"Mr. Luthor will string us up if we don't find him." That's a voice to the left--cranky and too young. Lex guesses at twenty at most. Flashes of glaring white in the dark, big obvious beacons of danger. Lex supposes that asylums aren't really equipped to understand the concept of subterfuge.
And God, this body feels different.
It's not just the weight, or lack thereof--Lex's metabolism burns fast, he's known that for years. It's the habitual feeling of it. He's not coming close to getting enough to eat, even by his standards. The grind of hunger that the body's used to, just beneath the drugged apathy that keeps pulling him back down. The twitching, like a junkie, and the way he can't quite focus his eyes, and the nausea riding beneath it all like a constant reminder. Of what, he has no idea, and no real desire to find out.
The other Lex might not be here at all, for all the awareness Lex has of him. And that's not something Lex wants to think about too much.
Belle Reve's like he remembers it in his worst dreams, but strangely smaller, more familiar. Palatial grounds for the very wealthy to forget their embarrassments within. Lex isn't sure what it means that he's here, but he has a few guesses that he doesn't think bear close examining until he's the fuck out of here.
"He can't go far. The tranquilizer--"
"That was thirty minutes ago!" Rough search of the brush, too close. Lex smells burning leaves. Tazer. Fucking fantastic. Health care in the United States needs addressing in a serious way. "He can't go far. Not with the anklet."
Lex glances down. No anklet. A glance at his hands, broken nails and bleeding fingertips, confirm. This Lex got that thing off as soon as possible. Very bare feet stare back at him. He needs shoes.
And some other clothes. Assuming, that is, that he can get out of here.
Pushing out of the crouch, Lex looks around. No one too close. This bush doesn't offer anything close to adequate cover. But then, the grounds of Belle Reve aren't made for hiding, either.
And he's got to be able to stick to a single thought if he's going to get out of this in one piece.
His body's not sure how to respond to his signals, like inertia in action. A deep sense of comfort in not moving. A generalized sense of well-being in just staying. Being caught second to the spurts of euphoria that keep cycling in his system, like he just took a few hits of E. Anger beneath, so ingrained that he barely notices it. An urge to just *run*, fuck who would see him.
All of them dangerous. Lex finds himself in the novel position of wishing that the other Lex would surface, at least long enough for Lex to figure out what he needs to do. Besides get away. That one's as obvious as a billboard.
Those tazers just don't look like something he wants to experience.
"I found tracks!"
Holy fucking shit.
Lex moves, forcing his body to go with it by will alone, hating the hesitation, the untrained muscles and how they don't respond like they should. Will counts for a lot, but will can only go so far. An ungraceful scramble to a better group of bushes and trees, arranged in a variation of an English garden. Ignoring the scratch of branches and shrubbery, Lex burrows inside, glancing once to see if he left tracks. His night vision is for shit.
Right now, he's only dealing with the hospital staff and security. If they call in the police--
God *dammit*, would it kill the AI to send him in at a time he can get some fucking context?
Lex holds his breath at the sound of feet, too close. Too fucking *close*.
"Where the fuck *is* he?" Somewhere, something hits a tree with a lot of enthusiasm. Lex almost smiles, but it takes everything in him to control the twitching. Like every muscle in his body's being shot with electricity every second. "Christ. Make the call."
"There's no fucking way I'm telling Lionel Luthor that we lost his son." Booted feet come into view. Lex follows the lines of grey and white up between the leaves, catching sight of the tazer on one hip. A gun, too. Standard issue in asylums these days?
And *Dad*?
A jerk of his arm ruffles the leaves. Lex freezes, or tries to. The body pivots, and Lex watches the boots close in.
"Jared--"
When Lex was a child, his dad took him on safari in Africa. A parody of father-and-son bonding with some kind of subtextual lesson in leading men, or being an ass--Lex was never sure, before or after. They'd been somewhere on flat plains, watching a herd of some form of antelope wander through. All flat and golden and lifeless.
Then not. One second, quiet antelope, then a bloody body on the ground, herds running in confusion, and a cheetah ripping apart its prey.
As metaphors go, Lex got it loud and clear. There's no such thing as safe.
Jared probably never heard his name called. Lex's body moves, like he's nothing but a passenger, vague echoes of that second universe and that Lex forcing past, but this is almost effortless. Mindless anger reaching so deeply that Lex can't even begin to control it, pushing through his body, and for a second, Lex tries to stop it.
Like standing in the path of a tornado.
The crack of the man's neck echoes like a broken twig, and Lex comes back to himself with the body falling with a soft thump to the ground, rich joy spiraling through his body like something alive. His hands still shape the man's chin, the effortless twist, like pulling the head off a doll. Easy and familiar. He's done this before. He's liked this before. He wants to do it again.
"Leo?"
Christ.
Lex breathes out, taking a step back. The loose hospital pajamas expose him as thoroughly as their hospital whites, but he can't quite make himself move. The haze of rage recedes like the tide. Lex clenches his hands to control the tremors.
There may be a very good reason someone (Dad) locked him up in here.
"Leo?"
Not important. Getting away. Important. The rest will have to wait. Forever, if possible.
"Leo?"
Lex turns his head. Below the sounds of Jerod's voice, he hears the unmistakable sound of traffic. Reaching down, Lex strips the tazer and gun, tucking them into the elastic of the pants. A second, then Lex gets the shoes and the ID card as well. A wallet's in the back pocket. A set of keys. A leather case that looks just about the right size for a hypodermic needle or five.
The bullets in the gun aren't blanks.
"Leo? What the hell are you doing?"
Too close. Lex turns his head to the highway and starts to run.
*****
Other Lex still isn't poking his head into anything but the body. Lex isn't sure what to make of it--one second, he's himself, all present and accounted for; the next, that other presence, barely thinking, but *doing*. Like it's practiced for this, dreamed of this, knows every move it will make, every contingency planned for, every possibility covered. Flagging down a motorist and shooting him up from something in that leather case, rolling him into a gutter. That's--almost prosaic. His body doesn't know stick shift anymore, though, so Lex is left to do that.
This isn't anything like the last two times. Almost more unnerving than anything else.
A few dozen miles, a hour straight, and Lex has no idea what direction he's going, and that's a problem. Mindlessness doesn't work as a plan. At least, it shouldn't, but in this case, Lex is beginning to wonder. Right now, that other Lex isn't anywhere. And the twitching is getting worse.
There are old hypodermic tracks up one arm, shaded bruising in yellow-brown and recent red-purple. Deep black on his forehead. Someone tried to knock him out? He almost doesn't blame him. He's killed before, but it's never been like that.
He's never *wanted* it like that.
"What the *fuck*?" Glancing at the rearview mirror, Lex notes the lack of traffic. A side road comes up, dusty and small--farm road. Good enough. Turning awkwardly, Lex just makes it, somehow surprised by the fields of corn around him, waving high and sickly green.
This is how he always remembers Smallville.
He pulls over, jerking the car into park before letting himself lean into the steering wheel.
Fuck.
There's no way he can be expected to figure out what the hell is going on. Though he's going to go out on a limb and say that Lionel's habit of imprisoning unsatisfactory sons in insane asylums has gone unchecked for a while. The body feels completely wrong, and he's starving, but the thought of food makes him sick. And not just because he just killed a man like he would an animal.
Though that's not helping.
Leaning back, Lex looks at the seat beside him. A briefcase from the former occupant of the car, a laptop still in its case. The ID from the hospital. One gun, one tazer, one pair of shoes. He should have taken the driver's clothes, but they'd been an impossibly large size for this emaciated body. Lex doesn't want to look in the mirror again. Nothing living should look like that.
He needs *food*. Adrenaline and insanity only get you so far.
Unbuckling his seat belt--and God, it's funny, he remembered to *buckle up*--Lex gives the car a quick once-over. A package of Doritos, a bottle of generic water, and what looks like a second change of clothes in a bag. Still too big, but beggars, in this case, can't be choosers. A cell phone.
Lex wonders if there's anything left in any account he would know about or be able to access. He'll go with a no on that one.
What the hell is he supposed to do?'
"Just once, I'd like it easy," Lex mumbles. Christ. He's talking to himself now. His head's still echoingly empty of whoever usually resides here, but that's okay. Lex may be crazy enough for both of them. Flexing his hands on the wheel, Lex remembers the simplicity of murder, pulsing between his fingers.
Damn. *Damn*.
"So where am I supposed to *go*?" There isn't anyone Lex can think he'd trust; everyone is suspect. Putting the car in drive, Lex's mind flips through place and people one by one. Every universe is different, but they all remain the same. Ever since the day Lionel had cut him off, playing Lucas against him, Lex had made sure he always had access to at least one account somewhere.
He has a laptop and a cellphone Between the two, he thinks he can figure something out.
*****
There are a lot of ways to be untraceable, but they all require money. Eventually, someone is going to find that guy and work out who he is, even without a wallet. Whatever Lex gave him won't last forever. So he can't use the credit cards. The cash is okay, but he needs a ground line to access the account he needs. Assuming Lionel didn't find it.
And that's assuming a lot.
Still, though, like all unnatural creatures and parents, Lionel had strange blind spots. He wouldn't empty accounts if he never thought Lex would be able to access them.
The cheap hotel is the kind that never notices who stays, and the front desk clerk is stoned out of what passes for his mind, barely counting the money Lex shoves across the counter, tossing a key, all without his eyes leaving MTV2's classic showcase. The soundtrack of Lex's life is a disturbingly appropriate cover of Father Figure by a thin boy who ogles the camera like he expects to fuck it.
Dear God, he's tired.
The room is cheap carpet and a bed that Lex tries not to think of too much before sitting down. The suit is too big and keeps threatening to slide off his hips. Stripping the cheap cotton coat, Lex opens up the laptop and sets the cellphone down beside it.
