Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

~*~*~*~*~*~

No one knew how this was going to end.

Then again, no one knew how this was going to begin either.

Lex looked down at himself, and he wondered whether anything was ever going to be the same. He was covered in blood, and it pooled on the ground beneath him, though it wasn't his own. He sort of wished it was.

He raised his head slightly, and he looked at Clark, sprawled across his lap. He was as pale and cold as the crystals in the Fortress around them. This wasn't surprising, given that most of the blood was from the gaping hole in Clark's chest. (...Actually, all of the blood was Clark's. Lex just didn't want to think about that.)

The Orb was supposed to control him, but that wasn't what had happened. Lex had placed it into the control panel, and the crystalline Fortress had lit up eerily. He'd expected something of a lightshow, and he'd gotten one, too -- it had come in the form of a bright, directed beam of light that had blasted out of the walls, straight at Clark.

But when the beam hit Clark, it had pierced his chest like it was made of tissue paper. That shouldn't have happened. Clark was Kryptonian. He should have been able to shrug it off, at least physically.

It didn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense at all.

Lex knew he was in shock, but he couldn't shake himself out of it. The Fortress was coming down around them, and Lex couldn't even summon the energy to force himself to move. He could barely breathe.

A huge crystalline pillar shattered next to him, and Lex didn't even flinch. He sat there, and he looked down at Clark in utter disbelief, staring into Clark's vacant, empty eyes.

Clark was dead. Lex had killed him.

And as Lex sat there, alone and unmoving, dumb and uncaring as to his fate, the ceiling collapsed down on top of them, burying them both.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex sat bolt upright in bed, gasping.

...What. What the hell had that been?

Better question: what in god's name was a Kryptonian?

Chapter Text

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex stared up at the handsome stranger above him, gasping for breath in an entirely different way than he had been the night before.

"You should be dead," Lex said, and what else was there to say to the handsome, strange, young, and far, far too familiar-looking man who'd pulled him out of the wreckage of his car?

The man had survived getting hit by a car -- his, Lex Luthor's car -- at something like 60 miles an hour, and a quick tumble into the cold, frigid river below it, thereafter. And yet a weird beam of light had downed him, left a smoking hole straight through him, and fatal blood-loss followed by a collapsing ceiling had finished him off.

...except that had just been a dream, right?

Was he asleep?

Lex shoved himself farther upright, then looked down at himself and pinched his own arm. Ow.

...oh. Oh, crap. He was awake this time. Well... well, okay then. Hit a big metal bale of wire with his car, went over a bridge, took someone with him, drowned, and resuscitated. Got it. Both of them were still alive somehow, despite all odds. Sure; why not?

Lex looked up at the young man in front of him, who appeared to be in some form of shock.

"You're not dead, Clark," Lex told the young man.

He looked up at Lex somewhat blankly.

He said, "Okay."

"That's a good thing," Lex said, trying to reassure them both.

"Okay."

Lex thought for a moment, then tried again.

"You're not asleep, either," Lex told him, then leaned forward a bit. "Look."

Lex reached out and pinched the young man's arm.

The young man watched this without comment, then looked up at Lex.

"See?" said Lex. "You felt that, right?"

The young man stared at him.

"No," he said.

Lex blinked. "No?"

The young man continued to stare at him.

Lex experienced a vague feeling of unease.

"You didn't feel that?" Lex asked him, to be sure.

"No," the young, strange man told him distantly, a little like he'd been asked to confirm that the sky was, in fact, really blue. "I didn't feel that."

"Oh," said Lex.

The both sat where they were, on the edge of the riverbank, soaking wet and facing each other.

"...oh," said Lex.

Chapter Text

~*~*~*~*~*~

The paramedics arrived, and the police, and Lex let them do their jobs. He got a blanket for his trouble. So did the young strange man who had resuscitated him. And that was about as far as Lex was letting himself think through things, just then.

The other adults were more or less leaving them alone after the initial hustle-and-bustle, right up until someone behind them called out with a great deal of agitation, "Clark! Son, are you all right?"

The young stranger rose to his feet, taking his blanket along with him. "Yeah, I'm okay," he said.

Lex stared up at him. Clark. He stared up at Clark.

The older man wrapped his arms around the young stranger protectively and looked around, frowning furiously. "Who's the maniac that was driving that car?

Lex blinked up at Clark's... father?

"That's me," said Lex. "I'm the maniac."

Clark's old man looked down at Lex, and his frown got a little less furious, and more confused.

Lex looked up at him from where he was seated on the ground still, and lowered his hand once he'd been noticed. He wasn't hard to pick out of a crowd once seen; a raised hand for a short while was more than enough. And since he wasn't even in a crowd, right now...

"Who're you?" the not-so-old older man asked gruffly.

"Lex Luthor."

The older man stared at him for a while, then said, "I'm Jonathan Kent. This is my son."

"Okay," said Lex.

There was another long pause.

"You hit your head, or something?" Mr. Kent asked him.

"Yes," said Lex, "but that was after." Didn't explain anything, really.

Mr. Kent seemed a bit stumped for a moment. Lex sympathized.

"You drunk? Or on something?" he asked, finally.

"Dad..." said Clark.

"Not that I can recall," said Lex. Though it'd probably explain a lot, if he had been. Pity, that.

Mr. Kent stared down at him for awhile longer.

"How fast were you driving," the older man asked of him, finally.

"About sixty miles an hour," Lex told him, which was the truth as far as he knew it.

"Drive slower," he was told.

"Okay," said Lex.

The man stared at him for another long second or two, then turned and led his Clark away.

Lex turned back to the river. He pulled the blanket around his shoulders in a bit, looking for comfort where there was none to be had. Both usual, and typical, really.

Maybe he should go home.

Lex decided to walk. His car wasn't working, being all smashed up and waterlogged, and driving wasn't working out for him so well that day, anyway. And as far as Lex was concerned, he could really use the time to think.

~*~*~*~*~*~

When Lex got home... to his new home until further notice, the mansion in town... he went straight to the library, and started rummaging around through the various boxes therein.

He eventually found and pulled out a not-so-worn copy of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, and reread the first two of them. They weren't all that comforting.

He put down the book.

He turned around, walked out of the library, down to the end of the hallway, and into his more-or-less designated (rather than chosen) bedroom, the mansion's master suite.

He walked the periphery, surveying the room, glancing around at the marks on the boxes, written in his own handwriting. He stopped at a stack three boxes high.

He removed the first two boxes, getting them out of the way, then crouched down and pulled the lid off of the bottom box.

He stuck his hand in and pulled out a far more well-worn copy of Carroll's Through The Looking Glass. He opened it up to a point a bit before midway through the novel.

He flipped a few pages, and began reading again.

After awhile, he closed the book, and put it away, back in the box it had come from. He didn't put the lid back on it, or fix the pile in any way.

Instead, he got up and walked over to the king-sized bed -- oh, what irony! -- and flopped backwards down onto it.

Then he coughed twice and grimaced as the dust resettled.

Should've taken off the dust cover first, Lex thought, and then he resolved to not think about anything else again for awhile.

Chapter Text

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex unilaterally decided that he had been hallucinating. He didn't have prophetic dreams, after all, and people weren't carproof.

He blamed the fertilizer plant. God knew what poisonous by-products the place was probably spewing out into the surrounding environs. It was Occam's Razor: hallucinogenic gas couldn't explain his dream, but it could explain him having a waking episode where he thought he'd run into someone from a dream he could remember.

Take that, reality! ...Or, well, his own untrustworthy senses.

Unfortunately, Lex wasn't hallucinating badly enough (...yet...) to believe that his father would listen to him if he told him that continuing to work at the fertilizer plant would be hazardous to his health, and possibly also the well-being of others if he hallucinated again whilst driving.

Worse, the only way across the river to the plant was that particular now-infamous bridge. So if there was some gas leakage in the area that was the root cause of his episode, Lex would be exposed to it again, and again. Twice daily, in fact. (Possibly four times if he forgot to bring lunch.)

Worse than that, Lex hadn't been able to find a commercial gas mask manufacturer that guaranteed their product to work for at least 8 hours at a stretch, and an easy and reliable method for cleaning the mask and changing the filters without risk of exposure in the interim. If Lex was going to get something, he wanted it to be a solid investment. For all he knew, the transient exposure might not have happened at the bridge; it could just as easily have been a slow build-up of some toxin or twelve in his system over the course of the day while he'd been at, and touring, the shit factory.

So, the next day, Lex had resigned himself to working in the plant without a gas mask on -- he had no reason to think that the exposure had occurred there, instead of being an immediate reaction to something nasty being vented outside and in the vicinity of the bridge. He did make sure to drive to work in a car that wasn't a convertible, and had an air-conditioning mode that only blew air that was recirculated from inside the vehicle, though.

And he kept the windows up.

