Chapter 1: secrets
Chapter Text
POV: LEX LUTHOR, PRESENT DAY
The clone had been useless.
No matter how hard Lex had tried, it just couldn't be stirred into attacking unless attacked first. It was such a brain-dead, stupid creature.
Or nearly useless, he corrected himself.
After making sure Superman was suitably distracted, he used the clone to sneak in, then had the others take it away again. If absolutely nothing else, he could find out the alien's evil plans for invasion, or if as obnoxiously good as he seemed, find or plant some dirt to embarrass the beast with. He easily dealt with the robots trying to guard the place.
The place was... interesting. There were enclosures that had red sunlight beaming down on strange plant and wildlife.
And an entire chamber full of empty cloning pods. If the alien had been sent to invade, why weren't these full?
Downloading data and fixing up a damaged message from the freak's parents, he hit play.
"Kal-El, we know that you may struggle to understand why you are the way you are, and to cope with your instincts not matching those of the humans around you. The truth is that Krypton has been engaging in selective breeding and genetic editing for a thousand of Earth's years. With the ease of gene editing, to call the different kinds breeds would not be quite correct. You, Kal-El, are of the scientist caste, and not meant for conquest."
What?!
That giant, ham fisted buffoon who went into everything swinging first, not meant for war? A scientist? Was this some sick idea of an alien joke, planted in waiting for anyone who dared invade their privacy?
No, if that had been the case, it would make no sense to have it damaged.
"You will find it psychologically difficult if not impossible to attack first. This is why it is imperative that you start Krypton's rebirth by cloning members of the military caste, such as Jax-Ur, or creating new children from mixed DNA profiles. While humans associate science with coldness, our species has reproduced via science for generations now, and places great value in teachers. The scientist caste is the parental caste."
Now that made a touch more sense. Superman was nothing if not infernally parental toward humanity, like some sickening helicopter parent who didn't know when they were smothering their own children to death.
"It is your duty to be the mother to your species, Kal-El. The humans will never be able to meet your psychological needs like your own can. If you do not carry out your duty, you will be forever alone and condemned by Rao."
The holographic mother intoned the last of her message:
"We place our trust in you."
Lex's curiosity was stirred. A check confirmed there was a database of numerous Kryptonians. An advanced alien species could certainly fit a lot of data into a small package.
He wired up one of the decapitated robot heads and turned it on.
"Intruder. You must leave, you are trespassing."
"I have a question. Did you ever tell your Kal-El about the cloning technology and birthing chambers?"
"Yes, but I will not tell you."
"That is irrelevant, I already know how to clone," Lex dismissed. "You are driven to protect him, yes? Convince me he isn't planning an alien invasion."
"He is the last of his species."
"So why hasn't he cloned or birthed others?"
"He has stated he sees Earth as his home now. You have nothing to fear from him. Desist."
Did he, hmm.
Turning off the head, he went to do more research on the alien computers, no longer feeling as much of a time limit. If the information he had been fed was correct...
Superman arrived and stared at the destruction and the home intruder with great dismay and confusion.
A normal, human person probably would have attacked or gotten frightened. Even many earth animals would have acted territorial. Instead, he stared at Lex with alien eyes and alien emotion and said: "You're digging through my things. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"And you're intruding on my planet," Lex responded, calm and confident now. He did bother to turn toward the freak, however; he had gotten most of what he wanted from the computers here, so the main reason to stay was simply to mess with the - well, he couldn't call him a man, really.
"I have nowhere else to go. This continent was uninhabited."
They both step forward at the same time. The alien stopped, not seeming to expect his approach.
"The least you could do is pay a tax to the proper owners of this world. Here you are, hoarding all this knowledge to yourself." Lex still wasn't convinced of this 'scientist' part, but if he was, that might make the other squirm internally a bit.
"I'm not sure you're ready for it. I've heard of you, Lex Luthor. You seek primarily profit for yourself and I've heard rumors of your criminal dealings." If he'd heard of him, why the hell hadn't he bothered to meet with him?! Was the alien stupid or just arrogant beyond belief?
