Fic: Timeshared (Part 1) (1/3)
Title: Timeshared (Part 1)
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark, Lex
Rating: R
Spoilers: general for the entire series; follows canon up through season 7 and a little of 8x01, but events and particulars diverge (at times rather drastically) from that point onward
Word count: 24,900+
Summary: The explicit use of the Orb actually did work the way everyone thought it would... more-or-less... and Clark discovers that he isn't who he thought he was...
Warnings: Un-beta'd. AU. Darkfic-ish. Rating for violence, nonconsensual enslavement and torture (both physical and mental). It, uh, gets better, though, making its way towards H/C. *coughs*
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Comments: Yes, please! :)
Author's Note: I really don't know why more people don't play around with this basic premise. Should I leave out carrots and chocolate, or something? (Or did I miss a bunch of fics? Does anyone have links? I'd be forever grateful! *bigeyes*)
Also posted to AO3 here.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark groaned as he tried to sit up.
He was dead tired, hurting, and freezing cold -- he could barely feel his fingers. ...or any of his extremities at all. He remembered, he'd felt this way before. Powerless.
This was not good. He was in the middle of the arctic with no super-strength, or invincibility, or endurance against the cold. Or speed to get him out of here.
He remembered how far away civilization had been from the Fortress when Chloe had needed medical attention. Not good at all. He needed to get moving. Now.
He managed to roll over and lever himself upright, and brought an arm up in front of his face to try and shield himself against the frigid, biting wind that was blowing snow into his face. He could barely see his arm in front of him.
Then his eyes widened as he realized that it wasn't his red jacket sleeve he was seeing in his field of vision, but Lex's dark coat sleeve and one of his gloves.
"Lex?" Clark whispered. He raised his head and twisted in place, trying futilely to scan his surroundings once again.
"Lex?!?" Clark yelled as loudly as he could, but the wind immediately tore the sound away from him, drowning it out with its own howling roar.
He started to panic, realizing that there was no way Lex would survive without his winter gear -- why had Lex taken it off in the first place, let alone put it on him? Where was he? Clark tried to search around, but being unable to get off of his hands and knees in the raging storm weather, and with such low visibility, he couldn't find any sign of Lex or the Fortress anywhere near him.
Clark huddled down in on himself and hugged his arms around his chest. This was wrong. He didn't know what the controlling crystal was supposed to have done -- everyone said it was supposed to allow the user to control him, but what exactly did that mean? -- but Clark was pretty sure that it shouldn't have hurt Lex, or done anything to him at all. The beam had only hit Clark.
Had Lex gotten caught in the collapsing Fortress? --But that didn't make sense, he'd been right beside Clark and had stayed with him until Clark had blacked out. Whatever the Orb had done to him had hurt like hell -- the beam had left behind an oscillating pain that had radiated outwards in waves from where he'd been zapped in the chest. It had gotten worse and worse until Clark had felt like he was being ripped in half, and that had been when everything had gone dark.
The only other explanation Clark could think of was that Lex had survived, too, decided to drag Clark far enough away from the shattered Fortress to a place where there were no crystal shards littering the landscape, and left him there for whatever reason. But where was he now, and why had he decided to leave Clark here?
Clark whimpered and he shivered uncontrollably as he got colder and colder. His teeth chattered, and the cold was beginning to hurt worse than Kryptonite radiation ever had, unbelievably.
So Clark tried and failed to stand several times in the middle of the raging snowstorm, until he was nearly too tired to move. He collapsed, laid out flat in the snow, and stared at the flakes whipping wildly around and about him for far too long. Then, with a sheer effort of will, he shoved himself back to his knees and started frantically digging down into the snow around him, as fast as he was still able to.
Lex's gloves saved him, dark against the white so he could see what he could no longer feel -- too cold now to be anything but numb -- and keeping his hands from becoming life-threateningly damaged against the hard-packed snow. He slowly built himself a shelter around him, raising the walls inch by inch. Once he had somewhat of a windbreak, he huddled down even further, keeping himself out of the wind and minimizing his exposure to the elements as much as possible. He slowly dug himself in deeper and deeper, piling up the walls higher and higher until it started to resemble an igloo, leaving himself only a small gap for air flow, so very cold as it whistled by. Each breath was like knives down his throat, but he didn't dare stop.
Finally he could no longer force his limbs to move. He collapsed completely, fatigued beyond his body's capacity to save itself, even if he'd been able to produce a further surge of adrenaline to help drive him. He barely had the presence of mind to pull the hood farther down over his head to cover his face a little better, and tucked his arms in under his hood, supporting himself so that he didn't fall asleep with his head in the snow -- knowing that, powerless as he seemed to be, he'd never wake up again if he did that.
He prayed that Lex was ok.
...Maybe he would see the makeshift shelter and come back? It was safer here than out there.
Unless Lex had left him behind to die.
Clark whimpered softly, curled in on himself, and closed his eyes.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"--or. --th--. M---"
Clark was so tired. Everything felt heavy, even his eyelids. He couldn't move, and he wasn't sure he even wanted to try to do so.
"--Luthor? Mr.--"
What? Lex was here? Clark struggled to wake, to move against the heaviness in his limbs. He wanted to see Lex, to be sure he was ok.
Lex must have gone for help! Clark suddenly realized as he slowly began to become aware of the distinct lack of the feel of cold snow and biting, frigid wind. He was fairly sure he was no longer in his makeshift shelter of packed snow -- it felt cold, but still too warm for that -- so someone must have found and retrieved him for Lex. But Lex wouldn't leave the retrieval of an alien he considered possibly dangerous to only some nameless subordinate, Clark was almost certain. Not even a depowered one. And no-one would have left him unrestrained, powerless or not, and it didn't feel like there was anything external weighing him down. ...So where was he? What was going on? And why couldn't he hear Lex?
Clark was startled as suddenly the heavy feeling left his eyelids and he blinked open his eyes. A redheaded woman was looking down on him from overhead, and the world spun uneasily. When things settled again, he realized he was upright, clutching tightly at the side of the...cot. He was on a cot in a tent.
"Mr. Luthor? Lex?"
His vision swam in and out for a moment, and Clark felt very weird as he quickly passed a hand over his eyes. He'd never had issues with seeing before, when he was depowered after everything with Zod. And something felt different, like he couldn't focus properly.
He turned his head up towards the woman, and felt tense, like... like something wasn't quite meshing up. His control was way off, and when he tried to move everything felt too sluggish, or too heavy, and then too light, and sometimes almost all at once. His breathing felt almost erratic; it felt like he couldn't take a deep breath as fully as he should be able to, somehow.
And where was Lex? He wasn't here, and the woman had been calling for him, hadn't she? Why wasn't he here yet?
"Ms. Mercer. Report," he heard raspily, and Clark realized with no small shock that the words had come from his own mouth.
"Sir. I- We were worried about your safety. After the zero hour, as you requested, search and rescue teams were dispatched. We found you in a small ice shelter, but thus far there has been no sign of the plane you arrived on, or its crew. We are still searching the area for signs of the original cause of electromagnetic disturbance, but nothing so far."
Clark watched as his vision -- what he could see -- darted back and forth, felt as his hands reached up and took a cup of water from the woman. Felt it go down his throat, felt something ease.
"An ice shelter?" soft enough to be a mere echo, but that voice... smoother now...
Oh god. Clark recognized that voice.
"Did you find anyone else?" he said.
"No, sir."
Clark felt his forehead furrow in a frown, felt a gloved hand reach up and glide over his head without resistance -- a hairless skull.
Clark would have shivered, but he couldn't move. Would have screamed, but he couldn't make his throat work because it wasn't his throat, now, was it?
Denial warred with sense that was switfly overwhelmed by pure panic and mental flailing to hold onto something, anything--
"No... body? No sign of another person?"
"I'm sorry, sir. We haven't finished searching the area-- but we'll find anything if it exists here, we'll scour the area, sir!" the woman promised fervently.
But Clark barely heard her, because he was realizing that he was dead. He was dead, or as good as dead -- he was dead, he was a Phantom, a ghost, Lex had done this to him, Lex had killed him and he had no body and no body to go back to and he was stuck and he had no control and he was dead--
He needed to scream but he couldn't scream, and then he felt unmoored like something had come loose and he clawed and grasped at nothing as everything started to spiral away from him -- taste, smell, hearing, touch, sight -- but there was nothing to grab onto, nothing to slow his fall as he fell and fell and fell down into black, worse than his worst fear of heights, worse than Jor-El and the summer in the caves, worse than anything that came before because he couldn't even feel the hammering of his heart, the catch of his breath, because he didn't have that anymore, he didn't have a body anymore and he needed to scream--
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark... drifted for awhile.
Except it wasn't drifting, because drifting was a feeling and he didn't have those anymore, feelings were a body thing, not a mind thing.
He didn't-drift in darkness that wasn't really darkness, because darkness was sight when you weren't seeing anything and he didn't even have that anymore, either.
So he didn't-drift in not-darkness and he had no concept of the passage of time, not that it really mattered anymore, because he was really and truly dead this time -- no Scarecrow Field with an empty grey sky, no rows of corn, no oppressive breeze, no nothing. All he had was time.
It was just Clark and his thoughts, and Clark was his thoughts, that was all he was anymore.
He wasn't sure when the panic started to go away. There hadn't really been anything to stop it, no way to calm down, and he vaguely realized now that maybe being able to force himself to calm down, back when he was alive, had had something to do with the feel of his own body -- being able to feel the speed up of his heart, the panted breaths, and realize that he needed to stop, to try and back off and undo whatever he was doing. That there was a physical limit to his panic.
But when he was all-thought, well, there weren't really any limits anymore, were there?
At least he didn't have to worry about breaking things anymore. Except himself.
Clark didn't know how long he'd panicked for, or even how badly exactly; things had gotten to be really bad for awhile there, and he had a vague notion that maybe he didn't quite remember it all properly. He was pretty sure that he didn't want to remember it properly. Kind of like whatever had happened with Jor-El and the brainwashing in the caves into the soldier-Kal-El-him.
Clark wondered if it had been like this for Cyrus Krupp, if maybe this was why he'd gone comatose and ended up hidden deep inside his own head. Maybe what had happened to him had been similar, except that in Cyrus's case his brain had just stopped listening to his body, and the panic had gotten so deep and circling, gotten too close to some point of no return that his mind and sanity had ended up spiraling down in on itself like water down a drain, like tying a knot into itself farther and farther and tighter and tighter...
Cyrus hadn't been able to heal himself, but Clark tended to heal pretty quickly. Or his body had used to. Maybe his mind did, too, given enough time.
Clark wasn't sure he cared. He felt detached; if he was still capable of really feeling anything at all, that was what it was: detached.
After awhile, he felt like he could move his thoughts around this place that wasn't really a place, a place without landmarks or walls, although somehow he had a sense that it was contained, not endless, but somehow actually cramped: not small, but not large, either. Not comfortable, not roomy. He could expand out and give himself 'space' to think, or spiral his thoughts in tight, weaving them together like a tight thread or a braid.
He drifted without drifting in a place where he couldn't feel anything to care, and wondered if he would ever know peace, because his thoughts would not settle or still, they just ran about restlessly, never ceasing...
Clark was his thoughts. If his thoughts never stopped, would he never die? Would he be stuck like this? Forever?
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark's eyes snapped open as physical feeling slammed into him with a furious overwhelming combination of hot-cold-pressure-smooth-rough-heavy, muscles-fighting-pull-of-gravity, breath-in-through-the-nose-filling-lungs, shift of arms and legs against rough cheap cotton--
Spots danced in his vision before it cleared to a dark room and a normal-sized, sheet-covered bed.
Clark shoved himself upright in a flash, panting, thinking oh thank god, it was just a nightmare!
...until he looked around and realized where he was... or rather, wasn't. And then looked down at himself and realized this wasn't himself, wasn't his body. All over again.
Clark moaned in utter desolate grief.
He stared down at hands that were thin and marked by odd calluses. A pianist's hands, a chemist's hands, an artist's hands; hands worn by corporate work, instead of what might be otherwise expected.
Clark wrapped Lex's arms around Lex's torso and hugged himself. Sort-of. He curled forward and started to rock, then shivered as the sheets slithered off of him and pooled around his -- Lex's -- waist and as he grabbed at them, he glanced over to his right--
There was somebody else in bed with him.
Oh, god. Lex had been sleeping with somebody. Some woman. Some stupid Lex girl. He was supposed to know better by now. Clark thought he had knew better, now.
Lex had had sex with this random person, and now Clark was in control of Lex's body, sitting in bed next to her.
Clark felt ill.
