Disclaimer: Smallville, Superman, Batman, Nightwing, Young Justice, etc. DC Comics, Warner Brothers, Miller and Gough, and probably a million other people; no profit is being made from this fan production, no disrespect is intended to the original creators. We're only having fun with them. We promise not to damage them. Much.

"Slow drag and I can't get up now/Slow drag. You've been messing with my mind./All the world is sleeping like a baby tonight/I wanna see you dead/Laying in the muddy ground." --- Slow Drag, Fastball

'Sorry' was a powerful word.

It was laden with implications, none of which he was willing to agree with. Regret for actions taken, a willingness to decry those actions, a willingness to try to fix what one had done. Remorse. Sorrow. Penitence. To a certain degree, words meant what he wanted them to mean.

He was sorry that he wasn't sorry, that the emotion of regret didn't lay in his heart for him to offer up. And to be truthful, there was a point where any apologies would fail to have meaning. 'I'm sorry I tried to kill you' never had an appealing ring. 'I'm sorry that you thwarted me' was the reality -- sorry for being caught, sorry that he was being stopped, sorry... sorry that he couldn't bring himself to feel sorry.

There was only anger, because they didn't even try to grasp the complicated concept of the lessons of history. Humans needed disaster to evolve, humans needed devastation to overcome, and then a lull to create in, then devastation. The cycle of war and peace fostered culture, fostered religion, fostered hope and hatred and idealism, and the idealists who laid their theories out and tried for the sort of permanent peace that THEY were attempting to enforce.

It didn't work that way. The idealists were supposed to be people to look up to, not people who won.

What was the harm in trying to inject change into a stagnating planet?

He wasn't sorry. Not even when they finished reading the charges and his sentence to him; not even when the needle slid into his skin and carried him to a temporary oblivion. That, too, was change.

Even if it wasn't the sort of change Lex would have chosen to instate.

And he wasn't sorry about that, either.

White bled into his skull through his eyes, wrapping around the inside and squeezing his brain with the lethargy left behind by anesthesia. Even with his new body, even with the advanced healing granted by the warped wishing rocks known as Kryptonite, post-anesthetic languor clung to him. No matter that he didn't want it.

"Luthor."

Oh. God.

"I know you're awake, Luthor. Open your eyes. There's food. I wouldn't want anyone saying that I had starved you to death." The sheer sarcasm in that statement was enough to make Lex laugh. Sarcasm was something that SuperTwit had learned at his hands, after all.

They'd been at odds with each other for enough years that SuperTwit should have learned sarcasm from him. Death could very well have been preferable to whatever Superman was planning. "I'm surprised that you'd even suggest that you're capable of murder. Wouldn't that lower you to human standards, Superman?" He still hadn't shaken the lethargy, but it let him slit his eyes open to look at Superman.

"You're the one who's always been afraid to lower yourself to human standards, Luthor. Or maybe that's raise yourself."

God, Lex hated him. Hated him, hated him, hated him with a violent passion that put all other dislikes to shame. Nothing, ever, could compete with the furious snarl that lay between the two of them.

Lex started to sit up, glaring at his new 'keeper'. "Well, your sense of humor hasn't improved since we last met, 'Superman'. What did you do to your fellow 'heroes' to end up with this duty?"

"Inflicting you on them wasn't enough?" That statement stung, but Lex wasn't about to let him see that. "After much discussion, I was the one least likely to kill you, and most likely to reform you. And if I can't reform you..." That voice darkened. "Then I'll have to break you."

"I see." The mere concept of being 'broken' was enough to make Lex rebel violently, but he kept that twist of emotion inside. Meddling JLA bastards. He was a two term president who'd done great things -- and gone on to endorse a successful successor, his vice president! And they thought he could be reformed.

"Do you have any plans for this 'reforming' concept of yours?"

"A few." Blue-green eyes looked through him where he lay. "I wouldn't care to discuss them with you, though. Sit up and eat."

No, of course he wouldn't discuss them with Lex. It was easier to keep him in the dark, or else Lex might do something brilliant. Like talk himself free, which wouldn't be too hard to do with Superman's record of mental prowess.

He could always go to ground in South America. Columbia was a nice hiding hole... "Fine." Lex sat up fully, leaning on one hand as he looked at Clark. "None of you understand why I did this, do you? I wasn't even allowed to speak in my defense -- were you all afraid I'd make sense?"

"You weren't allowed to speak because all you do is lie." Coming from the mother of all liars, that was almost enough to make Lex laugh. "You lie and you twist things to suit you. And while I'm pretty sure that putting spin on blood raining down from the sky in the go-..." The alien paused. "Gosh darned Middle EAST would be hard to do, you'd still manage it."

"It isn't my fault that both sides took it as a sign from God. I can't say that I regret my actions." Or that he'd tell them how he'd done it; the notes had already been destroyed beyond recovery by the time he'd put it into action.

That last act in particular made Lex pleased with himself.

"No, but you knew what you'd spark off if you did it, Luthor." There was a tray being shoved onto his lap. "You're not stupid. You've never been stupid, and with all of your talk of history and wars, I know more than anyone else that you knew what you were doing."

"Do you mean you, or one of your various split personalities?" Lex asked mutedly, as he looked at the food on the tray; it actually looked good, even if it was simple. Or maybe that was just hunger speaking to him.

He wondered just how long he'd been unconscious.

"All of my various split personalities agree that you're dangerous." Superman, the alien menace. Kent, the vicious reporter.

Clark, the betraying friend.

God alone knew how many others there might be.

"And you are dangerous. You're dangerous to the world at large. If it was just me personally, I'd live with that. You couldn't just leave things that way, though, could you?"

"And you couldn't stop meddling with how humanity functions. We need to have governmental overthrows and kill each other," Lex said simply, as he picked up a spoon, and started to eat the no doubt nutrient laden soup. "Now there are superheroes who tidy up every scraped knee for the citizenry."

"You've never even considered that we're part of a natural evolution, have you? That we're meant to guide humanity into a peaceful existence," Clark said low in his throat.

"Guide and eventually control." He ate a few spoonfuls of soup, and the more he ate the more he realized how hungry he'd been. "Look, you even now have a court of your own making that supersedes the international court in the Hague. They brought no charges against me."

"They still haven't connected you to the matter." Clark didn't add that they would have executed Lex instead of allowing him to live. "And all of the information connecting to the appropriate source -- you -- would cause the ultimate downfall of most civilized nations. You made sure of that."

"I think you underestimate civilization," Lex drawled. "And the tolerance it has for corruption. But I can appreciate how with the containment of one man you've managed to stop that from happening."

"Shut up, Lex." The sheer fury behind that statement was something that Lex recognized, Clark-the-once-upon-a-time-friend, not SuperTwit or Kent. "Just shut up. I know as well as you do that half of the organized crime worldwide is stuff you're responsible for. I know about your political machinations, I know everything you've done over the years to try and make yourself look good while you kept getting yourself dirtier!"

"You do? If it offends you so badly, then why didn't you stop me?" Lex asked. He laid his spoon down, and picked up the piece of bread beside the plate. "Of course, where would a hero be without an adversary."

"Well now I'm a hero with a prisoner. And you're going to change, Lex. You're going to change, or you're not going to like what happens. I'm all that stands between you and death."

And Lex liked living. As himself, as what he was and who he was. "You won't kill me, 'Superman'. I'm still to useful to your people -- imagine what you can accomplish with my mind once you fuck it over and make me think like you."

"Coming from the master of all things brainwashing, that's a real compliment." Cold and hard and not Clark at all. Clark was so long buried that it actually was a thrill to snipe at the alien. Like seeing Clark around red K.

The edge of Lex's mouth was twitching upwards. "It's always so personal to you, Clark. Every little thing that didn't go your way was a personal affront. Seems that it still works that way."

"That's rich coming from you, Lex. Finish your supper." In a whirl of blue and red, Clark turned away from him, a dramatic attempt at an exit.

It would have worked if Lex had felt like buying it. But he didn't, and he didn't have any more words for Superman. Words just made them angrier at each other, which was pointless when the outcome was already cast in stone.

They were going to make him into something useful, and then he wouldn't be himself any longer. It was escape, or let it happen, and escape seemed far away just then.

Not that he had regrets, no. He'd never be sorry. Only...

Only he was sorry that he wasn't sorry. When they'd decided his fate, they'd certainly chosen the right man to make him question himself. Lena had no doubt been vaguely notified of where he was -- she was his only relative, after all. It would only be a matter of time until she was dragged into the mess.

He'd had a good life, full of ups and downs, but... Oh, what splendid peaks. LeXCorp, then the loss of that, then LuthorCorp, then a proper LeXCorp, then Senator, then president, then crisis after crisis of saving the world, then blood from the skies. No one would ever be able to top the astonishing string of events that was his life.

He couldn't have regrets.

There had been time alone, and that was all right. Time alone, Lex could face. Schedules were irregular, food even more erratically brought and taken away from him. There were sandwiches sometimes, and pie sometimes, too. Sometimes it was warm, and sometimes he shook with cold, and always, always, in the end...

There was Clark.

"You're going to have to make decisions, Lex. You're going to have to be what you could have, once, or you're going to have to be molded into something else entirely. Something a lot more feeble. You don't want that, I know."

What the fuck did he know?

Clark was doing a job, which was all Clark ever seemed capable of doing. He wasn't capable of being honest, or being able to face up to the fact that his own fucking decisions weren't the best. Even if he was winning again. But he was cold, and crisp, clean white clothes didn't do shit for warmth; with his bare scalp, his bare body it was usually hard enough to keep warm...

"Why, because I never fucking figured out how to play by your rules?!" They'd had the conversation, Christ, for what could have been weeks on end. Maybe days. "I had incentive then to pretend I could -- there's no incentive now!"

"What incentive did you have, Lex? There wasn't anything. You weren't my friend, you just wanted my secrets. And if you'd found them out then, how fast would you have had me on a slab? I know about the Kryptonite enhanced knives."

Lex looked up from his desperate huddle in the bed, and then just closed his eyes. Yes, he hated SuperTwit, desperately. And he would get out of there, somehow... "That came... later. When I... tried, you were my friend! You were worth trying to be good for, you lying fuck."

"If I was worth trying to be good for, why did you stop?" The confusion in that question was all Clark. Beautiful, perfect, wonderfully beloved Clark, and Lex hated him. "If I was worth so much to you, why did you start trying to take me apart just because I wasn't ready to tell you my secrets?"

"Because I wanted to know. Because you were lying and I wanted you to stop. I..." What did it matter to the reason he was there? Being good versus being himself, no, versus being 'bad'. It was subjective, even looking back at events that were decades passed. There were only snapshots of memory left from that time, precious snapshots littered among his early accomplishments.

"If you wanted me to stop, you'd have been trustworthy, Lex. You wouldn't have been stockpiling Kryptonite. You wouldn't have let others know how to purify it, how to make it better able to hurt me and slice me open. If you wanted to know, Lex, all you had to do was stop lying to me."

"My father stockpiled it, my father..." Lex swallowed back the tone of his voice, desperate to reign in the weakness of emotion. "The worst I did was take your blood sample from Helen's office. I never even looked at the fucking thing! You gave me so many opportunities, and I didn't take them, waiting, waiting for you to tell me..."

"And when your father was gone, who stockpiled it then, Lex? Who took the meteors and honed them into knives then?" The question of whom had been betrayed by whom was making Lex's head swim and ache and scream. It hadn't been Lex's fault. Lex had never meant for any of that to happen, it just had, but he'd never admit it. Never admit that he hadn't planned every bit of it, been the clever manipulative Luthor.

Been the man he wasn't sorry for being, but he was sorry that he wasn't sorry. Shouldn't he be?

It was the best, worst, that he could do in that moment. "I... I did. It just happened. You weren't talking to me by then, anyway. Because for all of your, your morals you'd already judged me and given up. I was still trying... But why bother when no one notices."

"You weren't trying, Lex." Soft, defeated words. "You were just digging yourself in more and more deeply. You were playing his game, and now you're so wrapped up in it that you can't get out. You killed the mother of your child." God, those words... "I wonder sometimes if your father didn't do the same. Just to be sure that you'd turn out the way he wanted. Twisted. Warped. Wrong."

That wasn't an implication Lex liked, not at all. He huddled a little more into himself, shaking his head. No, he was justified in what he'd done. "The Contessa was an immortal, she needed to die -- she made me think Lena was dead, so she could keep her, it... It's more complicated than you can conceive of!" Never mind that Clark sounded so soft and defeated; it was just to make him be sorry for what he'd done. The war. He wasn't sorry that he'd sparked change in the world.

Just...

Just.

"I'll let you have some time to think about all of it, Lex. I know you need it. But Lex... no matter what? Killing is never justified."

And then Clark was gone and Superman was gone and it was hot and cold and everything arrived at funny intervals again.

It wasn't, to any observer, the best circumstances for thinking. But it was also circumstances where Lex had no other choice but to think. Maybe it wasn't about the war, maybe that wasn't what they were trying to change in him -- maybe it was everything else, maybe...

But he wasn't his father. The Contessa was like his father, and Lex had seen what she'd done with her last half-bred child. He'd raised Lena carefully, with as much warmth and more than he'd ever given anyone else. Killing is never justified?

But it was. Why should someone live when all they brought to the world was... ruin?

Like him.

Oh, God, God, why did Clark have to create such horrible moral conundrums to make Lex's brain swarm? No one else ever did, just Clark, because he had those awful Kent morals that didn't make any sense to anybody, even them. They couldn't, because Lex had never been so confused in his life as when he'd dealt with them on a regular basis. One day, the Kents all loved him, and the next day, Clark was looking at him mournfully and backing away from him. He'd never done anything to deserve that. Not really.

And now they were back to some bizarre status quo that was made up of Lex suffering the same way he had then, and he shouldn't. He shouldn't, because Clark had abandoned him, and all of the bad things he had done were really Clark's fault.

If there was any fault to be laid at all.

There had always been a double standard -- it was okay to kill for them, for the Kents, but if anyone else happened to die and he was involved? Not okay, no, it was immoral. Lying, hurting, evading was fine if it was Clark, but not him. The exceptions extended to everyone but him.

Was there a reason for that, or did it just work that way? Other people could start wars, and they didn't end up where he was, cold one night, or maybe it was day, and warm the next. Hungry, then full but not knowing when the next meal would come, whether it would be while he was still full or not until he'd been hungry for a good hour.

Lex missed liquor.

Maybe if he could just get drunk and stay that way a while, all of this nonsense would make sense. Maybe Clark would stop making his head ache, making his heart throb and fram with worry.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

That would have been too much like stability, and Lex wasn't being allowed that. He was being made to break, only he wasn't breaking, not yet. He could bend more than they expected -- he'd survived fucking Smallville and Metropolis, and two Presidential terms in a row while barely aging, without losing his energy and will to do.

But if anyone could break him, it was Clark. SuperTwit. It was so tempting to just give in and agree that, yes, everything that had gone wrong was his fault. All of it. Clark's lying? His fault. Brainiac? His fault. The No Man's Land Crisis in Gotham? His fault.

But it wasn't. It was just subtle things, spiraling things, blood from the sky.

All right, the blood from the sky was his fault, but never mind that part. That part wasn't important. Those other things weren't his fault, had never been his fault, and he wasn't going to agree that they were. He wasn't. No matter how much Clark wanted it.

Never.

When he saw Clark again, when Clark bothered to talk to him again, he would just... have to remember that.

If he could just remember that....

"What was it that you wanted from me, Lex?" The question wasn't one of the usual ones. Maybe Lex wasn't remembering them, though. It seemed like forever. "You were so kind, so tender, and then you'd be trying to dig the meat of me out of some crevice I never could hope to understand."

At one point he'd tried to count the hours when they'd passed, tried to count days, only there was no day or night, there was only clean cold lines and white glowing light that was equal in brilliance from all directions.

Lex leaned his head back against the chair he'd been granted -- for who knew how long -- and closed his eyes. "I just wanted you not to lie to me..." They'd covered that ground already, hadn't they? "I wanted your friendship and your honesty, that was all I ever wanted from you."

"Why do you want something when you won't give it, Lex? Things like that have to go both ways. If you want friendship and honesty, you've got to give it." Give and give and give. That was all he'd ever been for Clark, was somebody to whom he could give things.

"I gave you my friendship," Lex insisted, voice aching. "I gave you my help, did all sorts of things for you. Luthors speak love with money, and friendship with favors. I did everything you asked me to -- for your friends, for you. I made sure that your family didn't lose their farm, when I didn't even have a job, and my soon to be ex-wife had tried to spend me broke..." He felt his voice go up, but he was too tired for a rage or indignation. It wouldn't take, would it? Not with Clark.