He needs to stop and think, though.
Theory; he's in Belle Reve. From the feeling, this has been a long term stay. Inner Lex seems to be confined to specific moments, but Lex can't tell if it's the drugs that are keeping the other Lex so--invisible--or something else. If it was the drugs, wouldn't he be feeling it too?
And he is, but he's been high, he's mainlined the kind of shit that kills other people. Psychotropics can fuck with his head, but they can't be worse than the fact he's been jumping realities for over a hundred and six hours.
But that lack of inner Lex--that just feels wrong.
Taking a deep breath, Lex tries to relax. His muscles want to cramp up in a variety of unpleasant ways, and the idea of getting very drunk has a certain charm.
"Focus, Lex."
Focus, Lex. One, keeping free long enough to figure out how the hell whoever defeated that thing in this universe did it. After that, it's up to whatever passes for him in this universe. Though Lex doesn't think the odds are good, not with this man.
Christ, where *is* he?
Lex curls his fingers into the blanket, closing his eyes at the next surge of restlessness; the twitching's become worse. Jesus. Withdrawal, maybe? With careful, not very steady fingers, he unzips the case. Neon colors and pale ambers and clear fluids, symbols he doesn't recognize, but his body knows kryptonite when he sees it, even refined and diluted. It should be a surprise, but it's not.
This is Dad, after all.
Closing the case back up, Lex lays back. Even his worst hangovers never last long. His body knows how to deal with them. So. He can survive this. He can survive anything.
*****
Other Lex likes the sound of birds at four in the morning and can't stand the piano. It plays on never ending repeat, and no one believes him when he says it never stops, even when he does. Tranks for sleep that never gets farther than the surface of his mind. Bach at three in the morning would make anyone go insane.
They ask him things. Do you remember? Do you understand? We need to understand you. You can tell us, Lex. We're trying to help you. We're trying to *help you*.
He used to answer, but now he doesn't. They don't want to know if he remembers anything. They want to know if he's forgotten. They want to know if he's as crazy as they want to believe. They want to tell him he's killed people and has to be here to protect everyone. And it may be true.
"I don't understand," Lex says, and that Bach doesn't ever stop, does it? Over and over and fucking *over*. "He wants to make sure--what? That you don't tell he killed his parents? Why the fuck would anyone believe you now?"
You shouldn't be able to feel a shrug like you'd see one. "Not exactly. He wants something. I don't know what. I just know not to tell."
"About what?"
The smile is sharp.
"I don't--remember."
It's a comfortable room, what Lex would expect that Lionel would order for his son. A bed with modestly concealed restraints. Easy to confine him for the night. The day. The week. The other images move too fast, out of focus, soft and sharp at the same time, but the touch of Lionel's fingers on his cheek burns even now.
"Why don't you just fucking tell him? This is better?" Dad played Mozart's Requiem after Mother died. Hideously appropriate of him.
"You think he'll ever let me go? Didn't you ever fucking *meet* him?"
"What does he want?"
"He wants. Things." The voice breaks, like someone not used to conversations outside his own head. Choppy and too loud, coded in a way Lex almost thinks he can understand if he tries. "After all, we're a danger to society. We murdered our wife, tried to kill our best friend, God knows how many other denizens of Smallville. Who the hell wants us at large?"
"I'm not you."
"I'm sure thinking that makes you feel better."
This Lex isn't sane. He's nowhere close to sane. The room freezes even with warm sunlight pooling at their feet. Lex stares at the modest bed, the view of the grounds, the quiet tan walls and inoffensive beige tile. A picture of his mother is on the nightstand. There's nothing terrifying here.
"You haven't seen all its secrets." The other Lex is just barely out of view, flickering on the edges of Lex's eyes. Lex isn't sure what to make of this. Extended hallucination from drug withdrawal? Or is his sanity cracking? "There are bodies in the garden and bodies in the rooms. Some of them are even alive, if you want to be technical. Very, very technical."
"You're crazy."
"That's such a relative term. Sanity's overrated anyway." Lex thinks, if he stares, he can see the shrug. "It's so freeing. Not to give a shit."
"There's a dead man on the grounds that would think differently." That joy again. So complete and overwhelming. The room almost dissolves under the force of it. "And you liked it."
The room shivers again. "Come on. You should see the rest. They don't care what I see. Luthor's psychotic son's in no danger of telling. Or anyone believing."
The door opens on a brush of air, and Lex thinks he hears voices. Low and angry, hurt and confused. Terrified. Unhappy. This Lex's memories. Somewhere, the AI is telling him the dangers of this, of coming too close, absorbing so much, but it's a whisper like all the others.
The hall is cream-washed, wallpapered in soft, muted colors. "It's easier on our sanity. Primary colors make us excitable." A low laugh chases the words. "Everything makes us excitable."
The view through the first door stops Lex cold. The room twists, like watching a movie, reassembling itself in icy white, so cold Lex's teeth want to chatter. But they don't. "Ryan's dead."
"You're sure of that?" The door pushes all the way open, revealing shining medical equipment, stainless steel and chrome. The body on the bed is the adult Ryan never became. "Brain dead. Like I said, we have very loose standards on what's considered alive here."
"How--"
"The best medical care available. That's what you told him, right? And then to spend those last days with him. You told him that, too. I bet you didn't tell him that comas can be forever." The dark hair is shaved to a stubble. Thick wires protrude from his scalp. An IV drips sluggishly into one arm.
"Ryan *died*."
"Miracles of defibrillators and kryptonite. Dad knew. He couldn't bring him all back, but he didn't need all of him." There's amusement in that voice. Pity, too. "All he needs is a heartbeat and viable brain tissue."
"He's not--not--"
"Come on."
Lex drags his eyes away. Another bright room, a glimpse of grown women gathered around a pile of beheaded dolls, stark in too-long hospital gowns that graze their knuckles, pajama bottoms rucked up their calves. Bitten nails on small, chapped hands reaching like vines for more. A glimpse of wild eyes. Jodi's skeletal fingers. Amy's wide, mindless smile. Alicia. Emily. A flash of dark hair and a honey-skinned face. "Lana."
"Want to know why he wants her?" A twist beheads another doll, palm against the tiny chin. It falls like a body in a quiet garden in the dead of night.
No. "This is your--this is your imagination. Your fantasy. Belle Reve wasn't this."
"It was always this. You just don't remember. Sometimes, I don't remember, either." He sounds wistful. "Sometimes, I don't remember anything, even my name."
Lex stops short, staring down a hallway that extends forever. Door after door after door. And Bach in the background. "What the fuck is up with the music? Christ, do your delusions have to be so pompous?"
Lex has never heard a sound like that before, laughter by way of machine gun fire. The sound hurts. "I don't get a lot of visitors. I have to amuse myself somehow."
"Christ." There's got to be a way out of this, but he can't make himself concentrate with that music. With that Lex, who he can't see but can almost see, just ahead, if he looks hard.
A hand grabs for his pants, and Lex jumps. It's the stupidest thing, but he thinks he can hear his heart, pounding too loud in the silence; his own breathing, too fast and too hard, like he's suffocating. There's a tiny hand gripping his thigh. "We're going to bring it all down," the girl says, blue eyes looking into his. "All down. He promised."
"Not now, sweetheart." The soothing croon brings goosebumps like a rash.
The hand disengages reluctantly, and Lex stares at the smear of a bloody handprint. She pouts, arms crossing over her chest. It should look stupid, a woman crouching like a child, but there's nothing stupid about the eyes that look up at him with cloudy cunning.
"It's your delusion." This is possibly the worse drug trip in history.
"If it was, I'd be a lot less happy when I'm shot up. You know how long it took them to get a sedative that worked? I thought I'd have to mix it myself." The air shifts with a low hum. "But not always. Nothing is always."
Lex has been here too long. He's beginning to see things, and he's not sure what they are. Orderlies pass him in the hall like sterile ghosts. Every footfall is powdery silent, like walking in snow.
"I have to get out of here."
Lex can feel the grin, sharp on the back of his neck. "I've been saying that for years, but no one's listened. You killed your wife, Lex, you tried to kill your best friend, Lex, he left you here to *rot*, Lex, you think anyone cares if you live or die, Lex?"
How long can this possibly last? And how the hell will the AI pull him out of *this*?
"Clark."
"That's his name. I--forgot."
Motion far down the corridor catches his attention. Lex tries to focus his eyes, but everything goes blurry, like in a dream, and for some reason, his legs won't work, sinking into the floor like quicksand.
"Did you know--" Whisper behind his ear. The figures are slowly coming closer, a horror movie of deliberate, placid, unending steps. Mindless obedience. Three. One's fighting.
"Dad didn't know our secret until we came here."
Lex sees himself.
Too thin, too pale, that institutional white that turns green under the right kind of fluorescents. Fighting, though, with closed eyes, white straightjacket he's seen in every nightmare. One of them cuffs him as they walk, and this close, Lex can see the old bruises, the bitten lip, blood trickling down his chin.
"This is a hospital." There are limits, there have to be. Even for Dad. "They don't--"
"Lex." They're too close, and Lex tries to move, but his feet are stuck and the walls seem to be getting closer. The body between the two men lifts its head, and fractured blue eyes grab his. It's like being touched. "Oh Lex. You don't know anything at all." They go through him like he's the ghost here, splashing him with a cold like frozen water.
He can follow--when he doesn't want to, when he'd do anything to be anywhere else, and that other Lex fights, but not really, all rote, like he knows that no matter what he does, he'll end up there anyway. "It's not whether I win," he says, twisting his neck around to smile. Lex watches blood drip down his chin, staining the immaculate white of the straightjacket. "It's that I fight at all."