"All unproven allegations. No one has nailed me of anything in court, I assure you, and profit isn't a crime. In fact, I've made vast improvements to my city of Metropolis and own a majority of its infrastructure. You should be thanking me; considering all the time you've spent there, I'm practically your landlord."
There was a small, suppressed flicker of amusement there. "And this is your idea of rent? Destroying my things thousands of miles away from your Metropolis? I may be an alien, but I know that's not how it works here."
And then, infuriatingly, faster than Lex can blink, the creature is picking him up, manhandling like he's some misbehaving child, and has whooshed him outside into the snow.
"How did you even get in?" the alien asked.
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
There's no retaliation. No threat of torture. Just a repressed look of exasperation quickly smoothed off its face.
"I can't leave you to freeze." Lex had been absolutely fine and in no actual danger of freezing, actually. He got here on his own, he could leave on his own. But if he had been, this was yet another sign of Superman's immense softness. "I'll escort you home."
Here Lex had been thinking he needed to beat Superman in a fight. And he still wanted to, at some point, simply to attain absolute victory and put on a nice little show for the world of who was really number one. But now it was rather clear there was another way of dealing with it:
He could trap him, and he was so tame he wouldn't even bite like a cornered rat.
Mind rolling over the past three years, a new thought caught him.
It couldn't be... could it?
Lex Luthor hadn't officially met Superman over the last three years, but he had met one Clark Kent.
POV: CLARK KENT, PAST
While he hid it, Clark Kent actually was somewhat close to the real him: a soft, shy nerd, though it was true he was more confident than his Kent persona in the face of danger.
He knew it was deeply unfair to have everything, to have both intelligence and brawn, so he'd deliberately got scores close but not quite 100% in school and hadn't applied himself as hard as he could have. Clark always quietly suspected the only reason Batman hadn't straight up murdered him on their (admittedly few so far) meetings was that Batman knew he could outwit Clark, or out-skill him in a fight where Clark had been de-powered. Could Clark have chosen to take martial arts lessons, or study chemical analysis, or any number of things? Yes. His parents had been scientists, for fuck sake.
Clark wasn't stupid. He just - didn't trust himself to be smart. If that made sense. (Maybe it was more he didn't trust how other people would react. But who would believe Superman was shy and anxious about anything?)
But that didn't mean he didn't yearn sometimes to be more than just a 'jock'. That was one of many reasons reporting had appealed to him.
The problem was, one of the only people who seemed to actually prefer Clark Kent (the nerd version, not the farmboy jock version which had appealed to Lana Lang) to Superman was *Lex Luthor* of all people. Not the sole person, mind you, Cat Grant had hit on him a few times, to his confused shock and also Lois's.
"C'mon, Lois, he may have terrible taste in clothes but he is clearly BUILT under there, just look at those shoulders. And he shares interests in common, we literately have the same workplace! That's a nice combo."
Since it seemed her interest was mainly (but not entirely) in his body, Clark wasn't very interested back. So maybe it was inaccurate to say she preferred Clark, rather, she preferred a mortal guy who seemed actually potentially available and happened to work at the same profession as her.
"By that logic of terrible clothes but fine bod, wouldn't you prefer Superman?" said Lois. "Especially since he's not a coward. I like Clark, but he's a little bit of a flake..."
"Nah, that chad must have a gazillion women chasing after him. He'll probably end up dating a super like Hawk Woman." No way. The lady was a bit too murder-y, smash-first for his tastes. He couldn't see her having much patience for a soft Southern boy. "I'd always be uneasily wondering: why me? I'd just feel inadequate all the time," Cat said. "But enough discussing fun. What's Luthor up to? Do I need to avoid a certain part of the city tomorrow?" Cat joked.
"I'm still looking for proof he was involved with the killer robots." Lois sighed. "That man is so slippery. Oh, hello Clark."