Clark was always the only person who could be indignant.

"I gave."

"But you still lied." And lying was only okay if it was Clark. "You still had interest in the Kryptonite and you still had people like Hamilton working for you, money or no money, and you still wanted all of my secrets."

Ah, and he had, and Clark's hand was touching him, and it made him want to cry. Lex never cried. He hadn't cried since Clark had hurt him the last time.

The very last time.

But it wasn't, because he was hurting him again. It hurt, but he wasn't going to cry. He... "Why can you lie, but I can't?!"

"Because you lie for profit, Lex. And your lies hurt people. My lies..." Clark's hand was so stupidly tender. "My lies never should have hurt anybody. I would never have asked you to tell me a secret that would have you hunted down and destroyed. I would never have asked you about anything that led to this if you hadn't made it necessary for the rest of the world to become involved."

He didn't dare open his eyes, because Clark was right there. Lex couldn't look at him so directly, couldn't risk that maybe his face would be like his hand -- so fucking gentle. "You told others, you... Your lies hurt me!"

"I know." And that hurt worst of all, didn't it, and fucked if he wasn't crying.

He hated Clark.

He hated him. Hated him...

"I know."

Lex was silent for a moment, because his face was wet and he had to bend forwards to wipe at his eyes with his face hidden. He sucked in a gasp of air, sucked back anything that could have leaked from his nose, and simply sat there, looking into his palm. "Then why..." No, too much emotion. "Why do you say I was never a friend to you?"

"Because if I had been, Lex, I'd have been enough for you. Even without my secrets."

"I've told you -- it wasn't your secrets I was looking for, I was trying to stop your lies," Lex insisted. It was getting harder to keep insisting, harder to resist Clark's suggestions. "I wanted to know that you trusted me..."

"How could I trust you with my life when you were constantly threatening it?" God, everything that came out of his mouth was so twisted, and it made Lex's entire body want to shrivel and ache.

It hadn't been that way, had it? He hadn't done that to Clark, he'd saved his life... "I helped you, at every turn I could, Clark! I wasn't, I didn't threaten your life!" He had to look up at him, and that hand was still on him with such gentleness. "I..."

"What do you think would have happened if anyone had known, Lex? Your father. The sheriff. The government. Who do you think would have said, 'That Clark Kent's such a nice boy for an alien'?"

"I don't know...? They like you now, it's not an issue any longer..." Had it ever been an issue then? As long as Lionel had been alive...

"The sheriff hated both of us, and your dad wanted to cut me open. And then you did. I had to find some way to protect myself. Worldwide adoration seemed like a pretty good start."

And he had it. And for a time, Lex had possessed it. According to polls at the time of his seizure, he still had it. "I didn't... mean for it to all go this way," Lex finally admitted. It wasn't a sorry. Because he wasn't, not sorry for playing his part in history.

He wasn't sorry.

Just sorry...

"I know, Lex." That was the worst, Clark's voice so quite and gentle, and his hand. His hand. "It finally went beyond me."

Lex looked down again, looking at his shoes, at Clark's boots, the glossy floor. Anything but Clark's face. "Now what?" It sounded like defeat to him, to his own well-attuned ears, and maybe it was. You didn't have to be sorry in defeat, did you?

"Now, you'll have to change. Because if you don't..." Clark's voice trailed into silence. "You'll just have to, Lex. That's all."

It was ironic. He'd tried to change the world, and was being made to change himself... There was a part of Lex screaming that he would not be changed. A part of him that would rather die than change. When the proposal had first been given to him, all of him had resonated with that idea. Death before becoming a mockery of himself.

But. Just...

"How?"

"Just... be gentle, Lex. Be careful. You can't hurt people anymore. You can't... can't have blood rain down from the sky or have people manipulated into positions that are better for you."

But it was as simple as breathing. It... wasn't something he could do on his own, not without help. Like before. Did that mean Clark was offering...? An exchange, even though Lex didn't think that it would be an equal one. "I need someone to tell me no. To... stop me. It's so simple, Clark. People are like, like toys, they don't even know they're being shifted..."

"I know." And Clark did know, Clark the liar, Clark the boy who could push anyone to do anything with only the faintest tremble of his beautiful mouth. "I know. I'll tell you no, Lex. I'll do my best. But you have to get rid of the Kryptonite, Lex. Because if you don't, and if the others catch you, I can't stand between you and the world again."

Getting rid of the Kryptonite made him vulnerable. It...

What was he thinking? He was already vulnerable, he was there with Clark himself, he was already at his mercy. At the mercy of that smile and those lies. "I'll tell them where it's stored. I... would have thought you'd taken it already."

"No," Clark told him simply. It was the gentleness that was killing him. The faint strokes of hands that he'd missed for so long, never really felt, made it hurt. Made him almost...

No. No. Not sorry.

"That's something you have to give up of your own will, Lex."

He wasn't sorry, because he'd accomplished the war. It had needed to be done, needed to happen, and... he wasn't going to revoke it. Clark wasn't asking him for that, though. Lex closed his eyes again for a moment, then looked up at Clark, up to his face. "I'll tell them. You."

"Thank you, Lex," Clark said quietly, and for a long time, no other words passed between them.

"What are you... Never mind. I don't really care what you're doing here. I don't care what the fuck possessed Diana to tell you where here is. What I want, what I care about, is that you get the fuck out."

Clark Kent of Smallville would never have used that sort of language. Come to think of it, SuperTwit wouldn't either.

"I came to talk to our prisoner and get an update on him, Kent," the voice replied sharply.

It sounded like it was going to be a good conversation, and distracting. Clark had turned the heat up, and had left him his high-backed leather chair, so he could sit comfortably with a book and a throw from the bed. Cooperating really wasn't bad at all.

"You can't talk to him." That wasn't Kent-the-Reporter, now. That was SuperTwit in full self-righteous mode, and Lex was very glad that he still had the spirit left in him to think of Clark that way. He was almost proud. "That wasn't part of the conditions."

"I want to make sure he's alive, or still even functioning. You've had him for three months, Kent. You at least owe us an accounting of those three months."

And now he knew just how long things had been dragging on. Or maybe he didn't. Whoever Clark was talking to could very well have been lying. But the voice was familiar.

Too familiar.

Who was that?

"If I'd had him three years I wouldn't owe you anything, Batman. None of you wanted him. Not even you. And every last one of you implied that I fell down on the job, effectively blaming me for that war in the Middle East. Maybe I did. Maybe I am responsible. But I never saw any of you working too hard to keep it from happening. You couldn't even control your own city, much less the world, Bruce."

Lex turned his head a little, resting it against the side of his chair as the shock of realization slipped through him. Bruce... Batman. Everyone he knew fucking lied to him, didn't they? The only exception he could think of was Lena, and... well, he'd been away from her for more than three months. That wouldn't be long enough for her to take up lying to him as the hobby others seemed to view it to be.

"I've got Gotham under fucking control right now -- and Northern Africa! I demand to know what progress you've made, because we need the scheming bastard to scheme about peace for once!"

"He's not ready." It was a flat denial, hard and cold. "Northern Africa isn't the only thing under control. What do you think I'm doing when I'm not here?"

"We know. We all have multiple obligations." Lex didn't know how people could live like that, three, four different lives with different names and personas. One was enough for him. "How ready is he? Tell me what he's told you."

There was silence, one that stretched out for a long moment. "He hasn't told me anything," Clark said softly. "He's not ready to tell me anything."

"You're lying." So it was an Olympic event, now? "I can see it in your eyes. He's told you where his stockpile is, hasn't he?"

"Actually, no. You can see whatever you want in my eyes, because I don't know where it is. Why are you so interested in it, anyway? Afraid you might need it for some reason or other? Just in case?"

More silence, then a wary reply of, "We aren't talking about the same stockpile. I meant his biological agents that let him pull the blood rain trick off."

"I'm not sure that was any kind of biological agent." Clark was right, of course, which would have caused a huge swell of chagrin if Lex had been the same Lex of three months prior; and when had he become a different one? "No, there's some other trick here. I've got a feeling about it."

Probably somewhere between cold skin and warm, gentle touches. He was still infinitely proud of his accomplishment, still not sorry. But... there wasn't any gain to be found in fighting him, not any more.

"Any leads what the trick could have been?"

"No." It was a simple enough answer. "Now, would you please get the fuck out and go back to North Africa, or Gotham, or whatever place it is you're haunting these days? I'm busy."

"We need disclosure, Kent. There are people who want to know how he's being treated."

"And you gave him to me to do what was necessary. You didn't list stipulations on the whats and wheres and whens and hows. You wanted to kill him outright, as I recall."

"We have allies questioning us, Kent. You may or may not have noticed this. Some of our tentative but useful allies want to make sure he's not being treated overly poorly. Talia Head, and her... associates in particular."

"He's just fine. What do you want, pictures? Video? Because I'm not going to let you see him and unravel every bit of work I've done in the last three months." Clark was as obstinate as ever, sounding more like his father than he knew.

Or maybe he did know; the crux of it was that he didn't care how much he was like the man. Not that Lex could say anything, not with the comparisons to his own father. He shifted his head a little, still listening intently.

"Pictures or video would serve the purpose fine, since you're so reluctant to let anyone see him."

"He was placed in my care; treatment at my discretion, visitors at my discretion. And while Lena might get through? I'm not letting you see him, Bruce."

"Lena is one of our concerned allies who want proof that he's alive," the Batman said. It was enough to make Lex's heart glow thinking of it -- his daughter, an ally along the lines of Ra's and Talia? And who else knew who the JLA was working with in desperation to contain what he'd released.

She was probably skipping classes to do whatever it was she was doing. But... three months brought it to summer, didn't it? So it was all right. If MIT was even open with the war going on.

"Then have Diana bring her." Clark's voice was hard, tight. "But I don't want you here again. Not ever. Understand?"

"Fine. I won't come back, but I'm not leaving until you give me proof that he's alive. We all know you have a personal matter you want to take up with him, but now is not the time."

"Now is exactly the time," Clark insisted. Lex didn't have to be in the room to know that he was furious, and that his eyes would be nearly glowing green with his fury. "You don't know anything about the way he thinks, no matter how rich you are and no matter how long you've known him."

"You're making bad decisions, Kent. Just get me a video file and I'll leave. You don't want to have this discussion with me." No, Clark didn't because he was a jealous man when it came to friends. Or people he was interested in. Another double standard.

Clark was full of them.

"Take it. And if Lena wants to see him, you know what to do." Clark had made his instructions clear enough, after all. "You had the opportunity to do this, and you didn't. You've all made it very clear that Lex is my responsibility. You've made it clear for years. But I wasn't the one who fell down on the job and missed the blood-rain he was planning, so I suggest that you fuck off, Bruce."

Silence from Bruce, which didn't surprise Lex. There wasn't much anymore that could surprise him. 'Batman' and 'SuperTwit' were part of a grand liars' club, and neither of them were talking about why it was Bruce that had fallen down on the job. But Lex knew, and almost smiled a little.

"I'm leaving now." The man's last attempt at dignity, that finally did made Lex smile while he was probably walking off. Except Clark was angry, which...

Couldn't, couldn't be good.

"Then leave. And Bruce? Don't ever come here again without an invitation. One directly from me."

Lex couldn't help remembering how sexy Clark was when he was angry, how good he looked when he lied, and it made his skin shiver.

"Fine. Expect more visitors."

Which meant that Clark would be coming back soon, or maybe he wouldn't be. Either way, Lex couldn't be caught looking like he'd been listening in, which was just what he'd been doing. Lex shifted in his chair, tugged the throw closer, and started to attend to his book with more intensity.

The heavy stomp of boots sounded; not SuperTwit's, but Clark's, and that was something of a surprise. "I guess you heard."

After all, Clark liked to parade around in his costume; that he was out of it was... one more curveball being thrown at Lex's head. He closed his book, finger between the relevant pages, and murmured, "I was trying not to listen."

"There's something about him that's very difficult to ignore. He's a real pain in the butt. Lena will be allowed to see you. You know that."

"I heard." Lex was still smiling just a touch, because he had heard. Cooperating was good, and they were keeping him because they needed him to 'scheme for peace', apparently. If he did that, it wouldn't be the same thing as being sorry, would it?

Because he wasn't.

Really.

Not sorry even a little bit.

"That would make you happy?" Clark asked him seriously. "Maybe you'd even be willing to think about that other thing?" So Clark was assuming he'd heard the entire conversation, which really wasn't out of place in the least. He had heard, and since he'd accomplished his goal already...

"Yes, I'd be willing to... do more than think about it."

The sheer relief on Clark's face went straight to the pit of Lex's belly and warmly glowed. "I'd appreciate that," he said simply. "It would make things easier." And maybe Bruce would leave them alone.

Lex fully closed the book, still keeping his eyes locked on Clark's face. "I told you I'm willing to cooperate, if you'll just... let me. Just give me access, Clark, and I'll help..." He didn't seem angry, which was more than Lex had hoped for.

Clark seemed to be seriously considering the matter. "What kind of access do you need?" he asked finally.

"Telephone with visual contact." He'd already started to think about it, after he'd told Clark where his Kryptonite had been stored. It was the next obvious step, if he were going to continue cooperating. "The people who need to be spoken to will need to see that it... is me speaking to them."

Clark paused, frowning thoughtfully. "Okay," he said finally. "I'm going to trust you, Lex." The unspoken words lay between them.

'Don't make me regret it.'

Not that Lex hadn't trusted Clark a hundred times in their lifetime, only to have it thrown back at him time and time again. But he... was a better man than SuperTwit. He set the book aside, and started to stand up despite that Clark was looming so close. "We can do it right now. I won't... misplace your trust."

The way that Clark smiled at him was almost enough to make him sorry.

Almost.

Just not quite.

"Okay. I'm sure that Lena will be glad to see you, anyway."

After how he'd been treated, after the humiliation that had followed his splendid rise, the taking away and cutting him off from his happiness... No, he wasn't sorry, not yet. Lex lifted his chin slightly, looking Clark in the eyes. "Show me where I can contact them?"

"Come this way." Clark reached out, touched Lex's hand, a strange, tender little motion that made Lex wonder. "You'll like what you see with the rest of the Fortress. I've always wanted to show it to you," he admitted a little slyly.

That was simply blatant bribery, but Lex would take it; as an advocate for change and continuing evolution of ideas and people, how could he not? "Is the rest of it glassy like this room?" Because it if was, then it wouldn't be very interesting at all.

"Oh, no," Clark assured him. "It isn't. Well, not exactly. And even if it was, there are a lot of other things that I know you'd love to see, Lex."

It made Lex suspicious as he fell into step with Clark -- who seemed very Clark-like, a sharp contrast to his snarling cursing and threats to Bruce. "Oh really? Things like...?"

"For one thing? Kelex," Clark stated with a grin, unable to help himself. "For another thing? Kandor and Krypto and Ned."

It was almost casual, almost... familiar. Clark, not Kent or Kal El, or SuperTwit, or one of Clark's other deviant personalities. Lex relaxed a little -- which was probably a mistake, he knew -- and then asked, "What're they?"

"In order? The robot in charge of maintenance and defense, the last city of Krypton, my dog, and the last Superman-Robot. His job is to look after Krypto. It keeps him out of trouble," Clark explained. "Having a super-powered dog? Not all it's cracked up to be."

That was what laid beyond the doorway? It was enough to set Lex's scientific mind to ticking, enough to make him wish he'd went along with things sooner. Why pass up an opportunity to really interact with Alien technology? "I don't suppose that you'd tell me where you managed to get a super-powered dog."

"Sure," Clark promised. "I'll tell you. Once we get the rest of this over." He drew in a deep breath and, in a swirl of motion that Lex nearly missed, became SuperTwit.

Dammit.

"Let's take care of business."

Lex let Clark take care of business for a moment once they were walking through glassy halls to what Lex considered a control center. So many computers and technological things -- if it wasn't the heart of the place, then Lex was truly impressed. He paid keen attention to the AI's smooth female voice, waiting for the moment when SuperTwit would allow him to make contact with people who would take his suggestions and help the JLA in its actions, willing or unwilling.

A few short words in another language and a robot rushed past in a flurry, calling back some sort of answer that was equally incomprehensible. "Kelex is going to take care of setting up the appropriate transmissions. You'll only have to tell him who to contact for the transmission to be immediate."

"I know you... I heard that Bruce is working with Talia. I need to contact Ra's himself. I need to contact... people who should be dead if you know where to find them." Lex moved towards one screen hesitantly, then turned to look back at Clark to see if the wondrous-looking machine could indeed do that for him.

"Everything is ready."

Ready to go, ready to reveal his partners in crime, ready to give Clark what he wanted: a cease to the nasty war that had bubbled up with his blood rain, a cease to the growth he was causing to spring forth.

