P.L. Nunn's Blog, page 3

shifting the balance chapter 22

Chapter 22 of my Kenshin fiction "Shifting the Balance".

http://plnunn.com/fiction_new/story_chapters/shifting22.php

I just ordered the live action Kenshin film. After seeing some of the trailers and fight scenes on youtube, I can't wait to see it.

Shifting the balance chapter 21

I've got the next chapter of my Kenshin fiction, "Shifting the Balance"

http://plnunn.com/fiction_new/story_chapters/shifting21.php

new chapter of an old, old fan fiction

Its been a long, long time since I've felt the urge to write on my Rurouni Kenshin story 'Shifting the Balance', but I was rereading some of my old fiction recently and the story snared me again. So I pulled out some old Kenshin DVD's and watched a few eps to get back into the grove and took up where I'd left off at chapter 20.

It always was one of my favorite animes - - aside from that last terrible kenshin movie where they f@*ked it all up.

Check out chapter 20 - - or the whole thing at the fiction page at plnunn.com

http://plnunn.com/fiction_new/story_chapters/shifting20.php

clex snippit - Altered Reality -4

I know, I promised this a long time ago. As usual, time got away from me.

Anyways, here's the next (and unfortunately the last part written) of Altered realities.





Part Three

Clark slowed, a half mile out from Smallville proper to take in a sprawl of glass fronted buildings that appeared to be nothing so much as an small office complex, sitting in the middle of what used to be Tom Jacob’s farm. A little bit past that was a mall, with vast, tree-lined parking lots.

The farm was ten miles out of town if you were driving. Six miles down the main road and another four down rural route 261. It took Clark less time to draw a handful of consequitive breaths than to reach the road that ran alongside the Kent acreage and it was with relief that he saw row upon row of waving corn, and green pasturage. It was still here.

He stopped at the end of the long drive that led towards the house and the distant collection of outbuildings. The mailbox sported the Kent name, in his father’s blocky, handpainted letters. Almost reverently, Clark laid fingers on the age worn type.

Something drew his attention, the mournful mooing of a cow a quarter mile up the road. He saw the old Holstein first, standing in the middle of the road and thought, the south fence must be down again, because that particular cow had a sixth sense for finding the loose spots. He’d had to chase her down more than once. And then he drew breath, seeing the tilted body of the truck lying on its side in the ditch just past the cow. The wheels were still spinning, and a faint cloud of escaped steam trickled up from under the front tire wheel wall.

He was there in the blink of an eye, heart trying to hammer its way up his throat. The passenger side door was up, and he was almost afraid to climb up and look in. But then a hand appeared, at the open window, and Clark shook the second of apprehension off, clamboring up and reaching in to help.

His mother’s face looked up at him in shock, a little smudge of grease on her forehead, a cut on her hand.

“It’s okay, I got you. I got you.” Clark assured her, grasping hold of her upper arms and lifting her up out of the window. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine - - fine. My husband. Help my husband.”

Clark took a shuddery breath, peering down into the cab, at Jonathan Kent - - bleeding from a cut at his cheek, struggling to unfasten the seatbelt that trapped him behind the wheel. Very much alive.

“Dad.” Clark whispered.

“Damned belt’s stuck, Martha - -“ Jonathan growled, and looked up expecting to see his wife and found Clark staring down instead. “Who the hell - -?”

“Help him, please.” Martha pleaded, from the road where Clark had lowered her, her bleeding hand on the front tire.

Clark lowered himself into the cab, bracing one foot on the steering column and reached down to force the seat belt loose. He levered himself back out, and reached down a hand to his father, who grasped it after a moment’s hesitation and let Clark help him out. They both slid down the roof, to the grassy side of the ditch, and Martha rushed around to embrace her husband, half laughing, half sobbing in relief.

“That damned cow. Ought to fill the freezer with steaks.”

“That’s what you always say.” Clark whispered, feeling the odd intruder, because they weren’t looking at him. Because there had been nothing of recognition in their eyes. And he couldn’t stop staring at his father, at familiar rugged features, and work worn hands, peppered strands of grey in blonde hair.

But she must have heard him, for his mother looked back at him, smiling gratefully and said. “Thank God you were here. We swerved to miss the cow and - - ohh, we’re so lucky.”

Then she frowned, brows wrinkling and took a step towards him. “Are you hurt? Did you hurt yourself on the truck?”

He didn’t know what she meant, until she grasped his wrists and turned his palms over. They were black with oil, but of course, that was the extent of the damage done.

“No,” he said. “No.”

“You don’t look well,” she said and he almost laughed. He didn’t feel well. But it had nothing to do with physical trauma.

“Martha, let the boy alone. Jonathan Kent. My wife, Martha. Don’t know what you’re doing out here, but we owe you a debt.” Jonathan said, then held out his hand and Clark reflexively took it in his grease smeared one. He didn’t want to let go, But he did, reluctantly as they both stared at him, expecting him to return the favor of names.

“Clark,” he said, and choked on the last name. They ought to know. It wasn’t right they didn’t know.

“Clark?” His mom - - Martha dipped her head a little to try and catch his eyes. “I think you ought to come up to the house with us. You’re shaking.”

He was. He couldn’t stop.

They walked up the dirt driveway, past two sets of pasturage, Jonathan muttering about the south fence and the single-mindedness of cows and Clark stared at the sunflowers and the garden, and the small tractor out in front of the barn, with its back axel up on cinder blocks in the midst of some repair and listened to the sound of his parent’s voices.

They invited him into the house, and there were subtle differences here and there, but mostly it was the same. He washed off the grease at the kitchen sink while Martha put water on to boil for coffee and Jonathan considered how he was going get the truck out of the ditch.

“I could help with that,” Clark offered, wanting to keep within their good graces. Wanting to linger here more than the time it would take to drink a cup of gratitude coffee and be sent on his way.

“If you’ve got a big jack - -?” he explained awkwardly. “Between the two of us, we could probably flip it.”

Jonathan nodded, considering. “Might work, if you’re willing to get your hands dirty again.”

Clark was willing.

“Clark, do you live around here?” Martha asked. She had a bottle of peroxide out and was dabbing at her husband’s cut cheek with a cotton ball saturated in the stuff. Jonathan winced, trying to avoid her tending, with muttered, ‘its just a scratch, honey.’ while she pursed her lips and ignored him.

Clark missed this so much, it was like a fist squeezing his guts.

“No,” he murmmered. “Not around here.”

“Not one of the Residents?” Jonathan narrowed his eyes a little, distaste for something crossing his features.

“Resident?”

“Pretentious bunch of bastards.”

“Jonathan.” Martha chided, but there was a touch of worry in her eyes, then she looked at Clark and asked. “Are you here in town on a Work Visa? Or are you kin to a local?”

“Work Visa?”

She missed the question in his voice and nodded.

“It’s a little early for harvest.” Jonathan said. “But I can’t complain about you being here.”

They drank strong brewed coffee, and homemade shortbread while Martha talked about the latest batch of preserves she was planning of putting up, and taking to town to sell, because the Residents were all for homemade goods and paid top dollar.

“Who are Residents?” Clark ventured, almost hating to ask and have them think him too odd and too ignorant to have in their kitchen. They both did look at him a little strangely, before exchanging glances with each other.

“Just how far outside of Smallville are you from?” Jonathan asked. “Not from the City?”

Clark shook his head, because the way his father asked that was like somebody asking if he happened to be carrying the plague. “I’ve come a pretty long way,” he said, smiling weakly. “Some of this is a little - - new to me.”

“The Residents are the damned rich sons of bitches who’ve taken over this town and think it’s their own. Drive the streets like they own them, and look down their noses at honest working people, like it wasn’t our land first. Corporation drones, most of them - - or leeches that made their fortunes when the economy tanked after the war, when the rest of the country was going to hell.”

“Its not all that bad, Jonathan,” Martha said with forced optimism. “If not for the Residents and LuthorCorp, we wouldn’t have the Perimeter and we might have gone the way of Jackson and Plainsville. We’re safe here.”

“What happened to Jackson and Plainsville?” Clark had the feeling he probably didn’t want to know.

“Overrun. Picked bare by people that - - that were less than people after the bombs hit the cities. But that was close to twenty years ago and those the Corporation didn’t take care of permanently, they herded back into the City. Like they were no better than animals.”

“Some of them weren’t,” Martha said sadly, touching her husband’s arm. “But it wasn’t their fault.”

“God,” Clark said softly and wanted to ask everything. War. Bombs. Smallville cordoned off, a protected area, the neighboring towns victims of desperation or mass hysteria. He was afraid to ask for details.

They went out to deal with the truck, Clark carrying the big jack the long way down the drive. He waited while his father - - he couldn’t think of this man as anything else - - dug out a spot to wedge the jack in under the frame and went through the motions of levering the truck up before he put his shoulder to it and got it turned over. Jonathan swore in happy surprise at the ease, having only moments before claimed they wouldn’t get it onto four tires again without the aide of the tractor. He slapped Clark on the back, like he had a thousand, thousand times before, but he had no clue how that truck had really been flipped and it left a queer, fluttery feeling in Clark’s belly, hiding the fact.

It was scuffed and dented and the driver’s side door wouldn’t open, but then, the Kent trucks had always been prone to abuse. It grumbled and sputtered but refused to start, so they pushed it back up the driveway.

Jonathan asked if he knew about trucks and though Clark’s mechanical skills were limited, he knew enough about the ills of this particular truck to claim some knowledge.

“I’d be happy to give you a hand.” He offered, and Jonathan gave him a look. An odd sort of questioning stare that any man might when faced with an overly generous stranger. And Clark held his breath waiting, meeting his father’s blue eyes earnestly, because Jonathan Kent always had said that he could gauge a man by the honesty of his stare.

“Okay,” Jonathan said. “I’ll take that offer of help. Maybe you can work on getting that door pried open, while I get some tools.”

Working alongside his dad, was like the Twilight Zone of earlier had tuned into a little bit of Oz. The shiny, colorful part, where witches and flying monkeys weren’t out to get him. Despite the ominous hints of what was going on outside the boundaries of Smallville, this place, this company was idyllic enough for Clark to shuffle the rest aside. For him to consider the possibility that maybe finding himself in another version of reality wasn’t so terrible a thing after all.

When his mother called them in for supper hours later, it was almost like he’d never left home. He had to remind himself that these were not the Jonathan and Martha Kent that he knew. She had fried Chicken and lumpy mashed young potatoes with the skins still on, the way his father liked them. String beans simmered with ham hocks and flakey biscuits and it was too good to be true. Something had to give.

He consumed the food, sitting at the kitchen table of the most important people in the world - - this or any other - - people that didn’t know him, but invited him in nonetheless, and waited for the bubble to burst.

“Do you have family?” Martha asked, smiling at him tentatively around her iced tea.

“I - - I have a mom,” he said and didn’t know how to explain more without a lie that he didn’t want to tell.

“She must miss you.”

There was real sympathy in her eyes and he couldn’t make his mouth work to reply to that. Instead he commented. “This is a big place you have. You take care of it all yourselves? No kids?”

Martha smiled a little sadly, but it was Jonathan that answered a little bitterly. “We get seasonal subsidy from the Corporation - - they import workers at harvest and sowing. A few more times during the year to keep the crops coming in. They claim half the county harvest so I guess they consider it fair trade. Course we’re one of the lucky ones. Half the farms that were here before the war were claimed by LuthorCorp, no choice given. So who am I to complain, right?”

“Honey.”

“Damned Luthor’s took a quarter of my land, too and it was either smile about it or get forclosed like half my neighbors.”

“The Luthors?” Clark murmmered, remembering something he’d conveniently forgotten. “Lex.”

Martha looked at him curiously. “No. Lionel Luthor. There was a son named Lex, I believe, but he died some years ago, in an accident off * ** Bridge. There’s just the younger son now. Lucas. The Luthor Corporation owns a good deal of the county - - well, a good deal of the country, if you want to get technical, but Lionel has had his headquarters here since before the war.”