Clark, who had been able to hear their conversation well before actually arriving via the elevator, simply gave a nod and went to his desk. It was reasonable for him to have overheard about the killer robots bit, though, so after he went through his emails and rss feed he commented:
"I have some automated alerts set up for LuthorCorp press releases, if you're at all interested Lois. Or Cat," he added, seeing the other woman was still listening in. Who wouldn't? Nobody wanted their morning traffic route intercepted by killer robots.
"If you have anything interesting." Lois leaned over his shoulder. "Job offers too, Clark? Thinking of leaving?"
"It's a way of telling what Luthor may be working on even when there's nothing official out about it," Clark pointed out. "Hiring lots of biochemists? Probably a biochemistry project. On the flipside, suddenly a lot of robotics experts looking for jobs citing previous work experience with Luthor?" As he scrolled through, he saw one computer scientist citing LuthorCorp experience. The woman, Amanda McCoy, was at the top of her field in artificial intelligence, but worked mostly with LLM's... he could unfortunately actually understand why Luthor wouldn't be happy with that kind of AI, it was vastly inferior to alien AI standards.
Lois's eyes lit up. "He finished a project, like said killer robots. They'll all certainly have signed NDA's, of course."
"Of course. But it may be worthwhile to watch the scientists and see if they mysteriously disappear in order to fully ensure their silence."
"Huh. I hate Luthor as much as the next person, but would even he regard highly skilled scientists as that easily replaceable?"
Clark shrugged. "He thinks of himself as a genius, but projects usually go faster with multiple people. If he let them go, they're probably skilled but he believes they aren't actually on his level." He hated to grudgingly agree with Luthor on anything, but in this instance... the AI experts probably weren't that good, honestly. Hell, Clark could do better Clark could cheat and use Kryptonian knowledge, he didn't know how he'd do trying to from-scratch one himself. Clark wasn't that smart, really, definitely not a genius or anything, and he didn't want to be. The very thought of it gave him anxiety.
Lois snorted. "He's probably narcissistic enough to think world leading experts are slowing him down."
"Probably," Clark agreed without giving anything away on his face. "And yet, it looks like he's planning a big science expo showcasing interesting problems, solutions and tech. It's going to be a joint expo with Max Lord's company and a few others."
"The meta hating guy is collaborating with the guy funding the Justice Gang?" Lois said. "Sounds suspicious. We should definitely go."
"I mean, it is literately our jobs, but yes," he teased.
"I meant even if Perry wasn't likely to assign us to it," she took the jab fairly light-heartedly.
She might prefer Superman, but she wasn't totally devoid of chemistry with Clark Kent. It... made him hopeful. Because in truth he'd always identified more as Clark Kent than Superman.
The science expo, as expected, turned into a giant disaster, but not from killer robots.
A mutant pile of goo turned maybe-sentient and started devouring things, growing steadily more massive in size.
What was not expected was that Clark didn't even need to suit up as Superman. Maybe that was the plan, to ego-stroke Luthor and make him look heroic, but it was still a shock to see Lex Luthor step in front of Clark Kent and defend him from a science experiment gone rogue with a freeze ray.
"Don't sweat it, Kent. As you can see, pure human ingenuity alone can save the day," Luthor isn't really looking at him at all as he speaks, and he certainly isn't thinking much about him. But he does add, in such an off-hand way that it comes off as sincere as well as a bit demeaning, "though it may be a bit difficult for you to imagine. You're a simple salt of the earth type, who doesn't pretend to not be afraid or hold himself as more perfect than everyone else. But I prefer that about you to Superman."
The irony was Clark hadn't been scared for himself, but for other people. But... it was true he tended to hide his fear as Superman, no matter the source, since he needed to be a source of comfort to people. Nobody wanted to see their idol panicking or nervous twitching. Was it the faintest bit possible Lex had picked up that insincerity - no matter how small - about him, and misinterpreted it as something more sinister? Lex was kind of a hypocrite to rain down on anyone else acting perfectionist.
"Are you saying if I was Superman, you'd trust me?" Clark can't quite help himself. It's just such an amusing mental image, even though he knows even as he asks there is no actual way Luthor would say yes.