That thought was enough to make Lex almost pause. Almost. Because what he'd done would have repercussions for years, decades to come. "Then connect me with Ra's Al-Ghul," Lex told the computer. "And when I'm done with him, Clark, you need to tell me what problems there are other than general chaos. Ra's will... quell opportunists in the area."

"Yes." Yes, even though he wasn't Clark, he was SuperTwit. It would all be okay. Lex had to trust in that.

Lex settled his posture into something firmer and more natural for him, and faced the screen solidly when his sometimes ally, often enemy, came on screen.

"Hey, Lex?" Clark's voice was quiet, serious, a sound that Lex had missed for a long time. "Did you ever think about how things might have been different? If we'd just made different choices, I mean." Or if Clark had actually been able to hate him. Or if Lex had actually managed to separate Clark-Kent-Kal El-Superman as well as Clark himself had.

"Often enough." Lex's reply was honest, comfortable in the otherwise quiet Fortress. Incarceration wasn't so bad as long as it was Clark he was dealing with; there was that air of familiarity, the bantering discussion that could fall very serious at a moment's notice. "I wish sometimes... that when you offered to go to Metropolis with me, that I'd taken you up on it. Just because I wish I knew what would have happened."

A faint shudder made its way through Clark, a visible motion of distaste. "Nothing good," he promised. "The only times I was... Like that... Well, it wasn't good." Clarification wasn't all that necessary. Lex remembered those times, remembered some of the things Clark had said, and worse, some of the things he had done.

"I know. I just..." Lex sighed, resting his cheek on the palm of his hand to better survey Clark in his comfortable lassitude. "Wonder sometimes. It felt like it was a turning point. I wish I knew what could have happened at each of those turning points. If I hadn't married Helen, for example."

"If you hadn't married Helen," Clark decided, "I wouldn't have ever run away from home to Metropolis. I'd have just run to you." He'd done that a lot in the early days. He hadn't trusted Lex with his secrets, but he'd trusted Lex with everything else.

"Then that would be a turning point worth revisiting." Clark would have come to him, instead of going on a crime spree and tangling with Morgan Edge. The lack of association with Edge would have kept Lex from getting onto his father's bad side, and everything that had gone to hell afterwards.

It was a beautiful sort of pipedream, interrupted by the faint buzzing sound that had alerted Clark the last time they'd gotten a visitor. In a swirl, he was all blue and red and stalking out of the room angrily.

It also meant that Lex probably wouldn't get to enjoy sitting sprawled comfortably in a love-seat, with Clark across from him on a half-familiar sofa, for the rest of the day. Maybe longer -- after all, interruptions weren't good things.

Interruptions were a very bad thing if it meant someone was coming to the Fortress. He honestly hoped that it would be Wonder Woman; Clark would be pissed if it was Bruce again. Of course, Bruce was probably stupid enough to try pulling it off again, but Lex could hope otherwise.

There was a racket, Clark... Yelling, incoherently. Enough to make Lex stand up and take the risk of wandering without permission to see what was going on.

"Go on, go ahead and see if you can find him. Kal El, you have to forgive me for not trusting Kryptonian technology. We need to be sure."

"FUCK you." Fuck you, and Lex was familiar with the labored breath, the gasping throb that lay beneath that voice.

Kryptonite.

Refined.

Fuck. Bruce really was stockpiling the stuff, then?

Lex pressed his hands to the sliding door, and tried to will them to open. It wasn't working -- Clark needed to be there. "LARA! Lara, open this door -- Superman's hurt!"

"Luthor? Lena, that way -- I hear him!"

Lena? Bruce had brought Lena? That didn't sound good, not with Clark roaring on the other side of the door, furious beyond all bearing. It was a sound even Lex wasn't sure he'd heard before that moment, so much hurt and anger that it made him shiver. It might have been as bad that night Lex had won his first presidential election, but the silence of space had overwhelmingly muffled it.

"Lara, OPEN THIS DOOR!" Lex shouted to the cavernous roof. "Superman is being hurt!" And Lena was out there. His daughter, whom he hadn't seen in far too long...

"Daddy! Daddy? I can't get the door open!" Lena was on the other side -- he could nearly feel her.

"Stand back." Grim, loud enough for both of them to hear, obviously Bruce. How the hell he was making himself heard over Clark, Lex couldn't say. The chill of Clark's words were hard enough.

"He GAVE it to you! He gave it to you, didn't he!?"

"I gave nothing!" But he stood back, already thinking that he shouldn't have involved himself in the fray. Even if he could hear Lena out there. Sending her off to college had been hard enough, but such a long separation wasn't letting him think clearly in the moment.

He needed to think clearly.

"Where the FUCK would he get refined ore, LUTHOR!?"

Kal El.

Not even Superman. SuperTwit. Whatever. Kal El, and Kal El was... was definitely dangerous.

Unpredictable.

The fizzle of electronics sounded, and maybe Bruce had actually gotten the door open or maybe Lara was just fucking all of them, AI instincts wanting all of the prisoners in one clear place in the hopes that Ned or Kelex would be able to take care of whatever Bruce had brought with him.

The moment the door opened Lex was torn between two actions, and with typical Luthor ability to multi-task, shouted at Bruce, "The FUCK do you think you're doing, Wayne?! God dammit!" even as Lena fell into his waiting arms.

"Daddy! Oh, Daddy, I was so worried, so scared," she confessed. Not the loveless relationship that had lain between his father and himself by far, this daughter of his, this child so close to his heart. No, theirs was better, and he'd made sure of it. There wasn't any help to be had for it as he reached up to stroke her hair. "Batman said there was only one way to come through and see you, and after I talked with you..."

"You had to see me. I told you that I was safe; Wonder Woman would've brought you here." He didn't chide, just curled fingers through her hair for a moment, hugging her tightly. "We'll talk when there isn't..."

Kelex coming towards them.

"WAYNE, get that out of here! Are you mad?"

Mad, maybe, because Lex couldn't imagine where the man had gotten Kryptonite. Lex thought he had all of it, especially the refined ore. He'd kept it in out of the way vaults, using it when he felt it absolutely necessary, experimenting with it, sure, but he hadn't been inclined to let anyone else share in the stuff. It was his.

It was his, it was his Father's. The only way Wayne, Batman, could have gotten it was to have broken into Lex's supplies. Or to have searched far and wide to find it himself.

Kelex made a motion towards Wayne, and Lex hugged Lena tight for a moment before pushing here away. "Run! Get out of here, and come back only with Wonder Woman -- get the Kryptonite out of here!"

"But Daddy...!"

And then he knew that Lena must have given it to the man, must have, because he could see it in her eyes. Rescuing her father.

Condemning the fuck out of him.

"KELEX!"

"Get out of here!" Lex tried to shout it louder than Clark could shout, pushed Lena towards Batman, who grabbed her hand and finally started to run. "Get out of here!" He couldn't leave with them. He couldn't...

Hah. Let Clark die there, not that way, not -- and if he stayed, it was proof that it hadn't been him, and he could plead Lena's case. Blame Wayne. Save both of their hides.

If he could just get past the red Kal El gleam in those eyes, the fury drawing back gorgeous lips into a fierce grimace that made Lex's heart race wildly. THIS was Clark-on-Red. This was the Clark who'd come to him with that offer.

THIS was one of those turning points.

For good or for bad.

Lex could still hear Lena and Wayne retreating as he knelt down beside Kal/Clark, and lifted up the kryptonite-coated gloves that were wrapped around Clark's neck. Then he threw them away, towards Kelex so they'd be taken care of.

"I had nothing to do with it, Wayne had to have stolen--"

The words weren't even fully out of his mouth by the time his back was against the wall, a wild dose of Kryptonian fury atop him. "Stolen!?" Kal El snarled. "Stolen, Luthor!? Highly fucking unlikely!"

It was hard even for Lex to not panic. Particularly after the last few months, after knowing that Superman and Kent could deprive him of warmth and food and comfort. Kal... God knew what Kal could do to him.

"Likely! I told you where my stockpile was, I told you!"

Today had looked so good. So possible. So much as if he might have time with Clark, and Lex had wanted that for so long. So long. Even if he hadn't wanted to admit it any more than he'd been willing to say that he was sorry for anything.

"And who else did you hiss that god damned secret to!? Who else did you mutter code words to, trying to get free of me?!"

"You were there, your computer was monitoring everything -- I didn't tell anyone code words, nothing, Clark! I wouldn't do that..." But he would, if he wanted free badly enough.

He would, and Clark might believe him, but Kal El never would.

Kal El didn't believe anybody.

That nearly familiar whir of motion had never contained Lex before, never sent him spinning the way that it did Clark. Kal El. Whatever. By the time the world stopped spinning, he guessed putting name to a nearly naked Alien with eyes that glowed with fury wasn't all that important.

Questions rose into his mind -- why was he naked? The -- oh, the fuck. Fuck. "Clark, Kal, oh, Christ, God damn you, I didn't tell him where to find it!"

Didn't tell him where to find it, but it didn't look like Kal gave a damn. Clark would feel bad about it later, but that wouldn't do either of them any good.

"You need LESSONS, Luthor." Oh, God, oh, God. "You need lessons, and fucked if Clark shouldn't have given them to you long before I ever had to."

"Lessons?" he half-echoed. "In what?" Too imperious for Kal, Lex knew it right away. Fuck, it was so hard to remember to play to the different personalities when it was the same fucking face.

Grim. Feral. Vicious. Malevolent. "In obeisance." And Christ, Christ save him, was Kal El-Clark-Kent-Superman naked? And when had that happened, because a moment ago, Lex would have sworn that he wasn't.

"Kal, please -- whatever you're planning, it..." Wasn't worth it? Wasn't something. Every twist of motion Lex gave made him hurt, until he thought that Kal was just going to crack his ribs like a bird under a car-tire. Fragile, and human, and Clark would regret it later.

Regret it badly.

That didn't seem as if it would stall Kal any at all, make him even remotely inclined to stall or cease. Instead, there was a heavy thigh between his own, forcing them to part, and God. All of the what-ifs about Clark and red kryptonite and Metropolis seemed like too much.

Clark had been right. An outcome he wouldn't want, didn't want. Once upon a time, before lies grew thick and spandex cut between them, Lex had harbored the idea that something like that would happen. In his office, in his bedroom, consensual and enjoyable. Not...

Lex let out a harsh breath, and tried to twist to kick, hit, something. "This isn't going to, fuck, teach me anything!"

"Maybe not," Kal agreed, voice thick with anger and lust and a thousand obscure, aching emotions, "but it'll damn sure make me feel better."

And there was slick and hard and huge sneaking up on Lex, making him want to yell denials that wouldn't do any good.

"You'll regret it," Lex husked, or maybe he only thought that he'd husked it. It could have been a whimper, for all the attention he was paying to his own voice. The floor beneath him was hard and cold, something much more positive to concentrate on than thick and slick against him without permission.

Something much better than aching-hurting-spreading-screaming and fuck, fuck, FUCK, he should have looked closer at Clark, should have known that it wasn't feasible, wasn't possible, and oh, God, Kal wasn't going to stop.

Wasn't.

It wasn't that he was new to taking something up the ass. Lex liked to think that he had a healthy libido, even if his taste in companionship was often less than healthy. It wasn't new, but the pain... the pain, the feeling of wanting to scream and cry all at once, to howl protest at that previously indescribable feeling, was unbearable.

At least when a person was shot, it happened and was over. When Kal fucked you, it was apparently an endless horror.

Strange, that punishment would be something sexual to Kal where it was deprivation of presence for Clark, deprivation of food for Kent-cum-SuperTwit. Strange that Lex's brain was shutting itself off from the rest of his body, because everything hurt too much to do anything else.

It was easier to think, to half-muse until his head went empty. Half-muse and half wish that he had let Kal lay there and die, that he'd left with Wayne and his daughter. But at least they'd left, they were away and safe by then, even if they'd been kind enough to sign the go ahead on his own suffering.

'Sorry' was starting to feel like a graspable concept suddenly.

Sorry was something that maybe he even was. A little.

A sharp snap of Alien hips made him think, maybe a lot.

Thoughts scattered at that stab of pain, the too-hard press of hips against him, probably enough to break bones. If any did, then there weren't enough pain receptors left to process it. Maybe endorphins were kicking in. A godsend.

There must have been some moment where it was all finally too much; some moment when his brain couldn't tolerate any more knowledge of his body, because there were parts missing later, parts he couldn't put together. The part that was immediately obvious when he could think again was that the back of his neck was wet.

He didn't dare yet move, because Kal could still have more lesson in store for him, and there was every chance that the wetness was his own blood. Better to think about the floor and wait for more details before he responded.

"Lex."

Mindless, sniveling sort of whimper. Heart-in-throat sound, absurdly gentle touch, and oh, he'd do anything if Kal was just gone. Gone. Away, anywhere. Away.

"Lex. Lex. Lex."

He swallowed, and reached for a moment to find his voice. It wasn't easily reached, so Lex settled in bending his neck a little, testing for a moment that it could move before he spoke. "Clark?"

"Sorry."

Sorry, a word that had never come easily to either of them. Sorry, because Clark would be sorry. Lex had felt the distaste in Clark's words when it came to Kal, and the hands on him were ridiculously gentle and easy.

"Sorry. Oh. God."

So gentle that it hurt. It did hurt, his whole body hurt, and it got worse when Clark started to move back. "I 'n't... give... to Wayne..."

"I know. I know." Clark knew, even if Kal didn't, even if Superman might distrust him intensely. God, the shit stupid Wayne wrought. As crazy as he was, he surely should have been able to recognize it in someone else. "Shhh. Lex. Shh. I'll take care of you. So sorry."

Lex twitched his hands a little, just to make sure that they worked, and then tried to push himself up onto them. "I... can't do this. I..." But that was what a sentence of imprisonment was supposed to be. Suffering.

"Never," Clark promised him, almost hysterical. "Not ever. I won't ever. Not again, Lex, please. Please. So sorry. So. So sorry." And he was crying, and Clark didn't. He just didn't. He was strong and all boy and, and, and.

And Alien.

And as crazy as Lex.

And maybe being apart was the stupidest, worst thing they'd ever done.

There had to have been some pivotal point where everything would have worked out. Like getting on well with like, crazy mind to crazy mind. Clark's hysteria wasn't helping Lex, not when Lex was just trying to stay conscious and move a little. Nothing moved below the waist yet, because it felt like something was definitely snapped. Pounded, fucked to pieces.

"Help me."

"I promise, Lex. I promise."

And the world after that was tenebrous, inky black.

The mattress felt good enough beneath him that he was inclined to think that all of it, from blood rain to Kal, had been a horrible dream created by an overactive imagination and a long-lost sense of guilt. Just enough support, cradling his lax body comfortably. And warm, luxurious sheets, yes. A hotel somewhere.

The fantasy held up until he actually moved.

"Not yet, Lex. Don't move yet." That tenderness was pure Clark, fretful worried Clark, not the one who gave him concussions or the one who turned into Kal at a moment's notice. "Be still. Please. Lex."

But he couldn't help a twitch of motion. Or the groan that left his throat before he started to open his eyes. He didn't even have to ask if it was Clark, because the tenderness of warning, the familiarity of how Clark was made his heart ache.

"I'm so sorry." So sorry. Clark had never been so sorry, or sounded so utterly disgusted with himself. Lex had wondered, in later years, if sorry was something Kryptonians were even capable of feeling. "Oh, God, Lex. Please."

"Please...?" Lex looked at Clark's face through half-open eyes, trying to make sense of the man's expression. It wasn't as if he were often or ever sorry about things himself, but... Clark had crossed a line. Concussions and pain were one thing, being shot, and then there was... that.

"Please. Forgive me." The words nearly choked him, hurt him worse than it sounded, likely. "Please. Oh, God."

"Sure. Why not." Lex closed his eyes again, mindful to not move beyond that, beyond what it took to talk. "Probably could... do it a few more times before we were even."

"Don't say that." Pleading, and how long had it been since he'd heard Clark do that? "Please. Please, Lex. Don't say that. I wouldn't... I couldn't ever... I should have controlled it..." He had no excuse, after all.

No ring.

No red kryptonite.

Only as many tectonic plates hidden beneath the surface as Lex had; ruptured and twisted veneers bursting up when the pressure became too great.

Lex was better about keeping the bursts small, regulating it, keeping it all under control, which was part of it. And even then, sometimes there was a shift and he snapped. Clark...

"What have you... done to yourself?"

"Nothing yet," Clark promised, visibly dazed and shaken. "Nothing. I swear. You, you would be, it would be your right to see. Lex. Lex." His name, a prayer, soft and tender as Clark's pleas.

