Disclaimer: This is a write-up of a fantasy I had concerning the characters of the CW's Smallville. I have no claim on those characters, I just happen to like fantasizing about them. No money or other gain is made from this hobby. Only the fantasy is mine, everything else from the characters to the setting was thought up by DC Comics and/or Smallville creators.
Archive: Do not redistribute without permission.
Rating: PG-13 (adult situations and mature subject matter)
The grass was almost ludicrously green, birds spoke endlessly to one another, and there was one lonely, fluffy white cloud in the sky that threatened nothing.
There was a hill at the peak of a clearing, neither of which were officially claimed as anyone's property, but were instead considered public grounds. The area was rarely used because very few knew about it, and those that did know also knew of many just as hospitable places that were much more attainable. At the base of the hill on one side was a deep dip filled with briars and hosting a small, trickling stream. At the base of the hill on the other side was a thatch of trees, and on the other side of those trees began the Luthor property. No one who tended the Luthor property ever bothered going beyond it simply in order to find more clearings, and so this one remained recumbent.
Without warning, the singing birds began to screech. Dozens of them rose from their perches and nests and mating dances and flew madly in every direction that fulfilled the requirement of being away from the clearing. Not a second later, there was a deafening crack of sound that would have shaken the nerves of anyone, had anyone been there to hear it.
What once was an empty hill in the middle of a clearing was now an occupied hill in the middle of a clearing.
Specifically, a man stood on top of the hill. The man was quite tall. The man was quite strong. The man had quite long, flowing, straight black hair that was being occasionally teased back from his shoulders by a light breeze.
This man wore what might have appeared to the untrained eye as a strange leather bodysuit, scored in many places with white stitching. His boots were also black, a slight vee at the sides, something like a cowboy boot, but softer and flatter at the heel. They hugged the man's calves, the pant legs of his strange garment not so much tucked inside them as so tight to his skin that the boots must have slid right over them.
The man wore no gloves. There was a belt, however, but it also had a strangeness to it, thick, with a black buckle devoid of metal, and several odd, small instruments clipped to it that few, if any, could have guessed the use of without seeing each in operation.
On the left shoulder of the man's garment was a small, metallic pin that appeared woven into the fabric, assuming it was a fabric that could have been woven. The design on the pin would have been recognizable only to a very select few as the insignia of the House of El.
The collar of the garment had a vee in the front much like the sides of the boots, and otherwise rose only an inch and a half up the man's neck. Just under the man's right ear, and behind his jaw line, was a small, somewhat alien mark. It was falu red in colour and appeared to be permanent. No one would have recognized it.
The man had a face, however, that many would have recognized as Clark Kent's.
The man squinted toward the trees. A moment later, he regained in a blur the unbelievable speed he had so recently broken. But just before he did, he muttered one word: "Lex."
~
Lex sat at his desk, sighing heavily as he sifted through a pile of paperwork, his infinitesimal interest in which he couldn't have begun to locate even with painstaking use of the Smithsonian's scanning electron microscope.
A burst of air did to those papers what he would have liked to do himself but had unfortunately become far too responsible over the past several years to attempt. He sat back in shock as they fluttered madly around him, and wondered how a window had been open all of this time without his having realized it.
This minor annoyance was quickly disregarded when he looked up and saw, to his utter astonishment, Clark Kent standing over his desk.
Clark Kent had been banished from Lex's home some time ago, so this alone would have been enough to surprise him. However, the getup Clark was wearing and the long-haired wig that adorned his head were enough to bring this surprise up several notches to what certainly qualified as flabbergasted consternation. He was quite literally speechless for nearly a full minute.
"Lex, you have to come with me. Right now." Clark spoke in a very demanding, no nonsense voice, as if he honestly expected Lex to get up out of his chair and follow without question.
It was all Lex could do to not laugh. He sighed heavily and tapped a finger on his desk. "First things first," he said seriously, and got to his feet. Clark watched him with nothing so much as stoicism as he stepped around his desk, stood in front of Clark, leaned back, crossed his ankles, and slid his hands into his pockets. "Clark," he said steadily, "why are you dressed up like a goth?"
The tiniest smile crinkled only the left corner of Clark's mouth. He had the air of a man who hadn't laughed in months. "You've just won me a bet."
Though still amused by Clark's costume, Lex found himself mildly annoyed at being left out of the loop. "A bet about what?" he asked casually. "And with whom?"
Clark walked away, feigning interest in the knickknacks about the room and giving Lex ample opportunity to rake confused but fascinated eyes over his lean form, which was stuffed into what Lex could have only described as a leather bodysuit, peppered here and there with white stitching and pockets so flattened to Clark's body that it was unlikely they were holding, or could have held, much of anything. It reminded Lex—who found this rather hilarious—of a catsuit he'd once seen advertised in an adult catalogue and couldn't have imagined who would have been tasteless enough to buy.
"As for your first question," he turned around near the fireplace and faced Lex once again. Lex's eyes were drawn immediately to his long, black hair and how positively real it looked. He wondered if it was extensions instead of a wig, "I made a bet that the first words out of your mouth upon seeing me would be some witty, sarcastic comment, most likely about," Clark waved a hand down at himself as if he could also see humour in his choice of attire, "my current fashion."
"A foolish bet."
Clark didn't seem to hear him. He walked closer, his smile fading. "As for your second question: With whom." Lex stood up from the perch he'd made on his desk as Clark came nearer, somewhat startled by the intensity of his approach. He stopped only a step from Lex, all but trapping him against the desk.
Lex swallowed, made uncomfortably nervous by Clark's nearness and the sharpness of his stare. "Yes?"
The corner of his mouth twitched once more. "With you, Lex. I made the bet with you."
~ ~ ~
Chapter 1
Lex swallowed again, growing angry with himself for so plainly displaying his nervousness. But there was something wrong with this situation.
At first, he'd thought perhaps the man before him was Clark's other personality: the strong one with the devil-may-care attitude Lex hadn't seen in some time. Then he'd worried about a double—not Clark at all, but only some creature who had stolen his countenance and memories and intended to use them, and Lex, toward his own evil ends.
But now, with this last startling assertion, he didn't know what to think.
"Me?"
"Yes." Clark—if it was indeed Clark—tilted his head slightly, as if considering Lex's expression, then shrugged and walked away again. "Or at least a version of you."
"A version? I don't understand."
"I'm sure you don't."
Lex gritted his teeth in frustration. He would have been the first to admit he had issues with the way Clark often spoke to him, taking more liberties than Lex had ever cared to give him, but this dismissive tone was several steps beyond even that. "Why don't you explain it to me, then?"
"Lex, listen to me." He spun on his heel, his hair spinning out over his shoulder and bouncing in a wave across his back. It was distracting, but only to Lex. Clark seemed to view his out of character locks as perfectly normal. "We have very little time. I promise I will explain everything; but right now, I need you to come with me."
Lex nearly laughed. "I'm not going anywhere with you."
"There is no time for this! Lex," he walked forward suddenly and, to Lex's great surprise, held out a hand palm up as if he expected Lex to take it. He even smiled, if very slightly. "I need you to trust me," he said softly. "Okay? Trust me, Lex."
Lex's eyes narrowed and he didn't fully bite back his sneer. "Why should I trust you?"
Clark blinked in surprise and his hand fell slowly back to his side. Then he adopted a cavalier stance. "If you can't trust your best friend," he said flippantly, "then who can you trust?"
Lex scoffed grandly. "Best friend?" He shook his head in disbelief. "Clark, you have not been my best friend—or friend at all, for that matter—in years. Who do you think you're fooling?"
He was somewhat gratified to see Clark swallow for a change, though he couldn't have claimed to know why he'd done so.
"What?" he asked quietly. "What..." he looked around the room, and with meaning this time, as if trying to pinpoint some detail he hadn't already taken in. Whatever he was looking for, he didn't seem to find it. He only shook his head and looked back to Lex with wide, concerned eyes, possibly the first real emotion he'd shown. "Lex, what year is this?"
Lex opened his mouth, but his scoff caught in his throat. Slowly, he took two steps away, following the line of his desk. "You're not Clark."
Concern turned quickly to anger. "Tell me what year it is!" he boomed.
Lex's slow steps melded quickly together, sliding him away from the desk and toward a far wall. He watched the man unblinkingly, certain he could become violent at any moment. "It's 2007. Who are you? Tell me what's going on."
"What?" he breathed, his voice positively despondent. His shoulders slumped, and Lex only then realized how much more proudly he'd been standing than Lex normally associated with Clark Kent. His face fell and Lex noticed that the angles of it were a little stronger, but not as sharp as those he associated with Clark Kent. Despair came into his eyes, and Lex understood that this man, whoever he was, seemed to possess a more exacting, more honest range of emotion than he associated with Clark Kent.
"You're not Clark," he said again, this time with conviction.
"This can't be," the man who was not Clark muttered to himself, a nervous hand combing his hair back from his face. "It's not going to work. It's too late. It's too— No. No, it has to work. It can still work, it's just going to take—Lex," suddenly his head snapped up and he was speaking to Lex directly once again, "there is no time to waste. You have to come with me right now."
"It would be unlikely I would go with you even if you were Clark, and you are quite obviously not, so I have no intention of going anywhere with you!"
"You're right about that, okay?" He approached Lex, his hands held slightly away as if to soothe him. "I'm not Clark. I haven't used that name in a very long time. My name is Kal-El. You may refer to me as Kal, if you wish."
"Kal?" Lex tilted his head in concession. "All right, Kal," he said tightly. "What the hell's going on?"
"I will explain everything. But you must come with me now."
"I'd prefer things in the reverse order if you don't mind."
The man's face twisted in anger. "Damn it, you don't know what's at stake! If you did, you wouldn't hesitate!"
"Then tell me!"
"I can't!" He sighed sharply. "You'd never believe me, Lex. You have to come with me. Please."
"I'm not—"
For a moment, just that moment, he had pleaded in voice, body, and expression, looking and sounding so completely like Clark that Lex was once again wondering if this was just another of Clark's alternate personalities. But that moment passed in a flash; his shoulders squared, his back straightened, his face lost all emotion, and his voice became hard as granite. "This discussion is over. You're coming with me. Right now. I won't take no for an answer."
Lex's eyes shuttered over, his own posture straightening. He'd been regularly taking steps backwards and was now well within reach of his liquor cabinet and the handgun he stored there. "Are you threatening me?"
Kal narrowed his eyes, shooting Lex a suspicious glance. "You'll come with me," he said certainly. Then he turned his head, looking toward the box behind the liquor cabinet as if he could see right through them both, and a second later, to Lex's astonishment, a tiny hole seared through the back of the cabinet, and the box burst into flames.
He jumped back in shock. Then there was another sudden breeze, the fire was out, and Kal was inches from him, though he couldn't possibly have been.
"I am offering you the illusion of free will," he breathed darkly. "Don't look this gift horse in the mouth, Lex. Come on." He turned and headed for the doors, but Lex did not follow.
He stood, rooted to the spot, unable to process what he'd seen and unwilling to follow a freakishly powerful madman into the unknown.
As Kal reached the door, he stopped and sighed heavily, seeming to know without looking that Lex wasn't following him. He glanced back over his shoulder. "I will not hurt you. You have my word." When Lex didn't move, he turned and looked back more fully. "You have Clark's word."
Lex couldn't have explained why that assurance relaxed him slightly. But he still did not move.
"Please, Lex. Come on." Again, the slight twitch of a smile graced one corner of his mouth. "I'll even let you drive."
He blinked. He opened his mouth. He closed his mouth. Then, before he knew what he was doing, Lex was following the man out the door. He couldn't have said why: His person was threatened, he was convinced the man was a stranger to him, and yet the thought of him leaving—of Lex never knowing what he'd wanted, where he was from, who he really was, or why he was there—compelled him to follow.
Halfway down the hall, he was second-guessing himself, but his legs didn't stop moving. "Where are you taking me?"
"Somewhere you know." He glanced at Lex out of the corner of his eye. "And then somewhere you don't."
Lex opened his mouth to ask for clarification, even though he was sure he wouldn't receive it, but the words died before they ever reached his lips.
There was a mirror at the other end of the hall, a mirror that showed not only a normally reversed reflection, but a doubly-reversed reflection. Only there was no mirror at all, as Lex well knew.
Approaching was a double of himself and a double of Kal.
"What the hell?" Lex breathed. But Kal didn't slow down, and so Lex didn't feel that he could, either. Slack-jawed, he watched as the doubles approached, their positions the same, so that Lex was on Kal's right in each pair, and hence while he approached Kal's double, Kal approached Lex's double. He stole a glance at the first instance of this strange man, and found him looking not at all surprised.
Then, just as suddenly as everything else had been, the doubles stopped. Kal and Lex also stopped. Everyone looked at one another.
Lex's eyes were drawn to the double of himself, his head spinning at the idea of it even while he looked the man over for any indication that he was not truly Lex—a surgery scar, an inconsistency of the skin, anything. All that looked back at him were sad eyes, and a small, resigned smile that he didn't understand.
He looked at Kal again, hoping vainly for some answer to what he was seeing—perhaps the man would turn into his mother, or into Lex himself, and then Lex could be certain he was dreaming—but Kal only stared pointedly into the eyes of his other self.
The other Kal was stoic, his eyes showing no emotion, no suggestion, nothing except for perhaps the smallest hint of recrimination. In fact, the first Kal ducked his head slightly, as if ashamed of something, though nothing had been said or done, and then he began to sidestep the doubles just as they began to do the same, and soon Lex and Kal were continuing on their way while the doubles headed toward Lex's office.
Kal had taken his arm, apparently concerned that Lex might try to follow the doubles, which was precisely what he wanted to do. "Hey! Let go of me!" He looked hard over his shoulder, stumbling as Kal led him away. "Wait. Wait!"
His other self turned his head, looked back at him, and offered another of those small, sad smiles that told Lex nothing of what the hell was going on. He then disappeared from view as Kal led Lex around a corner.
"Jesus Christ, what the hell is—"
"I swear I will explain everything. There is no time! Hurry!"
Mind racing, legs numb, Lex nonetheless pushed on, shoving disorientation and the churning in his stomach aside, satisfying himself for now with the promise of eventually learning what was happening here, though if this man had the face of anyone else, he was sure he couldn't have brought himself to take another step.
He stumbled when he realized that that was the reality of his current situation. It was loathsome, but he was only going along because this man who was not Clark looked like Clark, and somewhere in Lex's confused, twisted, traitorous mind, that counted for something.
Kal led him to the garage, waving a hand vaguely at the key box without stopping. "Pick one."
He was halfway down the first row of cars before Lex realized he was just hovering a hand over the wide choice of keys, no clue on what basis to make a decision. "But where are we going?" he called over his shoulder. "What kind of—"
"Just grab one, Lex! There's no time!"
Lex made a blind grab for any modern set, pressed the Doors Unlock button, and followed Kal, who had immediately pivoted on his heel toward the vehicle that had made the sound. He was in the passenger seat of the Aston Martin what seemed like hours before Lex even managed to make it to the door. His vision finally began to steady once he'd taken the soft leather wheel in his hands and it seemed to tether him to Earth.
"How did you do those things?" Lex asked in little more than a whisper, shaking his head in disbelief. "And who were those people—were they us?"
Kal looked at him expressionlessly. "I'm an alien. And those people were your proof that I'm not going to harm you. Drive."
~
"Here? I hate to disappoint you," Lex said sardonically as he climbed out of the car and Kal headed immediately for the cave entrance, "but I've already seen these caves—hey! Where are you going?" He broke into a jog to catch up with Kal, who seemed to become more and more impatient with every passing minute. Even speeds over eighty hadn't been enough to satisfy him.
The cave was dark and dusty inside, rocks strewn about from god knew what. It was true that Lex had been here, but it hadn't been in a while. It appeared even more tattered than it had the last time he'd walked through.
It took his eyes a while to adjust to the light, or lack thereof, but once they had, he knew something wasn't right.
The cave was bigger than it should have been. There seemed to be an entirely new room inside, which began where a wall used to be. He was startled to realize he recognized it: The last time—the only time—he had seen it, the brightest light he'd ever beheld was shooting out of it, and then Clark Kent had disappeared within that light.
He shook his head to divest himself of the memory, scowling at the thought of the blatant lies that had soon accompanied it, and continued carefully ahead.
"Kal? Kal, are you back here?"
He soon saw him, kneeling and hovering over something on the floor, against the far wall where little light reached. He was murmuring to himself, speaking as if saying a well-known and cherished prayer.
Lex sighed with irritation, the dust of the caves coating his tongue and making him want to cough. "I've had enough of this. You told me you would explain what the hell is going on. Well, explain it now. Because in about thirty seconds, I'm going to take my car and get out of here, and you can find your own way home—or wherever it is you're headed."
Kal stopped talking, and he might have sighed. As he fell to the other knee, arms moving slightly, Lex squinted and walked a little closer.
"Kal? What are you—" he broke off as what Kal was hovering over on the floor moved, and Lex realized it wasn't a what at all, but a who. There was someone else here.
Lex took a careful step back. He began to consider the wisdom of walking into a dark cave, outnumbered and ignorant, and with no one the wiser as to his whereabouts.
Just then, Kal shifted to his hip in the dirt, and began to carefully heft the other person upwards to rest partially on Kal's leg and partially against his chest. There was a moan of pain, and then Lex was able to pick up the sound of rattling, laboured breathing. His curiosity began to overcome his fear, and perhaps his common sense, and he took a few steps closer.
He froze in his tracks when Kal shifted slightly farther, and the man's face came into view. It was twisted in pain, the lips chafed and bleeding, one cheek dusted with dirt. There was something horribly wrong with the man's skin: It was mottled and uneven, patches of black staining it in peeling splotches as if death itself was spreading across his face.
The eyes were sunken and yellow and bloodshot, the tips and edges of his ears encrusted with black blood and open sores. Breathing was obviously an agony for him, his chest rising and falling in quick spurts. His hands were thin and weak, and though he wore an outfit similar to Kal's, he seemed to have shrunk inside of it, as if the whole of his body was just a balloon that was slowly losing air.
Despite all of this, Lex recognized the man's face. He would have recognized that face anywhere.
"What the hell?" he breathed.
The jaundiced eyes peered into Lex's own, then rolled in disappointment that was directed plainly back to Kal. "You didn't tell him," his wispy, broken voice rattled.
"He never would have believed me without seeing you first," was whispered back to him.
As he looked up and met Lex's startled eyes, the man who was not Clark continued to gently cradle the man who was not Lex to his chest.
"Lex," he said steadily, "this man is you... one hundred and fifty years from now."
~ ~ ~
Chapter 2
"That's ridiculous," Lex immediately blurted. "I-I mean, it's impossible! I'd be long dead." He paused, swallowing spasmodically, no longer bothering to worry about the picture he presented as he looked over what honestly appeared to be himself. "God," he breathed, "he almost is dead, isn't he?"
Kal's eyes flashed angrily. "He isn't going to die!"
Lex shut his mouth with a click and a scowl at the volume of Kal's voice, but said nothing.
Kal adjusted the other man—the other Lex—on his lap and went on more calmly. "Lex, listen to me. I am going to explain everything to you, and I'm going to explain it right now. But we don't have time to go through it more than once, so I need you to listen very... carefully. All right?"
Lex shot a sarcastic expression in the general direction of Kal's patronizing voice, but didn't remove his gaze from his own deteriorating double. "Oh, believe me, you have my undivided attention."
"All right. This man, Lex, he is you. We—"
Lex shook his head dismissively. "Stop right there. I'm not buying that."
"I told you there's no time—"
"You don't honestly expect me to believe you're from the future? He's a clone! An impostor! It's happened before."
"Damn it, he is not a clone! He is you!"
Lex waved an equally dismissive hand and turned his back. He took a few steps toward the nearest wall, then stopped, took a steadying breath, and turned around again. "I don't believe you," he said simply, and rolled a shoulder.
He was surprised to see panic fill Kal's eyes. "Wait. Just wait. Before you make any rash judgments, why don't you let me give you all the facts?"
"That's what I've been asking for since you walked into my office!"
"I know. But I had to get back here to make sure he was all right." He glanced down at his charge once more, then focussed on Lex. "Okay, you've made it clear that you don't believe me, and that's fine. But let me tell it anyway. Let me tell it all, and then you can decide what to believe."
Lex sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. "All right. Talk."
"As I said before, I am an alien. I don't mean I'm from another country, I mean that I'm from another planet. I am not the Clark Kent that you know, but I used to be. I am his future."
Lex rolled his eyes, but kept quiet.
"All of those things that you believe he can do that he constantly says he can't—he can. I can. And he doesn't tell you specifically because you want to know so much." He paused and glanced away. "You frighten him."
Lex didn't move, didn't even breathe. He was hanging on Kal's every word, but wasn't about to let him know it.
"I am an alien. My parents sent me to this planet because ours was about to be destroyed. Along with me, they sent a great deal of technology, as well as the knowledge to enable me to use it. In your time, I have the technology, but not much of the knowledge. It will take decades to master."
"That's all very entertaining. But what does it have to do with him?" he nodded his head toward the broken man wheezing in Kal's lap.
"I'm getting to it. I realize that from where you're standing, you and Clark are not friends, and right now, I know it might seem difficult to understand why I would go to such lengths to keep you alive. But things change."
Lex swallowed hard. He didn't want to say anything aloud, but between aliens on Earth and this, it was this that he found the most incredible. In the end he had no choice but to ask, "We're... going to be friends again?"
"Yes," Kal nodded slowly. "In time."
Lex watched as his other self took Kal's hand and seemed to weakly squeeze it.
"The technology I refer to is an artificial intelligence. It can learn, grow, change. At my request, it found a way to keep a man—to keep you—alive, young, virile, long past your time. This isn't indefinite, but it is for a great many years. With the A.I.'s treatments, Lexx," here, he looked down at the man in his lap, "is still a young man. He has many centuries ahead of him. But," he met Lex's eyes again, "there's been a complication."
Lex tilted his head quickly, lifting his eyebrows as if to say, ‘Yes, obviously.’
"Human cells are not made to sustain this, and they have ceased multiplying. His lungs, his skin—all of his organs are breaking down. But we knew this would happen. The treatment isn't perfect. Before they began, many of Lexx's cells were harvested, cultured, and have been kept in stasis for use at just this time and each time this happens, which should be about once every two centuries."
"I'm sorry," Lex raised a hand to get him to stop. "Once every two centuries he needs one of these treatments?"
"No. He needs the treatments several times a week. About once every two hundred years, the treated cells—his entire body—will begin to rapidly break down. The treatments must be suspended, and the cells must be replenished from an original supply, and then the treatments begin again."
Lex scoffed. "A two hundred year cycle?"
Kal shrugged slightly in concession. "Due to events beyond our control," he gritted his teeth at this, the jaw muscles flexing powerfully, "this part of the ‘cycle’ has come too early... and due to the same events, our supply of original cells has been destroyed."
Things suddenly began to fall into place for Lex: Time travel, Kal's appearance, his own double, and how and why it was all connected to him. He tried to take a step backwards and bumped into the rock wall behind him.
Kal was watching him carefully. "I have come back one hundred and fifty years into the past to get the cells that he needs. They can only come from one person. Not even his descendants would be a close enough match. The cells must come from a man who has not undergone the treatments, and that man must be you."
Lex adjusted his weight on his feet, spreading his legs and procuring a solid footing on the dirt floor. He was prepared to bolt. "What is it you want from me?"
"Very little," Kal said in what Lex assumed was meant to be a soothing voice. "Cellular samples. It will not hurt, or affect you or your life in any way."
Lex waited, allowing several seconds to go by, but nothing more was forthcoming. He snorted incredulously. "That's it? A few cells? What—a scraping from my inner cheek? A vial of blood? Christ, can't you just take it and leave?"
Kal briefly closed his eyes as if exasperated. "It's more complicated than that. I don't just need one sample, I need several. And I don't just need them once, I need them many times over several days. You must come back—forward... with us."
"F... forward?" Lex's hands curled into fists at his sides. He felt as if he was either going to run or faint, and he had no intention of doing either. "Look, not that I'm saying I'm agreeing to this, but even if I did, whatever you would need, it could be done here. I wouldn't need to go anywhere. I have access to labs that—"
"Lex, I know everything about you and everything about this time and what resources you have, and I am telling you that we can not do what we need to do here. The right kind of technology does not exist. Not yet. It barely exists even when we are from. You have to come with us. There is no other choice. Please."
Lex's double broke into a fit of horrid coughing, weak and wheezing and unable even to raise a fist to his mouth. Kal produced a bright red cloth—from where, Lex did not know—and hovered it before the dying man's mouth, wiping what looked to be black blood from his lips as he settled down into pained breathing once again.
Horrified at the sight of himself withering away, Lex began taking side steps toward the exit without being truly aware of it. "I don't understand this. Why would I want to live for centuries? It's not natural!"
Kal watched him without blinking and it was only as his head was turning gradually, following him, that Lex realized he'd been moving, and stopped. "Because," he said softly, "I asked you to."
A weak, flaking hand landed on Kal's arm over the double's chest and held onto it shakily. Lex only stared.
"My species is very long-lived. Life for me could be... quite isolated." He paused and gave a small one-sided shrug. "Can you imagine it? Everyone dies around you, you begin to get frightened to make a connection..." he trailed off, seeming for only a moment to forget where he was or what he was doing. "Please, Lex. I'm asking you to trust us: Trust me, trust yourself, trust what you see with your own eyes. Come with us to our time. Help us."
"I know what you're asking."
"I'm not sure you do." He shook his head slightly. "Not really."
The man in Kal's lap made a strange, rattling sound, and Lex looked down to him, wondering if he was finally taking his last breath. Then the blackened lips parted again, the same sound choked through, and Lex was able to read what he'd said more than decipher the noise he made. "Please," he said. "Please help us."
Kal held him a bit closer and ducked his head. He murmured something into his ear that even Lex couldn't hear and then the man fell still once again. "I'll explain more," Kal offered. "I'll fill in the details, and—and that technology I mentioned? You could see it. You could even use it."