This causes Luthor to actually look at him for a moment. "Don't engage in such ridiculous hypotheticals."
Don't giggle. Don't giggle. If you do giggle, blame it on the ludicrous thought of Clark Kent = Superman.
Green Lantern arrives and levitates the goop safely away shortly after that. The expo is basically over, and Clark is left alone with his thoughts. A farmboy and his ruminations.
Well, that and a chalk board of random problems that was left relatively untouched by the disaster. Clark finds himself staring at it, intrigued despite himself. He sees it was next to the sign of some minor company he'd never heard of before. A quick google search doesn't turn up any problematic history.
Clark hasn't let himself completely nerd out in a really long time.
...would it really be so bad if just this once, he let himself solve some intellectual problems that weren't of the 'track down the supervillain paper trail' kind?
It wasn't like this was solving a problem for Lex, either. These were just some random problems posed by some other company, presumably for some monetary reward. There was no one here to be threatened by him being both brawny and intelligent. He could just send the solution anonymously! Nobody need know.
Clark ends up writing them all down and the contact info, then reviewing the problems in the fortress of solitude and cross-referencing with what Kryptonian scientific works still survived.
If humans can fit a copy of wikipedia on a fancy USB, Kryptonians could send over plenty of copies of their scientific works alongside the literal robots and giant crystals.
"I would say I am glad to see you taking an interest in your scientific heritage, sir," Four said to him. "If I was capable of any feeling at all."
"I just don't want to be too ahead of people, you know?" Clark said.
"I do not. I find your attitude completely insensible, especially considering your parents' caste."
Clark huffed a laugh and went back to work, studying chemistry diagrams and biology. Thankfully, Kryptonian biology wasn't 1 to 1 to human, so he didn't entirely feel like he was cheating and couldn't just look up all the answers. He had to do some actual work at this. And some of the problems were just math problems.
One problem was code, and ancient Kryptonians certainly didn't know any human programming languages. This would be fun!
POV: LEX LUTHOR, PAST
Lex wasn't oblivious. He knew how much some people hated him and wanted nothing to do with him or his company.
So he left a little bait under a secret subsidiary. Inviting all those other unaffiliated companies had been a cover.
He wasn't expecting someone to solve all of the problems in two weeks. He had done so himself, of course, but nobody else was supposed to. It had him a mixture of thrilled and threatened. They had left a single method of digital contact.
COMPUCON OFFICIAL REVIEWER -
Who are you?
ANONYMOUS -
Um, no one?
If Lex hadn't met shy scientific types before, he would have scoffed. As it was, he perked up. Someone with low self esteem could be potentially molded into what he wanted. More importantly, they were less likely to be an idea thief, though the thought of profit could make any man salivate.
How do you want the reward sent? I need your information for that.
You can donate it to charity! :3
...seriously, who was this person? Who made a little smiley face like that and just gave up their reward so easily?
Were they wealthy, like Lex? Or were they wallowing so deeply in low self esteem they couldn't imagine themselves deserving the reward more than lesser men?
(That they were really that humble and selfless did not cross Lex's mind as a possibility.)
But I want to reward you, specifically. Perhaps we could meet in person and I could at least buy you a meal?
ahh, I dunno. We might not even be in the same area.
- I know you were at the expo. Those problems weren't posted online. The camera crews focused on the slime and didn't get a good shot of the board. While it is entirely possible you flew out of the country, that just means geographic location is not as big a limitation to you as you seem to be pretending, and in any case, I could simply go to meet you. I am -
[Submit]
Here Lex paused, wondering what would impress this person more. Scientific types who cared less about money probably wouldn't care he was a CEO, even though they should.
- the head researcher of the company.
[Sent]
He hit submit.
NEW MSG 1m ago
oh wow, you must solve lots of interesting problems. Can you tell me about them and what your company works on? It's actually quite hard to find information on you.
Why did Lex suddenly feel like he was talking to a reporter? No matter. He would turn up the charm.
I'd like to dote on you a bit and pick at your brain. Your solutions call for celebratory cerebrations, they were really quite cogitating.
