek and try that first, or how maybe he could have given Lex a peck on the cheek instead since Lex hadn't been covered in mud, and have it devolve into an argument about whether that would've worked or not and maybe required escalation anyway... or just head home to a nice warm bath and a soft bed and try not to think about it. Hmmm, tough decision!
"I'm leaving now," Clark grated out.
"Then go," Luthor replied dismissively.
Superman took off, but then paused and turned three feet off the ground and folded his arms, as he realized he ought to at least make some effort on this front, given the League's anti-Luthor stance. "...You do realize that I could mind-whammy you right?" Clark put out there. At a frown from Lex, he added, "I can do this Kiss of Lethe thing. Steal certain memories away. I could make you forget." And, oddly, Lex seemed to have no fear of that, despite his various bouts with memory loss and his recurring obsession to regain them intact. Did he really think Superman wouldn't do it?
"Ah, but then you'd have to kiss me again. Wouldn't Lois be angry?" Lex ended, saccharine-sweetly. And he smiled a Cheshire Cat smile.
"I didn't kiss you the first time!" Clark shot back.
"Hmm," said Lex.
Well, that was just great. Lex knew him better than he knew himself. Or could play him against his own morals well enough that it might as well be the same thing. He tried not to visibly twitch in frustration.
"I won't tell if you won't," Lex offered, "...but I can't speak for your magician-witch."
And if that wasn't tempting... The only problem was, Clark wasn't willing to kiss Zatanna either, though for vastly different reasons than not wanting to kiss Lex.
And what he wouldn't give to not have been subject to Zatanna's nonsense in the first place. This wouldn't have happened if Lex hadn't been off on his own, otherwise she never would've been able to get at him, and why had he been here without even the most basic Kryptonite precautions today anyway? "On this day of all days..." Clark murmured, glancing off to the side.
~*~*~*~
"...you're each spending it alone? Do you know what I saw when I looked into this place while I was scrying? You two really need to remember what's important and work things out. So you both can just stay right here until you kiss and make up!" Zatanna had admonished. " Lleps etavitca!"
~*~*~*~
Seven years ago this day, a planet full of hellfire and brimstone had almost crashed into the Earth. Tess had nearly died. Mirror-Lionel had died, and Darkseid had been beaten back. He'd thought Lex had lost his memory for good. He'd realized Lex was alive. Lex had declared his undying nemesis-hood to him, and he had in return promised to always stop him when he went too far.
Lex knew who he was, had known for years, could remember everything, had never really forgotten, and Clark-as-Superman had, in all honesty, sometimes felt more secure in his screwed up twisted relationship with Luthor, such as it was, than he did with many of his own colleagues, even on the worst of the bad days. Though today seemed to have difficulty deciding which sort of day it wanted to be. But even if he couldn't trust him outright, he knew the things that Lex would and would not do, and where all the lines were that they each would and would not cross. This far and no farther, and he could write a book detailing the given expectations and outcomes when they interacted during their various fights. And that, oddly enough, was a sort of trust. At least he knew where he stood with him. And he had a hunch that Lex felt similarly, as well. And when he thought about it, he could live with that.
"Status quo, Lex Luthor?"
"I don't see why not, Kal-El," he returned.
Superman nodded. He turned in midair to go.
"...except, there is one small problem."
He stifled a groan. "What's that?" Superman asked, turning back and crossing his arms. He should've known the rules of the game were about to change, with everything out in the open once again. He also knew better than to think that Lex's use of his name earlier was anything other than intentional, and Lex never did anything intentionally without multiple reasons and several backup plans. Hell, these days, unintentional seemed to have been stricken from his vocabulary.
Though intentional did not always mean planned well in advance. If there was one thing Lex was good at, it was recognizing the potential in something and taking advantage, if not downright exploiting it.
"I'm going to be in office soon. Given that the result of the working relationship you've had with the White House in the past has been... generally beneficial," he admitted, "it would be a shame if our personal differences caused unnecessary friction in a delicate situation or during a time of crisis," he ended on an almost self-deprecating note.
Clark couldn't help but smile a little ruefully. "I'm sure we can figure something out that doesn't involve you trying to force me to carry out executive kill orders for you, or me needing to smash through the White House air defenses and secret service every week to get at you. We've worked together against a common threat before."
"Yes, we have. I look forward to it."
Superman nodded and once more turned to go, but as a parting shot: "Lex?"
"Yes?"
"Happy Anniversary."
Clark didn't need to turn around to hear the soft sigh or see the slight smile that passed across Lex's face, so he didn't. He wondered how many years previously that Lex had come here alone, unarmed, in an affirmation of what they were, and what he wanted them to be. As he soared higher into the sky, headed for the stratosphere, his super hearing picked up one last thing before he tuned into the nighttime noises of the city and away from his small town home.
"Cognatus meus et frater meus, scutum meum consortium, et ductor meus," he heard Lex murmur as he strode off into the darker corners of the mansion, footsteps echoing in abandoned, but not forgotten, corridors.
'One of these days, I'm going to learn Latin,' Clark promised himself. 'And then I bet Lex and I are going to have a very interesting conversation.'
~*~*~*~*~*~
Author's Note 2: Feedback and concrit happily welcomed!
Author's Note 3: Ok, I admit freely that I got a little silly with Lex's parting comment :) I used an online translator for the Latin; it should read:
"My kinsman and my brother,
My shield-mate and my guide"
It's not anything from a Roman military text or Greek philosopher, unfortunately I'm not that well-read! *laughs* If you want to interpret the ending as some good and proper Clex crack, go ahead and Google it -- they're song lyrics(!).
Author's Note 4: Tangents to what happened in this story, but that I recalled when writing this and prompted the "Kiss of Lethe" comment: "Achilles' Heel" by X-parrot (link) and "Every Time" by Romany (link). Thoughts of Lucas and Lex (mostly) getting along ok tend to remind me of "Project Perdiccas" by Claire (link).