He got up slowly in the moonlight, finding shoes and socks and pants and shirt slowly, carefully, quietly. He did not want to wake her up. Whoever the hell she was. He absolutely did not want to know whatever she and Lex had done. He winced at forming bruises and a throbbing in his -- Lex's -- head.
Then Clark started as he heard a door creak, the noise coming from the other side of the closed bedroom door. Angry voices. Male.
Quiet, subdued angry voices.
Oh, shit. Clark knew how these sorts of things ended for Lex. Stupid, stupid, stupid! he mentally berated his ex-friend, murderer, now-jailer.
Clark dressed hurriedly, glanced around, feeling a wholly-physical panic churning upwards from the region of Lex's gut. His eyes finally settled on the window, and he bolted over, checking it.
Thank god. Fire escape.
He heard the bedroom door slam open behind him and didn't waste time looking back -- he just slammed the window open and shoved Lex's body through, then barreled down the fire escape to a chorus of no longer quiet yells and...
Gunshots.
Clark, thoroughly pissed off now, dodged, ducked, and weaved as he somehow managed to maneuver Lex's body down the rusting ladder, across the alleyway, and out into the main street without getting anyone killed. He realized as he broke out onto the larger roadway that (a) he was in Metropolis and (b) he was in a really bad part of Metropolis, judging from the hookers and drug dealers about.
Who were staring at him with open interest.
Forget subtlety and fuck Lex's reputation -- Clark ran.
Clark ran and ran until he thought Lex's lungs would give out, and then he ran some more. He ran past the point he thought Lex's legs would give out, and finally let himself slow on purpose once he'd reached a part of town where cops might actually even consider coming out if there was a 911 call logged by dispatch from the area.
He searched and searched, moving at a brisk walk, until he found a taxicab. It took him five tries and three different cars before he was finally successful in flagging one down.
"Luthor Towers," he told the cabbie, and, breathing heavily, collapsed back in the seat.
Clark felt awful -- or rather, Lex's body did -- but it wasn't awful awful. Not like Kryptonite, or getting stabbed, or anything like that. The running had been pretty nasty, though. Clark now understood first-hand what it meant to 'have a stitch in your side', and all sorts of aches and pains were making themselves known as what must have been actual 100% human adrenaline began to wear off.
Luckily, Lex had left his wallet in the back pocket of his pants, and Clark paid the cabbie a huge tip like Lex probably would... if he used cabs.
Clark wondered for a moment where Lex had parked his car back there, and then he decided he didn't care. It wasn't like Lex couldn't afford another car, or needed another one to add to the dozen.
Clark forced himself upright, slamming the car door behind him. He stared up at the Towers before taking a deep breath (well, deep for Lex, which he was finding was a lot different than him, in a lot of ways) and striding in through the sliding doors. He walked up to the elevator, slapped the button for up with his palm, and hit the 'P' button nearly as hard once inside.
He was fuming by the time he let himself into Lex's penthouse apartment. What the hell had Lex been thinking?
Clark slammed the door behind him, and started stripping off clothes as he made a beeline for the nearest bathroom. He wanted a shower. Get the stink of the girl-whore and panicked flight and the streets and the cab off of him. He'd never felt so... unclean.
...And what the hell had he been thinking? He'd been stuck rescuing Lex, again.
I can't win, Clark thought hysterically, bracing himself against the sink as he stared into the mirror at Lex. I'm still having to rescue Lex even after I'm dead. Then he started as what he was seeing finally registered through the fatigue and the frustrated anger, and he got a really good look at Lex's body.
Lex was... emaciated. His eyes were dark hollows. He looked half skin and bones.
What the hell? Clark thought, reaching out a hand and touching the mirror, skimming the surface with fingertips, cool and smooth to the touch.
This wasn't right -- Lex had always been a bit on the lean side, but he'd been fit. Muscular. Not... this.
"What have you been doing to yourself?" Clark whispered in Lex's voice, horrified beyond belief.
Then he grimaced and backed away from the image, shaking his head once. He turned away and got into the shower, stripped down completely, and started scrubbing.
You don't care, Clark reminded himself. You don't care, he's not your friend anymore, he killed you, for god's sake, and locked you up in his own body. Whatever it is, it's his own damn fault, and nothing to do with you. He can clean up his own damn messes for once.
He finally finished scrubbing away the filth under good water and clean-smelling soap, and stepped out and dried Lex's body off with a towel.
Clark glared at the mirror again as he walked to the door. Then he stopped, looked back, and stared again.
Maybe Lex doesn't know I'm in here, it occurred to him. Maybe if I told him... maybe... Then Clark realized how ludicrous that really was and shook his head over and over again in an attempt to physically rid himself of the thought. So Clark had saved Lex's life again tonight, even after Lex had killed his body and imprisoned him inside his own; so what? If Lex did know, then he either didn't care or had done it on purpose. If he didn't know, he'd either find a way to exorcise Clark to the Phantom Zone, or similar. Lex wouldn't feel like he 'owed him one'. Lex wouldn't do anything to help him. Lex had tried to kill him, and only managed partway.
Lex didn't like doing things in half-measures.
Clark wasn't sure yet if even this quarter-life and twilight-death was better than nothing.
Clark shivered, then grimaced and went hunting for clean underwear and pajamas.
He ended up settling down on the couch in the living room -- Lex's body was feeling pretty horrible, and Clark wasn't so sure anymore -- now that he'd gotten a good look at Lex -- whether Kryptonite-in-his-own-body-horrible was any good gauge to use against human-level horribleness. He did have the sinking feeling that once he fell asleep, he'd lose control of Lex's body again -- whatever small amount he must have at the moment -- and go back to being nothing but thoughts in that un-place of not-darkness again. Which meant that Lex would be the one to wake up. If Clark went to bed, and Lex slept in his room, no-one might bother him and see to care. But if Clark camped out on the couch out here, whoever did Lex's cooking and cleaning for him in the penthouse suite would see the state of Lex's body and react accordingly.
It occurred to Clark that while he didn't know how long he'd been out, he could easily check by grabbing a newspaper, or just turning on the TV and checking the date. But he realized that, well... he really didn't want to know. He just as easily discarded the notion of trying to contact the League -- Lex would have the phone call on his outgoing call record, and no-one in the League would believe him, anyway; they'd just think it was some game of Luthor's and freak the fuck out at what 'Lex' knew and kill themselves trying to figure out how 'Lex' knew it. Paranoia was a real bitch, sometimes. ...And even if he could convince them, it wasn't like they could do anything for him anyway, what with him being dead and all and only haunting Lex from time to time, in some weird form of random possession. He wasn't even sure where he was a Phantom anymore, because if that really was the case then shouldn't he ought to have more control, like all the other Phantom Kryptonians did? --Either way, he'd just be upsetting people unnecessarily; no good could come of it.
Clark yawned as he settled in on the couch with a pillow and blanket, and hoped that his real body really was dead, or gone, or whatever, because he hated the idea of Lex and that red-haired Mercer woman getting their hands on it and doing alien autopsy things with Kryptonite and lots of sharp knives. He might not be inhabiting it anymore, but it was still his.
As Clark relaxed into the cushions and let Lex's eyelids flutter shut, Clark vaguely wondered if he was wrong -- maybe he really was going to be the one to wake up in the morning, and Lex would be the one set drifting instead. He wasn't sure he cared at this point -- the fatigue of his earlier exertion of will upon and within Lex's less-than-well-kept body had gotten to him far too quickly to fight against.
Clark drifted off to an almost-pleasant slumber, and when his mental grip on Lex's body loosened he slowly slipped back into the darkness-that-wasn't. But this time, when his thoughts drifted off, they settled into dreams. Dreams in a neutral grey, if dreams could have color when a mind had no body to visualize them for the imagination's benefit, but dreams they were, nonetheless.
Clark slept.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex gasped awake, flailing. His head was pounding and every last inch of him ached.
"Sir!"
Lex clenched down on a whimper of pain, baring his teeth and nearly jackknifing in bed. Slowly, numbness crept in, as Tess murmured to him about the morphine drip and apologies about not being able to give him a higher dose.
"Fuck," Lex breathed out, when the ain was finally medicated down to something manageable. "What the hell happened, Mercy?" he asked, turning his head and squinting his eyes at the glare from the hopsital's fluorescent lights, trying not to wince.
God, he loved his sociopathic half-sister, all-unknowingly so. She dimmed the overhead lights without his even having to ask.
"It was a triple-cross," she reported grimly. "That woman--"
"Drugged me, tossed me, and didn't hand me over to the right bad people to be caught red-handed," Lex hissed out. "I know. Just tell me that you got both groups."
Tess glanced away and swallowed nervously. That wasn't a good sign. That was a tell of incompetent work. Damnit. He hadn't wanted to use himself as bait, but the subversive elements that Lionel had let weasel their way into LuthorCorp to rot it from the inside out had needed rooting out long since, and Edge's old network would not have moved for any lesser prize. And if his reading of Tess' reactions was anywhere close to the mark, it had been the worst outcome: the group they had known about hadn't done anything to allow even partial identification of its members for a quasi-legal detainment, and this unknown second group that they hadn't previously been aware of had somehow not only managed to grab him but had also slipped the net.
"How much did you have to pay for my safe return?" Lex asked, closing his eyes in mental pain as he feared the answer, especially if the coin used had not been of a monetary sort.
A short pause became an uncomfortably long pause. Lex slowly opened his eyes and looked up at Tess.
Tess looked... confused.
"What is it?" Lex asked.
"Sir..." Tess said slowly, carefully. "We didn't have to pay anything at all. You escaped yourself."
Lex stared at her incredulously. "...What?" he asked, feeling a sick dread as he slowly pushed himself upright to stare at her more fully. He didn't remember escaping. From his recollection, he'd been hit from behind, then woken up here.
"You surprised everyone. You just walked in the door at half-past midnight last night, went straight up to the Penthouse, cleaned up, and went to sleep in the living room."
"...The living room?" Lex echoed, feeling struck dumb.
"You collapsed on the couch. You didn't even try to contact anyone to tell them you were all right. We only found out that you'd returned the next morning when the cleaning maid saw you lying there, and we backtracked your movements from the security tapes." She frowned. "Actually, you didn't follow any of the protocols at all..."
"I want to see those tapes," Lex demanded softly in a voice of steel, feeling a disquiet he hadn't felt since... no. No. No, this was not that. There was an explanation. A different explanation. Not that. It wasn't that. It couldn't be. He knew more now than he had then, and none of the other proper known warning signs were there. He had no reason to feel so... unnerved.
"Yes, sir," Tess affirmed quickly, standing to leave and immediately track down for him the data necessary to accommodate his need for more information. Even if that information was about himself.
The door to the hospital room opened. "Mr. Luthor?" one of his doctors said tentatively. Lex waved him in, but he only just stepped inside, keeping so near the exit that Tess was barely able to get through the doorway past him. He closed it with great reluctance.
He looked very, very pale.
"Out with it," Lex very nearly growled. This was one of his own set, one with a very high-level clearance, and whatever it was that was wrong, standing there and not telling Lex was not going to magically make things any better somehow. Lex needed information to be able to assess, plan, and react effectively. He needed to stay calm and give himself the time and breathing space to think things through, and this idiot was not helping.
"Ah, well, sir, you see, with your kidnapping and your hospital stay, we ran more than the usual battery of tests on your bloodwork." He paused. "The... the full battery of tests."
"And?" Lex prompted, about to lose his temper. He'd rather have the bad news sooner than later, especially if it related to his personal health.
"And we found low levels of -- well, just traces, really! it's probably nothing serious--" the man stammered, trying to sound cheery but failing miserably.
"Traces. Of. What." Lex gritted out, a moment away from forcing himself out of his hospital bed and strangling the man.
"Of-- of alien peptides similar to the ones we retrieved from the corpse at Fort Ryan, but... but they most closely resembled the ones documented as being found in the blood sample of subject 7805, the Quebec boy, the subject who had been inhabited by the, the," the doctor swallowed heavily, inching backwards towards the door.
"The Kryptonian entity," Lex finished in a monotone, feeling an impending sense of doom.
Lex took it all back. Now was an excellent time to panic.
~*~*~*~*~*~
To hell with all of this -- for once in my life, I am getting some damn answers! Lex seethed with rage.
He slammed the door shut on his convertible and stomped towards the barn, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
When he got to the barn door, he grabbed the handle and slid it open so hard that the "bang!" sounded like a gunshot as he nearly forced it off its track.
"KENT!" he bellowed, stomping in, teeth bared and longcoat billowing out behind him.
Lex heard the casual, heavy thump of boots from one of the horse stalls, and out strolled Clark Kent.
Lex damn near saw red when he saw the look of boredom on Kent's face. He mentally stuttered incoherently for a good thirty seconds at least, standing stock still like a statue carved from a rare marble shot through with darkness and hate.