He'd meant long-term, not short term, but Clark's answer was all right on a few levels. "Mm. Should be... okay in a few days." As long as he didn't think, or see Lena or Wayne. Everything would be fine.

After all. Being fine was a part of who and what he was. Mutant. Strange.

Lex.

"I talked to Lara." Whispered, soft words. "The nerves will heal, Lex. I nearly killed you."

"Kal nearly killed me." He bit his tongue to keep from saying 'I know', that he'd guessed he'd come close or was going to die. It had felt like it, when brain and body had given up talking. But he was talking, so they had to have reconnected at some level.

One shaking hand petted him, stroking over sensitive skin. "I didn't want you to see him." Superman, yes. Kent, reporter, okay. Clark, yes, definitely.

Kal, no. Not ever. And maybe that desire was all that had kept Lex living all this time.

Maybe that was what Wayne had been so scared of. Maybe, the next time he saw him, he'd have to have a heart to heart, knuckles to jaw conversation with the man. If he didn't see Kal again, himself, because he was sure that he wouldn't last a second time.

The fingers on his skin were almost assuring, but not enough to soothe him. "When did this, the... clean division start?"

"Long time ago." Lex supposed it was the best answer he was going to get. Maybe Clark didn't even know, because Clark amongst the lot of them was the one he saw the least.

The one he hadn't seen in years.

The one that maybe nobody had seen in years.

"Don't know."

Lex gave a quiet permissive noise, and laid still for a moment before he murmured, "I've missed you." Which was true; he'd never missed Kent or SuperTwit, and he'd hardly known Kal. But Clark, Clark was a fond memory.

Even if he never had been able to lie without looking guilty.

"Yes." Yes, Lex had missed him, or yes, Clark had missed him, too. Couldn't be told, maybe it didn't even matter, because Clark's head was lain on the bed beside him, hazel eyes exhausted, sleepy, confused. Different than how it had been at the beginning.

So eager, so young and tentative. Confused in different ways, ways that Lex had been less-able to understand at the time. "You should sleep," Lex murmured, and he turned his head a little to better look at Clark. Still hurt a little, but that was all right. The pain told him he was alive. "Rest before the world demands rescue."

"Don't want to anymore." But Clark's eyes were closing, and his hand was curling around Lex's so tenderly it was ridiculous, stupid, and yet there it was, sweet as it might have been, if only things had gone differently.

If only so many things.

As if Clark could forget all that had come before, the pain, the arguing, the attempts to kill or stop the other. The basic differences in how they dealt with things. Love didn't heal anything for them, it had just left each of them separately fucked up. If they'd at least loved each other when the opportunity had been there, they might have been jointly fucked up.

"Sleep," Lex whispered even as he closed his own eyes to drift in not-sleep. Half awareness.

"Kay." Okay, because Clark had probably been up since Kal had tried to destroy Lex, and Lex couldn't guess at how long that might have been. It could have been an hour or it could have been a week or it could have been forever. Time wasn't something that had any real meaning in Clark's Fortress, never mind when unconsciousness held you tight in its grasp.

Three months could have felt like a week, or like a year, depending on the exact hour and mood that he'd held during his incarceration. Time ebbed like the tide, rushing in one moment, and then out again the next. Back and forth, back and forth...

It was quiet, almost comfortable to lay there unbearably still, listening to Clark breathing. It'd probably been a few days. He shifted his fingers a little, and it was like a signal to something; Lara's voice broke through the silence.

"A single visitor for you, Kal El. Diana."

That didn't seem to faze Clark; didn't even brush against his mind, apparently, because he simply turned his face more towards Lex, burying his nose against Lex's throat.

Diana. That would be Wonder Woman, then, probably coming to see if Clark had killed him.

And how would she react to his current state? Injuries that he hadn't even bothered to categorize, that he didn't dare move because of. Clark was... Clark, not Kal, and it felt so tentative. What if he came back?

"Clark..." He really could have used a drink, or food. But the press of face against his throat was so good. "Lara..."

"Lex Luthor."

Well, that was the first time he'd ever been acknowledged at all. He wondered what might have caused that. "Diana waits at the gate."

"Can you open the door for her?" Lex asked slowly. Clark was too comfortable to move or make him move. And he was under sheets. As long as he laid still and under Clark, and there hopefully weren't too many visible bruises or blood...

There wouldn't be anything to explain to her.

Maybe.

"As you will, Lex Luthor."

After months of being effectively quarantined from the rest of the world, months of being ignored by Clark's Fortress, that was almost creepy. There wasn't much of an 'almost' about it. It was eerie in ways that made Lex shiver despite the warmth of the room and Clark against him.

Why then? Had it seen what Kal had done to him, how Clark acted towards him? Of course it had seen... and Wonder Woman might see. Which would make Lex think about what had happened when he didn't want to think about a single thing that was in his head, pressing his body.

The sound of boots tromping down the hallway caught his attention. Somewhere, he'd bet all of LeXCorp on it, a man was making a fortune in outfitting superheroes with shoes that made a satisfying thud with every step. Even Wonder Woman had them. He wondered if Warrior Angel, too, would be a man with boots like SuperTwit's. It was an entertaining thought.

Concentrate on that. The entertaining thought. The one that made him almost want to laugh, in a hurt sort of way. It kept him from noting that the door to the room was opening, but he did hear the sudden cessation of the bootfalls. "Wonder Woman?" Hearing himself in such quiet, it sounded like he'd gargled with sand. A drink would've been great just then.

"Luthor." There was a certain amount of relief in the woman's voice as she moved into the room, pausing just past the doorway in surprise. "Ah. This wasn't quite the scene I was expecting..."

No, and neither had he. But as long as he laid still, she'd think the scene was everything that it wasn't. Hopefully there hadn't been any blood on the floor anywhere. "I'm sorry -- I'd get up to greet you, but Clark's asleep." That sounded normal enough, didn't it?

"Clark, or one of the others?"

Diana was a hell of a lot smarter than Bruce. She at least hadn't come with Kryptonite, and that was saying something.

She probably at least thought she could hold her own in a fight with Clark. "Clark." Lex swallowed, giving up on that sad stretch for normality. So, she knew. Had that been a reason why they'd handed him over to Superman? Hoping that the madman inside of Clark would kill him?

The relieved sigh she gave made him think that might not be the answer. "Honestly, we were hoping that perhaps you would be able to help. And that perhaps, given who and what he is, he could help you." Never mind that she wasn't defining which he. "Batman, of course, doesn't necessarily see things the same way most of us do. We're very sorry for his interference."

"Not as sorry as I am." Lex tried to move a leg, testing to see if it would, and how much it would hurt. All that talking was making him restless.

"Yes." She seemed to know more about that than he was really comfortable with her knowing. "I can imagine. That's one of the things which have... worsened... with time."

"So... you thought 'let's throw two madmen into a Fortress'..." Lex gritted out a gasp, and gave up on the motion. Hands. Hands were easier to move, and Clark was still holding onto his. "And see what happens?"

"No." Wonder Woman was adamant about that. "Actually. What I thought was, 'let's see if we can turn back time just enough to make everything whole again'. Functional." She paused. "You've been going farther afield. He's stretched himself out to cover that, Luthor. And the rest of us, the ones of us who feel a certain loyalty to him... We've taken up the watch when he finally had to rest. For fear of the other. Kal."

Lex wished he could see her face. But opening his eyes and turning his head just didn't seem like it was worth the pain. And Clark felt so good. "Lena... took from my supply. There's a yellow... kind. It might work."

He'd thought it would be a great Artificial Kryptonite. Like fake emeralds, except the colors had never come out right, and the properties, well... It made him sick, and the odd meteor mutant -- animals included -- that he'd exposed it to. But there had to be other properties. The wishing kind.

He even remembered his own wish. I want to live.

The other parts hadn't seemed nearly so important at the time. And maybe, if he gave it to Clark...

"Yellow. Not gold?" she asked. "What are its properties?" Straightforward and to the point, her blue eyes on him hard and tight. If he was the kind of man who went for half-naked women with dominance issues...

That was the wrong if to be thinking there.

"It cripples..." Lex kept his eyes half-open as he looked at her. She was just looming there, as if Clark wasn't laying atop him, as if he wasn't hurt so badly. "The mutants, the Kryptonite mutants." Which almost seemed like something out of the history books just then; most had died or been caught, and he'd personally gathered up most of the Kryptonite. Refined it. But when he'd made it, the issue had been very pressing.

He'd been a little surprised to have his own freakishness finally confirmed by crawling veins and paralyzing pain. "Reverse of normal Kryptonite."

"So what good would it do him?" To the point. She was good at that, and nothing like Bruce, and Lex was thankful for that. That was probably why SuperTwit and Kent were willing to have her near even when they didn't want anyone else in the Fortress.

"Can you get me some water?" Fuck if he was going to have to explain it, he wasn't going to keep rasping and having to swallow nothing at all.

"Of course. Kelex." The name was spoken in a perfectly ordinary tone of voice, but it was apparently enough. The little Kryptonian robot appeared out of nowhere, right at her elbow. "Fetch Luthor some water. Preferably some sort of electrolyte balancing drink if you have that."

With his head clotted so badly, she was a better thinker than he was. The fingers Clark clung to shifted, clutched back because it was the closest thing Lex could manage to shifting his position. Clark apparently weighed a metric ton when he was dead asleep. Because it was easier to think about that, than... "Exposure to Kryptonite for a normal human has a wishing property."

"A wishing property? What sort of... Don't answer that until Kelex gets back," she decided. "No one's ever mentioned that there was a wishing property. Not even him." Any of him, apparently.

So Lex didn't answer. He laid there, still and concentrating on Clark's warmth until the robot's faint noise came into his senses. Then he lifted his head a little, and tried to move his other hand so he could hold the glass himself. "No?"

"No," she said, coming forward and taking the glass despite the fact that it would irritate him beyond bearing. "I've never heard any such suggestion. Even my gods believe nothing can be done to change this..." Diana paused, looking for a word. "Inconsistency."

It was past the time for irritation. He was thirsty, he was hungry, and he probably still needed a shower. Fuck it all, and fuck the world. Lex leaned up as best as he could with Clark snuggled atop him, and drank greedily. A little choking on it was okay, even if it did hurt his sides.

"Green Kryptonite interacts with people's wants. What they want the most at exposure is what they get," Lex half-coughed.

"And how did you learn about this? Some kind of bizarre experimentation on humans, or...?"

"I lived in Smallville for four years," Lex almost growled as he gestured for her to bring the glass back so he could finish it. It almost tasted like grape, in a watery way. "I'm one of them."

"Ahhh." She was willing to give him more, as much as he liked, apparently. "There were some interesting articles implying certain mutations in humans, but none of them ever mentioned wish fulfillment. This synthesized Kryptonite... What makes you think that it would grant wishes? Since it's reversed?"

"It isn't the exact opposite. It has no effects on normal humans." He laid his head back down when the cup was empty, and savored for a moment more the fullness of the pillow under his head. "Never tested it on a Kryptonian."

Her voice was so desperately even that it frightened him when she spoke. "And you don't fear the repercussions of attempting such an experiment, then."

"No." He didn't even have to pause and think over his answer. "I can't... handle Kal again." It made him sorry, sorry that everything had gone to hell. "We're at a turning point." And if it went wrong, so what? Just one more that he'd fucked up.

"All right. Then I'll bring it to him," Wonder Woman decided firmly. "Someone will have to, obviously, and it's just as obvious that it won't be you. He's more likely to listen to me than he is to Batman. Especially after this last little contretemps."

Understatement, again, but the word was the closest to one that fit the situation that Lex could think of. Except, perhaps, bedeviled mess. "I'll breach the idea to him." When he woke up, when Lex thought he could carry on a coherent conversation with him.

"Then I'll wait for his word," Diana said, leaning forward and placing her hand upon his brow almost tenderly. Like his mother had. Or the way Martha Kent might have, if things had gone differently. "Rest, Alexander Joseph Luthor."

He'd need it.

It had just been... Clark since then. Since Diana had come and gone, it had only been Clark. Whatever Kelex had brought him to drink, it had been enough to make him start to heal up faster, fast enough that he felt better rather than just alive. Well enough to make short trips away from the bed, to stretch and move even when there were a few lingering deep down (in?) hurts left.

It felt like it had been a couple of days, which was all right for Lex; he'd needed time to heal before talking to Clark about the idea.

"I can make breakfast," Clark had offered, giving him that look of puppyish devotion that had always made Lex want to melt. Clark was so different than any of the others. Younger. Softer. More idealistic. "Ham and cheese omelets, like Mom used to make for you."

More like what he'd always wanted. Unbroken, unhurt, shocked by the sharp realities that filled the world. "I remember those omelets," Lex murmured. And his hungry stomach. "I bet that you're just as good a cook as she was, if you try."

"Not so good," Clark disagreed, head ducking down a little. "But I'll pass. Omelets are kind of hard to screw up." That was something of a lie, but even the Clark part of things had always been a liar, first and foremost.

That was just what Clark did. Breathed in on the inhale, lied out on the exhale. There was no wonder that it came even easier to the other three. Maybe Kal was the most honest of them all, which scared Lex to think of. "Pretty much. I'll... stay here and wait for you?" He half-wanted to offer to help, but he couldn't see himself as being any help. "There's something I want to talk to you about."

That deer in the headlights look wasn't very good on Clark. Not really, not when he looked utterly terrified that way. "Something?"

"About Kal." Simple words, but they could imply any number of things. Clark could think he wanted to talk, well, about Kal, or about what Kal had done to him, or... None of the above.

The kicked puppy look that shot his way implied that Clark obviously thought he wanted to talk about what Kal had done to Lex. "Do we have to?"

"I believe I've come up with a solution." Lex shifted, perched on the edge of the bed, and then moved to stand up carefully. The couch and chairs weren't far away, and it was warm as long as he dragged a blanket with him.

"Lex, you shouldn't be moving...!" It was a vitally different reaction from any of those he'd gotten when he'd first arrived. Of course, when his sentence was newly begun, he hadn't been at all sorry about anything and neither had SuperTwit.

Things changed. And as an advocate of change, how could he be against it?

"If I can move, then it's a sign I should try and move." Lex pulled one heavy blanket loose with a little effort, and limped over to the sofa with it in tow. "But thank you for your concern." He didn't drawl that sarcastically, either, even though the temptation would have been there when he'd first arrived.

Green eyes were focused firmly on the floor. "I'm so sorry, Lex. I don't think there's any solution, though..." No matter what Lex suggested. He'd listen, Clark just didn't think it would work.

"I... accidentally created yellow kryptonite some years ago," Lex hedged carefully. "I suspect it's the reverse of green. It makes my veins crawl, so I suspect... that the wishing property would fall to you. A Kryptonian."

The way that Clark looked at him, immensely, unbearably hopeful, shock and surprise splashed across his face, made Lex want to touch him. "So I could wish...?" To be rid of Kal. Clark, of all of them, would be the one most capable of making that wish. Kent and SuperTwit would have very different desires.

"Yes. Wonder Woman is going to bring it to you, since it..." Lex grimaced a little as he sat down, pulling the blanket atop himself in fidgets of motion. "I can't touch it."

"Why can't you touch it?" Clark seemed honestly curious, his head tilted to the side. Since Kal had appeared, Clark himself seemed even more off. There was the faintest of traumatized expressions constantly on the edge of his every motion, tentative looks at Lex where before there would have been glares or firmness.

Maybe if Kal went, Clark would feel better; or maybe he wouldn't. Wonder Woman had told him that Clark had been growing more and more erratic. All four parts of him. "It hurts me, like green kryptonite hurts you. It only affects meteor mutants, which was occasionally useful for me..."

"Because they're still crawling out of the woodwork?" That obviously hurt Clark at least as bad as Kryptonite itself. "So you think, maybe, I'd be able to wish on it, then. But you won't be able to stay."

"Not in its immediate area. You know how Kryptonite works for you. And it's been refined..." He tried to give Clark a reassuring smile. "I'm sure that it'll work."

"What if it doesn't?" What if it killed him, or sent him mad, or did worse things than red?

A possibility he couldn't deny the existence of, no matter how much he wanted to. Of course it was going to work, just like his blood from the sky trick had worked. "Then... I'm sorry."

The faint, slow nod of Clark's head was an answer. "Then have her bring it," he decided. "I'm going to. Um. Go make you an omelet." And then he was gone, altogether.

There wasn't any need to tell Clark that he'd already told her to bring it, just to take her time doing it. She'd arrive when she could. And everything would work out, even though it had all changed from the half-plans he'd foreseen and clutched onto.

"Thanks," he told the empty space where Clark had been standing.