Another hospital room, like Ryan's, but doctors this time, with sharp instruments and sharper curiosity. Lex thinks he recognizes a few from LexCorp.
"I know them." But his mouth won't form the words.
"There's a lot you can do with a person who never gets sick." Lex watches as he's strapped down, with the efficient, indifferent ease of long practice. "There's so much you can *learn*."
Lex's back presses into a door that's no longer there. He has to *watch* this. The jacket's discarded on the floor, and Lex stares at the network of fine scars criss-crossing his torso. The unmistakable lines of a vivisection. An appendectomy. Heart surgery. Liver transplant. They can't be there, they *aren't* there, Lex has seen this body, knows what his own can do. "Those--"
"Think of them as symbolic."
Lex shudders, the wall behind him solid, as if there'd never been a door. He wants out. He wants out *now*.
"Why?"
A mask is placed over the open mouth, and he bucks against the restraints. Blue eyes blaze hot for a second, and Lex watches a needle slide into the back of his neck. A scalpel cuts a line across a bare stomach. There's no way to stop seeing.
"Why?"
One of the doctors turns, and Lex stares into his own eyes, dancing above a surgical mask. "Why not?"
*****
He's aware of the touch almost as soon as he feels the bed.
Instinct lunges him to the floor, and his body knows *this*, knows no touch is good touch, scalpels and needles and bright, plastic-lipped smiles. We want to *help you*.
"....trying to help you!"
The gun is in his hand and pointed the direction of the voice. It takes long seconds to recognize the figure on the bed, and it doesn't inspire him to drop his weapon, though he doesn't know why.
"Clark."
Clark's--himself. Flannel and jeans and too-green eyes, like a forest in summer. Not moving, either, and Lex is glad. He's not sure he can control the finger that wants to pull the trigger like it wants air to breathe.
The words that grind between his teeth aren't his. "You left me there."
All Clark's color vanishes. "I--Lex...."
No. *No*. "Where are they? Are they here?" There's nothing left of the other Lex now, and it's profoundly disturbing. Like a mist that clears at dawn. Lex shakes his head, surprised by the realization one hand is shaped over his stomach. Holding Clark's eyes, Lex pushes up the shirt, touching smooth, unscarred skin, feeling the bone beneath too easily. "I don't scar."
"Not since the meteor shower." Clark looks awkwardly at his own knees. "I--you remember me."
The thing about a gun is, you have to use it or put it up or it just starts feeling stupid. Lowering it, Lex flicks the safety back on, noticing Clark's breath of relief. "It's not like it can hurt you."
Panic's funny. Clark's mouth opens and shuts soundlessly. "And the insane thing? May work other times. It doesn't mean shit now. So save the denials of what you are for someone who cares." Standing up, Lex frowns at the dampness of his clothes. "If you're not here to take me back--"
"I'm not. I--I wouldn't--" Clark's horror is real, but so are Lex's memories. "Your dad wouldn't ask that of me."
So much can be discovered by what someone doesn't say. "But he asks other things?" The strong jaw clamps shut. Lex wonders what Lionel used to buy Clark's compliance . A few threats against the Kent family? Lana? A rock or two? "So you're Dad's most interesting hired gun?"
"I--don't. I'm not." Clark doesn't look at him. "It's--Lex." Lex doesn't want to look--there's too much raw in him, from those images. That's other Lex, too close under his skin. It's got to stop. He can't fucking *afford* that. "I'm sorry."
"So am I." Lex fixes his eyes on the laptop on the bed, the phone that will get him the ground line he needs. "Fought any really freaky robots lately?"
Clark frowns, shifting on the bed, eyeing him like--like an escaped mental patient. It's getting silly, sitting here on the floor with a gun in his lap, like there's an actual chance he's going to use it. Pushing against the wall, Lex ignores the way his head spins and forces himself straight, tucking the gun into his pocket. It's not safe, but then again, neither is this world.
"It's not on the news yet." Clark glances at the silent screen of the television. "I--it took a while to find you. I'm not sure--"
"What? You're here to *help*?" He's blaming Clark for this? Lex closes his eyes, pushing off the wall, finding the bed by touch. Clark won't hurt him. Even this Lex knows that. Shifting up the bed, Lex leans back against the headboard. "Why are you here?"
"I can't get into Belle Reve." The look on Clark's face is stark. "I've tried, Lex--I tried when I knew--when I found out--but I can't even walk the grounds. I swear--"
"I don't have time for this." How the hell is he going to find the information he needs? He can't take Clark Kent's apologies. He's not even sure he deserves them. "I--need information."
Clark nods, leg curling closer. The green eyes look very old, older than anyone Lex has ever seen. The hunched shoulders are different, too, the way the dark head bends, green eyes not quite able to meet his. All the thousand things that Clark lost with his adolescence, vivid in the slumped body. "I can do that. I can--" Clark stops, looking away. "I don't know--I can't ask you to trust me. But I'm not here to bring you back to Lionel."
Lex nods shortly. His body feels wire-fine, fragile, like a good wind could break him. There's an ancient duffle bag by the door, and Lex, for the first time, thinks he smells food. "What did you bring?" His stomach turns over at the thought, all attention on those bags. *Food*.
"What I thought--what you might need." Clark moves off the bed in hurried, clumsy motions that don't mesh with any of Lex's memories. Going on his knees, Clark unzips the bag, and for a second, Lex's hand gropes for the gun.
They're not even Kryptonite *bullets*, for God's sake.
Clark comes back to the bed, dumping the contents for Lex to look at. Clean clothes--they look like Clark's, actually, worn jeans and a t-shirt, a baseball cap, even underwear. A toothbrush and toothpaste. A bar of soap still in the box. Bottles of water. A bag from McDonalds. Lex's stomach rolls again. *Food*.
The last item gives him pause. Reaching out, Lex picks up the lead box, turning it between his fingers. Lifting the lid, he winces at the flash of green light, but is completely unprepared for the rage inside at the sight.
This Lex *know* this, knows it in ways that Lex himself does not.
Lex closes it, not looking at Clark, setting the box aside with carefully steady hands. The smell of McDonalds is like ambrosia and petite cut filet mignon all at once. His only hope is that he takes the time to chew.
"Why that?" After the fries. Has fast food always been this good?
"Eat slower," Clark says, looking worried. Big hands are folded in his lap, as non-threatening as six-something feet of alien man can be. "I wanted you to know I--I'm not here to hurt you."
"How'd you find out I was gone?"
Clark's eyes fix on the metal box for a second, then flicker up. "I heard you."
The last fry stops halfway to Lex's mouth. "You--"
"I can't come on the grounds. I can't get in the building. But I can--listen, sometimes." The stark look on Clark's face makes Lex look away. There's nothing he can think to say to that. "I had to move the guy whose car you took. He'd been found already by one of the orderlies. I thought you needed more time."
Lex looks up. "Did you kill them?"
"N-no." The green eyes go back down. "But they won't--be able to do anything. For a while."
Lex nods slowly. There are a lot of ways. Hell, Clark could have flown them to a deserted island for all Lex knows.
"You didn't kill your wife. Lionel--used that. After. Her disappearance. For a reason to keep you there."
Lex's fingers go numb on the hamburger; lettuce oozes over his skin, lubricated by secret sauce down to his wrist. He licks it away. Maybe he's not as hungry as he thought he was. "That, so far, was the only good thing I had to think about."
Clark's eyes, fixed on the bed, don't move. The awkwardness is becoming worse, and Lex isn't sure he can possibly deal with this along with everything else.
"Clark." Clark looks up, too fast, dark hair falling in his eyes. "I--don't have a good plan here." An inner stirring of suspicion surprises him, but it vanishes almost as soon as it appears, leaving Lex feeling strangely empty. The images from the other Lex's mind still have the power to make Lex shiver, but they're easy to push aside. Now, anyway.
"I--think I have something. I mean, if you can trust me." Clark hesitates. There's nothing familiar in that--even adolescent Clark wasn't like this. "I--your dad's expecting you to come straight to LuthorCorp to kill him. You--that's kind of been your thing." Lex isn't surprised. "You--I thought I'd take you to Smallville."
"Smallville?" What does it say, that no matter the world, it always comes back to the beginning? "You're kidding."
"You--your dad won't think you'd go there. Not with me. Not with anyone. But--but especially not with me." A dark flush extends through Clark's cheeks. Against the pale skin, it looks like sunburn. "I--you don't have any reason to trust me--"
"But I don't have anyone else that's even tried." Taking a last bite of the Big Mac, Lex sets it aside, wiping his hands on a napkin. The other Lex isn't even making a pretense of weighing in on the situation, and the truth is, there's nothing Lex can think of as a better alternative. He's got to get out of here, and Clark may be his only option.
"Right. Um. I'll--get rid of the car." Clark stumbles to his feet, backing toward the door. "You can get dressed. And stuff." Get cleaned up. Stop stinking of your own sweat and the hospital from hell. Put on clean clothes. Lex nods to all the points that Clark probably isn't even trying to make, watching him go out the door, closing it quietly behind him.
"It would help if I knew whether I should trust him," Lex says, then sighs. Talking out loud. It's a bad habit. But it's Clark And Lex knows deceit and knows how Clark lies, and Clark wasn't lying. He has to believe that, or he'll go as crazy as Lex, and God alone knows what the AI will manage to drag out of this world.
Shower. At least that will be something he can do.
*****
The other times he's flown with Clark Kent--or Superman, rather--it hadn't been pleasant. Held by the scruff of the neck like a disobedient puppy, handcuffed, or unconscious. None of them made him any more fond of flying than he'd been before.