Despite Kal's rushed, desperate voice, Lex felt his own eyes flare in interest at the offer.
"Do you understand? I'm asking you to come to the future with us, Lex. You'll see things that no man of this age has ever seen or will ever see. The experience will actually be unique; it couldn't be bought."
Quickly, Lex's eyes narrowed. This man, Clark or not, knew Lex well. He was playing him, and doing so with some skill.
But then Kal smiled, just slightly, that small upturn of one corner of his mouth, and the spirit of his manipulation softened. "You know you want to," he said, his voice provocative. Then he sobered, his face awash with concern. "Being here is making Lexx worse. We've got to get back immediately. Please. You're our only hope."
"All right." Lex's eyes might have widened as much as Kal's after he'd said it. He wasn't sure he had meant to. "But," he quickly added, "I want you to answer one question for me."
"Hurry," Kal breathed.
"You say it has to be me. Why? Why couldn't it be an earlier version of me, or a later one? Why not go back to when you took the original samples, and just take a new set? If what you say is true, then surely at that time, I would be easier to convince."
"Actually..." Kal winced slightly, "we'd been trying to come earlier than this. Several years earlier, in fact, preferably when you were about 20 or so, before the quantities of alcohol you consume had done much damage to your body."
Astonished, Lex felt his cheeks begin to burn. He'd had occasion to feel ashamed of his drinking, but he'd never felt it so acutely as he did at this very moment.
"But there was apparently a slight miscalculation," he looked to his left, wryly, as if there was someone else in the room he was silently blaming for this fact, "and we arrived too late. It can still work, it will just be a little more difficult."
Lex scoffed, trying his best to look offended, though he was only mortified. "If I'm too ‘damaged,’ then why don't you just try again?"
"There isn't time!" Quickly, Kal shuffled around, got himself out from under the double's weight, and then carefully hefted the man into his arms. Despite his tenderness, a painful wheeze burst through the man's ravaged lips, and he began to tremble. "There isn't even time for these questions. Come with us, Lex. I'll tell you everything."
Without even waiting for an answer, Kal crossed the chamber, passed the stone table, and stood stoically at a break in the wall, through which there was only darkness. Then, suddenly, it burst into blaring white light and Lex raised a hand to shield his eyes. Sharp, cold wind buffeted at high speeds from the light, and as Kal's hair whipped fiercely around his face, he hugged Lex's double close to his chest.
"Come on!" he called over his shoulder. "We need you!"
Lex's knees were shaking. Two years ago, when he wasn't wanted, he would have given anything to walk through that light and know where it led. Now, being not only wanted but needed, it was all he could do not to run in the other direction. Slowly, trembling almost as badly as his double, he took a step toward the light. Then he took another, and another. Soon, he was right on Kal's heels, and when he stepped through, so did Lex.
The light became unbearable, shrieking a banshee's cry into his eyes. He closed them tight, digging the heels of his palms into them, trying to block out the pain. The wind ripped at his body, making him shiver uncontrollably, and his legs were shaking and numb. He was certain he was about to fall.
Suddenly, the wind lessened. It was no less cold, but it wasn't quite as fierce.
"Open your eyes!" Kal demanded.
Bristling at the authoritative tone, Lex nonetheless did take his hands away from his eyes. He opened them only a sliver, carefully, and did not open them any farther. All around him was snow. Blindingly white, perfectly smooth snow, and more of it was falling from the sky and swirling around him. This place, whatever it was, was nothing more than a frozen wasteland.
Somehow Kal had gotten behind him in the journey, and Lex turned to ask what in the hell—
"No questions!" He jerked his head forward, behind Lex. "Walk that way!"
"But—"
"Damn it, walk! He'll freeze out here!"
Biting his tongue at the sight of his double shivering madly, his wheezing having grown even more uneven than it had been in the cave, Lex pulled his jacket more tightly around himself and tucked his hands under his arms. "He's not the only one," he muttered under his breath, starting in the direction Kal had indicated.
"I should probably tell you that one of those alien things I can do is hear just about everything! Best to keep your smart-ass comments to yourself!"
Lex scowled and thought up a couple of real choice ones.
He walked and trudged, the snow soaking quickly through his expensive Italian shoes and thin dress socks. The tips of his ears burned with oncoming frostbite, his nose already numb, and still all he saw was swirling snow and blinding whiteness.
"There's nothing out here!" he shouted over the howling storm. "You're going to get us killed!"
"Just keep walking!"
Lex leaned into the blustering wind, wondering how he could have thought for even a moment that it had lessened in intensity. It bit at every spare piece of exposed flesh, from every inch of his bald head to the hollow of his throat above the open collar of his shirt. He couldn't see two feet in front of him, and was stumbling blindly, only adjusting his course as Kal shouted instruction at his back.
He was beginning to come to the realization that they were going to die out here—that after all of that, Kal was really just a madman who was going to get them all frozen to death—when all of a sudden, it stopped.
The wind disappeared, the sound going with it. The silence, in fact, was so complete and so sudden, it almost made his ears hurt. It was considerably warmer here, and blinding whites had been exchanged for milky creams and soft blues. Blinking snow and ice crystals from his eyelashes, Lex raised his head. He just as quickly dropped his jaw.
He'd never seen anything like it: Ice. They seemed to be in a castle made of ice. Everywhere, huge thick pillars of the stuff stuck every which way out of every angle of the enclosure. It was huge and so perfectly asymmetrical, it seemed to have been purposely designed that way. He tilted his head back, attempting to see the ceiling, but all he saw was pillar after pillar of ice criss-crossing over one another again and again until his eye could no longer decipher anything but darkening shades of blue.
"My god," he breathed, his quiet voice seeming to echo in the silence. He turned to see Kal settling Lex's double onto a slab of blue ice lined with thick cloth. "What is this place?"
Kal looked up only briefly. "Home."
~ ~ ~
Chapter 3
"Home?" Lex repeated, watching with a disconnected interest born of sensory overload as Kal secured his double into the strange piece of ice furniture that apparently made up his medical bed. "You actually live here?"
Kal only grunted in response, working intently with the various accoutrements that surrounded the bed.
"My god, what happened?" Lex asked with concern. "Nuclear winter?"
Kal's hands seemed momentarily to stumble in their movements. He might have been smirking. "No," he said, a stifled laugh in his voice. "We're in the Arctic. But trust you to think the worst."
Lex chose to ignore this last comment. "People live in the Arctic in the future? In these ice structures?"
"No." Kal had lost his mirth, frowning as he looked over what Lex assumed to be readouts on various displays. "Just us. And it isn't ice, it's crystal."
Before Lex was able to ask him to qualify ‘us,’ his attention was drawn to the instruments around his double's sickbed. He'd thought that Kal had been manoeuvring them, adjusting them, attaching various pieces of them to his charge's body. But he had just seen one of the arms move without Kal having touched it.
He watched, stunned, as the pointed black tip of a flexible appendage bored itself deep into the dying man's body between two of his ribs. He showed no reaction to what must have been the excruciating pain. Even his harsh, uneven breathing didn't change.
"Is that supposed to be—?" Lex broke off with a choke, his mouth closing abruptly and a sick feeling climbing out of his stomach as he watched another arm force a thick black tube past the man's ravaged lips and down his throat. At first, there was again no reaction, but then, amazingly, his breathing began to even out.
"A.I.," Kal said, apparently unfazed by the sight of the instruments forcing their way into his friend's body. "Prognosis."
A strong female voice came from everywhere. "The patient's cellular cohesion has weakened. I estimate complete organ collapse in forty-nine hours."
A pained, disappointed breath blew through Kal's clenched teeth and parted lips. "No time," he muttered, shaking his bowed head.
Then he took in a deep breath as if to steel himself for what lay ahead, and got to his feet. A soft grey blanket was tugged over the dying man's body, every mechanical arm and tube protruding from within him shifting, adjusting, and flattening itself closer to his skin to allow the blanket to lie smoothly atop him.
Kal looked as though he was going to touch the man's blackened cheek, his peeling forehead, but his hand finally formed a fist and was drawn back to his side. It seemed to Lex that he was unable to find any place to touch that wasn't falling apart.
Kal turned to face him, his expression dull and withdrawn. "A.I.," he said again, his voice tighter and quiet, "this is the earlier specimen. Prepare to harvest the samples you need."
Something somewhere began to whir distressingly like a dentist's drill, and Lex took two stumbling steps backward. "Hold on a minute."
"There isn't time to hold on a minute!" Kal snapped. "I'll explain whatever you want after the first round of samples." He took a few determined strides forward, but Lex only backed up until a crystal post was in his back. Kal was right about it not being ice. It was warm.
"Look, this sample gathering thing, I..." his gaze jittered between Kal and the picture of himself, broken and deteriorating, stuck all over with tubing.
"It won't hurt," Kal said tonelessly. He took Lex's arm in his hand. He wasn't gentle.
Lex jerked out of his grasp. "Yeah? Well, that," he pointed viciously toward his double, "didn't look too damn pleasant!" He circled away from Kal, glancing once around to try to find the source of the whir, but unable to pinpoint it.
"I promise you, he felt no discomfort."
"No? How can you tell?" Lex panted. "Why isn't he moving? Is he—?"
"He's just resting. Please, he has very little time. Get into the chamber."
Lex darted away, heading the opposite direction from where he gathered Kal wanted him to go. As his heart beat out a frantic rhythm, he began to wonder what the hell was the matter with him. Why had he ever agreed to this—to any part of it? What had possessed him to trust this man who was not Clark?
"Why would you want to save me?" he murmured.
Kal stopped trying to advance on him and peered at him instead in confusion.
"You can't stand me!" Lex shouted. "You hate me! That's what this is, isn't it?" he pointed at the man who was not Lex with a shaking finger. "Not saving him—killing me! You just want me out of the way—the project you failed at, the one you couldn't save—you just want me d—!"
"FIFTEEN YEARS!" Kal boomed.
Lex hunched where he stood, certain the echo of Kal's incredibly strong voice would bring the pointed crystal posts down on them all.
When he went on, he did so in a whisper, the difference to what had come before sending goose flesh over Lex's skin, "For fifteen years," he breathed, "we were enemies. Yet not once did I ever truly hate you, and not once did I ever truly wish you dead."
Lex blinked, and Kal was in front of him. It was impossible, but he was right there, his hands tight on Lex's arms, his eyes blazing.
"That time is long past. I gave you my word I wouldn't harm you. I have no intention of breaking it. You have got to get into the chamber... right now."
His hands tightened on Lex's shoulders and Lex found himself holding his breath. The gun box in flames, a dozen metres crossed in the blink of an eye, and all of the things Lex thought Clark could do... he really could.
"Are you going to force me?" he asked without breath, his wide, terrified eyes searching Kal's gaze.
The pressure on his arms let up and Kal's eyes deadened. "The A.I.," he said, not quite steadily, "is programmed to accept your orders as it accepts my own. I... can not force you. You must agree or it can not be done."
Lex let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. For the moment, he didn't consider why this might be, only that it might be, and if it was, he had less to fear than he'd thought. "Then, if I should refuse, and ask you to take me home right now... you would?"
Kal's expression hardened. "No. I am a person, Lex, and I can't be programmed to follow your orders. I can't force you to get into that chamber and submit to the gathering. But nothing short of Lexx's death will make me give up on convincing you."
Lex stared at him, unblinking, perhaps not even breathing.
"Please," Kal breathed, more emotion in his voice than Lex had heard since the moment he'd appeared in his office and sent his papers into a whirlwind. "I need him. And we need you. Please, Lex... please don't let him die."
Lex gazed into his eyes, watched them become limpid with moisture, and found what he hadn't realized he'd been looking for. Despite everything, he nodded.
Kal did not thank him, he only began to lead him toward the chamber he had mentioned but not pointed out. It was only as they walked toward it that Lex noticed it nestled into a wall not twenty feet in front of them. It was made of the same substance as everything else—the crystal Kal had mentioned—and could have remained hidden where it was for quite some time if Lex's attention hadn't been specifically called to it.
It was basically a rectangle cut out of the wall, protruding forward, and indented with the shape of a man. "Will I be rendered unconscious?" Lex heard himself ask, as if he was hearing the conversation from another room.
"If you want to be. You don't need to be." Kal began to help him into the chamber, which consisted of almost completely hefting Lex into it, as Lex was finding it difficult to move his legs. "But it is best that you don't look down."
Lex immediately looked down. "Down? Why?"
Kal moved a crystal restraint across Lex's middle and secured it on the other side. "It's better not to see it."
Lex's stomach flipped and his gaze went unbidden to the sight of his other self, lying on his back with instruments invading every part of his body. The chamber began to move around him and Lex gasped and stiffened. "What's it doing?"
"Relax. It's just molding itself to your body. It will make it more com—" Kal broke off suddenly, and his eyes shifted. His lips twisted slightly, and a tone Lex might have equated with wryness laced his voice. "Well, no, it doesn't actually make it more comfortable. But that's what it's supposed to do." He waved vaguely. "Just try to ignore it."
The crystal, which began hard and unmoving as crystal should be, was rippling against and hugging the contours of Lex's body. He couldn't have possibly ignored it. His attention was quickly redirected, however, when something above his head moved, and he looked sharply up to find mechanical arms with black instruments on their ends come descending from the ledge above him.
"Oh, my god."
"It will be very brief."
Lex's head jerked down and as he tried to meet Kal's eyes, his peripheral vision picked up another set of instruments to either side of him, all aiming for various portions of his anatomy. "Get me out of this."
"Please. Don't. We need your help."
Lex wanted to insist further, wanted to demand to be let out of the chamber, wanted to scream that he'd changed his mind, and whoever that man was, just let him die, because Lex was not going to do this! But he was suddenly rendered mute. At first, he was certain it was the chamber affecting him, but then he realized the truth: He was choked by his own terror.
He was locked into place, various apparatus both sharp and dull, snapping, whirling, spinning, whirring, and shrieking as they came for him like sentient, alien, malicious creatures, and he could not scream; he could not fight. A thin, twirling spear became just visible by his left eye. It was clearly aiming for his temple.
Panicked, his rapid breath turned to hyperventilation, his body unable to move due to the now completely form-fitting nature of the chamber. As the appendages came at him, one aiming for his head, another his chest, another his throat, and yet another straight for his gut, he came to the absolute and horrifying certainty that he had made a terrible mistake.
~ ~ ~
Chapter 4
"It's going to be okay. Just look at me."
Lex's eyes darted toward Kal, then immediately back to the point approaching his temple. He tried to jerk out of its way but had nowhere to go.
"I swear it won't h—"
"NO!"
But it was too late. The spear penetrated his flesh, the whir coming from both inside and outside his head. He looked down despite Kal's warning that he shouldn't and watched a thick black pointed tool bury itself seamlessly into his stomach. Nausea filled his throat.
"Don't look down! Just look at me, will you? It'll be over soon."
It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt at all; in fact, he couldn't feel anything. He could hear it, and he could see it, but it felt as if he was alone where he stood, nothing touching his flesh but the sides of the chamber. His breathing slowed only slightly, the vision enough to cause panic, but the lack of pain enough to pull him back from the edge.
"How is this even possible?" he said brokenly, trying to shake his head, though he couldn't move it.
"Technology, Lex. Please look at me."
Lex ripped his gaze away from the clawlike tool approaching his ribs and focussed unblinking eyes on Kal's steady stare.
"All right. You're doing well." He paused but never broke their eye contact. "Let it breathe for you," he suddenly said. "Don't struggle."
"Wha—?" before he was able to get the word out, a thick tube much like the one that had gone into his double's mouth breached Lex's lips and began snaking down his throat. He couldn't feel the penetration, but his breathing began to feel too tight.
"Just let it breathe for you," Kal said again.
Lex tried to swallow against it and couldn't. Nervous sweat trickled down the side of his face and he felt that more intensely than he should. Still, he tried to take Kal's advice and didn't struggle to breathe. Soon he found himself breathing deep and regular, and his heartbeat began to calm further.
Lex's vision began to become dreamy and floating. Nothing seemed real to him. He looked across the room at the dying man, punctured all over with apparatus just as Lex was, and he might have laughed at the similarity if he'd been able to control his own breath. He looked at Kal, who was still and steady and whose mouth was moving. Lex couldn't hear what he was saying, but they looked to be very soothing words.
Kal's hair was behind his shoulders, much of it not visible to Lex's blurry gaze, and for a moment, he was sure Kal really was Clark, and not some older version with a different name at all. Surely Clark had put on a strange leather getup and lured Lex to this odd place for reasons as yet unknown. There was no malice in these actions, but nor was there altruism. There was something Clark hadn't told him, something more than there usually was.
Another mechanical arm was approaching from beneath him, and Lex looked slowly down, knowing even without being able to hear Clark that he was insisting Lex didn't do that. He managed only a disconnected, blurry glimpse of a small, four-tonged black hand opening like an orchid and reaching up between his legs before Clark was inches from him and forcing his head up. Their eyes met once again. But a falu red mark was nestled behind Clark's jaw and it wasn't Clark at all—hadn't been all this time.
Lex opened his mouth, intending to say that he'd like to be rendered unconscious now, but he'd forgotten there was a tube down his throat breathing for him as it gathered what cells it needed from his respiratory system, and he only made a weak choking sound.
Kal's hands were uncomfortably warm on his already burning face. Lex jerked his head away once, twice, and on the third try realized he wasn't jerking away at all. He stared at Kal's moving red lips, wishing he could talk, too, and eventually he was able to make out the word, ‘Shock.’ Soon after that, Kal spoke to the ceiling and everything went black.
~
"Lex, wake up. It's over."
"Already?" he slurred, and wiped a numb hand over the wetness on his mouth as his eyes cracked open.
Kal snorted. "Yeah. You did... well."
"How long did that take?" Lex asked, blinking a few times to adjust his vision as he watched Kal help him out of the chamber.
"Two and a half minutes. Whoop—" he caught Lex as he fell forward when the restraint opened, his legs still numb. "But you were out for one and a half of those." He paused, then muttered under his breath, "Plus a few extra," as Lex slowly regained his footing.
Lex shook his head once, trying to clear it, and managed to finally hold up his own weight. "Two and a half minutes? That's it? But why are you in such a hurry if—"
"It isn't obtaining the cells, it's the analyzation and purification sequences that must be done on them before they're of any use. A.I.—"
"Analyzation already under way."
"Good girl," Kal muttered. He backed away and watched Lex for only another two or three seconds, then turned and walked away when it seemed he wasn't going to fall over.
For a moment, Lex was sure he was being altogether dismissed before he realized Kal was approaching his dying friend, checking, Lex assumed, that he was as comfortable as he could be.
Lex swallowed down the last of his vertigo. "Is he all right?" he asked, his voice respectably steady. He took a few careful steps forward.
Kal bowed his head, then looked away, wincing. Lex wondered if perhaps he didn't like seeing the other Lex this way any more than Lex himself did. "The A.I. will inform me if anything changes. Please," he gestured a few metres away from the sickbed at a pair of crystal chairs that faced one another—far enough that they couldn't be visitors’ chairs, and yet close enough to be considered nurses’. "Sit down. I'll explain what you want to know."
Lex laughed breathily, walking carefully but steadily toward the chair and trying not to groan in relief when he sat down. "That's a tall order to fill, Kal."
"I'm sure it is." Kal settled gracefully into his chair and settled an ankle on the opposite knee. Lex tried not to stare at the strange makeup of the soft black not-leather boot.
The chair, though apparently made of the same crystal as everything else, was surprisingly comfortable and Lex found himself slumping in it, all but lounging. He opened his mouth to ask a question, then second-guessed himself and spared a glance at the ravaged face of his double, which was pointed right at them.
"Can he hear us?" he asked apprehensively.
He glanced back to Kal to find the corner of his mouth twitching, which Lex had begun to recognize along with the slight twinkle in his eye as this older Clark's version of a playful smirk. "Well... he's asleep right now, so... no."
Lex chewed the inside of his cheek and looked away for a moment. "I suppose," he finally said with a sigh, "the first thing to ask is: How did this happen?"
Kal raised his eyebrows in question and Lex, as delicately as he could, gestured toward his dying double.
"You said the cells you'd already gathered for just this moment were destroyed. Did a refrigeration unit break down?"
Kal made a soft sound that might have been a laugh. "Have you looked outside?"
Lex felt his ears burn as he realized the stupidity of what he'd just asked. But Kal quickly went on, replacing his embarrassment with interest.
"The cells were in stasis. And... yes, you could say that the stasis chamber ‘broke down.’" He paused and adjusted unnecessarily in his seat, giving Lex the impression that he was not looking forward to the story he was about to tell. "A man—another alien—stranded from the destruction of my planet came here one day. He explained that he'd once been a friend of my father's. You see, this place, it houses the consciousness of both my parents. They welcomed him, the A.I. welcomed him, and so Lexx and I both welcomed him.
"He began to speak to us about his experiences since our planet's destruction. He spoke of his anger when he'd learned that Jor-El—my father—had known it was coming. My father had in fact tried unsuccessfully to convince a council of his peers that it was going to happen. This man believed that because they had been friends, he deserved warning of the impending doom so he could have time to get his family off the planet.
"But my father felt that great honour and duty bound him to the council's wishes. Thinking him a crackpot, they'd ordered him to tell no one else of what he'd theorized and forbade him from leaving the planet and causing a panic. He bowed to those demands, knowing that if he wasn't backed by the council, no one would believe him even if he were to raise the alarm. He agreed to keep quiet, and guaranteed that neither himself nor his mate would leave the planet."
"But not you," Lex interrupted.
Kal smiled very slightly. "No. Not me. He never mentioned me. I suppose as I was an infant, and he had agreed not to tell anyone else with whom he might have been able to stow me away, the council assumed I was implied."
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "This man, Shiar-Da, was off the planet at the time. His entire family, however, was home: His mate, their children, his parents... They were all killed and he was alone. He explained that due to our long lifespans in comparison to most other species of the known galaxies, he'd once done the same as what he believed I had done: He'd taken companions of other species that lived not near as long, and one after another had watched them die. It sometimes took twenty years, sometimes two. He told us how he felt even more alone now than he had when he'd learned his entire family was dead. He knew this was what the rest of his existence was going to be like.
"Unaware of what it would do to his already damaged mind, Lexx and I gently explained to him that he was mistaken, that we had known one another for nearly one hundred and fifty Earthen years, and that the A.I. my father had provided me with had long been working on a technique to make this longevity possible specifically so that I would not have to be alone. We explained that the treatments Lexx was undergoing would give him centuries, maybe even a millennium.
"We immediately offered to share this technology with him so that he could find his own companion to last the centuries. But as far as he was concerned, his future was already gone. Shiar-Da was living in the past. All of the pain he'd suffered, and the anger he'd nursed toward my father, he'd come here to bury in a gesture of peace and goodwill toward Jor-El's living heir. But when he learned of this, of what Jor-El's son had that he felt had been stolen ruthlessly from him, he became incensed. He wanted me to suffer as he had been suffering for so long. He wanted Lexx dead."
Lex swallowed hard, a chill going up his spine at the thought of some alien out there in his time, building up anger and despair on some other planet, spiralling down a path of depression that would lead him inexorably to wish to take Lex's life a century and a half later.
"He went mad, snapped, threatened Lexx, I— I was sure the best thing I could do was get him away. I took him and flew as far and as fast as I could."
"Wait—flew?"
Kal's eyes twinkled for a short moment. "One thing at a time, Lex."
Lex cleared his throat and sat back into his chair.
"When we had explained to Shiar-Da the treatments and what would be required for them, we had included the information that about once every two centuries, his companion's cells would need to be given a jump-start. We explained in detail how, when the treatments began, many samples must be taken from the original, enough to last at least five of these jump-starts, and preferably ten or twenty, just in case.
"The A.I. knew him as a friend. With only slight manipulation, she let him walk right into the stasis chamber."
"Kal-El, I could not have known—"
"Yes, yes, I know," Kal interrupted the female voice wearily. "Not your fault."
Lex looked toward the ceiling in surprise. "It listens to every word you say?"
"Mm," Kal grunted, sounding displeased. "And always makes sure to pipe up when she feels her usefulness is in question." He paused, then sat suddenly forward. "There! You hear that?"
Eyebrows arched severely, Lex looked up and around. "Uh, I'm... I'm sorry, I... I don't, actually."
"Exactly." Kal narrowed his eyes at the ceiling. "Wounded silence."
For a moment, Lex froze, but then he finally recognized that Kal was mostly joking, and he broke into a grin, laughing quietly and shaking his head.
"Anyway." Kal sat back into his chair with a sigh. "Shiar-Da accessed the A.I.'s programming to give himself more rights than he should have had. He entered the chamber and," Kal shook his head, all remnants of a smile gone, "he destroyed everything. Everything." He fell quiet, his gaze focussed on some unspecified spot on the smooth crystal floor for a long moment before he spoke again.
"While I hid him away, Lexx missed several treatments. I didn't understand why Shiar-Da was sticking around. I didn't yet know what he'd done, but I came back several times to find him still here, sometimes raging, sometimes disturbingly polite. I had told him that I would never bring Lexx back to the Fortress so long as Shiar-Da was here, and that if he didn't find his way to leave the planet soon, I'd destroy him. I had no idea what he was planning.
"In our discussions, he'd learned by inference that there was a critical number of treatments that, once missed, would cause Lex's organs to begin to break down before his second century had been reached. I wouldn't let him near Lexx, but he had found a way to kill him from a distance. After the proper number of treatments had been missed, he left, and I hurried us back here for an immediate exchange of cells... only to find there weren't any.
"The symptoms were already setting in: lethargy, dry skin, slowed reaction times, difficulty breathing during exertion. The A.I. could replace the organs that are breaking down. It could replace his skin, his heart, his lungs, his liver, everything, with artificial implants. But his brain is breaking down, too. It doesn't matter if the rest of him is made up of plastic and metal, a man's brain can not be duplicated. Lexx wouldn't allow it even if it could be.
"So, you see, we had no choice but to try to locate an early enough version of him with perfect cells—more perfect than those we had taken before, when he was getting older and just before the treatments began."
