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.”