There was a certain gentle care in the way that Clark's fingers took the lead box from her. He wasn't dressed in any way she was commonly accustomed to seeing him. It was almost disturbing to see him out of costume, green flannel over grey t-shirt.

"He's told me what I have to do with it." The voice, though, that was familiar enough.

"I'll stay here for you while you... do it." It was hard to not seem skeptical, to be skeptical. Luthor was mad, and she'd half-doubted that yellow kryptonite even existed.

She'd more than half-doubted that there would be trouble getting hold of it. Just as well that she'd gone and stolen it, then.

"No," Clark decided with a firmness that wasn't so out of place. "It's better if no one is here."

"Then I'll just wait outside," she told him, as she turned to leave him with his lead box. Maybe it would work. Maybe Clark would accidentally wish for something completely different. Maybe... a lot of maybes. Wonder Woman decided she could wait with Lex Luthor for whatever the outcome would be.

If they were both very lucky, it would be something livable.

If they were beyond lucky, it would work just the way the bald man seemed to think it should. The look on Clark's face as she left him said as much.

Lex Luthor was a genius, and that was part of the reason why they'd spared his life; they still hadn't been able to think of how he'd made blood fall from the sky like rain, and he wasn't telling or apologizing for it. And there was little chance that Lex would actually try to kill Clark and succeed. All of his plans had too many built in flaws to actually kill Clark.

Which meant that he believed, whole-heartedly, that it was going to work.

It was a little disconcerting to come into the other room to wait with him, and find him out of bed, and eating an omelet.

"Is it good?" It was the only question that Diana could think to ask, dark brows rising, no small amount of surprise on her face. "I hope there's enough to share."

After all. Everyone should have a last meal.

Just in case.

"Clark cooked... somewhat too much." He gestured to the low, crystalline table that sat in front of the couch, and the covered tray. "Or his AI did. One of them. I remember when his mother made omelets like this."

"Yes. You were friends, once..." She paused, turning to look back at the door through which she'd so recently come. "He never would discuss that. With any of us, but particularly not with some."

Lex took another bite of his omelet. People like Batman, others who lived in grey and yet couldn't seem to understand. "I know Wayne personally, so it's understandable that he wouldn't take a risk like that. Those years of friendship in Smallville are... long in the past." But not forgotten, and neither was the friendship itself.

Thing of legends. Or nightmares.

"You must have been an incredibly different person then, to cause the sort of devotion that he feels for you," she suggested solemnly. "Although he does have a fondness for lost causes, somehow I don't think he meant for you to be one of them."

What a lovely, backhanded comment. Lex had to appreciate that about the 'superheroes'; they certainly knew how to stick a knife in your back and jiggle it around. "I never meant to become one of them. And I was never a different person. I just... got tired of him lying constantly. You... you people have some wonderful double-standards about honestly and good deeds."

"You're right." She was the first one who'd ever admitted that to his face. Diana moved, lifting the silver lid and reaching for one of the small plates that appeared on the table. "We're all liars in one form or another, I suppose. Some more than others, of course. And some who can't even admit it to themselves."

"Well, that's comforting to know," Lex drawled dryly. It was easier to finish eating his omelet than it was to talk with one of them.

"I have to say, your idea of comfort isn't quite the same as mine," Diana admitted wryly, reaching for utensils and finding them at her disposal. Convenience was the true name of the Fortress, Lex sometimes thought. "Personally, I've never been inclined to lie to myself."

"No? Are you sure of that?" He closed his eyes slightly, and set his empty plate down. Clark had to be doing it by then; soon they'd know whether he was right or not.

"Fairly certain." She wasn't having much luck with her omelet, spending more time shifting it around on the plate than eating it. Of all them, she was really closest to Clark, Clark as he was rather than the split creature he'd become. "Of course, everyone lies to themselves to a certain extent, one way or another. Some of us lie a bit more than others, that's all." Batman, she meant, or maybe one of the others.

Maybe Clark.

Definitely Clark. "He's always adored you, you know. Even when he wanted to stop you. Even when you did things so wicked, most of the rest of us would as soon have sent Batman to deal with you and gotten it over with entirely."

"Batman has his own hurdles of personal issues to get over with me," Lex drawled. "Had. It was hard to tell that Clark was still... in any way attached to me. I'd thought Clark himself was gone, replaced by... the others."

"Almost," Diana admitted. "Almost."

Silence spilled out between them, frosted over with a liberal dose of worried waiting. Both of them were on edge, but couldn't do anything more than hope, and watch for Clark to come back to them.

Hope that he didn't come back as Kal, or wish for the wrong thing. That it worked at all. Maybe it was so quiet because it had killed Clark? Lex... wanted to laugh when he realized he didn't want that on his conscience. Of all the crimes he'd committed.

Diana was the one who finally broke the silence. "Perhaps if we had the Fortress itself check on him..."

"Lara, can you give us an update on Kal El's condition?" Lex lifted his head a little to speak up towards the ceiling. He still wasn't sure that he'd get any response at all.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence -- nerve wracking, horrible silence. Finally, the AI spoke calmly enough. "Kal El is..." A pause. "Kal El is different?"

"Different?" Diana sputtered. "What's that supposed to tell us!?"

"That it worked to some degree," Lex muttered, standing up shakily. He could walk over to the room where Clark had been going to try it, couldn't he? "I'm going to check on him. We have to know for sure."

"Maybe you should let me." It wasn't quite an order, but Lex was sure that the average Amazon would have stood down at that point.

He wasn't the average Amazon, or someone who had ever stepped down. "We'll both go," he countered firmly, and walked around the sofa to prove that he was damn well going to do it.

The way her shoulders rose and fell seemed to imply that he could make that mistake if he wanted to. It made him even more determined. "Right. Together."

He would prove it wasn't a mistake; after all, he knew he could at least get close enough to Clark and the stone to make a guess at what had happened. So Lex made himself walk as fast as he could, leaving the room in silence and walking down the hallway toward where Clark was.

She was right behind him, her boots making that god-awful thud-thud-thud that drove him crazy, and the door was just ahead of him. She didn't speed up, thank God, because he didn't know if he could have kept up or not. No, she simply followed behind him, and waited for his cue.

Yes, some fucker made a fortune making those intimidating boots for 'heroes'. Lex reached his fingers out to the door, and it opened in front of him, revealing Clark.

Guileless green eyes. Tall, but not quite as tall. Mouth still full, not pressed firmly together until it had become permanently compressed. Shoulders broad, but not impossibly so, hair just long enough that it made Lex want to tousle the curls there.

God.

It had been so long.

Even though he was close enough that the yellow rock was making his stomach roil, his body ache, it was enough for him to linger in the doorway and use it to keep standing. What had Clark wished for? A second chance? Would he remember any of what had happened? The thirty something years that had passed, passed and left pain around both of their eyes even though neither of them had aged much.

But contrasting the Clark he'd known to the Clark who'd made breakfast that morning, it was clear that they had aged a great deal. Or simply changed.

"Clark..."

"Lex?" It was a demand more than anything else, and it sounded remarkably scared. Terrified, and maybe it was just age, but he could swear he'd heard that tone in Clark's voice a lot when they were younger. Heard it, but maybe not understood it, and now he was old enough that he could. "Lex, what's going on?"

It was stunning what experience taught a man if he was willing to look back over those teachings. "You just did a very brave thing," Lex declared quietly, holding onto the door frame still. "Wonder Woman, put the... the rock back into the lead box."

"I don't understand." Anything, actually, but Clark didn't say that, just looked to Lex and waited for an answer.

"I'll take care of it. Why don't you see if... Clark wants some breakfast? Those omelets should still be warm."

Lex pulled back from the doorway, gesturing for Clark to follow. "They're the kind your mother made. Makes, Clark. There... is a great deal to explain to you."

"Yeah," Clark said slowly, moving towards the door. He was very careful not to look at Diana, probably because she was nearly naked in that outfit. "I can guess that."

"I don't think there's a way you can even guess all of it." Lex waited for Clark, his beautiful Clark that he'd adored until Clark had started to stupidly, repeatedly hurt him. There were going to have to be things that he'd omit.

Like explaining how he'd gotten to be so injured that he was limping as he walked to lead Clark to the room that had been Lex's cell.

"You're hurt." A concerned arm wrapped around Lex's waist, gently lifting him and helping him to move. "What kind of mess are we in, Lex?" Suspicious, yes, but trusting of him, at least.

"Our mess, Clark," Lex told him simply. "Decades have passed from the day you suspect it to be."

"...that's not possible," Clark declared with a deep, scowling frown. It reminded Lex too much of SuperTwit. "I mean, it just isn't. Is it?"

"Look at me, Clark, and tell me that it isn't possible that time has passed," Lex said as he paused to open his door.

"Now you're even older than me. I mean, than you were before." That seemed horribly sad, Clark waiting for him obediently. "I can hear the gossip already."

But Clark had done that before, back in Smallville. Waiting for Lex, his brave older friend to lead the way, to open the door, to sweep him into a fantasy world of money, mansions, fast cars and gorgeous women. "The gossip?" Lex looked over his shoulder as he waved the door open and limped into the simple but clean space. Glassine walls, glassine floors, the nest-like bed where he and Clark had lain, the chairs, the sofa where his blanket still was.

"Sure," Clark said, looking around with a great deal of curiosity. "You know. 'What can that Luthor be wanting with young Clark Kent?' And after that, they always leer and say... Well, anyway, not very nice things."

"That gossip. It's a long time in the past, Clark. Smallville. This is the Fortress of Solitude that you built for yourself. Fancy, isn't it?" Lex asked, gesturing vaguely to the area.

The expression in those green eyes was doubtful. "I don't know, Lex. It doesn't seem like something I'd be inclined to like much..."

Lex limped towards the sofa once he'd given a slight shrug of his shoulders. "This particular room is a prison cell. It's grown more comfortable in recent weeks. Sit down and have some breakfast."

"A PRISON cell!?" The remarkable horror on Clark's face was unmistakable. "What... for YOU!?"

"Calm down," Lex said simply as he sat down, and pulled the blanket closer for warmth. "And sit down, Clark. I don't quite know where to start telling you this story."

It seemed obvious that Clark didn't WANT to sit down, or to calm down, either. Still, he did it, proving that strange youth in a way that made Lex catch his breath. "Okay. But.. is this breakfast?" A hand waved tentatively to the covered dish.

"Omelet. Go on." Lex reached for a glass of water, and sat back to watch Clark's motions while he started to talk. "You just wished on a piece of Kryptonite to... give yourself a second chance at life, Clark. It appears to have taken your memory with it, which I don't consider much of a loss. It was a very brave thing for you to do."

"Kryptonite?" The way that Clark's brows moved together was a sign of confusion, and certainly made Lex wonder how much he could have known at that age. "I think we have to find some other beginning, Lex."

Lex almost sighed, but didn't. "The meteor rocks have a name. Kryptonite. And you revealed to the world that you were an alien -- by creating a character called 'Superman'. Clark Kent remained... marginally human. I believe that in the effort of separating yourself mentally, you gave yourself multiple personalities."

Even Clark's golden skin could turn white given provocation. "Uh-a-alien?" He knew, Lex could tell from the gleam in his eyes. He wasn't prepared for anyone else to know, though, apparently.

"Yes, Clark. Alien. I already know this well, all right?"

"Oh. Okay." The strained tension in that whisper was unbearable. "I wanted to tell you, Lex, just... I was scared and I didn't know how to say it, so I, I hoped you'd stop looking and maybe we could just pretend and it would all be okay..."

"The Kryptonite's been put away, Lex." Wonder Woman, come to make Clark that much more uncomfortable, even if she didn't mean to do it. "Clark? How are you feeling?"

"It's all right, Clark," Lex cut in. "She's a friend of yours. A good friend of yours. Wonder Woman, whose real name is Diana. No messy romantic tangles with her, either." He gave her a glance, and then added, "That I know of."

It didn't stop Clark from blushing, all the same, and carefully not looking at her. "Um. Are you really cold, Lex? I mean, I'm sure she must be cold, too..." Plus, a blanket would cover her, and that would likely make Clark feel a lot better.

"Clark, we're in the Antarctic right now, and neither one of you are human," Lex finally told him, voice filled with amusement. It was hard to remember the sixteen year old Clark who'd bumbled and done so badly with girls. "But..." Fuck, injured or not, if it would calm Clark down. "Here, Diana. Do you want a blanket?"

"Ah, if it's all the same to you, not particularly," Diana said, watching Clark with a great deal of interest. "But we can share. I suspect you could use the extra warmth."

The grateful look that Clark cast was so sweet it made Lex tremble, or maybe that was pain from moving around too much. "Thanks."

Lex drew a slow, concentrated breath, and shifted over to give Diana plenty of room. "Clark... tell me the last thing you remember?"

Clark took a deep breath and sighed. "I remember... saving Lana and Chloe. From Ian. You remember, the guy who could split himself in half? And I remember being excited because it was time to go buy class rings." He fiddled with his omelet. "Dad didn't really want me getting one, because there were better things to spend the money on, but I wanted one."

"You wanted to fit in with your peers," Lex murmured, pulling up the distant memory while he offered Diana most of his blanket. As long as he was still, he'd be all right. "Things started to happen when you picked up your class ring, Clark. Things that you couldn't have foreseen that would change in yourself."

"What?" The question held a certain desperation. "What, Lex?"

"Eat your breakfast, K-Clark, and stay calm," Diana told him.

"The hell with CALM!" Clark blurted.

"The ring was a kind of kryptonite that... created" -- which was a creative twist of the reality that it had simply given Clark's darker side an outlet -- "an evil version of yourself. A warped Clark, caused by the red stone in your class ring. Remember when I helped you with Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde? You only let this... warped Clark out occasionally. Over the years, he started to bring himself out from time to time. He did this... a few days ago, and you decided to..." How to explain it, how to explain it. He wouldn't mention being hurt. Rape. No, none of it.

"You decided to take the chance with the yellow kryptonite and do away with him. It put you back to the age you were before he was first created." There. That made a modicum of sense, even if it left Lex's throat dry.

"What did he... What did I," Clark asked, voice hoarse, ruptured. "What did I do, Lex?" He trusted Lex to tell him, trusted Lex not to hide things from him, only Lex was older. So much older. And selective truths were excellent ways to keep hurt at bay.

It wasn't as if anyone else knew the specifics. Just Lex and the AI, and Wonder Woman thought she knew. "A friend of yours brought Kryptonite here, and my... daughter, Lena. You mistakenly thought I'd given him the kryptonite, snapped, and almost killed me while in the process of taking your anger out on me." Which was the truth. "When the... other you was finished, you were reasonably distraught."

"Oh," Clark whispered, utterly horrified. "Oh, GOD."

"Clark, it wasn't something you would ordinarily do," Diana assured. "You and Lex have been... at odds for some time now. Your suspicions were not what might be called unjustified."

Honest. Lex could start them down a new path of honesty, couldn't he? If Clark could handle it. He sat back a little, studying Clark for a moment before he agreed with Diana. "No, they weren't. You and I have been working against each other for decades now, Clark."

"But..." That was obviously difficult to grasp. "WHY would we do that, Lex? You're.. You were, you have been, my best friend. THE best..."

A smile tugged at Lex's mouth, more than a little sad. "There were a few incidents that... skewed my world-view, and yours. In opposing directions." All Clark's fault, but he wasn't going to say that. It hadn't gotten him anywhere before, and wouldn't then.

"Your dad?" Almost as if Clark wanted someone, anyone, to blame it on.

"It's past, K-Clark." Diana was firm in that. "I suspect these are things that neither of you should worry about at this time." She eyed Lex with no small amount of suspicion. "However, I think that perhaps someone else should take over your guardianship of Lex, since you're much more... impressionable, now."

Fuck. Lex grimaced a little. "My father had a lot to do with it at the start... but blood rain in the Middle East is entirely my doing, for which I've been serving a term with you." And he could hardly sound proud about it anymore. Wasn't the plan to make Lex pliable, cooperate with them, and then... something. He'd probably never be free. But at least he could live with Clark.

Now he wouldn't even have that.

Clark took a deep breath before speaking very firmly. "How old are you, Lex?"

"Fifty five." And Lex didn't look it; meteor induced healing, slowed aging, experiments... It was a small boon to Lex's existence that he felt and looked younger than that. But to Clark's 16 year old eyes, well...

Forty years was a lot more than five, but the set of Clark's jaw when he was finally determined about something was remarkably familiar. It still had the ability to make Lex want to smack Jonathan Kent. "Which makes me, technically, fifty. Which makes me an adult, and one capable of making conscious choices. Lex will be staying with me."