"But why do you need perfect cells? You said you took the original samples—the ones this alien destroyed—after he—after I—was older. They couldn't have been perfect then if you're saying they're not perfect now."
"No, they weren't. But the infusion is meant to be done when the patient is still healthy and only one or two treatments have been found to have no effect. In order to bring him back from this extreme decomposition, we need cells that have had all damage eradicated before introduction to his body. Otherwise, we run the risk of ever greater dissolution of his cells’ bonds. That's why the A.I. needs so much time to study your samples, and why we'll need more than one instance of them. This far along... nothing but perfection will save him."
"But you said," Lex looked down at his hands as he side-stepped the exact words, "that you were concerned my cells weren't... young enough." He met Kal's eyes almost defiantly. "Not pure enough. Is it...? Do you think it's going to work?"
Kal stared at him steadily. "It has to work," he breathed. "I won't let it not work."
Lex bore the intensity of his gaze for nearly a full minute before he felt forced into looking away. "Why did you have so much trouble getting to the right year? Is time travel that difficult even now?"
Kal snorted softly. "Lex, four months ago, time travel didn't exist."
Lex's head snapped up and he met Kal's steady gaze with wide, incredulous eyes. "You invented time travel... for this?"
He shrugged casually. "With the use of the A.I. You'd be amazed at what's been invented in these rooms over the last century."
"I already am." He looked around with interest, wondering just how many stories these odd walls held. "This architecture is... quite amazing. Impossible, I think. Is this the style now?"
"No. This place exists in your time. It's the same as it's always been—in style, anyway, it is unchanging. The technology inside, of course, has grown quite a lot. It's Kryptonian."
Lex blinked his incomprehension of the word. "Is that the name of a designer?"
Kal's laugh was honest and real, though it was short-lived. "Krypton is the name of the planet I am from."
"Ah, it's alien, too. That... explains a lot." He took a breath and tried to gather a few scattered thoughts together. "There's one thing I don't understand—"
"One thing?"
"Well..." Lex offered his own quiet laugh. "If he's so ill... so close to death, then why risk it? Why bring him on this time travelling escapade to find me? Couldn't he have died in the cave?"
Kal's jaw worked furiously. "Yes. But we knew there was no way you'd come with me, no way you'd believe me when I tried to tell you what was happening without seeing him for yourself. Neither of us believed I'd be able to quickly convince you through the portal, and there was no time to waste."
"The portal? That would be the bright white light...?"
"Yes. There is a portal located about one hundred metres to the north. It is designed for travel between two points—here, and the cave in Smallville. It is, in essence, a wormhole. The A.I. found a way to adjust the portal's resonance so that it could not only move someone from one place to another, but also from one time to another. But she could never get us to the exact year we wanted. ‘The strings of time are temperamental and difficult to navigate,’ she says. When we found you, it was our fourth attempt."
Lex's eyebrows arched in surprise, whether more at Kal's repeated anthropomorphizing of the computer system, or that there had been other attempts before his own, he didn't know.
"Two had put us in times when you didn't yet exist. The other, in a time when you'd already been undergoing treatments."
"And what year were you aiming for?"
"2001 or 2002, preferably."
"So it was a crap shoot."
Kal shrugged slightly. "It wasn't supposed to be. But time travel is tricky; after all, no one had actually invented it yet. You see, you have to get the resonance just right. The increments with which we're dealing are literally one trillionth to the five hundred millionth power of fractions of one."
Lex's eyes widened. "Jesus."
"Yeah. Time is big. Time, in fact, is infinitely larger than space. There's a lot of it to end up in."
"Are you certain," he asked, his heart fluttering in his throat, "that you'll be able to—"
"Don't worry. The portal holds until the resonance is purposefully changed."
Lex let out a shaky breath.
"It's finding the resonance, not holding it, that has given us such trouble. Honestly, we're lucky it didn't take forty tries, or four million. 2001, even 2004 would have been preferable, but 2007... 2007 was not ideal. We're lucky that you've always wanted to trust me, even when you were sure you couldn't. If you really hated me—if you'd ever really hated me—you would never have come with me. We're all very fortunate."
Lex leaned earnestly forward. "I never claimed to hate you, Clark."
Kal smiled softly, briefly. "Wait."
As Lex's face fell, Kal got gracefully to his feet. "I want to check on our progress." He waved toward a small rectangular depression in the wall behind Lex. "If you're hungry, just ask the A.I. for something. Whatever you want, she can make it."
Lex passed a hand over the knots in his stomach. "No, thank you."
"You should eat something," Kal said, even as he walked away from Lex toward a large display above an equally large control board. "We need you strong."
"I will, when I'm hungry. But at the moment, I couldn't eat a bite." He paused and watched Kal work the controls, scanning through strange characters that scrolled by on the screen so quickly that Lex couldn't have read them even if they hadn't been alien.
As the silence stretched, he began to realize how antsy he felt. His legs started to shift restlessly and the parched, thirsty feeling in the back of his throat begged to be burnt away. He held off and held off, ashamed at even the thought of asking, but after only a few minutes, the urge was crushing him.
"I wouldn't mind something to drink, though," he mumbled.
Kal's fingers paused on the controls. He turned his head slowly and searched Lex's eyes. Dismissively, he looked back at the display. "There is no alcohol here," he said bluntly.
Lex winced and licked his lips.
"Even if there were... we can't have you polluting your cells right now. The purification is going to take long enough as it is."
Another spike was buried in his pride and Lex sneered his displeasure. "Well, I had a brandy last night, not all that long before you arrived, so another couldn't do too much more ‘damage.’"
"There's no alcohol here," Kal repeated steadily. "There is plenty of juice and water."
Lex sighed, biting his bottom lip and mentally forcing the desire away as he got to his feet. "All right," he said quietly. "Orange juice, then?"
Kal jerked his head slightly toward the dispenser. "Ask the A.I."
Nodding, though Kal couldn't see him, Lex approached the rectangular depression in the wall and looked discreetly about it for buttons. Finding none, he cleared his throat and clearly asked, "A.I., may I have a glass of orange juice, please?"
Kal snorted audibly. Lex glanced at him in mild confusion until he was distracted by a strong female voice that calmly asked: "Specify size."
"S— Oh. Um, eight ounces, please."
"Specify temperature."
Lex sighed and licked his parched lips. "Cold."
There was a pause. "Specify temperature."
Lex sighed. "I don't— Forty degrees. Fahrenheit!" he added as an afterthought.
"Specify pulp to juice ratio."
"Oh, Jesus!" He looked in exasperation to Kal, and narrowed his eyes suspiciously at what seemed to be his tightened, tremorous lips. He turned back to the black rectangle and crossed his arms with determination. "One to ninety-nine," he said clearly.
"Specify nutrition fortification."
"None. Just. Cold. Orange. Juice."
There was another, longer pause. "Specify container material, height, depth, and circumference."
Lex turned to Kal, gaping.
Kal's shoulders were shaking lightly. "A.I., give the man his juice. I'm sure you can find some other way to amuse yourself."
With an almost regretful sound, a very normal looking glass of orange juice appeared in the gap.
"Kal-El, as an artificial intelligence, I am unable to experience amusement."
"Uh-huh." He didn't sound convinced.
Neither was Lex. He gulped the juice greedily, draining more than half of it before returning to his chair. He intended to sip the rest, not looking forward to requesting a refill. "Kal," he started curiously, his line of sight drawn to just below Kal's ear as he worked, "what's that red mark on your neck?"
Kal's hand glanced toward his ear, as if he was going to rub the mark, but then he continued what he was doing. "It is a Kryptonian symbol mixed with an Earthen symbol. In the Kryptonian tradition, this mark represents that two people are a part of one another."
"I see."
Kal continued to work, though Lex was beginning to think he was simply following the computer's analyses in real time. He seemed to give a new meaning to the term ‘speed reader.’
Lex hoped that Kal would add another sentence or two of explanation to his quick definition of the mark, but he seemed to have no more to say on the subject. When Lex was certain he wasn't being watched, he turned his head casually to look over to his dying double. Every first glance of him was difficult to take, the peeling, blackened skin seeming worse every time he looked, the bright lighting of the crystal enclosure offering little forgiveness.
He craned his neck this way and that, but from his position, was unable to see the patch of skin he wanted to examine. He was just about to get casually to his feet and feign an aimless walk around when Kal said, as if he'd been watching him the entire time, "He has one as well. But the deterioration has made it... impossible to see."
Lex nodded sagely, trying to appear casual about being caught looking. "When were the marks created?"
Kal let out a long sigh and his fingers paused on the controls. Lex thought he could make out a very small smile. "One hundred twenty-three years, four months, and twelve days ago."
Lex scoffed in surprise at the accuracy. "That must be a record for a..." he stumbled, "a partnership."
Kal allowed a few seconds to go by, as if waiting for more. But when Lex offered nothing further, he didn't mention it. "Yes. But only on this planet."
Feeling antsy, Lex quickly changed the subject. "Other than, um... what was it, Krypton?"
Kal nodded curtly.
"Other than as an infant on Krypton, have you been to any other planets?"
"Yes. Quite a few."
"Have you, uh," he gestured vaguely toward his other self, "gone together?"
"Lex has only been to three other planets, and several moons. He thought he'd enjoy interplanetary travel, but after only two attempts, realized he much preferred Earth. Besides, as he has to fly, the trips are long and uncomfortable."
"Ah, there's that flying thing again..."
Kal spared him a quick, amused glance. "Clark can't fly."
Lex's brow crumpled in confusion and disappointment.
"But I can."
"I don't suppose... a demonstration might be...?"
The corner of Kal's mouth twitched. "Maybe later."
Lex smiled and let a quiet minute pass. "So you're, what? A hundred and seventy years old?" Kal only threw him a dry look. "What does a man do to keep himself busy when he has that kind of time?"
Kal shrugged a shoulder. "Things were pretty wild for a while. After college, because of the abilities I have here, I became a kind of hero to this world. I was very, very busy. Hell, if it wasn't for some of the things I did over the years, we all would have been destroyed—burned to ashes, blown to smithereens, or drowned—" he turned suddenly, scowling at Lex. "Do you know how many times I refroze those damn polar ice caps?"
Lex's eyebrows arched sharply. "I..." he cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, no."
"Well, it was a lot." He turned back to the display. "Felt like I was out there every other weekend. Don't get me wrong," he shrugged, "it's not as if it's that far to go, and I've never minded the cold, but I just started to wonder if people were ever really going to change. And then, one day..." he shook his head and scoffed lightly, "they did. I guess they always had been, slowly—too slowly for their own good—but eventually, they began to solve all of the problems I'd been holding at bay for them. After enough years went by and enough problems became permanently solved, they stopped needing me." He shrugged like a man who was not bitter, remembering back to a time when he had been. "I quickly became this... big, spandex-clad anachronism."
Lex choked into the last of his orange juice. "Sp—" he coughed twice. "I'm sorry—spandex?"
Kal chuckled. "You think this outfit is bad?"
Lex's gaze travelled up and down its strange, leatherlike texture with all its unusual white stitching, and tilted his head briefly as if to say he wasn't sure.
Kal sighed quietly. "I was always respected. The new generation knew what I'd done for their parents and grandparents. The stories—they were regaled with them as children. I was always respected, but I was no longer needed... like an old warhorse." He shrugged. "I didn't see the point of hanging around if no one really needed me. So about eighty years ago, Lexx became... all I had and all I needed. We moved here permanently. Sometimes he gets antsy for other people. We figure out what the current population is wearing and doing and how they're talking, and we choose a population centre to blend into for a few days. But we're used to our isolation and it rarely takes more than a week before we're longing for this place and the solace of each other's company."
"I'm not sure if that sounds lonely or agreeable."
Kal watched him steadily. "Before this... I hadn't felt loneliness in over a century."
Lex winced, then nodded with quiet understanding. Just as Kal turned back to his display, Lex broke quite suddenly into a loud and embarrassing yawn.
"You should rest," Kal said immediately.
"I don't want to. I have so many more questions."
"I know." Kal shut down the display and finally walked away from the control board, giving Lex his undivided attention. "But you need rest. I apologize if I seem controlling, but you have to be strong and healthy when the samples are taken. You must sleep. You're simply no use to us exhausted."
Lex got to his feet, yawning again and covering his mouth. "You're right. I suppose I'll ask more intelligent questions in the morning anyway." He looked around the room, trying valiantly to avoid looking on his other self, though his gaze was constantly pulled toward his deteriorating features. "I assume there's a guest room, or...?"
"This way." Kal headed for the back of the enclosure, stopping briefly as he passed his still sleeping charge, checking something over before moving on. He led Lex up a few steps to a room that, while not completely private, felt more closed off from the rest of the rooms than any of them did from one another.
Lex might have called it a bedroom, though only because there was a large bed in it, as there was nothing else in it at all. It consisted, in fact, of only a kind of raised crystal pedestal that seemed there simply to offer the bed up for use. There was a silky red coverlet over it that didn't look able to keep a flea warm. Lex was glad it didn't feel as cold in this place as it looked.
Kal pointed Lex to the near side of the bed. "That's your side. You'll find it more comfortable."
Lex stopped walking just in time to avoid tripping over his own feet. His head whipped toward Kal's expressionless face. "My side?"
"Yes."
He stared for a long time into Kal's eyes, and Kal neither blinked nor looked away nor offered any further explanation. Lex thought he might have seen another of those amused twinkles in his eye, but as he was beginning to feel a bit dizzy again, he couldn't have been sure.
Eventually, he had to speak. Feeling absolutely idiotic for asking, as it seemed so obvious, he haltingly asked, "Then... whose... side... is...?"
Kal smiled softly and Lex became certain of the twinkle. "Twenty years of sexual tension is a lot to work out. It's been a hundred and thirty more, but we still haven't resolved it all."
Lex blinked mutely, gaping in astonishment.
Kal smirked, said good-night, and headed back out to the main rooms, presumably to sleep by his patient's side, or perhaps to not sleep at all.
Lex stood there, stunned, for some time. He'd suspected, of course—there had been so many clues—but to have it thrown at him so blatantly... It was very difficult for him to process this situation as an eventual reality in his life.
In time, he managed to get his shoes and belt off, unbutton his shirt cuffs, and climb into the bed. He expected it to be hard crystal, and was amazed to find that the ‘mattress’ and ‘pillow’—both seemingly made of crystal—were exactly the softness he preferred. The blanket, not much thicker than a sheet, was warmer than seemed possible.
Poised on his left side, he stared across the bed to the other pillow, trying to imagine Kal—Clark—lying there beside him, and couldn't. After a minute, he sat up and looked for Kal, and found them cut off from one another by the large blue icelike slab that worked as a separator of rooms. Quickly, embarrassed by his curiosity, he shuffled to his left, onto the other half of the bed, and lay back.
The firmness of the mattress was uncomfortably hard, the fluffiness of the pillow disconcertingly high. Lex slid back to his own side, smiling and shaking his head. Who would have thought that one day he'd be nightly sharing the alien version of a Sleep Number mattress with Clark Kent?
He was loathe to close his eyes, certain that when he opened them again, there would be no crystal, no Arctic, no other self, no older, long-haired, leather-clad Clark Kent with a new name. Best case scenario, he figured he'd wake up in his own bed. Worst case scenario, he figured he'd wake up in Belle Reve.
He fell quickly to sleep, his brow tightening when he picked up the sound of gentle, quiet murmuring echoing softly from the outer room.
~ ~ ~
Chapter 5
"Lex. Lex... Lex, come on, wake up."
Lex slowly opened his eyes to a static view of whites, light blues, and blue greys. Closer to him was the red of the coverlet and the almost jelly-like appearance of the pillow he wasn't using. His eyes, quickly relieved of any residual sleepiness, widened, and he turned to his side, gaping with disbelief toward the voice he'd heard.
Kal smiled slightly. He was hovering over him by the side of the bed, his disconcertingly long hair curtaining his face. "Yeah, it wasn't a dream," he said with mild amusement. "Come on. I want to get some breakfast into you and give you a little time to digest before we put you back into the chamber. The analyzation routines are nearly finished."
At the mention of the chamber, Lex's wonder at his situation suddenly withered under discomfort and hesitance. He shuddered and felt his stomach tighten. "I'm not hungry," he mumbled, and turned to plant his cheek back into his strangely yielding pillow.
"Look, I know the chamber isn't any fun—"
He looked back sharply, scowling. "Not any fun?" he spat. "Why does it have to be so horrific?"
Kal's ghost of a smile faded. "It doesn't," he said blandly. "I just rigged it up that way in order to torture you."
Lex stared at him for a long, unblinking beat. "I'm not really sure that much sarcasm was called for," he grumbled.
"Get moving, Lex," Kal said, walking away and slowly dragging the coverlet behind him.
Lex grabbed at it, but Kal overpowered him seemingly without trying, and exposed him to the comparably cooler air of the room. Sitting up from the momentary tug-of-war, though it had apparently been more like taking candy from a baby, he looked down at himself, sneering at his hopelessly wrinkled shirt and slacks and wishing Kal would have thought to tell him to bring a change of clothes.
On the other hand, he considered as he forced himself out of a bed whose comfort might have posed the danger of keeping him in it for life, he supposed that if Kal had suggested that at the time, Lex not only would not have agreed, but would have been even less likely to follow. And then he wouldn't have been here now, wearing a wrinkled shirt and getting ready to be freakishly prodded all over by grabbing, snaking, numbing alien probes.
And what a damn shame that would have been.
He pulled himself out of bed, grumbling and grumping internally as he headed out of the bed chamber and into the wide open of the main rooms of the crystal castle. He lifted his head at the sound of fabric being fluffed and was greeted with the sight of Kal changing the thin grey blanket that laid over his double's form.
Lex stopped in his tracks, any notion of voicing his complaints fleeing from his mind in terror and shame.
The previous evening, when he and Kal had been talking, Lex had thought each time he looked at his other self that it was as if he was getting worse with every passing moment. But now he knew it wasn't ‘as if’—he had been. The black splotches that marred his face, neck, and head were spreading, some converging together, leaving ugly slices of red sores wherever they met. One of the cancers had travelled over his right eye, blackening the lid and making his light-coloured eyelashes seem gaudy and fake against the skin in comparison. His breathing was still deep and steady with the help of the phantom tube down his throat, but Lex wondered if now he'd be able to breathe at all without it. He didn't see how it could be possible if all of his organs were as bad off as his skin.
When the blanket was off of him for a brief moment as Kal switched them, Lex was sure that the body inside that strange black outfit had shrunk even farther. If he truly had been a balloon, he would have been only a few feet from touching the ground.
Lex's stomach turned in sickness at the sight of him and the thought of his pain. He crossed his arms over his chest, the thought of a wrinkled suit suddenly not worth thinking. "Is he...?" he had no idea how to end the question.
"This is going to work, you know," Kal said, a strange lilt to his voice Lex hadn't heard before. "The A.I.'s analyzation has shown that your cells aren't as damaged as expected. We can thank the first meteor shower for that. With only two more samples, we might be able to start the infusion."
"Can't we do it sooner?" Lex asked softly, afraid to speak loudly enough to be heard, the echoing nature of the room giving so much life to every word uttered.
"The risk is too great," Kal said, looking down at his charge as if he could see his true self through the deterioration that seemed to so completely define him. "We're only going to have one try at this and we have to make sure everything is in order."
Lex checked his watch, trying to remember what time it was he had gone to bed. He was surprised to find he'd slept nine hours. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept more than four at one time without having been unknowingly drugged beforehand. "That analysis took quite a while. Nearly eleven hours, wasn't it?"
"Yes. And each will subsequently be less."
At eleven hours each, two more attempts would have brought them only fifteen hours from the A.I.'s announced deadline. Lex didn't know how long the infusion Kal spoke of would take to complete nor how long after that it would be before it began to take effect. He was glad to hear the analyzation times would shorten, because this was already being cut far too close for his comfort.
"Maybe I should," he hesitated, swallowing his discomfort, "get into the chamber now."
Kal shook his head. He continued to look down at his charge, having not once glanced in Lex's direction since he'd emerged from the bed chamber. "Not right after sleep and before you've eaten."
Lex passed a hand vaguely over his stomach. "I really couldn't eat. I—"
Instantly, Kal's eyes were boring into him. "Your organs need the calories, Lex, and I need your organs strong. You are going to eat a healthy and balanced breakfast."
Lex's mouth, still hanging open from his aborted sentence, closed with a click at the vehemence of this declaration. "I... suppose perhaps a piece of toast or..."
A tight smile ghosted over Kal's lips. He gestured vaguely behind him and across the room. "Your breakfast is being kept warm on the table."
Lex looked in that general direction and, what would have been a room away if there had been any walls, found a crystal breakfast table and crystal chairs he hadn't noticed before—that he was, in fact, quite certain hadn't been there before—topped with a myriad of, not surprisingly, food-laden crystal dishes. His urge to insist that he couldn't possibly stomach the amount of food Clark would consider to be ‘a healthy and balanced breakfast’ died without ever seeing light when he looked back to find Kal running a gentle fingertip over the one unblemished eyelid on his double's hauntingly disfigured face.
Lex headed for the table without another word, still not hungry, but willing and determined. He was gratified to see both orange juice and coffee waiting for him, and even managed to hold down the sneer when the coffee was found to be decaffeinated. His fear of a spread of pancakes, waffles, bacon, sausage, fried eggs, and every other sugar- and fat-laden pseudo-food he mentally associated with the breakfasts of farm people was thankfully unfounded. His ‘healthy and balanced breakfast’ consisted of cut fruit, a small bowl of oatmeal sweetened with lavender honey, and one large piece of whole grain toast topped with a bed of sautéed spinach and two small poached eggs sprinkled with Asiago cheese and herbs. It was still much more volume than he was used to in the mornings, but not near as intimidating as he'd feared.
Foregoing a second cup of tasteless coffee, he began working diligently on the eggs, pleasantly surprised at their perfection as yolk rushed out to cover the toast at the first motion of his warm crystal fork. If it took half a dozen specifications for a glass of juice, then how many questions, he wondered, did one have to answer to get the A.I. to provide eggs like these?
Kal casually joined him at the table. "Good?"
Lex tilted his head, not quite nodding in concession. "Not what I'd expected," he said around a small mouthful.
Kal smirked. "Do you think," he asked curiously, "that after even a century and a half, I still wouldn't know what you prefer to eat?"
Lex's hand stilled halfway to the glass he was reaching for, pausing for several seconds before going forward. "I suppose I hadn't thought about it like that."
"It's strange, isn't it?" Kal leaned back into his chair, his long legs, unsettlingly defined in the odd outfit he wore, stretching out before him. "Seeing your own future. Having to adapt to it."
"It's definitely... a unique experience."
Kal chuckled softly.
"How did this happen?"
A few silent seconds passed as Kal watched him. "What?"
"Despite my... high emotion at the time, I meant what I'd said: As far as I know, you hate me—or at least don't particularly care for me. How could something like this... possibly come to be?"
Kal's jaw worked fiercely, his small smile dissipating. "Things change," he said simply, and removed himself from the table. "Eat," he called over his shoulder as he walked away, approaching the same display he'd spent so much time at the previous night. "I want to wait at least half an hour after you're finished before we put you back into the chamber."
Lex checked his watch again, and tried to hold down his curiosity for a little longer, quickly stuffing his mouth with fruit.
"But don't rush," Kal said, accentuating each word as if he was certain Lex was doing just that, though when Lex glanced in his direction, he was greeted only with his broad back and the display in front of him rushing madly along.
Offering a tight smile to no one, Lex managed to chew up and swallow his large mouthful then went on eating more casually. "Aren't you going to eat? You have to keep up your strength, too, don't you?"
"I ate three hours ago, Lex."
"I see. Still the early riser?"
Kal didn't respond, solidifying Lex's suspicion that he hadn't slept.
"Is that a species thing?" Lex asked innocently, slowly cutting off a bite-sized piece of toast and egg. "How much sleep does a Kryptonian need in a twenty-four hour period?"
With a quiet sigh, Kal's fingers came to a stop on the control board and he looked back at Lex over his shoulder. "When you're talking," he said tonelessly, "you're not chewing."
Lex's lips slowly twisted into a wry expression and he bit the food from his fork with deliberate force. Kal turned back to his work, apparently satisfied.
Thusly led to silence, Lex finished his breakfast rather more easily than he had expected and was looking forward to half an hour of peace before his Spielbergesque nightmare picked up where it had left off the previous day.
Attempting to be a cordial houseguest, he picked up the plate and looked around for something akin to a sink. He turned in place twice before certain he wasn't missing it. "What should I do with these dishes?"
"Leave it."
Confused, Lex nonetheless did as he was told, then watched with wide eyes as the table—dishes, chairs, and all—sank into the floor after he'd walked several yards away. "Now that's efficient."
When it was all completely gone, he began to walk aimlessly around the large enclosure, not certain what he should be doing for the next half hour while he was ‘digesting.’ Most of what he saw, he didn't understand, and was loathe to mess with or ask about and bring Kal's short temper down upon him. He knew there would be plenty of time to ask questions during the next analyzation, or after his other self was on the mend.
One wall, however, caught his attention. At first glance, it was only a wall, light blue and mottled like thick ice. He could see into it a few feet before it darkened to a blue too opaque to peer through. But there were other colours in the crystal and Lex found himself triple-taking the whole of it until he realized there was something different and really focussed on it. As he peered, squinting, the differences became more and more pronounced, some trick of the light bringing squares of reds and blacks and yellows out of the icelike structure until, finally, it cleared and Lex realized he was gazing on a wall of photographs.
He blinked in awe at how bright and clear all of the pictures were now, apparently brought to light simply because he had been looking at them. Though he hadn't been expecting anything in particular, he couldn't have said, either, that he was particularly surprised to find that the photographs were mainly of himself and of Clark. They surely covered the century and a half Kal had often mentioned, some of them digitally sharp and still, others moving in a loop, others in three flickering dimensions, and still others like miniatures of life happening right before his eyes. He was entranced by the moving 3D scenes, staring openly at repeating moments of laughter, closeness, and quick expressions of physical affection he never would have imagined he'd see between the two of them.
