DPJ part 18
10/19/05 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roxyThe Previous Parts are here, trying to get Dick Grayson’s home phone number. Odds are they’ll get it.
Here is the next part of this fic. I’m shocked—Clark’s cooperating! Can you believe it? I’m stunned, completely. This part has been less of a joy to write and more an exercise in excruciating mental agony. And I’m not just saying that so you’ll say, but Roxy, this is brilliant.
Well, okay, yes, I am going for that –but really. It was hard. Feel my pain? No?
Oh, all right, I’m having gangs of fun. But the part coming up is hard. Lucas is getting harder to balance and I keep tipping over into sympathy for him and that’s wrong. He’s an asshole—totally an asshole. I have to keep coming back and snipping bits out. He’s so manipulative, he’s manipulating me!
Am I the only one bullied by her characters? Sigh so pathetic…but hey! Enough about me!
Please to be enjoying a fresh new slice of fic! Mmmmm! Ice cream anyone?
“—are you nuts? I saved your life, and that’s all you have to say?” Clark looked completely shocked, not mad, just…stunned.
“I didn’t ask you to!” Lex snapped, and twisted the blanket he found folded around his hips up over his chest. He felt his hands trembling, he felt weak and sick and scared and empty. He pulled the swiftly tattering shreds of his dignity around him and did his best to sound angry. “You’re the one who butted in, I didn’t call you.”
Clark looked at him incredulously “You ungrateful bastard—I find you drowning in a tub in Sigfiried and Roy’s bathroom, and you know what-- the *least* you could say is thank you, I mean this is the second time I saved your miserable life!”
“Third,” Lex muttered and closed his eyes. He was so damn tired. He wished sincerely that Clark would shut the fuck up and get out so he could sleep.
“Oh!” Clark’s anger seemed to drain away. “Oh. Right.” And driven by the change in Clark’s tone, Lex opened his eyes reluctantly, he could almost see the memories playing out on Clark’s face, see the moment at which all their lives changed…and the pain on Clark’s face cut him as deeply as it cut Clark. It didn’t matter any more.
Clark looked down at him and his eyes were cold and hard, and Lex twisted his lips to keep them from quivering. He was too fucking old to cry and it didn’t matter anyway.
*****
Lex’s eyes were wide open now—he looked up at him, and his face was twisted in a grimace that he couldn’t interpret, pain or disgust? Clark knew his face was an open book, he probably looked needy and desperate and he…closed his eyes. Lex hated him, he knew that and he was trying to be okay with it, but he had to ask. He just had to know, whether it broke him the rest of the way or not.
“Lex…did you never want me? Did…Lucas? Because I don’t understand any of it. Why did you two do that to me? Was it funny?” And tears filled his eyes—this was not in any way how he’d pictured this conversation taking place. In his mind it had always been a lot more testosterone driven and he’d always come off a lot better. Much less weepy. Lex was really looking disgusted now, and the tears spilled over-- Fuck. He jammed the heels of his hands into his eyes, twisting hard. “You fucked my life up for years—was it just a joke between you two?” He laughed shakily, on edge of hysteria and hating how he sounded. “Did Lucas win—or did he lose?” And now I sound like a woman wronged. Jesus.
He stopped and swallowed hard, and noticed that Lex was barely breathing. “ What?”
“It was never ever like that—not for me. Ever. But what else do I have? Who else can I turn to?”
“Your brother? That’s sick.” Clark cursed inside—that’s not exactly what he meant. It was but… “I mean…”
Lex turned pale as a ghost and his head dropped back against the table. “I know. I know what you mean.”
Lara’s voice broke in. “Alexander, Kal-El will show you to your room now.”
Lex started. “That voice--That’s the woman, the one in my…vision. She tried to tell me something about you, about me, I think. She’s real?”
Clark glared at the floor. “That’s because she’s a busy body. And a know it all. And yes, she’s real and she’s worried about me.”
Lex gestured around. “Where is she? Is she watching us?”
Clark sighed and looked about the huge vaulted chamber. “This,” he spread his arms wide, “is her. She’s…she’s an artificial intelligence. She’s more than that though, she has the personality imprint of…my mother.”