Once 'at work', but before he was actually required to start 'working', Lex took some time to research the schedules of the usual truckers who drove through town, by way of a phone call to the local greasy spoon diner he'd passed by the previous morning, driving in from Metropolis, that was located on the outskirts of town.

He took copious notes.

He sighed as he hung up the phone. He was going to be leaving work at an unreasonable, but not ungodly, hour, most nights, to avoid any possible repeat of the previous day. No more getting stuck behind huge flatbed trucks with precariously tied-down loads for Lex Luthor, oh no. He'd had more than his fill of that already, thank you.

It was going to be dark out when he left for the day, but not too far past his usual dinnertime by the time he pulled up to the mansion. ...Well, at least most people in town should be safely at home while he was out driving, instead of out on the streets and backroads with him. Small mercies.

He resolved to stay as far away from 'Jonathan Kent' and 'Clark' as humanly possible. No notes of thanks with promises of reward, no well-meaning but contrived shows of appreciation; no contact at all. Lex was happy he was alive, but beyond verifying that the car he'd driven the previous day really was missing from his garage, he didn't know what to think about the incident on the bridge. He certainly didn't want to have to seriously consider how much of it had -- and had not -- been real.

He also wasn't fond of the idea of running into the young man again. Out of sight, out of mind, after all, and Lex didn't like the imagery or the feelings that welled up inside him when he thought about Clark. Because thinking of Clark reminded him of the dream, and the thought of what his senses had told him had happened on the bridge made him feel ill enough as it was. But thought of killing anyone, even in a dream, even without meaning to have done so in that dream...

What had happened on that bridge -- what had almost happened on that bridge -- was not something he wanted to think about. He didn't know what had happened, really. Not really. He didn't know whether Clark was real or imagined, whether he'd actually hit the young man or not. Whether Clark had actually survived and walked away unscathed, or...

Lex pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up, swallowing hard.

He was happy he was alive, and he wanted to put it all behind him.

That should've been the end of it. It wasn't.

Chapter Text

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex wasn't surprised when he found himself slamming on the brakes, hard, as an all-too-familiar face out of a nightmare ran out in front of his car.

...He was shocked, certainly, just not surprised.

It was a good thing he'd been driving slowly. That was both the first and the last of the good things, though.

The first smart thing Lex did after seeing what he had seen... was to make sure he really had brought his car to a complete stop. ...And stop he had, quite suddenly, with both clutch and brake pedals pressed firmly to the floor.

He sat there and shook for awhile, wide-eyed, hands clenched around the steering wheel, before peeling his fingers away from their death grip around the corded leather.

Then he pulled the keys out of the ignition, and tossed them onto the seat beside him with an abrupt motion. He yanked the parking brake up for good measure, pulled in his legs, and collapsed against the seat back.

Then he raised his left hand to his opposite arm and pinched himself. Ow.

Lex grimaced down at the offending arm, attached to his traitorous body. Still not asleep. He sat there for a long moment.

He dropped his hands and let his head fall back against the headrest of his seat, staring up at the ceiling of his car.

...Damnit, he hadn't even made it to the bridge this time. He was right in the middle of the cornfields on the way to the bridge, and he didn't have the windows down or the top back like he usually did. Whatever had him hallucinating was either something he'd been exposed to at the fertilizer plant proper, or...

Lex shook himself, and straightened in his seat. Well, there was nothing for it. He couldn't drive in this state -- not when he was seeing things again, things that couldn't possibly be there, or real... like the living unaged ghost of a boy who'd he'd last seen alive and begging for help, tied up and hanging from a post in the middle a cornfield, that fateful day that the sky had fallen down on his head, so many years ago. Only this time, now free and running across a roadway.

He really couldn't drive -- not on this side of the bridge, and especially not when he got closer in to town. Not when he was hallucinating people like this; not when he might hallucinate the exact opposite and not see someone who really was there.

At the rate he was going, Lex laid even odds on the possibility that he might run his car straight into the river, thinking he was driving on the road, still, when he actually wasn't.

He was better off walking home. Again. Even if it meant breathing in the open air, like he had the last time just before he'd hallucinated something else just as unrealistic, if not downright insane. Though how and where and why and what his brain had drudged this particular nightmare up out of, Lex didn't have a clue. He hadn't thought his imagination was that good.

Then again, that crystalline palace had been pretty damned strange, too. Maybe it was the town, somehow, in conjunction with whatever-else. That meteor shower-- it had happened here, hadn't it?

Lex sighed to himself and hit the handle, shoved the driver's side door open. He turned and pushed himself out, got to his feet and tried to ignore the sudden, worse chill as the wind picked up. He hadn't been the only one working late at the plant, and he didn't want anyone, tired and not paying enough attention, to get in an accident, not seeing his car sitting there. The headlights were still on and bright, but that wouldn't help someone leaving the factory as he had all that much.

He didn't dare try to get back in and move the car over to the side of the road, unfortunately. He didn't trust himself even that much. No, better to set up something so that no-one would end up rear-ending his car from behind. He had an emergency kit in the trunk, he thought; it should have some road flares in it.

He reached down and pulled the lever that popped the trunk of his car, then straightened again and started walking down and around the side of it.

He breathed deeply, taking in the cool, sharp night air as he walked. Fresh air would likely only do him some good, at this point. He at least didn't think he'd get much worse, wandering about outside his car. Since he'd had the windows up this time, he was convinced that what had been causing his hallucinations must have been from something he'd been exposed to at the plant, not out of doors.

He trailed his hand along the body of his car as he moved, and then came to an abrupt stop, just at the edge of the trunk.

He felt a shiver down his spine for a moment.

He blinked and turned and listened.

Nothing. Just the wind.

...Surely, he'd just imagined it, hadn't he? He couldn't possibly have heard...? Surely not.

He listened to the silence, and the wind, and the not-silence of bugs in the night, under a full moon and several galaxies worth of stars, overhead.

Surely, he'd imagined it.

...But what if he hadn't?

It was about that point that Lex looked around -- at the fields around him and the factory in the distance -- and realized exactly where he was.

Oh, hell.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex cursed himself under his breath. He was a fool, doing foolish things, and even in broad daylight, a body could get lost in a middle of a cornfield, if the corn stalks were high enough.

These corn stalks were more than high enough, blocking out the horizon after only a few yards in. ...Yet here he was, out at night, wandering around in them anyway, despite all that.

He should have at least set up the road flares first. Or grabbed himself a flashlight from the emergency road supplies in the trunk. Something. Instead, he'd pretty much walked directly into the cornfield, without a backward glance, without a second thought -- no, nary a thought running through his head at all -- as he did so.

And now he was quietly cursing himself, as he stomped his way through a dark field with only the light of the moon to see by, and the stars and nothing else to guide him.

He cursed himself for a fool, and walked the way he remembered -- a swath cut sharp and bright in his mind from years upon years ago -- how he could remember something like that, Lex didn't know, for he realized he hadn't forgotten it at all, even at twenty-one from nine, even at three feet more height, even in a darkness lit by moon instead of sun. He half-expected the sky to fall in on his head again.

It sort of did, but a different way this time, as he stumbled out into a small clearing in the midst of the field, and looked up.

Oh.

...oh.

It was like the world tilted under him, flipped upside-down; his knees almost gave out, as he stared up at...

...his savior, hanging from a veritable cross for someone's sins, half-naked, with some sort of dark blood-like marking painted across his chest.

His savior, head hanging downwards, half-dead and barely breathing. He was tied to his cross-pole with rope, not nailed up there, but the imagery still seared itself straight into the back of Lex's brain and stole his breath outright.

Lex knew he wasn't going to be explaining this one away as a hallucination. No. Lex knew…

Lex knew…

Oh, my.

...he knew exactly what was going on, now, as everything that was solid shifted under his feet.

The world as he knew it shattered, reformed, shattered again, and everything spun around him, a host of little puzzle pieces that slotted right back into place in his mind, into very different places than before. The world spun, and kept on spinning under him, and Lex swayed in place -- in his new place in it -- and then slowly straightened.

He regained a new balance without much effort.

It should have been harder, really. (That it wasn’t was rather indicative of the truth of things, Lex believed.)

"...Hello, again," Lex breathed out to his savior from the bridge, as he stepped forward into the center of the cleared space.

Lex saw the young man's head move slightly, barely more than a twitch. Then a more controlled, pain-filled movement, as he slowly lifted his chin up off of his chest with great difficulty.

He stared down at Lex, almost glassy-eyed, and his jaw worked to move.

With effort, he said, in a voice barely above a hoarse whisper, "Help me."

It was the same thing Lex had heard years ago, in this very same place, in this very same field. The same thing he'd thought -- he had -- heard on the wind, what now seemed like ages before this.

Help me, says a man hanging from a cross. Not much mistaking what a body like that wants: to get down.

"Of course," Lex told him, and moved forward and behind him to assist.

He took his time. He probably shouldn't have, but the man wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, before he was down, and neither was he.