Bizarrely, his attempts to track down this person's location told him they were in Antarctica, of all places. So they weren't even trying to hide the fact they were messing with their location data. Not as trusting as their easy going persona seemed, then.
POV: CLARK KENT
Did this person just write what Clark thought they did? He re-read the line in disbelief, blushing. 'Dote on'.
This person didn't know anything about him. They didn't know what he looked like. They didn't even know his gender!
The thought someone liked him just for him was incredibly intoxicating.
But like all things that sound too good to be true, it probably was. They didn't really know him, just the solutions he'd posted. So they probably just wanted more of that:
While I do not know about meeting in person, we could certainly talk more if you like on any problems you want! We could be like secret pen pals. Ah, not that I would really ask you to hide me from your significant other or anything like that, that was just a joke. :P
I suppose that would be acceptable for now, though I desire to meet some day. And I do not have anyone I would consider significant in my life.
That... was a weird way to phrase things. And very sad.
No family? I'm sorry for your loss. :(
None. And don't be, my father was a lout. And I don't remember my mother.
Well, I am sorry that you had an unhappy childhood, then. I hope you are happier now!
POV: LEX LUTHOR
Killing a drunken Lionel and taking his insurance money had been the best decision Lex had ever made. Happier, huh? Not with Superman around. It somehow felt like Lionel all over again, yet another powerful being he had to struggle to do anything about for years before a final victory.
10s ago - You are insipidly cheerful.
Lex impulse typed and then regretted it.
NEW MSG 5s ago
- sorry,
The other person responds first. They are a fast typist and reader, almost inhumanly so, but Lex was also a fast typist so he didn't think much of it.
No, I should apologize.
- This is, one might note, not actually an apology. -
The topic made me short tempered and I took it out on you. But I need something to call you by.
He clicked on his draft. [Sent]
READ 10s ago-
Super pal?
2s ago - NO.
That was too much like Superman for his tastes.
Just kidding. I'm a typical enough guy, I guess, so just about anything will do. How about Pendragon? Or just Pen?
A typical person, pulling swords from stones?
Arthur is easily presentable as a wish fulfillment myth about a seemingly typical honest person proving their worth via the supernatural recognizing their true merit and gifting them a cheat. It's like a medieval version of modern isekai and shonen anime, almost, or those silly x-men comics about random ordinary people discovering they have powers! So yes, depending on the literary version of which there are manyyy.
That was fairly self aware.
It readily re-inforces the status quo as Arthur is ultimately of noble blood and not truly common at all, 'Pen'. I am not a fan of superior beings lording it over others.
Well, I suppose most versions do have that if you squint. But the simple concept of a weapon that can only be gotten by someone of worth isn't, and I'm sure as a scientist it must appeal to you, only, you would build your Excalibur rather than find it.
Well, he had Luthor there. Perhaps the name was marginally acceptable then.
But what can I call you in return? Professor X?
No! He had nothing in common with that fictional meta!
- or Research Guy? Gal? It occurs to me I don't know your age and gender either.
32 yr male.
He briefly contemplates using Alex if the other is Arthur, but frankly, he hates being called Alexander. It reminds him of his dead mother, and no one could replace her. Nor would he want them to. He had mixed feelings about her suffocating his little brother in the crib, even if it saved the baby from having to exist in the same space as Lionel. He preferred to pretend he remembered almost nothing about her.
No name preferences?
I suppose Galileo will do. I'm not completely fond of it.
One of history's geniuses that he found less stupid than the majority. Sharing a name would not be completely intolerable, though he didn't care for it too much.
Not Newton or Einstein?
Neither would have their work possible without Galileo.
True enough. How about Leo?
A name with an L at the start. That did feel more fitting.
Chatting with Pendragon was not completely intolerable. He'd continue with it. And in the meantime, try to track down his real identity, because how dare he think he could evade and keep information from Luthor? Honestly.
POV: CLARK KENT
Clark found Leo to be an interesting guy with a lot of issues. It took awhile before Leo got comfortable enough to talk about anything other than problems and solutions, but once he did, boy did Leo like to rant.