"Was there something you wanted, Luthor? I'm busy," Clark drawled.
That did it. Lex marched over.
"You son of a bitch--!" Lex started.
"We talking about my adopted or biological parents? Or both? Just to be clear, you understand," Clark interrupted casually, and just as casually turned his back on Lex and proceeded to go back to brushing down the brood mare's coat in the horse stall with the currycomb he was holding.
That had Lex nearly sputtering all over again, because Mrs. Kent--
Lex grabbed Clark from behind, fisting two hands in his shirt, and slamming him sideways into the wall of the stall. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, you damn alien menace!" he screeched.
"Fuck you," Clark laughed easily, with a slowly-growing grin. "The only 'alien' around here is you."
"What the hell do you know?!?" Lex demanded, going dead-white, his eyes widening as he reeled backwards in shock. How could he know? was soon replaced with What did Clark do to me?
But Clark just laughed, and the fear was overpowered as the the anger flooded right back in again, and Lex, fed up, grabbed him again and shoved him out of the stall. Clark stumbled and fell, but then smiled thinly and picked himself up, brushed himself off deliberate-slow while watching Lex. Looking like it was taking him some effort not to laugh. Like it was all some big funny joke.
"You suddenly show up after being missing for a month at the same time as-- as--" Lex clenched his teeth, old habits finally kicking in as they never had with Clark before and being completely unwilling to give more information than he had to. "You expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with it? What the hell did you do???" he hissed, advancing on Clark again.
Clark's smile widened into a grin. "I wandered through a snowstorm, got myself picked up and sold as slave labor to some really smelly Russians, and eventually got rescued by the League. Next question?"
Lex didn't believe a word of it. "Do you think I'm fucking stupid?!" Lex tossed out, irate, his voice rising through octaves, his control slipping even further.
"Yes!" Clark replied simply. Then he easily dodged Lex's barefisted swing at his head with an easy sidestep, letting out another peal of laughter again.
"Oh, come on, Lex," Clark taunted smoothly. "You've always said that you wanted no lies, just the truth, and when I actually give it to you, unvarnished and whole, you get all angry with me. How childish."
"You're not telling the truth; you're lying. You're still lying! Keeping things from me!" Lex spat out.
Clark's grin widened further, nearly becoming a death-head's grin. "Oh, no I'm not. Hell, I'll even make you a deal, Lex. No, even better -- a promise!" His eyes glittered with mischief and something else. Something that would have given Lex pause if his anger hadn't been completely overriding his good judgment just then. "I promise to answer every question that you ask, and to always tell you the truth. Even when you beg me not to," he ended, his tone as smooth as the caress of a sharp blade slicing through someone's jugular. "Especially then."
Lex was shaking and he couldn't stop. He wanted to tear Clark to shreds. Instead, he settled for reaching in a pocket, pulling a huge chunk of meteor rock out of a lead-lined pouch, and tossing it at Clark's head. Hard.
Clark reached up and caught it, one-handed. He smiled all over again.
Lex's jaw dropped.
Clark snickered and tossed it up and down in one hand, casually. "Very stupid, indeed. You shouldn't carry this around with you, Lex. It'll make you sick. Or worse." Clark went back to his thin, knowing smile. Lex found himself wanting to slice it off his face.
When Clark threw the rock underhand right back to him, Lex caught it but almost fumbled it, mind reeling, because Clark really was showing no Kryptonian-poisoning symptoms at all. He ended up dropping it back into his pocket, thoughtlessly.
"How?" he asked finally.
"I'm not an alien," Clark shrugged.
"The Orb-- it worked against you," Lex accused.
"More like worked for me. Thanks for that, by the way," Clark smirked.
"--You lying son of a bitch!" Lex yelled out again. If there was one thing Lex hated, it was being used and the thought that the Orb had made Clark immune somehow to the one thing that could bring him down, and tha Lex had been tricked into using it on him, thinking it was a weapon that could bring him under control instead--
"Now-now, Lex. Not lying. Truthful! I thought we went over this earlier," Clark tsked.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Lex demanded. "Who the hell are you?" came next, and he realized all at once that this wasn't Clark, couldn't be Clark. This is some sort of imposter, somehow, and as the thought occurred to him, the feeling grew stronger and stronger. This wasn't Clark. This isn't Clark. Where the hell is Clark?
"I'm Clark Kent, can't you tell?" he grinned quickly. "Oh no, I take it back -- I guess you wouldn't be able to, now, would you?"
This is probably what insanity feels like, Lex realized as he pressed his palms against his temples, hard. "You were at the Fortress," he accused.
"Yes."
"You were affected by the Orb."
"Oh, yes."
"You have to do what I say."
A laugh. "Nope!" the imposter shot back, grinning. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"You're Kal-El!"
"Wrong again!" He crossed his arms, then cocked his head. "You're pretty bad at this, aren't you?"
"Stop lying to me!" Lex hissed, and he reached into his coat, pulled out a handgun, and aimed it at Clark's head.
Clark smiled. "I'm not lying," he said evenly, not changing his pose.
"I don't care if you're fucking bulletproof, I will find a way to--" Lex started shakily, remembering the last fight he had in the barn. Remembering the awl, bent. Remembering the rebar in the lower caves, sticking out of Clark's arm... and the meteor rock dust. Remembering the 'snick!' of the lead-and-meteor-rock bullets as he had shoved them into into the clip of the gun he was pointing at Clark's head. Remembering how little Clark had been affected by the meteor rock just prior, if he'd been affected at all.
"Not bulletproof," Clark interrupted casually.
Lex blinked. "Fucking hell," he whispered. Then he felt calmer, as he straightened out his arm to full extension, and cocked the gun to a hair-trigger.
Clark looked almost amused. He shrugged and said, "You're not going to pull the trigger."
"The hell I'm not," Lex said, feeling a little braver now that he wasn't up against an invincible alien. At least, assuming that the imposter wasn't lying about the lack of invulnerability...
"Nope, not gonna do it," Clark said confidently, dropping his hands down to his waist and looping his thumbs in the beltloops of his jeans.
Lex stared in astonishment as Clark walked forward, then right past him, and back to the horse stall, completely unconcerned.
"You-- you--" Lex sputtered. "I will shoot you!" he said tightly, spinning around and aiming the gun at him again, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. Was the man insane?
"No, you won't," Clark rejoined, as he strode forward and picked right back up with his work in the horse stall. "If you shoot me, you can't ask me questions and you'll never get your answers. You'd even be giving up the ability to ever 'win' over me," he added as almost an afterthought as he picked up a pitchfork out of a bale of hay. "Which means you'll lose, and you hate losing. And, with humanity at stake..." Clark looked at him sideways, "I know you. You'll not dare to do anything to risk it." He smiled slightly, then turned back to the stall and tossing down new hay.
Lex was confused as hell, because that couldn't possibly be right. And, besides, "You're not Clark Kent. I have no compunction to hold back with you," he ended grimly. "You will answer my questions truthfully, or I will shoot you, and it won't be fatal until I'm satisfied."
"Oh please, as if you ever held back before," Clark scoffed. "Pay attention, Lex," he said snidely, and with that he whipped up the pitchfork and slashed Lex's hand with the manure-encrusted tines.
Lex shouted and lost hold of the gun, which spun off into a mess of tractor parts near the walls. He clutched desperately at his left wrist, in horrendous pain where the tines had sliced him across his hand.
Clark promptly shoved the pitchfork into the bale of hay again, stepped forward, and punched Lex in the gut. Hard.
Lex folded and went down, sprawling backwards a good yard and a half from the blow.
Wheezing, Lex tucked his left hand in towards his chest and tried to shove himself upright, but found himself unable to do much more than lever himself up a little bit onto one arm. He shivered against the ground and curled inward subconsciously as the fake Clark approached and towered over him.
He'd never been so scared in his life. Clark had never-- not with physical violence, not like this. Not with a weapon. Never. This wasn't Clark.
Lex looked straight up into cold green eyes and knew down to his bones that this man wasn't Clark. He'd never seen him before in his life.
"You just couldn't do it, could you," the not-Clark talked down at him condescendingly, chatting almost ambivalently. "You couldn't just walk in and ask, 'Are you a Kryptonian?' and just listen. You couldn't say, 'I have a problem,' or 'I need information on those aliens I've been fighting,' or 'I don't understand what's really been happening all these years, could you please tell me what you know so that when I go out there I can maybe not get myself killed doing something unbelievably stupid?' Hell, I bet 'please' left your vocabulary a long time ago, didn't it?" The bastard sounded almost amused.
"You've played me for a fool," Lex whispered.
"Today?" the man laughed. "Oh, yes. But before?" He leaned down. "Never." He was smiling again. "Oh, go on, ask me. It's ok. We both know you want to."
"Where's Clark?" Lex asked shakily.
"Right here," the imposter grinned. "You just can't see it right now," he added, with that death-head's grin again.
"You're not Clark," Lex repeated, shuddering.
Pause and a deepening smile, and Lex suddenly realized he'd missed something important.
"Yes, I am," the imposter repeated. "You just never got to know the real me. Not that it was your fault, mind you," he added breezily.
"I'm going to kill you," Lex promised quietly.
"No. You won't." And with that, the imposter squatted down to near eye-level with Lex, where he lay half-sprawled in the dirt and the dust and the muck of the barn floor. "If you even try to lay one finger on me again, the League will know. And Green Arrow will kill you, if I don't first." He looked Lex right in the eye and smiled.
Lex shivered.
"But we won't have to worry about that, now will we? Because the next time you come by, and the next time, and the time after that -- every time after that -- you are going to be kind and courteous and above all polite. You will ask nicely and I will answer truthfully, just like I promised, and we'll both get along so swimmingly." Clark stood up, and snagged the pitchfork from the haybale again, and twirled it absently. "And as a show of good faith, I'll even answer a question for you that you don't even know enough to ask." He glanced back over his shoulder, down at Lex, and his smile grew sharp. "When you used the Orb, it did exactly what you wanted it to do."
And then Clark Kent turned, balanced his pitchfork over his shoulder, and walked out of the barn, laughing.
"Don't forget to clean out that wound, Luthor!" Lex heard through the ringing laughter, tossed back at him like a parting slap, "Manure can be a bitch on the immune system!"
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex staggered out of the barn some time later. He wasn't sure how long it had taken him. He'd collapsed twice.
He'd been thoroughly unprepared. He shouldn't have come alone. He should have--
Shivering even harder, Lex fell to his knees next to his car. He bit his lip, curled his arms around himself, and rode out the shudders as they grew worse, then finally lessened. He felt weak.
A sheen of sweat layered across his face and forehead. He realized what a mistake it had been, coming out here so soon when he had barely gotten himself out of the hospital. When he hadn't even had an idea yet for how to handle the threatening alien presence hidden somewhere within him. He'd just grabbed the nearest meteor rock sample he could find in convenient packaging, stuffed it in a pocket, snagged his guns from hospital security, and headed for a confrontation at the Kent farm.
I wasn't thinking, he realized. I was panicked and alone and I turned to Clark like I know better than to do anymore. Ever. That I know better than to ever do, ever again. But a small traitorous part of him whispered, But he's always helped you before. Even after everything.
Then why is it different now? He struggled with the thought. He'd done worse. Much worse. Before. And he hadn't lost Clark. Not completely. Not even then. Much, much worse. ...Hadn't he? Clark had never... he'd never really given up on him before. Not really.
But that wasn't Clark.
I just need to find Clark, he thought shakily. Everything will be all right if I can just...
And with that half-formed thought, Lex managed to get himself upright and into his car, start the engine, and drive off.
He made it a good half-mile down the highway before he became so dizzy, the sickening pain so intense and him feeling so weak, that he lost control of the vehicle and ran off the road.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Lex woke up later, he was in his bed at the mansion, clean and in fresh clothes, with his hand carefully bandaged and feeling like it had been cleansed and treated. And in a house silent as death because all the staff was back at the penthouse in Metropolis, knowing that there was no-one else there to have cared for him or to hear him now, Lex curled up into a ball and screamed for an hour and a half.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark shoved at the airbag and tried not to curse.
He fumbled at the car door and stumbled out, lost his footing, and went down in the grass-and-dirt embankment.
He turned over and lay there, on his back, arms and legs splayed out from his sides, for a couple minutes, just breathing.
Then he groaned, opened his eyes and slowly pushed himself to a seated position, glaring at the car.
As it turned out, it was the same car that Lex had crashed the previous time Clark had woken up.