Clark's gentle, though--careful of windburn and passing debris, which the sky is surprisingly full of. Almost afraid, and Lex wonders at the way Clark touches him, like he's not sure how, like he never touches anyone, like he's never touched anyone before. Too rough sometimes, in that way that's all about awkwardness. It's unreal, and it hurts Lex, though he's not sure why.
The Kent farm is like he remembers from his days in Smallville, though the paint's more worn and the porch seems to have sunk into the ground more than he thinks it used to be. Clark lands them on the front porch, letting go of Lex with quick but reluctant fingers, and it's strange, still, and for some reason, it makes Lex want to stop him.
A stupid instinct. He can't even be sure why it's there.
Martha Kent, greyer, but still rolling bread on the counter, like it's any day in the world. Lex feels himself freeze in place, but Clark somehow pushes him without touching, and the blue eyes find Lex as the screen door opens, hands freezing on the dough.
The *stupidest*, most inane things occur to him. He's wearing Clark's too-big t-shirt and jeans, rolled up above the loafers he'd stolen from the motorist he'd accosted. There's no reason, but it feels wrong.
"Lex."
"Mrs. Kent."
The last time he'd seen her--in his world, not the other--she'd been grayer, strong hands clasped as she watched Clark marry Lois. Nothing was left of Smallville but burnt, blackened fields and crumbling stone. Not even trees had survived the thing's attack.
Attack of what, Lex still doesn't know.
Brushing her hands off on her apron, her eyes dart to Clark. Lex wonders what he told his mother. If he told her anything at all.
"I set up your old room," Martha says to Clark, voice too high. Lex watches the rhythmic twisting of her apron, the tension in her knuckles, the tight mouth that bespeaks fear. Of him or of Lionel, he's not sure. Maybe both. "You can--take Lex up."
Yes, wouldn't want the dangerous psychopath in the kitchen. Lex's eyes narrow, but it's not like it's not *true*. Taking a breath, Lex walks to the stairs. Behind him, he can hear Clark's footsteps slowing. If they want to have a mother/son bonding moment about Luthors and their evils, Lex thinks the nostalgia should be indulged in. It's not like he doesn't know where Clark's room is.
Walking into the past is never easy, Lex thinks, freezing at the door. It's been over a decade since he last saw this small room, but it's like nothing's changed. Cleaner than he remembers, the smells of lemon Pledge and floor wax, Windex, strong enough to make him want to sneeze. Immaculate bed, definitely not a Clark thing. But his things haven't moved, like they're waiting for the boy to come home.
Setting the laptop on the bed, Lex turns in a slow circle. The closet's empty, bare of a boy's clothes and shoes. He wonders how Martha feels when she comes in to clean.
"Lex?"
Lex tears his gaze back to Clark, standing awkwardly at the door, like he's waiting for an invitation. Too polite a boy, Lex thinks, almost smiling, but the expression dies before it reaches his lips. "How long?"
"There's nothing on the news yet." Unsettling. Though maybe understandable--Dad might not want anyone looking too closely at Belle Reve, even if it's only as far as looking for a missing son. His own resources should suffice. The question he should be asking is, is Clark one of those resources?
There's no reason to hide him. If Clark really worked for Dad, Lex would be hog-tied at his feet already. Don't borrow trouble. Or more appropriately, worry about it at a more opportune moment. Sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed, Lex takes a deep breath. "She doesn't want me here."
"She doesn't want me here either." Clark's crooked grin vanishes as he turns away, closing the door like he's shutting out the rest of the world. "Since Dad died, she--likes her privacy." He leans back, eyes on the floor. More than anything Lex wants to ask him about--Christ, so much. But he's on the clock and a Smallville farm isn't going to do him any good at all. "Lex--"
"I have questions." Clark seems to shrivel a little, nodding. "There's a--thing. A mechanical and kryptonite--"
"Xerxes."
Lex blinks. "You call it Xerxes?"
Clark's mouth turns down. "Your father calls it Xerxes. His pet."
Pet? "I'm not sure we're talking about the same--"
"It's an organic machine--built of robotic and organic tissue." Clark's eyes flicker to the window. "I--I don't know who made it, but your dad acquired it a few years ago. When it was--weaker. He's had problems controlling it, outside specific missions he assigns it." Clark gives him a curious look, probably wondering why the hell Lex would be interested in that, considering all the far more pressing matters of freedom and upcoming assassination. "How do you know--"
"I heard something." Christ. He shouldn't be offended that Lionel had managed what he couldn't, but he is. Fuck. Also, apparently, it *wasn't* destroyed here, double fuck. On the other hand, this is Dad. He has contingency plans. His contingency plans have contingency plans. So, thought; get those.
Clark's still watching him, eyes narrowed. "Why--"
"It's nothing." For a few seconds, Lex wonders what Clark would have done with the other Lex, if that's who he had found. There are a lot of nasty possibilities, not the least of which is that even Clark, alien power though he may be, might not be up to handling a clinically insane Lex Luthor, whose grasp on reality included Bach music on nonstop repeat.
It's on the tip of his tongue to mention Ryan. Even now, he's not that cruel.
"I-what are you planning?" Clark looks innocent enough against the wall, but Lex's instincts don't like the question, and while inner Lex isn't voting, he's pretty sure he doesn't like it either.
And what *would* Lex be planning? It's almost a no-brainer. And exactly what will get him into LuthorCorp. "Kill Dad. Any objections?"
There always, always are.
Clark opens his mouth, then shuts it tight, an almost audible clatter of teeth. They stare at each other, conversation a distant memory. Inner Lex isn't weighing in, and Clark Kent has never been the best conversationalist on earth.
"Do you need anything?" Clark says awkwardly, shifting against the door. Somewhere downstairs, Lex thinks, Martha Kent is doing dishes with a criminally insane Luthor above her, chatting with her son.
Lex finds himself looking away. "It's upsetting your mother that I'm here."
"Mom's been different since Dad died. She's--" Clark stops, looking helplessly at the floor. The guilt's thick enough to cut, and there's no one in the room who's qualified to give absolution to anyone. He wonders if Clark would feel better if he knew Lex's crimes in a different world.
Provided that Clark could ever believe him.
"Are you hungry?" Clark says awkwardly, hand on the doorknob. Don't look like that, Lex almost says. No one likes their past coming back to chat with them. I met you a hundred times and it never stopped hurting. You get used to it. You have to. "I can--can see--"
"Yeah." Christ, anything to get him out of the room. Lex watches him leave, and with the door closed, Lex lets himself collapse backward on the bed. His body isn't impressed with all the lack of drugs and the sudden influx of food, and it occurs to him, only now, he has no idea how long he was under. Rolling, he looks at the clock, but eight at night doesn't give him much to work with. It was near dawn when he left the hospital, he thinks--there are faint images of near-dawn greyness on the horizon, and it had definitely been bare pink when he'd taken the car.
So, give or take, fourteen hours since he arrived. He must have been hallucinating for *hours*. Christ. Closing his eyes doesn't seem like a viable idea. He has no idea what will be waiting for him.
"...think I don't know that?" Martha's voice, faint. Lex rolls over, grabbing for a pillow. Kent family angst isn't in the plan. Inner Lex is enough. Inner Lex is more than enough.
"...know it would be this." Clark, softer. Fuck. *Fuck*. "I can't do it again, Mom. I can't. I won't."
"You're my son." Her voice almost breaks, and Lex pushes the pillow into his ears, feeling absurdly six. Very mature of you, Lionel says dryly. Melodramatic like your mother.
And insane, like my father, Lex murmurs back. They don't lock you up for being a sociopath, but if ever there was anyone who deserved the name.... Why did you do that to me? It wasn't about being unsatisfactory, was it? It was about not being you.
"...what are you going to do? If he finds out--"
"I don't care anymore!" Clark's voice breaks through feathers and mental blocks--it probably breaks some sonic barriers, too. "Everything went wrong. This isn't what you and Dad wanted."
"No."
Lex murmurs Latin into the pillow. Planning to kill him or planning to help, he's not sure which and isn't sure he really cares. I don't need this, he tells the blanket. I need information and I need to get out of here. Everything else can go to hell, Clark's angst and all. Just leave me the fuck out of it.
*****
"You don't want him dead?"
Lex recognizes the room with its mirror-wall. Bare, sterile white all around. Humans don't do well with this kind of blankness. Neither, apparently, does Lex. "I'm getting tired of this."
Rolled eyes. Lex doesn't need to see them to know it's happening. "Sorry my life couldn't live up to your expectations. It's not a metaphor. I just thought I'd remind you that you might have been with them a few weeks, but I've been with them for a hell of a lot longer."
"That's obvious." The mirror's a window now, and he can see cheerful psychiatrists making frantic notes. Watching the monkey in the cage. "Any reason I'm here?"
"I'm guessing--and this is just speculation--that coming out of a drug cocktail is just about as much fun as living in one." A room shouldn't feel so full with only one person in it. He may not be able to see him, but damned if he can't feel him. "I can't do this on my own."
Lex spun around. "I'm not here to help you do whatever it is--"
"Kill Lionel."
Lex breathes out. "--you want. I'm here for what I need. Information."
"You can ask him while I'm cutting his throat."
Christ. "No."
Here, grins are feelings, sharp as razors. "I can make this very, very difficult for you. This is my body, my mind. And trust me on this, there are places in it that you really don't want to go."
The other ones hadn't been like this. But then again, the others had been very sane. This one had been constructing his own inner reality for years. Lex turns slowly, watching the psychiatrists again. "How much of this is real?"
"Most of it." The room chills suddenly, and Lex wraps his arms around himself, shivering. "I--don't remember everything. Sometimes, I don't remember anything at all. But I always remember this. This room, this place, this time. I remember him watching me through the glass, even though I couldn't see him. And I remember--" The voice trails off. "You--I can see it, you know. You."
