FIC: When My World Ends (1/1)

[lila_blue_b]

Title: When My World Ends (1/1)
Author: Lila-Blue
Fandom: Smallville/JLA
Pairing: CLex
Rating: PG-13 for background violence and the abuse of drugs and alcohol
Date Written: 05/26/2006
Disclaimer: I do not own "Smallville" or the "Justice League" cartoon, comics, etc. DC Comics, the WB and various other entities do. I am not making any money off of this and do not wish to make any copyright claims on the material. Please do not sue me... It is purely for mature fan enjoyment.
Author's Notes: This fic was written after viewing a "Justice League" cartoon episode, "Hereafter: Part 1" and "Hereafter: Part 2." (for clips, see here.) It is inspired by it, based on it and I use "Smallville" canon through the end of Season 4 as back story, although a romantic CLex relationship and the coming, but non-canon Rift are implied. The description of what's going on in the background of the story is straight out of "Hereafter" and the description and dialogue of the church scene are also straight out of the episode too... Lex's take on things and what happens between him and Clark at the end, as well as the opening scene before the church are all me... Also, the abuse of prescription pain pills and the mixing of drugs and alcohol are not things I take lightly, and I do not mean to imply that by Lex's behavior. I do, however, feel it was in character for him to do what he does, and do not mean to suggest that it is something anyone should do in real life. It is extremely dangerous.
Summery: After a terrible accident, the world mourns Superman and Lex has lost a lot more than just a rival... (I suck at summeries!)
Warning: This is unbeta-ed. (Notice "Deathfic" is not listed here as a warning...)

********

Superman was dead. That’s what was reported on the news over and over again. He wasn’t watching it anymore, couldn’t stand to see the talking heads reporting the grief of people who didn’t even know him. If he thought about it, he might actually pity them for a moment. But he didn’t. The images from the news feeds - of Superman being there one second and blipped out of existence the next, as if he had never been - were burned into his retinas and he didn’t think he’d sleep an entire night ever again. Not that he often slept through an entire night without Clark next to him anyway.
Something Clark would never do again.

He was dead too because Clark and Superman shared a body and that body had been hit with some type of insidious weapon and had disintegrated him in full view of the entire world. Gone without a trace. Lex’s only consolation, small though it was, was that it hadn’t been him, not one of his little schemes, that killed him. Sure, he liked to play with Superman, it kept him on his toes and in contact with Clark in some small way, after they became estranged ten years before for reasons that Lex didn’t remember anymore. He needed that connection or he would lose the last of himself that was good, as ironic as that justification was.

Toyman… And what kind of name was that for a so-called Super-villain anyway? He’d always given Lex the creeps. Lex would get his hands on that thing someday and make it pay dearly for what it had cost Lex.

And now, Lex had to go do something that he had fervently hoped he’d never have to do, attend the funeral of the man he loved. He still hadn’t accepted it, that Clark was dead, that he’d never see him ever again. He didn’t really feel like he was dead, despite the fact that he had seen it. That wasn’t proof, not really.

He had scrambled to get his hands on the material evidence from the crime scene immediately after the attack, but Batman had beaten him to it and he had turned it over to a private firm owned by Wayne Enterprises. Not even all the Luthor money and power in the world could get those metal and concrete fragments away from the Bat, so Lex couldn’t run the forensics tests himself. All he could hope for was that Bruce’s obsessive nature would uncover something, anything that would prove that Clark wasn’t really dead. Or that he would find something to definitively prove the opposite, so that at least he would know intellectually, if not in his heart. Maybe then he would feel some kind of closure, but he didn’t think so.

As he walked into First Metropolis Cathedral, he could feel the eyes on him, some in surprise and wonder, others in distrust and hate, absolutely none were friendly or sympathetic. And why should they be? No one here had a reason to do anything but hate the enemy of Superman. Even Clark’s parents, who he respected far more than he had respected his own father, hated him now if they had ever felt otherwise. He would have liked to offer consolation and support, but knew that it would only be painful for them to hear it coming from him, and even now they still protected Clark’s secret, so he planned to stay as far away from the Kents as possible. The situation was bad enough without making a scene.

“Luthor, how dare you show your face here!” Lois Lane raised her voice over the soft murmurs in the church as she marched down the aisle toward him.

Wanting to quell her anger if at all possible, he tried to explain, “Lois, I-” But he was cut off by a sharp smack across his face as soon as Lois came within striking distance. It stung. So much for not making a scene…

“You’ve come to gloat! You’ve tried to get rid of him for years! Are you happy now?” she asked, as tears began streaming down her face and her voice trembled with emotion. “Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted? I hate you! I hate you!” she yelled, as she struck at his chest with her fists several times before collapsing into his arms, finally letting the tears take over.