"But you don't have the experience, Clark, and you..." Diana sighed, giving Lex a look as if he'd somehow planned it all from start to finish, as if he'd manipulated everything into place. "And you don't know what he's capable of doing, and what he's done. I know you've been working with him the past few months, but you have to be willing to control him."

"Then we'll just have to come up with a way to do that, won't we?" Clark was determined. Lex could have told Diana that he wasn't going to be dissuaded, just from the set of his jaw. Were all of those stupid superheroes blind as well as total idiots?

"I..." Diana hesitated, looking at Clark's expression. "We can go to the Justice League's headquarters, Clark, and discuss this there. There's a lot of us who'll be willing to help you in what your task was supposed to be."

"Diana, Clark hasn't learned how to fly yet," Lex murmured the moment the thought struck him.

"I can FLY!?" The squeaky question would have been laughable under other circumstances. "That explains the floating thing."

"I think you developed it around when you left Smallville for a while, and before you came to college at Met U." Lex started to stand shakily. "So, Wonder Woman. How will the three of us be leaving here?"

Reluctantly, she sighed. "I suppose I could call the jet..."

"Um, Lex?" Clark looked at him. "I get the feeling this place is supposed to be secret?"

"Very secret," Lex agreed. "You've only told a few people that it even existed, let alone where it is. Unfortunately, you called it 'Fortress of Solitude' which... well. Your barn loft."

"Right." Clark's grin was one that Lex had missed so much, with all of his heart. "The barn." It faded a little. "Mom and Dad...?"

"Your father died ten years ago. Your mother is still alive, living in Smallville. She's still on the farm, because... no, you don't." Lex sighed as he stood slowly, a motion to Wonder Woman to start making some decisions about how they were leaving. "When you started your junior year, I paid out the deed on the farm, and signed it over entirely to your parents. Now your mother takes the cost of leasing the fields to other farmers, and her baked goods, and lives comfortably on it."

The quick pain that crossed Clark's face at the mention of his father's death was horrible. "Dad? Did he... I mean, was I...?" No, no, Lex wasn't going to tell him that Clark was the reason for Jonathan's weak heart. Because he might as well not have been. No matter what Clark had sobbed after the fact.

No matter that for one brief, brief moment, Lex and Clark had... spoken again. Or Kent, but even Kent could be moved by grief and could recall the weight of admiring respect. "No. Years of bacon breakfasts and poor genetics," Lex told him gently, and it was truth. But it wasn't the sole factor. "Your mother is in good... very good health. She's a strong woman."

Faint relief marked Clark's grief. He couldn't have borne losing both of them in a single moment that way. He took a deep breath and looked at Diana. "This jet thing. Get it. So long as it's just you."

That sounded to both of them very much like the Clark/SuperTwit that they'd known well. Lex gave a half-agreeing nod, and Wonder Woman sighed. "Don't worry, Clark. It's just me. And the Jet is on its way..."

Saying 'don't worry' to Clark was like telling Aquaman that he couldn't breathe water. Lex knew it better than anyone else on Earth or in space. The look that Clark cast to Diana said as much, too. "Good," he said, jaw compressing faintly. "I'm not going to let any weird people take Lex away where I can't see him. No matter how young I look."

"'Weird people'?" Wonder Woman looked amused about that remark, mouth twitching upwards as she moved towards the door. "All right, as long as you don't let Luthor out of your sight."

"Any weird people would be your colleagues," Lex almost chuckled as he halfway followed her, making sure Clark stayed with him. "Or mine."

"Well, used to be, weird people was a bad thing and not a good one," Clark decided, frowning. "Lex. Are you sure you ought to be walking around? You don't look so good. I mean, not that you look bad or anything," he rushed to say, "just..."

"I heal quickly, Clark -- I'm fine." Tired, hurting, but fine, and if there was a chance to leave the Fortress while the JLA went into a panic of trying to decide what to do, he was going to take it.

"I always wondered about that," Clark admitted. "The day after you smacked through into the river, the cut on your face was gone."

"You noticed that?" And still remembered it, he almost asked. But it was probably a relatively fresh memory for Clark. "Most people never noticed those things. That's what protected you for so long."

"No, Lex. It's because it's Smallville," Clark told him solemnly. "It's the reason nobody said anything when Jodie lost fifty pounds in a week. It's the reason nobody said anything weird when they saw two guys named Ian in places at the same time. That's all."

"Blind eye turned to the strange. You'll find, Clark, that most of the world has adjusted to the existence of fantastic things. The rise of the metahumans and outside threats have brought about another leap in human development." They were almost to the entrance again, and there were Clark's robots.

"Obviously I must be the weirdest of the weird," Clark muttered, shaking his head as he looked at the robots. "Um. WHY is that guy wearing his underwear on the outside, Lex?"

"Because that's what you've been doing for the past twenty five years," Lex responded. "Your robots are impressive despite the clothes, even by today's technological standards."

The repressing frown Clark gave him was utterly serious. "Lex? No matter how smart a guy is? Underpants on the outside? That's a little much. Even you couldn't make that sexy."

It made Lex laugh, turning his head to look at Clark intently. There was hope in the way that Clark frowned and insulted his own choices. "Thanks. It's good to know that. Clark, I've really missed... you. No matter what they tell you at this place we're going, I've missed you -- the real you -- very badly."

"I get the feeling that the me you've been dealing with was a pretty horrible guy." The sheer morose sound of Clark moping was a little irritating; had he been that way at sixteen? Yeah.

"Partially," Lex murmured. They were standing at closed doors, that Wonder Woman had already passed out of; she'd be back soon, and Lex would freeze for a few biting moments before they were being transported back. "I certainly didn't help matters. Believe me."

The faint smile that Clark cast him was knowing. "Still too curious for your own good?" Even Clark at sixteen had known that about Lex. It was too obvious when they were younger and then too rigidly enforced by Lex himself when they were older.

"You could say that. I accomplished a great deal by myself. If you and I had been able to work together..." Who knows. They could have ruled and crushed the world together, which wasn't what Lex truly wanted.

"But we didn't." That made Clark scowl, even his eyes tearing at the cold, whipping wind. "Well. If there's anything I should know before we face all of these weird people, now would be the time to tell me."

"Clark, I don't even know where to start," Lex sighed, wrapping his arms around himself. "You're their leader, albeit in recent years that position has been shaky. You and I, Clark, have spent the past decade being the world's most famous madmen and leaders."

"Since I wear my underwear on the outside, I'm reckoning I get called a madman more than you do." The encroaching warmth of Clark reaching out to him felt too good, utterly delicious.

"Don't worry. Bad fashion is all the rage among your peers," Lex drawled, trying not to smile too hard as Clark touched him. Clark. Not Kal, not Kent, not Superman. All Clark. With a second chance, if the JLA people didn't fuck it up for them both. "Great. I'll keep that in mind. Maybe if I expose them to enough flannel, it'll help their urge to do funny things with their drawers." Light, easy conversation. Words meant to distract Clark from thinking about anything.

If Lex had a choice in the matter, he'd keep Clark from thinking about anything. A shift, and he peered through the cracked open doors as an iridescent shape moved past, causing a ripple in the scenery. "And I believe that would be the jet. Let's make a run for it."

"You don't have anything more than those pajamas and that blanket?" Clark asked him, frowning.

"No. All of my property is in Metropolis or Smallville. I'm a prisoner, and given the world situation right now, Amnesty International would like to make dart-boards of my face rather than involve themselves with an ultimately worthy case." Lex tugged the blanket around himself, twisting to look at Clark.

"What did you do?" Clark sighed. It was more of a rhetorical question, because before Lex knew it, he was gathered close and warm, and he was in the jet.

Dizzy.

But in the jet.

It was a step towards peace for the world that Clark had touched him, done that, and he hadn't started to scream holy bloody murder, lawsuits, and threats of a painful death at Clark. Lex had to sit still to get his balance again, but he managed it.

The Jet really was invisible. Inside and out, and Lex just hoped that because they could see out, out couldn't see in.

"All strapped in?"

Thank God he'd gotten over his fear of heights.

From the look on his face, Clark was still having some serious problems with his own. "Tell me this thing stops being see-through," he mumbled.

"I doubt it," Lex murmured as he made sure he was strapped in tight, and that Clark was the same. "Yes, we are, Diana. Clark, you very recently used to fly..."

"Very recently doesn't mean a lot to me right now, Lex," Clark pointed out, teeth grinding tightly together, his eyes shut just as securely. "There's this thing about having nothing but air between me and the ground that's just BAD."

"You can get over it again. I did -- even went on to pilot my own planes." Partially out of paranoia, but Clark didn't know anything about Helen or the deserted island. Clark didn't know anything about running away to Metropolis and tangling with one of the most dangerous men in the city. "Being tense like that makes it worse."

"When you hit the ground?"

"You aren't going to hit the ground, Clark." Diana's voice was filled with amusement. "Even if the plane does decide to crash, I can fly."

"Great. I feel so much better."

"You can fly, too, Clark," Lex pointed out as he relaxed back into his seat. "I'm sure that if we crashed your instincts would kick in."

"Lex. I can only float when I'm having good dreams right about now. Instincts or no instincts, floating while I'm scared to death isn't likely."

"But your body, Clark, remembers." Or... doesn't remember, since Clark had regressed that, too. A hollow assurance was better than nothing when Diana did start to lift the jet up off the ground.

Maybe it would be better to just not think about the ground after all.

No matter how not-afraid of it Lex was.

Lex hadn't been kidding when he'd said he was a prisoner. Lex hadn't been kidding about any of it, even the statement that Clark was the leader of the people who surrounded him.

As soon as Diana had touched down -- and Clark could hear Chloe snarking in his head that the feminists would like to get a hold of that costume -- on the runway behind some massive building, as soon as they'd stepped out of the jet, a man in green and black had trapped Lex into a globe of green light to escort him to a cell.

It had only gotten stranger from there. Now Clark was in their conference room, sitting at the head of the conference table in a chair with an 'S' symbol engraved onto it like Alexander the Great's breastplate had, surrounded by weirdos in bad costumes.

If they hadn't put Lex into a cell, he probably would have been having a field-day with their comic-bookness.

Maybe that was one of the reasons they'd taken him straight to a cell and kept him there. Clark was tempted to poke fun at them just to try and lighten the atmosphere.

How did these people function when even the air seemed heavy around them?

"Kal El, tell us..."

"NOT Kal El." If Kal El was what Clark had become, what had made him enemies with Lex, Clark wasn't going to accept that. "Clark."

"CLARK." The word was damn near snarled by the pointy-eared guy. Wow, didn't he have issues. "What the hell is going on here?"

"From what I understand, you're responsible for at least part of it, so why don't you start by telling me what you did to set me off into some kind of murderous rage?" Against his best friend, no matter what had happened in the intervening thirty-five years.

"It didn't take much," the man, Batman, bit back at him. "That isn't what we're here to discuss. We're here to discuss, when there are other things to see to right now, why you have suddenly forgotten everything. Superman, this..."

"It was Yellow Kryptonite," Wonder Woman supplied. "I fetched it for him from Luthor's supply. He wished this onto himself, so he would be rid of Kal."

"Who apparently rivals the average crazy meteor mutant serial killer," Clark tacked on. "And who you apparently saw fit to let loose and leave in that ice Fortress with Lex. And then not check on anybody until this nice lady showed up."

"Yeah, well, the world's probably a lot better off without Luthor," the blacksuited green-key thingy guy smarted off.

"Do you recall who called all of those rogue nations and... criminals and got them to work with us? He started the war, but he's also done more to stop it than any of us could," Wonder Woman snapped. "Do you even remember why we gave Ka--Clark custody of him?"

"Because he could control Luthor. Because Luthor was afraid of him, which showed more good sense than I thought he had," the big-eared freak growled.

"Why was he afraid of me?" Clark asked slowly, looking at the man. "What did you do before? When you came and then left us alone? I want to know."

"I wanted to prove to his daughter that he was still alive, and you weren't being cooperative." A vague answer that kept the freak from looking guilty of a damn thing.

"Well, I had hoped they'd temper each other," Wonder Woman snapped, crossing her arms over her chest. The arm-bands clinked together. "And it was working until you did that, Batman!"

"He's lying about something." Half of the spandex clad nuts in the room shifted uncomfortably at that. It was obvious that they either knew something Clark didn't or that they had been in similar circumstances before now. "You showing up with his... daughter..." The word seemed to stutter off of Clark's lips. "...wouldn't be enough to set anybody off. Not even some... KAL person."

Batman's expression was stony for a moment. "I came with Kryptonite to keep you subdued while we checked on your prisoner."

"You showed up with KRYPTONITE? Where in the hell did you get that!?" a guy in red blurted, the lightning bolts on the side of his head wiggling in a way that made Clark want to laugh. "I thought nobody had that except Luthor!"

"So," Wonder Woman added, "did I."

Lex wasn't there to defend himself, and Clark didn't know what he used to know, so there was no way of being sure if what was being said was true. "And Luthor's main stocks mysteriously vanished once he was in Superman's custody. Lena, however... had a small stock of it on her own."

"So, I'm guessing that I would have naturally assumed that he'd somehow given her the stuff." Meteor rocks, he was guessing. Kryptonite. Whatever. "And you knew I'd make that assumption."

"I didn't expect any of that, and I didn't expect that you'd lose your mind!" And that sounded like a lie, too, the way that the words seemed to dance around a truth but differ from it completely. Lex did that sometimes, for him.

"You know," Clark said slowly over the faint buzz of conversation that rose. "I've heard some pretty good lies. But the best lies are the one where you're even lying to yourself. For whatever reason. Lex used to be great at those. I get the feeling you are, too."

"I'm not lying," pointy-ears said simply, turning away from a momentary exchange with the man in green and black. "I was trying to do Luthor a favor, and make sure he was still alive."

"But you knew what showing up with that stuff would do, right? That it would piss me, him, Kal, off." Clark wasn't stupid. He was probably smarter than Kent or Superman or Kal on the grounds that there was one whole being there to devote all of his thought processes to the matter. "You knew where I'd think you got it, and you probably had a suspicion about what I'd do." Not that he knew what he'd done, and not that he wanted to know, but.

But.

"And what did you do? You didn't kill him," the man in green and black tossed out. "He's still alive. A little worse for wear, but hell. He almost started a world war. I'd like to rough him up a little myself..."

"Hey, now, beating up somebody just 'cause you can? That's wrong." The guy with the lightning bolts for ears stood up, scowling. "I mean, we already sent him to Superman's Fortress. We left him there. We left him defenseless. And Batman thinks it's okay to turn Superman Kal? On anybody?"

"Oh, God," Clark mumbled. "I must have gotten really bad." He shook his head and spoke loudly. "It's not right to rough anybody up just because you can."

The green man with the craggy face at the other end finally spoke up. He'd seemed... Yoda-like to Clark in complacency so far. "Which is one of the precepts of what we do. We are losing sight of being the Justice League. What you did, Batman, was irresponsible."

"Luthor could have died because of what you did," Wonder Woman chimed in, "And it's not your place to... make someone else get blood on their hands."

"Especially not the blood of my best friend. Because no matter what's changed in the last thirty-five years, no matter how... How AGAINST Each other we might have been or pretended to be? I would never, EVER hurt Lex," Clark said solemnly. He knew it so deep in his belly that it couldn't be anything else but true.

"But you did," Batman pointed out flatly. "You must have. And then you did... this to yourself, Kent."

"Because maybe whatever you caused was just bad enough that I didn't have any other choice. You ever think about that, BRUCE?" And that was a shock. Clark didn't know any Bruce, and certainly not well enough to snarl that answer out to the guy with his funky sharp ears and rubber suit.

So maybe he still did have his memories tucked away in his mind. It was enough to make Wonder Woman give him a startled look before she leaned forwards. "I doubt it. I think I know what this was a ploy to do -- if Luthor didn't die, obviously we were going to have to switch him to the custody of someone else. Batman, were he not in the hot seat, would've been our next best choice."

"He is no longer," J'onn intoned.

"This is bullshit." Batman stood, darkness swirling around him. "Luthor is dangerous. Leaving him in the hands of a sixteen year old Clark Kent," the sarcasm was heavy enough to smother half of the room, "isn't a viable option, either."

Clark opened his mouth to protest, but he was interrupted before he could speak.

"And neither is giving him to YOU!" Flash slammed his hands down onto the table as he bolted up so fast that it seemed he'd been standing all along. "Clark did just what we'd wanted -- made Luthor useful again, made him work for instead of against society. I don't think any of the rest of us could, without using his daughter as bait. And bringing innocents into this is NOT what we do!"

The Arrow cleared his throat loudly. "Why don't we all sit down and gather a little bit of composure?" he offered dryly. "While Batman did something he shouldn't have, we now have the issue of a sixteen year old whole Superman who probably isn't powerful enough to guard a megalomaniac of Luthor's disposition."