But eventually, unable to reconcile such a far-off reality with his own life, he felt himself drawn to the older pictures—the ones that might have been taken with the technology of his time, providing Clark ever smiled like that when Lex was near, or put an arm around his shoulders, or kissed him passionately on a balcony in Paris.
He shook his head hard, trying to process it all. Following the pictures’ time progression as well as he could fathom, he could see where the treatments must have begun. The photos taken with earlier technology could be arranged in chronological order in his mind simply by following his own face's age. But as the technology progressed, his face grew younger again—much more quickly, in fact, than it had grown older. During the last two major technological progressions, he remained as young looking as he had been the day he'd arrived in Smallville.
Lex touched his own face, finding light lines that didn't used to be there and skin not as taut as it once was, and the slight puffiness to his cheeks that had more than once made him seriously consider some minor cosmetic surgery.
He reached out to point at the Parisian photo, drawn to it both by its passion and his familiarity with the technology that had likely captured it. "When is that one from?" he asked, and turned his head toward Kal, who was still looking at the large, fast-moving display and probably wasn't aware of what Lex was doing.
After a moment, Kal looked over his shoulder. He seemed to stop breathing when he saw where Lex was pointing. For a protracted moment, he only stood still, fingers poised over the control board, not blinking, not speaking, his lips a thin line. Finally, he turned away. "You shouldn't be looking at those."
Lex scoffed. His hand dropped back to his side. "Then perhaps you should have put them away before bringing me here."
"I had other things on my mind," Kal replied acidly.
Lex's gaze shot unbidden to the deteriorating man and, as if by the touch of his very stare, the man's dull, yellowed eyes suddenly fluttered open. Lex's mouth opened to express his astonishment, but he couldn't bring himself to speak.
"Kal-El, the patient has regained consciousness."
In a flash of alien speed, Kal was settling onto the edge of the sickbed, gazing with plain emotion into his friend's eyes. Lex glanced back at the wall, intending to busy himself there so as to not intrude on a personal moment, but found the photographs had all sunk back into the crystal. He supposed perhaps the A.I. sensed that he had lost his interest in them. Unwilling to attempt to tease them back out, he took a few steps away from the wall and, as unobtrusively as possible, watched the strange couple.
"We're just about to start the second gathering," Kal whispered to his charge. "The analyzation is going better than expected."
Jaundiced eyes blinked slowly and Lex wondered if he could even understand. Kal had said the man's brain was deteriorating along with the rest of him. Was he even cognizant?
He turned his head to the right, the small movement causing his blackened scalp to crack against the pillow. Kal produced a red rag from nowhere once again and carefully dabbed the black blood away. A withered hand rose to the tube in his throat and he gave it the weakest of tugs.
"Lexx, don't—" Kal's protest came too late. The tube slithered out of his body at his behest and arched itself in the air, as if the head of it was watching him for any sign he wanted it back. Lex shuddered, both remembering and dreading the gathering chamber.
Ravaged lips made a choked, breathless sound that Lex at first thought meant nothing, and then belatedly realized with some surprise had been ‘Clark.’ He wondered if the slip was a symptom of his deterioration or if he often used the name Kal had said he hadn't gone by in a very long time.
Kal didn't seem at all thrown by it, leaning a bit closer when the shrunken hand reached for his hair. It rubbed a thick lock of it briefly between its shaking, cracked fingertips before falling back to the bed in exhaustion.
"If... doesn't work..." he choked, Lex wincing at the tortured sound of every word.
Kal shook his head certainly. "No. It is working. And you don't have to tell me anything, Lexx." He reached for his hand and held it very gently in his own. "I know everything you mean."
A wheezing, uneven breath was taken in, and what looked like a small smile caused his blackened cheek to lift. Lex held his breath, sure it would crack just as his scalp had done, and diseased blood would begin pouring down his face, but it didn't happen. His eyes fluttered closed for a moment and Kal leaned down to place a very careful kiss at the corner of the one eye and temple that was not yet blackened by the spreading death of his skin.
What might have been a sigh rushed uncertainly out of his weak lungs. "Still feels... good there."
Kal did not remove his softly pursed lips from the small strip of skin, kissing it gently again and again, his eyes closing in pain. When he finally raised his head, it was only to reach for a two inch splotch of flesh-coloured skin that still graced his friend's blackened neck and carefully stroke two fingers over it.
His shrunken body expanded slightly with a sputtered gasp, his eyes fluttering closed. It still apparently felt good to be touched there, too.
"Kal," he said, though it sounded more like a cough, "I... I... I'm sorry."
"Shh, shh, shh." He lowered his face to the one clear spot once again, looking as though he wanted to bury his face in his friend's neck, but knew he could not. Lex watched, his throat tightening as the corners of Kal's eyes became damp.
"I w... wanted to..." his broken voice went on relentlessly, though even Lex wished he would stop, the sound of it painful to hear, "to be... here for you... much longer."
"You will be," Kal insisted, raising his head and gazing fiercely into his companion's yellowed eyes. "Just two more tests, and I know it's going to work, Lexx. This time to-morrow," he smiled unsteadily, "you'll be walking."
"That... be nice."
"Yeah."
He took in another rattling breath and Kal's gaze shot toward the hovering black-headed tube, which seemed, creepily, to look back at him. "Lexx, you need to breathe."
He glanced at it as well. "I remember... when I used... to hate this thing."
Kal smiled, his laugh not real, then darted forward when a reddened tongue came out to swipe at blackened lips. "No," he said hurriedly. "Don't lick."
The other Lex's lips remained parted and dry, and he waited patiently, wheezing, for whatever Kal had in mind. A tube of balm was produced from a small pouch on his belt and Kal began smearing it thickly over his cracked, bleeding lips. Lex didn't see how it could have possibly helped a man whose flesh was breaking down, but he did sigh softly, as if it offered some comfort. When his black lips were shining with it, like some overzealous glitter goth had gotten to them, he turned his head, opened his mouth, and the tube, black end and all, disappeared quickly down his throat.
"Just go to sleep," Kal whispered, rubbing the fingers of his clean hand over the one undamaged strip of skin on his neck. "When you wake up again, I'll make sure you feel better."
He gave the smallest of nods, the slightest of smiles, and then his eyes fluttered closed again, his deep, regular, artificial breathing soon the only sound in the room.
Lex watched Kal use the red cloth to deliberately wipe his hands free of the balm and the black flakes of skin that had clung to his fingers as he'd dabbed it on. "It is time," he said clearly.
Though he wasn't looking at him, Lex knew to whom he was speaking and of what he was speaking. It hadn't quite been half an hour, but that no longer seemed to matter. The suffering of that man—his own future suffering, in fact—was going to continue until Kal and the A.I. found a way to stop it. Lex was the only path to that way.
Though he had been willing to help before, he found himself now infused with a new determination. This time around, he wanted to ask questions about the process. True, his knowledge was grounded in the early twenty-first century, but science had always been his specialty—even that above business. Much of what he'd done even recently would not have been understood by most, or perhaps even thought possible. He was sure he had something to offer this process other than his DNA.
Kal got to his feet, gazing down at his charge a few seconds longer, before turning and approaching Lex in an all business manner. He took him unnecessarily by the arm and walked him quickly to the chamber. Lex resisted the urge to struggle against the manhandling, knowing Kal had been greatly affected by the recent scene.
"A.I., prepare for the second gathering."
Despite all his resolve, and even all his pride, when the chamber began to slide out of the wall as if it was reaching for him, Lex's body began to tremble.
Kal's step shuffled, and he looked down at the arm in his hand, wearing a considering frown. He stopped moving, holding Lex still as well, and met his eyes. Suddenly both his frown and his grip softened. "I'm sorry the procedure has to be so... unpleasant," he said gently. "If you'd like, you could be rendered unconscious for this gathering."
Even as Lex shook, he wondered how it must feel for this man, one hundred and fifty years of life, countless deaths of friends and family, to be here in this moment, losing someone he'd thought to be able to keep for a millennium, dealing not only with that man's pain, but also with the pain and fear of his young, healthy double, seeing the unblemished face before him that he remembered while his companion's faded away to sickness, and all the while never dealing with his own pain, his own fear. It seemed he was constantly sublimating his own emotions to Lex's comfort or Lex's questions, or, more frequently, to the care of his charge. When did Clark get a chance to hurt, or to be afraid? Without his companion, who was caring for him? Who would care for him?
"No," Lex said, straightening his back and willing his limbs to stop trembling. "It causes no pain. I shouldn't need," he sneered at his own weakness, "general anesthesia."
The corner of Kal's mouth turned slightly up, his line of sight shifting far away. "Lexx says the same thing."
A chill trickled down Lex's spine. He knew that he and this other Lex were the same person, and yet couldn't fully conceive of it. But sometimes certain things got to him: Kal knew what Lex liked to eat; the bed knew how Lex liked to sleep; Kal saw his stubbornness even before he'd asserted it. It was true, he realized as these things came to light: This was his future. That broken, twisted, blackened man was his future. He had to stop this from happening.
Steadily, he withdrew his arm from Kal's grip, and walked to the chamber alone. Heart racing, and hands not as steady as he would have liked, he climbed into the man-shaped space and connected the crystal restraint across his own middle. The chamber began to once again mold itself to his body.
He met Kal's steady eyes across the enclosure, seeing naked pride and approval in them that he hadn't seen before. Lex's back straightened and the chamber moved to accommodate him.
Their shared gaze did not waver even as the whirs grew louder and Lex's body was punctured seamlessly by various instruments. His hands continued to shake with fear, his eyes burning with the desire to close and let it all go to black. Still, he held his ground, allowed the tools to penetrate his body, trying to pretend he didn't see the spear entering his temple, the metallic hand sinking into his testicles, the snakelike arms reaching into his chest and stomach, and the tube forcing him to breathe the way it wanted him to, not allowing him the dizzy solace of hyperventilation.
He guessed—and hoped—the procedure was about half over when a startling alarm began to blare, making him likely to jump out of his skin if the chamber hadn't had him immobilized, and Kal's reassuring gaze left him in a panicked rush.
Lex watched, helpless, as Kal flew to his sick friend's side. The other Lex was sputtering and spasming, his body moving more than Lex had seen it do at his own behest in all of this time.
"Damn it, A.I., what's happening?" Kal shouted.
Lex sensed his own procedure slow, presumably as more resources were diverted to the medical emergency.
"The patient's organs are undergoing cellular collapse."
"That's impossible!" Kal screamed, tossing the blanket aside and ripping the strange leatherlike garment open.
Lex glanced sickly away as a blackened, mottled, shrunken chest was exposed, uneven lines of bloody sores, shiny with recently applied balm, scoring the black flesh. He soon forced himself to look back again, watching Kal check every tube for any blockage or other imperfection.
"He has a day and a half left! You said he had forty-nine hours!"
"Cellular degeneration has accelerated."
"WHY?"
"Unknown."
Kal's hands hovered in the air above his spasming friend. For the first time Lex had seen, he looked completely helpless. "Well, make it STOP!"
"Unable to comply."
Lex tried to speak, though he wasn't sure what he would say. Nothing happened, of course, his lungs still controlled by the procedure along with every other part of him. Even as he watched the drama unfold before him, his left eye was entered painlessly by yet another tool, skewing his vision.
Suddenly, as Kal hovered there, uncertain of what to do, the spasming just stopped.
There was a terrible silence.
"Kal-El, I am sorry. The—"
"Get out of him! GET OUT OF HIM!" Kal tugged at the tubes until they each released from their places, one by one, and then he got up to kneel on the bed's edge. Lex watched as he performed CPR, just the same now as it had been a hundred and fifty years before.
Weak skin cracked and flaked under the pressure of his hands, and when he breathed into the open mouth, his own lips came away bloody.
Very unexpectedly, all of the tubes and tools in Lex's body also retracted. The whirring wound down, and the chamber unmolded itself. He released the restraint and stumbled out, unsure if the procedure was finished, or if the A.I. had simply terminated it because his other self was gone, and neither he nor the procedure was any longer of use.
He stood uncertainly just a few feet away from the chamber as it was sucked back into the wall out of the corner of his eye. Kal had not stopped administering CPR, had not even looked up when Lex's procedure had abruptly ended. For far too long, he continued beating the unresponsive chest and breathing into the open mouth.
"Kal-El—"
"Give him oxygen!"
"Kal-El, the patient—"
"Give him oxygen NOW!" After a pause, the breathing tube slunk back up and found its way into his throat with what appeared to Lex to be nearly human reluctance. "Coordinate with me. Breathe now. Again. Again." They continued like this for some time before Kal changed tactics once again. "A.I., provide cortical and intracardial stimulators."
In the very brief silence that followed, Kal seemed to sense an oncoming argument, and his voice shook the crystal rafters. "YOU WILL FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTION WITHOUT QUESTION! NOW!"
Three small metallic-looking items, one circular, two rectangular, were forced from the top of one of the displays Kal was constantly checking. He reached for them and, without hesitation, placed the circular one on his companion's forehead, and each of the rectangular ones on his raw chest, one in the centre, and one on the left ribcage. All three pieces then opened like blooming flowers, reached outward, and sunk various filaments into the other Lex's body.
"Three hundred. Activate."
The blackened body arched dramatically. A crack opened along his collarbone but did not bleed.
"Breathe," he whispered. "Come on, breathe." Then, louder, "Response?"
"Negative."
"Three fifty. Activate."
He jerked again, less intensely instead of more.
"Again."
He barely moved.
"Again."
He didn't move.
Kal's hands formed fists at his sides. "A.I., response?"
"Negative. All cortical activity has ceased. Kal-El, the patient has suffered brain death."
Lex stumbled backwards and eventually fell into a chair. Kal didn't notice his movement, and was soon barking new orders.
"A.I., prepare the first round of cells for infusion."
"Kal-El—"
"I know they're not fully prepared. We'll just have to risk it."
"Kal-El—"
Kal's fist slammed through the top of a display, shattering it. "DO AS I TELL YOU!"
"KAL-EL!" the A.I. insisted, its own voice momentarily on par with Kal's shouts. "The patient is brain dead. His cellular activity has ceased. I am not capable of infusing cells without life." It—she—paused and, when Kal did not respond, softly said, "I am sorry, Kal-El. Lexx is gone."
He opened his mouth, took a harsh breath, and Lex steeled himself for the volume that would come. But then he said nothing. Finally, he stilled, and bowed his head.
Lex had never realized until this moment how the sound of the machine breathing for his other self had acted as ambient noise. The silence now was deafening, even unreal. He'd never heard such silence in all of his life. He never wanted to hear it again.
He looked at Kal, standing there bowing his head over his dead companion, and wondered how long he would stay like that. He wondered if he was praying, and if so, then to what kind of god did a god among men pray? He wondered again: Who would care for him? Even the dying man himself had said that he'd wanted to be here for Kal for much longer than this. Lex believed, though he had no direct evidence, that Kal needed someone to watch over him, to be with him, that he would, in fact, be fully incapable of living out his lifespan alone. Surely he would go as mad as Shiar-Da, or worse. Surely any man would, faced with near immortality alone.
He wondered if, when the time came for him, there would be something else he could say that his other self had not. Perhaps he could use his last breaths to encourage Kal to find some other companion, to do anything he could to be happy, that he should not feel guilt for wanting to find another. But then, Kal had said that he already knew all the other Lex had wanted to say, and Lex realized that he'd probably said it all before, and more than once as the decades had passed.
Kal muttered something under his breath and though Lex strained to hear, he did not say a word of his own, worried about interrupting some alien prayer or death ritual. Kal continued to mumble, his head shaking slightly, his arms trembling, and his voice slowly began to rise, and Lex realized he wasn't praying.
"No, no, no, it can't be, it can't be!" he cried to no one. His voice had lost its resonance, its strength. He sounded more like a boy than Lex had ever heard him sound—whether Clark or Kal. "No, no, please," he went on. "Don't do this—don't do this. I can't—please don't—" his voice thickened, his face reddening and twisting and Lex inclined his head and averted his eyes, attempting to give some privacy as Kal began to sob.
The sobbing quickly grew to guttural shouts and sharp cries, making Lex wince and cower. Never had he seen nor heard Clark shed a tear, and never had he imagined he'd bear witness to such grief as this.
When he heard a startling cacophonous crash, his head snapped back up. Kal had hefted the display he'd already ruined and thrown it across the room. It had shattered against the wall.
He stood there, panting, his chest heaving, his face shining with the tears he'd shed, and looked at the destruction. Then he suddenly turned and picked up another machine and, with a great wail, hurled it after the first.
"Kal," Lex tried to say, but his voice caught in his throat, coming out as nothing more than a breath. His eyes remained wide and concerned as he watched Kal destroy all of the things that in the end had not saved his friend.
Every tool, every tube, every monitoring device that had been implanted in, on, or near the other Lex's body was wrenched from its place, broken, shredded, thrown, or otherwise destroyed. Lex eventually got out of his chair and hunched slightly behind it, ready to duck if anything flew his way. But Kal ran out of things to throw before he ran out of places to throw them, and he stalked around the head of the sickbed—now the deathbed—looking helplessly about for anything else to ruin, his eyes aflame with rage and despair.
Finding nothing, he stalked toward the large control board at which he'd spent so much time and raised both arms high in the air. Lex winced at both the ear-splitting sound and the loss of such an advanced machine as his fists crashed through it with massive force, tearing out the middle and causing it to collapse in on itself from both sides. He pushed it viciously away as it fell toward him, and it slid noisily across the room, blocking most of the entrance to the snow-covered outdoors as Kal stumbled back.
He bumped into the chair he'd occupied the previous night, when Lex had sat across from him and they had talked, and he picked that up too and threw it so far, Lex was only able to hear, but not see, where it crashed. He turned to grab the other chair, and then very suddenly froze when his gaze fell upon it.
All at once, he crumpled to his knees, pressing his forehead into the seat of the chair Lex had used, his fingers scrabbling at its surface. Lex abruptly realized that he must have been offered the chair usually reserved for his double.
Kal's voice had softened along with his rage, and he shook his head in denial against the smooth crystal seat. His screams of ‘no’ quieted to whispers and whimpers of the same as he hugged himself to its surface as if he wished it could hug him back.
Shakily, Lex released his chair and walked away from it, glancing behind him to see it sink away as he left it, and only then realizing it had appeared in the middle of the room simply because he'd needed it at the time.
He didn't know what, if anything, he could do to ease Kal's pain. Kal had come to find him so that he could help his companion, and for all intents and purposes, Lex had failed to do that. He was more than a little frightened of having Kal's wrath of grief turned upon him.
After lessening the distance between them by half, Lex stood not far from the bed of the corpse he would one day become and gazed uncertainly at Kal's bent back and shaking shoulders. "Clark..." he breathed softly.
"This is your fault."
Lex took two careful steps back, his breath quickening.
Kal slowly raised his head from the chair, looking blankly into the distance. "This is your fault," he repeated darkly.
"Clark, I—"
"You're to blame for everything! Your imperfect treatments! Your lax security over the stasis chamber—you knew how important those samples were!"
Lex let out a shaking breath of relief and gratitude, backing up to lean against a wall in deference to his shaking knees as Kal berated the A.I.
"You didn't protect them well enough; you didn't tell us what we needed to do soon enough; you took four months to figure out how to send us back, and then you sent us to the wrong time—three times!" He had risen to his feet and was screaming at the ceiling, his fists tight white circles of flesh at his sides. "You let Shiar-Da into the chamber; you submitted to his reprogramming; you did this!" An arm flew back to gesture behind him, where the subject of his grief lay still.
"Kal-El—"
"You killed him! You're supposed to protect him, and you killed him!"
A second rage, even more intense than the first now that he had something to blame, boiled out of him. But instead of the machines, he directed it this time at the very roof over their heads.
Lex watched, gaping, as Kal buried his fists into a wall and wrenched out a massive portion of it, then crushed it in his grip. He stalked to a spire Lex had gathered to be a support beam and tore it from its place, huge chunks of crystal falling from the impossibly high ceiling and crashing around him.
He moved next to a section of the room Lex had seen but been unable to conceive the purpose of: Dozens of crystals of all sizes pointing outward as if waiting to be taken and examined, and a receptacle next to them that seemed able to hold any size. Kal walked into it with his arms extended, then opened them with an angry yell, breaking some crystals, bending others, and sending a few into shattering bits. He stepped back and stared fiercely, and the whole of them began to melt together and pulse red with heat, a dozen Smallville fires suddenly making sense.
He raised a fist to the wall Lex had not so long ago teased memories out of, but didn't plant the punch until he'd passed it and another spire made itself useful. Kal left it with only a basketball sized hole gaping three quarters into it, then moved on.
Lex continued to press his back to the wall he rested against, ready to run at the first sign that Kal was coming his way, despite his shaking legs. His alert gaze continually darted toward the door Kal had mostly blocked as he wondered if he could get through the slight opening that remained, and if so, how he would survive the blistering cold and if he would be able find and use the portal home on his own. Even if Kal did not come for him, he thought it likely he might need to run. The way he was destroying the structural support of the castle, Lex was sure it would soon begin to cave in on their heads.
A monumental crash came from behind a wall that Lex had not seen the other side of, and then Kal stalked back out. He looked around as if planning the next level of his destruction and then, in a heartbeat, softened once again from rage to silent despair.
His angry eyes had alit upon the body of his late companion, and quickly began to shine. After a deep breath and a shaking sigh, he approached the bed with long, slow steps and sat carefully on its edge.
Hands steadier than Lex's reached out and removed the already loosened stimulators from black and red skin and dropped them unceremoniously to the floor. He straightened the top of the ripped garment, laying it across the sunken chest as if it were closed, though he had torn it beyond repair when he had opened it in a panic. Gently, he pushed closed the jaw still gaping from the second slinking retreat of the breathing apparatus, and traced a fingertip over the one spot on his face that had never given in to the spreading decomposition of his skin.
Lex pushed off from the wall and stood on his own two feet, stepping carefully closer as Kal gathered the body in his arms and pulled it up, holding it to his chest as if his hands could never cause destruction of any kind, and had only ever been made to tenderly comfort.
He pressed his face softly against the blackened skin of his friend's neck, his tears making it shine like cheap oiled leather. "Oh, no," he breathed, shaking his head and rocking the body forward and back. "Oh, no, Lexx. Oh, no, no, no, no, no..."
A lump born of more than sympathy rose in Lex's throat. Something that he now knew he should have known since the beginning had suddenly dawned on him. Kal didn't just need him—need a companion to last the ages. Kal loved this other Lex—this Lex who Lex would one day be. He loved him.
Clark would grow to love him.
"I'll tell you," Lex blurted.
Kal blinked with incomprehension, the rocking of his body slowing. Looking confused, he turned to stare back at Lex, his expression showing disconcerted surprise that he was there. Then it faded, and he only glared. "What?" he asked cruelly, his voice lined with pain.
"I'll tell you," Lex said with more conviction. "Clar—Kal. I'm not going to forget this. A hundred and fifty—a hundred and forty-nine years from now, I'll tell you the chamber is going to be destroyed. I'll tell you we're going to need to go back and find an earlier version of me. The A.I. will have time to develop the method, and we'll do all of this a year earlier, before it ever got a chance to get bad like this. Don't you see? We'll do it all while there's still time. This will never have happened."
Kal watched him speak, his expression blank and uncomprehending. And then, slowly, his lips parted and his eyes widened in amazement, and his face began to blur before Lex's very eyes.
Everything, in fact, began to blur and swirl. A hand went to Lex's temple and he stumbled, sure he was going to faint, going to die. He wondered in a panic if being so close to his future self as he died could somehow be stealing his own élan vital.
His back hit the wall, both hands racing to his head, trying but failing to steady it, and the floor shifted under him. The vertigo turned everything, and he opened his mouth to vomit, when it all suddenly stopped.
Blinking, he very gingerly tried to raise his head. The dizziness and faintness were both gone. He straightened his back, leaned more heavily against the wall, and looked up. What he saw made him start violently in place, scraping his scalp against the crystal.
Standing before him was Kal-El, and he was smiling. It wasn't the simple, slight upturn of one corner of his mouth that Lex had seen so often over the past day, something nearly fake that he had to force out of himself. It was a real smile that reached his eyes, showed a strip of white teeth, and brightened a room.
More than this, next to him stood another Lex. But this was not the damaged man he'd barely known, skin deteriorating, each breath agony, his body riddled with tubes and apparatus that kept him barely alive. This man appeared to be a younger version of himself. This man looked better as Lex than Lex himself did when he looked into a mirror.
The destruction Kal had so recently wrought was also gone as if it had never been, but Lex was too amazed by who stood before him to notice.
"What the hell just happened?"
Kal and his other self looked at one another in mild confusion, and then the younger Lex met his gaze again. "You've just agreed to help us."
~ ~ ~
Chapter 6
"‘Just agreed’?" Lex repeated. "What the hell?"
"I know." The other Lex walked forward, arms outstretched, and took Lex's shoulders in his hands. A discomfiting shiver ran over his skin at the notion of being touched by his future self. The other Lex smiled as if he knew. "All you can remember right now is the other timeline. It will be like that until you go home. Then you'll remember it all."
"The other timeline?"
Kal took a step forward, his smile slighter in deference to his concern for Lex's disorientation. "You did what you intended—or, rather, you will. You told me early so we could begin preparations."
"But— I— Do you—?" he looked from Kal to the younger Lex. "Do you mean that I've changed the future already? Just by intending to do it?"
"That's exactly what we mean," his own voice replied.
Lex rolled a shoulder in discomfort, wishing he didn't so prefer the silent, suffering double to this talkative version. "Could you not touch me, please?" he asked quietly and as politely as he could under the circumstances. "It feels—"
"—weird." His hands dropped to his sides, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "I remember. Now."
Kal gestured toward a table and three chairs that were oozing their way from the floor. Lex settled gratefully into one before it was completely formed. "This is strange for us, too. You see, from our point of view, we've just finished explaining everything to you that we're about to explain again."