“Martha?” Lex asked confused and edging on to alarmed. “How is that possible?”
.
Clark shook his head. “My birth mother. The artificial intelligence is split, in a way. There’s the AI, the computer that runs this place, and hosts the personality of my mother...” Clark shook his head, “It’s all very schizophrenic.” He stopped and noticed Lex staring at him, mouth open. Crap. Now he had even more explaining to do.
“Lex, I didn’t build this place. The AI sort of…grew it for me. I’m not a mutant—not,” he mumbled, “ actually human at all.”
Lex paled so suddenly that the circles under his eyes looked purple, his lips were blue and Clark yelled for Lara.
He will be fine Kal-El. Please take him to his room. Let him rest and try to assimilate this information. He is perfectly capable of doing so.” She sounded, Clark thought…proud. What was it with Lex and his mothers? He snapped his head back and forth to clear his brain. “Come on.”
“I’m not staying. I’m fine now, she said I am-- so take me home,” he said to Clark.
“To Lucas,” Clark growled. “Fine. Get him some clothes,” he snapped.
The silence was deafening and Clark wondered to himself how a self-described construct could be so passive-aggressive.
“AI, get him some clothes. Now! Don’t make me ask again!” Clark threw his hands up. “How is it that I can’t control my temper around you two?”
“Alexander is not traveling now. You will step aside and allow him to be transported to his room.” The voice was devoid of any emotion or inflection. Lara had turned her back on him. A whirring noise pulled his attention to what looked like a collision between a wheelchair and a lobster moving towards the table.
“I see she bows to your every whim,” Lex murmured.
Clark looked annoyed. “Don’t you know, everyone does,” he groused.
Two large telescoping arms rose from the machine, looking rather like metal lobster claws and reached for Lex. Clark got between Lex and the arms. “Okay, okay, I’ll take him,” and he lifted Lex from the table, ignoring his protests, and walked through a series of empty spaces until he came to an alcove. He stepped through it into what looked like a small apartment.
Clark laid him gently on the bed—Lex looked surprised, like he’d expected to be dropped. Clark was reluctant to take his hands away; Lex had fit so perfectly in his arms. Warmth lingered on his palms. He tried not to look at Lex where the blanket had pulled back to expose cream colored skin that he knew would be just as smooth and velvety as his cheek had been because it was Lex—“Should I let you get dressed? I’ll just leave.”
Lex shook his head. “No! Don’t go—can you show me where the clothes are?”
Clark looked around the space, and walked to a wall that slid back to reveal clothing. Racks and racks of clothing, drawers filled with folded items and shoes—
“Wow—that’s a lot…”
Clark nodded, speechless. It was a replica of Lex’s closet at his apartment, and felt a tiny prick of conscience that he knew what Lex’s closet looked like.
What did Lara have planned?
Lex got up and let the blanket slide off and walked to the closet.
Fuck. Clark stared. Lex seemed not to notice, just went through the garments and spoke to Clark as if…as if they were taking a walk in the park—instead of Lex standing in front of him. Naked. And standing…god. It took him a moment to realize that Lex was speaking to him.
“So, why am I not freezing? Is this all ice or does it only appear to be ice? My feet are cold—ah! Socks!--but nothing else is—well, shit. These shirts are Charvet…how did it know those are my shirts? Amazing. Clark, all of this is amazing. So, it seems you aren’t a mutant after all. Not like me and …me. You’re really not human, and all this--” he stroked the wall of the closet, watching his reflection waver as he moved. “This is alien technology. Alien.” He turned to Clark, his face lit by wonder.
“Clark—I’ve always known you were incredible but this. God, this—makes me unbelievably happy. We’re not out here all alone on our spinning ball of dirt.” He took a step towards Clark and rested his fingertips lightly on his arm. “We have neighbors,” he laughed.
Clark felt sadness, and he found that he was horribly reluctant to ruin Lex’s open joy, his thrill. “I’m so sorry Lex--my people are all long dead, destroyed in a catastrophe that reduced the entire planet to, well, to those meteorites that wreaked havoc on Smallville the day I arrived here.”