Lex worked at the ropes, and as he slowly let the final one go, he moved around to the front, to catch the young man as he fell.

He got whatever-it-was that was smeared across the young man's chest on his own clean shirt, but Lex didn't much care about that. There were far more important things to worry about.

Like how heavy he was.

Lex nearly toppled over backwards, before he managed to catch the man and then control his descent to the ground.

"There," Lex said quietly. "Got you."

He heard a soft groan in reply.

Lex couldn't imagine how long he'd been up there -- hours, at least. It had been daylight, the middle of the afternoon, when he'd run across the other one. The first one. He doubted the timetable had changed much, in the intervening years. Same day, same month; a different year, that was all.

He was holding the young man nearly in his lap; he helped him sit up. Their eyes met. The young man seemed somewhat aware of his surroundings. Good; Lex had something he needed to tell him, straightaway.

"Don't wake up, Clark," Lex warned him.

"Wh--what...?" the young man half-slurred, not looking too well. He blinked stupidly up at Lex.

"Don't wake up," Lex repeated.

"I think I'd like to, if I could," Clark told him hazily. "I've been having a really bad week," he continued on, which left Lex frowning.

"Well, you're down off of that thing now," Lex told him. "So it should be getting better already."

In reply, he got something more like a noncommittal wheeze than anything wordy.

"Look, I'm serious, Clark; you really need to not wake up," Lex said urgently. "It's very important that you not do that."

"...Okay," Clark said. It sounded more like a confused acknowledgement that he'd heard Lex say something, rather than anything like a promise. "Why?"

"Because I'm a figment of your imagination," Lex reminded him of the patently obvious, which Clark really ought to already know, "and as much as my life might suck right now, I think I'd still prefer living it, compared to blinking out of existence for no good reason."

Clark blinked up at him.

"...What?" the young man said, weakly.

"I'm a figment of--" Lex sighed in more than a little frustration as he looked down at Clark. "What on earth is wrong with you?" Lex asked of him, sidetracked from the conversation by Clark's further slumping against his chest. Clark's state should have been improving since Lex had gotten him off of that cross; instead, he looked worse, and even weaker by the second.

"I... I don't know," Clark told him faintly.

Lex tilted the young man's head back to try and get a good look at him under the moonlight -- pale, at best -- then his eye caught something and he looked further down.

He frowned and reached a hand up to cradle the odd, dark and glittering crystalline necklace hanging around Clark's throat. Clark's skin looked dark and decayed underneath it, the veins bulging and pulsating and wrong.

When it became apparent that the necklace caused no similar adverse reaction in proximity to Lex's own skin, Lex tightened a fist around it, then yanked it off of Clark's neck.

He held it up by the chain, dangled it up in front of the moonlight, the better to see it with. He peered up at it; it was green.

He glanced down at Clark, arm still extended, his other arm encircling Clark's back, while Clark slowly sat up on his own.

Clark's chest no longer seemed in danger of rotting apart. It looked normal now, smooth, veins undisturbed under the surface of his skin. His color also looked much better, though he still seemed somewhat pale compared to Lex's other memories of him, though perhaps that was just an affect of the moonlight.

Clark, for his part, gasped for breath for a bit, looking even more confused than before.

He seemed to get his bearings, then looked up at the necklace Lex was dangling from above, out in front of him.

He saw the wheels turning in Clark's head, behind his eyes. Lex kept his arm steady, supporting him still, as Clark slowly, cautiously, reached out a hand towards the crystal gem hanging from the necklace and...

The skin on his hand shriveled. His veins writhed like dark worms under his skin.

Clark turned his hand, pushing it no closer, staring at this sudden, encroaching decay with an unreadable expression upon his face.

As if some silent signal was given, the young man abruptly pulled his hand back, cradling it to his chest. It quickly returned to normal.

Lex watched all this.

Then he brought his arm back down and shoved the necklace into his pants pocket. The left one, on the far side. Away from Clark.

"Any idea why that happens?" Lex asked of him.

"I'm an alien," he was told blankly.

Lex considered this.

"That's fine," he told Clark. "Just don't wake up."

Clark shivered in his lap.

"Do you know what happened to your clothes?" Lex asked him. It was rather cool out.

"They're over there," Clark said, pointing. Lex turned his head and looked, followed the finger with his eyes to the edge of the small dirt clearing, saw the dark area where a small pile of something lay at the base of a corn stalk.

Lex helped Clark stand, and stood a short bit away, waiting as Clark gathered up his things. His movements sounded almost uncertain.

“Is something wrong?” Lex asked of him.

"Yes. I-- I have to go," he heard Clark say uneasily, and Lex turned back to him immediately.

"Go?" Lex repeated. "Go where?"

For a moment, Clark clutched at his clothes and glanced around furtively. For a moment, Lex thought Clark wouldn't answer him.

"I need to get to school," Clark told him, more than a little desperately.

Lex blinked. "All right," he told Clark, "Get dressed and come with me."

"What?" Clark said, straightening up a bit. He started redressing himself, though. "Why?"

"Because my car's right over there," Lex said pointing. "I'll drive you."

"I--" Clark seemed a little flabbergasted. "You want to drive me there?" He finished pulling on his shoes, the last thing to go.

"I don't see why not," Lex said easily, as he started walking. It wasn't like he'd be a danger on the road; now, he knew he wasn't hallucinating anything, he was just a figment of Clark's imagination. He could drive perfectly fine, as a figment, though he wondered about the recent upswing in not-very-realistic events happening in Clark's dreamscape-reality. Maybe it was due to the close proximity to said dreamer?

He turned and started walking, then stopped again when he realized Clark wasn't moving -- despite being fully dressed again -- so he turned around, walked back up to him, and grabbed him by the hand.

He led Clark at arm's length out of the cornfield.

"Why are you helping me?" Clark asked, after a bit, as they left the field behind them and stepped out onto the roadway. "You don't even know me, really, or why I want to go to..." he trailed off.

Lex found himself jerking to a halt, unable to tug Clark any further along.

"...You're here," Clark said slowly. "Why are you here?" And, with a great deal more reserve, if not downright suspicion, he added, "And how did you know my name?"

"I'm here because I work at the factory now," Lex told him, turning back towards him, "and I'm here now because I was working late to avoid any more trailer trucks hauling large loads. I stopped here," he continued, "because someone who looked like the last person I saw hanging from a cross-pole -- that cross-pole -- like that ran out in front of my car, and I was driving slow enough to hit the brakes without running him over." He could follow simple requests, after all. "And your... father?... called out your name at the bridge."

"No," said Clark, tugging his captured hand out of Lex's own. "You knew my name before that. You said my name first-thing when..."

Lex blinked at him. "Oh, that." Lex smiled up at him. "I had a dream about you before we met."

"You... had a dream about me before we met?" Clark's voice moved up into the higher registers.

"Yes," Lex told him, then felt himself frowning slightly. "It was exceedingly odd."

"It's... it's 'exceedingly odd' that you dreamed me," Clark repeated, in a tone of voice Lex couldn't decipher.

"No." Lex tilted his head at him, and slid his hands in his pockets. "The dream was exceedingly odd.” Somewhat nightmarish, actually. “I doubt you being in it was, though," Lex said kindly. "What with me being a figment of your imagination and all, I should think I ought to know you," Lex told him, as he turned away and started walking towards the car.

"...You're a figment of my imagination," Clark repeated somewhat flatly, following him over.

"Well, yes," said Lex, as he stopped at the car and slid into the driver's seat. He looked up at Clark. "Why, what did you think I was?" he asked of him, curious as to his reply.

Clark stared down at him. "A person."

"Well, I don't see why I can't be both," Lex told him grandly, then gave him the brightest of smiles. "Are you getting in?"

Clark looked at him, then glanced away uncomfortably.

"Please," Lex added, patting the passenger's seat next to him.

Clark stood where he was for a moment, then sighed as if defeated and moved around the front of the car towards the opposite door. Lex, for his part, leaned over and unlocked it for him, then retrieved his keys from the seat before Clark got in and sat down.

"We need to get there quickly," Clark told him.

"All right," Lex said agreeably. He stuffed his keys in the ignition as Clark slammed the door shut.

"Now," Clark added, somewhat more urgently.

Lex glanced over at him. "My car can only go so fast," he informed Clark, as he shoved in the clutch and turned the ignition to start up the car. "So unless you can fold space or otherwise teleport us there..."

"No." Clark shifted uneasily in place and looked away, out the window. "I should just run..."

"You can run faster than my car?" Lex asked him, as he dropped his hand to release the parking brake.

"Yes," said Clark.

Lex stopped and blinked. "Really?"

"Yes."

"Even after feeling as sick as you were before?"

"Yes."

Lex considered that for the briefest of moments, before the fly in the ointment reared its ugly head. Because if Clark couldn't just change the landscape around him -- or them -- at will, then, like it or not, there had to be some rules still operating in effect here.

