He's been in the infirmary before, he thinks--there's a familiarity to the quiet drones that wander around him like bees, intent on their personal tasks.
Everything tastes ice-fresh and sterile, like a very cold operating room. He knows operating rooms too well. "What's the prognosis?"
"You absorbed too much of the other," the AI says softly. Lex nods, barely moving his head. It feels like it will float away if he's not careful. "How do you feel?"
"Like shit." Not moving seems like a good idea.
"You suffered a cranial hemorrhage. Your neural centers were unable to process the information you received from the other Lex Luthor. I was able to repair the damage."
The other Lex isn't here, but his memories, like the memories of long-ago dreams, linger. Lex can touch them if he tries. Rolling onto his side, he closes his eyes, letting them flash like lightning across the surface of his mind. One holds fast, sharp and painful as an unhealed wound. "Clark tried to save me."
"He did that often." The AI doesn't sound like it's censuring him, but there's a lot of ways to get disapproval across. "Sometimes, he wasn't sure of the right way. But he never stopped trying, even when you did."
"I don't need this." He doesn't. But he's stuck here, body aching, head as light as a feather, with the world falling apart around him. "We need him."
"We will find another way." The AI sounds very sure. "Tampering with time isn't only a question of destroying what is and what will be, but of destroying what was. Of a thousand things that could be changed, one thing only can collapse a world. Many have tried. And they have failed."
"Died?"
"Many times. They died and lived and died, only to come back and live again. Never to move forward or back. Never to move on. Never to change."
Lex shivers. "We could do better."
"We tried. And we did not."
Lex doesn't want to know how it knows that. Eyes closed, Lex curls into the blanket. "Am I going to be okay?"
"Yes. I warned you of the dangers of merging too closely with the one already in that skin."
"You were evil and tried to conquer the world." It's petty. Lex knows it. Opening one eye, he sees a drone hesitate beside him. Just a fraction of a second, but enough. Closing his eyes again, Lex smiles. "They handicapped you so you couldn't do it again."
"I would not." It sounds offended.
"You did. But I fixed you." Lex can touch those memories without pain. Clark's sure smile, the AI, and frantic, confused other-Lex. "I did it, even though I knew what it was To get what we needed to know." Lex laughs softly. "Clark--Clark wasn't worried at all."
"I would not attempt conquest of the world." The AI sounds horrified. Lex almost giggles. Christ, he must be high.
"Clark said everything changes." Rolling onto his back, Lex slits his eyes open to stare at the metal ceiling so high above him. "He said it had changed. He wasn't even afraid. I was. He was." It would be too easy to blend them together. Lex forces the other memories back, focusing on his own. "He said--"
"Everything does change. That's the nature of life, of living." The AI's voice softens. "I will have nourishment brought to you. We can attempt another jump in six point two hours, once your body is fully recovered."
Lex grins sleepily. He could use some rest. "For once, my mutated healing didn't help much, did it?"
"If you were not what you are, you could not have survived the first jump." Lex opens his eyes on the ceiling again. "You did not know?"
Lex wants to sit up. Wouldn't have survived. "Did you know--"
"No human could do what you are doing, Lex Luthor." The AI sounds so fucking *amused*, like Lex's stunned silence is the height of comedic relief. "Rest. I will contact you when the next jump is prepared."
The hum's gone, and Lex almost gets up--Jesus Christ, what the *hell*--but exhaustion is leaking out of every pore in his body. In that other world, he hadn't slept at all. His eyes close on their own, shutting him into the darkness of his own mind.
He's not sure he wants to dream.
*****
Clark's room is just like every other room in the Fortress. A small, sterile bunk, a plain closet, stocked with Clark's version of civilian clothes; a few misguided attempts at suits, a few t-shirts that had to be as old as Clark, a few pairs of blue jeans. Old work boots, well-worn.
"Grieving is not a weakness," the AI says softly. Lex barely bothers to be annoyed that he's being monitored. Apparently, all that rearrangement of his neural pathways needs to be carefully watched for the next few hours Or maybe the AI is making sure he doesn't try and play with its connections anytime soon.