Lex ‘s hand went up in an involuntary motion and almost but not quite touched his bare scalp. His hand went down and he turned back to the closet, selecting clothing as if it were the most absorbing thing to do ever.
“You.” He nodded. “Of course. I remember that day…There was a man in the sky talking to me, and then—fire and smoke and pain. And a little boy who smiled at me and made me go to sleep. You.”
Clark shrugged. “I don’t remember that too well. Just light, and then Mom and Dad. That’s about it. I never really asked them exactly what happened and I guess they just told me enough to explain certain…things. I’m…I’m sorry.”
“God, you didn’t do this Clark. What happened in Smallville wasn’t your fault. In fact, if you hadn’t survived, who would have saved Smallville? Everyday you help to keep the world safe. You have nothing to apologize to me for.” Lex walked to the bed, mercifully dressed by then, soft gray sweats and thick wool socks and it made Clark want to hug those wool covered feet to his chest. He found himself following Lex back to the bedside and Lex just looked over his shoulder and smiled a small half smile, but nice, it was a nice one.
Clark was kneeling at the side of the bed and Lex was sliding under the thick comforter, his face was inches from Lex and he felt the soft movement of his breath against his skin, and shivered when Lex yawned and gusted warm air harder against his skin.
“Clark, I want to talk to you but I’m so tired. I have to sleep.” He turned away from Clark and burrowed under the covers.
“Oh sure, sorry.” Clark stood, folded his hands together and he started to back out of the room when Lex asked, “Could you stay? Just until I fall asleep?’
Clark nodded and the tight spot in his chest relaxed. “I’ll stay until you fall sleep,” he said. There was just enough room for him to sit on the edge of the bed, and Lex didn’t move to give him more room. His back was to Clark; he was cocooned in the thick comforter, insulated against the world.
Clark listened to him for a while, listened to his lungs work, his heart beat, for a second or two listened to the faint woosh of blood through Lex’s veins. Clark listened to him breathe slower, deeper and he knew when Lex eased over into sleep. Then he touched him, carefully and gently and so lightly that Lex wouldn’t have felt it if he were wide-awake, but to Clark it was as if his fingertips had been numb, but now were finally alive.
TBC--God knows when....
Here is the next part of this fic. I’m shocked—Clark’s cooperating! Can you believe it? I’m stunned, completely. This part has been less of a joy to write and more an exercise in excruciating mental agony. And I’m not just saying that so you’ll say, but Roxy, this is brilliant.
Well, okay, yes, I am going for that –but really. It was hard. Feel my pain? No?
Oh, all right, I’m having gangs of fun. But the part coming up is hard. Lucas is getting harder to balance and I keep tipping over into sympathy for him and that’s wrong. He’s an asshole—totally an asshole. I have to keep coming back and snipping bits out. He’s so manipulative, he’s manipulating me!
Am I the only one bullied by her characters? Sigh so pathetic…but hey! Enough about me!
Please to be enjoying a fresh new slice of fic! Mmmmm! Ice cream anyone?
“—are you nuts? I saved your life, and that’s all you have to say?” Clark looked completely shocked, not mad, just…stunned.
“I didn’t ask you to!” Lex snapped, and twisted the blanket he found folded around his hips up over his chest. He felt his hands trembling, he felt weak and sick and scared and empty. He pulled the swiftly tattering shreds of his dignity around him and did his best to sound angry. “You’re the one who butted in, I didn’t call you.”
Clark looked at him incredulously “You ungrateful bastard—I find you drowning in a tub in Sigfiried and Roy’s bathroom, and you know what-- the *least* you could say is thank you, I mean this is the second time I saved your miserable life!”
“Third,” Lex muttered and closed his eyes. He was so damn tired. He wished sincerely that Clark would shut the fuck up and get out so he could sleep.
“Oh!” Clark’s anger seemed to drain away. “Oh. Right.” And driven by the change in Clark’s tone, Lex opened his eyes reluctantly, he could almost see the memories playing out on Clark’s face, see the moment at which all their lives changed…and the pain on Clark’s face cut him as deeply as it cut Clark. It didn’t matter any more.
Clark looked down at him and his eyes were cold and hard, and Lex twisted his lips to keep them from quivering. He was too fucking old to cry and it didn’t matter anyway.