She went on, about Luthor family history, and the importation of the castle, but all Clark could focus on was the image of that car veering towards the rail, twice the speed limit at the least, crashing through concrete and steel and plummeting into a rain swelled river. And no one there to fish a half dead Lex out of that muddy water and breathe life back into him. This world’s Lex had died in that car, taken by the river, pale white thing drifting in dark water, maybe down there for hours before somebody came by and noticed the gap in the railing.

He tightened his fingers on the edge of the table and heard a faint crack under the tablecloth. He loosened his grip, and sat there, the home cooked meal sitting cold and heavy in his gut.

Jonathan was talking about how the driver of the truck that had lost the roll of wire that had caused the accident, had been deported across the perimeter along with his family, on the order of a grief stricken Lionel Luthor. A decent man as good as destroyed because some reckless kid couldn’t drive the speed limit.

And Clark heard every third word, snared by clammy, morbid images that he couldn’t shake. Like Lex dead was such a terrible thing. Like this world wasn’t better off - - like maybe his own would have been if Clark had never been there to make a difference.

He shivered a little, a sharp stab of nausia rising, stinging the back of his throat, while something dark settled in his chest that might have been guilt, but certainly - - absolutely, not grief for a carbon copy version of somebody he wasn’t particularly fond of in his own reality. It wasn’t like this world hadn’t just gotten another version of Lex Luthor to throw a cog in the works.

Clark wondered how that was going. Felt a little niggling worry and tried to push it away. Not only did Lex generally tend to land on his feet, but he’d made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want Clark’s interference or company.

“Mo - - Mrs. Kent?” Clark asked, needing confirmation of a sudden. “Was there ever a meteor shower in Smallville?”

“Meteor shower?” She traded looks with Jonathan. “Not that I ever heard of. Why do you ask?”

“I - - ah, just wondering. I’m sort of interested in that sort of thing.”

They thought he was nuts, he could see it in their eyes. He knew them well enough to see they were trying to overcome a dilemma he’d brought to them. He didn’t want to cause them grief, he shouldn’t have lingered as long as he had, but they were just so similar to the parents he had known. Right down to his dad’s favorite mug.

“I really appreciate the dinner - - the food was great. But, I’ve imposed enough. I ought to be going.”

“Imposed?” Martha exclaimed. “It was - -“

“Son,” Jonathan cut her off, and Clark started at the familiarity. “If you’re here on a Work Visa, don’t you have a job you ought to be at?”

“I was sort of free for the day.” It was hard to come up with a good lie if he didn’t know the rules of the game. Harder still to look Jonathan Kent in the eye while he was telling it.

And with the same keen sense his father had always had, Jonathan saw through it. He shook his head, sighing. “Are you here on an expired Visa? Or God help, did you jump the Fence?”

Clark stared helplessly, not certain if either of those answers were the right one - - having the creeping feeling that neither was.

And what was the worst that could happen to him if he tried a little bit of truth? Or as much of it as he thought they could deal with. He already must have seemed a right idiot, ignorant of this world. If this Jonathan and Martha Kent were as much like his as he suspected, they might be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“I never had a work visa,” he blurted. “I’m from a place a lot like this, but not and I’m honestly sort of lost now. I’m not even sure how to get back home, but I swear I don’t mean you any harm. And I certainly don’t want to bring you any trouble - - its just you reminded me of my own - -“

He couldn’t finish that. They were both gaping at him like he’d grown horns and he didn’t think he could stand their fear. He stood up, half knocking over his chair in his need to retreat. He mumbled his thanks again for their food and their hospitality, and took himself out the back door and they let him. He refused to listen to their whispers after the door closed behind him, instead tromping down the steps out into the yard, trying hard to control uneven breathing.

He needed to figure out where to go. Back to town was no good. Lana was as unfamiliar with him as the Kents. And she had a fiancée and a mother. And absolutely no reason to give him the time of day. He wondered if Chloe was here? Where would she be if she were? In Smallville or Metropolis? Was there even a Daily Planet? But, no, they’d said the cities were less than hospitable places now, not havens for commerce and news. He ought to go and see for himself - - get a better overview of this world he found himself in - - because, God, what if he was stuck here? What he really needed to do was find Lex - - his Lex - - and wring every bit of information out of him, about how they’d gotten here and the possibility of getting back.

“Clark?”

He started, too wrapped up in his own uncertainties to notice them on the porch. They stood there, Jonathan’s arm around his wife’s shoulders, halfway protective stance even though her expression bordered on fierce.

She nudged him a little with her elbow and Jonathan said. “If you need a place to stay, we’ve got work aplenty on the farm. Honest work in exchange for food and board same as I’d offer any man that came to me with a company sponsored work visa.”

The lump in Clark’s throat seemed to double. It took a second before he could attempt speech. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

clex snippit - Altered Reality -3

Merry Christmas.

Hope everyone is winding down and getting a little relaxation after the holiday rush.

Its nice to have the time sit down again in front of the computer.

Here's the next section of Altered reality story. One more section after this before you can really get annoyed at me for it being a work in progress.





Lex’s words echoed in Clark’s head, backed by the incontrovertible evidence of things that just had no business being. Reality was quite warped enough, thank you, without bringing in the mind-numbing possibilities of alternate ones. Therefore, whatever Lex had done, or caused to be done, or driven someone else to doing, had to be an isolated incident. Had to be contained to the area around the big stretch of forest between the Franklin orchard and McCalister’s dairy.

Clark couldn’t wrap his mind around other possibilities. Didn’t want to try, because today had been a bad day. Had started out bad, waking up on the tail of a dream that had his parents - - both his parents - - downstairs in the kitchen sharing breakfast duties, flirting and kidding - - the wonderful sound of their laughter fading as awareness replaced sleep. And he’d laid in bed minutes after, in the silence of an empty house, devoid of the smell of early brewed coffee, or the quiet movement of his mother, who could give a place life with her very presence.

Sometimes, he missed her - - her everyday company, her reassurances and her comforts, more than he did Lana and Martha Kent was only half a country away - - not dead. Which blatant betrayal had made him cringe, and forcefully tear open half healed wounds, dredge up the most sentimental of memories, because it was only right that grief linger longer than the four months she’d been in the ground.

If he thought about it brutally like that, if he made himself flinch from imagery best left unimagined, he felt justified for his slips. For the times he could go into the city and talk to Chloe and Lois and not miss that other presence. For when he forgot, wrapped up in the things Oliver threw his way, that he could concentrate more on now that the mess with the last Phantom was as clean as it was likely to get.

So he’d woken up again today, mourning the wrong things and hated himself for it. He’d spent the day, turning over the west 40, doing odd jobs around the farm, contemplating running into the city and unloading on Chloe. But Chloe would just bitch at him about his life being stalled. About why he hadn’t picked up classes again. Why he was moping around the farm, even though his mother had told him flat out she didn’t expect it. Chloe had a new lease on life and was attacking it with a frenzy.

Where he ended up instead, after he’d channel surfed himself into oblivion and failed to find sleep, was the cemetery. Where his father was buried with a headstone that left enough room for the eventual addition of his mother. Dreadful, depressing thought.

Where Clark and Henry Small and Lionel Luthor had all fought tooth and nail to have Lana, or what was left of her, buried next to her parents - - and Lex had eventually given in, either too tired to fight about it anymore or just not caring.

She still wore Lex’s surname on the tombstone. Lana Lang Luthor. And every time Clark visited the grave, he had to fight the urge to deface the stone and burn that name away. Sometimes he hated Lex so much it made his hands shake.

He felt empty coming here though. He always had. But he did it as a tribute to her, because she’d always felt a connection to the dead that Clark just couldn’t find. There was nothing here but bones and bones didn’t hold memories. He didn’t feel her here. He didn’t feel her anywhere and that bothered him.

If he hadn’t been feeling morbid, and ended up there, amidst the tombstones and the markers in the middle of night, he might not have heard the distant screams of Clem Rawlins. Wouldn’t have come upon her, pursued by armed men. Lex’s armed men. And Lex himself. And wouldn’t have ended up where he was now - - the where of which was in great question.

Which was what had him running towards town now, having no problem whatsoever leaving Lex to his own devices in the face of bigger fears. Barely a blink of an eye and he was almost there, but another anomaly made him pause.

The uninterrupted farmland outside of town was overgrown with houses. Miller’s field was gone, waving stalks of corn replaced by a sweep of large, well maintained houses. And not the cookie cutter boxes that had popped up north of town, engorging Smallville’s moderate suburbia. These were indulgent, mini-estates of the sort only the wealthy might afford. He detoured through the neighborhood, baffled, staring at houses that had no more right being here than razor wire topped fences that seemed to stretch around the width and breadth of the county.

And now that he’d slowed down enough to look, the farmland still did grace the highway was exceedingly well cared for. Formally wire fences, or dilapidated wood, was now white washed and spotless. Down the road, the Clancy farmhouse, which had been in Smallville as long as Smallville had been, and in Clark’s lifetime had always looked a bit on the weathered side from roadside view, had been renovated and landscaped to postcard charm. In fact all the remaining farms that he passed on the way to town were in similar condition, as if this were a tourist town instead of a working farming community.

When he reached the border of Smallville proper, the town showed the same subtle differences. It took him a while to soak it in, slowing to a mundane walk at the very edge where houses began to bleed into the commercial district. Main Street boasted the same familiar buildings, only the facades had been renovated, painted and updated, sporting subtle changes, advertising new occupants.

Storefront windows boasted not the cheap, dollar store merchandise that most Smallville residents drifted towards, but high dollar displays. The types of things you’d see in boutiques lining the street of a wealthy resort town. The cars were shiny and new and expensive. Only the rare battered pick-up among them. The feed store was gone and in its place a chic restaurant with a chalkboard menu on the sidewalk that boasted truly outrageous prices. There was a Sharper Image where Kelly’s Thrift store had been and a Starbucks on the corner where the Beanery used to be.

It was like a dream or an episode out of the Twilight Zone. Bizarre and unreal.

But the Talon was still there and the flower shop next to it. The matinee overhead advertising some movie that Clark had never heard of. He stood across the street for a long while, while the traffic on the street gradually increased, as the morning aged, trying to convince himself that this wasn’t indeed some hallucination. It felt real. He felt real. Lex had been as real as Lex ever had been, infuriating and probing and trying hard to hide how unnerved he had been. If he was going to dream Lex, he ought to come up with a nicer version - - or at least one that had all the answers.

He crossed the street, because the vender that had just opened shop behind him was starting to give him looks, loitering on the sidewalk so long. He hesitated on the edge of the Talon, then ventured inside, almost afraid to cross the thresh hold.

There was a pleasant chatter within. The old bright colors and comfortable chairs around small tables. Most of the people he didn’t recognize, but he saw a familiar face or two. The feel of it was comforting, like he’d stepped back into the familiar. Like Chloe might burst in babbling about a story she was investigating, or Lex pad in like he owned the place - - or Lana turn up around the counter.

“Can I help you?” The woman at the counter asked and Clark swallowed, lost.

“Still thinking,” he smiled weakly at her and she smiled back, and went to take another order.

He stood there, in the midst of the early morning rush and tried to get his bearings. He frowned a little at an incongruity - - two young men in black uniforms with the LuthorCorp logo on breast pocket and caps. No one gave them a second look. They joked with the girl at the counter. Got coffee to go and left.

Clark watched them get into a black SUV and pull away, heart beating a little faster. An armed LuthorCorp presence in town and people smiled and greeted them like they were the second coming.

He turned, thinking of maybe asking the woman behind the counter about them, and froze, snared by the sway of long brown hair. She had her back to him. Petit, trim shape that he’d know anywhere - - that shouldn’t be here, walking about, living and breathing. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was wishful thinking. And maybe here wasn’t really the here he was familiar with.

She turned around, laughing at something the woman at the counter said and Clark choked on a breath, momentarily shocked out of the ability to breathe.
“Lana?” he managed and she heard him and turned her attention his way, smile wide and sweet and alive.

He took a step towards her, wanting to sweep her up and crush her in his arms, to feel her warmth and her vitality, no matter the absurdity of her being there. But there was something in her eyes that stopped him. A curious expectation, as if she were waiting for something from him, but he didn’t know what.