At least this time Lex's hand wasn't shredded, but his neck felt like murder. Clark massaged it carefully with a hand and glared at the offending vehicle as he got himself upright. Last time, Lex had 'merely' drifted off the road and down into a shallow enbankment. Clark had woken up to an incredibly ill feeling, and a huge chunk of glowing meteor rock in Lex's pocket. Clark had been half-sure that Lex had been in the process of being mutated into a really horrible meteor-freak when Clark had gained control again, and if he'd managed to throw the rock away before it was too late then Lex really owed him one, this time.
Oh, and he'd lost Lex's lunch on the side of the road afterwards. Lex really, really owed him one. Throwing up was terrible and gross.
But transporting that exposed meteor-rock? On his person? With no lead shielding? Lex should've known better. He did know better. Idiot.
This time didn't looke like an accident at all, though. The poor car was half-embedded in a tree, straight-on aligned with the driver's side. You didn't hit a tree straight on like that if you had any control at all... unless you were actively trying to. Idiot. Why the hell had Lex done it? On purpose, and so soon after the last time? Because, given the bandages still on Lex's hand, it couldn't have been long since the last car accident. Maybe a day or two, if that.
He would've glared at Lex instead of the car, because he doubted it wasn't driver error being the real problem here this time. Unfortunately, that would've involved tilting his head at an odd angle at the side view mirrors, and Lex's neck ached enough as it was. Clark wasn't exactly anxious to find out how bad it would feel after torquing it around a whole bunch more.
Clark looked over the car, looked around, considered his options. He looked up at the clear blue sky and implored the heavens for strength and patience he was pretty sure he didn't have. It didn't really help. He looked back down at the car and sighed. Then he moved around to the front and shoved hard against the grill with his shoulder, putting Lex's whole body into it.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Tess watched, fascinated, as Lex didn't look for a cellphone, curse, or do anything remotely Lex-like at all.
Instead, she watched as he slowly extracted the car from the tree and, once free, popped open the hood.
After fifteen minutes of fiddling around inside it, he slammed it shut, wiped his hands on a handkerchief as he walked around to the front of the car, and got back in.
Then he fumbled around in the interior of the car for a minute, before he finished whatever he was doing, started the car, backed up carefully and somehow managed to drive the car back up onto the roadway, and peeled off.
Son of a bitch!
Tess dropped the binoculars around her neck, scrambled down out of the tree, and made a mad dash for her car.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark froze as he heard a crumpling sound under his feet as he slid into the car. He carefully glanced down and rooted about.
He blindly felt around -- oh, and how oddly awesome was that, that in Lex's body he could feel things, pick things up without breaking them without having to see what he was doing? -- and retrieved the piece of paper.
He frowned down at it as he smoothed it out and brushed it off.
Then his jaw clenched as he read what was written on it.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Tess hadn't been able to follow his car, having lost it when it ramped up to speed, and she spent no little time panicking about what might happen to Lex if he didn't go where Lex had thought -- if she lost him -- but she caught up with Lex at the mansion again. The car was in the garage. Lex himself was lying on a couch in the library, supine, unconscious.
"Sir?" she asked quietly, kneeling down next to him and touching a shoulder.
Lex groaned and slowly came to. "What--?" he croaked, then winced as he tried to sit up. Tess helped him upright.
"Did it work?"
"Sir, he -- he doesn't even move like you do."
"I'll take that as a 'yes' for observation, then." Lex grimaced. Then he stared down curiously at the paper laying on top of his chest.
He picked it up slowly and turned it over. Then he got a sour look.
"Sir?"
"Not exactly the answer I was hoping for," Lex said, holding out the paper to her.
Tess took it from him and read through it.
Printed in the middle of the page in a rather large font were the words, "Who are you?"
Written just underneath that in a half-legible scrawl in pen was the reply, "Stop running into trees. Haven't you ever heard of whiplash?"
"He repaired the car," Tess added, handing the piece of paper back.
"What?" Lex said, looking up startled, as he was carefully rubbing the back of his neck.
"Him, it, whoever or whatever it was..." Tess started.
"Let's say 'him', for now," Lex said grimly.
Tess nodded. "He repaired your car. He managed to push it back from the tree and did something to the engine, I think. He didn't even seem to consider calling for a tow truck or outside assistance."
"I don't know how to repair a car," Lex said slowly. Tess looked back at him, equally grim. After reviewing his bloodwork, neither of them had truly thought it likely that his highly-functional actions during his blackouts could have been the result of some alternate personality of his, only coming to the surface in times of stress, but...
"Did you call for a mechanic?" Lex asked as he forced himself upright, wobbling. Tess took his arm to support him.
"No sir, I--"
"Good," he interrupted. "Show me."
"Sir?"
"Show me the car. I want to see what he did."
~*~*~*~*~*~
They found the car in the garage, right exactly in the parking space where it belonged, which would have had the hairs standing up on the back of Lex's neck if he had had any.
Neither of them were able to tell one way or the other whether what had been done to get it working again had been odd, and the mechanic, when Lex finally let Tess call one and he showed up, wasn't much more informative.
"It'll cost you for the replacements and all the body work. The fix for the radiator and the timing belt was a quick one, but there wasn't anything really odd about it."
"Nothing at all?"
The man looked at Tess oddly. "Lady, you don't do forensics on a repair job for a car. I don't know whoever this anonymous guy is who repaired it for you. Most guys don't have a 'style' at how they repair shit. We just make it work the way it's supposed to. Though..." he paused, considering, "I guess I've seen this too often to call it an odd quirk, but nobody ever did this back west," he mused, pointing to the timing belt. "This kind of thing you only see around here, in farming country. It's not really uncommon, though. Everybody and their brother usually cuts their teeth on farm equipment before getting into cars in these parts. --But that's just a regional thing," he added. "You'd have better luck just walking into town and going door-to-door tracking down your good samaritan than trying to figure out differences between one guy or another doing this type of fix." He shrugged.
Lex paid him for his time and thanked him. As the butler escorted him out, Tess looked at her employer carefully.
"You aren't going to have him tow it away for repairs?"
"I don't see any reason to demolish another car," Lex said steadily, glancing back at her.
"Sir!" she protested.
"I'll be more careful next time," Lex promised, turning and barely keeping a straight line as he walked back to the door to the main house. "We know this works, so we'll stick with it for now. I'll just run into something a little softer next time," he ended.
Tess didn't like the sound of this one bit.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex sighed as he looked at the array of notes he'd assembled from the aftermath of the various shocks to his system, and tried to ignore the aches and pains he'd given himself over the last two weeks. Spurred by Tess' almost outright begging, he'd acquiesced and tried pharmaceutical help at one point, but as they discovered, taking sleep medication or any sort of drug to induce unconsciousness did not seem to allow the proper state to force his silent passenger to the surface in the way that a physical shock seemed to provide. He had, at least, acquiesced to not doing anything possibly damaging to induce the state more than twice a day in the evenings, after he'd completed the majority of his LuthorCorp work.
"Sir, I really don't think that you should be doing this!" Tess protested.
Lex usually enjoyed his half-sister's concern, but he was barely tolerating it now. Question after question, and the entity residing inside him had never answered directly. He looked down at the last note and had to force himself to stay calm, to not tear the paper to shreds.
"Please! The being seems to want to leave you to your own devices. We should focus on suppression, not--"
"I will not be a host to some unknown Kryptonian thing," Lex ground out. "We don't know its true motives." Lex didn't want to think of what it might mean if it was some remnant of Zod. "We've barely been able to get a response from it." His lips curled up in a snarl. "And I will not be dictated to or threatened," he ended, setting down the paper, the scrawl on which read, "Stop doing this, or I will make you stop."
Up until this latest message, he'd had hopes that it might be benign. But now it seemed more likely that perhaps it was only lying in wait for some signal, and only serving its own purposes by keeping him alive until then.
Lex sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "In a way," he mused, "we are making progress. We know it thinks it can be more active, and that it displays a rather astounding level of arrogance."
"But if we suppress it until we can remove it--"
"No. I need information. I need to be able to communicate with it. The last one of these things we saw was incapable of intelligible speech when not possessing a human body, and could not survive long outside of one. I don't want to risk a loss of a direct information source like this. We need to provoke it to action, to make it show its true intentions." Lex stood, pushed himself upright.
"Sir, please. If you would just let me approach it, I could..."
"No!" Lex said, whirling back around and grabbing Tess by the arms. "I will not risk exposing anyone else to this thing. We don't know whether it is capable of the baseline Kryptonian abilities we've seen in other cases."
"It's never demonstrated--"
"We. Don't. Know." Lex repeated. "It could kill you. Or worse." He dropped his hands, letting go of her. "I've already put your safety at risk far more than I should have, telling you about the Kryptonans and having you follow me to observe."
"Sir-- Lex-- please. I want to do this. You shouldn't have to risk everything yourself! We need you, too! The company, the projects, your employees, the entire human race needs you. You have done things no-one else could."
"No -- I have failed, time and time again. I need answers. I need the knowledge this thing must have."
"Clark Kent--"
"He is a liar and a wretch and I cannot trust anything he has to say!" Lex yelled at her. He took a shuddering breath and composed himself, still shaking in rage. "I don't know who or what he is and I will not depend upon him for anything. He had made it clear that he does not have anyone's best interests at heart, other than his own."
"Sir--"
"I will be going through with the next phase tomorrow night at seven." Lex stated with finality, turning and walking towards the double doors of the library. He opened one of them, then paused. "If you wish to be on hand afterwards and try to speak with the thing, I cannot stop you," he said with a heavy air of resignment, then walked out.
The door swung shut behind him silently.
Tess breathed a small sigh of relief.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Tess cursed as she stared at the white chess piece in her hand. Not now! Any other night, any other time but now! she screamed silently at it.
But of course, she could not ignore the summons. Not so brazenly and without consequences. Dire consequences.
She weighed the risk of Lex, alone tonight without her, and her being there with him and ignoring the summons from Checkmate. If she stayed with Lex tonight, she would be killed and soon -- traitors and nonrespondents were, no-one ever 'retired' from Checkmate alive -- but if she didn't stay with him, if she left him to do her mission, just this once, she would be there for all the future times to come. For whatever other moves she was given, assuming that Checkmate did not call her away at another highly inopportune time.
Was this one night important enough that it was worth throwing away all future chances of helping him?
Would he forgive her for not being there for him, this one time, and forever without an explanation?
She clenched her fist around the white knight piece and tried not to scream in frustration.
Then she slowly, resolutely unclenched her fist and carefully set the chess piece down on the table in front of her.
Tess looked at her watch. It was five o'clock. Maybe, just maybe, if she left immediately, if she was fast enough...
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex breathed out a sigh, though of relief or of shame for having wished for Tess' presence but gotten her absence, he wasn't sure which.
It was seven-thirty-two and Tess wasn't here yet. If she had arrived, she would have announced herself, and she was never late -- always early.
She must have received a summons from Checkmate, Lex realized dourly. He was suddenly glad that he'd given her that jamming necklace earlier that day, instead of putting it off. Frankly, he was lucky that they hadn't detected the transmission from her eye-cams before; if they had, she'd be dead, and would never have even known the reason why. It was a surprise to find out about the group, reviewing her footage, but now that Lex knew about them he could keep a look out for their agents and plan accordingly.
He couldn't really blame her; she'd joined them before she'd begun work at LuthorCorp, and only been reactivated once there. Conflicting loyalties aside, he knew how far he could trust her, and it was a great deal farther than most.
He resolved to schedule a surgery for her to remove the surveillance chips from her eyes, soon. Even if their signal couldn't be picked up through the jamming signal, the jamming signal itself could be, and what would happen if she was on a mission in the future and the necklace was removed? Or if someone thought to run a full bodyscan on her at some point? ...No, learning more about Checkmate by continuing to spy on Tess was not worth the risk of losing his little half-sis. Neither was exposing her to the entity while it was in control of him. He'd just have to keep a closer eye on her the old-fashioned way, lock down the chemical labs and medicinal greenhouses with even more security, and hope that her days of cooking up lethal substances to surreptitiously poison people really were well and truly over -- because she was more than intelligent enough than to let a little thing like those 'inconveniences' stop her, rather than just find a way to work around them and get done what she wanted done. But it was a little hard to mix poisons without looking at what you were doing, and she'd always been very self-sufficient and a hands-on gal. Maybe if Lex just had all the workstations surreptitiously well-surveilled instead...?
Lex glanced at his watch again. Seven-thirty-seven. He was itching at this point. He couldn't wait any longer. If he was going to do this... no, no, he would do it now, or he never would.
He took a deep breath, in and out. He touched a trembling finger to the rig, then steeled his will, put it on and braced himself.
He felt his breathing become erratic. He had to stay still. He had to do this. It would all be over soon, he just had to--
He couldn't do this.
His hands flew up to tear the rig off of his head when it hit. He kicked out, spasming uncontrollably. Everything whited out to gray and black and he slumped.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Next part is here.