*****
Lex’s eyes were wide open now—he looked up at him, and his face was twisted in a grimace that he couldn’t interpret, pain or disgust? Clark knew his face was an open book, he probably looked needy and desperate and he…closed his eyes. Lex hated him, he knew that and he was trying to be okay with it, but he had to ask. He just had to know, whether it broke him the rest of the way or not.
“Lex…did you never want me? Did…Lucas? Because I don’t understand any of it. Why did you two do that to me? Was it funny?” And tears filled his eyes—this was not in any way how he’d pictured this conversation taking place. In his mind it had always been a lot more testosterone driven and he’d always come off a lot better. Much less weepy. Lex was really looking disgusted now, and the tears spilled over-- Fuck. He jammed the heels of his hands into his eyes, twisting hard. “You fucked my life up for years—was it just a joke between you two?” He laughed shakily, on edge of hysteria and hating how he sounded. “Did Lucas win—or did he lose?” And now I sound like a woman wronged. Jesus.
He stopped and swallowed hard, and noticed that Lex was barely breathing. “ What?”
“It was never ever like that—not for me. Ever. But what else do I have? Who else can I turn to?”
“Your brother? That’s sick.” Clark cursed inside—that’s not exactly what he meant. It was but… “I mean…”
Lex turned pale as a ghost and his head dropped back against the table. “I know. I know what you mean.”
Lara’s voice broke in. “Alexander, Kal-El will show you to your room now.”
Lex started. “That voice--That’s the woman, the one in my…vision. She tried to tell me something about you, about me, I think. She’s real?”
Clark glared at the floor. “That’s because she’s a busy body. And a know it all. And yes, she’s real and she’s worried about me.”
Lex gestured around. “Where is she? Is she watching us?”
Clark sighed and looked about the huge vaulted chamber. “This,” he spread his arms wide, “is her. She’s…she’s an artificial intelligence. She’s more than that though, she has the personality imprint of…my mother.”
“Martha?” Lex asked confused and edging on to alarmed. “How is that possible?”
.
Clark shook his head. “My birth mother. The artificial intelligence is split, in a way. There’s the AI, the computer that runs this place, and hosts the personality of my mother...” Clark shook his head, “It’s all very schizophrenic.” He stopped and noticed Lex staring at him, mouth open. Crap. Now he had even more explaining to do.
“Lex, I didn’t build this place. The AI sort of…grew it for me. I’m not a mutant—not,” he mumbled, “ actually human at all.”
Lex paled so suddenly that the circles under his eyes looked purple, his lips were blue and Clark yelled for Lara.
He will be fine Kal-El. Please take him to his room. Let him rest and try to assimilate this information. He is perfectly capable of doing so.” She sounded, Clark thought…proud. What was it with Lex and his mothers? He snapped his head back and forth to clear his brain. “Come on.”
“I’m not staying. I’m fine now, she said I am-- so take me home,” he said to Clark.
“To Lucas,” Clark growled. “Fine. Get him some clothes,” he snapped.
The silence was deafening and Clark wondered to himself how a self-described construct could be so passive-aggressive.
“AI, get him some clothes. Now! Don’t make me ask again!” Clark threw his hands up. “How is it that I can’t control my temper around you two?”
“Alexander is not traveling now. You will step aside and allow him to be transported to his room.” The voice was devoid of any emotion or inflection. Lara had turned her back on him. A whirring noise pulled his attention to what looked like a collision between a wheelchair and a lobster moving towards the table.
“I see she bows to your every whim,” Lex murmured.
Clark looked annoyed. “Don’t you know, everyone does,” he groused.
Two large telescoping arms rose from the machine, looking rather like metal lobster claws and reached for Lex. Clark got between Lex and the arms. “Okay, okay, I’ll take him,” and he lifted Lex from the table, ignoring his protests, and walked through a series of empty spaces until he came to an alcove. He stepped through it into what looked like a small apartment.