Of course it ended up being a simple thing, something any moron could have provided. And he bumbled over it like he was fourteen and working up the courage to actually speak her name.

“Hello,” she said, that little wrinkle between her brows that said she was still waiting. “You seem to be one up on me. You know my name, but I don’t know yours. Did we go to school?”

His name? Lana didn’t know his name. She didn’t know him. And the ground dropped out from under his feet at that realization more than from the one of her actually standing there, alive.

“Are you okay?” she stepped forward, hand going to his arm and he figured he probably looked as sick as he felt.

“Fine. I’m fine.” It came out rushed. He stepped backward, and bumped into someone ordering at the counter, and muttered an apology and looked back up at her miserably. Lex had said things about wormholes and other worlds that Clark hadn’t wanted to hear. He rolled them around in his mind now, trying to latch on to an explanation that he could comprehend.

“You look a little befuddled.” She smiled at him and moved around the counter, pouring a cup of plain coffee and pushing it across the Formica towards him. “You must not be a morning person. You know, I think I would remember you if we went to school. You’ve got a memorable face. So how do you know my name? And you still haven’t mentioned yours, by the way.”

“Clark,” he said numbly. “Clark Kent.”

How could she not know him? How could this place be so familiar, down to the same Egyptian art on the deco columns, the familiar armchairs, the Fiesta ware cups and dishes, and Lana be here and alive and not know him?

“Hmm. Are you any relation to the Kent’s off route 261?”

Almost he answered affirmative out of a simple surge of relief to know that there was such a thing as the Kent’s here. But he caught himself, some sense of survival instinct prodding his higher reasoning into gear. If she knew his parents, how was it possible she didn’t know him?

“Honey, could you get the register?” The other woman at the counter asked, in the midst of mixing an iced cappuccino.

“Sure, mom.” Lana smiled that radiant smile and shifted over to deal with a customer and Clark found himself forgetting to breathe again, staring at the profile of another woman that ought to be dead. Long dead.

She glanced at him, and it was easy to see Lana in her - - or more accurately, her in Lana - - and he looked down into the untouched coffee Lana had sat before him. Black coffee in an orange cup and he was drowning.

“So,” Lana drifted back down the counter towards him, polishing with a rag as she went. “How did you say you say you knew me - - Clark, was it?”

There was a blockage between brain and mouth, that he just couldn’t seem to get past. He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from her face, fragile and lovely.

“Um- - I - -,” she was going to think he was deranged. God knew she had always been a magnet for the dangerous stalker types. “I just heard someone mention it.”

She lifted a brow, as if she didn’t quite believe it, but wasn’t prepared to call him on the lie. “Well, Clark Kent, it’s nice to meet you. First coffee’s on the house for new customers.”

“Giving coffee away to strange men?” Someone chided and Lana looked beyond Clark, her smile brightening.

“Ah, but you get the special blend, and a kiss.” She moved around the end of the counter and into the light embrace of a tall, uniformed man. Familiar features. Familiar blonde hair, cut almost military short. Whitney Ford. Of course. There were enough other dead people walking about. Why not him, as well?

Clark’s fingers tightened on the cup and a hairline crack appeared. He took a breath and released his hold, dropping his hands to his sides.

“Whitney, this is Clark. He’s new in town.” Lana urged Whitney forward, her arm linked in his. His jacket was cut tight, the LuthorCorp logo at the collar instead of the jacket pocket like the other two men, nor was he armed. Just straight black pants over shiny black boots. “Clark, this is my Fiancé, Whitney Ford. Newly promoted, I might add.”

Out of reflex, Clark glanced down to her hand, saw the ring on her finger, a modest little diamond, not nearly the rock she’d gotten from Lex when she’d accepted his proposal. But then, this wasn’t that Lana. This wasn’t that time or place or reality.

“Stop bragging, you’ll make me blush,” Whitney said lightly, but the smile only went so far and he was looking at Clark as if he were sizing him up.

“New in town?” Whitney asked. “Guest of a resident or work Visa?”

“Work visa?” Clark asked dumbly. Lana was still pressed close to Whitney, his arm curled possessively around her waist.

Whitney narrowed his eyes, the look of a man on the scent of something. “Where did you say you were staying?”

“I didn’t.” Clark forced a smile. Tore his mind away from the ring and the arm around Lana and met eyes that were substantially cooler than he ever recalled of Whitney Ford, even at his worst.

“Do you have your C.I. Card on you?”

“Whitney,” Lana scolded, breaking away and giving him a stern look. “No harassing the customers. Sorry, Clark, he takes his job very seriously.”

“That’s okay,” Clark shifted away from the counter. “I’ve gotta be going - - nice to meet you, Whitney. Lana.”

He started walking and he didn’t look back, but he felt the eyes following him. It was officially the Twilight Zone. He was a stranger in Smallville. Lana, Whitney and Lana’s mother were alive.

And if Lara Lang had survived in this world, it meant she’d never been the unfortunate victim of a plummeting chunk of rock. And if the rock had never fallen, maybe he’d never fallen with it.

Obviously the farm was still here and belonged to people named Kent. He felt the desperate need to see if his mom was there - - to see whether she remembered him, or if he’d never existed to her either.


“Lucas.” Lex turned to follow what was unmistakably, though obviously a better dressed, version of his half brother, as Lucas circled him.

“That would be Mr. Luthor to extortionists and con-artists.”

Lucas ran a hand up the lapel of Lex’s coat, fingering the material, that half smirk he’d perfected so well twisting his lips.

All right, get a grip. Focus on what was important here. That there was - - or had been - - a Lex Luthor here, that had perished in a manner that Lex himself had very narrowly avoided. Which meant his appearance, wearing that very same face would understandably be taken as some sort of attack against the family. He saw no advantage whatsoever to playing that route. Nor was he particularly ready to start spouting parallel universe theory. Not to Lucas who, if he had more than physical resemblance to the one Lex knew, would comprehend the mechanics of the possibility not at all. Which left, for the moment, the only other option . . .

“You would know from con-artists, wouldn’t you?” Lex inquired, deciding there was little other course than blatant self-assurance, now that he’d stepped into this. “You had plenty of time to perfect the art in the back rooms of Edge City before dad pulled you out to fill the empty heir spot, didn’t you?”

It was assumption and a dangerous one. But he knew how Lionel Luthor’s mind worked - - well, as much as anyone could understand his father’s mental machinations - - and the only reason he would claim an illegitimate son, would be if he lost the legitimate one. Lionel had always been big on the whole legacy thing.

And he must have gotten it close, if not dead on, because Lucas’s smirk faded, twisting into something less amused. His fingers tightened into fists on Lex’s lapel and jerked him forward.

“So, you’ve done your fucking homework. What do you think you’re gonna to gain from it?”

“Nothing that’s not already mine.” Lex met his eyes, unflinching, indifferent. “Don’t you think this situation is a little beyond you, Lucas? Maybe you should give dad a call.”

Lucas snarled, fist slashing out in a backhanded arc. It caught Lex across the mouth and the sting of torn lip preceded the warm taste of blood. Lex staggered, but kept his balance, glaring up from under his lashes as Lucas closed the distance and latched hold of his coat again, driving him backwards into the wall. Hard. The cuffs bit into Lex’s wrists.

“You think I’d bother the old man with this shit? Just because you show up with a name on a card and a dead man’s face? And don’t get me wrong,” Lucas growled, moving a hand up to clutch the side of Lex’s face. “Because the bald thing looks good on you, but what’s with the hair? Or the lack of?”

Hair? He’d still had his hair here?

“What you don’t know, Lucas, could fill libraries,” he said, bitingly, but his mind was racing over the implications. Had the Lex here just not been in Smallville when the meteor shower hit and never exposed, or had it never happened at all?

“Goddamnit, you just don’t get it! You’re not getting off of this base. The old man’s never gonna know about you. You’re not even gonna get deported to the other side of the Perimeter. You’re just gonna disappear. Understand?” Lucas spat, lunging away from Lex and snatching a taser off the utility belt of one of the two guards, who reacted, startled, but didn’t try and stop him.

Shit. Lex had been electrocuted quite enough today. He tried to evade it, but Lucas pressed the tip of the taser against his shoulder and the current surged in, debilitating, spasming pain that dropped him to the floor.

“But maybe,” Lucas crouched over him, and Lex blinked up, unable to stop the twitching of taser induced cramps. “Just maybe, I’ll spend a little time making you regret trying to play us first. Nobody fucks with the Luthor’s.”

He pressed the tip of the taser to Lex’s stomach with the anticipatory smile of someone who enjoyed the infliction of pain. Someone who got off on it, because it gave them the illusion of power - - and maybe that wasn’t so far off from the Lucas Lex knew either.

Lex had a moment of near hyperventilation in expectation of the next jolt when Lucas’ jacket rang. Lucas’ face twitched in annoyance, but he reached into his pocket and withdrew a cell, looked at the incoming number and flattened his lips. He rose, flipping it open, staring towards the long bank of windows with their half drawn blinds.

“Yeah,” he said flatly into the phone. And. “Okay. I understand.”

He stood a moment after he’d snapped the phone shut, breathing hard, jaw working, then slipped the phone into one pocket and the taser into the other and motioned sharply to the guards.

“Bring him. We’re going to see my father.”

The Castle - - the grand ‘ancestral’ estate - - was no different that it had been when Lex had driven away from it much earlier in the evening of another world. The grounds were no less manicured, the stones of the estate no less weathered, the design no less gothic and foreboding than ever they had been. There were a few big, black SUV’s similar to the one that brought Lex back home, outside in the drive, and more black uniformed security prowling around, but beyond that the familiarity was simply unnerving.

It was cool inside, hardly warmer than air outside, but the stone of the place tended to retain chill, even in the warmth of summer. It was hell to properly heat.

The furniture they passed in the grand foyer and the central hall was the same. Monstrous, antique pieces that his father had picked up during his travels over the years while he’d been building an empire, and had shipped out here, to sit under sheets, possessed but not seen, for years until Lex had come. One more problematic possession for Lionel to dispose of in the country.

Hadn’t that turned out well.

They led him into the study, Lucas striding ahead with his hands in his pockets, the measure of his gait betraying his agitation. The furniture here was different, but then, Lex had had it all replaced with more pleasingly modern fixtures when he’d set up his office. It was ponderous and dark now, all done up in mahoganies and marbles, brown leather and brass molding.

And there sat Lionel Luthor behind the enormous desk, a pretty assistant in a black suit leaning over with a folder in hand. Lionel made a few comments to her, and she nodded and walked out the side door, not even looking at the new arrivals. Lionel paid more attention to the sway of her hips as she retreated than Lucas or Lex and the escorts behind them, and someone who didn’t know Lionel and his tactics might have assumed a certain lack of interest the business brought before him. And granted, he might very well have been screwing the help, but the lazy preoccupation was a front.

Finally, once the side door was softly closed and there were no other shapely distractions, Lionel slowly swung his gaze around.

“I’m disappointed, Lucas, that I had to hear of this matter through company channels instead of family ones.”

“I didn’t think you needed to be bothered,” Lucas offered an excuse that bordered on surly and Lionel lifted a brow.

“Your consideration has a stench of self-interest, son.”

Lucas frowned, but Lionel was done with him, sitting forward in his chair, hands steepled before his chin, staring past Lucas at Lex with inscrutable eyes. Lucas laid the driver’s license and Lex’s wallet down before Lionel.

“This is what he had on him. He hasn’t told us anything yet.”

“But, have you asked the right questions?” Lionel asked, but it was in his hypothetical voice, so Lucas hesitated answering. He stepped back, when Lionel rose, moving across the carpet towards Lex, who stood within the grasp of his two armed escorts.

Lionel stopped a few feet away, and Lex met his gaze unwaveringly. Unsettling to look into a face so familiar and yet not. To not know whether this Lionel Luthor was quite the manipulative bastard that his own was. He could only hope there were enough corollaries, enough shared circumstances to pique curiosity.

Lionel made a small motion and the guards stepped back, but only a few feet, as if their first priority was Lionel Luthor’s well being. Lex didn’t try and turn when he circled him, just stood there with a faint, bored expression on his face, as if all of this were a terrible waste of his time. He met Lucas’ eyes for a moment, while Lionel was taking stock of him, and let his mouth twitch in a superior smile.