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark, Lex
Rating: R
Spoilers: general for the entire series; follows canon up through season 7 and a little of 8x01, but events and particulars diverge (at times rather drastically) from that point onward
Word count: 24,900+
Summary: The explicit use of the Orb actually did work the way everyone thought it would... more-or-less... and Clark discovers that he isn't who he thought he was...
Warnings: Un-beta'd. AU. Darkfic-ish. Rating for violence, nonconsensual enslavement and torture (both physical and mental). It, uh, gets better, though, making its way towards H/C. *coughs*
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
Comments: Yes, please! :)
Author's Note: I really don't know why more people don't play around with this basic premise. Should I leave out carrots and chocolate, or something? (Or did I miss a bunch of fics? Does anyone have links? I'd be forever grateful! *bigeyes*)
Also posted to AO3 here.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark groaned as he tried to sit up.
He was dead tired, hurting, and freezing cold -- he could barely feel his fingers. ...or any of his extremities at all. He remembered, he'd felt this way before. Powerless.
This was not good. He was in the middle of the arctic with no super-strength, or invincibility, or endurance against the cold. Or speed to get him out of here.
He remembered how far away civilization had been from the Fortress when Chloe had needed medical attention. Not good at all. He needed to get moving. Now.
He managed to roll over and lever himself upright, and brought an arm up in front of his face to try and shield himself against the frigid, biting wind that was blowing snow into his face. He could barely see his arm in front of him.
Then his eyes widened as he realized that it wasn't his red jacket sleeve he was seeing in his field of vision, but Lex's dark coat sleeve and one of his gloves.
"Lex?" Clark whispered. He raised his head and twisted in place, trying futilely to scan his surroundings once again.
"Lex?!?" Clark yelled as loudly as he could, but the wind immediately tore the sound away from him, drowning it out with its own howling roar.
He started to panic, realizing that there was no way Lex would survive without his winter gear -- why had Lex taken it off in the first place, let alone put it on him? Where was he? Clark tried to search around, but being unable to get off of his hands and knees in the raging storm weather, and with such low visibility, he couldn't find any sign of Lex or the Fortress anywhere near him.
Clark huddled down in on himself and hugged his arms around his chest. This was wrong. He didn't know what the controlling crystal was supposed to have done -- everyone said it was supposed to allow the user to control him, but what exactly did that mean? -- but Clark was pretty sure that it shouldn't have hurt Lex, or done anything to him at all. The beam had only hit Clark.
Had Lex gotten caught in the collapsing Fortress? --But that didn't make sense, he'd been right beside Clark and had stayed with him until Clark had blacked out. Whatever the Orb had done to him had hurt like hell -- the beam had left behind an oscillating pain that had radiated outwards in waves from where he'd been zapped in the chest. It had gotten worse and worse until Clark had felt like he was being ripped in half, and that had been when everything had gone dark.
The only other explanation Clark could think of was that Lex had survived, too, decided to drag Clark far enough away from the shattered Fortress to a place where there were no crystal shards littering the landscape, and left him there for whatever reason. But where was he now, and why had he decided to leave Clark here?
Clark whimpered and he shivered uncontrollably as he got colder and colder. His teeth chattered, and the cold was beginning to hurt worse than Kryptonite radiation ever had, unbelievably.
So Clark tried and failed to stand several times in the middle of the raging snowstorm, until he was nearly too tired to move. He collapsed, laid out flat in the snow, and stared at the flakes whipping wildly around and about him for far too long. Then, with a sheer effort of will, he shoved himself back to his knees and started frantically digging down into the snow around him, as fast as he was still able to.
Lex's gloves saved him, dark against the white so he could see what he could no longer feel -- too cold now to be anything but numb -- and keeping his hands from becoming life-threateningly damaged against the hard-packed snow. He slowly built himself a shelter around him, raising the walls inch by inch. Once he had somewhat of a windbreak, he huddled down even further, keeping himself out of the wind and minimizing his exposure to the elements as much as possible. He slowly dug himself in deeper and deeper, piling up the walls higher and higher until it started to resemble an igloo, leaving himself only a small gap for air flow, so very cold as it whistled by. Each breath was like knives down his throat, but he didn't dare stop.
Finally he could no longer force his limbs to move. He collapsed completely, fatigued beyond his body's capacity to save itself, even if he'd been able to produce a further surge of adrenaline to help drive him. He barely had the presence of mind to pull the hood farther down over his head to cover his face a little better, and tucked his arms in under his hood, supporting himself so that he didn't fall asleep with his head in the snow -- knowing that, powerless as he seemed to be, he'd never wake up again if he did that.
He prayed that Lex was ok.
...Maybe he would see the makeshift shelter and come back? It was safer here than out there.
Unless Lex had left him behind to die.
Clark whimpered softly, curled in on himself, and closed his eyes.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"--or. --th--. M---"
Clark was so tired. Everything felt heavy, even his eyelids. He couldn't move, and he wasn't sure he even wanted to try to do so.
"--Luthor? Mr.--"
What? Lex was here? Clark struggled to wake, to move against the heaviness in his limbs. He wanted to see Lex, to be sure he was ok.
Lex must have gone for help! Clark suddenly realized as he slowly began to become aware of the distinct lack of the feel of cold snow and biting, frigid wind. He was fairly sure he was no longer in his makeshift shelter of packed snow -- it felt cold, but still too warm for that -- so someone must have found and retrieved him for Lex. But Lex wouldn't leave the retrieval of an alien he considered possibly dangerous to only some nameless subordinate, Clark was almost certain. Not even a depowered one. And no-one would have left him unrestrained, powerless or not, and it didn't feel like there was anything external weighing him down. ...So where was he? What was going on? And why couldn't he hear Lex?
Clark was startled as suddenly the heavy feeling left his eyelids and he blinked open his eyes. A redheaded woman was looking down on him from overhead, and the world spun uneasily. When things settled again, he realized he was upright, clutching tightly at the side of the...cot. He was on a cot in a tent.
"Mr. Luthor? Lex?"
His vision swam in and out for a moment, and Clark felt very weird as he quickly passed a hand over his eyes. He'd never had issues with seeing before, when he was depowered after everything with Zod. And something felt different, like he couldn't focus properly.
He turned his head up towards the woman, and felt tense, like... like something wasn't quite meshing up. His control was way off, and when he tried to move everything felt too sluggish, or too heavy, and then too light, and sometimes almost all at once. His breathing felt almost erratic; it felt like he couldn't take a deep breath as fully as he should be able to, somehow.
And where was Lex? He wasn't here, and the woman had been calling for him, hadn't she? Why wasn't he here yet?
"Ms. Mercer. Report," he heard raspily, and Clark realized with no small shock that the words had come from his own mouth.
"Sir. I- We were worried about your safety. After the zero hour, as you requested, search and rescue teams were dispatched. We found you in a small ice shelter, but thus far there has been no sign of the plane you arrived on, or its crew. We are still searching the area for signs of the original cause of electromagnetic disturbance, but nothing so far."
Clark watched as his vision -- what he could see -- darted back and forth, felt as his hands reached up and took a cup of water from the woman. Felt it go down his throat, felt something ease.
"An ice shelter?" soft enough to be a mere echo, but that voice... smoother now...
Oh god. Clark recognized that voice.
"Did you find anyone else?" he said.
"No, sir."
Clark felt his forehead furrow in a frown, felt a gloved hand reach up and glide over his head without resistance -- a hairless skull.
Clark would have shivered, but he couldn't move. Would have screamed, but he couldn't make his throat work because it wasn't his throat, now, was it?
Denial warred with sense that was switfly overwhelmed by pure panic and mental flailing to hold onto something, anything--
"No... body? No sign of another person?"
"I'm sorry, sir. We haven't finished searching the area-- but we'll find anything if it exists here, we'll scour the area, sir!" the woman promised fervently.
But Clark barely heard her, because he was realizing that he was dead. He was dead, or as good as dead -- he was dead, he was a Phantom, a ghost, Lex had done this to him, Lex had killed him and he had no body and no body to go back to and he was stuck and he had no control and he was dead--
He needed to scream but he couldn't scream, and then he felt unmoored like something had come loose and he clawed and grasped at nothing as everything started to spiral away from him -- taste, smell, hearing, touch, sight -- but there was nothing to grab onto, nothing to slow his fall as he fell and fell and fell down into black, worse than his worst fear of heights, worse than Jor-El and the summer in the caves, worse than anything that came before because he couldn't even feel the hammering of his heart, the catch of his breath, because he didn't have that anymore, he didn't have a body anymore and he needed to scream--
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark... drifted for awhile.
Except it wasn't drifting, because drifting was a feeling and he didn't have those anymore, feelings were a body thing, not a mind thing.
He didn't-drift in darkness that wasn't really darkness, because darkness was sight when you weren't seeing anything and he didn't even have that anymore, either.
So he didn't-drift in not-darkness and he had no concept of the passage of time, not that it really mattered anymore, because he was really and truly dead this time -- no Scarecrow Field with an empty grey sky, no rows of corn, no oppressive breeze, no nothing. All he had was time.
It was just Clark and his thoughts, and Clark was his thoughts, that was all he was anymore.
He wasn't sure when the panic started to go away. There hadn't really been anything to stop it, no way to calm down, and he vaguely realized now that maybe being able to force himself to calm down, back when he was alive, had had something to do with the feel of his own body -- being able to feel the speed up of his heart, the panted breaths, and realize that he needed to stop, to try and back off and undo whatever he was doing. That there was a physical limit to his panic.
But when he was all-thought, well, there weren't really any limits anymore, were there?
At least he didn't have to worry about breaking things anymore. Except himself.
Clark didn't know how long he'd panicked for, or even how badly exactly; things had gotten to be really bad for awhile there, and he had a vague notion that maybe he didn't quite remember it all properly. He was pretty sure that he didn't want to remember it properly. Kind of like whatever had happened with Jor-El and the brainwashing in the caves into the soldier-Kal-El-him.
Clark wondered if it had been like this for Cyrus Krupp, if maybe this was why he'd gone comatose and ended up hidden deep inside his own head. Maybe what had happened to him had been similar, except that in Cyrus's case his brain had just stopped listening to his body, and the panic had gotten so deep and circling, gotten too close to some point of no return that his mind and sanity had ended up spiraling down in on itself like water down a drain, like tying a knot into itself farther and farther and tighter and tighter...
Cyrus hadn't been able to heal himself, but Clark tended to heal pretty quickly. Or his body had used to. Maybe his mind did, too, given enough time.
Clark wasn't sure he cared. He felt detached; if he was still capable of really feeling anything at all, that was what it was: detached.
After awhile, he felt like he could move his thoughts around this place that wasn't really a place, a place without landmarks or walls, although somehow he had a sense that it was contained, not endless, but somehow actually cramped: not small, but not large, either. Not comfortable, not roomy. He could expand out and give himself 'space' to think, or spiral his thoughts in tight, weaving them together like a tight thread or a braid.
He drifted without drifting in a place where he couldn't feel anything to care, and wondered if he would ever know peace, because his thoughts would not settle or still, they just ran about restlessly, never ceasing...
Clark was his thoughts. If his thoughts never stopped, would he never die? Would he be stuck like this? Forever?
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark's eyes snapped open as physical feeling slammed into him with a furious overwhelming combination of hot-cold-pressure-smooth-rough-heavy, muscles-fighting-pull-of-gravity, breath-in-through-the-nose-filling-lungs, shift of arms and legs against rough cheap cotton--
Spots danced in his vision before it cleared to a dark room and a normal-sized, sheet-covered bed.
Clark shoved himself upright in a flash, panting, thinking oh thank god, it was just a nightmare!
...until he looked around and realized where he was... or rather, wasn't. And then looked down at himself and realized this wasn't himself, wasn't his body. All over again.
Clark moaned in utter desolate grief.
He stared down at hands that were thin and marked by odd calluses. A pianist's hands, a chemist's hands, an artist's hands; hands worn by corporate work, instead of what might be otherwise expected.
Clark wrapped Lex's arms around Lex's torso and hugged himself. Sort-of. He curled forward and started to rock, then shivered as the sheets slithered off of him and pooled around his -- Lex's -- waist and as he grabbed at them, he glanced over to his right--
There was somebody else in bed with him.
Oh, god. Lex had been sleeping with somebody. Some woman. Some stupid Lex girl. He was supposed to know better by now. Clark thought he had knew better, now.
Lex had had sex with this random person, and now Clark was in control of Lex's body, sitting in bed next to her.
Clark felt ill.
He got up slowly in the moonlight, finding shoes and socks and pants and shirt slowly, carefully, quietly. He did not want to wake her up. Whoever the hell she was. He absolutely did not want to know whatever she and Lex had done. He winced at forming bruises and a throbbing in his -- Lex's -- head.
