Author's Notes: An anastomosis is a surgical connection between two structures. A pathological anastomosis can result from trauma or disease and may involve veins, arteries, or intestines. These are usually referred to as fistulas. In the cases of veins or arteries, traumatic fistulas usually occur between artery and vein. (definition from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002231.htm )

Thanks to: Gothgirl for the beta.

It starts with a dream, as most things do. Crimson lights streak the sky with an eerie glow, and he hears the whispers of a thousand voices, the echoes of a million screams. There's almost a melody to them, a singing, sighing rhythm that fills his ears and his thoughts with the message he can't escape.

The destiny he can't run from.

You will obey me, Kal-el.

Every night the House of El falls, swallowed in the magma of an ice planet torn apart down to its molten core, and every night the dreams come more quickly, stay longer, breathe more harshly into his mind. He wonders if his house was really Hell, if Jor-el is just the latest in a long string of names the devil has hidden behind, spreading death and chaos across the galaxies. Lex thinks that his father is a demon personified, but he knows differently. There is one Satan's spawn in Smallville, but it's not Lex.

I grow impatient, Kal-el.

"Shut up, Father." His whisper holds no force, the conviction of his ability to resist long worn away, but it's a token refusal he feels compelled to offer. Not yet, not tonight, but all too soon he knows what will come. Who will come.

He lies motionless the rest of the night, counting the hours until dawn as he counts the shadows on his walls. There's a smile for Mom, strained and quick, and a worried glance at Dad, still trying too hard and doing too much, and then it's off to school in a cloud of dust and denial. Summer's coming soon, and graduation, and the move to Metropolis to start college, but it's the dreams that occupy his thoughts.

Soon, Kal-el, *you will obey me*.

The stalks of corn whip by in a blur as he tries to out-run the voice in his head.

The dreams change the year he turns thirty, and now the crimson streaks fall from his eyes and the sky goes black as he devours the sun. He remembers Adam, long-dead and rotted in the grave, and wonders what these dreams mean.

There's a flood in Bangladesh, and he rises from his warm bed to fly around the world and save those he can. Lex shifts restlessly as cool air darts under the sheets with Clark's departure, and his brow furrows in protest. Clark takes a moment to smooth the lines away, pressing a kiss to Lex's temple before he steps onto the balcony and into the night.

This is not your path, my son.

He doesn't bother to respond, just tries to drown the incessant buzz of Jor-el's summons with first the sounds of the city traffic, then the call of night birds and insects, and finally the dull roar of the wind as it whistles past his ears.

But he hears it, and feels it, and he wonders when the vibration in his bones will tear him loose and toss him like so much chaff into the air.

I am waiting, Kal-el.

He tunnels through the water and mud, shifting through the silt and debris, and when he leaves there are seventy-seven victims safe in their families' arms. But as he starts his journey home, he hears the faltering heartbeat he didn't notice before, and digs into the mudslide with help that comes too late. Her heart stops as his stained fingers touch the soft, swollen mass of her head, and she's dead before he pulls her tiny, broken body free. Seventy-eight, one dead, and no divinity to be found here.

He thinks he feels the crack beginning, and the tears freeze on his face and fall to earth before he's back in Lex's arms.

The dreams come every night now, and he stops sleeping. That doesn't seem to matter, though, because the images flash behind his eyes with every blink when he stares blindly at the ceiling. In them he's flying, and the sky flashes with black lightning as he tears through the air, the horizon bleeding in his wake, scarlet acid pouring from his flesh onto the ground below.

He knows the day is coming, and thinks that thirty-five years isn't nearly long enough. Jor-el doesn't speak to him anymore; he doesn't have to. He claws through Clark's soul every minute, ripping and tearing, shredding that which he rejected. That which rejected him.

One day he pulls a dead baby from a dumpster behind the Daily Planet, and realizes that... he doesn't care. He looks into the tiny, wizened face with apathy, and can't even summon fear or disgust at his lack of empathy. He idly wonders when the exchange of detachment and emotion became so one-sided, and imagines he can feel the imbalance in his blood, backwash and cross-flow tangling in his heart and lungs.

He thought it would hurt more, this systematic destruction of Clark Kent, but it's strangely painless, a long, slow slide into ice that would make the Snow Queen proud. Instead, it's Lex that bears the burden of proof, hand crushed beneath his grasp as he clenches tight in passion, his pale flesh bruised with marks and scars that never fully fade from his shadowed eyes these days.

Lex wears a black glove over his prosthetic hand, and he still smiles when he sees Clark walk through the door at the end of the day, still greets him with a kiss and the slow, turgid slide of flesh on flesh. But he knows that soon this, too, will end. The proof of that lies in his deadened skin, impervious to even the glove's soft glide, as much as in his crystalline heart.

Kal-el. You are Kal-el.

It's the only thing the voice ever says now, and the one truth he knows he can't escape.

On the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year after he began to dream of swallowing the sun the dreams stop, and the sky fades to gray. He notices it as he's flying, and the shock stills him in his path. There's still a gradient of light and dark, still the white-hot glow of the sun high above, but the clouds, and atmosphere, and landscape below are nothing more than shadows, shaded along a continuum.

He resumes his course, headed for Smallville and the fields of sunflowers heralding the lazy days of summer. He misses the voice, misses Jor-el, because the absence of both forces him to face the reality of Kal-el made flesh, Clark Kent shed like an outgrown skin.

The ground grows into sharp relief as he dives lower, and the ants morph into cows, and cars, and people. The flowers are blooming in the old south pasture, blanketing the sleeping bones of Jonathan Kent. Lex is there, his black hand bending the sturdy stalks as he laughs, arm thrown around Martha's shoulders.

He feels wetness, and hints of warmth, and is surprised to find so much sensation left in his armored skin. The droplets of red seeping through his pores come faster and faster, falling to the ground more swiftly than his descent. He watches them spatter against Lex's face, against his suit, against the golden petals of the flowers.

They're talking to him now, faces creased with fear and concern, but the buzz of their words in his ears is just an annoyance. Lex. Martha. Mother. Words he knows should mean something more than the sum of their phonemic parts but no longer do. He feels the last of Clark slip away, the last remnants of his humanity soaking into the soil. For a brief moment he sees what his father has done, sees the tear in the soul that divides Kal from Clark and watches the El spill over until Clark is hopelessly muddied and corrupt, bathed in blood and regret. But then the moment is gone, and he is left to the cold, gray world, too chilled for Lex to warm and too lost for Martha to find.

Welcome, Kal-el.

That night, he sleeps alone despite Lex's body draped atop his. The time to aid has passed, and now it's time to lead. The world will be as it was meant to be. He knows what he can accomplish, what he was destined to achieve. All it takes is a dream.

*## The Beginning ##*