“Extraordinary,” Lionel remarked, completing his circuit. There was a smile on his face, but then Lionel’s smiles were Machiavellian at best and not to be trusted. “The resemblance is remarkable. I might even go so far as to say flawless.”

He lifted his hand, and Lex controlled the instinctual desire to flinch away from the fingers that touched his face. Fingertips trailed down his cheek, touched the dried blood on his lip where Lucas had split it, then drifted over to touch the scar.

“Perfect, even down to the defects.”

So that had happened as well. The similarities were as impressive as the discrepancies in this world. That could only work in his favor.

Lex looked down at Lionel’s hand, long and narrow like his own, but a shade or two darker. Lex had his mother’s complexion, fair with a tendency to burn.

“You don’t wear the ring anymore that made it.” Lex looked back up at Lionel. “Or are we still sticking with the unfortunate fall in the garden story? So many dirty little secrets, I sometimes forget.”

Lionel pulled in half a startled breath, but the extent of his surprise ended there, everything else artfully covered.

Lucas was a brute, because Lucas had grown up in a brutish environment, fighting tooth and nail for what he gained. He would have struck out. He looked like he wanted to, even though Lex had spoken too quietly for him to have heard all of what was said. But Lionel practiced his brutalities under the cover of subtly nowadays and never in the presence of an audience. Lex hoped.

“Oh, very, very good.” Lionel’s lips pulled back in a smile that bared teeth. “With a presentation this good, it’s to be expected that not just the physical details would be explored. But my son is dead, as you very well know, and I find it unpardonably insulting that someone believes they can exploit my loss with the appearance of a cheap imposter.”

“Cheap?” Lex said. “Now I’m offended. If you can’t believe your eyes, dad, what can you believe? Do I look dead to you?”

“You look like a work of art that someone spent a great deal of time and effort creating. For what purpose, I’ve yet to discover.”

“Easy enough to prove. You can’t fake DNA.” Lex said, as smooth as Lionel, as calm, even though he was crossing metaphorical fingers that the DNA of a Lex Luthor that had never been exposed to meteor radiation was the same as one who had. He knew his genetic code had been altered slightly - - just not how much, since there was no sample before contamination to measure it by.

Lionel laughed. “Do you honestly think I’d exhume the body of my son, just to disprove the wild accusations of a charlatan?”

“You could be collaborating them. You could uncover something altogether unexpected. I would think that you of all people, would be open to the possibility of the inexplicable. It would be incredibly closed-minded of you otherwise.”

Lionel’s mouth quirked. Amused or a dangerous facsimile. “My time is valuable. Why don’t we get this over with and you just tell me what you want?”

“I’d like to get out of here alive. That’s a start. Losing the handcuffs would be great. Oh, were you looking for something a little more mercenary, maybe you should talk to Lucas?”

“Do you even know who you’re talking to?” Lucas pushed himself off the desk where he’d been leaning, patience obviously at its limit. No doubt more than a little freaked out that Lionel was even talking to Lex. Certainly not happy about the banter.

“I have an inkling.” Lex said dryly. Though really, he didn’t. He wanted desperately to know about that base and the fence and the reasons behind them. He needed confirmation that the meteor shower had never hit Smallville and never brought irrevocable change with it. Never the rumored ship in the first shower. Never the prelude to alien invasion that came with the second.

Never a Clark Kent in this world to pull a Lex Luthor out of a mangled car in a sluggish, brown river and bring him back from the dead. God - - no meteor shower. No Clark.

“Dad, let me deal with this.” Lucas was pleading, and that got Lex’s attention back where it belonged. “You let him get to you and maybe that’s what they want. The A.C.L.A or the insurgents, or the damned Liberal Right. He’s just here to fuck with our heads.”

“Language, Lucas.” Lionel corrected off handedly, like it was something he chided Lucas over regularly, but he had a thoughtful gleam in his eye. Lionel was thinking and that might bode very good for Lex or very bad. He needed that DNA confirmation as a foothold, because before he started effusing parallel universe gibberish, he damned sure better have the evidence to back it up or to at least give Lionel something to think twice about. And Lionel always did like to have all his bases covered.

“All right.” Lionel nodded and Lucas beamed. “If you feel the need to deal with this - - issue. I’ll give you the opportunity, son.”

Lex started, glancing at a mirror image of his father in the beginnings of alarm, because Lucas had nothing but cold anticipation in his eyes and Lex had already had a taste of his brand of questioning.

“I’m not here with an agenda,” Lex said quickly, because Lucas was stalking towards him and Lionel was heading towards the long mahogany bar that sat along the wall where one of the bookshelves had been.

“I’m not anyone’s idea of a sick joke.” Unless you counted fate or - - God, Karma. “Don’t take my word for it. Run the test.”

Lucas caught his arm under the elbow, jerking him around hard enough that cuffs bit into his wrists.
“Oh, I will.” Lionel assured him, as Lucas and the guards were pulling him out. “But in the meanwhile, well one must appease the needs of flesh and blood, and if it make’s Lucas feel appreciated, I’m willing to let him use methods he sees fit to draw forth a little truth.”

Clex snippit - Altered Reality -2

Here's part two of my very long clex snippit.



If he shot Clark, he could claim it was within his rights, defending himself against an intruder on his property. There were ‘no trespassing’ signs posted along the perimeter. That was assuming the bullet would penetrate. You never knew with Clark - - when he was going to prove intriguingly invincible and when he was going to bleed.

Lex pulled out his phone instead, needing a team down here now, to secure the area where the woman and the security guards had disappeared and see what if anything might be discovered before it faded. He also needed security to escort Clark out and keep him out.

Static hissed out at him from the phone. Not even a dial tone. He cut it off, then on again and still nothing. Perhaps the ripple effect of whatever Clem Rawlins had generated had fried the circuits? He considered hurling it. The crack of the casing against a tree would be satisfying - - but he wasn’t prepared to show Clark the extent of his nerves.

It was damned cold. He shoved the phone back into his pockets along with chilled hands and contained the agitation.

He reached the dirt track, but must have misjudged the path back and overshot the jeep, because it was nowhere in sight. It was a quandary. He didn’t want Clark dogging him back to the facility, but short of physical force, getting rid of him seemed problematic.

“Exactly what,” Lex turned back to where Clark had stopped at the edge of the track. “Are you doing out here? I thought we’d established that you had better things to do with your time than stalk me? Having second thoughts? Or is it just so easy blaming me that why bother spending your time and energy elsewhere?”

Clark stared back at him, eyes shadowed pits in the darkness, mouth a tight line. They had come to an uneasy understanding on that one thing - - that one mutual a aggrievement they both shared. Clark had believed . . .

Clark’s eyes flicked past him. There was the flare of headlights from down the track, approaching from the direction of the facility. Lex let out a breath of satisfaction. The arrival was overdue.

He shoved the useless phone in his pocket and gave Clark a look. “This is not your affair. I’ll make sure you are escorted off this property.”

“Its my affair if you’re holding someone against their will.”

“How so?” Lex kept the snarl out of his voice with effort. He wasn’t prepared to let Clark see just how badly he unnerved him. This location was compromised beyond repair. Between the damage the woman had caused and Clark, who would no doubt run right to the authorities, the back up team that might be fifteen minutes away by now would need to serve double duty as containment and clean up crew. All evidence of the project could be gone by the time Clark convinced the sheriff to gather together a few men and come out here to investigate - - and Lex could put that off a little longer by requiring a search warrant to enter the property. All he needed was a phone that worked to get things moving.

He walked towards the jeep, into the wan light of headlights as men spilled out.

“Stop right there.” A man ordered, and weapons were leveled.

“Lower the weapons.” Lex snapped, not stopping. “I need an escort for - -“

“I said to stop. Hands in the air!” The security guard yelled, four of them approaching around the edges of the headlights, uniforms blending into the night. Black uniforms with the faint shimmer of purple LuthorCorp logos on their caps.

The personal in these low profile projects never displayed incriminating corporate identification. And their uniforms were bland tan.

“What - -?” Lex started, mind racing, creating reasons why official LuthorCorp personal might be here, no few of them involving his father’s duplicity.

He took another half step and the man in the lead fired. Six feet and the electric pulse of the taser hit him in the chest like a fist. He spun, the breath slammed out of him, heart skipping a beat or two as it endured invasive and traumatic shock to his system. He didn’t hit the ground, and it belatedly occurred to him through the fog in his head, that it was because Clark had been two steps behind him when he’ d been hit. Had caught him when he’d spun backwards and held on to him still while his legs splayed like rubber under him.

“Wait - -“ Clark was saying and Lex could feel the soft rumble of the word against his cheek pressed to Clark’s chest.

But they weren’t listening to him any more than they had Lex and he heard the sound of weapons fired, and Clark swearing, and swinging him around, putting his back between Lex and the combined output of more than one electrical impulse weapon. Which of course, mattered less than nothing in the long run, electricity having the tendency to travel, going straight through Clark and into Lex - - blinding, heart-stopping shock to a system already taxed.

He blacked out.

And came back in a wash of disorientation, of sickening vertigo that might have been an aftereffect of the tasers, or might have been from hanging ass over head across Clark’s shoulder. He struggled against the indignity and the motion sickness diminished, almost too abruptly and he was dumped onto the ground. He sprawled in a tangle of roots and leaves, and lay there, vision spinning, staring up at the pale purple of a cloudless night sky through the thin lattice of black branches. He still felt the impact of combined taser hits in his muscles, little spasms of cramping pain.

He didn’t hear the sound of pursuit, didn’t see the dirt road. How had Clark managed to avoid them, after he’d taken several dead on hits was no less a burning question than why they’d fired at Lex in the first place. It wasn’t like he was easy to mistake.

“Having some management/employee issues, Lex?” Clark stared down with that smug superiority that he wore so often of late. “Or is it that sometimes there just isn’t a big enough paycheck to justify some things and maybe they’d had enough.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.” Lex forced his limbs into cooperation and got up, not in the mood for Clark’s accusatory crap. “There’s always a big enough paycheck. And if you’re feeling so self-righteous, why not just leave me there?”

Which shut Clark up for a moment. And though Lex would have loved to comprehend the mechanics of Clark’s reasoning, he couldn’t complain overly about the end results. If they had been working for his father, or some other insurgent agent within the hierarchy of LuthorCorp, with an agenda that veered towards the type of hostile takeover that required hostility of the violent sort- - he wasn’t certain if remaining in their custody would have been a healthy choice. The thought of ending up in a shallow grave in these woods was not a comforting one.

Clark gave him a scathing look, and stomped away. Which was just fine, because he didn’t want to talk to Clark anyway. He wanted Clark and Clark’s complications gone. Lex could deal with him later.

He needed a phone. Badly. He needed to find out if this was some incredibly unlikely fuck up - - or whether he needed to initiate some very serious housecleaning. He reached the edge of the trees unexpectedly. A surprise since the facility had been deep within the boundaries of the wooded area. How long had he been unconscious, for Clark to get him so far?

He saw Clark’s silhouette, unmoving up ahead, and opened his mouth to inquire - - and then stopped, seeing what Clark was staring at, rising up out of the darkness.

A fence. Twenty-foot high, industrial grade chain link sections between thick iron pylons, all of it topped with razor wire. And it stretched on into the darkness for as far as the eye could see in either direction. Not a structure that might be easily missed, or quickly erected since the last time he’d looked.

Clark walked forward slowly, something vaguely bewildered in his gait, probably more disconcerted than Lex at the thing’s presence, being more familiar with Smallville’s in roads and back country. He reached out a hand to touch the chain link, maybe to test the solidity of its existence.

“No - -” Lex cried, making out the writing on the metal plaque at the edge of the chain link section a moment too late to make a difference.

And Clark did start, surprised, and a spark or two rose off his sleeve, before he pulled his hand back, a cautious aborted motion. A guilty movement, almost. And Lex snapped his mouth shut hard enough to click teeth and stared at the hand that Clark had dropped back to his side. The hand that should, by all rights, be charred and blackened, along with the rest of Clark, after touching a fence charged with twenty thousand volts of current.