Her words of accusation were untrue even if she’d never believe it, but they hurt him still because it shouldn’t have been this way. Superman shouldn’t be dead. It wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d never wanted Clark dead, even when Clark ruined every plan he hatched and cost him obscene amounts of money, even when Superman got him thrown in jail that regrettable time. He just continued to hold Lois as she sobbed hysterically. His eyes slid closed when he said, “Believe it or not, I’m going to miss him too,” because that was as close to the truth as he could verbalize.

Jimmy Olsen, that intern at the Planet, approached after a moment and Lex turned Lois over to him. He didn’t even know why he had come here now. Clark’s body wasn’t even in that casket in front of the alter. It all seemed so meaningless… He could feel a migraine coming on. He hated feeling so helpless. There was nothing he could do, no one he could help, no one he could kill (right now), no way to make anything change. He had to get out of there, before he started to panic or do something else equally undignified.

He excused himself and discreetly made his way out one of the side doors. As soon as he was back at the Penthouse, he popped several Xanex and tried to distract himself the best way he knew how, by throwing himself into his work. But the entire world seemed to be in a time warp for the funeral; Superman wasn’t just Metropolis’ hero, he was the world’s hero, and continuing with business as usual was impossible with everyone making a show of their mourning.

In the end, he stood on the balcony and watched Metropolis Central Park far below, where Superman’s symbolic casket was being interred, amongst great pomp and circumstance, below a monolithic crest set in granite and steel. “It’s the symbol of the House of El,” Clark had once told him. Lex wondered who was footing the bill for the monstrosity. It put the Luthor Family Memorial to shame. He thought that Clark would have hated the fuss. But it wasn’t for Clark. Clark wasn’t being remembered today. Did anyone even know that Clark would never show up for work at the Planet again? Did anyone even care?

Lex went back inside. He thought he might have to move, maybe even out of the city. He didn’t think he could live with having that view outside his windows for the rest of his life. It was bad enough having a permanent hole in his heart and his life without having that constant, glaring reminder.

He needed a drink. He went to the bar and downed two glasses of scotch in quick succession and poured himself a third. Getting rip-roaring drunk sounded like a pretty good idea to him right now, and his current course of action leaving him no alternatives, he proceeded in doing just that.

He fell into a fitful sleep about two hours later.

*****

BOOM!

Lex jolted awake by the sound of explosions coming from outside. The windows of his penthouse rattled, and he ran out the still open glass door to the balcony outside. He saw Batman leaving the park across the street in the direction of Metropolis’ answer to Time Square.

Going back inside, he picked up the security phone and buzzed Mercy. “What’s going on?”

“We don’t know, sir, but the building is secure,” she answered immediately.

Frustrated, and with a pounding headache, that was not what Lex wanted to hear. “Well, find out what it is! It sounds like the entire city is falling apart!”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” She hung up.

There was gunfire and the sound of heavy objects that might be buildings, or at least pieces of them, hitting the ground. He wondered if his last comment before hanging up wasn’t hyperbole. Sirens from various emergency vehicles sounded in the streets below his building as they sped past.

A few minutes passed before the security phone rang, signaling trouble or Mercy's answer. Lex picked it up quickly before it could ring again. He didn't need more noise. "Yes?!" he growled impatiently.

"Sir, it seems that Livewire, Kalibar, Copperhead, and Metallo, along with several other criminals, have broken out of jail and are currently celebrating Superman's demise in the downtown area. The Justice League is on the scene, but the situation is not yet under control and the city police are afraid to enter the area."

Lex gripped the phone tighter as the explanation sunk in and his jaw clenched and eyes slid shut. The police in this city really were useless. Some of those guys had been part of the contingent that killed Superman and they were actually able to make a jail break within two days? And now, they weren't even willing to brave the situation they had allowed to happen? It was disgusting.

All Lex said was, "Keep me posted," before he hung up the phone.

The noise continued for about twenty minutes. Then all was silent, although he could still see the reflecting lights of the police cars and the flicker of flames in the distance. He had returned to the balcony to watch.

Once things calmed down, Lex started to get tired again. He was getting too old to pop Xanex like candy… But just before he went inside for the night, he saw a streak of red and blue rise above the skyline for just a moment, followed soon after by the rest of the Justice League. Could it be? Lex watched it for the short time he was able as it rose higher and higher in the air - oh, please - but he wasn’t able to tell for sure that it wasn’t his imagination playing tricks and there were no other disturbances in Metropolis that night. He fell asleep around 4 AM after telling Mercy to contact him immediately if anything, anything unusual happened in his city. He had made sure to leave the glass door to the balcony open though… just in case.