Then Clark started as he heard a door creak, the noise coming from the other side of the closed bedroom door. Angry voices. Male.
Quiet, subdued angry voices.
Oh, shit. Clark knew how these sorts of things ended for Lex. Stupid, stupid, stupid! he mentally berated his ex-friend, murderer, now-jailer.
Clark dressed hurriedly, glanced around, feeling a wholly-physical panic churning upwards from the region of Lex's gut. His eyes finally settled on the window, and he bolted over, checking it.
Thank god. Fire escape.
He heard the bedroom door slam open behind him and didn't waste time looking back -- he just slammed the window open and shoved Lex's body through, then barreled down the fire escape to a chorus of no longer quiet yells and...
Gunshots.
Clark, thoroughly pissed off now, dodged, ducked, and weaved as he somehow managed to maneuver Lex's body down the rusting ladder, across the alleyway, and out into the main street without getting anyone killed. He realized as he broke out onto the larger roadway that (a) he was in Metropolis and (b) he was in a really bad part of Metropolis, judging from the hookers and drug dealers about.
Who were staring at him with open interest.
Forget subtlety and fuck Lex's reputation -- Clark ran.
Clark ran and ran until he thought Lex's lungs would give out, and then he ran some more. He ran past the point he thought Lex's legs would give out, and finally let himself slow on purpose once he'd reached a part of town where cops might actually even consider coming out if there was a 911 call logged by dispatch from the area.
He searched and searched, moving at a brisk walk, until he found a taxicab. It took him five tries and three different cars before he was finally successful in flagging one down.
"Luthor Towers," he told the cabbie, and, breathing heavily, collapsed back in the seat.
Clark felt awful -- or rather, Lex's body did -- but it wasn't awful awful. Not like Kryptonite, or getting stabbed, or anything like that. The running had been pretty nasty, though. Clark now understood first-hand what it meant to 'have a stitch in your side', and all sorts of aches and pains were making themselves known as what must have been actual 100% human adrenaline began to wear off.
Luckily, Lex had left his wallet in the back pocket of his pants, and Clark paid the cabbie a huge tip like Lex probably would... if he used cabs.
Clark wondered for a moment where Lex had parked his car back there, and then he decided he didn't care. It wasn't like Lex couldn't afford another car, or needed another one to add to the dozen.
Clark forced himself upright, slamming the car door behind him. He stared up at the Towers before taking a deep breath (well, deep for Lex, which he was finding was a lot different than him, in a lot of ways) and striding in through the sliding doors. He walked up to the elevator, slapped the button for up with his palm, and hit the 'P' button nearly as hard once inside.
He was fuming by the time he let himself into Lex's penthouse apartment. What the hell had Lex been thinking?
Clark slammed the door behind him, and started stripping off clothes as he made a beeline for the nearest bathroom. He wanted a shower. Get the stink of the girl-whore and panicked flight and the streets and the cab off of him. He'd never felt so... unclean.
...And what the hell had he been thinking? He'd been stuck rescuing Lex, again.
I can't win, Clark thought hysterically, bracing himself against the sink as he stared into the mirror at Lex. I'm still having to rescue Lex even after I'm dead. Then he started as what he was seeing finally registered through the fatigue and the frustrated anger, and he got a really good look at Lex's body.
Lex was... emaciated. His eyes were dark hollows. He looked half skin and bones.
What the hell? Clark thought, reaching out a hand and touching the mirror, skimming the surface with fingertips, cool and smooth to the touch.
This wasn't right -- Lex had always been a bit on the lean side, but he'd been fit. Muscular. Not... this.
"What have you been doing to yourself?" Clark whispered in Lex's voice, horrified beyond belief.
Then he grimaced and backed away from the image, shaking his head once. He turned away and got into the shower, stripped down completely, and started scrubbing.
You don't care, Clark reminded himself. You don't care, he's not your friend anymore, he killed you, for god's sake, and locked you up in his own body. Whatever it is, it's his own damn fault, and nothing to do with you. He can clean up his own damn messes for once.
He finally finished scrubbing away the filth under good water and clean-smelling soap, and stepped out and dried Lex's body off with a towel.
Clark glared at the mirror again as he walked to the door. Then he stopped, looked back, and stared again.
Maybe Lex doesn't know I'm in here, it occurred to him. Maybe if I told him... maybe... Then Clark realized how ludicrous that really was and shook his head over and over again in an attempt to physically rid himself of the thought. So Clark had saved Lex's life again tonight, even after Lex had killed his body and imprisoned him inside his own; so what? If Lex did know, then he either didn't care or had done it on purpose. If he didn't know, he'd either find a way to exorcise Clark to the Phantom Zone, or similar. Lex wouldn't feel like he 'owed him one'. Lex wouldn't do anything to help him. Lex had tried to kill him, and only managed partway.
Lex didn't like doing things in half-measures.
Clark wasn't sure yet if even this quarter-life and twilight-death was better than nothing.
Clark shivered, then grimaced and went hunting for clean underwear and pajamas.
He ended up settling down on the couch in the living room -- Lex's body was feeling pretty horrible, and Clark wasn't so sure anymore -- now that he'd gotten a good look at Lex -- whether Kryptonite-in-his-own-body-horrible was any good gauge to use against human-level horribleness. He did have the sinking feeling that once he fell asleep, he'd lose control of Lex's body again -- whatever small amount he must have at the moment -- and go back to being nothing but thoughts in that un-place of not-darkness again. Which meant that Lex would be the one to wake up. If Clark went to bed, and Lex slept in his room, no-one might bother him and see to care. But if Clark camped out on the couch out here, whoever did Lex's cooking and cleaning for him in the penthouse suite would see the state of Lex's body and react accordingly.
It occurred to Clark that while he didn't know how long he'd been out, he could easily check by grabbing a newspaper, or just turning on the TV and checking the date. But he realized that, well... he really didn't want to know. He just as easily discarded the notion of trying to contact the League -- Lex would have the phone call on his outgoing call record, and no-one in the League would believe him, anyway; they'd just think it was some game of Luthor's and freak the fuck out at what 'Lex' knew and kill themselves trying to figure out how 'Lex' knew it. Paranoia was a real bitch, sometimes. ...And even if he could convince them, it wasn't like they could do anything for him anyway, what with him being dead and all and only haunting Lex from time to time, in some weird form of random possession. He wasn't even sure where he was a Phantom anymore, because if that really was the case then shouldn't he ought to have more control, like all the other Phantom Kryptonians did? --Either way, he'd just be upsetting people unnecessarily; no good could come of it.
Clark yawned as he settled in on the couch with a pillow and blanket, and hoped that his real body really was dead, or gone, or whatever, because he hated the idea of Lex and that red-haired Mercer woman getting their hands on it and doing alien autopsy things with Kryptonite and lots of sharp knives. He might not be inhabiting it anymore, but it was still his.
As Clark relaxed into the cushions and let Lex's eyelids flutter shut, Clark vaguely wondered if he was wrong -- maybe he really was going to be the one to wake up in the morning, and Lex would be the one set drifting instead. He wasn't sure he cared at this point -- the fatigue of his earlier exertion of will upon and within Lex's less-than-well-kept body had gotten to him far too quickly to fight against.
Clark drifted off to an almost-pleasant slumber, and when his mental grip on Lex's body loosened he slowly slipped back into the darkness-that-wasn't. But this time, when his thoughts drifted off, they settled into dreams. Dreams in a neutral grey, if dreams could have color when a mind had no body to visualize them for the imagination's benefit, but dreams they were, nonetheless.
Clark slept.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex gasped awake, flailing. His head was pounding and every last inch of him ached.
"Sir!"
Lex clenched down on a whimper of pain, baring his teeth and nearly jackknifing in bed. Slowly, numbness crept in, as Tess murmured to him about the morphine drip and apologies about not being able to give him a higher dose.
"Fuck," Lex breathed out, when the ain was finally medicated down to something manageable. "What the hell happened, Mercy?" he asked, turning his head and squinting his eyes at the glare from the hopsital's fluorescent lights, trying not to wince.
God, he loved his sociopathic half-sister, all-unknowingly so. She dimmed the overhead lights without his even having to ask.
"It was a triple-cross," she reported grimly. "That woman--"
"Drugged me, tossed me, and didn't hand me over to the right bad people to be caught red-handed," Lex hissed out. "I know. Just tell me that you got both groups."
Tess glanced away and swallowed nervously. That wasn't a good sign. That was a tell of incompetent work. Damnit. He hadn't wanted to use himself as bait, but the subversive elements that Lionel had let weasel their way into LuthorCorp to rot it from the inside out had needed rooting out long since, and Edge's old network would not have moved for any lesser prize. And if his reading of Tess' reactions was anywhere close to the mark, it had been the worst outcome: the group they had known about hadn't done anything to allow even partial identification of its members for a quasi-legal detainment, and this unknown second group that they hadn't previously been aware of had somehow not only managed to grab him but had also slipped the net.
"How much did you have to pay for my safe return?" Lex asked, closing his eyes in mental pain as he feared the answer, especially if the coin used had not been of a monetary sort.
A short pause became an uncomfortably long pause. Lex slowly opened his eyes and looked up at Tess.
Tess looked... confused.
"What is it?" Lex asked.
"Sir..." Tess said slowly, carefully. "We didn't have to pay anything at all. You escaped yourself."
Lex stared at her incredulously. "...What?" he asked, feeling a sick dread as he slowly pushed himself upright to stare at her more fully. He didn't remember escaping. From his recollection, he'd been hit from behind, then woken up here.
"You surprised everyone. You just walked in the door at half-past midnight last night, went straight up to the Penthouse, cleaned up, and went to sleep in the living room."
"...The living room?" Lex echoed, feeling struck dumb.
"You collapsed on the couch. You didn't even try to contact anyone to tell them you were all right. We only found out that you'd returned the next morning when the cleaning maid saw you lying there, and we backtracked your movements from the security tapes." She frowned. "Actually, you didn't follow any of the protocols at all..."
"I want to see those tapes," Lex demanded softly in a voice of steel, feeling a disquiet he hadn't felt since... no. No. No, this was not that. There was an explanation. A different explanation. Not that. It wasn't that. It couldn't be. He knew more now than he had then, and none of the other proper known warning signs were there. He had no reason to feel so... unnerved.
"Yes, sir," Tess affirmed quickly, standing to leave and immediately track down for him the data necessary to accommodate his need for more information. Even if that information was about himself.
The door to the hospital room opened. "Mr. Luthor?" one of his doctors said tentatively. Lex waved him in, but he only just stepped inside, keeping so near the exit that Tess was barely able to get through the doorway past him. He closed it with great reluctance.
He looked very, very pale.
"Out with it," Lex very nearly growled. This was one of his own set, one with a very high-level clearance, and whatever it was that was wrong, standing there and not telling Lex was not going to magically make things any better somehow. Lex needed information to be able to assess, plan, and react effectively. He needed to stay calm and give himself the time and breathing space to think things through, and this idiot was not helping.
"Ah, well, sir, you see, with your kidnapping and your hospital stay, we ran more than the usual battery of tests on your bloodwork." He paused. "The... the full battery of tests."
"And?" Lex prompted, about to lose his temper. He'd rather have the bad news sooner than later, especially if it related to his personal health.
"And we found low levels of -- well, just traces, really! it's probably nothing serious--" the man stammered, trying to sound cheery but failing miserably.
"Traces. Of. What." Lex gritted out, a moment away from forcing himself out of his hospital bed and strangling the man.
"Of-- of alien peptides similar to the ones we retrieved from the corpse at Fort Ryan, but... but they most closely resembled the ones documented as being found in the blood sample of subject 7805, the Quebec boy, the subject who had been inhabited by the, the," the doctor swallowed heavily, inching backwards towards the door.
"The Kryptonian entity," Lex finished in a monotone, feeling an impending sense of doom.
Lex took it all back. Now was an excellent time to panic.
~*~*~*~*~*~
To hell with all of this -- for once in my life, I am getting some damn answers! Lex seethed with rage.
He slammed the door shut on his convertible and stomped towards the barn, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
When he got to the barn door, he grabbed the handle and slid it open so hard that the "bang!" sounded like a gunshot as he nearly forced it off its track.
"KENT!" he bellowed, stomping in, teeth bared and longcoat billowing out behind him.
Lex heard the casual, heavy thump of boots from one of the horse stalls, and out strolled Clark Kent.
Lex damn near saw red when he saw the look of boredom on Kent's face. He mentally stuttered incoherently for a good thirty seconds at least, standing stock still like a statue carved from a rare marble shot through with darkness and hate.