“There’s a sign.” Lex said through clenched teeth and Clark looked up at it, the warning that was hard to take notice of in the dark, and clenched the hand into a fist.

“It must be malfunctioning,” Clark said, hardly even trying to get that plaintive air of innocence in his voice that he used to have down to perfection. There had been a time when Clark used to look at him with those eyes, big and blameless, a heart-melting smile on his lips when he spewed his lies. Now it was sullen belligerence and animosity laden, crappy excuses.

There had been a multitude of reasons Lex used to accept the bullshit with a smile, but none of them were viable now.

“You think?” Lex asked. “Let’s see.”

And reached towards it, fingertips a half inch away before Clark caught his wrist and prevented him closing that distance.

“Yeah,” Lex said, pulling his hand out of Clark’s grip, a churning knot of anger/elation growing in his gut. “I can see how the tazers might not have been that much of a problem for you.”

He stood there, waiting for Clark to say something. To come up with another flimsy lie, to take a stab at an explanation - - anything. It was more important in that moment, than the perplexing fence or LuthorCorp personal tazering him or destructive mutants on the loose.

But wasn’t that what Clark was? A meta human, a mutant, an inexplicable something that Lex had always known was there but was always just out of reach?

Clark looked away, offering up nothing, not even trying, like he’d just tied his shoe or recited the alphabet instead of barely reacting to a mega dose of electrical current. And on top of everything else; tonight and the last few hectic months of dancing around federal investigations, colossal property damage and the resulting lawsuits, the harassment from Smallville law spearheaded by Henry Small who still blamed Lex . . .

Lex was simply tired. Too tired to level accusations of his own. Too tired to scream at Clark when it would be a waste of his breath anyway. The anger was fading to numbness. It wasn’t as if this were startling news - - as if he didn’t remember, word for word, every scrap of evidence gathered over the years - - enough to fill volumes. Lex’s personal biography on Clark Kent - - never published, never utilized, when god knew other meta humans had been approached on a fraction of the evidence.

The fence was a blaring presence on the edge of his property. Maybe actually on his property. It had been hard to see the design of the uniforms, other than the overall black, but what he had seen hadn’t been familiar. The LuthorCorp Logo had been - - odd. Same basic design but, different font, maybe? What had Clementine Rawlins done?

He brushed past Clark, walking the perimeter of the fence towards the main road, which was out there somewhere. Thoughts spinning, too many tangents to properly focus on, but maybe that was partially due to repeated taser shocks.

“Lex?” Clark finally said, reluctantly trailing. And Lex didn’t want to talk to him - - wanted to talk so bad it was the like the sudden craving of nicotine after years of abstinence. He ground his teeth and kept walking.

“How did this get here?” The fence. Clark wanted to know about the fence. Lex hoped he choked on the want of knowing. Twenty thousand volts. Not a flinch. Lex recalled other things.

“Damnit, Lex I want to know what happened back there?” Clark caught up with him, hand on his arm, pulling him a little off the straight line he’d been walking parallel the fence.

“So would I.” Lex wrenched his arm and Clark held on, eyes a little spooked, which meant he’d been thinking about what this very intimidating fence and the odd ripple of distortion that Clem Rawlins had sent at them meant. The fingers hurt a little, biting into Lex’s bicep and he had to stop, facing Clark, fighting for the cold impassiveness of expression that would drive Clark mad.

“Whatever do you mean?” he inquired, glancing aside at the fence. “I’m sure you’re imagining things. Or it fell from the sky. Or sprouted from the earth. Insta-fence - - perhaps a new revolutionary product. I’ll have to look into it. It sounds like a money maker.”

Clark glared at him, and the fingers tightened and Lex fought the urge not to try and pry the grip off with his free hand in favor of enduring it and facing Clark down. He’d never tried the route of blatantly ridiculous lies to Clark’s face before and it was interesting to see the reaction to them, from the outside in. Of course, Lex had always - - for the most part - - endured them with more poise. Clark looked like he wanted to shake him. And that would be unacceptable and embarrassing.

“Get your hand off me.” Lex said very calmly, in case Clark might have forgotten it was there.

Clark pressed his lips flat, suppressing a reply or a growl or a curse, - - it might have been any one, Clark had so many mixed emotions crawling across his face, but he pulled his hand back regardless.

Lex resisted the need to massage the life back into the arm Clark had brutalized.

“I don’t know,” he said finally, uncomfortable admission. Lex had suspicions that boggled the mind, but he wasn’t prepared to discuss them with Clark.

“She did something.” Clark said. “I felt it when it passed through me.”

Lex swallowed and started walking again. There was a more than reasonable chance that it hadn’t passed through them, but they had passed through it. But he didn’t know if it were time they had traversed, alternate realities or quantum universes. There had been multiple theories concocted by men with a more intrinsic grasp of scientific hypotheticals than him. He had been interested in the end results and the strategic applications.

There was a rise, a slight swelling of land and beyond that, the lightening sky of pre-dawn. The highway would be past it and the chance for a ride back to - - what Lex dearly hoped would be familiar territory. And when he crested it, he did see the long, straight stretch of road that could take one either to the hamlet of Smallville or the sprawling mass of Metropolis miles and miles the other way.

But there was something else. The fence intersected it and kept going, curving into the distance, and squatting next to the road, was a sprawling compound. At first glance the lay out seemed military in nature. The buildings seemed positioned strategically, and there were what looked like bunkers and depots, and massive hangers. There was a landing strip that spilled out into the flat land on the other side of the highway, and several long-nosed, black helicopters resting idly at the edge of it.

The highway did not pass unfettered through the fence. Not even close. It wasn’t a matter of a barricade, but of a series of heavy duty gates with check points on either side. As if something terrible lay outside that needed confirmation several times over before it was allowed within. Or vise versa. As if this heavily fortified compound was here to over see just that.

And on the tallest building, what might have been an air control tower, was the shining metal logo of LuthorCorp. And now that he’d noted it, when he squinted down at the line of trucks and vehicles closest to the highway, he could make out the symbol there as well.

“What the hell?” Clark said softly, close on Lex’s heel.

A cliché came to mind, but really it didn’t apply. They were still in Kansas, just not the same Kansas they’d started the day in.

“Lex, what did you do?” The accusation was so strong in Clark’s voice that Lex actually laughed. A bitter, humorless laugh, granted. But it was hysterical that Clark thought him responsible.

“The fact that you think so highly of my capabilities is flattering, really,” Lex said, mind racing. LuthorCorp logos. So even if this were some distant future or alternate plane of existence, it was a close match for one he knew. Extraordinarily close, because the trees hadn’t altered when they’d passed through, and the dirt track had been the same-pitted road.

“You need to explain this to me, now.” Clark ground out, angry and probably freaked out. Lex was freaked out, but he was trying to get a handle on it.

“You first.” Lex turned on him. He had an advantage in this situation, which consisted of an inkling of what had happened. He wasn’t above using that as leverage. He wasn’t beyond shuffling that compound down there and the possibilities it represented aside in favor of trying to wring a little truth out of Clark. Because there were priorities and then there were priorities, and Clark constantly shifted about in the order of his - - but never, ever strayed far from the top. The value of the things Lex would be willing to give up in exchange for carte blanche access to Clark’s secrets was ever changing, but always high. The things Lex would be willing to do to get them also tended to fluctuate, depending on the state of his sentimentality.

“What do you want me to say?” Clark threw out his hands, an explosive gesture of anger or frustration.

“You need to ask?” he shot back, calm lost somewhere along the way.

Clark looked past him, to that base down there, mouth a tight line, fists white-knuckled at his sides. “Is now really the time?”

What better time, than standing here in a strange/familiar place, the world likely skewed out of any recognizable balance? Stranded. He laughed again and strangled on it, feeling something close to hysteria rising. He truly needed to look into those priorities.

Clark would ruin him, one way or another. Damnation that he never had been able to deal with in a coolly professional manner.

He remembered a time, when Clark had still been a boy, walking into the study. Maybe the third time he’d been in the mansion, nervous and sincere like he had nothing to hide. Tentatively venturing in because Lex had offered invitation, because Lex was curious - - not obsessively so - - not yet - - but curious still about the boy that had resurrected him. Wanting answers and knowing how to seduce in order to get them. And there were so many things that wealth and sophistication had to offer that would be seductive to the son of a struggling farmer.

Only Clark had come in that day, that third visit, inanely covering his nervousness by babbling about the quality of the shipment he’d dropped off in the kitchen. Remarking about the wall of books that Lex had added to since he’d arrived mere weeks ago, while Lex considered how to veer the subject subtly to what he wanted to hear. And Clark had turned to him, with those incredible, expressive eyes and blurted. ‘My dad doesn’t have a very high opinion of you, and he’d rather I not come in and talk. But I think he’s wrong. And I like talking to you, because none of my other friends talk to me like you do, like what they’re saying really matters. Like they believe in things. And like it matters that I believe too. I just thought you needed to know.’

Lex had never been sure if it was the heartfelt little confession that got to him - - or the earnest application of the word ‘friend’. Like it was more than an easy term to banter around. Like Clark had meant it for all they’d known each other less than a month. It had knocked Lex off his target with ruthless efficiency and kept him wavering on the verge of needing answers and simply not caring for a very long time to come. That had him questioning himself and his motives as often as he questioned the mystery that surrounded Clark.

Until Clark stopped using the word friend and the lies, like all lies, became too big to ignore and Lex no longer had a reason to try.

“You’re probably right,” Lex said, regaining cool, because he had an agenda now and purpose gave him focus.

If he was going to go down there, and try to bluff his way into a LuthorCorp compound that might or might not have some ties with a him of the past or the future or some alternate version thereof, he didn’t need the weight of Clark’s inability to assimilate a decent lie dragging him down.

“I believe Mrs. Rawlins may have created a wormhole of sorts and sent us somewhere - - else. Obviously there are things here that didn’t exist in our world.”

“In our world?” Clark’s voice hit an unusual high note.

“Yes,” Lex said, playing to that growing panic, while his own was a contained in a tight little cage. “In fact, Smallville as we know it, might not exist at all here. The people you know - - might be dead and buried if time is a factor, or simply not exist.”

“Dead . . .” Clark’s face turned a little ashen. It had been a calculated word, a calculated visual to create in Clark’s mind.

Lex dealt with his losses like they were enemies, locked them away in secure boxes inside his head, so that he could bring them out and use them to his advantage if need be, but the rest of the time they were buried deep enough not to hurt him. Clark carried his losses like a cross, burdens he never let himself forget and shouldered the guilt for whether there was guilt to be had or not.

Clark looked into the distance, in the direction Smallville ought to be.

“If you wanted to go and see. I assure you, the lack of your company would be no offense to me.”

Clark cast him a fleeting, annoyed look, before looking back towards Smallville. Lex started walking down the slope, towards the road and the compound. When he glanced over his shoulder a few minutes later, Clark was gone. That was no unusual occurrence either. Clark had a habit of untimely departures. It was what he’d wanted. But still, he suppressed a shudder, from the cold, he told himself.

Lex kept walking. He shoved his hands in his pockets and felt the cool, heavy shape of the gun. Unless they let him through unquestioned, it might not be the wisest thing to walk up to a secure compound armed.

He hated to get rid of it. Hated the notion of walking into the unknown unarmed, even if the unknown in question was plastered with a LuthorCorp logo. But it was the rational thing to do, just like unloading Clark. He hoped.

He tossed the weapon into the grass, where it lay, half concealed.

The compound itself was fenced in with more moderate ten-foot high, razor-topped chain link surrounding the perimeter. He had to follow the line of the fence around to the highway before he came to the guarded entrance, where he walked up to the surprised contingent of on duty guards and announced with unshakable authority that he wished to see the person in charge.

They were understandably shaken at his sunrise arrival. They were in the black, LuthorCorp uniforms that he’d seen back in the woods, with truncheons and holstered pistols at their sides, as well as the formidable military grade tasers hooked to their equipment belts. Apparently security at this base was taken very seriously. He had to applaud that attention to detail, since there were admitted holes in his own. Somebody here was on the ball.