*****

It was morning. Lex could tell because the light streaming in through the windows was making it feel like someone had dropped a rock on his head. He groaned and then stopped it short when that only made the pain in his head hurt worse. He grabbed at one of the pillows on his bed and pulled it over his face so that maybe he could go back to sleep.

But he didn’t. He could sense that someone was in the room with him. So he blinked his eyes open, sat up, and pretended to be a lot more alert than he felt.

Clark was sitting in one of the chairs in the corner of the room. “Hi.”

“Clark, you’re alive,” Lex croaked and then cleared his throat, blinking several times. “What are you wearing?”

Clark chuckled at that, bending his scruffy, unshaved face to look down at the fur shirt and torn leggings he was currently donning. “I’ll tell you later. Just rest assured that this isn’t my new costume.”

“Hm. It might actually be an improvement… Wait, what are you doing here?” he asked coming to his senses.

“I- I uh, needed to see you.” And there was his Clark, behind the odd clothes and funky facial hair that definitely needed to go, there was the boy he knew so long ago from a small farming town. “It’s… been a rough couple of days.” Clark stood up and faced the window.

“Yes, it has.” Lex was still suspicious and didn’t really know what to make of it. After ten long years, Clark came back like nothing had happened... or like everything had happened.

“Do you remember why I left?” Clark asked suddenly, but in a lost kind of way that didn’t put Lex on the defensive like it could have.

Lex opted for honesty. He knew that whatever it had been, it had made both of them so angry they couldn't be around each other anymore, but what it specifically was, he hadn't a clue any longer. “No, I don’t. I was just thinking about that yesterday... before the funeral.”

“I’m sorry, Lex. I don’t remember why I left now either. I just know how I felt once I realized that you were gone and I might not get back to here.” Clark turned around to face him.

Lex didn't know what Clark was talking about. “What happened?” It was a simple question, but he had a feeling the answer wasn’t as simple.

“The weapon that Toyman got me with threw me several hundred thousand years into the future. There were giant cockroaches, endless deserts, ruins everywhere, and Vandal Savage was the only person left on the planet.”

Lex gasped, noting the scars on Clark’s arms that hadn’t been there before for the first time, as he jumped out of bed. “What did he do to you?!” he demanded, thinking that Savage had found a way to hurt Clark in the future and Clark had had to escape. Who knew how long Clark had been there!

“He helped me get back to here. He told me that in three days time, he’s going to destroy the world and after all that time alone, he wanted nothing more than for me to do anything I had to in order to stop him… He, he didn’t do this...” Clark gestured to the scars on his arms. “There were giant, wild dogs in the future. And the Earth was thrown out of its normal orbit by what Savage did. We were too far from the sun for me to still be invulnerable.”

“How did he do it?”

“It’s complicated. Basically, one of his world domination plans went horribly wrong and he ended up with no one left to conquer.” Clark smiled wryly for a moment, as he added, “He’s even more of a megalomaniac than you are at your worst…" He sighed. “Anyway, the League is working on the problem right now. I think, now that we’ve had a heads up, things will turn out alright. But in case it doesn’t,” Clark put his hands over Lex’s, “I had to come see you.”

Lex nodded slowly as he grasped the seriousness of what had happened.

Clark continued, “I had to tell you that I’ve never stopped loving you Lex, no matter what happened.”

“I still love you too, Clark.” Lex remembered his thoughts from the night before. “I was thinking of leaving the city yesterday." His brow furrowed with the remembered pain. "I didn’t think that I could stay here with the memorial across the street and all the memories of you here.”

Clark, remembering his own distress at the thought that he'd never have a chance to make things right with Lex again, closed the distance between them. "Do you think... that maybe... if the world doesn't end in a few days... that we could try again, Lex? I've missed you so much." He carefully placed his hands on Lex's shoulders, rubbing them gently.

"I'd like that, Clark," Lex admitted. After a small moment, he wrapped his arms around Clark's neck and kissed him, nearly falling apart at the thought that he might never have felt this again. Clark returned it with equal, though restrained, fervor. Holding him so tight that he would have hurt a human, Lex breathed a heavy sigh when their lips finally broke apart. "I love you so... much." He squeezed him tighter.

"Me too," Clark agreed, kissing Lex again, floating them to the large bed. Whatever would come to pass in several days would surely come. They would be as prepared as they could possibly be. For right now, they had only the moment before them and they intended to take full advantage.

The End