"--Is what that necklace does to you a one-time-only thing?" Lex asked him immediately, because if it wasn't... "What is it made of?"

"I... don't know. It's meteor rock."

"From the 1989 meteor shower?" Lex shot him a look.

"Yes." Clark looked highly uncomfortable now, almost itching to get out and run. His hand was still on the door handle, at least.

"Are you sure that if you try to run over there on your own, that you won't run across any other random little pebble-sized meteor rocks, scattered across the landscape between here and there, that might make you sick on the way over?" Lex asked, as he released the parking brake.

"I--"

"Which would have you getting sick and weak and tripping and falling -- and then hitting the ground -- at speeds upwards of a hundred-fifty miles an hour?" Which was how fast this particular car could go, and even Lex didn't need much imagination to realize the most likely end result of tripping and falling at those speeds when ill and, presumably, vulnerable to harm.

That had Clark hesitating for a moment.

Lex didn't hesitate -- he shifted gears and floored it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex most assuredly did not drive slow, in getting them to the school.

"How, exactly, does someone not age for twelve years, by the by?" he asked of Clark, as he shoved the door open and got out of the car, because that seemed like an odd rule to be breaking all willy-nilly.

Clark mirrored his method of egress on the opposite side. "I don't know," he was told. "Maybe it has something to do with the coma and the electricity?"

Lex turned his head and stared at him. Comas didn't generally stop people from aging, but... "Electricity?" he repeated.

"Yeah," said Clark.

"What electricity?" Lex asked, wondering what he'd missed -- was there some electric therapy he hadn't heard of for comatose patients that had (apparently) woken the boy up? -- as he jogged after Clark towards the building.

"He's been killing people with electricity," Lex was informed, which left him frowning.

"All right," Lex said under his breath. He supposed he'd be less worried about that if he didn't think that, as an imaginary figment, he wasn't exactly immune to imaginary lightning. Except he was, so he did that. Worry a bit.

"There shouldn't be this many cars here still," Clark said, slowing down as he looked around at the nearly-packed parking lot they were crossing. "The dance should be over by now, or soon."

Lex mentally shrugged as he continued past Clark, headed for the big double-doors in front of him, connected to what looked like a very big building, one of the largest within the gates. It also had all the lights on and blazing in the interior, from the look of the windows high above. It seemed the most-likely candidate, to Lex.

"Where are you going?" Lex heard Clark call after him.

"The gymnasium," Lex said. "The dance is being held there, isn't it?"

"Yes, but--" said Clark.

"Well, you said he was going to attack everyone at the dance, correct?" Lex asked rhetorically of Clark behind him, as he came up to the door. "If we evacuate them, then he can't--"

Lex opened the door, about to step in, but he was arrested at the look on Clark's face, who was staring over his shoulder into the gymnasium.

He turned his head forward and stopped in his tracks at the scene in front of him.

It was silent inside. And everyone was--

And the smell was--

Lex slammed the door shut and leaned against it, breathing heavily through his mouth and trying not to vomit. He clamped his lips together and swallowed hard several times.

Clark didn't sound like he was having any better a time of it.

"You know," Lex said conversationally, as he stared down at the ground in front of him, hands still braced against the door like doing so might keep all the horror safely within, "I probably should have realized this sooner, given that you seem to have been able to think up somebody like Lionel Luthor to help populate this dream of yours -- because, let's face it, my father is a really horrible, depraved excuse of a human being --" Lex gulped in a breath, and expelled it just as roughly, "-- but I think you really have some sort of serious mental issues going on, for a sleeping alien god," Lex informed him, about as casually as he could manage. "You should probably work through those, and not think things like this up into happening any more, ever again. I would really appreciate that very much. Not doing this again. Ever. Please."

"I-- I didn't do this," Clark answered him weakly, sounding quite ill.

Lex took in and let out another breath, and another, before slowly straightening and turning to face him.

"Well," Lex said, straight to his face, "If that's the case, then I think that you really need to work on your omnipotence, instead. ...And that maybe some subconscious part of your brain really hates you," he added for good measure, because the point still stood. "You should probably do something about that, post-haste."

"I--"

"Don't touch that door!" Lex warned him, as took a few steps away from it himself. "We are not going inside. The floor looked wet; for all we know there's still live current running through that mess." It was clear what had happened, though the explicit ‘how' of what had been perpetrated there might still be a little uncertain. With the lights still on, the building still must have some electricity powering it; at least some of the circuit breakers in the building clearly hadn’t blown, yet. That pointed to either the killing current having come from some other more indirect source, or the building’s safety wiring having been circumvented somehow and the possibility of live current still flowing. “Step away from there.”

Clark took his hand away from the door and stepped away, but he didn't look happy with him. "What are you--"

"Calling the police, ambulances, fire department, the whole nine; we can't handle this ourselves," Lex told him distantly, as he pulled out his cellphone, flipped it open, and dialed 911, then shifted his attention as he heard the line pick up. "Yes, hello, I'd like to report an emergency--"

Chapter Text

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex drove up to the address that had been listed for the Kents -- which he'd copied out of the phone book onto a scrap of paper and brought with him, along with the directions he'd made from following an honest-to-god fold-out paper map. Old-school style.

Not that he had anything against those talking GPS units, mind you; it's just that the electronic voices grated on him. Just a bit. ...Okay, a lot, but still. They were fine with the sound turned off, he just felt like using an actual paper map today. (He was out in the boondocks; it fit.)

He turned down the dirt-and-gravel ‘driveway’, passing under the sign that read “Kent Farm,” and assumed that he’d found the right place.

He passed a largish small vegetable garden, and pulled up partway between the yellow house and the red barn. He was careful to park far enough away from the sliding barn doors so as to not block any large machinery that might need to trundle out of them while he was there.

He pulled his keys from the ignition, unclicked his seat belt, pushed open the car door, and stepped out of the car. He slammed the car door closed, pocketed his keys, and looked around.

It didn’t seem bad; it seemed nice. --A bit out of the way, mind you, but that in itself could be somewhat alluring. It wasn’t what Lex would call extravagant, or even charming, but he himself wouldn’t mind living someplace like this.

It reminded him a little of Blackcreek Ranch.

Lex took in a breath and let it out, then made his way over to the stairs and up them onto the porch.

He opened the screen door and knocked on the dark, sturdy wood of the front door.

He heard movement inside, and Clark opened the door.

Clark stared.

Lex smiled.

“Um,” said Clark, intelligently.

“May I come in?” Lex asked.

“I-- Yes,” Clark said, though he grimaced a little as he held the door open.

Lex stepped inside and let the screen door swing shut behind him.

“Clark?” he heard a female voice call out. “Who is it?”

“It’s--! ...uh,” Clark began to call out, then dropped his tone and stopped as he glanced down at Lex. He looked uncertain, possibly about yelling to his folks from what sounded like the opposite end of the house right in front of him.

Lex gestured, and Clark moved forward and into what looked like the living room at their left, rather than down the hallway in front of them, past the stairs. Lex followed.

The house opened up into a larger living space, a combined living/dining room that opened out directly into a kitchen area. An older, red-haired woman was puttering around by a stove.

Jonathan Kent was sitting at the kitchen table. He was reading the newspaper, at least until he caught sight of Lex. Then he dropped the newspaper to the surface and stood up.

“What are you doing here, Luthor?” Mr. Kent demanded to know. The woman -- presumably his wife, and Clark’s… mother? -- turned around to face him, wiping her hands on a dishtowel and blinking with some surprise.

“I came to check up on Clark, and make sure that he’s all right -- are you?” he asked, turning to address the person in question.

“I-- no, not really,” Clark admitted, looking downcast and shuffling his feet.

“What’s wrong?” Lex asked.

“My friends were at the dance,” Clark said, not raising his eyes.

“...Ah,” said Lex. “How did they fare, do you know?”

“Luthor--!” Mr. Kent said angrily as Clark’s jaw clenched.

“I don’t ask to be insensitive,” Lex said, glancing over at the elder Kent male. “I simply don’t know who they are. --If you don’t want to talk about it, you could tell me their names, and I can ask after them at the hospital myself,” he told Clark.

“Pete Ross and Chloe Sullivan,” Clark said quietly. “...And Lana Lang,” he added, almost under his breath.

Lex looked at him, then nodded once. He moved forward and pulled out a chair, sat down at the table, and gestured for Clark to do the same, because the boy looked like he needed to get off of his feet. Clark sat down.

Because Lex was watching him, when Clark glanced up at his father, Lex followed his gaze. Mr. Kent was red-faced and looked two seconds away from an apoplectic fit.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he thundered down at him.

“I’m Lex Luthor,” Lex reminded him. Apparently he hadn’t made much of an impression at the bridge.

“I know who you are!” the man said tersely. “I just can’t believe that you have the arrogance to just walk into my house and sit down like you own the place--!”