“This is a restricted area. What business do you have at the Perimeter? Present your ID.” The ranking guard stepped into his face, while the others got their shit together and looked on ominously.

All right. One question answered. His face was obviously not recognized here. Maybe the name . . .?

He pulled out his wallet, carefully, because there were too many tense hands hovering near holstered weapons, and handed his license over.

The guard turned it over in his hands like it was crayon drawn on construction paper. “What’s this? This isn’t a Perimeter pass or a Citizenship Identification card.”

“It’s a license. Drivers. The best I can do.” Lex told him mildly, waiting for the man to take a look at the name. Lex saw it when it finally registered. Saw the man take a closer look, brows beetling, then looking back up at Lex with a wary sort of suspicion.

“What is this?” The guard stepped back, hand on the grip of his gun and his movement set every one of his men into similar threatening poses.

“It’s exactly what it says.” Lex said carefully, not moving an inch, trying to look unintimidated and harmless at the same time. Getting shot by jumpy guards was not part of the agenda.

The guard closed his hand over the license and motioned sharply to the men behind him. “Secure this man.”

And guns came out and it wasn’t exactly what Lex had planned, being pushed against the guard house and searched for contraband, while the guard commander was inside on the phone, reporting this bizarre situation.

At least he’d tossed the gun. They relieved him of his phone, keys and wallet - - he’d had nothing else in his pockets - - and escorted him back to the gate in front of the guard house, one on each arm, like he was going to try something rash and violent surrounded by armed men. The guard commander was still on the line, casting Lex looks now and then as he conversed with someone on the other end. Finally he nodded, and gave an affirmative, and stomped purposefully back out, a man with a purpose now instead of a confusing quandary.

“I assume,” Lex said smoothly. “That you’ve arranged for me to speak with someone with authority. Preferably someone with executive power in the company, because I really prefer not to have my time wasted.”

“Cuff him.” The guard commander ordered.

“No. Wait - -there’s no need!“ Lex was willing to argue the point, but they weren’t willing to hear it. They were very efficient, twisting his arms behind him and locking cuffs around his wrists before he could really think about resisting.

The guard commander made a short motion, marching towards the gate and swiping a key card through a lock to open it. There was a jeep racing up from the depths of the compound and it skidded to a stop just past the gates. Three more guards in black uniforms jumped out, trotting forward. Grim faced, square jawed men of the sort Lex liked to employ to manage the less agreeable subjects housed in his biogenetic research facilities.

He was transferred into their care, and he could only hope that they were the conduit between him and some more flexible authority, because this sort of man would hear no argument and no plea for mercy. It wasn’t in the job description.

He shut his mouth and did what they wanted him to do. Got into the back of the jeep, uncomfortable ride with hands secured behind him and tried to figure out if he’d made a horrible miscalculation or if he simply needed to wait it out and see if he could make something of this after all. His name had caught their attention, that was certain. So there still might be advantage to be had.

They drove through the compound, everything about it more military than corporate, and came to a low, long concrete building with no particular designation. He wouldn’t ask questions of them, or confirmations, because that would be the act of a desperate man. A frightened man. And they didn’t need to see that - - even though, God, he was beginning to get that way.

Because they were leading him down a hall lined with what could only be room after room of containment cells with plain metal doors and small grills for viewing. Someone inside one cried out as they passed, claiming ‘it’s a mistake, a mistake. I belong here.’ Which was baffling and unsettling. And someone else was crying softly, the sort of sound you might hear if you walked down the aisle of one of his own containment facilities from a newly acquired test subject.

He flinched, trying to control his breathing, pressing his mouth tight when they opened a cell door and shoved him in, following far enough to uncuff him - - small favor - - before stepping back out and sealing him inside.

Tiny room. Eight by eight foot. A metal bench with no mattress secured to the wall. A stainless steel toilet in the corner. A camera protected behind a grill in one corner of the ceiling. Nothing else but cool concrete and the oppressive air of dread.

He stood there, rubbing his wrists, listening to the fading sounds of boots outside. And when those were gone, nothing else got past the door to the cell. Just silence. For a while, he stood there, blank, then moved to the bench and sat down. He’d been on his feet a long time. It felt good to be off them.

Didn’t think about the smallness of the cell. Didn’t think about how long he would be in it, because that way lay panic and fear and that’s what this sort of place was designed to instill.

Think instead what it meant about this place that the name Lex Luthor meant nothing. Think about how to deal with that. Think about Clark, who had probably taken the safer route, heading towards a place not surrounded in military paraphernalia. Clark was a safety net, because Clark knew he was here and Clark wouldn’t abandon him. But, no, maybe that wasn’t true anymore. Not after this last miserable year - - the last few months of hell. Maybe Clark would just as well be rid of him, because even though he might not believe Lex ordered the act - - he still held him responsible. Which was just fucking unfair - - Lex choked off a breath, refusing, absolutely refusing to unlock that box and go down that path.

He pushed himself up and paced until his knees hurt, sat back down and repeated the process. And waited. Hours. Alternately pissed off and worried.

When he finally heard the sound of boots on concrete again, it was like a rack of stones lifted off his chest. He had to fight back the look of gratitude at the simple act of opening the cell door.

“Its about time. How long does it take to get someone here that knows the Luthor name?” It was brazen, but he was feeling the need to assert a little illusional authority.

The guards of course, said nothing, simply turning him about before they let him exit the cell and recuffing his wrists. He growled a little at that, frustrated, and walked between them to the end of the hall, where there was an elevator with three buttons. 1st floor. 2nd floor. Basement. The basement of a prison complex boded ill, so it was a relief to see them press the 2nd floor.

There were administrative offices here, and meeting rooms and they led him into one of those, pushed him to the middle of the floor and retreated to take up positions by the door. There were two men, both in suits, with their backs to him looking out the window over the base. One of them turned, and he had Lex’s license in hand.

“This is a very interesting identification you have here.” The man said.

“Really? Do you like it?” Lex asked, with a wry arch of the brow.

The man turned it over in his fingers, stopping a few yards away from Lex and studying him. “A very interesting resemblance.”

More intriguing still. “Is it? So does the name Lex Luthor have any meaning here?”

“It did. It still does, if you’re talking about ghosts.” The other man, the one still staring out the window said. “But you see, Lex Luthor is dead and has been for seven years. Unfortunate accident involving a car and a bridge. Shame about the car.” The man turned, a cold smile plying a familiar mouth, familiar eyes holding that same challenging glint that Lex remembered form the last time he’d seen his half brother.

“But I’ve got to tell you,” Lucas Luthor said, padding towards him, circling him, getting close enough in his face that Lex could feel his breath. “You’ve done a damned good job of pulling off the look.”

Clex snippit - Altered Reality -1

You're going to hate me for this 'snippit'. It's less a snippit than a 18,000 word story that petered out and got used as the basis for another story. I think I took some of the premises and utilized them in 'Stranded' - - maybe.

Working title was 'Altered Reality' and I'll post it in 4 or 5 sections.



The subject’s name was Clementine Rawlins and Lex watched from a control room outside a static-depolarization field that seemed to be the only thing capable of blunting her unusual abilities.

She was a long time resident of Smallville, but a short-time mutant, having gained her powers only a few years past, during the second hail of destruction from the sky. She had been trapped in her storage shed, next to a sizable chunk of meteor rock for almost two days before rescuers had come to dig her out of the wreckage. More than long enough, research showed, for the agitated radiation of the rocks to have altered genetic structure irrevocably. More than enough to drive her mad.

But madness, to some degree or another, seemed a common byproduct of meteor-generated alterations. According to interviews of her neighbors, the oddness surrounding Clem Rawlins had started around sixteen months ago. Little things that made people blink and think twice and then doubt their own senses. She’d stare into space at things that other people couldn’t see, and sometimes between one blink and another, she’d have something in her hand that she hadn’t before. Or be holding something, some bit of refuse or an empty cup and she’d reach forward and some trick of the mind or of the light would make it see as if her hand disappeared into nothingness and she’d pull it back empty. Or stranger things, that people didn’t like talking about. Of objects seemingly embedded in her walls, pots half in and half out of plaster, or shoes or other household items, of hearing the distant hum of voices when Clem was staring at a blank spot in the wall like it was a TV set, and then hearing nothing at all.

It wasn’t until a sister-in-law stopped by one afternoon in an impromptu visit and found the leg of Clem’s husband sticking out of the kitchen wall as if it had grown there and the rest of him incontrovertibly gone - - just vanished, that she’d become more than just a local curiosity.

She’d claimed he’d threatened to leave her and she’d simply helped him along the way. The police wanted to know where the rest of him was, and she’d said, serious as stone, that she’d sent him to the other place, and that she was sorry all of him hadn’t gotten though. He’d miss that foot.

Of course they thought her crazy. They figured she’d cut him up into bits and disposed of the evidence. All except that damning section of lower leg. No one really cared to investigate too thoroughly how it had come to be growing out of a wall. In Smallville some things were taken at face value.

Lex underestimated nothing that had any link to the Smallville meteor showers. Any scrap of the unusual his people gathered data on. And when the chance arose, they gathered more than data.

In two days Clem Rawlins had been transferred out of the county mental facility to which she had been admitted to a more secure compound of a private nature. Lex had an understanding with the administrator of Belle Reeve and there were some patients, that were simply better off where proper precautions might be taken - - where proper understanding of their abnormalities might be gained.

And sometimes that took prodding. Sometimes a little inhumanity had to be practiced to understand the limits of humanity. Sometimes people hid the things that made them different, or sometimes they didn’t even know they were. Lex’s people had gotten very good at uncovering secrets. At peeling back layers to find inner truths.

Clem Rawlins was being prodded. They’d tried the easy way first - - simply asking. Interview after interview. They were not needlessly cruel, especially to subjects whose cooperation they might eventually require. But she was uncooperative, in a state of denial. Other methods were required.

She was 49 and had haunted eyes, but you had to look past that, to the fact that she could pull objects out of nowhere and make bodies disappear into the same negative space - - well, most of a body.

She had an aversion to snakes. A phobia. A platform came up, with a clear plastic cage in the center of the holding cell, with a coiled, serpentine occupant. Not a poisonous variety, they weren’t so careless with their subjects, but a person with a fear wouldn’t differentiate between a garden-variety corn snake and any other.

She started backing away, torn between hyperventilation and screams, as soon as she saw it and when it undulated out, slithering across the featureless metal floor, she rocked in her corner, crying incoherently. Cursing them perhaps.

“Send it away, Mrs. Rawlins.” The tech outside the depolarization field told her. She scrambled along the wall, and begged release.

Lex canted his head and observed, impassive. She wasn’t an innocent. She’d stopped being an innocent the day the meteors altered her genetic makeup and accident of fate or no, her fear was a small price to pay if it brought them one step closer to understanding the wellspring of human potential.

Her movement and her noise drew the reptile, doubtless no less terrified than the woman.

“She’s on the verge of collapse. Look at her vitals.” One of the doctors said beside him, intent on his monitors. They weren’t sure the extent or nature of her abilities, though they theorized. Was she creating matter and obliterating it, with the power of her will? Or might she be actually breaching the barrier of time/space, seeing future or past or different realities altogether, and snatching things into or out of her own little wormholes?

Either way, it was a staggering power, if it could be harnessed. If it could be replicated the potential might be limitless. There were other theories, but only Clem Rawlins could describe what it was she was seeing and touching and where the things went that she sent through her own personal portals.

“Send it away. Like you did the trey in your room.” The tech urged.

Two nights after she’d come here, before they’d perfected the depolarization field, she’d banished her supper tray, screaming about the contents of her meal. Apparently fish was also not to her liking.

“Bastards,” she screamed, staring at the one-way glass of the control room panel beyond the field.

“Her vitals - -” the doctor reiterated. “Heart rate’s 242, blood pressure - -“

And something did happen. The floor opened up before Clem Rawlins. Or more accurately, it disappeared along with the scaly object of her irrational terror. Simply ceased to be. And its abrupt departure destabilized the connecting walls, severed circuits that were vital to power and the field sputtered out and died, along with every other electronically powered device in the facility.

The control room was plunged into darkness. Inky and complete.