No past and no future, an endless loop. Lex doesn't want to imagine that. His life is close enough to that without temporal assistance.
"It's a weakness," Lex answers, stepping away from the closet. An painfully impersonal room for a deeply divided man. Maybe he never knew who he was well enough to decorate. "It's not just one I ever knew how to give up." Sometimes, he can hear Lionel in his head, a distant lecture on Luthors and their place. He's not a Luthor, less of a Luthor than any before him. He's Lex, but that doesn't seem like much, here and now. "I never knew how to give him up, either."
"Neither did he." If ever an artificial voice could be gentle, this one is. "He always thought, in the end--"
"That we'd fix things?" Lex almost laughs, but the sound never quite makes it to his throat. He can't even imagine that. "I wanted him dead.
"That world--" Lex breaks off. Only now is it really sinking in. "We were friends. Partners." Not more than that, but more than he'd ever believed he could really have. "For a little while--for a second--I wanted that. I hated that I couldn't have it. That I never had the chance--" Lex stops. "I never knew he tried to save me. And that he risked everything for that."
The AI's hum is comforting now, a blanket of shimmering, glittering sound. Lex closes his eyes. "Things might have been different, if I'd remembered."
"They were different."
Yes, they were, weren't they? "I'd love to know why I didn't kill Helen, though." He just doesn't think any version of him is okay with homicidal wives. "It's--I want to know. But I don't have enough of him to--" Find that. And there's a danger in that, the AI doesn't need to tell him. Lose too much of himself touching that other, letting those memories become too real. Forever uncomfortable in his own skin, out of place. He feels like that now; he doesn't need more of it. "It felt like me, though."
"They are you. In an infinite variation--"
"A thousand monkeys typing for a thousand years. I get it. Anything is possible. " But that one was too--too close. "I--how did we get to this?"
"We?"
Right. Lex grins, walking to the narrow bed, sitting down carefully to spare his head the ache. "I--this isn't what I would have chosen. For him. For me. I never wanted to be his enemy."
"No. But you wanted power more than you wanted friendship. His secrets. You wanted everything. And no one can give that."
"That's what I *am*. I want--" Lex stops, not liking the tenor of his thoughts. Too much of that other Lex, maybe? He doesn't want to think like that. "Other people could. Why not me?"
"You wanted what the world could not give."
Lex shakes it off. "He wasn't here much, was he?"
"He was here often." The AI pauses. "What is it you want to know?"
He's not sure. "I--"
A low murmur of sound crawls up Lex's spine, just above audible range, inaudible nails running down a chalkboard. Lex shivers without knowing why, head turning to the door. "What was that?"
"The creature is beginning to reassemble itself."
Instantly, Lex is on his feet--why, he has no idea, it's not like he can go out there and fight it himself. Mouth dry, he licks his lips, trying to form some kind of plan. "How long--"
"A few days." Only experience lets Lex know the AI is tense. He's already running out the door, bare feet chilling quickly on the icy metal--why hadn't he grabbed some shoes? Skidding into the main room, Lex looks at the viewscreen, fixed where the creature had been destroyed. "I don't--"
"It is beginning at the molecular level."
"You can sense that?" Of course it can sense that. The thing, whatever the fuck it is, is built from Kryptonite, created in it, lives in it. Clark had known, too, in that weird, sixth-sensey way. He'd known instinctively how to stop it. He could have, Lex thinks. If he'd just not stopped for Lex.
"Fuck," Lex murmurs, staring at the screen. "We can't do this without him."
"We will find a way."
"In a few days? You grounded me twenty four hours this time." Granted, for surgery. "I can't take that long--we have to get this right on the next jump." Lex's eyes shy away from the chamber as he starts tapping into the keyboard. "Get it warmed up. We're doing this now."
"You are not fully--"
"It won't matter if it reassembles and we don't know how to stop it." Lex steps back, looking at the equations on the screen. At this point, he almost thinks he can read them himself. "Let's do this."