LEO -
There's this billionaire who hesitated on the question of whether the human race should be preserved. Wants to replace us all with AI servants, the fucking nerve of him. He doesn't even have shares in good AI, they're LLM which can't even solve a game better than a goldfish. *
PEN -
I saw that clip, if we're thinking of the same person.
He contemplated adding a question of whether Leo had ever worked with Amanda McCoy, but a new message popped up fairly quickly. Whoever Leo was, he seemed to be pretty interested in Clark no matter how many boring details Clark shared about himself like how Clark drank his coffee. It didn't make a lot of sense, but it was certainly flattering. They could both be very busy people, but both seemed to try to respond only when they were actually free to text back for a bit. Of course, Clark being Superman, this freedom didn't always last as long as he expected...
LEO -
You wouldn't work for him would you? You have at least some loyalty to the human race.
PEN -
No, I would never work for anyone who hesitates on the question of whether or not they should save the earth.
That seemed to make the other pause thoughtfully for awhile, because they took a minute to respond.
LEO -
In darker, more frightening moments I sympathize with the thought of replacing the human race. The masses are just so weak and stupid. You can do a lot for them and they often won't even be thankful, or they'll turn on you in a heartbeat. You can't trust those more powerful than you, and you can't trust those weaker than you, so you have to get as much power as you can.
PEN -
That sounds like a very fearstricken way to live.
Clark... didn't want to think the people of Metropolis would turn on him easily. But he knew people could be fickle. It didn't mean there wasn't still good inside of them, just that they were easily frightened, like how a wild animal would bite you when you got it out of a trap because it didn't know any better. Leo seemed really cynical, but Clark hoped he could help him learn to trust at least one person simply by being there for him, even if it was only in the form of a chat partner. He was certain without the anonymity Leo wouldn't be half this honest, so there was already a little trust laid down like a brick to build upon.
LEO -
It's the only way to live, Pendragon. Do you spend every waking moment afraid of the sky and the weather, which at any moment could cripple crops with a massive humid heatwave and cause mass famine as well as deaths in a wet bulb event?
PEN -
I do have some fear for the future of our climate, yes, but I don't spend every waking moment about it. I remember one summer growing up where the corn grew funny because it rained before a massive heatwave, which steamed and sterilized the corn. The corn kept growing, shooting up green, but it was totally pollenless and no cobs grew. Every bit of corn had to be chopped up and plowed over, only good for mulching the ground.
LEO -
Why doesn't it surprise me you grew up near a farm? Next you'll tell me you were a boy scout.
PEN -
I was. :3
POV: LEX LUTHOR
Try as he might, Luthor couldn't track him down. It was both intriguing and humiliating, but he reassured himself that Pendragon had no idea of his real location either, so that made it more like a tie.
As time went by, he found Pendragon to be bafflingly shy and more likely to answer a problem - no matter how difficult - if Lex lied and said it was easy or looked not too difficult. If on the other hand he said an easy problem (well, maybe difficult by uneducated person standards, but Lex wasn't counting them as people) was actually hard, Pendragon tended to hedge and offer up a number of hesitant suggestions, one of which would be in the right direction.
It was like Pendragon's ability to gauge what was normal was a bit skewed and he was relying partly or entirely on other people's responses.
5 mins ago - Why do you hide yourself like that?
30s ago - What do you mean? Maybe I'm just stupid.
That long pause before answering didn't escape Lex's notice.
I told you the hard problem was easy and the easy problem was hard. Please don't patronize me.
...ah. I'm so so sorry, making you unhappy is the opposite of what I wanted. People don't like it when things come easily to me, they feel threatened. So I guess I just kind of reflexively hide a lot of myself, you know? And I guess I also don't really tend to think of myself as a smart person, so I got intimidated. Believe it or not but people tend to think of me as a jock from how I look.
People are superficial. You shouldn't bow down to your social inferiors and keep your talent locked away like that. If you came to work for me I'd have you well compensated and properly appreciated by someone who knows your worth.