Lex raised a sardonic eyebrow, then turned to Clark. “Clark, do you have a problem with me sitting here?” he asked.

“Um, no, not really,” Clark mumbled. He glanced at, then away from his father, and his shoulders went up.

“Is that your mother?” he asked, pointing to the red-haired woman in question.

“Yes,” said Clark. Lex glanced up at her, and she was frowning at him, for reasons unknown.

“Hello,” he said to the woman with a smile, that dimmed a bit as she stared down at him, eyebrows scrunched up a bit high on her forehead, like she didn’t know what to do with him.

Something struck Lex, which might account for certain parties’ odd-seeming behavior. He dropped an elbow to the table. “Clark, are your parents aliens?” he asked, making a wide gesture that encompassed both elders, then propped his head up on a fist, looking at Clark.

“Uh, no,” said Clark. Then he straightened a little, looking slightly shocked. “I mean, I don’t think so... I-- I’m pretty sure not,” he said. “I mean, I think they’re human.”

Lex tilted his head at Clark, considering this. Then he glanced up at Clark’s parents, who both had their mouths hanging open. Well, that didn’t tell him much. He turned back to Clark. “Adopted, then?”

“What?” said Mrs. Kent, sounding startled.

“Yeah,” Clark told him.

“When’d you get here?” Lex asked, curious.

“1989,” Clark told him. “At least, my parents said I did; I don’t remember.”

“Clark...?” Mr. Kent said. Mrs. Kent started to look a little frantic.

Lex’s eyebrows rose. “Did they tell you how you got here?” Lex asked, lifting his head and straightening in his chair.

“They said I came down during the meteor shower--”

“Clark!!!” his mother shouted out. Lex glanced up at her briefly. Her face was drawn, and she looked completely horrified. He couldn’t imagine why. He heard Mr. Kent moving behind him.

“--in a spaceship,” Clark continued, glancing up at her too, as his father rounded the table to his side. “It’s in the--.”

“Clark, stop talking,” his father demanded authoritatively, dropping a hand to Clark’s shoulder.

“--storm… cellar…” Cark trailed off and twisted his head to look up at him, now looking a little nervous, or maybe just uncomfortable.

“Do they have a problem with you being an alien?” Lex asked as he glanced up at Mr. Kent, his eyebrows rising.

“What? --No!” Clark said quickly, his head swiveling down to look at Lex again. “They’re nice! My parents are both nice!”

“Clark--” Mr. Kent tried to cut in.

“Even your father?” Lex asked, because the man seemed a bit judgmental to him, biased, quick to temper...

“My dad’s great,” Clark said firmly, looking Lex straight in the eye.

Lex looked up at Mr. Kent again; he was dead pale at the moment. “Mm.” He thought about that, then realized that that might not be saying much, considering how Lionel had turned out. Because, given Clark’s track record, he wasn’t at all sure that Clark’s father-dreaming-up skills were all that great. “Well, I certainly hope he’s better than my father.” Lex paused. “Then again, it’s not like that’d be hard,” he added musingly, then pondered that one a little more because, really, what hangups would Clark have to have to dream somebody like that up?

He heard a choking sound come from Mr. Kent.

Lex didn’t bother to glance up at him this time, but he did feel a little bad about the pained look Clark was giving him. “Oh, don’t worry. I doubt it’s entirely your fault your subconscious is all screwed up. That much trauma usually requires the involvement of several other people,” at least in Lex’s experience. “I don’t blame you for Lionel,” he told Clark with a smile.

"What?” Clark’s mother said. There was a heavy silence from Mr. Kent.

Lex glanced up at her, then looked over Clark with a frown. “Oh, are they not lucid?”

“They’re lucid!” Clark said.

“Are they stupid?” Lex asked, as Mr. and Mrs. Kent both stared down at him in shock.

“What? NO!!” Clark protested. “They’re-- they’re fine. Not stupid.”

Lex got the picture. “So, not dreamers, then."

Clark huffed out a breath at him. “I’m awake! --We’re all awake!”

Lex eyed him.

“...You know, on second thought, maybe you should just keep telling yourself that,” Lex said good-naturedly, because why rock the boat? Clark was asleep, but he thought he was awake. If it worked, it worked.

Clark groaned and held his head in his hands.

Lex glanced back up at Clark’s parents. “Problem?” he asked, because they were both staring at him weirdly.

“...Are you insane?” Mr. Kent asked him slowly.

“No,” said Lex. “I’m just a figment of his imagination,” he told them, pointing at Clark.

They both continued to stare at him. Clark groaned again.

Chapter Text

~*~*~*~*~*~

“Look, I don’t see how this is so hard to understand,” Lex complained. “This is Clark’s dream. We are all figments of his imagination. Clark is the seemingly-awake alien-god avatar-form of the sleeping Red King, or whatever equivalent exists outside this dream-state we’re all in.”

“The sleeping Red King? ...From Alice in Wonderland?” Clark asked.

“Yes,” Lex said, glad that someone was getting it, “but it doesn’t help them if only you get it. Your subconscious mind is clearly not getting along with the rest of your consciousness.”

“What’s next, the Wizard of Oz?” Mr. Kent muttered, which had Lex blinking and freezing in place.

He turned to Clark quickly. “Clark, I would really really not like any tornadoes to--”

“--neither would I,” said Clark.

The two of them stared at each other.

“You’re sure--”

“Yes,” Clark told him promptly. “I thought you thought I had no conscious control over that stuff, anyway,” Clark said.

“Well, yes, but there’s always wishful thinking.” Lex paused. “Especially if Oz is involved.” Lex paused again. “Though you’re the one who told me you couldn’t--”

“I can’t.”

“--and I’m just opting to believe you.”

“Why?” Mr Kent said, peering down at him with his arms crossed.

Lex looked up at Mr. Kent, which was easier now that he and Mrs. Kent were over by Clark’s corner of the table. “‘Why’, what?”

“Why do you believe him?” Mr. Kent asked of him.

“Well, I have to believe in something,” Lex put out there, with more than a little exasperation.

“So, what, you really think it makes more sense for me to be some sleeping alien god dreaming everything and everybody up, than me being an actual real alien and everybody being awake and this being real?” Clark asked him.

“Yes,” said Lex. “Kudos for thinking up being an alien, by the way, to explain the super-human strength and speed you gave yourself. Very nice backstory; explains things well.”

The seemingly-awake alien stared at him. “Uh-huh.” Clark said neutrally.

“Who told you he was an alien?” Mr. Kent asked of Lex.

“He did,” Lex said, gesturing at Clark.

“Why,” Mr. Kent asked flatly, while not quite glaring down at his (adoptive) son.

Lex blinked at him. “Why not?” Mr. Kent turned and stared at him. “I asked nicely.”

Mr. Kent clenched his jaw, staring down at him for several seconds.

Lex stared back, wondering what the problem was.

“...And where exactly, does the ‘alien god’ part of being alien come into the picture?” Mr. Kent asked, sounding almost amused, but looking more consternated.

“Jonathan,” Mrs. Kent scolded.

Lex looked up at them both. “Well,” he began, because this one seemed obvious, and easy enough to explain, “if you’d seen him up on that--”

“LEX!” Clark shouted out.

Lex stopped and dropped his gaze to frown over at him.

“I don’t-- That’s not--” Clark stammered out, with high color spreading across his cheekbones.

Lex’s frown deepened. “...You didn’t tell them?” he asked in incredulous tones.

“No, I-- No.” Clark said.

“Tell us what?” Mrs. Kent asked, as both Clark’s parents turned and looked down at Clark, who pulled his shoulders up and hunched inwards a bit.

Lex hesitated.

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter,” Clark said, frowning and giving Lex a sharp look.

“Clark--” Mr. Kent began.

Clark, still frowning, crossed his arms and cut his father off, asking Lex, “--If you’re so sure that nothing is really-real, then how do you know that you’re not the one who’s asleep and dreaming everything up, instead of me?” he asked Lex almost peevishly.

“I’m just not that creative,” Lex told him. “And before you go trying to blame things on my subconscious -- remember: I died.” He took a breath and tapped his chest with a finger. “I died, and if I was the dreamer, then everything and everyone would have blinked out of existence when I did -- I would’ve woken up. However, you were still around to pull me out of the water, out of my car, and resuscitate me. Ergo, I can’t be the one running around dreaming things, because you wouldn’t have been there to save me and bring me back to life if I was.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Clark told him belligerently. “How do you know we’re not both asleep?”

Lex opened his mouth and pointed at Clark to give him a solid rejoinder--

...and stalled out. He couldn’t think of anything in particular to say, other than ‘I really don’t think so.’

“Besides, you had a dream about me first, before we even met!” Clark said, tossing up his hands. “How do you explain that?”