"Well, I'm sorry," Lex automatically said, then realized he'd sounded sardonic and harsh. "I just mean... I don't understand why I don't remember. The last thing I remember was—"
"Kal can't remember the other timeline," the younger-looking Lex rushed in suddenly, "and you can't remember this one. When you go back to your own time, you'll remember both. But Kal..." here he paused and caught Lex's eyes with meaning that Lex couldn't have misunderstood even if it hadn't been coming from himself, "never will."
Slowly, Lex nodded, clearly grasping that he was to avoid mentioning the state of his future self in the previous timeline if at all possible.
Kal looked back and forth between them with some discomfort, plainly picking up on their unspoken communication, but apparently more bothered by the possibilities of its insinuation than by the secrecy itself, so he said nothing of it. "Why don't you ask a question to get us started?" he asked Lex gently. "That worked the first time around."
Lex's mind was spinning, his head pivoting this way and that as he took in the completeness of the room and how nothing appeared to have ever been destroyed in a rage of grief. "I, uh..." he trailed off for a while, eventually resting his head on his splayed fingertips and trying to think up something intelligent to ask. It came to him in a sudden burst. "What the hell am I still doing here?"
Kal and the other Lex both smiled with amusement.
"If I warned you about Cher-what's-his-name ahead of time, changed the future, then there was no reason for you to go back and get me, was there? Couldn't you just move the samples before he arrived?"
"I see the change hasn't had all that much effect on you after all," Kal said with a grin. "That's the same question you asked first before."
"I did tell Kal before Shiar-Da's arrival. In fact, in our time, right now, we haven't even met Shiar-Da yet."
"And we did intend to move the samples to a secure location before his arrival."
"You see, even though we now know what not to say to invoke his rage, we can't be certain to avoid it altogether."
"Imagine our surprise when we opened the containment chamber to relocate the samples only to find that they had already been compromised."
"Yes. Over a decade ago, due to a malfunctioning failsafe in the A.I.'s programming. So we got to work with the A.I. and started trying to find you."
"In the other timeline, all Shiar-Da did was accelerate what was going to end up happening to Lexx's cells anyway. When it was time, we wouldn't have had the replacements we needed. And, quite possibly, we wouldn't have had four months to invent time travel, find you, and have you end up deciding to change things before they happened."
"So, in a roundabout way, Shiar-Da's insanity might have actually saved my life."
Lex blinked in massive confusion—not only at the incredible story they told, but at the rapid fire way in which they told it, one picking up the other's thread and vice versa, so that Lex needed to listen the way one watched a tennis match. "Jesus, I don't understand any of this," he breathed helplessly.
"We know," Kal said, sympathetic and sincere. "But you will. Actually, we..." he glanced at his companion, "well, we had been hoping that your memory would change a while later than this."
Lex's head snapped up, his eyes narrowing. "Why?"
"In this timeline," his other self said, "you only just arrived here about half an hour ago."
"You see, you... haven't even been in the chamber once yet."
"Oh, g—! You mean I've got to get into that thing three more times?" Lex cried.
They shared a look, then gave Lex their best apologetic expressions. "The estimates in the other timeline were a bit..." he watched his other self turn his head slightly, wincing for Lex's benefit, "slapdash. It's going to take more than three sessions to get—"
"How many?"
Kal bit his lip. "Maybe more like six."
"Give or take."
Lex sat heavily back into his chair. He was beginning to seriously wonder if this was worth it. Sure, he'd gotten to see the future, but at what cost? He was going to have nightmares about that torture rack for the rest of his life.
"Lex, why don't you just let us put you out? It would be so much—"
"No," he insisted, cutting off Kal's plea. "I'm not going to be put under for a painless procedure. I am not... a child."
Kal unexpectedly turned on his companion, his eyes narrowing to slits. "God, was there ever a time that you weren't stubborn?"
The other Lex turned his head slightly away and scratched the back of his neck, looking mildly embarrassed. "Anyway..." he said through a sigh. "What do you say we get the first round out of the way? We can talk some more while the A.I. analyzes and purifies, hm?"
Lex threw his hands in the air dramatically. "Why the hell not? I'm already dizzy and confused and want to vomit, what's another harrowing experience?" He got to his feet, shaking his head and waving Kal off when he looked concerned and opened his mouth, most certainly to suggest waiting. "This must be a bit odd for you," he said instead, wishing intensely to change the subject, "having two of us in the same room. How will you keep us straight?"
He was only joking, so was a bit surprised when Kal answered, "It won't be so difficult. After all, you do... look a bit different," Lex looked up to find him sharing a meaningful glance with his counterpart, and he bit his cheek to avoid saying anything dry and caustic, "and you're dressed differently from one another and... well, Lexx doesn't even spell his name the same way."
Lex stopped in his tracks, not least because they were approaching the chamber and it was beginning to reach for him, making him slightly woozy. "What?" He turned to his double. "What do you mean you don't spell your name the same way?"
"He uses an extra X," Kal answered.
Lex gave his other self a perplexed look. "Why in the world would you do that?"
The other Lex—or, apparently, Lexx—shrugged. "It was the style at the time; I liked the way it looked on paper. It sort of stuck, so after it went out of vogue, I hung onto it."
Lex blinked with incomprehension. "It was ‘the style’ to add an X to the end of one's name?"
Kal chuckled. "No, it was the style to double the consonant at the end of your name."
"Assuming it ended in a consonant," Lexx added.
"Right. So if your name was Tom, you'd spell it T-O-M-M, and if your name was Clark, you'd spell it C-L-A-R-K-K—"
"Which, incidentally, looks idiotic on paper."
"—which explains why I never did it."
For a long time, Lex merely stared at the two of them, peering at their expressions very carefully and looking for any sign whatsoever that they were pulling his leg. Finally he said, with all seriousness, "That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard."
Lexx snorted. "It won't be."
"Honestly," Kal said, resuming their walk to the chamber, "you should hear about some of the fads he passed up."
Lex widened his eyes in incredulity and climbed into the chamber on his own, denying his terror with small talk. "I might like to, actually."
"A.I., prepare for the first gathering," Kal said casually.
"Or," Lexx suggested, "perhaps some of the fads he," he tilted his head toward Kal, "didn't pass up?"
"Now, that," Lex said, grinning despite himself as he secured his own restraint, "sounds interesting."
"What do you think?" Lexx asked Kal as the whir began above Lex's head. "Shall I start off with your pink period?"
Kal shot him a withering look that seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever. "You know what—" he broke off, apparently thinking better of what he'd wanted to say.
Lexx grinned at Lex. "There are pictures."
Lex only just managed to snort—quite loudly, as well—before the apparatus meant for his lungs entered his mouth and began to control his breathing. As the procedure continued, the couple—mainly his other self—kept him entertained (as well as his terror at bay) with little anecdotes of the collective world's ridiculousness in the form of fads, any or all of which might have been completely concocted strictly for his amusement. It was difficult to tell.
"I can't be sure," he said when the whirs wound down and Kal had helped him out of his restraint, "but that seemed to take less time than before."
Kal gave him a blank look.
"I-I mean, not before, but... other."
"Well, we've had more time to prepare," Lexx said. "I'm sure it probably is a little more efficient."
"That's good news. Listen, before my next," he glanced wryly behind him at the chamber disappearing into the wall, "charming procedure, is there a shower around here somewhere?"
"Yes," Kal said. "You can ask the A.I. for anything you need or desire. A.I.," he directed, his voice a bit louder, "shower."
On the other side of the large open room, beyond where Lex had remembered the breakfast table in his other morning, a large, clear, enclosed crystal shower emerged from the floor. Next to it emerged a small opaque cupboard—also, of course, made of crystal. He wondered if his other self ever got sick of the monotony of this particular decorating scheme.
Lex stared at the shower. "Ah," he said meaninglessly. He looked at Kal.
Kal looked back at him, then at Lexx, who returned his gaze, and then looked at Lex.
Lex looked back at the shower and cleared his throat.
"Um..." Kal said uncertainly, "toiletries and towels are in the cupboard."
"Yes, I... gathered." He continued to stare at the shower. Awkwardly, he rocked on his feet.
The shower immediately coloured from clear mottled ice to solid snow white.
"Ah!" Lex said again, this time with much meaning. He nodded toward Lexx. "Thank you."
As he headed for the enclosure, he could almost hear the two of them chuckling at one another in silence. "I realize," he called over his shoulder, "I don't have anything that both of you haven't seen before, but... humour me."
~
There was a partition inside the enclosure, one side of which was a shower, the other side of which was a room for drying and changing. He'd nearly asked if he could have his wrinkled clothes washed while he showered, only to look down and see they weren't wrinkled at all. He had them off by the time he realized he didn't feel he needed a shower, either, but went forward anyway. It only took a few perplexed minutes for him to grasp that if he'd just slipped into a different timeline where he'd only just arrived in the future, then he hadn't yet slept in his suit and had only taken a shower half a day ago in what would have been his morning. In essence, he had an entire day to live over again, and it was very discombobulating.
He walked out of the enclosure dressed and refreshed, but no less confused. "A hundred and fifty years later," he said, watching the shower sink into the floor, "people still use simple water showers like that?"
Lexx and Kal exchanged guilty looks. "Well... we're not supposed to," Kal said uncomfortably. "We were given special dispensation by the Earthen Resources Committee to access a small reserve of fresh water which we can use and recycle—"
"On account of we're ancient."
"On account," Kal corrected, shooting Lexx a dry warning look, "of our contributions to the Coalition and..." he trailed off, then shrugged, "the... fact that we're ancient."
Lexx nodded once, apparently satisfied by the reluctant admission.
"I see." Which he didn't, but neither did he want to get any deeper into the details at the moment. Lexx and Kal turned back to the work they were undertaking with the A.I.'s computers when the subject seemed closed, and Lex walked around the room to amuse himself, strongly experiencing déjà vu. The sickbed that had been the centre of his experience in the other timeline, however, did not seem to exist, or to have ever existed. Where it once had stood, there was only smooth crystal floor, just like everywhere else.
Within a few minutes, he stopped at the large, blank crystal wall he had found pictures in before, and focussed on it, trying to will out the small splotches of colour he remembered.
But no matter how he stared, all he saw were ever darkening blues. He turned to ask a question of his hosts, but then remembered he need only ask the A.I. for what he wanted, and he turned back to the wall. "A.I.," when he spoke, his hosts turned toward him in curiosity just the same, "may I see the pictures in this wall, please?"
"How did—" Kal began to mutter to Lexx, but the rest was drowned out by the A.I.'s surprising response.
"Visitor Lex, your access is restricted. I am sorry, but you may not."
Lex blinked in astonishment at the rebuff. He turned to Kal and Lexx, and found Lexx finishing an explanation with, "...the other timeline."
"Sorry," he said to Lex, "but, honestly... would you want to live every pleasant moment as a rerun?" He offered a small, sympathetic smile with these wise words, which only irked Lex all the more.
He scowled his displeasure at the still blank wall. "I wouldn't mind a rerun of that one in Paris," he muttered petulantly, just loudly enough that he knew he could be heard, but quietly enough that if there was no response, he could pretend he hadn't meant to be.
There was a moment of silence, and he resisted looking over to them, though he couldn't see them even out of the corner of his eye. He managed to hold down his elation when Lexx dryly said, "A.I., allow visitor Lex access to memory Paris-18."
"Lexx, I must pro—"
"Oh, stuff your protests; just let him see it."
Slowly, the proper digital photo worked its way out of its crystal enclosure. Lex took a step closer, smiling only slightly to avoid looking too pleased with this small allowance. "I don't suppose I could get a copy of this," he asked wryly.
Lexx snorted. "I can't be certain, but I think that might actually cause a rip in the space/time continuum or something similarly catastrophic."
"When is this?" he asked. "Can you at least tell me that? With this technology, it can't have been too far into the future."
Again there was silence, but this time he did give in and look. He found the two of them with their arms crossed over their chests, shooting him dry looks. "I really don't think you should have any more details," Lexx said firmly.
Lex rolled his eyes back to the photo. "What will I do?" he muttered under his breath. "Request Venice instead?" He peered more deeply into it, tearing his eyes away from the main event of the kiss and embrace, and focussed instead on the scenery beyond the balcony. "Paris looks the same."
"Everything changes," Lexx said. "Except the old cities."
He nodded in agreement. Plainly visible were the Seine and the Louvre, and they looked just as he remembered them. In fact, as he peered even closer, he realized this particular view looked very familiar. "Hold on," he said suspiciously. "Isn't this the view from Quai Voltaire?" He turned to look at them. "In the 7th?"
Kal and Lexx shared a look, but they didn't respond.
"The Louvre looks unchanged," Lex went on, looking back at the picture. "And—" suddenly something caught his eye—something he was surprised he hadn't noticed before. A satisfied smile spread over his face. "I know when this is." He reached out and tapped a finger against the falu red mark on his own neck, which was surrounded by irritated skin. "That mark is fresh." He turned to smirk at them. "About a hundred and twenty-three years ago, wasn't it?"
Kal's eyes widened. His fingers went self-consciously to his mark while he turned to Lexx, hissing, "How did he—?"
"You told him," Lexx said softly, "in the other timeline."
Kal's jaw dropped. "Is there anything I didn't tell him?"
"You were... distracted." Lexx ignored the still shocked look Kal was shooting him and raised his voice. "A.I., remove visitor Lex's access to memory Paris-18."
Frowning, Lex watched it disappear into the crystal wall as he hurriedly etched the details into his mind.
"And, A.I., do try a little harder to stop me from doing stupid things in the future, will you?"
"I will do my best," she answered, her voice the perfect imitation of human wry indulgence.
"It's just a tattoo, then, isn't it?" Lex asked, approaching them from his place by the now vacant wall. "I suppose I had imagined something more," he shrugged, "alien. But from that skin irritation—"
"It's not a tattoo," Lexx interrupted. "It's permanent."
Lex's brow knitted in confusion. He looked from Lexx to Kal and back. "Tattoos are permanent."
"Tattoos fade. This... is permanent."
Lex searched his double's eyes, finding something more there than a discussion about how long a mark would last on one's skin, but he turned back to the display before Lex could decipher what exactly it was.
"Do you want some dinner?" Kal asked. "It's late here and we've already eaten, but I'm sure you're hungry."
"Oh, no. I just ate."
Kal looked at him curiously. "But it was the middle of the afternoon in Smallville when I brought you here. You'd only just eaten?"
Lex blinked, his memories all swirling together disconcertingly. "No, I... I had poached eggs."
Kal grimaced slightly. "Poached eggs at three in the afternoon?"
"No, no... the other timeline. You served me poached eggs."
Kal's head dipped slightly back in sudden understanding. "Well, Lex, you might remember that, but your body doesn't. The last time you ate in Smallville—that's really the last time you ate. Let us get you something."
"I'm really not, uh..." he shrugged. "I'll just get some juice."
Kal gestured toward the proper depression in the proper wall, but Lex was already headed toward it. "The dispenser—"
"I know."
There was a moment of silence behind him and then Kal muttered to Lexx, "I'm really starting to wish I could remember that other timeline."
Lex glanced behind him to find his other self pushing Kal's hair back, using the adjustment as an excuse to run his fingers through its length. "Don't worry. It really wasn't anything worth remembering."
Lex turned back to the dispenser, tilting his head slightly in silent but total agreement with Lexx's words. "A.I.," he said seriously, "I would like a twelve ounce glass of forty degree Fahrenheit nearly pulp-less orange juice—and before you ask me any facetious questions, please consider that I will remember this very clearly and you will have to live with me for over one hundred years while I will have access to all of your programming along with permission to alter it as I see fit."
A glass of orange juice quickly appeared, and Lex took it with no small measure of satisfaction. Sipping, he turned to find Kal's eyebrows reaching for his hairline while Lexx grinned with approval. "By the way," Lex said casually to Kal, "your double promised me a demonstration of your ability of flight, but he hadn't gotten around to it before the timeline changed."
Kal crossed his arms over his chest, obviously trying not to smile at Lex's rakishness, but not succeeding. "Oh, really?"
"Mm," he hummed into his juice, nodding. "And I do expect you'll be a gentlemen and step up to take his place."
"Sorry, Lex," he said, though he didn't sound it. "I'm too old to perform on cue."
Lex snorted and directed his conversation to his own double. "Do you remember all of this," he asked, "from my point of view?"
He nodded. "As it happens. I remember everything you can, and I remember being you and getting home from here and feeling a rush of memories regarding the part of this timeline that you can't yet recall—I even remember the headache that came with it." He shrugged. "But the time from now to when you leave is fuzzy, like a dream I can't quite remember. Every time anyone says or does anything, I'm instantly remembering it clearly as it was when I was you, as if it never should have been out of focus at all. This entire experience is like constant déjà vu to me, only in reverse."
Lex started to settle himself into the same chair he'd been in on what felt to him to be the previous evening, then sidestepped it and chose a third chair that hadn't been there in that timeline. "That must be disconcerting," he said obligingly, though he was rather distracted by his own disconcertment.
"A bit," Lexx answered with a near laugh in his voice.
He settled in, expecting to need to amuse himself much as he had when Kal had been working the control board in the other timeline, and was surprised to find them both leave it without hesitation and approach him, smiling. Kal took the seat the first Kal had chosen, and Lexx the chair that had been offered to Lex, though it was positioned much more closely to Kal's now. There was a small smooth table between them and they all leaned on it slightly.
Lex watched them across the table, smirking internally at the strange familyesque picture they presented by sitting so close together. "So," he started, "tell me more about this Earthen Resources Committee. Are they like the EPA?"
"Well—"
"I think," Lexx interrupted Kal, "you have quite enough detail about the ruling bodies of the future."
Lex spread his hands. "But I have no detail at all."
"Precisely." Lexx leaned back in his chair, looking pleased with himself.
Lex bit his inner cheek. "All right... Well, what is it you do here?"
"Sorry?"
"You've been here eighty years? There's no one else here. Aren't you bored? Isn't it difficult to run LuthorCorp efficiently from so far away?"
Lexx and Kal shared a somewhat frozen look.
Lex blinked, less surprised than he might have expected he'd be. "Ah. Well. I... hope that was at least voluntary."
As he expected, they didn't offer any detail on what had happened to LuthorCorp. "We don't have time to get bored," Lexx said instead.
"We have too much work to do."
"Work? What kind of work do you do out here?"
"Mostly scientific," Lexx said. "Innovation."
"But what for? I understood you're cut off from the world."
Kal looked as though he was going to ask a question, then seemed to realize he already had his answer and said instead, "Physically, you might say we're cut off. But our..." he glanced at Lexx and they both smirked, "‘brain children,’ so to speak, still manage to make it out there in the world now and then."
"Obviously, we'd go crazy if we didn't have things to do."
"We still have many centuries ahead of us."
Lex sighed, squelching the urge to ask if one of them couldn't please tell a story at a time rather than splitting everything up by sentence. "What kind of innovations do you work on?" He raised a hand to halt the brush-off he felt coming. "I'm not asking for plans, formulae, and details. Just in general."
"At first it was big things," Lexx obligingly answered. "Cures for cancer, HIV, Alzheimer's, fibromyalgia. But once the cures started coming and it was found that—" he broke off, looked aside for a moment, then rephrased. "I mean that once... the proper connections were realized, disease was quickly wiped out, one condition after another. These days, our focus is on innovations for existing technology. We work on improving the irrigation systems, the weather control systems—"
"Interplanetary communication and travel," Kal interjected.
"—solar, oceanic, and tectonic stability..."
Lex was trying not to gape at the scope of the projects they rattled off so casually. "And these improvements, what? You sell them to the government?"
They laughed. "No one sells anything anymore, Lex," Kal said, shaking his head and grinning as if Lex was five and had asked if the moon was made of cheese. "We transmit our findings to the proper industrial segments, they test and research them, and augment the existing systems only with whatever is found to be both useful and feasible."
"And then, as a favour to us, they transmit their findings and decisions back so we can follow progress and plan our next projects accordingly."
Lex opened his mouth to ask what, exactly, was in it for them if they didn't get paid and didn't receive public recognition, but had a sinking feeling he'd only be laughed at once again. "So people do know that you're here," he said instead. "Do they ever come to see you? I mean, the world must view you as immortal. Surely they're curious."
Kal nodded. "We had a lot of visitors in the beginning. But these days, people have so many interesting journeys to choose from, ways to find adventure... I don't think we've had a visitor here in—what?" he looked to Lexx.
"Must have been four years."
"Yeah," Kal nodded, seeming to look back in time. "Four years. And before that, nearly a decade."
"Do you enjoy it when visitors come?"
Kal shrugged. "Sure. We're always happy to invite someone new into our home." He leaned forward onto the table with a sigh.
Lex didn't miss one of his hands sliding under the table to graze the back of Lexx's on his thigh, but said nothing, only trying not to stare at the strangeness of it.
"But you have to understand," Kal went on, "we're very separated from society. We have no connection to the people of this time, nothing in common with them. For the most part, those who come here do so only to ask us about our past—about the past. It gives us an excuse to reminisce, but that can become tiring after a few days—not only for us, but for the guest as well. We have a hard time identifying or sympathizing with the ‘troubles’ the current population complains of—"
"They have no idea what a real problem is," Lexx muttered.
"—so after their questions are asked, they tend to move on."
"Usually to the North Pole."
Kal chuckled softly. "Yes, we're sort of the unofficial side stop whenever someone on the northern continent gets it in their heads to walk to the North Pole."
"Like that's a challenge anymore."
"Mm. Which might explain why no one's been by in so long."
Lex watched them carefully. "It sounds lonely. Like maybe you're bored with your lives."
"Oh, not at all. Lex... we're bored with the world. Out there..." Kal shook his head and sighed, "there's nothing for us out there."
"Bunch of whining, overprivileged—"
"Lexx."
Lex joined his double in biting his cheek, feeling somehow responsible for his other self's grousing.
"But in here... in here, we're happy. As the years go by, we get to watch humanity achieve things that most men we used to know could only dream about because they would never live long enough to see it. We watched man take his first step on Mars. We watched the governments of the world merge into the Earthen Cooperative. We watched Earth join its first Intergalactic Coalition."
"What a disaster that was."
"Well, yes. But the point is... most men can only read about history and dream about the future. We're able to watch the future become history."
"I wouldn't give it up," Lexx said, smiling. "I pray for every second of that millennium I've got coming to me."
Lex watched Kal's hand tighten on Lexx's under the table. "Longer than that. We'll find even better ways as time goes on."
A little chill went up Lex's spine. He was barely able to reconcile the thought of life for a hundred and fifty years. A millennium was beyond the ability of his imagination. But beyond even that? "So this is really what you want? To be together... forever... here."
As if they'd only just considered it, the two of them looked around, then back at one another. Some silent communication took place.
"Well," Kal looked back at Lex. "Maybe not here. Everyone wants a change now and then."
"We have property all over the planet."
"Not so much property—"
"Well, we had property. And as everything changed, it was agreed to allow us exclusive access whenever we want."
"There are quite a few special dispensations allotted when you're expected to outlive everyone else."
Lexx leaned forward conspiratorially. "In other words, it's because we're ancient."
Kal rolled his eyes silently as Lexx sat back in his chair, smirking.
"And now that you mention it, I have been thinking lately that I miss the seasons."
Kal looked at his companion in mild surprise. "You haven't said anything."
"Well, I don't particularly care for what they've done to most of the areas we have property in."
"Lexx, you don't particularly care for what they've done anywhere."
Lexx looked at him stonily. "They have no sense of style, Kal. It's all," he waved a hand vaguely, "flat. I'm telling you, these people are mortally terrified of texture." He sighed and looked around again. "I suppose this hunk of ice would look a little out of place in a temperate zone, hm?"
Kal chuckled. "Maybe we could get it to disguise itself. If—"
"Kal-El," came the female voice from everywhere, "Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van designed me with the most elegant of Kryptonian architecture in mind. To attempt to change—"
Kal sighed loudly with irritation. "A.I., I'm going to write a programme. And that programme is going to be permanently seared into your reasoning centre. And it is going to be very aptly named Anti-Eavesdropping Protocol Priority 1-A." He paused, but no answer was forthcoming. Slowly, he looked at Lexx. "You hear that?"
"Mm." He nodded seriously. "Wounded silence."
Lex's heart was thankfully slowing, having jumped into top speed at the sudden and unexpected sound of the A.I.'s voice. He shook his head, chuckling to himself at the easy interaction of these two men who were to be the future versions of himself and of Clark. In some ways, they reminded him of earlier, easier times when he could have called Clark his best friend; but in most other ways, they struck him as impossible. The thought of he and Clark the way they were seemed to preclude any possibility of them ever becoming like that, whether it be fifteen years, a hundred and fifty years, or a thousand years away.
He shook his head again, his lips pulling into a slight frown, and sipped at his orange juice. When he glanced up, he found Kal gazing at Lexx curiously while he stared into Lex as if he could plainly see everything he was thinking. Realizing that impression was perfectly accurate, Lex struggled not to shift in his seat, feeling exposed and uncomfortable. Lexx averted his eyes to the smoothness of the table.
"Well," Kal sighed, breaking the awkward silence, "this analyzation is going to take all night. I think I'll turn in. Good night, Lex." As Lex nodded in response, Kal rose from his chair and bent slightly over to speak quietly to his companion. "You coming?"
"Soon."
Lex glanced up, not sure exactly what he'd expected to see, and found Kal brushing his cheek just barely against Lexx's temple, the both of them briefly closing their eyes as if this tiny gesture brought them great pleasure. Heavily, he padded back toward the bed chamber, doing something to his outfit near the collar, which Lex assumed was where the fastener must have been. "A.I.," he called just before he disappeared around the corner, "prepare a sleeping surface for visitor Lex."
He watched across the room as a surface about the size of a double bed rose out of the floor, and then a blanket and pillow much like those he'd seen on the master bed seeped out of the top of the crystal mattress. He wasn't sure why the sight of it made him want to scowl, but scowl he did nonetheless.