Lex tears his eyes away from the glass. "Me?"
"You. Your--memories."
Shit. Shit. "The AI--"
"Don't tarry," the voice mocks. "The longer you're there, the more you will be affected by the one who is already in that skin. His body will be yours, and with time, his mind as well." Pause. "A warning?"
Fucking *hell*.
"You're really coherent for clinical insanity." The room seems smaller, suddenly.
"I have you to thank for that." The walls shiver. "It's hard to--think. Even now. With you here." Another sharp grin. "It'd be so much easier if you stayed."
If the room was freezing before, it reaches Arctic temperatures now and getting smaller by the second. "No."
"Maybe."
Christ. The AI hadn't warned him what to do if the one he was in wanted him to stay around. "I'm *not* you." His teeth want to chatter. He hadn't known that fear tasted like frozen metal. "No. It wouldn't--you can't--"
"I--think I could. I've been alone a long time."
Dreams have a trigger--you can break yourself out of them. Lex wishes he'd read the New Age crap his secretary was always raving about. Dear God, he could use some help here. Anything. "I'm not you. If I'm here, you stop being you. And you--you can get out of this. Out of this place without me."
"I'm always here." The room swins a little, solidifying back into bent lines and impossible corners.
"Without what they've been dosing you with, it--it'll be better." He doesn't know that. Years. Christ, over a third of his life in this. Almost half. Lex can't imagine it. "Clark can help you."
"He never helps anyone anymore."
That's not something that Lex wants to think about right now. "How would you know? You haven't been in the world for years." No answer, but the room doesn't shrink anymore. Lex wonders if that means anything "I need out of here. There's--"
"I don't control how long the seizures last." There's a smirk in there somewhere--Lex knows how his face looks when he sounds like that--but the bite of uncertainty is worrying. On one hand, great, it's not like this is deliberate. On the other hand, fuck, it's not deliberate. He can't negotiate his way out of this.
And the walls are close enough to touch with his fingertips if he spreads out both arms. The busy psychiatrists are like bees, swarming here and there. "You were in here a lot?"
"Sometimes."
Lex closes his eyes. "I--don't remember." The things that come with the dreams don't count. Lex turns to the glass, reaching out with wondering fingers to touch. Just cold glass. Seeing in but not seeing out. "For a long time, I didn't remember anything about here. No one told me anything.
"Your--in your place, Clark came?"
Lex swallows. A borrowed memory from another man. And it all fits, like he was supposed to know all along. "Surprisingly, yes."
"He never came here." The wistfulness is almost like a physical ache.
"He--wanted to." Lex remembers the look on Clark's face. "He's never stopped wanting to."
*****
He can feel Clark before he opens his eyes. The hand pressing against his forehead in slow strokes, the quick, almost silent breathing, the tension that radiates like heat from his body.
I'm not who you think I am, Lex wants to tell him, because God, whatever Clark will have to deal with once he's gone, it won't be this. He's not sure Clark can handle it. Hell, maybe he shouldn't even *have* to.
"Lex?" Right. Superpowers. Clark probably knew when he woke up. "You're--back?"
Lex keeps his eyes closed. "Did I go somewhere?" He's aware of aching muscles and a strange taste, like blood. He tests his lip with his tongue and feels the ragged mark of teeth. "I--feel--"
"You were--on the floor when I came in." Lex thinks he should pull away from the touch, but he can't make himself. It's Clark, and this body hasn't been touched like this in years. "I didn't know--your heart--"
Lex raises a hand to his chest, feeling the slightly too-fast rhythm. Panic, maybe? "Just the drugs working out of my system." He's cold, and it's not the room. *Years*. Locked in there, in that place, in his own mind. Clark's so close, warm and alive, no latex gloves or sheets, restraints or the thick cloth of the straightjacket. He's turning into Clark without meaning to.
He almost expects Clark to pull away, but the hand on his forehead slips down, a slow curve around the back of his neck, curling over his shoulder, down his back. Warm everywhere Clark touches, shifting closer on the small mattress. Soft hair brushes Lex's face.
"Lex." He's never heard his name said like that before. Never felt someone touch him like this--neither of them have. Slow, careful strokes, pushing warmth into his body by the inch. Clark's forehead presses against his, his other hand rubbing slowly larger circles on Lex's hip. It's so warm. So much more real than anything in years.
All these tendrils of that other Lex, reaching out, curious and wondering. There was an entire life before Belle Reve, but it stopped feeling real a decade ago. Stopped being real, too. "I--"
"I was there," Clark says, voice thick. The stroking's rougher, like Clark needs to feel him, convince himself as much as Lex that this is happening. "I--I thought--he let me visit, at first. I thought--I really thought he cared about--about what had happened to you. I didn't know--I didn't until later--" Clark breaks off with an indrawn breath. "I saw what he was doing to you. To all of you. He wanted me to know--"
"Clark--" He's not the one who should hear this. Trying to move is pointless--it feels too good. He needs it like air.
"I--I was a kid, I didn't know what he was doing. I'm sorry."
Lex closes his eyes. "Do you work for him?"
"Not--he has jobs. For me. That no one else can do." Clark's voice cracks. "Just sometimes. When he can't--when he's desperate." Something terrible in that voice; Clark says more with that than the words. "He said it was my choice. But you and Mom and Dad and Smallville were--things could happen he couldn't control, and if I helped, he'd make sure--"
Yes.
"He wouldn't--he'd make sure they were safe, you were safe--"
Yes.
"He asked for things I could do, that--they didn't hurt people. He said--the things wouldn't hurt anyone."
Not in any way Clark would see, when he was younger. Lex feels his hands shake, fingers clenching in the soft flannel of Clark's shirt.
"He said you would get better." Clark's voice twists, and yes, Lex knows Lionel, knows all the ways he can make the impossible reasonable, the ridiculous normal. How easily he could make a Smallville boy believe anything at all. "He said--"
"It's okay."
"It's never been okay."
*"He never helps anyone anymore."*
"Superman," Lex whispers. He feels Clark draw back, looks up into puzzled eyes, the bewildered curve of his mouth. Drying tear tracks beneath the greenest eyes in the world. No recognition at all.
"What?"
Lex closes his eyes again. No Superman. Just this broken man. "Nothing. I just need to rest."
Clark's hands shiver, like they might pull away. "Do you--do you want me to leave?"
Lex drops his full weight on the arm beneath his head. "No."
*****
So this is the world if his father had been left to pillage at will. On balance, Lex did a better job, but not by much. The fields of Smallville don't look too good, and from the quality of the soil, they won't get any better. Lex knows the land, in that way that his father would never understand. Smallville is home, rejected or not.
Holding the cup of coffee Martha gave him, Lex stands on the porch and stares at the endless, flat greyed earth. "You know, for some reason, I thought I was the worst I could be. Turns out I was wrong."
Talking to himself; sign of insanity. Goes with the gig, he supposes, taking a slow sip. Beneath his skin, the other Lex surfaces briefly. *Coffee*. His father didn't just lock him up, drug him into submission, and use him as a guinea pig. He denied him *coffee*.
"You--seem better, Lex."
Martha's voice is too close, and where the hell are his instincts, anyway? Probably reveling in the best coffee in creation and some unproductive self-pity. There are worse things, Lex tells himself. Clark could be in Armani trying to kill you. Or fuck you. Perhaps both. Or you could be delivering another Kent spawn while keeping your virtue unwillingly intact. Or you could be married to *Helen*.
"The lack of a forced drug regimen does tend to have that effect." Lex tries not to be bitter. One universe over, Clark came back for him. Whatever went so wrong in this one, it started here, somehow. "Did you tell him to leave me in there?"
"We--were afraid." Martha's voice is steady. "Of what you saw. We didn't know what your father would do to you."
"Or what turning away would do to Clark." Taking a sip of coffee, Lex turns around. He wishes, suddenly and ridiculously, that he liked her again. That when he looked at her, she didn't hurt him. He'd do anything, anything at all, to be the twenty-something in Smallville who thought she was everything that was good, everything that was a mother.
The problem with pedestals is that the fall always maims, and not just the person on the pedestal.
"We couldn't have guessed this." Her arms are wrapped tight around her, hard lines around her soft mouth. So much older than he remembers, with a lifetime of bitter guilt. He's not sure he can blame her for resenting his presence in her home. He's a reminder of everything that wasn't supposed to be.
"What does he do for Lionel?"
Martha blinks, eyes flickering to fix somewhere above his shoulder. "He doesn't kill for him. And Clark isn't going to give you back to him."
"But you wish he would."
She doesn't have to say it. Her son against Lex's life; it's not a choice. It's a fact of life. "Are you going to call and tell him? While Clark's gone?"
Temptation isn't temptation unless you want it badly, and she wants to. Buy her son's safety and her own fragile peace. He thinks he might even understand. Clark's her child, and she'd do anything to protect him.
"No." She hesitates, leaning into the open doorway of the kitchen. "No."
"Not even for your son? To save Clark from any more special jobs from my father?"
"No."
"Why? You did it before. Protected him with my life. Why not this time?"
The tightness hardens into something unfamiliar, and he wonders if he pushed too far; he's only the partially wronged party in this, but then again, that other Lex can't speak in his own defense. Curl up in bed and stay catatonic for a while, maybe.
"It was wrong then, and it would be wrong now."
Lex almost laughs. *Wrong*? "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"
"Everything." The blue eyes seem to pick up all the light from the kitchen. "We said--we always said that no one would die to protect Clark's secrets. We taught our son that. And we betrayed it, and him. Do you think there's ever a day I don't wake up regretting it? We taught Clark to be afraid--of himself, of other people, of the world. And we sentenced you to--that."