“Get the back up generator on line. Get her secured. Now.” Lex leaned forward, squinting out through the window, willing his eyes to adjust to darkness, ignoring the frantic babble of the researchers in the room with him.

Unexpected. But the unexpected happened when you dealt with the meteor infected. The walls shook, and the cries of men could be heard outside the control room. There was the flash of a drive stun taser. An aborted scream, but it wasn’t that of a woman. The rumbling impact of a something large falling and the glass on the control panel window shattered just as the red emergency lights along the floor blinked on, courtesy of a back up generator that should have been active as soon as the power cut.

“The ceiling is coming down,”someone cried, and the blood-red safety lights backed up the claim.

“Evacuate. Get everyone out,” Lex snapped, whirling himself to stalk out. “Where’s security?”

There was madness out in the hall, and a great deal of the tan uniformed facility security fumbling about in the wake of Clem Rawlins destruction. She’d taken out the wall in front of the cell and most likely the tech who’d been standing there. There was no body to indicate otherwise. The wall beyond that was gone and the roof over it as well. No debris, other than what had fallen free of the severed edges of the building.

Lex cursed, panicking a little at the extent of it, at the unforgivable miscalculation of her power. But he shook it off, kept a cool face in front of his people. They were agitated enough without seeing any loss of control from him. There were other subjects in this facility, other dangerous metahumans that needed to be secured if containment systems failed. He gathered security personal as he went, passing orders along as he threaded through the path of Clem Rawlins escape. Something shuddered and collapsed and it shook the floor. The domino effect. One wall disappeared and another fell and another followed and another.

He had a care for his people, not to get caught in this, unfortunate victims of an unfortunate blunder. He had a care for the other subjects, valuable assets that they were and not all of them inadvertent killers like Clem Rawlins. He’d already been on the phone, setting forces in motion to speed back up resources here, backup containment before things got further out of hand than they already were. But that help was forty-five minutes away at best and his men here were scattered.

It made him edgy and angry, that loss of control and it was harder to contain than it might have been half a year ago, when his world had been less chaotic. He snapped at a man who ran up to him, reporting that she was outside, loose in the woods surrounding the facility.

“Incompetents. She’s one middle aged woman and you’re trained professionals. Go help with the evacuation since you’re useless at the job you were hired.”

He took a breath, after the security guard had run back into the building, trying to gather calm. Ignoring the nervous eyes of the other two men that waited behind him. It was hard to find it, that cool reserve, when there might be dead under rubble. Dead who might be traced back to him, no matter what compensation was offered - - and it would be given generously- - to grieving families. The last thing he needed was more attention from small town law. Not after . . .

He shut down that train of thought with a vengeance and climbed through the last gaping hole in the wall and into the deceptive quiet of night. There were 120 acres of forested land surrounding the facility. Beyond that farmland and beyond that - - seven miles west, Smallville proper. If she got that far, there’d be hell to pay.

In the state of mind she was in - - if this power surge she was experiencing continued - - retaking her alive might not be a viable option. He told security and they passed the word along, a low babble of voices on comm. units.

There were jeeps, the only things that could easily deal with the pits and grooves of the washed out dirt road that led to the facility from the main road. He got in one on the passenger side and reached his secondary team leader on the phone, demanding ETA.

The headlights caught something pale at the side of the road, disappearing into the woods.

“Stop. There she is.” The jeep skidded, halfway off the pseudo road and into the bramble at the side. His two security dogs spilled out after her - - or what he thought was her, and Lex pulled the back up gun out of the glove compartment, checked the clip and followed.

He didn’t want her dead. But dead was safer than loose, when loose was a liability he couldn’t afford.

They hadn’t driven far from the facility, which meant she’d circled back, or hidden close instead of fleeing outright. The woods at night were treacherous - - roots and shadow camouflaged branches tangling in feet and catching clothing. They were bad enough in the light of day, he hated them at night. He ought to be back at the jeep, coordinating this instead of running through the undergrowth.

But, the rush felt good. The surge of adrenalin felt like release for controlled frustration.

There was a scream ahead of him. The thud of impact. He pushed through something with thorns that tore at the fine weave of his coat and saw a trio of unlikely things.

The two security guards down, the woman crouched, back to a tree, eyes wide, but face oddly expressionless.

But really, what Lex focused on was Clark Kent, standing between the sprawled guards and the woman like some avenging angle in worn denim and K-mart windbreaker.

Honestly, Lex should have been surprised. It would have been reasonable to be surprised to find Clark out here, in the middle of what for all intents and purposes was nowhere. But then Clark had a habit of being in the wrong place at the right time and surprise was one of those emotions, much like affection and forgiveness, that Lex stopped feeling for him long ago.

A little bit of rage spilled up. Indignation at Clark’s mere existence in the center of Lex’s affairs yet one more time. It was almost enough to make him forget the greater threat of Clem Rawlings. Almost.

“You’re on private property, Clark,” he said, shifting his gaze beyond Clark to the woman. Careful, because there were two unpredictable things here, but the greater of the two was crouched against a tree.

“What are you doing out here? This is Mrs. Rawlins. She’s supposed to be in Belle Reeve. How did she get here and why do you have people chasing her through the woods?”

So many questions that Lex had no intention of answering. Clark was narrow eyed and angry, spitting righteous indignation as he turned towards Clem Rawlings. If she sent him along the path of half Lex’s facility, it would serve him right.

“I’d be careful,” Lex warned lightly.

He slipped the gun in his pocket and carefully crouched and picked up one of the fallen tasers. He wouldn’t shoot her in front of Clark. He wouldn’t shoot Clark, though God knew it would be therapeutic. He’d taser either one, possibly both, if the opportunity arose.

The guards weren’t her work. If they were, they’d be gone, or partially gone. Which meant Clark had taken out two armed men. By the force of his personality? Lex seriously doubted it.

Clark glared warning at him, and approached the woman.

“Mrs. Rawlins? It’s okay. I won’t let them hurt you. Do you recognize me?”

Her gaze shifted, focusing on Clark, squinting through the shadows. “Martha’s boy. You’re Martha’s boy.”

Clark nodded, smiling. And she softened at that deceptive smile, just like anyone did, who was graced by it and didn’t know it was nothing more than a pretty facade for lies upon lies.

Of course, Clark knew her. Her husband had been a farmer and the farmers of Smallville were a close-knit community. They’d have attended bar-b-ques and hayrides and barn raisings together.

“You might not want to get too close.” Lex didn’t want to be accused of not giving fair warning. He didn’t particularly want Clark sucked into oblivion if it could be helped - - he might even concede that he’d go out of his way to avoid it happening. But that would involve Clark actually listening to him.

“Shut up, Lex. What have you done to her?”

And that seemed to spur something in her, because her eyes narrowed and she glared past Clark to Lex and rose, stabbing out a finger in accusation.

“You did this . . . you made me . . .”

Something rippled out. A faint sliver of disturbance almost undetectable under the cover of darkness. Lex could feel it more distinctly than he could see it. It passed Clark and Clark simply wasn’t there anymore. Devoured like inconsequential prey and Lex experienced a jolting stab of shock, unexpected and terrible, at the loss of him.

He screamed something. At her perhaps. Maybe at the echo of Clark. He dropped the taser and reached for the gun, having the sudden very passionate urge to put a bullet in her head.

And then the ripple washed over him, and it took his breath and his equilibrium for a moment. He staggered, the gun half out of his pocket, and tripped over a root. He went down in the soft earth, in mulch and dead leaves and lost the gun.

“Where did she go? What happened to her?” Clark whirled on him, demanding.

Clark whirled on him . . .

Lex stared up, hand paused in his search for the gun, breath caught in his throat. Clark stalked to the tree the woman had been crouched before as if it held some clue, then stared out into the darkened forest intently.

Lex stared at Clark. Coherent thought momentarily stalled, clogged on shock and relief - - then started up again. Clark was back. She was gone. The two unconscious security guards were nowhere in sight. Something was wrong with the picture. Seriously. He just wasn’t sure what yet.

He found the gun by feel alone in the leaves and slipped it back into his coat pocket. Pushed himself to his feet, reflexively wiping debris from his coat while he looked around. If he hadn’t gotten completely turned around - - which was entirely likely in night shrouded forest, the facility was to the west - - and west was to the right. Maybe. It might be a better idea to retrace his steps to the dirt track and take the jeep back, rather than fumble around in the woods.

He could find his way around a city by instinct alone, but put him in the forest and he was lost. It wouldn’t have killed his father’s reputation to send him to the occasional cliché summer camp retreat when he’d been young enough to actually enjoy it. He might have picked up a thing or two about woodland survival. Clark probably knew.

Which thought made Lex growl a little and think about bringing up charges for trespassing once he’d gotten this mess under control.

“Get the hell off my property.” He snapped, turning on his heel and stalking back the way he’d come.

“Why were your men chasing her, Lex?”

He could hear Clark crunching through the underbrush after him. “Is it because of the rumors about what she could do after the meteor shower? Is she another one of your sick experiments?”

Bloodraven snipit

Clex fiction blurb #2

Here's another Clex fiction babble that might have been the inspiration for Obsessions. I think.



There were some things you just didn’t do. No matter how badly you wanted. No matter the temptation. No matter the need that kept you up some nights. Fifteen was simply too young. Too naïve, no matter if you were a Kansas farm kid or a trust fund brat.

It wasn’t like he was in love. Nothing of the sort. Lex Luthor hadn’t been in love since he was two weeks shy of fifteen himself and experiencing his first taste of sex in the arms of the twenty-four year old wife of an oil Tycoon. And that had been all of the week they’d stayed at the sprawling Texas ranch, while his father and her husband had conducted casual business, and she’d conducted another sort of business with a wide eyed, self-conscious kid that had been bowled over - - simply floored by the attention of a worldly, beautiful woman. A bored woman that hadn’t wanted anything to do with him after that week was up. He’d been devastated and hurt and angry and he’d hated himself for weeks, not quite understanding that her rejection had been no fault of his.

But he’d liked the sex. Oh, he’d loved the sex, and once introduced, the body craved more and he’d gone looking - - being fifteen and needy and it had filled a void.

And he’d kept filling the void, without reservation or common sense for the next six years, until he’d been exiled to the capital of moderation and puritan ethics. Oh, and corn. Don’t forget the corn.

So, there were just some things you didn’t do, and seducing a naïve, corn-fed fifteen year old was chief among them. It didn’t matter if he had the hands of a man - - large and strong, or shoulders that stretched the material of his t-shirts, cloth clinging to hard muscle. Or that he was taller and broader, and looked up sometimes from under those ridiculously thick, inky lashes with eyes that speculated on things that Lex just couldn’t think about and function in the same room with him. Innocent speculation, he was sure - - but speculation just the same.

And if he knew, that green eyed kid, with his black, shining hair and his face that was like the wet dream of a renaissance master painter- - if he guessed the things Lex could do to him, the ways Lex knew to play the body like a fine instrument, he’d never be the same. All that innocence lost, sacrificed on the alter of hedonism.

And once it was gone, you never got it back, and that Lex knew first hand and he wouldn’t do it to the boy that had been his salvation. Not to a kid that smiled at him with honest enthusiasm and demanded nothing - - who went out of his way to refuse subtle little briberies, because he actually enjoyed the company.

Clark called him ‘friend’, but Lex wasn’t certain what that meant. Some terms were so easily bandied about, they lost all meaning. People had flocked to him in Metropolis because he had money, because he went to all the hottest clubs and did all the best drugs. Acquaintances, fuck-buddies, leeches. They all knew him by name. He’d fucked more of them than he could remember, or gotten fucked.

But it was a novel place, Smallville, filled with people with no agenda past working the land and feeding their families. Filled with baffling occurrences and all too frequent X-File moments. But, Lex was nothing if not adaptive.

He’d wanted Clark the first time he’d met him, the both of them wet and dirty from the river, sitting on the muddy bank waiting for the authorities to arrive, Lex’s teeth chattering so hard he’d barely been able to speak coherently, as they’d exchanged halting little bits of information. But want and act were two different things, and - - well, fifteen. And it had been a physical fancy, nothing more. Hard not to look at that body and avoid indecent thoughts.