He sipped regularly at his drink to mask it, though he did know how pointless it was to do since the man across from him had once scowled just the same.
"It won't always be like this, you know," he said softly.
Lex sighed and put his glass down. "I'm sure," he said as cheerily as he could manage. "A millennium is a long time. I'm certain many things will change."
"You know that's not what I mean."
Expressionlessly, Lex met his double's steady gaze. "What won't always be like what?" He smiled politely.
"Your life. Empty."
For a moment, Lex struggled to look innocently confused, then gave up the pointless game and leaned back heavily into his chair. He stared at his own distorted reflection in the crystal floor.
Lexx leaned forward onto the table and sighed, his voice filled with sympathy. "It won't always feel like... clinging to a rock face where there are no grips, having no choice but to jam in your spikes, destroying pieces of its beauty just in order to hold on."
A sneer crawled across Lex's face.
"I know. You hate me for pointing it out. But just don't forget I'm you."
Lex swallowed down his bitterness, doing his best to meet his double's gaze without sign of the anger and sense of injustice that were suddenly burning through him. "How did it happen?" he asked, speaking so quietly that his whisper was almost lost by the room. "What was the moment?"
Lexx watched him for a long, still few seconds, then finally sighed. "In the other timeline, Kal was distraught... distracted. He gave you far too much information."
"Just the same, I have it," Lex insisted. "Fifteen years? There has to be some way—"
"You shouldn't seek any further details, nor should you act on the ones you have already learned." He leaned forward and laid his hand over Lex's. Lex struggled not to pull away. "Lex... you can't change anything. All will be as it's meant to be."
He spread his hands, mostly to break their odd connection. "All right. But why can't it be just a little sooner?"
"Because events build on events. They're not all about who you are or what you do. You must wait for it all to happen before the moment will be right."
"All what?" He scooted forward in his chair. "What exactly happens?"
Lexx's lips thinned. "The things that happen to a man in fifteen years of life."
Lex sighed harshly, looking away in frustration.
"I'm not going to give you the details you want no matter how you press me. But please understand that there is a time for everything and your time will come." He shrugged, his expression empathetic. "Just... be patient."
Lex met his gaze hard. "I am not a patient man."
Unfettered, Lexx smiled slightly. "Yes you are. When you need to be."
As Lex sighed, biting back a sarcastic comment, his double rose to his feet. "Look, I hate that thing," he pointed over his shoulder, "so I know you will, too. Would you like to sleep with us?"
Lex's head jerked upright, his eyes wide with shock. "Excuse me?" He scoffed incredulously. "That would be a bit awkward, wouldn't it?"
Lexx shrugged. "I don't think so. I'm certainly used to sleeping with myself..." he smirked when Lex rolled his eyes, "and don't worry about Clark. He won't mind."
"Clark?" That gave him pause and he wondered for a moment if he was confusing his timelines. "But I thought you called him Kal."
"Oh. Well, old habits. I use both names. I knew him as Clark for nearly forty years..." he trailed off and shook his head, grinning, "but I've known him as Kal for over a century. You'd think that would be enough, but every now and then a ‘Clark’ still sneaks in." He shrugged. "I'm connected to the past. To you. I suppose I always will be. I fell for him when he was ‘Clark,’ after all."
Lex averted his eyes. "I wouldn't know."
His face began to burn when Lexx laughed without pretense. "Who do you think you're kidding? I'm you, Lex. You think I've managed to forget how long I've loved him?"
Lex sneered at his own light reflection in the floor, bitterness chasing embarrassment away. "I thought... I thought maybe I loved him."
"You knew. And you were right. So now there's antagonism and you try to bury those feelings under a layer of righteousness, of anger and disappointment, and something you want to call hate when you know it isn't. But you do love him, it is there, and the more you try to fight it, the angrier you'll get." He sighed. "But you already know that. And so this is pointless."
Lex had nothing to say to any of this, unwilling to agree, and yet knowing how idiotic it was to argue with someone who'd already lived his life. Instead, he backtracked on their conversation, pretending it hadn't happened. "Why doesn't he use ‘Clark’ anymore?" he asked casually.
He glanced up to find Lexx giving him a knowing look, his head turned slightly, and Lex fully expected him to say he knew very well the answer to the question he was asking. But then his face went slack, an almost painful memory flashing across his eyes, and he suddenly softened. "Because," he said quietly, and cleared his throat, "the Clark Kent persona had to die. It had lasted long enough—he wasn't aging, and people were starting to ask what kind of skin cream he used." They shared a smile. "People already knew what was happening to me, but that wasn't associated with Clark Kent or the life Clark Kent was leading, and Kal didn't want it to become that way because—well, for various reasons, some related to my personal safety. He had no choice but to stage his death."
Lex nodded, already having figured out for himself that would have been necessary, though many of the details escaped his understanding. He supposed that was indeed the point of making them so vague.
"Come sleep with us."
Lex shook his head quickly, rising to his feet. "I don't think—"
"You remember how comfortable the bed was in the other timeline?"
"Yes, but—"
"I want you to take that comfort, change it to discomfort, and multiply it by ten."
Lex raised an eyebrow.
Lexx pointed back at the newly raised bed platform. "I'm not kidding."
"Can't I just... ask the A.I. to make it more comfortable?"
Lexx laughed with apparent delight. "Oh, sure! It only took two years to get the bed right. And you know how helpful the A.I. can be about getting things the way you want them." He eyed Lex's orange juice pointedly.
Lex wavered slightly.
"Come on." With no further encouragement, Lexx turned his back and headed for the bed chamber.
Lex stood his ground, eying the separate bed critically. He couldn't have said what made him follow his double, the thought of sleeping next to himself doing little to calm his already frayed nerves, but he did follow.
When he stepped around the crystal wall that separated the bed chamber from the rest of the rooms and saw Kal already under the blanket and sound asleep, his own reasoning suddenly became very clear to him.
After removing his boots, Lexx stood by the empty side of the bed, messing about with his collar much as Kal had done. Then, to Lex's surprise, the entire leatherlike outfit he wore suddenly fell apart at its white stitching seams and puddled around his feet. He was clad in a black undershirt and shorts, smirking at the surprise on Lex's face. "Technology," he said by way of explanation. "Did you want to sleep next to him?"
Lex's eyes widened and he took a step back. "No."
The corner of Lexx's mouth curled upward. "Sure you do."
"I... wouldn't want him to wake up and think I was you. You sleep next to him."
With a shrug, Lexx slid into his side of the bed with a sigh, leaving plenty of room for Lex to climb in after him.
Lex uncertainly took another half-step back, wondering at how strange the two of them looked lying together on the same surface. They looked as though they belonged together, and yet as if they should not, by any stretch of the imagination, have been together.
"You can feel free to try out the visitor's bed. But I promise you'll be back in here within the hour."
Lex winced at the normal volume of his voice, the room picking it up and echoing it easily. "Aren't you worried to wake him up?" he whispered.
Lexx blinked. "Kal?" He grinned widely. "Kal?" He turned and looked down at his sleeping companion. "Hey, Kal," he said in a slightly louder than conversational tone. "A huge spaceship just landed and fifty Kryptonians walked out. Want to go say hello?"
Kal continued to breathe regularly, his eyelids moving rapidly with REM sleep.
Lexx looked back to Lex meaningfully.
"Ah." With a sigh, Lex mentally prodded himself to be a little less uptight, and slid his shoes off. He climbed into the bed and pulled the blanket over his chest, lying on his back.
"A.I., provide a third pillow with specifications Lexx-981." There was silence for a brief moment as the pillow bloomed under Lex's head.
"Nine hundred eighty-one?" Lex asked.
Lexx chuckled quietly. "Two years. I wasn't kidding."
A small smile crossed Lex's face, and then his brow furrowed in consideration. "I feel like I just got up."
"I know. But your body doesn't. You'll be asleep before you know it."
Lex turned to look at him curiously. "Do you remember that?"
"Not yet."
He paused, thinking. "If the pillow has a specification, then I assume the mattress does, too."
"Mm."
"Then why couldn't you just...?" He trailed off as Lexx met his gaze without evasion.
"You didn't want to sleep alone," he said simply.
Lex swallowed hard and stared at the ceiling once again.
Lexx sighed, peering at the side of his face. "I wish there was something I could do for you. Some way to take away the pain I know you're feeling—the pain that's yet to come. But I can't. You're my past. I'm your future. And in between, that pain exists and is built upon. I'm so sorry. I can only tell you that I swear he's worth it."
"I... I believe that."
"I know you do."
"I don't want to be like this. Bitter, and..." he turned to meet his double's gaze, "having to mar the face of my life just in order to keep living. But it's just that... I seem to be on this spiral, and like most spirals, it's only heading down."
"I know. But it will change. You will change. In time."
Before he knew what was happening or had time to protest, Lexx's arms were wrapping around his back. Lex froze, holding his breath. "I'm fine," he said tightly.
A soft laugh burst from Lexx's lips. "God, I was so stiff. Relax. The world isn't going to end if you give yourself a hug."
Lex's face began to burn, a sensation normally foreign to him that was becoming distressingly familiar the longer he was here. His other self was shuffling closer to him and soon had him wrapped securely in his arms, their faces in the crook of one another's necks.
Eyes wide open, Lex stared at the side of Kal's face where he lay there sound asleep, unaware of what was happening right beside him. He would have thought it would feel very strange to be hugged by a future version of himself, but it was only the thought of it that was strange. With Lexx's familiar bald head out of his field of vision, he had no physical way to know the other man wasn't just that—some other man. Since Lexx's body reflected a younger Lex than Lex's own did, they were not perfect matches. Lex had lost some definition over the past few years. Apparently more than he'd thought he had, he realized with a wry twist to his lips.
He was running fingers over his double's arm almost unconsciously, feeling out the differences, when his hand suddenly stilled. "Oh, my god," he blurted. "You have hair on your arms."
Lexx chuckled, pulling away to his own pillow. "Yes. It's the treatments, I think. It grew in nearly seventy years ago. I kept hoping for something a little higher up," he looked upward toward his hairline, "but no luck there."
Lex was unable to joke, his mouth still hanging slack. "Legs? Chest?"
"I'm afraid not," Lexx shrugged. "But, uh..." In a roundabout way, he glanced downward and away, expressing himself mutely with his eyebrows.
Lex's eyes deadened. "You're kidding."
Smiling slightly, he shook his head. "Only a dusting—nearly as light as on my arms. But still."
After he thought about it for a moment, Lex winced rather sharply. "Red?"
"No," Lexx said with a laugh. "Brown—auburn, I guess. Do you... do you want—?"
"Oh, god, no."
He laughed more clearly. "I thought not."
Kal made a muttering sound and both Lex and Lexx jumped as an errant arm came slapping over Lexx's chest. Lex's eyebrows arched, but before either of them were able to say a thing, Kal had wrapped Lexx in a tight embrace and cuddled up to his back, flattening his nose and lips against Lexx's neck.
Lex was surprised at such an overt expression of affection considering the length of time they'd apparently been together. But the expression on his other self's face—as if stoic acceptance and wry irritation were having a fistfight—convinced him it wasn't the norm.
"Kal." Lexx shrugged a shoulder firmly. "Kal."
Kal only mumbled and held him more tightly.
Lexx turned as well as he could, pressed the heel of his hand to Kal's shoulder, and gave a great heave. "Christ, you're like a furnace!"
Mumbling something that sounded like it might have been apologetic—and possibly in another language—Kal shifted around to his other side and fell still again.
Lexx's expression showed plain exasperation when he glanced back at Lex and shook his head.
"Is it like that every night?"
"Only recently." He grunted as he yanked their half of the blanket back, which Kal had managed to tangle around his legs during his attack and retreat. "He gets like this—" the blanket suddenly came free, and he plopped onto his back, "—when he's nervous. He'll be better once the gatherings are complete." With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the blanket over them both. "If I don't kill him before then."
Lex smirked, though he wasn't sure his other self could see him even from the corner of his eye, and then there was a long silence.
Eventually, Lexx's brow furrowed as he stared at the ceiling, and he asked, rather out of the blue, "What's the name of your butler?"
"My... butler?"
"Yeah." Lexx looked at him curiously. "What's his name?"
"Uh... Caldwell?"
"Caldwell!" Apparently excited by this news, Lexx poked him hard in the shoulder. "That's it!" He laughed, shaking his head—at what, Lex didn't know. "You know, I've been trying to think of that man's name on and off for the last three years. I could never think of it!"
"Oh." Lex struggled for something intelligent to add to this revelation. "Kal couldn't remember?"
"He has an eidetic memory. I'm sure it's in there somewhere."
Lex blinked with surprise at this revelation. "He ha— Oh. Well, so... why didn't you ask him?"
"And give him the satisfaction? I don't think so." He sighed happily. "Caldwell... how could I forget that? He's a good man, Caldwell. A very good man."
Lex peered at the side of his double's face curiously. "Is he? Why? What did he do?"
Lexx gave him a look Lex was beginning to become exceedingly used to and loathe the sight of. He slammed his head back into his pillow with a frustrated sigh.
"You know, it's strange," Lexx said quietly. "I have to admit that I was both looking forward to and not looking forward to meeting you. Kal was right when he tried to tell me how angry I was then, but I didn't believe him. I suppose we soften ourselves in our own memories."
Lex swallowed, feeling uncomfortably exposed. He tried to cover it with a quiet, flippant laugh. "Am I so bad?"
"I remember that life; you have every reason. It's just that after so much time has passed, the difference between who I was and who I've become is rather more glaring than I'd expected it to be."
Lex almost didn't respond, almost just let it go. But finally, he whispered, "I don't want to wait fifteen years to become someone else."
"I know you don't. But there is no choice; you can't change it."
"I bet that I can."
Suddenly, his arm was gripped tightly, surprising him, and Lexx was hovering over him, his eyes burning into Lex's own. "Well, get your damn chips off the table, because you're betting with my life."
"I don't want to damage your life!" Lex protested. "I simply want it a little sooner."
"Well, good luck," Lexx growled sardonically. "Because the more you try to convince Clark that this is the way things are supposed to be, the farther away you'll push him." He paused, searching Lex's eyes. "Think about who Clark is right now—and think about who he thinks you are. You know that I'm right."
Lex held his gaze for several seconds longer, then jerked angrily away, knowing what he said was true.
"Get it out of your mind, Lex," he said, shaking his head and sounding weary as he settled back down to his pillow. "You'll be a lot better off if you just accept things the way they're going to be."
Lex crossed his arms over his chest, sighing sharply at the ceiling but saying nothing.
"Besides," Lexx gazed at the side of his face, "it's not as if the next fifteen years are going to be hell." Lex met his smiling eyes. "You're going to have a lot of fun being... well, yourself."
Though he wasn't certain exactly what was in that smirk, Lex could imagine. He found himself smirking back until Lexx said good-night and turned on his side, quickly falling still.
Listening to his double's deep breaths, Lex fell slowly to sleep, certain there must be some way that he could bring this future to himself more quickly than it was intended to arrive, and determined to find it.
~ ~ ~
Chapter 7
Lex opened his eyes and gasped, glancing slightly away in surprise.
The previous night came rushing back to him, explaining why his gaze was lighting upon Clark Kent's closed eyes and lax features, and his heart slowed to a normal speed. He glanced slightly up and found Lexx had been hitched upward on the bed as Kal had used his chest as a pillow in the night. Kal was nearly eye level with Lex where he slept.
Lex watched him in silence, trying to imagine opening his eyes every day to the sight of Clark sleeping next to him, and unable to. A little beep came from the ceiling and Lex glanced up, wondering if it was their alarm. It didn't go off again, however, so he ignored it.
He was given another start when Kal's eyes suddenly popped open a few seconds later. As Lex stared, Kal smiled warmly in recognition before his expression became somewhat confused. He searched Lex's face, looking on the verge of asking a question, and then suddenly seemed to realize where he was. He glanced up and saw his sleeping companion above him, then looked back to Lex and smiled in a friendly way that wasn't nearly so warm.
Lex waited for him to make some comment as to why Lex had shared their bed when he'd had the A.I. prepare a separate one for him, but it never came. What he did say was considerably more surprising.
"I don't mind telling you," he said, grinning, "I've had dreams like this."
Lex's eyebrows arched severely.
Kal nodded. "Very pleasant dreams."
Momentarily uncertain what to say, slightly concerned that Kal was making some kind of illicit and very weird offer, Lex suddenly fell into laughter when Kal did something comical and familiar with his eyebrows that told Lex he was just kidding around.
As he calmed, the A.I. made that same quiet beep. Kal stilled, his grin softening. "A.I.? Why are you beeping?"
"Analyzation and purification is complete. I am prepared for the second round of cellular samples."
Despite his recent good mood, Lex felt his heart begin to race, his palms growing rapidly clammy.
Surprising him once again, Kal reached out and touched his shoulder with a warm hand. "I'm sorry it has to be so unpleasant. It's just," he shrugged, "we haven't used that technology since Lexx first began his treatments. We had no reason to update or improve it until recently, and when we realized what we needed to do, figuring out how to get back in time was more important."
"I understand. But... it is very unpleasant." He shrugged and Kal took his hand away, leaving his skin burning. Lexx had not been exaggerating much when he'd referred to him as a furnace. "Perhaps now that I know, when I come to live here with my Clark in the future, I'll work on updating it." He paused, considering. "On the other hand, since I know the stasis field is going to break down more than ten years before now, perhaps I'll just mention that to you and the A.I. and we'll fix the problem ahead of time. Then none of this will have happened and I won't have to go through any of the gatherings."
Kal's eyes widened throughout Lex's words, and he remained silent for a few seconds after he'd quieted. "I can't be certain," he finally said, "but I think that's impossible."
"What is?"
"If... you stopped all of this from happening," he said uncertainly, "then you wouldn't know to stop it from happening."
"I will if I continue to keep the memories from each timeline."
"Lex, we think the only reason you have memories from both timelines is because you were out of your time when they changed. If you change something while in your own time, and there is no earlier version of you out of time, then I think you'd change along with time."
"I see. And you think that would mean...?"
"I think that would mean you can't change it so that you never came here. Something else would just go wrong to get you here and—look, this is worrying me. How about you just let things happen as they happened? This is working out fine, right?"
Lex scowled. "You wouldn't say that if it was you in that chamber five more times—‘give or take.’" Kal began to look even more flighty, and Lex allowed a smile to let him know he was mostly joking.
Kal smiled back, looking very relieved, a slight colour rising in his cheeks. Then he suddenly turned and rolled out of bed and to his feet. He was dressed just the same as Lexx, in form-fitting black undershirt and shorts. Lex was surprised at the lack of bright colours, but more intrigued by the long, lean, well-defined lines he made as he walked away, muttering something about a shower.
He sighed, lying his head back on the pillow once Kal was around the partition, and was given yet another start by a voice from above his head.
"Still looking for some way to change the past, I see."
Lex glanced up to find his double with his eyes closed, and then he slowly opened them, focussed on Lex, and smiled.
Lex sighed wearily. "I have no intention of changing things so that I never come here. I know that would be self-sabotage. I was just... giving him a hard time about the chamber."
"Glad to hear it. And what we were talking about last night?"
Lex met his double's eyes stubbornly, getting a little sick of being spoken to like an errant child.
Nothing further was apparently necessary, Lexx sighing heavily at his expression. "Come on." He rolled over Kal's side to get out of bed. "I think we both need some coffee and conversation."
~
Lex lowered his voice to a hiss as Kal emerged from the shower, padding toward them in what appeared to be a fresh leatherlike outfit. "What are you guys whispering about?" he asked, helping himself to the cream cheese bagel and coffee Lexx had prepared for him only minutes before.
Lex considered putting the conversation aside while in Kal's presence, but then rethought his plan when he saw Lexx glancing worriedly at him out of the corner of his eye. He wondered if Kal would be his ally, and perhaps Lexx knew that. "Well, I'm trying to figure out how I can cut out fifteen years of antagonism, and he's trying to talk me out of it."
Kal choked into his coffee and slammed the crystal cup onto the crystal table. He didn't wince when hot liquid sloshed over his hand, and no one but Lex seemed to notice how the table absorbed the mess like a sponge. "What?" He turned incredulously to his companion. "Lexx, you told him?"
After a pause, Lexx very slowly turned his head to look at Kal without expression. "Nooo..."
Kal quickly flushed and looked away. "Oh." He sighed sharply, plainly irritated with his other self. "Well. You can't change it," he said to Lex. "You know that, don't you?"
Lex's lips parted in astonishment. "I don't believe this! You, too? If I didn't know any better, I'd think the two of you enjoyed being enemies. Is that what you want? For it to happen all over again?"
"No, of course not," Kal said, blinking as if disconcerted by Lex's outburst. "It wasn't a pleasant time. But... things must happen as they happened."
"Oh, really?" Lex spat. "And why is that?"
His double sat forward, beginning to explain something he'd already explained half a dozen times. "The timeline must be preserved as—"
"Don't you talk to me about the sanctity of the timeline!" Lex interrupted angrily. "You're supposed to be dead!"
Both Lexx and Kal gaped, and then their mouths clicked closed in shock.
"Not just now, or in a year, but a hundred years ago! When you grew old like everyone else. You and he changed the future with these treatments of yours, and you're changing it again by having me here now to fix what went wrong. The only reason you don't want me to change the future is because it's your past. Well, here's a news flash for you: Your present is someone else's past! Why aren't you worried about affecting that?"
"Well, they must not mind," Lexx answered sarcastically, "because they haven't come back and told us to cut it out." He gestured toward the display he and Kal worked at so often. "They certainly have the means."
"Because they haven't come back to tell you?" Lex scoffed. "That's very subjective reasoning."
"We're subjective creatures," Kal countered. "We can only go by what we see, what we know, what we've been told. And I don't think Lexx is meant to die now."
"No, he isn't. He was meant to die one hundred years ago. And yet here he is, with you and healthy just because you don't think he should be otherwise. Well, I don't think I should have to spend the next fifteen years of my life being hated by someone I—" Lex broke off suddenly, unable to say another word, not sure what the next word should be.
Kal gave him a moment to continue, then spoke softly when he didn't. "The very fact that we exist proves that you are. I know it's not fair. But that's how it is."
"No," Lex shook his head. "That's how it was. But it doesn't have to be. I'm going to cut out those fifteen years—I know I can. There's no reason for either of us to suffer like that."
"What exactly do you think you're going to do?" Lexx asked.
"I'll tell Clark what's happened here. I'll tell him we're meant to reconcile. I'll make him understand me."
"But he can't understand you," Kal said gently. "He can't understand anything about you—not yet. He sees you in an unflattering light and that's not going to change overnight. You have to give him more time to grow."
"He won't be able to deny this!"
"Deny what? You'll be returned to the same moment you left. There will be no evidence of this, and Clark would be hard pressed to believe in time travel for any reason."
"Much less coming from you," Lexx added. "Hell, in a week, you'll be questioning if it was real."
"All right—all right! Fine. Then why don't you go see him? Talk to him? Tell him what's meant to be?"
"Well, let's see," Lexx mused, "maybe because we don't want things to change?"
"Lex," Kal broke in before he could bite back at his other self, "he wouldn't believe us even if we did. He doesn't trust you, so he wouldn't trust Lexx."
"But he'll trust himself, won't he?"
Kal shook his head, sympathy etching his face. "No. Clark was having some... dealings with a kind of doppelgänger."
"Doppel—?" Lex sat back into his seat with sudden understanding. "That man... that man who came to me."
"Yes. Anything I say to him that doesn't fit his image of how things are or should be would only make him think I was him."
"Then you can bring him here!"
Again, Kal shook his head sympathetically. "That would mean nothing to him. He already knows of this place, but doesn't know enough about it or how to use it to recognize the changes time has made."
Frustrated, Lex let out a heavy sigh. "All right, what if I tell him everything you've told me? Everything I now know about you—about what you can do and where you come from?"
"All the times you've tried to confront him about his abilities, what happened? He'll only mistrust you all the more, Lex, wondering how you really found out about Krypton, and certain you're still spying on him. And you know he'll deny every word of it."
"Damn it!" Lex's fist came slamming down onto the table in frustration, but its makeup allowed no vibration and the A.I. softened it just enough to protect his hand, so he felt almost no pain. It was very unsatisfying.
"Lex... you have to give him time. Only time will bring you together. You can't force it or shorten it. It is going to take a lot of anger and struggle and changes before you find common ground with him. That's just the way it is."
"I promise you," Lexx added, "the rewards will be worth the wait."
"That's easy for you to say!" Lex shouted, getting suddenly to his feet, his anger and frustration boiling out of him. "Both of you! You have a hundred and thirty years of friendship and happiness behind you! Well, I have a decade and a half of nothing but more despair before me, and I can't just accept it like that!"
Lexx sat up more fully in his seat, his lips setting in a thin line. "I swear to god, if you do not drop this, we will keep you here until we find some way to safely remove all of your memories of this place and then we will put you back where we got you with no knowledge of what happened here."
Lex sneered, satisfaction pumping through him at the impossibility of carrying out that threat. "You can't remove all my memories of this place," he shouted. "If you did, I wouldn't know to move the stasis chamber out of Shiar-Da's reach, and then only the other timeline will exist, and you will suffer agonies for months, wither away like burnt paper, and DIE!"
He straightened his back, a momentary beat of victory pumping through him, until he realized that the shocked look on Lex's face had turned to regret. He glanced at Kal and found him positively crestfallen. All expression fell from Lex's face and he took a step backward.
He watched as Lexx bit his bottom lip, his head inclined slightly, and Kal stared wide eyed at the side of his face.
"Lexx...?" he said, his voice small.
Lexx rubbed a hand over his mouth and didn't respond. He met Lex's eyes hard.
Lex shook his head, stunned by the weight of what he'd done, sure he couldn't have, wouldn't have. He took another step back, then another.
Kal, becoming more and more distraught by Lexx's lack of response and what that likely meant, rose to his feet, breezed by Lex, and crossed the room, standing at the control panel without using it, his head bowed.