Fragile hands twist in her apron. "We told him not to save you. To protect him. And we taught him to hide. To protect himself. And that's what we made him, and that's all he knows how to do. I watched my son grow up and grow away and let himself be used by Lionel Luthor, because we taught him that. And he never forgave himself."
Sixteen years old. No one should make a life decision at sixteen. "He--he was just a child."
"Yes. He was. He trusted us to teach him right from wrong, and we taught him wrong."
It takes so little to cross over to the wrong side. A second, a minute, a single changed moment.
"Mom? Lex?"
Lex turns, almost spilling the coffee, as Clark materializes at the foot of the porch steps. He looks exhausted, but there's a hum around him that wasn't there before. That glint of immortality, of Superman, even in flannel and jeans. Like waking up after years of sleeping, or years of hiding. "Clark."
Clark licks his lips, eyes flickering to his mother before focusing on Lex. "I know how to get into LuthorCorp."
*****
Lex uses the cellphone to make the connection. Amazingly, it still works. Clark must have put the motorist and the orderly somewhere very far away from civilization and the police.
"What are you doing?" Clark asks curiously from the desk beside the bed. He cranes his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the laptop's screen.
"A few things." Dad is Dad, and he's predictable as hell. It took years to figure it out, and longer until Lex understood the pattern, but it's like breathing now. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different response. Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting that nothing will ever change.
Of course, Lionel couldn't have anticipated a sane son, either.
"Those are LuthorCorp's accounts."
"Only the hidden ones." Of all godforsaken places, the Caymans. Switzerland. Bulgaria? Lex shakes his head. So clichéd. "You know that LuthorCorp's assets are very widely distributed, right? He keeps the special project budgets here." Lex makes a few adjustments, rubbing absently at the back of his neck. "Here, for example, is where he funds Belle Reve, while it masquerades as an actual hospital." Lex thinks of the women around the pile of dolls, almost opening his mouth to ask about Lana, then shuts it tight. If that's true, he doesn't want to know. If Clark doesn't know, this would be the worst possible time to tell him. "He doesn't have the liquid capital to possibly back it up if, say, this account vanishes." Which it does, in the blink of a keyboard. Lex stretches both legs, fighting the cramps. It's becoming worse, he thinks clinically. Withdrawal can do that. "Or this one." There are eight, but those are only the ones Lex knows about. "Getting into LuthorCorp will be easy. It's going to be getting out that's hard." For you. Not for me, or for this Lex. I don't think he cares whether he comes out or not. Trying to kill Lionel Luthor is a very rarefied kind of suicide.
There's satisfaction in killing accounts across the board. The damage won't even be noticed until the next time whoever runs Belle Reve tries to use a credit card or buy a single straightjacket.
"You want to destroy him?"
Some things are better than death. He hopes the other Lex feels the same way. "Burn him right into the ground." His fingers are shaking on the keys. Rubbing his eyes, Lex focuses his eyes on the clock. Past midnight. "Does he expect you to check in or--"
"No!" Clark's hands tighten on the desk. "He doesn't--not unless he wants something." Clark runs a hand through his hair, green eyes fixed on Lex's hands. "You--you're--"
"Just withdrawal." The other Lex will be a mess when this is over, but at least he'll be a clean and sober mess. Lex pushes the laptop aside, breaking the connection. He can do more later, just for the hell of it, but what he's done will start it. And like all businesses, the very smell of blood in the air will bring every corporate raider and personal enemy of Lionel Luthor circling. It should be enough. "I'll--be fine."
"You don't sound fine." A flash, and Clark's behind him. There's no way to get used to that happening, but the strong hands on his shoulders make that just fine. Hard thumbs rubbing into the rhythmically tightening muscles of neck and shoulders. Soothing. Lex lets the laptop slide neatly to the floor and leans back into it.
Everything changes, the AI says, somewhere in the back of his head. The thing is, Lex *knows* that. It changes, and it does it when you're not looking, and sometimes, it does it at the worst possible moment.
It changes, with slowing hands that stop on his shoulder, and Lex is aware of Clark's warm breath on the back of his head, the stillness that's about decisions and how're they made. They can be a second in the making and a lifetime in the doing.
They can be this, the lightest brush of lips against the back of his neck.
"Clark." He's hard, in that sudden, hideously embarrassing way that he hasn't been since adolescence. This body's been going without a long damn time, and this is the worst time to figure it out. He opens his mouth to tell Clark to stop. "Touch me."
No. Oh God, no. That's not him.
The big hands slide down his arms, stopping at his elbows, lingering there. Another light kiss, chaste as a child, but the erection pushing into Lex's back isn't chaste at all. Fuck. And *fuck*. And that other Lex is peering out, curious, trying to connect this with needles and rough hands, reaching for Lex's memories to give it context. "Clark."
Clark's voice is rough. "Don't tell me to stop."
He wants to--dear God, he wants to, but the words won't form. Lex turns his head instinctively at the soft brush of hair, and that's a mistake. Clark kisses him, slow and light and gentle, like he's handling glass that will shatter on a breath.
Lex could break from this. Clark tastes like coffee and pie from dinner, and hope, electric on his tongue Lex finds himself turning reaching to touch, high cheekbones and silky hair.
A careless surge of other-Lex, and everything happens too fast--stretched out on Clark's childhood bed, Clark beside him, touching with those flickering fingers that feel like warmth and comfort both. In some ways, this is closer for the other Lex--wanting Clark so desperately, wanting to touch like this, and it moves him to dig his fingers in, wrap a leg around Clark's thigh and grind down. No. No, such a bad idea.
Such a fucking *bad* idea.
"Clark."
"I won't hurt you." Clark lifts his head, lips red and swollen, eyes wet and dark. "Let me. I just want to--I need to--"
Let me, the other Lex whispers. I want. I *need*.
Clark kisses like a kid, or a very desperate man, a man trapped by a choice he was too young to make too many years ago to count. He's Clark, and there's never been a time Lex didn't want him, even when he didn't.
This is new. These careful, tentative touches. Making out like kids on a plaid bedspread in a Smallville farm--how could it be more clichéd? Lex had dreamed about this once upon a time, and this Lex did, too. Warm and soothing and so fucking slow, all with clothes on and hands above the waist. But starving for all that, so deliberate, so careful. Christ, when is the last time Clark touched someone? Hell, Lex can't remember the last time *he* did, that it meant something, that it was more than anasthesia or rush. When it was--
Safe, Lex hears murmured in his head. It's safe.
It comes to a slow stop, Clark shifting beside him, hand touching his own mouth, like he's not sure it's still there. "Sorry," he breathes, like he's not sorry at all. "It's just--"
"Been awhile." And he's hard, and suddenly exhausted from this too long, too complicated day, and this is a warm bed that has Clark in it. Clark breathes out beside him, curling up with him in the narrow space, like he has no intention of moving. Lex really doesn't want him to.
"I can get us into LuthorCorp," Clark says slowly, fingers moving on Lex's arm like he's imagining skin, not worn cotton. "But I don't know how to--I mean, the computers. How to access the information you want. And you--"
"Don't worry about that part." Lex lets his eyes fall shut. "I'll take care of it. You--should rest."
"I don't sleep." That brings Lex's eyes wide open. "But you should." The big hand starts stroking again, and Lex's body is falling under without even meaning to. "Don't worry," Clark says against his skin, and Lex thinks he says something else, voice low and rough, matching the possessive touch of that hand. A twinge almost jerks him upright, but Clark's voice is wordlessly soothing in his ear, and his head feels like it's stuffed with cotton. He goes to sleep feeling Clark, big and warm against him, feeling that gentle hand.
It feels very safe.
*****
There's a hypodermic needle discarded on the floor; Lex feels it in his muscles, the sluggish response of arms and legs, the fog in his head. The case is on the bedside table, the other needles methodically broken, the vials gone.
Will is all he's got, and it drags him downstairs, rail clenched between his fingers, everything blurred into incomprehensibility. But he knows this house like he knows the back of his hand. Stumbling into the kitchen, hands catch him, small and rough. He's too weak to knock her aside, falling into the chair she pushes him into.
"Where is he?"
"LuthorCorp."
Trust is like cobwebs when the habit's not in place, but even now, Lex's mind can't wrap around a why.
A cup's pushed in front of him. "He left this morning."
Lex tries to reach it with shaking, uncertain hands, splashing himself with burning heat. Red blossoms across pale skin, and he can't help but stare at his skeletal fingers. It hurts to think about what he must look like to Martha Kent.
"Why?"
His eyes focus on Martha abruptly--greyed hair and tight mouth, holding her own cup like a talisman. "He said he'd take care of it." Slowly, she takes a sip, faded blue eyes fixing on the checkered tablecloth. "Drink your coffee, Lex. He'll be back soon."
Doing *what*? He can't focus and Christ, his body wants nothing but stillness; mind, too. The cup overturns, and Lex is barely able to move enough for the rush of heat to miss his lap. One bare foot burns, but he doesn't care. "Why?"
"Lex." She's so pale. An immaculate kitchen on a sunny morning--afternoon--*afternoon*--and he's freezing and not sure why. "Don't."
He stares at her, at the sun behind her back. Afternoon. It's been over twenty four hours. It's closing on forty, maybe--his mind won't wrap around temporal math when he can't even get a thought straight in his head.
And he's so *cold*.
"What is he going to do?" He knows. He has to know. It's somewhere in his head, in the touch of those big hands, in the way Clark looked at him, murmuring against his skin. He knows it, but he can't *find* it. Clark left, came back, said I can get into LuthorCorp. *I can get into LuthorCorp.*
"He didn't go to tell my father." This Lex knows. Martha gives him an unreadable look over the rim of her cup. "He went--to--"
"Lex." Her face stops him--a turn of her head to the door, highlighting pale skin and glimmering eyes. "There's nothing you can do."