‘Uh...’ went Lex’s brain, as he suddenly realized that, well, his original reasoning that he just wasn’t that creative might not hold up anymore. Because the one solid thing he could point to, which absolutely proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt for him, was the fact that he didn’t believe that he could ever have possibly dreamed up somebody like Clark. Except... he kind of had. Because he’d had that exceedingly odd dream about that crystalline Fortress, and Clark had been in it. There, with him.

He closed his mouth and blinked a few times, trying to regain his bearings.

“Dream?” Clark’s father asked. “What dream?”

“...Maybe that was another of your dreams, too?” Lex said slowly, still feeling more than a little off balance. He’d also had a fleeting vision where he’d been flying over the town of Smallville while he’d thought he was dead, which was just a different sort of weird. Though maybe that had only been a run-of-the-mill out-of-body experience? --If he’d died and been the dreamer, he should’ve woken up.

“I don’t think so,” Clark said stubbornly.

“What dream?” Mr. Kent insisted.

Lex looked up at Clark’s parents. He turned his head and looked at Clark.

He told them.

By the time he was done, Clark was staring, and Clark’s foster-parents were frowning and exchanging weighted looks.

“...You killed me?” Clark said in rising tones, looking a little freaked out.

“I didn’t mean to!” Lex said defensively, bringing up his hands, palms outward.

“You killed me,” Clark said. “And you think that was my dream. That I’d dream that!”

“It felt real,” Lex muttered, crossing his arms, because, well, it had. “It feels as real as all of this, right now. --And I don’t dream things like that. I’ve never dreamed anything like that before! I don’t know where it came from. And you were in it,” he added, eyeing Clark.

“And I was some kind of Kryptonian-alien-something,” Clark said, staring at him intensely.

“I--” Lex blinked, twice, his hands dropping to his knees. “What? --No!” He hadn’t connected those two things together. He frowned at Clark. “I don’t remember thinking ‘alien’ at any point.” He didn’t know what a ‘Kryptonian’ was, other than Clark, and he didn’t know much about Clark from the dream, other than that Clark was supposed to be somewhat invulnerable to harm, except apparently not always.

Clark’s parents exchanged another glance.

“You were in this huge cold fortress building thing, made completely out of huge glowing white crystals, with a weird crystal control panel pedestal thing sticking up out of the floor with a bunch more crystals sticking up out of it with no labels, which could randomly shoot killer laser beams out of the walls at people, and that doesn’t make you think ‘alien’?” Clark said in tones of pure disbelief.

“No,” said Lex, then he grimaced. “I mean, I suppose it does now, a little bit -- but it didn’t then,” he muttered.

“Uh-huh,” said Clark flatly. “But you think it was real.”

“It felt real. ...It could have been the dream you were having before this one,” Lex said. “A figment shouldn’t be able to kill a dreamer, just wake them up.” He certainly hoped so, anyway -- he felt uneasy just thinking about it. “I’m lucky you didn’t dream up something completely different and ‘poof’ me right out of existence. ...Maybe you reset it.”

“Reset... the dream?” Clark said.

Mr. Kent frowned down at him. “You think you dreamed something that happened in the future?”

“No, I think I dreamed something that already happened,” Lex corrected testily. He was getting tired of being misunderstood.

“You think you had some kind of prophetic dream that already happened,” Clark muttered. “Okay.” He looked up at Lex. “Okay. Well, when do you-- did you ki-- accidentally kill me?” Clark asked, pulling a face.

“I don’t know; I don’t remember thinking of the date,” Lex told him.

“Well, how old did Clark look?” Clark’s mother asked.

“Ah, maybe twenty-something? Twenty-five on the outside?” Lex said, trying not to wince.

“Great...” Clark dropped his head to the table, then curled his arms around it.

Lex blinked. “‘Great’?” He’d expected a much worse reaction than that. “How old are you now?”

“Fifteen,” Clark mumbled out, forehead still planted to the surface.

Lex stared at him. “...I am really bad at guessing ages.” Clark brought his head up slowly, brow furrowed. “You look at least eighteen to me,” Lex explained, feeling vaguely embarrassed, “Maybe nineteen or twenty.”

Clark frowned at him.

“...Maybe you’ll age much more slowly once you've grown up?” Lex tried.

“Or maybe I’ll age even faster, being a stupid alien and all,” Clark grumbled, dropping his chin to his arms.

“Clark, you aren’t stupid,” his mother chided from where she stood beside him, stroking his hair. “And we didn’t know what age you were when we adopted you; we had to guess.”

“You were small then, and you grew quickly when you were younger, but not that quickly,” his father added.

“Ah, perhaps his growth was artificially stunted at first!” Lex said, feeling enlightened. “You could have been stuck in your spaceship for awhile,” he told Clark.

Lex got stared at by the Kent family at-large.

After a while, Clark shook his head and sat back up. “Okay, so, you think you dreamed something that... already happened in the future... which I dreamed up,” Clark said.

“Yes.”

“But you don’t know when it was.”

“No,” Lex confirmed.

“And you don’t remember how you got there,” Clark pressed.

“No.” Lex frowned.

“And you don’t remember where we were. Where this fortress thing was.” Clark crossed his arms.

“...No,” Lex crossed his arms, feeling defensive.

“And you don’t remember why you wanted to kill me.”

“I didn’t want to,” Lex insisted, hotly. “I definitely did not want to kill you. --That wasn’t what I was trying to do!” Lex said, truthfully.

“What were you trying to do?” Mr. Kent asked him.

“I was trying to control him,” Lex said.

Lex got stared at by all three Kents again.

“...Admittedly, that sounded much worse out loud than it did in my head,” Lex told them, feeling very uncomfortable under all of the staring.

Clark’s parents were exchanging sharp glances again. Then Mr. Kent spoke up. “You didn’t say that you were trying to control him before.”

Lex blinked. “I didn’t?”

“No,” was all Mr. Kent got out before Clark came out of his shock.

“No, you didn’t! --You were trying to control me?!” Clark’s voice went up three octaves. “How is that better than killing me!?”

“--You were dead!” Lex said angrily. “That’s not fixable!” He hesitated. “...Usually,” he said, straightening in place as he realized that maybe it actually had been fixed, after all. “It’s a good thing you’re a dreamer -- and a heavy sleeper,” because he’d have to be, to be able to interact like this, wouldn’t he? “That could have been a disaster!”

“Lex, when you say you were trying to control Clark, what exactly did you mean?” Mrs. Kent said, laying a hand on Clark’s shoulder.

“I..." Lex felt a little thrown off-track. It had almost sounded like a leading question. “I mean I was trying to control him.” He looked down at Clark again. “I remember knowing that the Orb was supposed to control you, and I remember that I had placed it into the control panel on purpose. But…” Lex frowned. “I don’t think I knew exactly what was going to happen. The beam of light was unexpected; I remember being shocked that it was so deadly, that it even hurt you at all,” he said, looking at him.

Clark stared back. He didn’t look happy with him; he looked mad.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Lex told him. “If the Orb is around in this dream, and you dreamt up the crystalline Fortress again, too, I promise I won’t even walk into that thing, let alone try to use the Orb inside it.” That was just asking for trouble. Clark gave him an unreadable look. Lex threw his hands up at him. “I don’t want you to die, alright! --You seem nice enough,” Lex dissembled, crossing his arms again.

Lex got stared at by the Kents again.

...Well, at least Clark didn’t look mad anymore.

“You-- wait,” Clark said. “You weren’t trying to control me because I’m an alien?”

“No,” said Lex. “I remember you being Kryptonian -- whatever that means -- and I remember trying to control you. I don’t remember the two being linked.” He frowned. “I think I might have been mad at you about something a little bit before that, but I wasn’t at the time. Not after seeing you hurt. --Killed.” Clark hadn’t lasted long; he’d bled out quickly. Lex still felt sick, thinking about it.

Clark was staring at him. His parents went back to exchanging looks. “Why were you trying to control me?” Clark asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Lex shook his head and stifled a sigh. “The only thing I can think of, that it might be helpful to have some sort of control over, would be your subconscious dreaming self, since you as your avatar-of-consciousness seem to already have some very strong set limitations. Being able to stop your subconscious-self from doing more damage would be a blessing -- but I would have had to have known that you were a dreamer in order to want to do something like that, and in knowing that, I should have known that something like an Orb created by your own dreaming mind wouldn’t work on you to restrict you properly,” Lex told him. “If it was something you’d dreamed up, then it either wouldn’t work at all, because your avatar-self couldn’t create something like that that would work, or it would work on your avatar-self because it had been created by your more powerful subconscious mind to do so, but then your subconscious could just override it again with a thought -- it still wouldn’t restrict your subconscious mind, which seems to be the more powerful part of you, here, while you’re asleep.”

Clark looked down at his hands in his lap. “...What if you didn’t know I was ...a dreamer,” he asked, after awhile.