Lex continued stepping backward, driven away by the blank blame in his double's eyes, as if he was on the verge of saying, ‘I knew you were going to do this.’
Finally, he turned, unable to stand it any longer, and walked briskly toward the entrance.
"Lex—" Kal called as he hurried by.
Lexx's hard, angry voice cut him off. "Let him go."
A few steps more, and Lex stumbled into the freezing cold. He walked several yards into the swirling snow, until he felt separated from the crystal building and its reminders, and then fell to his knees in the deep, white ground.
How could he have?
He punched his fists deeply into the snow, his knuckles scraping raw and stinging with cold.
How could he have?
All he'd wanted was to hurt himself, that other smug, superior, happy self, and instead he'd managed to hurt Clark... again. Why did this happen? Why was it that even when he wanted something good, something real and beneficial, it only ever led him to hurt the people he cared about?
He fell to his side in the snow, shivering, gasping for breath against the wind.
It seemed so easy for them—for all of them. They obtained the simple things they wanted, they got life-loves and families and purpose, but it seemed the more he tried, the more these things were dangled just out of his reach. Like hanging from the edge of a cliff—a beautiful rock face he had no choice but to destroy lest he fall—that really was it.
And he'd really jammed it in this time, hadn't he? Jammed it in and watched a huge section come loose and fall. And was he still clinging? What the hell for? Surely he'd broken it beyond repair—surely he'd broken it all down long ago.
~ ~ ~
Chapter 8
Lex woke up unaware he'd fallen asleep.
Expecting to find himself surrounded by snow, he was surprised to feel the soft mattress under his back and the warm blanket atop him. For a short, hopeful moment, he thought maybe he'd dreamt the entire episode, but the sting on his knuckles told him otherwise.
He sat up on an elbow, hearing the A.I. inform his hosts he was awake. Moments later, Lexx walked slowly into the bed chamber, watching him without expression.
"I'm... I'm so sorry. I—"
"I know." He approached the bed.
"Is he okay?"
Lexx tilted his head slightly, seeming to think about it. "Well, something tells me he might inadvertently crush me to death in the night..." he smiled when Lex let out a weak chuckle. "But... yes, he's all right."
Unable to say anything further, Lex only fell limply back onto his side and let his head rest on the pillow. He stared without seeing at his other self's approaching legs, feeling sick over the memory of what he'd done.
With a sigh, Lexx settled himself on the edge of the bed and reached out to massage Lex's shoulder. Despite himself, Lex leaned into the touch. "Lex, I'm going to tell you something."
Curious, he turned to look up at his other self.
Lexx nodded. "I'm going to tell you something that I know you're not going to heed. Something that I didn't learn for a very long time. And though I'm sure it will do absolutely no good, I'm going to tell you anyway..." he shrugged casually, "just for the hell of it, I suppose. Lex," he met his gaze, "you try too hard."
Sighing, Lex relaxed more fully into his pillow, feeling he'd heard this from himself before.
"When you want something, you try it absolutely to death." He paused briefly. "Dad taught us to go after the things we wanted."
Lex nodded in agreement.
"But I don't think he ever considered that maybe the things we want... might be a little more delicate than the things he wanted."
Lex closed his eyes as the hand on his shoulder squeezed reassuringly, then pulled away.
"When you're feeling up to it," Lexx said as he got back to his feet, "we should get started on that second gathering."
Lex immediately started pushing the blanket off of him.
"You don't need to do it right now."
"Actually, I do." He gazed down at his body, clad in only shorts, and found his clothes folded on a newly formed chair by the end of the bed. He crossed to it and started pulling on his trousers. Glancing behind him, he found that his other self had left to give him some privacy, and was glad for it. He hurried into the rest of his clothes and headed into the main room, only misstepping slightly when Kal raised his head at his entrance and met his gaze with a slight smile.
"Feeling better?"
Lex didn't answer, heading for the dispenser. "Water. Hold the smart-ass questions."
Without even a pause of disobedience, a cool glass of water appeared. Lex sipped at it, glad for the moment that the A.I. seemed able to sense emotion and tension in the air and behave appropriately. He was gearing up to ask for a meal he didn't want, which he would quickly force himself to eat in order to be more useful for the chamber, when Kal interrupted his thoughts.
"There's food for you on the table if you want it. I... made sure not to ask for poached eggs. Or, really, anything else that came to mind first. Just in case."
"Thank you," Lex said in a gruff voice, and turned to walk to the table without meeting Kal's gaze.
He sat stiffly and worked his way through two cups of decaffeinated coffee, a cup of milk, two pieces of whole wheat toast, a small mushroom and prosciutto omelet, and a bowl of pineapple and strawberries and didn't taste a bite of it. He sat back, his foot tapping in impatience, knowing they would want him to wait before getting into the chamber.
Slowly, Kal settled into the seat across from him. Lex instantly began to dread whatever words would come out of his mouth. When he finally did speak, it was much worse than Lex had expected.
"It's okay," he said, softly, gently, his voice obvious in its attempt to soothe. "I'd already known there was serious trouble in the other timeline, and I suppose it only followed that—" he broke off, swallowed, and shrugged. "I know you didn't mean..."
Lex shifted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling nauseous. "It isn't."
Kal inclined his head slightly. "Sorry?"
"It isn't okay," Lex said more clearly, lifting his head. "I can't believe I..." He leaned forward earnestly. "I'm so sorry, Clark. I am so sorry."
A small smile lit Kal's face, his expression completely devoid of blame or hurt. "I know. It's okay."
Lex shook his head even as Kal spoke, not stopping until he finally left his seat, muttering, "It isn't," and headed at a brisk pace for parts of the crystal castle he hadn't yet seen.
"But, Lex..."
He continued without looking back and once he'd left the room, he spent a long time behind the wall he'd only before associated with the sound of Kal's destructive force, and was grateful when neither Kal nor Lexx came to chase him down. More than anything else, he wanted a drink to calm his nerves, but a close second was to simply be left alone for a while.
There were a lot of things behind that wall, rooms that went on and on, and Lex became more and more impressed with the scope of what Kal had once referred to as ‘the Fortress.’ Many of the most interesting things were restricted, which was only frustrating at first, and then he quickly became accustomed to it. However, he did find a restroom that he didn't have to call for, which was very helpful, as from his point of view he hadn't used a bathroom or brushed his teeth in two days, though his body insisted it hadn't even been one. It took a bit of trying to get an appropriate toothbrush out of the A.I., but he managed to make do.
Afterwards, continuing on his way, he found a chamber that looked almost like a crystal telephone booth and was humming rather terrifyingly with power. It was intriguing, but Lex had had enough experiences with the chambers of this place, so he gave it a wide berth just the same.
There was a room dedicated to playing important moments from history in three dimensional loops. They were activated by his presence as he walked past display after display, each made of a slab of thin, clear crystal that seemed held in the air by nothing. They stopped working for him after 2007.
In another room, quite similar in makeup, none of the displays worked. Try though he might, he couldn't get the A.I. to give in even once. He imagined it might have been where Kal and Lexx kept records of their innovations, or perhaps information on whatever they were working on at the moment. Either way, it was off limits for him.
At the end of many more rooms like these, including one that seemed to have no purpose but to house a larger than life statue of a man and a woman holding a globe of what appeared to be an alien planet, there was another exit from the Fortress. Lex leaned against the doorjamb, watching the snow swirl by, but not being stupid enough to go traipsing out into it again. He was intrigued by the way he could stand at the very edge of the castle and still feel only warmth, even as he heard the wind scream by and could have reached out a hand and grabbed a snowflake.
Once his watch told him half an hour had gone by, though the time of day it kept was surely nowhere near his current reality, he turned around and headed back through the rooms again. When he found himself back at the beginning of his journey, he paused, pressing a palm to his temple and wishing his dull headache would go away. He didn't have access to what he was craving, and he was just going to have to deal with it.
Finally, he emerged from behind the same wall and found Kal with his back turned, working at his usual control panel.
Lex nearly asked where his other self had gone when his gaze happened to stumble on him and the sight of his predicament gave him a start.
Lexx was in a chamber off to the side of the room. He appeared to be encased in a block of ice, his limbs lying as if he had been lifted from the floor and they'd been hanging loose when he'd been suddenly flash-frozen. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be sleeping. Flickering blue flashes were lighting his body.
"What's he doing?" Lex asked, approaching Kal slowly where he stood.
Kal looked over one shoulder at him, then over the other at Lexx, then back to the panel. "Oh, he's undergoing a treatment."
Lex took a few steps closer to the chamber, not wanting to get too close, but curious to see more. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "It looks like he's tanning."
Kal turned around, eying the chamber, and he laughed quietly. "Yeah, I guess it kind of does."
"Now, wait a minute. Why does getting a treatment look like that and yet that gathering thing—?"
"Lex," Kal broke in, shaking his head and smiling. "The two are completely different. It's like asking why brushing your teeth doesn't hurt but getting them all pulled does."
"Well, that's a charming analogy," he said dryly.
"And yet, I'm sure you'd agree it's an accurate one."
Lex smiled at the joke, gazing at Kal with appreciation. "You know, I," he shrugged awkwardly, "I sometimes miss joking around with Clark."
Kal's smile sympathized. "I know."
He took a deep, shaking breath, and let it out slowly. "I wish I could undo so many of the things I've done."
Kal nodded his understanding.
"But, I... I can't, can I?"
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to learn these things and now you have to live your life knowing them. It would have been much easier if you hadn't."
"Yes, I suppose it would have been."
Lex bowed his head and Kal allowed a silent moment to go by. "Are you ready?"
"Yes," Lex replied suddenly, turning toward the chamber as he remembered what he'd returned to the main room for. He'd intended to climb into it himself, without any assistance from Kal, but he was quickly there and helping him in just the same.
"A.I., prepare for an accelerated gathering."
"Have you ever been in anything like this?" Lex asked as casually as he could, speaking mainly to drown out the sound of the whirring.
Kal nodded. "I've been in this, actually."
"What—this chamber?" Kal nodded. "You? But why?"
He laughed quietly. "Lex... you'd be amazed at the strange things that happen. And how often."
"Worse than Smallville?"
Kal snorted and stepped back as the tools began to descend. "Smallville was a cakewalk."
Lex's eyes widened. "Christ."
"Yeah." Kal offered a small smile, then became more serious. "This one's going to take a little longer. The A.I.'s getting closer and I want to double up on the samples, all right?"
Lex steeled himself as various apparatus approached his body. "Go for it."
With that, the procedure began. Kal held his gaze, smiling slightly. But he didn't speak, and Lex felt no worse for the silence. A few minutes into it, Lexx's chamber began sinking into the ground, turning into a jelly-like material and allowing Lexx a moment to upright himself inside of it before it sank away from him completely. He stretched his arms out and pressed his shoulder blades together, looking refreshed, then moved to Kal's side to observe the rest of Lex's process.
"Two gatherings?" he asked Kal.
"Yes. We're getting close."
"The neuropeptides?"
"The enkephalins are still a little shaky."
"Hm."
Lex focussed on their casual conversation over the state of his body's cells, finding it vastly preferable to directing any focus toward the tool drilling its phantom way into his skull. He decided that he had reached the point where he would have been willing to sign away every stone of his mansion and every inch of the attached grounds for one good, stiff glass of scotch.
~
"I'm going to stay out here for the night."
"You don't need to," Kal said, gesturing toward the bed chamber. "I don't mind at all—"
"I know. You've both been very kind to me. But you should have your bed to yourselves, and... I'll be fine here."
"Well," Kal hesitated, glancing at Lexx, "if you're certain."
"I am. Thank you."
His double met his gaze, not saying a word about his decision, but rather seeming to search his eyes for a memory he already possessed. Then he simply nodded once. "Do you need anything?"
"Oh—no. And if I do think of anything, I'm sure I'll enjoy the mental challenge of fighting it out of the A.I."
Kal laughed in agreement, and began to head toward bed. "All right. Good night, Lex."
"Good night."
His other self merely gave him a nod and followed his companion. Lex once again removed his belt and shoes and unfastened his cuffs, then crawled into the guest bed as the lighting automatically softened.
He seemed to sink into it, which was comfortable at first. But then he tried to turn onto his side, and the bed moved to accommodate him, just a beat or two behind. It felt as if there were living things in his mattress, and that was far too much like the gathering chamber.
When he fell still, it also thankfully fell still, but he knew he would need to move about now and then in the night. "A.I.," he said quietly so as not to disturb his hosts, "could you please stop this bed from moving when I move?"
"The adjustment has been made."
"Thank you."
"You are welcome."
Lex sighed, sinking his head into the pillow and closing his eyes. The urge for a nightcap was very strong, but he was fighting it on matter of principle. He turned onto his back, pulling the cover more fully over him, then froze. His eyes popped open. He scowled.
"A.I., would you please flatten the mattress, removing the indentations from my previous position, and then stop the bed from moving when I move?"
"The adjustment has been made."
It had, but that didn't stop him from shooting the ceiling a dirty look. He closed his eyes again, trying very hard to relax into the now rigid crystal mattress and ignore the craving gnawing at the corners of his mind.
But after a few frustrating minutes of turning this way and that, he finally couldn't stand it and popped out of bed, padding to the dispenser as he wiped a hand over his dry lips. "A.I., what can you make that approximates scotch?"
"I am not programmed to provide alcohol."
"Yes, I know that—and would you keep your voice down?" Lex hissed. "I would prefer not to be overheard. Now, I said what can you make that will approximate scotch? Without alcohol."
"Cola and water."
A sneer climbed across Lex's lips. "Oh, perfect," he muttered. Defeated, he let out a heavy sigh. "What can you make that will help me sleep?"
"I am programmed with Martha Kent's recipe for warm milk and honey."
He looked up in surprise. "All right. I'll try that."
Without further discussion, the A.I. provided a mug—crystal, of course—of steaming, frothy milk. Lex blew on it and took a sip. It was far too sweet and far too thick. But in a way, Martha Kent had made it, so he felt obliged to finish it just the same. He crossed back to his bed for the evening and sat on the edge, taking another sip.
"A.I., could you provide a cushioned headboard to this bed for me to lean back against?"
He watched a slice of shimmering crystal about an inch thick begin to ooze out of the head of his bed, pushing his pillow out of the way as it advanced. It quickly solidified itself into a soft headboard that appeared far too fragile to accept any weight, though Lex knew that impression was inaccurate.
"The adjustment has been made."
"Yes, I can see that," he muttered.
There was a slight pause. "You are welcome."
He chuckled at her sarcasm, leaning back against the newly sprouted section and tugging the blanket over his legs as he sipped at his drink. It was growing on him, slowly but surely. "A.I.," he started curiously, looking for some way to pass the time while he tried to get tired, "why is it that you don't have a name? Something more personable, I mean, than ‘A.I.’"
"My charges are unable to agree upon a name for me."
"Your charges?"
"Kal-El and Lexx."
"I see." Lex would have thought that the A.I. would refer to them as her owners rather than as her responsibilities, but he—probably wisely—decided to keep that misconception to himself. He sipped at the warm milk. "But haven't they lived here for eighty years?"
"That information is restricted."
Lex laughed quietly. "They have," he answered himself. "A.I., are you telling me that in all the time they've lived here, they haven't been able to agree on one name? Just one?"
"That is correct."
"That's... kind of pathetic."
She paused. "That is correct."
Lex snorted into his drink, all but choking. He abandoned small talk with the A.I. to focus on his milk, finishing it within a few minutes. He sat the empty mug on the bed beside him and eyed it. "A.I., can you suck this thing up or whatever it is you do?"
The mug sank into the bed, all remnants of it disappearing within moments, the A.I. offering no argument nor requesting any clarification.
"Thanks," he said with a small, satisfied smile, and settled back down into the bed.
He was just thinking that perhaps he was getting the hang of how to talk to the A.I. when she all but drawled, "Shall I suck up the headboard thing as well?"
Lex's eyes popped open, a wry twist to his lips. "No, thank you," he said shortly. "I think I'll keep it."
She had nothing more to add, and remained silent as Lex's eyes closed again. Mrs. Kent's recipe was apparently doing its job, as only a few minutes later he felt his muscles begin to relax, and he started to drift.
The last thing he heard before falling asleep was a muffled grunt followed by the irritated sound of his own voice groaning with strain, "Christ, Kal, you're killing me, here!" and a mumbled, apologetic response. His lips curled into a slight smile at the amusing mental image it provoked.
~
When Lex next awoke, he knew without asking the A.I. that it was nowhere near time to get up. He wasn't sure why he'd been awakened. He couldn't remember if he'd been dreaming.
Just then, a small sound reached his ears, and he knew that something similar had been what had awakened him. Just after, he picked up the sound of his own voice gently shushing someone.
Lex's visual imagination slammed into overdrive, and he tried to shut his eyes, bury his head back in the pillow, forget about it. Perhaps if another sound had reached him, he could have. But that didn't happen. Only silence echoed in his ears, long enough that he was sure he'd imagined the sound, and had only extrapolated the meaning of it.
Mentally fighting his every movement, he nonetheless slipped out of his bed and to his feet. He only stood there quietly for a few seconds, his head cocked to his right, his ear straining to pick up the slightest rustle. But still, there was nothing.
He wouldn't do it, of course. He'd already seen them lie together when he'd been allowed it, and to encroach on their privacy now would be nothing less than abominable. He would ask the A.I. for another glass of that sickeningly sweet milk and go back to sleep.
He headed for the dispenser to do just that, and couldn't have claimed surprise at himself when he changed direction in mid-stride and climbed the few steps that led to Kal and Lexx's bed chamber. Biting his lip, shaking his head and berating himself internally, he nonetheless snuck up to the wall that divided the room from the rest of the enclosure and peeked around it.
The A.I.'s lighting was on its late night intensity, which meant there was just enough to stop a person from walking blind and stumbling into things, but not near enough to make out colour or much in the way of detail. Still, the slight rhythmic shuffling taking place under the blanket, below Kal's bared back, did much to fuel Lex's imagination.
He could barely even see his other self, almost completely hidden as he was under his companion's larger form. A pale hand was visible, splayed out over the head of the bed, near where Lex himself had slept the previous night. It dug into the crystal mattress in tandem with Kal's small movements. His forehead was buried in the edge of his pillow, while Kal's face was completely hidden by his own hair and his position in the crook of Lexx's neck. An arm was wrapped low around Lexx's waist, the muscles flexing in a regular rhythm.
Lex found himself quite thrown by the lack of shame he felt over watching them so blatantly, and wondered if it had more to do with the fact that it was his own future he was seeing, or that he was experiencing no erotic pleasure from the sight, but only fascination and disbelief. That was going to be him. He and Clark were going to be them.
He shook his head, still not able to buy it. It was difficult enough to imagine them friends again. Harder still to imagine them lovers—permanent companions. But even if he managed to get himself past both of these hurdles, he still had to accept that none of it was going to even begin for over a decade, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about that.
Kal's smooth movements intensified only slightly, and their heavy, almost surreal silence was broken by a muffled grunt, Lexx's one visible hand digging its fingers deeply into the mattress. Soon after, Kal sucked a breath quickly through his teeth and fell still, his back hunching. After a few protracted seconds, he relaxed completely. Lex's double turned his head away from the pillow, Kal turned his own away from his skin, and the sounds of dual rough panting filled the room.
They lay still for at least a minute before Kal's head was moving this way and that, and several small osculatory sounds reached Lex's ears. Then he adjusted slightly to his side, bringing Lexx with him, who let out a quiet grunt halfway through the movement. They rested, spooned tightly together, Kal's cheek against Lexx's neck. He sighed deeply.
Lex let out a slow, silent breath, enamoured by their quiet peace. He had to press his lips together tightly when Kal later mumbled in a sleepy, apologetic voice, "I'm going to fall asleep now."
Lexx breathed a soft laugh and patted his nearest arm. "I thought you might."
"Sorry."
"It's okay."
In seconds, Kal's breathing had deepened.
Lex watched them lie still for a few seconds longer, smiling and still shaking his head at the very thought of it, intending to move silently away and back to bed at any moment. He felt as if his heart would stop when, without warning of any kind, Lexx suddenly looked over his shoulder and met his eyes.
Frozen and mortified, he opened his mouth, intending to apologize or explain or something else that would probably only emerge as stuttering, when Lexx smirked and flippantly asked, "Can't sleep?"
When Lex only continued to gape, his double's smile widened, his eyes twinkling in the scarce light, and then he turned away as if he'd never looked back at all.
Lex backed away from his spying place, his steps quiet, his heart racing. But in a few seconds, when nothing further happened and only silence reigned in the castle, he sighed with relief.
Of course. How could he have forgotten for even a moment? Lexx would remember being Lex, standing there seeing them, and he would of course know precisely what he'd been thinking. There was no need for Lex to explain anything to someone who had once been him.
Just the same, he hurried back to his bed and climbed under the blanket as quietly as possible, his cheeks and ears burning with embarrassment. There was little even Mrs. Kent's warm milk and honey recipe could have done for him now.
It took him quite some time to fall back to sleep, and when he did, he found his dreams exceptionally complicated.
~ ~ ~
Chapter 9
When Lex opened his eyes again, it was plainly morning. But the sight that greeted him made him want to turn over and feign sleep for at least another few hours.
Kal was standing at his usual place, looking up at the large display of rushing Kryptonian characters and working the control board before him. This would not normally have caused Lex any anxiety, but all he could think this morning was, ‘What if Lexx told him?’
He closed his eyes tight, trying to etch an intention permanently onto his own mind: He would never tell Clark that his past self had spied on them. No matter how his embarrassment might fade, or what humour he might one day be able to see in it, he would never speak of what had happened—or, at the very least, he would only do so after this time travelling foray was complete.
But Lex had no way of knowing if swearing that intention to himself now was enough to change what was his present—assuming it needed changed—and so this gave him very little relief from his disquiet.
Just the same, he knew he couldn't stay in bed all day—the crystal mattress, even softened, hadn't treated him well in the night—and so he silently roused himself and sat up on the edge.
Despite knowing that Kal was apparently capable of hearing anything and everything, Lex did his best to keep quiet and not gain his attention while he fastened his cuffs and straightened out his newly wrinkled clothes as well as he could manage.
When his feet hit the floor and the bed began sinking away behind him, he cleared his throat and carefully approached Kal.
Kal glanced back at him and smiled, no recrimination in his eyes and no blush in his cheeks. "Morning," he said quietly.
Lex felt a sigh of relief rush out of him and he approached at a more respectible clip. "Good morning."
"Lexx is sleeping in," he went on, keeping his voice low. Lex joined him at the control panel. "He says he didn't get a very good night's sleep."
As Kal frowned with concern, Lex did his best not to smirk. He was sure he wouldn't have been able to get much sleep either, if his bed companion was regularly waking him with sleepy 3AM romps and embraces akin to violence.
He stared at his unshod feet for a moment, struggling to keep his expression neutral. When he was sure he had a hold on himself, he watched Kal's deft fingers work the control panel and his unblinking eyes move with machine-like speed over the scrolling text on the display.
"You know," he said casually, "in the other timeline, when you were trying to convince me to come here, you promised me that I could use this technology."
Kal threw him a little smirk. "And so you have."
"That depends on how you define the word ‘used.’ I've only interacted with it by giving simple voice commands."
"Then I guess it's a good thing that's how I define the word ‘used.’"
Lex stared at him dryly, but Kal's smile only grew.
"Sorry, Lex." He gestured vaguely at the display. "You can't read any of this, anyway."
"What about him?" he motioned toward the bed chamber with a tilt of his head. "How's he supposed to use it if it's only in Kryptonian?"
Kal slowly turned his head and gazed at Lex patiently.
With a start, Lex grasped his meaning. "Oh." He peered at the characters zooming by, each line moving in the opposite direction from the lines below and above it. It gave him a headache. "How long did that take?"
"Kryptonian isn't as hard to learn as you think. It's just governed by a different set of rules, that's all."
Lex nodded, watching Kal work the control panel instead, though he didn't understand any of the symbols on it, either. "I'm surprised," he said casually, "that it's a manual control panel."
Kal shrugged. "I prefer manual control panels. The immersion stuff they use now," he shook his head, "it's so distracting. I always spend more time screwing around with the options than I ever do getting actual work done."
"Most people use three dimensional controls, then?"
"Three?" Kal glanced at him. "Um... yeah, something like that."
Lex let out a sharp sigh, irritated with the lack of details. "You're working on the cell analyzation?" he tried instead.
"Yes—well, this is the purification routine."
"In the other timeline, you did the same, but you," he hesitated, realizing he had his own details to hold back, "well, you didn't have much choice. I have to admit, I'm surprised that even now you're still doing the brunt of the work. I would have thought that between the two of you, he'd be the more scientific one and would be more ensconced in this project."
Kal nodded consideringly. "Lexx is brilliant." He smirked. "But I'm faster. Besides, I love science."
"Do you?" Lex shrugged. "It's difficult for me to reconcile that statement with the Clark I know. He's smart, but he never seems to have interest in any academic subject in particular."
"Oh, you're right. When I was that age, I didn't." Even as he spoke, he didn't slow his speed reading of the alien information rushing by on the screen. He seemed completely unfazed by doing both things at once, his focus unfettered. "I was so messed up trying to juggle issues no one could help me with, I didn't know what I was interested in."
Lex let a quiet beat pass. "Someone... might have been able to help you," he said meaningfully.
Kal met his gaze. After a moment, he smiled his understanding and looked back at the display. "What I love about science," he went on, "is that it's always changing, always teaching those who study it. In all of these years, I've never once run out of things to learn from science. When you can read and comprehend at my speed—you realize I'm able to calculate more quickly than the computers of your time—and you remember everything you see, that's really saying something."
"Yes, he," Lex tilted his head toward the bed chamber, "mentioned your eidetic memory. I must say, I was thrown by it. But I suppose that must have been something you developed later in life."
Kal's constantly moving fingers paused on the control panel. "My memory?"
"Mm."
"No." He shook his head and took up his work again. "No, it's always been that way, ever since I was a child. But, you see, I wanted to go to school with my friends—be ‘normal’—and because of what I am, I also needed to avoid calling attention to myself. So for much of my life, I played dumb. The Clark Kent that you knew—that you know—he kept these mental abilities to himself just as he kept his physical abilities to himself."