By the second meeting, want was tempered, both of them dry and collected, and Lex on the cusp of offended that his generous gift had been refused - - equally intrigued that it had been, because no one in their right mind - - no one of his acquaintance would pass up such a thing. But Clark had been easy to talk to, and Clark had been interested, and Clark had walked away with nothing given and nothing gained, but a pleasant hour of time. And Lex had gone about his afternoon, absently pulling sheets from covered furniture, rediscovering things he hadn’t seen in years, and reacquainting himself with the sprawling mysteries of the mansion.

And life went on. Crops continued to grow. The plant continued to process crap and Lex learned the meaning of self-restraint. He learned, amazingly enough, that there were some people that couldn’t be bought. That the type of loyalty that really mattered couldn’t be paid for. And that sometimes comfortable company over the long run was an equitable exchange for a quick fuck.

So he savored Clark’s companionship, and tested the waters of friendship, not quite certain how to go about the whole thing. But he’d always been a consummate actor, and he’d learned to fake confidence early on. And camaraderie came so easily to Clark, with his huge grin and his earnest eyes, and yet he shared it with so few. His tiny cluster of friends could be easily accounted for on the fingers of one hand.

But then, Clark had his secrets. The Kent’s walled him in with them, guarding them and him viciously, discouraging outside interest. And being sixteen, Clark let them, because sixteen wasn’t much better than fifteen in the worldly knowledge department. When you were sixteen, you thought you knew everything, but so seldom did.

Lex had been with his first man when he was sixteen. Man. Boy. Hardly a difference. The guy had been eighteen so he was somewhere in-between. He’d met him on summer break in the Caymans, dark skinned and blonde haired and sly, like all eighteen-year-old sons of wealthy fathers think they are.

‘You’re so pale. Do you even go out in the sun?’ had been the pick up line. Lex remembered that, even though the guy’s name had been long lost. He’d been offended. He’d said something suitably scathing and the guy had smiled at him, big white teeth in a sun-tanned face and things had progressed from there.

He’d sucked Lex off, on his knees in the sand behind one of the god-awful expensive private bungalows and there had been something about the feel of a man’s lips, a man’s hard hands gripping his hips that gave him something he’d never gotten from the softness of the various girls and women he’d had before this. And he’d gone down, afterwards and had taken his first cock in his mouth, and he found he liked that too.

Mutual satisfaction.

What had made it even better was walking into his own bungalow afterwards, seeing his father conferring with his aide, who never left his side, even during dubious vacations, and knowing that if Lionel knew, if he even guessed what Lex had been doing, it would drive him mad.

Clark would never, ever derive such pleasure from scandalizing his father. But sometimes Lex thought about it. Jonathan Kent’s righteous indignation over the thought of his perfect - - God, so fucking perfect - - son, on his knees before Lex Luthor.

Granted, he didn’t have those vindictive little fantasies often, only when Jonathan Kent had particularly pissed him off. Generally his fantasies regarding Clark veered far a field from his father. Far, far a field.

Whether Clark guessed, was debatable. Lex thought he’d gotten rather good at masking his interest, but sometimes, Clark would catch him off guard and he’d get snared by a set of eyes that were too worldly for any common teenager and he’d lose his train of thought, or stutter out in the middle of a sentence. An uncommon loss of words that Clark never ceased to find amusing.

Weiss Kruez babble

Here's a bit of text i wrote when i was doing the Weiss kruez Doujinshi 'Last Dance'.

And here's a Weiss Kruez one



Sunlight slanted in through the blinds of Yoji’s bedroom, catching dust motes in the act of their eternal dance. Yoji blinked in drowsy content, encased in the soft comfort of goose down, expensive sheets and the exquisitely fine feel of Aya’s skin. They lay in a sprawl of relaxed limbs, peaceful and languid in the innocence of morning.

Last night had been decadent. Yoji had been . . . creative. Aya had been game, having the tendency to give himself over to Yoji’s lead in sexual matters, as if when he gave Yoji the reins, he couldn’t be blamed for any of the deviance that followed. He took no less pleasure from it than Yoji did, though. Yoji made damned sure of that. There was nothing taken that was not given back twofold in return, Yoji being nothing if not a generous lover.

Which was probably why Aya was still asleep when he was usually up hours before Yoji’s body even took the vague notion of rousing. It had been an energetic night.

Yoji smiled, leaning in to brush his cheek against Aya’s smooth shoulder. He laid a kiss on the apex, allowing his tongue to flicker against skin and taste the faint salt of dried sweat mixed with the mild shadow of coconut and fruit from scented body oil. His eyes fell on the blush of a mark of his making at the juncture of Aya’s neck and shoulder. He winced, predicting he would catch hell for leaving a love bite in such a visible spot. It would limit Aya’s wardrobe to high-necked pullovers for the next few days, Aya having the tendency not to want to broadcast their intimate activities to the world at large.

Yoji remembered making it though, and a smile of some satisfaction crossed his lips. Aya hadn’t protested at the time, unless one wished to count seductive, breathy moans of pleasure protest.

He ran a hand under the sheet to parts of Aya’s body that he couldn’t see and tried to recall if he’d left his mark anywhere else. Aya simply marked too easily, with his soft, pale skin. The texture of his flesh was undeniably alluring, silk smooth and supple. Yoji could hardly be blamed for wanting to devour him. Most certainly no blame could reasonably be placed when Aya encouraged it.

He thought there just might be a mark on Aya’s inner thigh. The right one, if he wasn’t mistaken. Aya wouldn’t mind that one so much, his chances of going out in public bare-thighed relatively low on the scale of probability. Yoji slid his hand past Aya’s sleeping cock, fingers brushing the soft sack of his balls and ghosting down to the warm skin of his inner thigh, rubbing the place he thought the mark might be. Aya sighed, shifting his head a little, soft lips parting, relaxed enough in Yoji’s bed, surrounded by Yoji’s smell and Yoji’s presence, not to wake at the feather soft caress.

That was no small thing, no small admittance, however subtle on Aya’s part, of the depths of trust he must have felt to allow himself such a relaxing of internal defenses. To say Aya was a light sleeper was an understatement of tremendous proportions. Deep sleep was not a luxury a man in their trade could always afford. And Aya more than most of them had internal demons that plagued his sub-conscience to the point that sometimes a light breeze outside his window would have him awake and alert.

That Yoji could touch Aya while he slept unhindered gave him the most delicious feeling of satisfaction . . . of sheer, overwhelming affection. He sighed, shifting closer to share Aya’s pillow, inhaling the fragrance of Aya’s hair, tickling his nose on errant strands of the silky stuff. He could just see the clock over Aya’s profile.

11:22. Aya would have kittens having let himself sleep so late. Not that they had anything more pressing to occupy themselves, other than taking advantage of Yoji’s expensive tastes in bedding. There was no mission in the works, no pressing personal business to take care of. No particular project either one of them had undertaken of late to while away the downtime.

The house was quiet outside his bedroom door, which probably meant Ken and Omi had taken off already, out to enjoy what appeared from the intensity of light coming in through Yoji’s blinds, to be a fine, sunny day. Yoji felt no particular guilt in wasting it in bed. The only crime would be not to enjoy the charms of his bedmate. Feeling particularly law-abiding, Yoji shifted a knee up to rest across Aya’s thighs, the top of his leg brushing the soft underside of Aya’s balls. He let his hand travel under the sheet.

Aya made a sleepy sound, finally drawn out of slumber by Yoji’s lack of it. Sleep-softened, violet eyes blinked at Yoji from a span of about six inches.

“Good morning, baby.” Yoji smiled, fingers idly circling Aya’s navel.

Aya blinked again, gaze rolling up to take in the angle and brightness of the light fighting its way past the blinds.

“Can it still be called that?”

“What? Morning? Sure. You’ve still got time before you can technically be thrown in with the lazy lot of us that habitually sleep past noon.”

Aya’s lashes flickered down. A smile curved his lips. Yoji couldn’t resist it, both the rarity of such an honest smile or the sweet curve of Aya’s lips relaxed in drowsiness and humor. He leaned over and kissed him and Aya sighed and parted his lips, kissing him back, the whole of it lazy and slow and entirely delightful. Yoji’s morning erection . . . well, the second one, for he was almost certain that one had come and gone before he’d fully woken, in accompaniment of some lusty and lurid dream . . . demanded acknowledgment. He rubbed it up against Aya’s hip, grinding his body close just so Aya might perfectly understand that Yoji was up for a bit of almost afternoon sex.

Aya’s hand slid up behind Yoji’s neck, fingers curling in his hair, nails gently massaging his scalp. A gradual tenting of the sheet across Aya’s lower body suggested that he wasn’t adverse to Yoji’s intentions. Yoji’s fingers unerringly found the fevered shaft. Aya gasped into his mouth as he gently squeezed, then proceeded to work a bit of five fingered magic under the sheet, all the while slowly rubbing himself against Aya’s hip.

He pressed his face into Aya’s neck, inhaling the scent of him, feeling the thud of his pulse, absorbing the heat of his skin. Aya’s fingers kneaded his hair, and trapped on his back as he was, with Yoji’s leg over his thighs the range of movement for his other hand was limited in reaching the parts of Yoji that Yoji would have most liked for him to reach. His fingertips grazed Yoji’s side, ghosted across his ribs, then traveled down his working arm to join Yoji’s hand on his own cock.

“Harder, Yoji.” He breathed, fingers tightening around Yoji’s and Yoji complied, gaining a shaky gasp and a groan for his efforts. He pumped faster, and Aya slipped his hand down to cup his balls. Aya’s body tightened, back arching off the bed as his cock leapt in Yoji’s hand, milky culmination spewing from its head. The sounds that came from Aya’s throat made Yoji crazy. He humped Aya’s hip with renewed vigor, hand still clutching Aya’s softening cock, and came with mind numbing intensity against Aya’s side.

They both fell lax, trembling minutely, enjoying the aftermath of even such simple pleasures as a hand-job and a dry hump. Yoji grinned into Aya’s shoulder. Aya shifted a little restlessly, stomach and side coated with both their leavings. Aya’s neat-freak tendencies did not allow him to lie placidly in a bed covered in come.

“So. Shower? Breakfast? Or should we stay in bed and fool around some more?” Yoji levered himself up on an elbow and smiled down.

Aya arched a brow. “Breakfast? Lunch, you mean. Shower first though.”

Yoji leaned down kissed the tip of Aya’s nose. “Okay, shower first. But then I’m walking down to the corner market. I’m in the mood for something sweet. Donuts, I think. Yeah, donuts for sure.”

Aya rolled his eyes good naturedly, and pushed Yoji towards the edge of the bed. “If powdered sugar and cake makes you happy, then by all means . . . “

“I’ll get you something appropriately healthy.” Yoji laughed and headed naked for the shower down the hall.


It was pleasantly nice to have the house to themselves for a change. Distractingly languorous to dally in the shower with Aya and then to pad down the hall naked to his room, grinning over his shoulder at a more decorous Aya who shook his head fondly and retreated with towel around hips to his own room to find fresh clothes.

Their present address being out the outskirts of a college campus and smack dab in the center of a college town, there were deli’s and pubs and small restaurants on every street corner. Thrift stores abounded. As did record stores, booksellers, chic clothing outlets. There was a quaint little occult shop at the end of their street that focused more on incense and gothic decor than anything mystical. One street over the residential buildings dwindled and the sidewalks were lined with an interesting little selection of sole proprietorships that made their livings off the eccentricities of college age customers. Yoji’s favorite deli/market was one block down and one street over. He figured he could make it there and back before Aya had his water brewed for tea and then if they were lucky, Ken and Omi would find something immensely time consuming to occupy themselves outside the house for the remainder of the afternoon. Yoji was already entertaining pleasant thoughts of languid, uninterrupted sex on the living room couch. His fantasy did not include the fast talking it would take to get Aya to consent to it right there out in the open where Ken and Omi might unexpectedly walk in through the front door and find them. Yoji was up for the thrill that came with the possibility of discovery. Aya wasn’t quite so much of a dare devil in his sexual escapades. At least when it came to public disclosure.