“If I didn’t know? And was still trying to control you?” Lex grimaced. What would he do if he didn’t know that the supposedly dreamer-controlling Orb was meant to be used on him? “Well, I suppose there’s always the meteor rock.” He frowned. “...I wonder if I tried that at some point, if there was any in the last dream. Looking for some odd Orb instead sounds overly complicated,” especially since it seemed to have malfunctioned on him.

“--What about the meteor rock?” Mr. Kent cut in.

Lex looked up at Clark’s parents, then back down at him. “You didn’t tell them?”

“No,” Clark said, all but squirming in place.

“Tell us what,” Mrs. Kent said, the two of them fully focused on Clark.

“--The meteor rock makes him sick,” Lex told them, frowning at Clark.

“It does?” Mrs. Kent said, startled.

“...How do you know that?” Mr. Kent asked slowly.

“Rather by accident; keep him away from the stuff,” Lex told him, mindful of how Clark had not wanted to talk about how he’d been strung up in that field. Mr. Kent looked halfway to shaking the details out of him, though, so Lex added, “Ask Clark about it sometime,” while staring at the person in question. “I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it.”

Clark winced.

“Clark?” Mr. Kent said neutrally.

“Later, dad,” Clark said quietly.

Mr. Kent didn’t look happy -- neither did Mrs. Kent -- but they didn’t ask them again.

“Lex, you...” Clark trailed off, then looked frustrated all of a sudden. “Why did you want to control me?”

“Clark, I don’t know,” he reiterated. “I can’t think of any substantive reason why I would want to control you.”

Clark stared at him, brought up short. “You... can’t?”

“No,” Lex confirmed. “--Can you?” Lex asked, a little belligerently.

“I’m an alien,” Clark said a little tremulously.

“Clark...” his mother said softly, touching his back.

Lex frowned at him. “So?”

“I’m an alien,” Clark said, again, quietly and a little more firmly.

“Clark--” his father said, but Clark shook his hand off of his shoulder.

“Yes, I know; you told me that yesterday,” Lex reminded him. “So?” And now Clark was staring at him for some reason.

“I’m an alien,” Clark repeated, looking a little wide-eyed, and Lex had no idea what he was trying to imply. He also had no idea why they had suddenly garnered his parents’ full attention.

“I don’t see what you being an alien has to do with anything,” Lex said, with more than a little exasperation.

Now all three Kents were staring at him again.

“...What!” Lex said, straightening in place, this time feeling more than a little harassed.

“You... don’t care that I’m an alien?” Clark asked him.

Lex frowned at him. “I don’t see how it matters all that much...” he said, confused. He should think Clark being, for all intents and purposes, a dreaming god would be a much bigger deal. Being an alien within his own dream was just window-dressing by comparison.

All three Kents exchanged glances.

“It matters,” Mr. Kent told him, punctuating it with a glower.

“So we’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself,” Mrs. Kent added.

“--Please don’t tell anyone else!” Clark pleaded.

Lex looked between the two adults. He looked down at Clark.

“It’s that serious?” he asked.

Clark nodded.

“Oh,” Lex said. He contemplated this with a slight frown, then looked up at Mr. and Mrs. Kent. “Well, alright then,” he told Clark and his parents.

Clark let out a sigh of relief. Clark’s parents exchanged a more weighty look.

Mr. Kent took in a breath, then let it out, and turned back to him. “Luthor--” he grimaced slightly. “Lex,” he said. “Do you know how many times you’ve asked Clark a question since the accident at the bridge?”

Lex frowned slightly. “Quite a few,” he told them, crossing his arms. More than he could count, really. “Clark doesn’t exactly seem inclined to offer up information on his own without prompting.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Mr. Kent said grimly.

“Lex, how many times has he answered you?” Mrs. Kent asked.

“Every time,” Lex said, turning to her. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“Mom?” Clark asked, looking up at her.

Clark’s mother looked down at him. “Honey,” she said, “How many times did you lie to Lex when he asked you something?”

“What? I--” Clark looked distraught.

“...Clark?” Lex asked, slowly dropping his arms. The elder Kents had serious looks on their faces, as though something were terribly wrong. “Did you lie to me about something?”

Clark turned his head back to face him. “No! I haven’t lied to you once!” he told Lex. He twisted in his seat, looking back up at his parents. “Mom, dad, it’s okay; he doesn’t care--”

Clark’s parents looked downright grim, now.

“Clark, that’s not the point--” Mr. Kent began, reaching for him.

“Yes, it is!” Clark shoved his hand away, just about exploding out of his seat. “You told me I had to lie, to never tell anyone -- to never trust anyone -- because they wouldn’t understand! Because they’d be afraid of me! Because they’d tell! And you’re wrong!” he yelled at them, backing away. “Lex doesn’t care that I’m different! And he won’t tell!”

Lex stood up slowly, looking between them.

“Clark, honey, you didn’t know that when you told him,” Clark’s mother informed him with some weight, moving towards him. Clark backed away further, shaking his head in denial, nearly in tears.

Lex took a step forward.

--And Mr. Kent stepped right up next to him and dropped a restraining hand onto his shoulder.

Lex whipped his head around to stare up at Mr. Kent.

Jonathan Kent stared right back at him, and his hold tightened. Lex didn’t think he could move easily, yet, strangely, it didn’t feel like Mr. Kent was gripping him nearly as hard as Lionel usually did.

“Luthor, what did you tell him to do?” Mr. Kent demanded of him.

“What?”

“Did you order him to not lie to you?” Mr. Kent said, glaring down at him. “What have you been telling Clark to do?”

Lex stared up at Mr. Kent, and the penny finally dropped.

“You think that the last dream... is influencing this one?” Lex said, taken aback.

“I don’t know what to think,” Mr. Kent told him with barely tamped-down anger. “All I know is that I just watched my son not answer us when we asked him a question, and then tell you immediately when you asked him instead.”

Lex’s eyes narrowed. “Not wanting to tell your parents something that you’ll happily tell your friends is normal teenage behavior.”

“Not in this house,” Mr. Kent rumbled out.

Lex glared at him outright. He’d known he was right -- Clark did suck at dreaming up decent father figures.

“What did you tell him to do, Luthor?” Mr. Kent asked him again.

“I didn’t--” Lex huffed out a breath. This was ridiculous. “I-- I told him to--” get dressed, but he certainly would have done that on his own. But he’d also told Clark to, “--come with me,” Lex said, and while Clark had at first looked like he might run off on his own, doing that would have been a poor choice, and that was before he knew that Lex would help him -- “I told him I’d drive him to school. I-- I asked him to get in the car.” Lex took in a breath. “When we got to the gymnasium, I told him not to touch the door, and to step away from it; I didn’t want him to get hurt, to risk hurting himself.” Lex shook his head. None of that was anything Clark wouldn’t have done on his own; he was almost sure of it. “--And I’ve told him repeatedly to not wake up,” he added, for completeness.

Mr. Kent stared down at him with an unreadable look on his face.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Lex said, with a bad feeling starting to coalesce deep in his gut.

“You don’t, do you?” Mr. Kent said grimly. He pushed Lex forward by the hand he had on his shoulder, further into the living room.

Mrs. Kent and Clark both quieted as they came closer.

“...Dad?” Clark said, still looking largely upset.

“Luthor, tell him to sit down,” Mr. Kent said.

“This isn’t--” Lex began to protest.

“Dad?”

“Luthor.” Mr. Kent’s hold tightened.

Lex clenched his jaw for a moment. “Clark, sit down, please,” he asked, while giving Mr. Kent a narrow-eyed glare.

In his peripheral vision, Lex saw Clark glance between the two of them and then slowly sit down on the couch.

“You just--” Mr. Kent actually had the audacity to look shocked at this. Lex fought the urge to punch him.

“Don’t be ridiculous! I asked him nicely,” Lex gritted out, “and he just heard you say that you wanted him to. That doesn’t prove anything.” Lex wrenched his arm out of Jonathan Kent’s grasp. ”The only way to do that, to tell whether I really can control him somehow, would be for me to tell Clark to do something I know he wouldn’t want to do, and see whether he still does it, and there is no way in hell that I’d do that to him!” Lex spat out.

Mr. Kent looked angry at him for some reason. Lex glanced away to look at Clark’s mother, to see if she believed this insanity as well, and had his attention fully snagged by Clark’s reaction to his pronouncement before he could do so.

Clark was staring at him in bright-eyed and almost starry-eyed worship, like Lex was the one who was the sleeping god instead of him.

It felt something like a punch to the gut.

“You..." Clark whispered out.

Lex felt a cold shiver go down his spine.

He wasn’t sure whether or not they had a point about the last dream or not, but Lex did know that he was fully capable of cutting things off at the pass.

“Fine,” Lex told Mr Kent, with a gimlet-eye glare. “It isn’t like I can’t fix this easily.” With that, he straightened to his full height and turned to Clark.

“Clark,” he pronounced authoritatively, “This an order: you do not have to answer every question I ask you, if you want to answer then you can answer truthfully or otherwise as you like, and you are not required to perform or even attempt to fulfill any order, request, or suggestion I give you -- unless and until I explicitly rescind this order at some point later in our association.”