"Was there something you wanted, Luthor? I'm busy," Clark drawled.
That did it. Lex marched over.
"You son of a bitch--!" Lex started.
"We talking about my adopted or biological parents? Or both? Just to be clear, you understand," Clark interrupted casually, and just as casually turned his back on Lex and proceeded to go back to brushing down the brood mare's coat in the horse stall with the currycomb he was holding.
That had Lex nearly sputtering all over again, because Mrs. Kent--
Lex grabbed Clark from behind, fisting two hands in his shirt, and slamming him sideways into the wall of the stall. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, you damn alien menace!" he screeched.
"Fuck you," Clark laughed easily, with a slowly-growing grin. "The only 'alien' around here is you."
"What the hell do you know?!?" Lex demanded, going dead-white, his eyes widening as he reeled backwards in shock. How could he know? was soon replaced with What did Clark do to me?
But Clark just laughed, and the fear was overpowered as the the anger flooded right back in again, and Lex, fed up, grabbed him again and shoved him out of the stall. Clark stumbled and fell, but then smiled thinly and picked himself up, brushed himself off deliberate-slow while watching Lex. Looking like it was taking him some effort not to laugh. Like it was all some big funny joke.
"You suddenly show up after being missing for a month at the same time as-- as--" Lex clenched his teeth, old habits finally kicking in as they never had with Clark before and being completely unwilling to give more information than he had to. "You expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with it? What the hell did you do???" he hissed, advancing on Clark again.
Clark's smile widened into a grin. "I wandered through a snowstorm, got myself picked up and sold as slave labor to some really smelly Russians, and eventually got rescued by the League. Next question?"
Lex didn't believe a word of it. "Do you think I'm fucking stupid?!" Lex tossed out, irate, his voice rising through octaves, his control slipping even further.
"Yes!" Clark replied simply. Then he easily dodged Lex's barefisted swing at his head with an easy sidestep, letting out another peal of laughter again.
"Oh, come on, Lex," Clark taunted smoothly. "You've always said that you wanted no lies, just the truth, and when I actually give it to you, unvarnished and whole, you get all angry with me. How childish."
"You're not telling the truth; you're lying. You're still lying! Keeping things from me!" Lex spat out.
Clark's grin widened further, nearly becoming a death-head's grin. "Oh, no I'm not. Hell, I'll even make you a deal, Lex. No, even better -- a promise!" His eyes glittered with mischief and something else. Something that would have given Lex pause if his anger hadn't been completely overriding his good judgment just then. "I promise to answer every question that you ask, and to always tell you the truth. Even when you beg me not to," he ended, his tone as smooth as the caress of a sharp blade slicing through someone's jugular. "Especially then."
Lex was shaking and he couldn't stop. He wanted to tear Clark to shreds. Instead, he settled for reaching in a pocket, pulling a huge chunk of meteor rock out of a lead-lined pouch, and tossing it at Clark's head. Hard.
Clark reached up and caught it, one-handed. He smiled all over again.
Lex's jaw dropped.
Clark snickered and tossed it up and down in one hand, casually. "Very stupid, indeed. You shouldn't carry this around with you, Lex. It'll make you sick. Or worse." Clark went back to his thin, knowing smile. Lex found himself wanting to slice it off his face.
When Clark threw the rock underhand right back to him, Lex caught it but almost fumbled it, mind reeling, because Clark really was showing no Kryptonian-poisoning symptoms at all. He ended up dropping it back into his pocket, thoughtlessly.
"How?" he asked finally.
"I'm not an alien," Clark shrugged.
"The Orb-- it worked against you," Lex accused.
"More like worked for me. Thanks for that, by the way," Clark smirked.
"--You lying son of a bitch!" Lex yelled out again. If there was one thing Lex hated, it was being used and the thought that the Orb had made Clark immune somehow to the one thing that could bring him down, and tha Lex had been tricked into using it on him, thinking it was a weapon that could bring him under control instead--
"Now-now, Lex. Not lying. Truthful! I thought we went over this earlier," Clark tsked.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Lex demanded. "Who the hell are you?" came next, and he realized all at once that this wasn't Clark, couldn't be Clark. This is some sort of imposter, somehow, and as the thought occurred to him, the feeling grew stronger and stronger. This wasn't Clark. This isn't Clark. Where the hell is Clark?
"I'm Clark Kent, can't you tell?" he grinned quickly. "Oh no, I take it back -- I guess you wouldn't be able to, now, would you?"
This is probably what insanity feels like, Lex realized as he pressed his palms against his temples, hard. "You were at the Fortress," he accused.
"Yes."
"You were affected by the Orb."
"Oh, yes."
"You have to do what I say."
A laugh. "Nope!" the imposter shot back, grinning. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"You're Kal-El!"
"Wrong again!" He crossed his arms, then cocked his head. "You're pretty bad at this, aren't you?"
"Stop lying to me!" Lex hissed, and he reached into his coat, pulled out a handgun, and aimed it at Clark's head.
Clark smiled. "I'm not lying," he said evenly, not changing his pose.
"I don't care if you're fucking bulletproof, I will find a way to--" Lex started shakily, remembering the last fight he had in the barn. Remembering the awl, bent. Remembering the rebar in the lower caves, sticking out of Clark's arm... and the meteor rock dust. Remembering the 'snick!' of the lead-and-meteor-rock bullets as he had shoved them into into the clip of the gun he was pointing at Clark's head. Remembering how little Clark had been affected by the meteor rock just prior, if he'd been affected at all.
"Not bulletproof," Clark interrupted casually.
Lex blinked. "Fucking hell," he whispered. Then he felt calmer, as he straightened out his arm to full extension, and cocked the gun to a hair-trigger.
Clark looked almost amused. He shrugged and said, "You're not going to pull the trigger."
"The hell I'm not," Lex said, feeling a little braver now that he wasn't up against an invincible alien. At least, assuming that the imposter wasn't lying about the lack of invulnerability...
"Nope, not gonna do it," Clark said confidently, dropping his hands down to his waist and looping his thumbs in the beltloops of his jeans.
Lex stared in astonishment as Clark walked forward, then right past him, and back to the horse stall, completely unconcerned.
"You-- you--" Lex sputtered. "I will shoot you!" he said tightly, spinning around and aiming the gun at him again, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. Was the man insane?
"No, you won't," Clark rejoined, as he strode forward and picked right back up with his work in the horse stall. "If you shoot me, you can't ask me questions and you'll never get your answers. You'd even be giving up the ability to ever 'win' over me," he added as almost an afterthought as he picked up a pitchfork out of a bale of hay. "Which means you'll lose, and you hate losing. And, with humanity at stake..." Clark looked at him sideways, "I know you. You'll not dare to do anything to risk it." He smiled slightly, then turned back to the stall and tossing down new hay.
Lex was confused as hell, because that couldn't possibly be right. And, besides, "You're not Clark Kent. I have no compunction to hold back with you," he ended grimly. "You will answer my questions truthfully, or I will shoot you, and it won't be fatal until I'm satisfied."
"Oh please, as if you ever held back before," Clark scoffed. "Pay attention, Lex," he said snidely, and with that he whipped up the pitchfork and slashed Lex's hand with the manure-encrusted tines.
Lex shouted and lost hold of the gun, which spun off into a mess of tractor parts near the walls. He clutched desperately at his left wrist, in horrendous pain where the tines had sliced him across his hand.
Clark promptly shoved the pitchfork into the bale of hay again, stepped forward, and punched Lex in the gut. Hard.
Lex folded and went down, sprawling backwards a good yard and a half from the blow.
Wheezing, Lex tucked his left hand in towards his chest and tried to shove himself upright, but found himself unable to do much more than lever himself up a little bit onto one arm. He shivered against the ground and curled inward subconsciously as the fake Clark approached and towered over him.
He'd never been so scared in his life. Clark had never-- not with physical violence, not like this. Not with a weapon. Never. This wasn't Clark.
Lex looked straight up into cold green eyes and knew down to his bones that this man wasn't Clark. He'd never seen him before in his life.
"You just couldn't do it, could you," the not-Clark talked down at him condescendingly, chatting almost ambivalently. "You couldn't just walk in and ask, 'Are you a Kryptonian?' and just listen. You couldn't say, 'I have a problem,' or 'I need information on those aliens I've been fighting,' or 'I don't understand what's really been happening all these years, could you please tell me what you know so that when I go out there I can maybe not get myself killed doing something unbelievably stupid?' Hell, I bet 'please' left your vocabulary a long time ago, didn't it?" The bastard sounded almost amused.
"You've played me for a fool," Lex whispered.
"Today?" the man laughed. "Oh, yes. But before?" He leaned down. "Never." He was smiling again. "Oh, go on, ask me. It's ok. We both know you want to."
"Where's Clark?" Lex asked shakily.
"Right here," the imposter grinned. "You just can't see it right now," he added, with that death-head's grin again.
"You're not Clark," Lex repeated, shuddering.
Pause and a deepening smile, and Lex suddenly realized he'd missed something important.
"Yes, I am," the imposter repeated. "You just never got to know the real me. Not that it was your fault, mind you," he added breezily.
"I'm going to kill you," Lex promised quietly.
"No. You won't." And with that, the imposter squatted down to near eye-level with Lex, where he lay half-sprawled in the dirt and the dust and the muck of the barn floor. "If you even try to lay one finger on me again, the League will know. And Green Arrow will kill you, if I don't first." He looked Lex right in the eye and smiled.
Lex shivered.
"But we won't have to worry about that, now will we? Because the next time you come by, and the next time, and the time after that -- every time after that -- you are going to be kind and courteous and above all polite. You will ask nicely and I will answer truthfully, just like I promised, and we'll both get along so swimmingly." Clark stood up, and snagged the pitchfork from the haybale again, and twirled it absently. "And as a show of good faith, I'll even answer a question for you that you don't even know enough to ask." He glanced back over his shoulder, down at Lex, and his smile grew sharp. "When you used the Orb, it did exactly what you wanted it to do."
And then Clark Kent turned, balanced his pitchfork over his shoulder, and walked out of the barn, laughing.
"Don't forget to clean out that wound, Luthor!" Lex heard through the ringing laughter, tossed back at him like a parting slap, "Manure can be a bitch on the immune system!"
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex staggered out of the barn some time later. He wasn't sure how long it had taken him. He'd collapsed twice.
He'd been thoroughly unprepared. He shouldn't have come alone. He should have--
Shivering even harder, Lex fell to his knees next to his car. He bit his lip, curled his arms around himself, and rode out the shudders as they grew worse, then finally lessened. He felt weak.
A sheen of sweat layered across his face and forehead. He realized what a mistake it had been, coming out here so soon when he had barely gotten himself out of the hospital. When he hadn't even had an idea yet for how to handle the threatening alien presence hidden somewhere within him. He'd just grabbed the nearest meteor rock sample he could find in convenient packaging, stuffed it in a pocket, snagged his guns from hospital security, and headed for a confrontation at the Kent farm.
I wasn't thinking, he realized. I was panicked and alone and I turned to Clark like I know better than to do anymore. Ever. That I know better than to ever do, ever again. But a small traitorous part of him whispered, But he's always helped you before. Even after everything.
Then why is it different now? He struggled with the thought. He'd done worse. Much worse. Before. And he hadn't lost Clark. Not completely. Not even then. Much, much worse. ...Hadn't he? Clark had never... he'd never really given up on him before. Not really.
But that wasn't Clark.
I just need to find Clark, he thought shakily. Everything will be all right if I can just...
And with that half-formed thought, Lex managed to get himself upright and into his car, start the engine, and drive off.
He made it a good half-mile down the highway before he became so dizzy, the sickening pain so intense and him feeling so weak, that he lost control of the vehicle and ran off the road.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When Lex woke up later, he was in his bed at the mansion, clean and in fresh clothes, with his hand carefully bandaged and feeling like it had been cleansed and treated. And in a house silent as death because all the staff was back at the penthouse in Metropolis, knowing that there was no-one else there to have cared for him or to hear him now, Lex curled up into a ball and screamed for an hour and a half.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark shoved at the airbag and tried not to curse.
He fumbled at the car door and stumbled out, lost his footing, and went down in the grass-and-dirt embankment.
He turned over and lay there, on his back, arms and legs splayed out from his sides, for a couple minutes, just breathing.
Then he groaned, opened his eyes and slowly pushed himself to a seated position, glaring at the car.
As it turned out, it was the same car that Lex had crashed the previous time Clark had woken up.
At least this time Lex's hand wasn't shredded, but his neck felt like murder. Clark massaged it carefully with a hand and glared at the offending vehicle as he got himself upright. Last time, Lex had 'merely' drifted off the road and down into a shallow enbankment. Clark had woken up to an incredibly ill feeling, and a huge chunk of glowing meteor rock in Lex's pocket. Clark had been half-sure that Lex had been in the process of being mutated into a really horrible meteor-freak when Clark had gained control again, and if he'd managed to throw the rock away before it was too late then Lex really owed him one, this time.