Lex gazed at the side of his face, his brow tightening in confusion as he searched Kal's open expression. "You're telling me that... you've always remembered everything you hear? Everything you see?"
Kal paused to look at Lex. "Yeah. Everything I experience, full stop." He went casually on with his work, apparently unaware of the confusion he was causing.
Lex fell quiet, trying to think it through, make it fit, but he couldn't. "That can't be right," he murmured.
Kal didn't pause his work. "Oh?"
"Well, it doesn't make any sense. In the beginning, when we were first friends, you often used to ask me to tell you things I'd already told you, repeat stories you'd already heard." He scoffed at the memory. "My god, I remember giving you the history of a scutum I picked up at a museum auction no less than four times in two years—at your insistence!" He gazed with open perplexity at the side of Kal's smiling face. "Why would you do that if you could have recalled the story line by line from the first time I'd told it?"
For a moment, he didn't respond. He only continued to work, his slight smile firmly in place, and Lex wondered if he was being ignored—if somehow he'd stumbled on another detail he wasn't allowed to have. Then Kal glanced over to him, his eyes twinkling, and he shot Lex a devilish smirk.
Lex suddenly caught his meaning and was taken aback with a start. "You liked hearing that story."
Kal's smirk morphed into a pleased grin and he looked back to the display with a shrug. "I liked watching you tell it. In those first few years, I never saw you so animated and happy as when you were telling me some ancient story about a piece of art or a sword or some other rare item you'd managed to acquire or been given." He shrugged again, sighing softly. "I suppose it should have scared me that you had so much interest in the origin of things. You ended up with a lot of interest in the origin of me, too." He met Lex's eyes steadily. "To know a thing's past is to know the thing itself, you said."
A smile ghosted over Lex's lips at the memory. "Yes."
"You were always very excited about the things you knew, the things you understood, and you wanted others to understand, too. The things you didn't, like me..." he sighed, "well, you were always a little obsessive about those. At the time, I saw one as a gift and the other as a fault." He paused, his smile becoming affectionate. "But I understand now that both are gifts. You have a real thirst for knowledge, Lex. If you didn't... this couldn't possibly work."
Lex didn't need to ask what ‘this’ was, and he knew Kal wasn't referring to the A.I.'s purification procedures. ‘This’ was them—Kal and Lexx, Lex and Clark, together watching the centuries go by—and Lex, what's more, was quite certain he was right. How could one possibly endure near immortality if there did not exist an undying interest to learn what there constantly would be to be learned?
Lex looked down at the slightly reflective crystal floor for a moment, watching a smile tease the corners of his own mouth. "I don't suppose," he said slyly, "you'd like to explain that to my Clark, would you?" He shot Kal a playfully devious look.
Kal laughed at the sight of it. "No. But I can't blame you for trying."
Unbidden, Lex felt his mood darken, his smile wilt, though he struggled to hold on to the light banter. "Mind if I blame you for not trying?" He ground his teeth, knowing the question had come in far too bitter of a tone, and yet unable to look away or apologize.
Kal's bright eyes dulled and his lips pulled into a slight frown. He sighed heavily. "Lex... I can't tell you how important those years are."
"Yes, I know you can't." He'd lost all pretense now, his expression stern, his eyes showing the betrayal he felt.
Kal was silent for a long time, only searching Lex's countenence, his own expression showing an increasing nervousness. He took a steadying breath. "What are you going to do?" he asked softly.
Lex blinked in surprise at the question, unsure how to answer. "I... don't know. I-I don't know that there's anything I can do, I suppose."
A small laugh passed Kal's lips, but it was insincere and awkward. "If that were true, Lex, I wouldn't be so nervous. I'm just terrified that you're going to try to do something and... and you'll change things. And not for the better. I just—" he sighed sharply with frustration, "I don't want to see fifteen years become thirty, or... or always. The timing worked out so perfectly for us, Lex. If that balance is upset..." he shook his head, his eyes filled with a fear that made him look young and familiar.
For a moment, Lex considered changing the subject, walking away, smiling and cracking some joke to break the tension. But after a short pause, he found himself instead leaning forward with great import, lowering his voice, and speaking in a quick, conspiratorial tone. "If you could just tell me what happens, give me a few cues to pick up on, then maybe I could shave off a few years or get—"
"You can't!" Kal insisted. "You just don't understand, Lex: It isn't just things that you or I control, it's the world, it's other people, other events, things that were outside our reach—you'd have to change everything, not just how you personally did something or what you said, but facets of each of our lives that are beyond your scope. Please, Lex, accept it! This," he spread his arms to indicate their surroundings, "is your future. But first... first, those fifteen years are."
Lex continued peering into Kal's eyes, beseeching with his own. But when he knew Kal had nothing more to say, he let out a long, slow breath, and bowed his head.
"They just are, Lex. I... I'm sorry."
Lex averted his eyes, saying nothing.
Kal adjusted his weight on his feet, plainly uncomfortable. "Look, Lexx is probably going to sleep for another hour or so. Why don't we go ahead and get something to eat?"
"Yeah, sure." He did his best to offer a smile, though it was small and wan. "I'm just going to go use the facilities. I'll be back in a minute."
"Okay," Kal said softly to his retreating back. "Would you like me to order anything in particular?"
Lex glanced over his shoulder as he crossed the room, able to offer a real smile this time. "Actually, I'm rather fond of the poached eggs you manage to coax out of the A.I."
Kal brightened instantly. "You ought to be," he called after him. "It only took seven months to get them right!"
Lex shook his head, chuckling quietly as he rounded the corner.
~
Panting and numb, Lex stumbled out of the chamber in a rush, having spent far too long inside it.
"Sorry about that," Kal said, wincing.
"You said three gatherings! That was an hour!"
"The A.I. is stockpiling. I am sorry."
"Kal, tell me something," Lex said, panting and wiping nervous sweat from his forehead, "how do you feel about the name Bertha?"
Kal's brow furrowed with incomprehension. "What?"
Lex let out a heavy sigh while his double chuckled from his seat at the still formed breakfast table, likely remembering his personal feelings toward the A.I. at that moment. "Never mind," Lex muttered. He gestured with disgust at his wrinkled, sweaty clothes. "I don't suppose you have anything to wear that isn't, uh," he eyed Lexx's black leatheresque getup with meaning.
Lexx's grin only grew. "I'm afraid not. Not anything you'll want to wear, anyway. The style these days is a little... quirky."
"I can see that."
He shook his head seriously. "No, you can't. This kind of thing," he gestured at himself, "hasn't been in style for nearly forty years. It was the last almost-cool thing they did, believe me. But you can use the launder."
"Yes, but what will I—" he broke off, realizing there hadn't been a Y at the end of that word. "Sorry, what did you say?"
"The launder. You can wash your clothes while you're wearing them."
"They use portable ones now for camping and things," Kal added.
Lex swiped sweat from his upper lip. "That sounds... vaguely unpleasant."
"It isn't. Really." Lexx pointed at the far wall that Lex had spent some time behind the previous day. "It'll come up back there, near the washroom, when you ask for it. Go give it a try. You won't regret it."
Lexx seemed to have nothing further to say, and Kal only smiled a friendly smile, so Lex shrugged and headed for the other room, muttering under his breath, "Well, who am I to argue with me?"
~
Ten minutes later, he stumbled back into the main room clean and pressed and utterly amazed. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "My god! Who invented that thing?" he asked, his eyes wide with impressed surprise.
Lexx shot him a dry look. "Not... you."
"Oh." Lex tilted his head quickly, giving a little shrug. "Shame."
Kal was chuckling at their interaction from where he stood working the control panel. "If you think that's something, you should try the—"
The A.I. cut him off with a quiet beep.
"A.I.?"
"Analyzation and purification complete. I have an exact match. Duplication achieved. Stockpile full. Process terminated."
Everyone looked at the display, which had finally stilled, and was repeatedly scrolling the same two lines of alien characters in opposite directions.
Kal was the first to regain his wits. "Already, A.I.?" he asked, surprise plain in his voice.
"That is correct. Damage initially found in the subject's organs has been lessening with each subsequent gathering. Liver cells were at ninety-five percent efficiency on the final gathering. I was able to compensate for the remaining five percent. Process terminated."
Kal spun on his heel, grinning right at Lex. "Only two days without alcohol!" he exclaimed happily. He turned back to the control panel, shaking his head as he entered some commands. "Thank you, Smallville meteor shower 1989!"
Lexx's sparkling eyes caught Lex's gaze. "I suppose being a meteor freak does have its advantages," he mused.
"Wait a minute," Lex said, still stunned and blinking his complete surprise. "Did she say ‘final’ gathering? Do you... Do you mean it's done?"
"Yes!" Kal said, his grin dazzling. "Thank you so much, Lex—for everything. You don't have to get into that chamber again. I can take you home now."
"Oh. Well, I, uh..." he trailed off, having nothing to say.
Lex was surprised to find himself experiencing intense disappointment. It felt like such an anti-climactic moment. It was all just over—suddenly, calmly, and without complication. There was nothing further for him to do here, no reason for him to stick around and make small talk with Kal, or his other self, or even the A.I. All at once, the future, which had been lost without him, was finished with him.
Just as suddenly, he found that the prospect of another session in the chamber—or two, or even three—wasn't as loathsome as it had been only minutes ago.
Stamping down his desire to ask if they were certain, if perhaps he should stay for a little while longer just in case, he fastened the top two buttons of his newly cleaned shirt to protect his chest from the upcoming cold and tried to appear well-adjusted. "All right."
With a nod, Kal finished what he was working on at the control panel, then turned to await him, his hands clasped casually before him.
Lex turned to his double, feeling awkward at the sudden need to think up a proper good-bye. "Are you, uh... going to come along to see me home?" he asked with a small smile.
Lexx rose from his chair and approached him, glancing at Kal and swallowing nervously. "I... can't go through the portal. While we were preparing for your arrival, we had time to run some simulations, and it turned out that my treatments and time travel don't mix well. If I were to walk through it even once, my cellular cohesion would begin a massive cascade of accelerated deterioration. I'd be dead within a day."
"Oh." Lex blinked, allowing this information to sink in and wrap itself around what all had gone before. He looked to Kal with wide eyes and found him placid and patient, only waiting, finding nothing surprising in Lexx's words.
Slowly, Lex's lips parted in astonishment and he looked back to his double, who was watching him carefully with great meaning in his gaze. "Oh," Lex breathed again.
Goose bumps covering his body, he felt a pressure lift from his chest. Lexx's hesitation about the other timeline, his anxiety whenever it came up around Kal, his constant silent insistence that Lex should not speak of its details—it all suddenly made so much more sense. What Lex had thoughtlessly done, told Kal about his other self's death in the other timeline, had been horrible. But knowing what he hadn't done, knowing that he hadn't accidentally informed him that the other Kal had unknowingly caused the very death he'd sought to prevent, made that slip somehow much more bearable.
"I see," he finally said, and averted his gaze, struggling to keep any emotion at this revelation from his face.
Quickly, Lexx offered his hand. "Good-bye, Lex. I suppose I'll," he smiled slightly, his eyes twinkling, "see you soon."
Lex smiled weakly, shaking his hand one last time before letting it go. "Yeah. And I suppose... I won't see you soon enough."
Lexx's smile softened, he nodded once in understanding and sympathy, and Lex turned and slowly followed Kal out of the Fortress, leaving his other self both behind and before him.
He was already prepared for the cold, his arms tight around his chest, his head inclined to protect his face, but when they walked outside, he was surprised to find the weather had calmed. There was very little wind; there was no swirling snow. It was all still, calm, and serene.
Kal walked at his side silently, either having nothing to say or perhaps knowing now, after so many years, when Lex was in need of the moment.
Without the raging storm, he was able to see all the things he had missed when he had arrived: The perfect smoothness of the undisturbed snow, the majestic horizon line made by the distant mountaintops, the beauty of the open wild, and the desirability of its quiet isolation. For the first time, he thought he might understand how after a lifetime of cities and people, he might not only agree to come to this seemingly barren place, but even cherish it and know it as home. A glance at Kal, his lips upturned in the slightest of smiles, his long dark hair rustling in the slight breeze, solidified that impression of the home he now knew he was heading toward: The home he'd always, in some way, wanted for his own.
They took another step, seemingly the same as every other step had been, and Lex quickly closed his eyes against the sudden shriek of blaring white light.
~ ~ ~
Epilogue
"Hi, Lex."
Lex stopped grabbing for swirling papers and looked up at the unexpected voice. "Clark." Shocked, he rose from his seat. "What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you—" he broke off and trailed his gaze over Clark's freakishly long hair and strange form-fitting leather outfit scored with white stitching. "What the hell are you wearing?"
"Hm. Okay, I'm not actually sure I've won. Would you say that you told me to get out first, or said something about my clothes first? You got them sort of mixed together there, so I'm not sure."
Lex shot him a nonplussed look. "What?"
"Never mind. Lex," he took a deep breath, "I'm from the future."
After a minor pause, Lex rolled his eyes and reached for his intercom. "Right. If you'll excuse me, I'll be calling security."
"Oh, sure. Go ahead." Clark stood there, grinning, his arms crossed over his chest.
Lex paused, his finger hovering over the call button. "I'm not kidding, Clark."
He nodded encouragement. "Mm-hm."
"All right, fine." Lex pressed for security. "Richard, Quinn, I need a guest escorted out, please." He waited, but there was no response. Clark continued to grin. Lex pressed the button again. "Security, respond."
"Oh, I forgot to mention... they're asleep."
Lex straightened, his hand leaving the intercom. "Wh—? What did you do?"
"Nothing," he shrugged. "Just gave them a little nap." His grin widened. "They'll be fine."
"What do you think you're doing? Jesus Christ, Clark!" he began to come out from behind his desk.
"I'm doing what I need to. I'm from the future, and I need to talk to you."
Lex shook his head in disbelief at the utter impudence and headed for the hallway. "Get the hell out. Just get out of here."
"No, Lex, I'm serious. Hey, wait!"
Lex blinked in shock as Clark suddenly moved from the front of Lex's desk to halfway between the desk and the door in a flash, stopping Lex from advancing any farther toward the exit. "How did you do that?"
"I..." Clark trailed off, searching his face and looking mildly confused. "You know, Lex, you look a little... Wait a minute. What year is this?"
Lex let out a great scoff. "Oh, come on, Clark. Give me a break, will you? What the hell kind of game do you think you're—hey!" He tried to yank his arm back indignantly as Clark had grabbed his wrist and turned it at an awkward angle so he could read the display.
"Why don't you wear a watch that shows the year?" he asked despondently when he let it go.
"Because I generally know what year it is!"
"And it is...?"
"Oh, for—"
"Humour me." He smiled, nothing but friendliness in his eyes. "Please."
Lex sighed sharply. "It's 2007. Now will you please get out?"
"Oh, damn, not again." He let out a heavy sigh. "All right." Suddenly, he grasped Lex's biceps, hunkering down only slightly so they were eye to eye, and began speaking with great sincerity. Stunned, Lex didn't have the presence of mind to pull away. "I know what you're thinking: You hate me, I hate you, we're not friends, so I'm playing some cruel trick on you. But you know what? That's all going to change. You and I are going to be friends again." With that, he let Lex go, stood back up straight, and beamed.
Lex stared at him expressionlessly. "I see," he said without tone. "And how, precisely, do you intend to achieve that?"
"No, no, no. It's already happened for me, Lex. But you and the Clark you know," he nodded, "you're going to make up. And so, in the future—and I did mention I'm from the future, didn't I?—we'll be friends again."
"That's charming. Get out."
Clark laughed with what seemed to be delight. Lex peered into his pupils. "Clark, are you high?"
"Please. Clark Kent would have to be on drugs to be on drugs, or so I've been told more than once. I'm telling you the truth. Let me prove it to you."
Deciding to take a few minutes out of his day, just to see if anything amusing happened, Lex crossed his arms over his chest and stood his ground. "All right. Go ahead."
"Come back to the future with me."
"All right." He paused. "Here we are in the future." Feigning interest, he looked around the room. "Looks remarkably like the past."
Clark rolled his eyes. "Ha, ha. I'm serious." He reached out and gave a gentle tug at Lex's wrist, trying to get him to uncross his arms. "Come with me. I'll show you."
"I don't have time for these games, Clark. If you want to say something to me, say it here."
Clark heaved a great, frustrated sigh. "All right. It doesn't matter, you know most of it anyway. All that stuff you think I can do? Well—" and then he disappeared.
Lex blinked at the empty space before him in shock. "What—?"
"Over here, Lex."
Lex jumped and turned to find Clark sitting casually behind his desk. He gave a little wave, looking pleased with himself.
"How the hell—"
Before he could finish the sentence, Clark disappeared again, then reappeared three inches from Lex's face. "—did I do that?"
Lex stumbled back, Clark catching him by the elbows before he fell.
"Whoa. Sorry, sorry. Here," he turned and walked back to the desk, bent slightly, grabbed one of the legs, and lifted the whole thing into the air, keeping it perfectly balanced so that nothing on its surface was disturbed. After tossing his hair out of his eyes, he looked around, then crossed the room, still carrying the desk, and hefted up the leather sofa in precisely the same way.
"My god..."
"Now, if this is possible, why isn't it possible to be from the future? I mean, look at me. Do I look like the Clark you know? Do I even act like the Clark you know?"
Lex was only peripherally aware that his jaw was hanging loose, but he couldn't do anything about it. "I'm... I can't..."
"Come with me, Lex," Clark said softly, putting the furniture back where it belonged. "When's the next time you think you'll get an offer to travel to the future?"
Lex shook his head, mute and trying desperately to keep his thoughts together and figure out what he should say. "Why?"
"Hm?"
"W-Why do you want me there?"
"Well... I need your help. You need your help. Lex," he crossed the room, taking Lex's arms in his hands again, "I would never hurt you. Trust me just one more time, and I promise I won't let you down. There will be no amazing things happening only when you're not looking or unconscious; there will be no lame excuses and cellophane lies. Everything you'll see will be real, and I will be as forthcoming as I possibly can with you, and when I can't be, I'll tell you why. You've always wanted us to have an open friendship. Well, I can't change your past. But to-day, I can offer you this. Please... come with me."
~
Lex gasped sharply and his eyes shot open.
A gentle hand touched his arm. "Are you okay?"
He blinked, his eyes wide as they adjusted to the scant light in the cave. The portal behind them had gone dark. They were back.
"Yes, I... I remember everything now." He raised a hand to his temple, trying to massage away the headache that had been included with the sudden onslaught of memories. "You were much kinder to me than the other Kal."
"Oh." Kal sounded taken aback. "Well, then, I... I apologize for his behaviour."
Lex shook his head, taking a few steps into the cave and away from the portal. "No, he had every right," he muttered, mostly to himself.
"It did take some convincing to get you through the portal. It felt like we were in this cave for hours. It would have been much easier if I could have brought Lexx."
Lex felt his back stiffen. Sighing, he turned and faced Kal, deciding not to respond to his comment. "Well, I guess this is good-bye," he said instead.
"No. I want to see you back home."
"You really don't need to—"
"I do."
Something about the determined set of Kal's jaw sparked another memory. Lex suddenly recalled passing their doubles in the hall. In both timelines, there had been some silent communication between the two Kals, and now, with these memories behind him, Lex knew what it had been: The earlier Kal had wanted to ask his later self if what he was about to try to do was going to work. But a stoic look, recrimination in the eyes, had silenced that desire. If Lex were to pass him alone now, perhaps the earlier Kal would give in to asking, and Lex wasn't certain that, Kal knowing Lexx better than anyone, he could keep his expression impassive enough to be unreadable to him.
"Listen," Kal took a step forward, halving the distance between them, "I don't know exactly what happened in that other timeline. But I'm not dim, Lex, and my imagination can fill in what you haven't." Lex glanced away, feeling a spike of embarrassment at the memory of his outburst and how he'd hurt Kal with it. "I want to thank you, Lex. Thank you... for not letting that man exist."
Lex gazed deeply into Kal's eyes, touched by his words and by his gratitude, and yet utterly unable to express it. "Yeah," he said lamely, and shrugged. "Well, a hundred and forty-nine years from now, I'll try not to forget."
Kal laughed. "Great. Thanks."
"No problem."
~
"When we pass them," Kal said as they made their way from the garage toward Lex's office, "you know not to say anything."
"Not a word."
"Don't even nod or try to communicate with your expression—nothing. We can't risk changing things by causing overconfidence."
"I understand."
They were rapidly approaching the hall in which they had all met—would meet—and Kal took a deep breath just before they rounded the corner. "Here goes..."
Again, like déjà vu in reverse, Lex saw their doubles approaching them in the distance, as if they were walking toward some strange inverted mirror. "What the hell?" he heard his own voice breathe. He watched his earlier self's already confused face become utterly perplexed, the seeming impossibility of this experience stunning him into silence.
The face of the other Kal was jittery and concerned, the fingers of his left hand twitching restlessly by his thigh. When everyone came to a stop, Lex watched himself search the various faces for a clue to what the hell was happening.
When his own expression was raked over with rabid curiosity, he did his best to be inscrutable, but knew there was sadness showing in his eyes and his slight smile. He knew it was pointless to say anything, that the man before him would learn all he needed to learn, and that the Lex he was now had no way to help the Lex he'd been then. But he felt great sympathy for what that man was about to go through because, having just gone through it himself, he knew it would be more painful and more wonderful than he could have guessed in the beginning.
Quickly, the two Kals were side-stepping one another, Lex following, though his other self struggled against the earlier Kal's grip on his arm.
"Hey! Let go of me! Wait. Wait!"
Lex looked after him, offering another smile of sympathy and sadness, and watched his wide, shocked eyes disappear around the corner.
Kal led him back into the office, lifting his arms as if to present it when they'd arrived, though he said nothing. He watched Lex pass him, taking two further steps into the room than Kal had, and looking at the mess they'd left behind.
"Well," Kal said with a sigh, "here you are back. A couple of days, a hundred and fifty years, and various timelines wiser." He offered a smile when Lex turned to meet his gaze, though it was somewhat wan with obvious empathy.
Try as he might, Lex couldn't banish the oncoming depression from his eyes. When Kal suddenly closed the distance between them and pulled him into a warm hug, Lex fell into him gratefully, trailing his fingertips over the silky hair cascading over Kal's back and pressing his nose against the black material that didn't feel like leather at all, but was soft like cotton. He inhaled deeply, breathing in the reminder of crisp, cold snow and crystal everything.
"Thank you so much," Kal whispered against his neck. "You've saved both our lives." He rubbed a large palm over Lex's back and then began to pull away.
Lex clung to him. "Not yet," he breathed. "Please." Uncertainly, Kal's arms wrapped around him again. "Knowing this is the last time for so long that I'll—" he broke off, swallowing down his regret. "Please, just a little longer."
Kal sighed against his shoulder, rubbing his back gently, as if soothing a child. "I'm so sorry," he said quietly. "It would have been better if you didn't have to know."
He shook his head once, hard, but said nothing. Perhaps it would have been better. But just the same, he wouldn't have changed it if he could. Laid out before him now was a path he didn't want to traverse. But it led to another that he would do anything to reach. And somehow, he was going to make that be enough.
Finally, he allowed Kal to pull away, and they held one another by the shoulders as Lex gazed into his eyes, which were filled with feeling—for him. Opening his mouth, meaning perhaps to say good-bye, or perhaps to not say anything at all, Lex heard himself breathe, "Kiss me."
Kal's eyes widened, but he didn't pull away. His gaze dipped to Lex's mouth, then back, unsure.
"Please," Lex said, his fists twisting slightly at the material of Kal's outfit. "Just so that I know... Just so that I have something concrete to look toward."
Slowly, Kal's expression turned to apology, and Lex held his breath. "If I kiss you now," he said softly, "then decades later when it happens... you'll regret this moment."
Lex let out a soft, humourless laugh. "It was that great?"
"Lex," Kal smiled gently, "when was the last time you spent twenty years wanting something... and then finally got it?"
Searching his eyes, Lex took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Never," he admitted.
Kal nodded. "And you never will again."
Nodding slightly, Lex closed his eyes against the burn in them, and forced his hands to unknot and let Kal walk away.
"Good-bye, Lex," he said by the door. "Hang in there, okay?"
Lex nodded, but did not open his burning eyes. He waited for the sound of the door or footfalls fading away, his brow tightening when it didn't soon come.
"Hey, Lex?"
Inhaling to steady himself, he opened his eyes and met Kal's gaze. Kal said nothing, only smiled, and then stood a little straighter. He was, in fact, rising slightly, and Lex had just opened his mouth to ask why he was standing on his toes, when he glanced down, saw Kal's boots had left the floor, and realized he was willing himself to fly.
Gaping, Lex gasped his surprise and laughed aloud in amazement and delight as Kal slowly approached the railing to the library.
He stayed in the air for only a few seconds and then began to descend, spinning once, slowly, before he landed with complete grace. He smiled brightly, saying nothing.
Sighing, Lex inclined his head, a silent thank you. He straightened his shoulders, lifted his chin, and said almost defiantly, "He will love me."
Kal's smile softened. "How could he not?"
Then he turned and left Lex's life, Lex staring until he had completely disappeared around the corner.
When he was gone, definitely gone, Lex's lips pressed tightly together and he forced down the lump in his throat, blinked away the stinging in his eyes. He turned and looked back at the mess on the floor. Slowly, he approached the desk and bent down, gathering all of the scattered papers and shuffling them together in a neat pile. He placed them on the corner of his desk, moving a crystal pyramid paperweight atop them, and smiling softly at its makeup.
He took a long look around the room, reacquainting himself with his life as it was and as he knew it would continue to be for some time.
Slowly, he settled himself into the same chair he'd been in when this had all started, only a few minutes ago as the universe marked time.
Steadily, he clasped his hands before him and looked ahead.
Stoically, he began to wait.
~ ~ ~
"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."