"It's a pity we can't regress Luthor to the same age," Flash muttered as he thumped down into his chair.

The silence in the room suggested to Clark that it was being considered too, too seriously.

"The idea has a certain merit," the black-and-green suit guy finally said slowly.

"Now wait just a cotton picking minute," Clark began.

Wonder Woman stared at him for a moment at that, the way that he expected of people who thought he was a hick. "Clark. What can you object to about that idea?"

"Maybe the fact that nobody's asked Lex what he wants," Clark said firmly. "Are all of you people accustomed to making decisions for everybody else on Earth? That must take up a whole lot of time."

"Clark." The man in green and black -- Lantern, something. Clark could call him Lantern in his head until he was sure -- almost hit a hand on the table to get his attention. "He made blood rain from the sky in the Middle East, after giving both sides fresh shipments of weapons."

Even Clark would have trouble forgiving something like that. "Still," he said stubbornly. "Just doing something to somebody 'for their own good'? Usually, not so great. After all..." His eyes twitched towards the freak with the ears.

"He's a prisoner," Batman reiterated. "If you hadn't offered to take him in the first place, we were going to simply execute him. After all of the devastation he's wrought on this planet with his schemes--"

"Not that all of them can be proved to be him," Wonder Woman muttered, giving Clark a look.

"And his greed, and the white collar crime he supports, we have two choices -- kill him, or render him harmless."

"So your notion, then, Batman..." The blond man (Arrow, Clark thought) paused, looking across the table at the black rubber suit in question. "...was to create the execution via use of Kryptonite, and then allow someone else to wallow in guilt for the action."

"No, my notion was to prove that he was alive. I doubted that two madmen could do more than drive each other more mad."

"Well," Clark said slowly, "I think we ought to ask him what he wants. No matter what, making a decision for somebody is wrong. And," he added, "killing him is not an option."

"So you say we can't kill him, no one else can watch him, but you don't remember what he's being watched for, and you certainly can't outwit the man, Clark. Not on most good days," Batman snorted.

"I believe he would be amiable to the idea," J'onn intoned from the other end of the table.

"Then let's ask," Clark said again. "Because that pervert in the black rubber? I'm pretty sure he doesn't deserve a vote."

Someone was still listening to him, because J'onn stood up. Even if he didn't look human, he acted more human than some of them did... Then Flash stood up and was waiting by the door.

"Damned if I'm sure how we'll do it, but there has to be a way..."

"I'll tell you a story about the pervert in black rubber sometime, Clark," Wonder Woman half-confided as she stood. Clark was pretty sure that would scare him. Hell. It would probably scare everybody at the table.

Lantern guy looked at all of them with a frown. "Well, Flash is right. There's got to be a way. And if it makes it all easier..."

"Which it possibly could," Wonder Woman murmured as she moved to head for the door with the rest. "I'm sure that there are things Luthor... would rather not remember, if the option came before him."

"Then we'd have to watch both of them," Batfreak demanded in a dark, foreboding voice. "Because they'll just do the same things that created problems for them before."

"And Luthor has a daughter," Flash reminded. "Can we really... wipe his memory back that far?"

"Superman wiped his own that far," Arrow suggested easily as they walked in a foreboding clot of people. "Does the name 'Lois Lane' ring a bell to you, Superman?"

"Sure," Clark said with a deep frown. Superman? God, he'd taken the whole Nietzsche thing just a little TOO seriously. The entire group tensed as if he'd said that he knew Satan. Personally. Of course, he knew Lex, and they all seemed to think that was just about as bad. "She's Chloe's cousin."

"You were married to her," Lantern sighed. "Head over heels, storybook married to her. Then she was killed. A decade or so back, maybe more. You kept track."

Clark felt his heart pang faintly.

He had been married.

STORYBOOK married.

And it hadn't been Lana.

It was a lot to take in, and he wasn't really sure that these people ought to be telling him these things. He wasn't going to ask any questions about her death. He didn't want to...

"Luthor killed her."

Clark really hated that freak in the black rubber.

Wonder Woman was closest to Clark's side, and though she seemed disinclined to like Lex, she defended him seemingly when the mood struck. "It was Lois or Metropolis, Clark. There were Kryptonians, and... it's a long story." She shot a glare to Batman. "One that you can read about at your leisure."

Lois or Metropolis.

Lana or Smallville.

LEX or Smallville.

Clark would have tried to save both. He knew enough about himself to say that honestly, to know that it was true, to guess that he'd probably done the same when he was twenty, twenty-five years older. Would always have done the same.

Sometimes, his father would have said, even your best can't be enough. So you do what you can, and you salvage what you can, and you put your best foot forward to try again.

Clark had never thought it would horrify him so much to put it in terms of lives, though.

"Look, you're freaking him out," Flash sniped. "So just don't do that, okay? Because we're mostly metahumans here," a smirk dashed towards Batfreak, "but I'm thinking he can still kick enough ass to make it close. And don't go pulling out that green stuff, okay?"

"Lena Luthor took it with her." Batman gave a calm shrug, and led the group into a turn that was right into a door that seemed to barely open in time to let them pass through. There were cells, open spaces with fantastical force-fields in front of them that looked like they belonged in one of the newer Star Wars movies.

The memories of watching Ep One with Lex was still fresh in Clark's mind. Big plasma screen, surround sound, amazingly comfy sofa. Geek commentary. Lex didn't belong in one of those cells, sitting there in his... prison clothes with that blanket wrapped around himself like it was a protective shield.

He wasn't some kind of, of... of SIDESHOW. The fact that these people couldn't seem to tell what they were doing was sincerely fucked up.

Unable to stop himself, Clark brought up his hand, touched the screen, and felt it fizzle beneath his fingertips, a shock he'd only felt twice before.

"There's enough electricity there to FRY somebody!" he yelled.

"That's why you don't touch it," Lex said calmly from his bench, not even bothering to stand. "I wouldn't touch that again, Clark. It increases voltage after the first attempt to breach it."

"He's tried," Flash muttered to Clark, like it were a joke. Like it was okay, when it wasn't.

"Turn it off," Clark demanded, brows knit sharply together. "What kind of complete FREAKS are you people!?"

"It's not nice to call the other freaks that when you're one yourself," someone pointed out behind him.

"Yeah, well, sc... Go stuff your head in the nearest toilet," Clark said, voice gruff and angry. "It's true."

J'onn cleared his throat, and laid one heavy hand on Clark's shoulder. "Please remain calm, and remember why we are here. Alexander Luthor, we have a proposition."

"You have a captive audience -- go on."

That was Lex's 'I'm not listening, hum, hum, keep right on talking, Dad' voice, and Clark knew it. On the other hand, he didn't have any inclination to give Lex's secrets away to these people, either. "I don't think it's a really bad idea. I guess," he offered.

"If we can find a way to place you to a similar age as Superman, would you be willing to go through with it?" Wonder Woman asked, and it seemed that she might, might catch Lex's attention. His eyes drifted to her, then back to Clark.

"You're asking me to forget my glory days. My achievement of my dreams, and relive them in memory and history books only. I've done everything I ever wanted to do, and some of it can't be done again. If you regress me, I can't be president again for another two glorious terms. My daughter..."

"Lex," Clark said in a low voice, "if you don't, they want to kill you."

"Hey, hey," Flash protested. "Not all of us. I didn't say that!"

"Ah, then this is the proverbial choice that isn't a choice at all. Lose my life, or lose my life." Lex started to stand up from the bench, and moved towards the wall of flat electricity. The science of it probably would've fascinated Lex, if it wasn't keeping him inside. Or maybe he'd stopped caring about science and things. "I'm sure you have some underhanded technique already in mind. How old would I be?"

"I believe that making the matter age-appropriate would be the most likely of decisions. That would make you approximately twenty-one."

"Ah, my halcyon days. Before three messy divorces, before my father tried to kill me, before I lost my mind, before I knew who I was. Before Superman, or Kal." His jaw twitched tight for a moment, and his eyes drifted to look at Clark. "Our days in Smallville were simpler days."

"Better ones," Clark offered a little optimistically. From the inside, he couldn't tell just how pathetically hopeful he seemed, how those pleading eyes were something Lex still dreamed of on dark, lonely nights. "We can start over. You know everything, Lex. There's no point in lying to you about... What I am. Now. Or when it's done. Then."

"Tell me -- did I hit you with my car that day on the bridge?"

Clark ducked his head, giving a faint shudder. "Yes." Yes, yes, because what else could he say? "I didn't know. What I was, I mean. Not before that day. I wasn't even sure then, but the next day, Dad showed me. The ship."

The quiet surrounding them almost implied privacy.

ALMOST.

"This is sweet," the rubber freak bit out, "but could we get this over with?"

"You were a great friend in boarding school, Bruce," Lex said slowly, angrily, "but you were a lousy fuck, and a worse excuse for a human being. That's one memory I'll be glad to forget. The Christmas party in 2006." That felt really... good, after having been so scared of them. Nothing could be worse than Kal, and with Kal gone...

"If you don't lie to me, Clark, nothing can go wrong this time. I'll submit to this scheme, as long as I can speak with my daughter first. Our last meeting was... fleeting."

"I won't lie to you," Clark answered solemnly. He didn't want to know why Lex hadn't seen his daughter transitorily. He wasn't going to think about that.

Just like he so WASN'T going to think about Lex doing anything with the freak in the rubber suit.

Or the pangs of jealousy in the pit of his sixteen year old belly.

The oddest smile curled Lex's mouth, and he almost touched the field; a little spark startled him backwards. "I'll go through with it."

"And I'll find Lena. I think the school year starts soon, so... she could be traveling already." Wonder Woman stepped back, not willing to waste time.

"I want to go in there," Clark told Flash, frowning as Rubber Idiot Guy moved with an expression that said he was going to protest. "You be quiet, Bruce."

"You've always been naive and crazy." He seemed to spit that out, but he did reach for the controls; slowly, the force field powered down.

"Well at least I haven't always been an asshole." The word made him blush horribly, but it drew snickers out of the crowd around him. Clark felt kind of like he was still in the sixth grade.

"Things almost feel normal around here already," Arrow mused from where he was leaning on the wall. "Well, J'onn. Let's go try to rustle up our best chance, hmn?"

"So long as I am not regressed again. Then, I will kill him first and ask questions later," the green man answered solemnly.

"That almost sounds like an interesting story," Lex decided as the wall that was keeping him in and Clark out finally fizzled away.

"Go on -- I'm not leaving it down forever. When you want back out, Kent, yell," Bruce snapped.

"I think I understand why you did whatever bad things you did," Clark groused at Lex. "It's because living with THAT guy for any period of time would drive you to attempt murder, right?"

Lex laughed quietly, and moved to sit down on the bench again. "Bruce Wayne puts on a great facade, but deep down, he's a jerk. And refuses to face that fact. Remember that for me. At twenty-one I was still idealistic about him."

"He's a rubber obsessed pervert," Clark decided, sitting down beside Lex. "Uh, I won't tell you that part, okay? When you were twenty-one, you'd probably have chased after rubber obsessed perverts. If they had, um, breasts. Anyway." Blushing again. Darn.

"I'm bi," Lex told him conversationally. "So you don't have to make that addendum. At that point in my life I was trying to hard to impress my father."

"You, uh, didn't tell me that part," Clark admitted. "On the other hand, I didn't tell you I wasn't from Kansas, so I guess we're sort of even."

"Yes." Lex's mouth curled a little, and he stopped hugging the blanket so close to himself. "I've really missed you. As yourself."

"Why did we stop being friends, Lex?" It was a forlorn little sound. "I mean, I lied. I know. I lied, and... I really wish that I could take that back, but it was important to lie. I mean. You know. Alien autopsies. That kind of thing. I know you said we had different world views. That you had done bad things. Just... I can't believe that we'd be enemies if there hadn't been one final bad thing."

"That's too simple. There were hundreds of little bad things, that you had done, that I had done. Lies as far as the eye can see, and I got tired of it. You tired of it, and then I... confronted you, with an ultimatum." Lex leaned his head back against the cold flat of the wall behind the bench.

"And I wouldn't tell you huh?" Clark sighed, shook his head. "I'm sorry. Even if I don't remember it. I'm sorry, Lex."

Lex clutched his fingers in the blanket for a moment, then let go of it. Moments later, he was hugging Clark in a manner that was carefully platonic. "We've both been assholes." And he was a slightly frightened asshole; Lena had been his lifeline for so long, the thought of losing that, of no longer knowing everything about her was... an unthinkable thought.

The feel of a boy's hand, soft, lacking lines, was sweet upon his head. It wasn't a touch he'd ever let many people give to him. Bruce was probably even watching, and if he was, Lex hoped he was spitting up bile and venom over it. "Maybe we won't be if there aren't any lies between us," Clark suggested. He shifted Lex carefully, as if he could tell where Lex hurt the worst.

That was really impossible. Clark couldn't know, he... simply couldn't. Even if there was the touch to his head, low on his skull, the feeling of warmth. Clark. Clark before Clark fucked with his head, and circumstances changed them so far away from the creature that Clark had become and what he was.

"I think it's more than a maybe," Lex murmured, going with the flow of it.

"A definitely then. I wanted to tell you, Lex. More than I ever wanted to tell anybody. Only... Things happened," he sighed. "Things happened. You shot me. Dad kept saying you couldn't be trusted. It wasn't anything personal. Or, maybe it was, but Dad... He didn't want anybody to know. He just wanted to keep me safe. Keep us safe. Keep home safe."

"I know." Lex ducked his head for a moment, and breathed out a slow, tired sigh. "Your parents eventually came to regard me more highly than you recall." But it hadn't lasted forever. Nothing did, and when his friendship with Clark had crumbled, there hadn't been question of whom the clannish Kents would side with.

"You should close your eyes," Clark said slowly. "You look tired, Lex." And sad, but Clark didn't say that. Some things were better left in silence, he'd learned. He'd been silence-bound since the cradle, he sometimes thought.

"Lena will be here soon. I think you'd like her. She's grown up nothing at all like her mother."

"Wife number two?" Clark asked him, allowing a faint smile. "Was I the best man again? You know..." It was sincerely conversational. "I really hated Desiree. I mean. Really. She was... I hated her."

"A manipulative bitch who set me on fire. I recall." Lex closed his eyes for a moment. "Number two was Helen. You were the best man, but you didn't show. I should have taken it as a sign of the doomed event it was. She tried to kill me on the honeymoon, and I was presumed dead for three months while I... rotted on a deserted island. Wife number three was... the Contessa. Personality wise, she was on par with Bruce."

Despite that Lex's voice was a mere muted whisper, Bruce still cut in with, "And you killed her."

"Take the point, Wayne, and shut up."

"Geeze," Clark sighed. "Privacy doesn't mean anything to these people. Are you sure I liked any of them? 'Cause, Lex. They wear TIGHTS. Except that bat freak."

"I'm sure, Clark. You've spent the last thirty-odd years wearing spandex like something right out of... of Warrior Angel." Lex could hear footfalls, so he started to sit up and pull away, one arm still over Clark's shoulders.

"Don't do that, Lex. There are... I don't know, healing things in there." Clark coughed. "Uh. X-ray vision. So. Just lay down. I promise I won't let you look bad, okay?"

"You won't let me look bad?" Lex laughed a little, but laid back as best as he could on the bench they were sharing. "Healing things. That's very specific, Clark."

"Anatomy's not 'til next semester, Lex," Clark pointed out calmly enough. Except that maybe it wasn't. "That green guy is coming back, and there's... I don't know. A teenager with him? Some guy who's not that old."

"Not an interest to me. I'll bother sitting up again if it's a girl who looks about your age, with wavy red hair." Because he wasn't going to let them do that to him until he'd had a last few moments with his daughter. Three months and a few weeks was a long time for family that had always been close. Lena's desperation to help and possibly get him out of the Fortress had been... understandable.

Sometimes Lex thought it was a Luthor trait not to think clearly when desperate.

"I've never understood your obsession with redheads, Lex." Clark was so definitely teasing. After all. His mom had been a redhead.

"This one is in the genes," Lex drawled, an easy chuckle. It was good to rest again after so much motion, the Jet flight's constant vibrations, and simply waiting in tension in the cell. Clark was there, as... Clark had been before Wonder Woman. "My father would have been delighted."

"Bet your Dad liked Bruce," Clark said. "I mean, you know. Freak calling to freak and all that. Maybe he's a redhead under there."

"Black hair. My father did love him." Lex's mouth quirked a little, concentrating on the sound of Clark's voice, because his eyes were focused on the backs of his eyelids. "If his son was going to be a deviant, he was going to be a respectable deviant."