"I can do anything." His head's trying to float away and he has no muscle control at all. It's so ridiculous it's a wonder that she's not laughing at him. "I've got to--I need to get to Metropolis." The secret to Xerxes is there. And so is Clark.
*Don't worry*. Leaning over him, reaching for that fucking case he'd just left lying around. *Don't worry, Lex.* Breath against his skin. As achingly gentle as Clark always is. *Don't worry.* Pulling out the needle, looking at the vials while he soothed Lex to sleep. Finding the one he needed. *I'll take care of you.*
*No one should have to kill their own father.*
Lex stumbles to his feet. The room twirls nauseatingly, and he's two seconds from vomiting his last meal all over the floor. "He's going to try to kill my father."
Martha doesn't look at him. He wonders if she's even breathing.
"He's going to go into my father's office and try to kill him."
Even to himself, it sounds insane. As insane as a world where Clark isn't Superman and Lex lived almost twenty years in a nightmare that never ended. As insane as watching Clark die when nothing could kill him. Lex fumbles for the edge of the table when his legs want to dissolve. "I have to get to Metropolis."
"Lex, it's been hours. If--"
"I have to." Clark is young and stupid and doesn't think, or maybe he's too old, thought too much, for far too long. "The car--" Shit, left that a long time ago. "Your car. Truck. We have to."
"Lex-"
"We *have* to." Redemption can't be found in blood. Lex knows that. Christ, does he know that. It's just another way to fall. "You have to help me. It's *Clark*."
She nods, and he thinks she must have said this today. This morning. When Clark came downstairs into this bright kitchen and told his mother that he planned murder and suicide all at once. Maybe they yelled, and she cried, and maybe Clark left in a rush of anger and old guilt, but he thinks that maybe they didn't. Maybe she took coffee, like this, and lifted her head while her son kissed her cheek, and he quietly walked out the door.
"You let him leave."
Like anyone could stop Clark. Like anyone can stand before that and hope to win. The blue eyes are very bright when they look into his. "I took away his choice once. I couldn't do that to him again."
"Take me to Metropolis." There's no way he can drive himself. He waits while she puts down the cup, standing up to look at him. "Mrs. Kent." He hears the pleading in his voice. His time's running out, and so is Clark's. It's been hours, and the Lex in his skin can't do what he has to. "Mrs. Kent. Please."
Her eyes flicker away to fix on the tile at their feet, and Lex holds his breath as he waits.
*****
Two men are dead before they see him leave the car. Shooting someone in downtown Metropolis in broad daylight isn't the way to get away with cold blooded murder, but then, Lex doesn't plan to be caught. Or to get away with it.
He thinks he hears Martha's soft gasp, but he's too far from the car to know for sure.
His body's still sluggish, but he knows LuthorCorp like the most unforgettable of dreams. He was raised in its walls, has always been here, even when he hadn't been. Belle Reve's nightmares were sometimes here, too. Locked up inside cold steel and concrete, a thousand feet above the earth.
The other Lex, too, wants. Carried along in bright, happy rage, sanity like an illusion. They look at him in the foyer of the building like a ghost, and security doesn't stand a chance.
Dad, Lex thinks, looking at the elevator. It's a deathtrap, but right now, so are the stairs. The other Lex is murmuring, we can't run up forty flights of stairs.
Lex takes a second to think that if they'd gone with his plan, this is not how this would be going.
"Get out," he says, and they all stare at him like he's crazy, and he is. Who lets the hostages go to tell? But then they move, a mass running to the door, and Lex goes to the elevator, pushing in the private code he knows like his own name.
Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and thinking that the same results will occur. Every time. Right down to security combinations and bombproof elevators. Surely someone's called up to warn them.
He gets off on the nineteenth floor. Stair access is private, separate from the emergency stairs that run the rest of the building. Lex *knows* this place. He grew up in it and razed it once, rebuilt it and lived in it, across the street from the Daily Planet. He *knows* it, like he knows himself. Dad is--
Thinks he's as immortal as he is, the other Lex murmurs gleefully. He thinks--
"No one's immortal," Lex tells the air, blowing the doorknob off the stairwell. Alarms go off everywhere, even if Lex can't hear them.
He'll be waiting. He's waiting for us. He thinks he can win.
"Clark," Lex says to himself. "He has Clark." It's been too long. Lionel has Clark, maybe the way he always wanted, the way he never dared before. Clark has nothing to lose, now, and Lionel has nothing to risk.
He won't kill us. He needs us. The voice bleeds satisfaction. He needs what we are.
"I know."
*****
Reality is cracking like an egg around them. Him.
He lives in this, Lex thinks, and it's not like the other times. Dragged into the depths of that mind is one thing, but seeing the world through the fractured glass is so fucking *different*. The stairs seem to twist around and open below him like some modern version of Dante's hell. He has to stop and grab for the sleek rail to convince himself it's real.
Too much absorption of the other Lex. He can feel it, the grooves being made in his mind. Not taking over. *Merging*.
"Stop it," he whispers, staring at the wall until it solidifies into something approaching normality. A woman passes him on the stairs, too-short hospital pajamas stained with blood, a tiny, broken doll in one hand, sliding through him like he's not there. His hand tightens on the rail. "*Stop it*."
I'm not doing anything. It's like a part of his thoughts, and he can barely distinguish between the two. Christ. No. No, no, no.
"Get. Back." He's not sure who he's talking to. Staring at the stairs winding up, he forces them into rational, straight metal and concrete lines. He's soaked in sweat, and he can feel the confusion of that other Lex, but the world slowly tries to reshape itself. Not enough--the walls quiver and he can hear the piano play in the background. He has to stare at his own fingers to convince himself that he's not playing himself.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Lex focuses on his own breathing, the sounds of his feet on the stairs, the thump of his heart. Tangible things. Another flight of stairs. His legs burn and his breath is coming too fast. This body's not used to this level of exercise.
The mind isn't either. Reality splinters at the edges, and Lex sees--things. Things that closing his eyes don't erase, ghost-visions just flickering on the edge of true sight. "I can't do this if you--"
I'm not *doing* anything.
Another flight, and his chest aches from the strain. One more up, stairs spiraling up to brilliant light that's not real, not real *this is not real*--
When his hand closes over the cold metal of the doorknob, he almost cries. "Just a few more minutes." It's so close to time, and he has to get up here, Lionel's computer and Lionel's blood--
"No. The information. And Clark. That's it. You carry out vendettas on your own fucking time."
This is my time.
The surge pushes him into cold metal, moving the body, making him a passenger, and he watches as his fingers try one code, then another.
"Lockdown," Lex whispers.
His gun raising and aiming, and this Lex never lost his eye or his aim. The pad's a smoking ruin and the door opens on a pull.
Lex emerges into a silent hall. His mind calls up a map of the building, and he turns left, pushing to regain a little control. Just a little. Enough to feel the thump of his feet on the floor, feel the gun still in his hand.
Stop it.
"I need to know how he controls Xerxes," Lex grinds out. "We need to get Clark out. This isn't his fight. It should never have been his fight."
The other Lex is iffy on moral and ethical greys, and he fades for a few blessed seconds, enough for Lex to be grounded in too bright lights. The big, wide reception area, the elevator in the corner, the empty desk where Lionel's assistant is usually stationed. All echoingly silent.
He might have got away.
The rage that follows the thought makes him stagger, almost dropping the gun.
"Not Dad." Lex almost grins. "He never backs down and he never gives up. He'll never admit we're a threat."
Every instinct wants to slam inside--it's not like he has the power of subtlety right now. Dad knows he's here. Dad's *waiting*, and somewhere in here, Clark could be dying and the information on Xerxes is waiting, and Lionel is--is *there*.
You don't understand. The other Lex presses into him, flashing things that Lex can barely understand, images that whip by like dreams. You don't know what he's done. He poisons everything he touches.
"So do I." Somehow, time hasn't erased the power of that, or the pain. "We're no different. If you'd been out, you'd be him, and there would be a blasted world and Superman would be dead. It wouldn't be *better*. We didn't do *better*. We just did it differently."
Other Lex is silent, and it's like being alone in his head, the room condensing, coming together in straight, rational lines, resolving into calm, neutral colors and solid shapes. Flat carpet under his feet. His father beyond those doors.
There's nothing *worse* here, not really. Dad got the power over Superman that Lex always wanted. There's no destruction by meteor monster because Dad figured out how to control it. He runs his business and has all the power Lex ever wanted.
Maybe he'll run for president, too, Lex thinks, and his hand freezes on the doorknob. And what kind of president would he be? Like Lex was?
You think? It's not quite a whisper, and it has a thousand questions in it. Lex touches the door with one hand, the cold wood grounding him.
"I didn't do better."
But maybe, I can do better now.
"You have got to be kidding." This is getting them nowhere. Lex leans into the door and pushes it open.
The office is so like his own, he has a second of wondering if reality's cracked again--glass and black lacquer, the huge windows, the sprawl of the man on the other side of the desk. Dad. Years in his grave, buried beneath concrete and dirt, but seated at that desk, staring at Lex like they've never been apart.
The other Lex goes silent, too.
"It took you long enough." Lionel motions at the phone. "I was wondering if I'd have to send security to bring you along." His eyes flicker to the gun, smile widening. "I see you came prepared."
Lex can't find words. Somehow, until now, he hadn't realized that facing Lionel Luthor would be facing his father. Or facing himself, and all the ways he never became anything else.
"Nothing to say after such a dramatic escape? A dramatic arrival? Really, Lex, all of this was unnecessary." Lionel folds his hands on the desk, and Lex twitches the sight of the kryptonite signet ring. He nods to the chair across the desk "Sit down, son."