Clark laid him gently on the bed—Lex looked surprised, like he’d expected to be dropped. Clark was reluctant to take his hands away; Lex had fit so perfectly in his arms. Warmth lingered on his palms. He tried not to look at Lex where the blanket had pulled back to expose cream colored skin that he knew would be just as smooth and velvety as his cheek had been because it was Lex—“Should I let you get dressed? I’ll just leave.”
Lex shook his head. “No! Don’t go—can you show me where the clothes are?”
Clark looked around the space, and walked to a wall that slid back to reveal clothing. Racks and racks of clothing, drawers filled with folded items and shoes—
“Wow—that’s a lot…”
Clark nodded, speechless. It was a replica of Lex’s closet at his apartment, and felt a tiny prick of conscience that he knew what Lex’s closet looked like.
What did Lara have planned?
Lex got up and let the blanket slide off and walked to the closet.
Fuck. Clark stared. Lex seemed not to notice, just went through the garments and spoke to Clark as if…as if they were taking a walk in the park—instead of Lex standing in front of him. Naked. And standing…god. It took him a moment to realize that Lex was speaking to him.
“So, why am I not freezing? Is this all ice or does it only appear to be ice? My feet are cold—ah! Socks!--but nothing else is—well, shit. These shirts are Charvet…how did it know those are my shirts? Amazing. Clark, all of this is amazing. So, it seems you aren’t a mutant after all. Not like me and …me. You’re really not human, and all this--” he stroked the wall of the closet, watching his reflection waver as he moved. “This is alien technology. Alien.” He turned to Clark, his face lit by wonder.
“Clark—I’ve always known you were incredible but this. God, this—makes me unbelievably happy. We’re not out here all alone on our spinning ball of dirt.” He took a step towards Clark and rested his fingertips lightly on his arm. “We have neighbors,” he laughed.
Clark felt sadness, and he found that he was horribly reluctant to ruin Lex’s open joy, his thrill. “I’m so sorry Lex--my people are all long dead, destroyed in a catastrophe that reduced the entire planet to, well, to those meteorites that wreaked havoc on Smallville the day I arrived here.”
Lex ‘s hand went up in an involuntary motion and almost but not quite touched his bare scalp. His hand went down and he turned back to the closet, selecting clothing as if it were the most absorbing thing to do ever.
“You.” He nodded. “Of course. I remember that day…There was a man in the sky talking to me, and then—fire and smoke and pain. And a little boy who smiled at me and made me go to sleep. You.”
Clark shrugged. “I don’t remember that too well. Just light, and then Mom and Dad. That’s about it. I never really asked them exactly what happened and I guess they just told me enough to explain certain…things. I’m…I’m sorry.”
“God, you didn’t do this Clark. What happened in Smallville wasn’t your fault. In fact, if you hadn’t survived, who would have saved Smallville? Everyday you help to keep the world safe. You have nothing to apologize to me for.” Lex walked to the bed, mercifully dressed by then, soft gray sweats and thick wool socks and it made Clark want to hug those wool covered feet to his chest. He found himself following Lex back to the bedside and Lex just looked over his shoulder and smiled a small half smile, but nice, it was a nice one.
Clark was kneeling at the side of the bed and Lex was sliding under the thick comforter, his face was inches from Lex and he felt the soft movement of his breath against his skin, and shivered when Lex yawned and gusted warm air harder against his skin.
“Clark, I want to talk to you but I’m so tired. I have to sleep.” He turned away from Clark and burrowed under the covers.
“Oh sure, sorry.” Clark stood, folded his hands together and he started to back out of the room when Lex asked, “Could you stay? Just until I fall asleep?’
Clark nodded and the tight spot in his chest relaxed. “I’ll stay until you fall sleep,” he said. There was just enough room for him to sit on the edge of the bed, and Lex didn’t move to give him more room. His back was to Clark; he was cocooned in the thick comforter, insulated against the world.
Clark listened to him for a while, listened to his lungs work, his heart beat, for a second or two listened to the faint woosh of blood through Lex’s veins. Clark listened to him breathe slower, deeper and he knew when Lex eased over into sleep. Then he touched him, carefully and gently and so lightly that Lex wouldn’t have felt it if he were wide-awake, but to Clark it was as if his fingertips had been numb, but now were finally alive.
TBC--God knows when....
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