Oh, and he'd lost Lex's lunch on the side of the road afterwards. Lex really, really owed him one. Throwing up was terrible and gross.
But transporting that exposed meteor-rock? On his person? With no lead shielding? Lex should've known better. He did know better. Idiot.
This time didn't looke like an accident at all, though. The poor car was half-embedded in a tree, straight-on aligned with the driver's side. You didn't hit a tree straight on like that if you had any control at all... unless you were actively trying to. Idiot. Why the hell had Lex done it? On purpose, and so soon after the last time? Because, given the bandages still on Lex's hand, it couldn't have been long since the last car accident. Maybe a day or two, if that.
He would've glared at Lex instead of the car, because he doubted it wasn't driver error being the real problem here this time. Unfortunately, that would've involved tilting his head at an odd angle at the side view mirrors, and Lex's neck ached enough as it was. Clark wasn't exactly anxious to find out how bad it would feel after torquing it around a whole bunch more.
Clark looked over the car, looked around, considered his options. He looked up at the clear blue sky and implored the heavens for strength and patience he was pretty sure he didn't have. It didn't really help. He looked back down at the car and sighed. Then he moved around to the front and shoved hard against the grill with his shoulder, putting Lex's whole body into it.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Tess watched, fascinated, as Lex didn't look for a cellphone, curse, or do anything remotely Lex-like at all.
Instead, she watched as he slowly extracted the car from the tree and, once free, popped open the hood.
After fifteen minutes of fiddling around inside it, he slammed it shut, wiped his hands on a handkerchief as he walked around to the front of the car, and got back in.
Then he fumbled around in the interior of the car for a minute, before he finished whatever he was doing, started the car, backed up carefully and somehow managed to drive the car back up onto the roadway, and peeled off.
Son of a bitch!
Tess dropped the binoculars around her neck, scrambled down out of the tree, and made a mad dash for her car.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Clark froze as he heard a crumpling sound under his feet as he slid into the car. He carefully glanced down and rooted about.
He blindly felt around -- oh, and how oddly awesome was that, that in Lex's body he could feel things, pick things up without breaking them without having to see what he was doing? -- and retrieved the piece of paper.
He frowned down at it as he smoothed it out and brushed it off.
Then his jaw clenched as he read what was written on it.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Tess hadn't been able to follow his car, having lost it when it ramped up to speed, and she spent no little time panicking about what might happen to Lex if he didn't go where Lex had thought -- if she lost him -- but she caught up with Lex at the mansion again. The car was in the garage. Lex himself was lying on a couch in the library, supine, unconscious.
"Sir?" she asked quietly, kneeling down next to him and touching a shoulder.
Lex groaned and slowly came to. "What--?" he croaked, then winced as he tried to sit up. Tess helped him upright.
"Did it work?"
"Sir, he -- he doesn't even move like you do."
"I'll take that as a 'yes' for observation, then." Lex grimaced. Then he stared down curiously at the paper laying on top of his chest.
He picked it up slowly and turned it over. Then he got a sour look.
"Sir?"
"Not exactly the answer I was hoping for," Lex said, holding out the paper to her.
Tess took it from him and read through it.
Printed in the middle of the page in a rather large font were the words, "Who are you?"
Written just underneath that in a half-legible scrawl in pen was the reply, "Stop running into trees. Haven't you ever heard of whiplash?"
"He repaired the car," Tess added, handing the piece of paper back.
"What?" Lex said, looking up startled, as he was carefully rubbing the back of his neck.
"Him, it, whoever or whatever it was..." Tess started.
"Let's say 'him', for now," Lex said grimly.
Tess nodded. "He repaired your car. He managed to push it back from the tree and did something to the engine, I think. He didn't even seem to consider calling for a tow truck or outside assistance."
"I don't know how to repair a car," Lex said slowly. Tess looked back at him, equally grim. After reviewing his bloodwork, neither of them had truly thought it likely that his highly-functional actions during his blackouts could have been the result of some alternate personality of his, only coming to the surface in times of stress, but...
"Did you call for a mechanic?" Lex asked as he forced himself upright, wobbling. Tess took his arm to support him.
"No sir, I--"
"Good," he interrupted. "Show me."
"Sir?"
"Show me the car. I want to see what he did."
~*~*~*~*~*~
They found the car in the garage, right exactly in the parking space where it belonged, which would have had the hairs standing up on the back of Lex's neck if he had had any.
Neither of them were able to tell one way or the other whether what had been done to get it working again had been odd, and the mechanic, when Lex finally let Tess call one and he showed up, wasn't much more informative.
"It'll cost you for the replacements and all the body work. The fix for the radiator and the timing belt was a quick one, but there wasn't anything really odd about it."
"Nothing at all?"
The man looked at Tess oddly. "Lady, you don't do forensics on a repair job for a car. I don't know whoever this anonymous guy is who repaired it for you. Most guys don't have a 'style' at how they repair shit. We just make it work the way it's supposed to. Though..." he paused, considering, "I guess I've seen this too often to call it an odd quirk, but nobody ever did this back west," he mused, pointing to the timing belt. "This kind of thing you only see around here, in farming country. It's not really uncommon, though. Everybody and their brother usually cuts their teeth on farm equipment before getting into cars in these parts. --But that's just a regional thing," he added. "You'd have better luck just walking into town and going door-to-door tracking down your good samaritan than trying to figure out differences between one guy or another doing this type of fix." He shrugged.
Lex paid him for his time and thanked him. As the butler escorted him out, Tess looked at her employer carefully.
"You aren't going to have him tow it away for repairs?"
"I don't see any reason to demolish another car," Lex said steadily, glancing back at her.
"Sir!" she protested.
"I'll be more careful next time," Lex promised, turning and barely keeping a straight line as he walked back to the door to the main house. "We know this works, so we'll stick with it for now. I'll just run into something a little softer next time," he ended.
Tess didn't like the sound of this one bit.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex sighed as he looked at the array of notes he'd assembled from the aftermath of the various shocks to his system, and tried to ignore the aches and pains he'd given himself over the last two weeks. Spurred by Tess' almost outright begging, he'd acquiesced and tried pharmaceutical help at one point, but as they discovered, taking sleep medication or any sort of drug to induce unconsciousness did not seem to allow the proper state to force his silent passenger to the surface in the way that a physical shock seemed to provide. He had, at least, acquiesced to not doing anything possibly damaging to induce the state more than twice a day in the evenings, after he'd completed the majority of his LuthorCorp work.
"Sir, I really don't think that you should be doing this!" Tess protested.
Lex usually enjoyed his half-sister's concern, but he was barely tolerating it now. Question after question, and the entity residing inside him had never answered directly. He looked down at the last note and had to force himself to stay calm, to not tear the paper to shreds.
"Please! The being seems to want to leave you to your own devices. We should focus on suppression, not--"
"I will not be a host to some unknown Kryptonian thing," Lex ground out. "We don't know its true motives." Lex didn't want to think of what it might mean if it was some remnant of Zod. "We've barely been able to get a response from it." His lips curled up in a snarl. "And I will not be dictated to or threatened," he ended, setting down the paper, the scrawl on which read, "Stop doing this, or I will make you stop."
Up until this latest message, he'd had hopes that it might be benign. But now it seemed more likely that perhaps it was only lying in wait for some signal, and only serving its own purposes by keeping him alive until then.
Lex sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "In a way," he mused, "we are making progress. We know it thinks it can be more active, and that it displays a rather astounding level of arrogance."
"But if we suppress it until we can remove it--"
"No. I need information. I need to be able to communicate with it. The last one of these things we saw was incapable of intelligible speech when not possessing a human body, and could not survive long outside of one. I don't want to risk a loss of a direct information source like this. We need to provoke it to action, to make it show its true intentions." Lex stood, pushed himself upright.
"Sir, please. If you would just let me approach it, I could..."
"No!" Lex said, whirling back around and grabbing Tess by the arms. "I will not risk exposing anyone else to this thing. We don't know whether it is capable of the baseline Kryptonian abilities we've seen in other cases."
"It's never demonstrated--"
"We. Don't. Know." Lex repeated. "It could kill you. Or worse." He dropped his hands, letting go of her. "I've already put your safety at risk far more than I should have, telling you about the Kryptonans and having you follow me to observe."
"Sir-- Lex-- please. I want to do this. You shouldn't have to risk everything yourself! We need you, too! The company, the projects, your employees, the entire human race needs you. You have done things no-one else could."
"No -- I have failed, time and time again. I need answers. I need the knowledge this thing must have."
"Clark Kent--"
"He is a liar and a wretch and I cannot trust anything he has to say!" Lex yelled at her. He took a shuddering breath and composed himself, still shaking in rage. "I don't know who or what he is and I will not depend upon him for anything. He had made it clear that he does not have anyone's best interests at heart, other than his own."
"Sir--"
"I will be going through with the next phase tomorrow night at seven." Lex stated with finality, turning and walking towards the double doors of the library. He opened one of them, then paused. "If you wish to be on hand afterwards and try to speak with the thing, I cannot stop you," he said with a heavy air of resignment, then walked out.
The door swung shut behind him silently.
Tess breathed a small sigh of relief.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Tess cursed as she stared at the white chess piece in her hand. Not now! Any other night, any other time but now! she screamed silently at it.
But of course, she could not ignore the summons. Not so brazenly and without consequences. Dire consequences.
She weighed the risk of Lex, alone tonight without her, and her being there with him and ignoring the summons from Checkmate. If she stayed with Lex tonight, she would be killed and soon -- traitors and nonrespondents were, no-one ever 'retired' from Checkmate alive -- but if she didn't stay with him, if she left him to do her mission, just this once, she would be there for all the future times to come. For whatever other moves she was given, assuming that Checkmate did not call her away at another highly inopportune time.
Was this one night important enough that it was worth throwing away all future chances of helping him?
Would he forgive her for not being there for him, this one time, and forever without an explanation?
She clenched her fist around the white knight piece and tried not to scream in frustration.
Then she slowly, resolutely unclenched her fist and carefully set the chess piece down on the table in front of her.
Tess looked at her watch. It was five o'clock. Maybe, just maybe, if she left immediately, if she was fast enough...
~*~*~*~*~*~
Lex breathed out a sigh, though of relief or of shame for having wished for Tess' presence but gotten her absence, he wasn't sure which.
It was seven-thirty-two and Tess wasn't here yet. If she had arrived, she would have announced herself, and she was never late -- always early.
She must have received a summons from Checkmate, Lex realized dourly. He was suddenly glad that he'd given her that jamming necklace earlier that day, instead of putting it off. Frankly, he was lucky that they hadn't detected the transmission from her eye-cams before; if they had, she'd be dead, and would never have even known the reason why. It was a surprise to find out about the group, reviewing her footage, but now that Lex knew about them he could keep a look out for their agents and plan accordingly.
He couldn't really blame her; she'd joined them before she'd begun work at LuthorCorp, and only been reactivated once there. Conflicting loyalties aside, he knew how far he could trust her, and it was a great deal farther than most.
He resolved to schedule a surgery for her to remove the surveillance chips from her eyes, soon. Even if their signal couldn't be picked up through the jamming signal, the jamming signal itself could be, and what would happen if she was on a mission in the future and the necklace was removed? Or if someone thought to run a full bodyscan on her at some point? ...No, learning more about Checkmate by continuing to spy on Tess was not worth the risk of losing his little half-sis. Neither was exposing her to the entity while it was in control of him. He'd just have to keep a closer eye on her the old-fashioned way, lock down the chemical labs and medicinal greenhouses with even more security, and hope that her days of cooking up lethal substances to surreptitiously poison people really were well and truly over -- because she was more than intelligent enough than to let a little thing like those 'inconveniences' stop her, rather than just find a way to work around them and get done what she wanted done. But it was a little hard to mix poisons without looking at what you were doing, and she'd always been very self-sufficient and a hands-on gal. Maybe if Lex just had all the workstations surreptitiously well-surveilled instead...?
Lex glanced at his watch again. Seven-thirty-seven. He was itching at this point. He couldn't wait any longer. If he was going to do this... no, no, he would do it now, or he never would.
He took a deep breath, in and out. He touched a trembling finger to the rig, then steeled his will, put it on and braced himself.
He felt his breathing become erratic. He had to stay still. He had to do this. It would all be over soon, he just had to--
He couldn't do this.
His hands flew up to tear the rig off of his head when it hit. He kicked out, spasming uncontrollably. Everything whited out to gray and black and he slumped.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Next part is here.