He's actually going to that chair, feeling like a puppet on a string, pulled by his father's voice, the approval he thinks he can hear in the even cadence--approval, Christ, is he as crazy as this Lex now?
"Where's Clark?"
Lionel shrugs. "Alive and well, Lex. You know better. I'd never damage such a invaluable resource." Lionel tilts his head, smile fading. "I have other ways of controlling Mr. Kent."
Lex grabs for the back of the chair before he falls. Or sits down. "Prove it."
With a look of profound exasperation, Lionel leans over, touching two numbers on the phone, then leans back. "Dominic? Have Mr. Kent speak, please."
The crystal clear pause reveals the sounds of movement, quiet murmurs of people in the background. A few long seconds, and then the sound of breathing, sharp and heavy.
"Lex?"
He knew, maybe, but he didn't believe. Lex swallows, feeling the gun slipping in his grasp. He's sweating. Fear or shock or withdrawal? Another seizure? Not the time. The very antithesis of the time. Lex forces himself to focus. "Are you okay?"
"Get out of here, Lex." The frantic sound of Clark's voice is thickened by something else. Lex thinks of all the ways he's used to stop Superman. The easiest and most effective has always been kryptonite. "He won't--" The voice cuts off with a thump, and Lex bites down, forcing himself to listen. After a few seconds of dead line, Lionel leans over and hangs up with the push of a button.
"If you wish to leave, son, you can." Lionel leans back with another sharp smile. "I won't stop you."
"And send people after me to take me back?" Strangely, he thinks Lionel is serious.
Lionel shrugs. "Your value in controlling Mr. Kent is now ended. And I no longer think Martha Kent will be--useful for this. Or she would have been able to stop her son." Lionel tilts his head. "His willing compliance was useful, but there are other ways."
"You didn't use them before."
"The risks outweighed the gains." Lionel shrugs elegantly, then the cool eyes fix on him. Lex feels the once over like a touch, and he's never wanted a shower so desperately in his life. "You look terrible, son."
"Torture has that effect." The wood of the chair seems to be straining beneath his hand. Lex takes a careful breath. His chest is still too tight, and his legs ache from the stairs, and he can feel the edges of everything blurring. He and that other Lex blurring. The AI might not be able to pull him out of this one.
Lionel rolls his eyes. "Your illness, son." He motions idly with one hand, like Lex's appearance is proof of--something. "It made you unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. Imagining things. You seem more coherent now." Lionel's voice is hypnotic; Lex feels the other Lex shudder softly, growling anger that brushes against the underside of his skin like heat. But not breaking through, not yet.
"I didn't imagine what you did to me." It's crazy. He can *see* what the other Lex saw, feel it on his body, feel it *in* his body. "What you did to everyone there."
Lionel sighs, the put-upon parent, and how the hell can that still work? Make him feel fifteen and a failure again. "Lex." His eyebrows push together as he leans forward on the desk. "Sit down."
His legs are giving out anyway. A chair is better than the floor.
"Son." Lionel's eyes catch his, holding them. "You don't understand. You can't. What happened to you wasn't your fault. What happened was--to borrow an expression--an act of God. You aren't *responsible*. You have to let it go. This--this habit of blaming me, of blaming Belle Reve--. You were ill. I didn't know what else to do."
"You're lying."
"I have recordings of what you were like there." Lionel slowly pushes his chair back. "I didn't know what else to do. You tried to kill anyone who came near you. After you came back from the island, you weren't--sane, son. No one would be, perhaps, after all you went through, and the fever damaged you. I've hoped you'd recover. That we'd find a way to help you." He's circling the desk, close enough for Lex to smell the expensive cologne. As familiar as his childhood. "I never would have chosen to send you there if there had been any other choice."
"I *remember*--"
"It wasn't real, son." Lionel's hand touches his face, cupping his jaw. Lex freezes, unable to flinch, not away from those eyes. "I'm your father first, Lex. Do you think I'd do anything to hurt you?"
They're all lies; he knows that. Knows it because he was raised beneath this, trained by this, shaped to believe and never believe anything at all. The long fingers stroke across his cheek, infinitely gentle, and Dad looks at him like *this*, like he's *seeing* him for the first time.
"You're a Luthor, son," Dad says, and it's like every word is coated in gold. Solid, true, absolute, can't be anything else, has to be--*has* to be. "You know that. You came here, didn't you?"
He's lying. The other voice seems so--weak, now. Or not even there. A figment of his imagination. No. No.
"I let you come here, to me. I knew, one day, you'd be able to overcome this." The gentle fingers slide around the back of his head, and Dad smiles at him. "You did it. I knew you would."
All those things--they couldn't be real. No one does that, would do that, Dad wouldn't do that to him, would never do that to him. There are lines, Lex knows that, and even Dad wouldn't cross them. They weren't--
"Let it go." The fingers stroke gently. "There's so much we can do now that you're with me, Lex. Clark, to begin. He'll be useful to us. To our plans."
No.
"I could never understand how his--gifts--appeared." Dad's crouching, and Lex can't see anything but those eyes. "What he really is, son." Both hands on his face now, and Lex tries to breathe, but everything is blurring. "Lex. Look at me. What you believe happened--it wasn't real. It was never real. This is real. You and I. Not that."
"You used to call for me."
The big hands freeze. Lex blinks. That--wasn't a voice in his head.
"I listened every night. When I wanted you out, he covered the place in meteor rocks. He said I could listen, if it got me off, but I wouldn't see you again until I learned to obey."
Lex closes his eyes.
"I did obey. And he still didn't let you go."
"How did you get out?" His father straightens, eyes fixing over Lex's shoulder, widening. Lex wonders idly when he's seen him so genuinely shocked.
Turning in the chair is slow, like trying to move in a dream, and maybe this is a dream. But no dream has ever had Clark like this, pale-green under the lights, listing into the door, eyes wide.
"Motivation," Clark answers briefly, and Lex's eyes refuse to focus, but there are stains on Clark's t-shirt that don't look like dirt. One big hand wipes across his face, smearing--something else. "Lex. Get away from him."
"You don't know anything." Dad straightens, eyes narrowing. "You would have destroyed him. He was ill."
"He was sane." Clark's voice cracks, like the earth opening up. "He was Lex. I listened and let him stay there, because I was stupid. You can't take anything else from me. I won't let you take anything more from him."
"He's lying, Lex."
"You aren't crazy, Lex. I heard what they did to you. What they said. What you didn't say."
They asked questions about him. They wanted answers. I knew what they wanted to know and I never told.
Clark stumbles, but the green eyes never leave Dad.
"Lex." His father's voice has never been this gentle. "Don't listen to him. He was afraid of you. Afraid of what you knew. I needed to know to protect you."
"He never protected anyone but himself." Clark's voice shakes, taking a stumbling step that lands him in an awkward heap on the floor. "You're not crazy. You've never been crazy. You didn't do anything wrong."
"Stay away from him!"
Getting this close to that ring must hurt, Lex thinks, dropping the gun, reaching out with time-slowed fingers. Something new is pulling at his mind. Other Lex is trying to push through, and he can *hear* that voice, but it's all a jumbled mess. "What was the question, Dad?"
Dad's eyes snap down, staring at him.
"What did you need to know?" He forces the words between clenched teeth. The entire world is blurring out, and he's not sure why. It isn't the other Lex. Something--something he should remember.
He's not looking at Lex's hand.
"What is he?" Dad breathes, and Lex touches his father's hand. Feels him almost draw away, but he's waiting. Waiting for Lex to believe, and waiting for Lex to answer, waiting until he knows what almost killed his son to find out.
"Lex--" Clark whispers.
"What is he, son?"
Lex feels the ring with the tips of his fingers, strangely numb, like blood circulation's been cut off. Do it. Just--
He pulls, and it's not easy, he thinks he's breaking bone and flesh, and Lionel yells, trying to get away, but Lex throws himself forward, knocking them both into the desk. Lex stares down into the angry eyes and almost smiles. "He's my secret."
Big hands close around his throat. Breath stuffs his lungs too full, and Lex feels them tighten, on their way to crushing his windpipe or break his neck or both. He still twists at the ring, and Lionel growls, trying to dislodge him, but other Lex is helping, that old anger giving him energy, giving him a memory.
Somewhere distant, Lex hears a sharp sound, like a gunshot, and maybe it's his sanity, finally, merging with this Lex, and they can live out the rest of their lives incurably insane, living in dream worlds where men with scalpels and men with clipboards try to destroy him every night.
The sudden rush of air in his starved lungs sends him to his knees, curiously numb under him. Grabbing for his throat, he realizes he's holding a bloody ring, and he throws it, letting himself collapse into the carpet. Something heavy falls beside him, but he can't bother himself to look.
His mind feels like it's tearing in two.
"Lex."
Lex turns his head, can just make out Clark standing--staggering--against the chair. The gun falls from one hand with a soft plunk to the floor. He looks like he wants to cry. "Clark."
You can't find redemption in blood, Lex thinks, as he watches Clark stumble to him, dropping on the floor at his side. But sometimes, you can find some peace.
"I never told," Lex hears himself say, like that's so fucking *important*. In some way, it might be. Reaching out, he fumbles for the big fingers, smelling gunpowder all around them. "You--you didn't--"
"No one should have to kill their own father," Clark breathes, and Lex lets his eyes close. His voice is so faint that Lex can barely hear him. He has to remember--something--
The world blurs out in grey, and the clinging fingers of thought rip, like something tearing through his skull..
"Don't let me be him," Lex whispers, tasting blood. I am him. I've *been* him.
He barely feels the hand that touches his face.
"You aren't."