"Hey, Lex?" Clark said quietly. "Your dad? I hate to tell you this, but he's a real asshole. The kind of guy that you'd really like to rip a hole in. You know. Because he needs it. A lot. You were too good a son for a guy like him. Honest."

"He's dead. Long dead and rotting in his grave. I know that he's a real asshole. I've been one, too, a man after his own... stone heart. We can change that soon, Clark. We can start over."

"It's going to work," Clark started to say before a puff of smoke coalesced in the center of the cell and then went flinging outwards, revealing a creepy looking teenaged boy with a cat lounging on one shoulder.

"Ahhh, SuperIdiot, I see you've pulled yourself together," he said with no small amount of amusement.

Insulting the name -- favorite tactic of enemies of Superman for thirty time-tested years. SuperTwit has such a better ring to it than SuperIdiot. Lex lifted his head a little to look at the spectacle, then simply kept his head turned. "Klarion."

"Ah-ah," Klarion smiled, wriggling a finger. "You forgot the important part. It's Klarion -- BUM BUM BUM! -- the Witch Boy."

"...Lex. Tell me..." Clark was floored, obviously. It hadn't taken much when Clark was a sixteen year old from Smallville.

Hicksville. Oh, his head was going to spin when he saw how much thirty years, the odd invasion, and a few interdimensional wars, could change the world. Why the Justice League had slammed down on him with the blood rain was beyond Lex. Except that they still...

Still hadn't figured out how he'd done it.

"You've crossed paths with him before. I think... he's your compatriot's concept of our solution."

"Well, once I've received my payment, naturally," Klarion agreed, quite cheerful. "Isn't that right, Teekl?"

"Meow."

"Cats," Clark sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Between Ian and Desiree, there had been that whole thing with old Mrs. Mulholland and the Glowing Green Cats of Doom. He'd forgotten about that. "Why does it always have to be cats?"

"I suspect it's because dogs don't perch on shoulders well." Lex closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at Klarion, with or without the musical introduction. Life was queer enough most days. "You'll have to speak to the Justice League about payment. I don't have anything."

"Oh, I've already asked for the appropriate payment," Klarion answered, beaming. "Now we just have to wait for..."

Bruce's bellow of NO could be heard probably throughout the entire compound.

"...for the others to convince the Batman to give me what I desire," he finished, nodding his head towards the two of them. "You're looking rather young and naive, SuperIdiot."

"Thanks," Clark replied. "Uh. I think."

"You're going to have to wait, once he agrees," Lex murmured. There was no 'if'. The masters of strong-arm tactics would make Batman agree. "I have to do something first. Wonder Woman is... certainly taking her time." Worryingly taking her time, but maybe she'd had trouble finding Lena and then had needed to explain to her what was going on.

"I don't want to wait," Klarion pouted. "I've always been very bad at waiting. Of course, if I get to flaunt my new toy in front of the Bat, then I suppose it might be worthwhile."

"Flaunt it all you like," Clark offered. "See if you can get those funky ears to wilt."

"Flaunt it well," Lex agreed, "Because he has it coming..." More noises, talking could be heard. Wonder Woman with Lena? Lex started to make himself sit up that time, because he simply had to look put together.

He had to have enough composure that Lena wouldn't question him, or scream bloody murder.

"God," Clark mourned. "They make those boots for the intimidation factor."

"It made it easy to tell when all of you were nearing one of my traps," Lex murmured as he grabbed Clark's arm and finally sat up straight. Lena was twenty, and not so different from how Lex had been at twenty. Very likely to question him and scream bloody murder at the same time.

"Batman, you can bring down the forcefield," Wonder Woman called to Batman from down the hall.

"This is a very bad idea," Bruce grumbled, but the field came down all the same. Clark almost felt like Lex's daughter must have superspeed, because the second it fizzled away, she was in his arms, crying out for him.

"Oh, Daddy! I was so scared for you!"

Lex hardly muffled the pained 'umph' of air when Lena all but tackled him where he sat, and wrapped his arms tightly around the flame-haired girl. "My girl... I was worried about you -- what did I tell you about trusting Batman, Lena? I'm so glad to see you're all right..."

"I know, I know. You said to never trust him, that he lied for his own purposes, and he was no Superman, but.." Her touch seemed to gentle when she realized she was hurting him. "But Daddy. Superman had you, and I had to be sure that he hadn't done anything to you." Because apparently Superman wasn't a liar, even though Clark was, and Superman was dangerous. At least to Lena. Or Lex. Or something like that.

"He's a freak," Clark said a little solemnly, nodding.

Lex wanted to ask if Clark meant Superman or Batman, but didn't quite say the words. Lena probably wouldn't guess that Clark was... Superman. And even though she'd loosened her grasp, he didn't let go of her. "It's all right, Lena. Everything is all right now -- I'm fine. See?"

"Are they going to let you go?" she asked him, blue eyes that mirrored his so very wide and hopeful. "I was so afraid for you, Daddy. I thought he was going to kill you, no matter how you always swore he wouldn't. Did they take you away? To keep you safe?"

No. No, they'd left him there to Kal's damaging hands and Clark's caring ones. It was only Wonder Woman who had come to check on them, checking more on Clark than on him. But at least she was honest with her motives, the great big Amazon bitch. "Yes, darling." Why not, why let her worry for him? He cleared his throat, looking into her earnest, half-frightened expression. "And now... it's been decided that the best way to keep me safe is to make me younger and bury my memories. Like what's happened with Clark. Lena, I... want you to meet Clark Kent, as I knew him when I was your age."

She turned slightly, looking at Clark in a way that made him desperately uncomfortable.

Lex had been looking at him like that for about a bazillion years, it seemed. He really ought to have gotten used to it.

"Hi. Nice to meet you," Clark said awkwardly.

"YOU'RE Clark Kent. The reporter? What's he got to do with anything, Daddy?"

Lex shifted to sit a little straighter, and soothed a hand at his daughter's shoulder. She'd always been daddy's little angel, and losing her... "He's Superman, sweetie. Or was. He's been de-aged to repair some... imbalances he had. This is the Clark Kent I knew when I lived in Smallville. You know, the town where the manor is? LeXCorp Plant #1."

"Well. That's great, then, Daddy," Lena said slowly. "If they're going to keep you safe. But they're not regressing you so that you can stay with him, are they?" Suspicion and paranoia were traits that bred true amongst Luthors.

And, as usual, were painfully on target. "I don't have much of a choice, Lena. I wish I could stay who I am now... but I can agree, or I can die." That was going to hurt her, so he kept her close despite the awkwardness of Clark sitting right beside him, listening, and Bruce outside, and Wonder Woman probably watching.

Fuck all of them.

"They can't do that!" she said sharply, turning to glare at Clark with a look so fierce that Lex had to admit he was a little surprised when the young man didn't burst into flames. "They have no right! You haven't even been given a trial!"

"Hey, it's not my idea," Clark protested.

"Oh, I was given a trial -- where I wasn't allowed to speak and was judged guilty by them. And sentenced by them. And..." Locked away by Superman, starved and toyed with; the farther away from that situation that he was, the more he resented having been in it. And... there was what Kal had done. That was still hurting him, even though he did heal quickly. "I'm sorry, Lena. I'm sorry. I pushed them too far."

"No, Daddy, you've only ever done what was best, and..."

"And don't you think he deserves a chance to start over and do it all again? Make sure he does it right, and keeps his friends without lies between them?" Clark asked her. "I don't want there to be lies anymore. I think maybe that was what caused all of our trouble, anyway."

Lex sighed, leaning into Lena to rest his forehead against his daughter's. "Maybe. But I'm a little more worried about... forgetting about you, Lena. I love you -- you know that, don't you? I..." How to say it? All of those precious memories, some of them captured in pictures, but so many would just be... lost. Forgotten entirely or buried. Clark seemed to have his, tucked away somewhere, but Lex wasn't facing Kryptonite.

Lex was facing something else altogether.

"Oh, God, Daddy! No! No, they can't, they just can't! It's cruel!" Sometimes, Lex forgot how young she was, how much he had loved her and spoiled her, kept her away from his father.

Until the old bastard's timely demise. "Shhh... Shh, Lena. Please don't make this harder for me. I don't have a choice, but I don't want to forget you..."

"Please don't let them do this, Daddy!" And she believed, honestly believed, that he could stop it. She had faith in her father, a greater faith than she held in any of the freaks who were holding him.

Lex slipped his arms tight around her again, trying to comfort and failing. There wasn't any way he could not fail, not without lying. "You have to tell me everything, all right? Promise to tell me everything about you, about us, after. I don't have a choice..."

"I hate them," Lena whispered to him desperately. "Oh, Daddy. I hate them."

"I'm sorry," Clark apologized, more for himself than for any of the others. Seeing Lex this way, a father, with a daughter who so obviously adored him... It made him desperately sad, made him wish that everything hadn't gone to such hell.

"Shhh. Don't, Lena. Don't waste your time hating them -- there are better things you can do. Better than I did. Remember that. You're a brilliant girl, I love you..." And he wasn't crying, no. He wasn't crying, and he wasn't sorry for what he'd done, he just... was very tired of it all.

That was it.

"Luthor, you've had enough time," Batman groused from the other side of the entryway. The shield was still down. They could have tried to get out, but... No, they couldn't have gotten anywhere.

Only killed.

"Get your tights out of your crack, okay?" Clark snipped, scowling. Ah, yes. There was the influence of one Chloe Sullivan, hard to miss in that moment. "She's saying goodbye to her DAD, and that's hard, you jerk."

"Promise me, Lena. That you'll tell me everything. That you'll make me understand." He swallowed, and pulled back to look at her face, studying the familiar lines of it.

"I'll make you understand, Daddy," Lena promised, not bothering to hide her tears. He'd never taught her that. "I'll tell you everything. I love you so much, Daddy."

Lex exhaled in a slow sigh. He'd done a good job as a father, better than he'd hoped he could have, to raise such a smart girl who wasn't scared to be whatever she wanted to do. Cry. Protest. Anything she wanted. "I know. I'll always love you, Lena, my sweet girl. And I'm sure if you tell me everything, it... it has to come back. There's no way I could forget you for long."

"Luthor..."

"Button it up, Batfreak." The mewl of Teekl probably annoyed Bruce more than it did the rest of them. "You're having a very bad day, aren't you?" Rhetorical question, that. "Well, in any case, I suppose it is time at that. I have things to do, so let's get on with it, shall we?"

Lex moved his hands up to Lena's shoulders, and shifted to kiss her forehead. "I'll see you soon, Lena. Be good for me."

"Lena, why don't you come into the conference room with me to get a cup of coffee," Wonder Woman offered from outside of the cell.

"I don't want a cup of coffee," Lena told him, shivering wretchedly. "I want my father. And you're taking him away from me!"

"Better young than dead," Flash said with a brilliant smile. "It's not that bad a plan, even if Supes did come up with it!"

Lex sagged back against the wall behind him, eyes on his daughter. "You're lucky I won't be able to remember that remark and make you regret it," Lex intoned flatly, tiredly. "Just get this over with. I don't want to hear your last taunts."

"Well, since I've been paid..." Klarion said with a little laugh.

"Wait until Lena is out of the room," Clark said. "Please. I don't think she should see this."

Lex saw her being led out of the room, but she looked back despite going forwards. It was always that way -- one more Luthor Trait, one which he wished she hadn't gotten. Then Klarion--

A field of green light washed over Lex, blinding him. He could hear Clark's startled yell, but could do no more than shudder at the feel of it. Magic was never a pleasant feeling, never something he wanted to experience any more than he had to, and now he had no choice.

He just had...

This.

Whatever This was.

Clark's suggestion that maybe they should have used one of the floor mats from Lex's Porsche as a makeshift towel was starting to sound really good to Lex. In a retrospective way, because there was nothing short of a long shower back home that would get the sand out of his asscrack.

Sticky, sweaty sand. And Clark had to have sand all the way down to his scalp. Lex wasn't quite thinking of that, though. He was thinking more about the beautiful hard body that was pounding him into a relaxed pulp, the way Clark's shoulders were strong and a little hard to keep that one leg hooked over, even when he was bent in half and being kissed.

"Perfect. Perfect. God. Fuck. Lex. Yes."

And it was perfect, perfect the way they always should have been, the way that Lex had dreamed about for months on end. It was a shame that it had taken the destruction of Smallville to prove it to them as the lone survivors.

Clark had mourned desperately, of course. Lex had promised to protect him, to give him whatever he needed.

And Clark's secrets had simply spilled out, soft and miserable and desperate, so sure that he was the guilty one. The one who had somehow made it happen.

And Lex couldn't quite bring himself to lie and say that of course Clark wasn't. Neither of them could remember. They'd only survived because they'd been in the basement of the mansion, discussing... something, something about the car that he'd hit Clark with. Sheer luck that Lex had been paranoid enough to have that room sunk into the hill, and reinforced, and that they'd been in the accidental bomb shelter.

And when Lionel had been counted among the dead, everything had seemed to just fit together. They couldn't stay in Smallville, not with the national guard everywhere and so many things to do, together. Metropolis served as a home base, but... after such trauma, how could they be expected to stay in one place for long? Clark had always wanted to travel...

The beach, that particular beach, was heaven. "Christ, yes, harder, harder! I, oh God, Clark, you beautiful..." He clutched at the back of Clark's neck with one hand, the other stealing between them to tug at his drooling erection. Just a few more strokes, and Lex was sure that his brain was going to blow when his nuts did.

"Lex. Lex!" A benediction, a prayer, sweetest breaths full of worship and adoration, and Clark's hips shifted, moving the way Lex wanted him to move. It was enough to make him see stars, to make his entire body feel each heavy push.

And every stroke back out, every motion leaving a deeper imprint of Lex's back on the sand. The contrast of gritty sand, Clark's sweet words, the pants that Lex drank down eagerly, the sharp erotic shivers that slipped through Lex with every motion. Clark was the best lover he'd ever had. "Close, Jesus, Clark, I'm so close, it--" Hand on his cock, Lex could hardly keep up that erratic stroking when orgasm hit.

Coming, and Clark was coming with him, Lex's entire body folded, his hands clinging desperately to Clark's back and neck and shoulders. It was just one long steady everything, and Lex yelled to the sky.

And no one came running when he yelled, or when Clark groaned a rumbling noise that sounded more inhuman than human. There was an upside to having friends who owned private beaches, to knowing when police patrolled.

Lex did everything in his power to make things perfect for Clark, and it was worth the effort. Even when he could hardly talk between moments of trying to catch his breath.

He'd never thought that anything could be so good.

That he could be so lucky.

That Clark would ever give him so much of himself, love him so much. And yet... He did. And everything was so right. So good. Lex had never been happier, at least not since his mother died. Maybe not even then, because his father had still been alive then. Now, there was nothing but Clark and Lex and goodness, happiness, no pressure. Having Clark made up for thousands of things.

Like the way that sand felt gritty against the back of his skull when he slumped into it, head falling back.

"You're a sex-god, Clark," he huffed in quiet laughter.

"Your sex-god." Clark was laughing, honestly laughing, and there was sand on one high cheekbone.

Showering was probably going to be more cleaning and less enjoyment than usual. Lex lifted one hand to brush that sand away, fingers touching Clark's cheek tenderly. "Never to be forsaken for a false idol, either. I like this sort of monotheism, Clark."

"I like it when you use the big words, Lex." And he did. It made Clark a little breathy, a little horny, and okay, Lex's body wasn't meant to do this twice in a row. Not really.

That hand stroked from Clark's cheek, down the line of his neck, and to his shoulder, to push him in an attempt to roll Clark onto his back. "If we're going to do anything else, it's time for you to get sand in your asscrack, Clark."

And Clark laughed.

God, life was so good.

"They're very happy," Lena said quietly, hands folded beneath her chin. "I suppose if this had happened when it should have, I wouldn't even be here. Though it is a little strange to see... Well." One should never be exposed to the sex lives of one's parents.

"They'll live out long, full lives," she was assured by the black-haired woman sitting beside her. "If you wish to, you can..." Do more than just watch occasionally, that strange peeking into their lives, their tiny little world that seemed full of everything the factual world had.

Maybe it even was, in its own strange way.

"No," Lena decided firmly. "There's still too much left to be done for that. I'll make due with seeing him on occasion." Her hand delicately traced across the table before her, not daring to touch the glass of the bottle that held them. Held everything that was real to them.. "And he's happy. And he's my father. And I love him."

"We... no, I'm sorry that everything turned out this way," Diana told her quietly. Clark had been her best friend before he'd started to really lose his mind, Lena had learned. It was all too little too late, and she was breaking her promise to tell her father about everything, to make him remember.

It didn't seem to really matter.

"Me, too," Lena said quietly. "Me, too."