I'm not motivated by money but that's a really kind offer, thank you! But I can tell you aren't motivated by money either, otherwise, why would you be trying to bribe me over when I've been helping you for free?
That... was a good point.
I am an insatiably curious person. -
Lex would admit that easily to anyone. It was a fairly obvious statement from all their conversations together so it wasn't much of a give-away either, and while not the most common trait it wasn't uniquely identifying.
I want, no, demand to see you in person. There are problems that are easier to work on in real time in-person than far away and whenever you have free time on your schedule, so it's logical. Don't think I haven't noticed you get very busy at times. Isn't the thought of more interesting problems the slightest bit of an incentive?
He read it over once for typos, then hit Send.
30s ago- It is! I'm just really loyal to my work, you know? BRB have to go, monster on a rampage ruining my commute you know how it is!
Hm. Lex could vaguely see it, he wouldn't like someone else telling him to drop one of his projects either. But if this was loyalty to people who employed him first by mere happenstance, Lex wasn't very pleased. If the universe were fair Pendragon would be his.
Perhaps if he set up another expo or joined someone else's? Pendragon had shown up to the first one. It made sense he'd come to a second.
The trouble then would be identifying him. Pendragon was apparently a 'jock'. There wouldn't be that many people of that physical character at a convention full of nerdy types, though more than you might think from the stereotype.
POV: CLARK
Clark was on edge at a Luthor event where absolutely nothing was going wrong.
Like...
what the hay?
"That man must be scheming something," Lois said, and Clark nodded in quiet agreement. It was a sign of their improving friendship that she didn't try to ditch him at the first opportunity and actually collaborated with him by choice now. He'd asked quite some time ago point-blank if she was comfortable with his flirting, and she said she was but that he shouldn't expect to get anywhere. They enjoyed teasing one another: she'd declare she was top banana, and he'd say 'so you like to top?' And on one occasion back when they'd been a bit more adversarial, he'd sent her on a wild goose chase through a sewer looking for Superman's spaceship. He actually felt sort of guilty about that one... but that was all water under the bridge now.
You go through enough near death experiences with someone, it becomes hard not to become attached, perhaps.
POV: LEX LUTHOR
Lex's eyes catalogued a number of possible candidates, and almost immediately dismissed Clark Kent. That bumbling oaf? Surely that couldn't be Pendragon?
But then he thought about how it was a literary reference right in his name, which a writer like Kent would surely be familiar with. And he watched from a distance how Kent was actually quite deferential to other people, which unfortunately felt rather familiar.
Reluctantly and feeling ridiculous for even contemplating this, he pulled up Kent's grades. They were better than he'd expected, solid A+'s, but nothing spectacular once he entered college. Yet, Pendragon had given strong indicators they were hiding their real intelligence from everyone, so that was exactly what one would have expected.
To be frank, Pendragon didn't make much sense to Lex. But Pendragon would probably make sense to someone like Clark Kent. And Pendragon had grown up on a farm in prime corn country, just like Kent. That seemed like too much for a coincidence.
"Kent, what would you say if you knew someone was hiding their real self?"
"I beg your pardon?" Kent had a deer in headlights look for half a second before gaining a very serious, more confident expression that had a hint of resignation. That was... a dead give-away Kent was hiding something, honestly. "You mean, like a superhero?"
Oh, ridiculous Kent thought this was about Superman and that he needed to protect his dubious 'friend'. What on earth had Superman done to deserve Kent? Besides save his life once, apparently. Or rescue cats out of trees. Or - it was all besides the point!
"Not everything is about Superman, Kent, don't feed the alien's immense ego any bigger than it already is." For some reason, that statement just had Kent look amused.
"I guess I'd ask if they were happy hiding, and if they were, I'd leave them alone, and if they weren't, I'd nudge them to come out and try to make them feel safe doing so," Kent mused. With playful confidence that really hadn't seemed like it had been there at all when Lane had been making him go get her a coffee, Kent added, "Are you coming out of the closet Mr. Luthor?"