Lex took a deep breath in and out again, then turned to Mr. Kent.

“There,” Lex said, gesturing at Clark. “If he was being forced to do anything before, he certainly isn’t now.”

Mr. Kent glowered down at him. “‘Unless and until’?” he growled out dangerously.

Lex slipped his hands into his pants pockets, and narrowed his eyes at the man. “Well, if it was working before, then having the option to taking it back means I don’t have to worry about the meteor rocks or that Orb and Fortress thing, or anything else,” Lex pointed out with ruthless logic. “That takes the possibility of accidentally gravely injuring or killing him completely off the table. ...And also would give me a way to override anyone else if they tried, most likely,” Lex added, tilting his chin upwards, “since I’d have the prior claim on him.”

Not that Lex thought he’d had control of Clark at any point. As far as he was concerned, they’d been having perfectly normal discussions and interactions since they’d met... well, except for perhaps the external events prompting them, and thus the general subject matter, due to the town being such a nightmarish landscape at-present.

“Clark..." Mr. Kent said almost cautiously.

Lex rolled his eyes and stifled a sigh. “Clark, is the sky purple with pink polka dots right now?”

“Yes,” said Clark, giving Lex a look.

“Clark, stay seated, please,” Lex asked of him.

Clark stood up.

“We could’ve done that before,” Clark said, crossing his arms and giving Lex a look.

“Yes, well, your parents were being weird,” Lex waved off. “Parents do that sometimes, as I understand it.”

Clark sighed.

Lex understood; it was a very sighable situation.

“Lex,” Mrs. Kent began, as she moved to her husband’s side, “I hate to ask this, but I don’t suppose you could give us any real assurances that you’ll keep your word on all this, and really keep this to yourself.”

It took Lex a moment to remember about the ‘alien’ thing being important. He tried not to pull a face.

“Mrs. Kent--” he began.

“Call me Martha, please.”

Lex blinked. ‘Well, alright,’ he thought, then began again. “If I wanted to explain ‘the alien thing’ properly to anyone, I’d have to explain about Clark being a dreamer first,” he told her, sparing a moment to glance at Clark. “Which I am not wont to do, because I’d rather not risk anyone believing me -- or not believing me.” He looked back to Mrs. Kent. “Either outcome would greatly increase the likelihood of someone deciding to try and wake Clark up, and I don’t want that. If they didn’t believe me, then they’d mess with Clark just to get at me, and if they did, then they might decide that an end result of managing to wipe me out of this reality is worth the risk of vanishing themselves -- Clark would end up being caught up in the middle of everything, regardless, and I’d rather not have that happen to him. Since I generally enjoy my continued existence, the easiest way for me to avoid any such unpleasantness would be to keep 'all this’ to myself, which I fully plan to do,” he told them, looking over at Clark again.

Clark smiled at him a little weakly.

“So!” Lex clapped his hands together and gave them a bright smile. “I hear you have a spaceship in your storm cellar?”

Chapter Text

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark blushed as he walked back to the house with his dad, who had practically kicked Lex off the farm to get rid of him. ...Okay, maybe it hadn’t been that bad, but his dad obviously wasn’t used to getting that many questions all at once, and Lex was persistent.

“Jonathan? Did you show him the spaceship?” were the first words they heard coming in through the kitchen door, and his dad grimaced, not looking the least bit happy.

“No, thank god,” his dad said. “I managed to get him to leave before that.”

“I showed him the fortress,” Clark said, meaning the loft in the barn. Lex had practically given himself whiplash when that little tidbit had slipped out. He hadn’t demanded to see it, but the way he’d been so interested about it had had Clark feeling like he’d almost had to show it to him before he left. ...Not that he didn’t like showing it off -- he did; he’d helped his dad build it and he was proud of it.

He wasn’t really sure he’d liked the way his dad had looked at him when he’d led Lex up the stairs to it, though.

“He’s planning on coming by again after work tomorrow,” Clark told his mom, feeling kind of happy about it. He’d never really had someone to talk to before about everything. His parents didn’t really count. ...They sort of did, just not really.

“And we are also not showing him your spaceship then, either,” his dad said, giving him a no-nonsense look.

“I’m sure that there are plenty of other things to do that can keep him busy,” his mom said, as she pulled the chicken out of the oven. “Why didn’t you invite him to stay over for dinner?” she asked.

His dad turned to his mom. “I don’t like having him here, Martha.” Clark bit his lip.

His mom turned and gave his dad a look. “Jonathan,” she said warningly, “The more time he spends here, the less time he’s spending with other people.”

“He’s insane,” his dad said, and Clark had to stifle a wince as he started pulling dishes out of the cabinets to set the table for dinner. “Who knows what he’ll do!”

“...Come by, ask lots more questions, and smile a lot maybe?” Clark said under his breath to himself, as he started setting out the plates.

“And if he’s here, no one else will hear or see him doing it but us,” his mom said, not hearing him.

“That’s exactly what--” his dad began.

“--Jonathan, would you rather risk him talking about Clark in front of someone in town?” his mom asked. “Or do you think it’d be safer for Clark if he didn’t have the opportunity to do so, because he’s here spending that time with us, instead?”

“We could try to have him committed someplace,” his dad grumbled, and Clark nearly dropped the water glasses he was holding.

“Dad, no!” Clark protested.

“Son--”

“No!” Clark said angrily, slamming the glasses down on the table a lot harder than he meant to, but at least they didn’t break.

“I don’t think we could,” his mom said. “We’d have to explain why we think he needs to be committed to an institution, and he’d be asked to explain things in therapy,” and that would draw attention. “Even if he tried to keep his promise after we did something like that to him,” and she gave his dad a long look, “They might drug him to make him talk about things anyway. --It likely wouldn't take much,” his mother noted dryly, and Clark couldn't exactly blame her -- Lex was super-talkative.

His dad looked outright frustrated.

“Dad, he’s fine. He’s weird, but he wants to help with stuff, and he’s nice, and--” Clark liked him.

Yeah, Lex thought some completely crazy things, but he was just trying to understand what was going on. Clark could relate to that -- he’d been living with his abilities for a long time, and even he’d had trouble believing he was an alien. Lex had probably been living a completely normal life right up until a couple days ago, and then had been in a car accident, run into Clark, drowned, died, come back to life and realized they’d both survived; he’d had an impossible dream where he’d known Clark before they’d met; he’d run across a non-ageing guy he’d seen before -- which should have been impossible -- and seen Clark hanging from a cross getting killed by a tiny piece of meteor rock -- which Clark would have a hard time believing if it hadn’t hurt so much that he couldn’t exactly ignore it -- and then there had been what had happened in the gymnasium...

Clark swallowed hard, forcefully pushing that last part to the back of his mind.

“Dad, you know about how people talk about ‘finding god’ when even one huge traumatic thing happens to them? Lex has had a bunch of them in, like, a week.” And maybe it was kind of off that Lex had decided that Clark was the god that he’d found, but, well…

“So yeah, maybe he’s really confused about me, but he hasn’t been treating me like some kind of a god. He’s been treating me like a person,” Clark reminded him. He’d been in the barn with them and hadn’t left; he had to have overheard them. “He knows I’m different and it doesn’t matter to him at all.” He took a deep breath. “And if I spend enough time with him, I can probably convince him that this sleeping alien god stuff is silly and he won’t think it anymore.” And then he’d really be okay.

“Son, even if you did, that wouldn’t change the fact that he thought those things in the first place,” his dad told him. “If he ends up being around here as much as your mother wants, and something else happens, he’ll just react the same way again.” He grimaced. “It’s bad enough that he's running around out there, knowing as much as he does, as it is.”

“Well, we can’t keep him locked up on the farm,” his mom said reasonably, putting the salad on the table. Which was true. Lex had a job -- even if he'd wanted to stay for some weird reason, someone would notice he was missing and end up saying something.

Clark got out the silverware and set it out, then took in a deep breath and pulled out the big guns.

“Dad, before you showed me the spaceship, I thought you were messing with me,” Clark told him truthfully, looking him straight in the eye. “If you hadn’t shown me the spaceship, I would’ve thought you were crazy, too.”

“Clark, that’s not the same thing,” his dad told him.

“Isn’t it?” Clark asked. “How many people believe in aliens? Maybe I’m crazy for believing you so easily,” Clark teased. “The spaceship’s just a big hunk of metal that doesn’t do anything, and it’s not like I remember growing up anyplace else.”

“Clark...”

“Hmm. You know, a lot more people do believe in gods than in aliens..." his mom mused.

“Martha!”

His mom laughed, and his dad tried not to look so embarrassed, even though it was obvious.

“Invite him to stay for dinner tomorrow,” his mom told them, with amusement still sparkling in her eyes, as they all sat down to eat.

Clark couldn’t help but grin.