"No!" Lex scowled. "Don't be vapid. Or intentionally dull."
It was unfortunate the man was a reporter. That made it even more difficult to simply have a conversation with him. You could assume he was looking for a soundbite or a scoop. Lex would be evasive and force the other man to feel like he was the one being interrogated, maybe even make him cry to mommy.
"I merely wonder: is it more generous to assume that people are stupid, or that they are clumsy baboons on purpose?"
That seemed to cut into the man a bit, satisfyingly. Kent fidgeted with his glasses for a moment, a small stim, like he was terrified of what would happen if they slid off so that even a tiny slide was unacceptable.
"I don't know. I suppose the latter is worse, depending on the purpose. A stupid person might be educated out of it," Kent sounded a little rueful. "A smarter man, well, you've got to address his reasons as he sees them, and they're highly likely to be emotional so there was no actual reasoning going into it, only going out. If there was an intellectual reason, then it's usually easy enough to address that once you know what it is."
"Surprisingly well said, Kent, but I disagree with you on which is worse. A sufficiently stupid person cannot be educated out of their stupidity. Stupidity is not the same as ignorance, it is innate."
"Maybe, but you can't really tell the difference until you at least try to educate the person," Kent argued. "So for all functional purposes, one should assume acts of stupidity are motivated mainly by ignorance, or something pretending to ignorance. Not," he hastened to add, "necessarily nefarious."
Lex wanted to retort that he wasn't interested in Kent's justifications for acting like a buffoon, except, he kind of was or he wouldn't be there talking to him at all. "And that would be?"
"Ah," Kent hemmed and hummed. He didn't seem like he'd expected Luthor to be interested. To be fair, Luthor hadn't expected Luthor to be interested either. "Something like preventing people from being uncomfortable."
"Heaven forbid we make people uncomfortable," Luthor drawled, ending the conversation with a nice final word and leaving before the full disappointment could show on his face.
That excuse had sounded exactly like what Pendragon would say. Damn it.
There was no way Kent was going to agree to being poached by the Luthor corporation. The man was a goody little two shoes reporter who seemed to rejoice in cheap tacky clothing and shitty apartments in the worst part of town (a part of town not owned by Luthor, so of course it was shitty). Ambition went to the Clark Kents of the world when it wanted to die.
And he didn't like Lex. Wouldn't write flattering articles about him, though Lex was appreciative of how Kent would try for a neutral tone on Superman which was more than some people like Lane.
He had to hope Kent wasn't really Pendragon. (It could be worse, of course. It could have been Lane.)
Abruptly, Lex was tackled from behind. "Watch it, you buffoon!" he snarled at Kent, assuming the man had tripped -
- only to hear gunfire. His guards returned fire and the would-be assassin was dealt with. An ex-Lexcorp employee, Luthor recognized, let go for shoddy work and a belief that products they worked on during company time belonged to them and not Lex. (Everything should belong to Lex, people were just too stupid to realize it.)
Kent had just saved his life.
"I need to repay you," Lex said smoothly.
"Er? No, no!" Kent stood up and held out a hand for Lex to take to help him up. "It's fine. If you absolutely need to do something, maybe you could invest in mental health services and aiding the unemployed to reduce the rate of disasters like this?"
"I suppose I could make a comment to some politicians at the next fundraiser I attend."
Now Lex was starting to get a bit obsessed. Just a bit.
He would get more evidence. Perhaps... a masquerade?
LEO - 10s ago
Can I interest you in a party with masks? No one will know your identity. Let yourself in as Pendragon, I'll pay.
PEN - 1s
Alright, sounds fun!
Bingo. Lex had Pendragon waltzing right into his grasp. Perhaps literately? He could certainly arrange for a waltz dance number.
Chapter 2: wanting you to feel safe
Summary:
Clark: Cuddles!
Lex: -runs away in raw terror-
Clark: what did I do wrong :(This chapter is basically just Lex being really neurotic, but also trying to be friendly in his own very controlling way.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
POV: CLARK, THE PAST
They meet at the dance. Clark pings ahead of time that he'll be wearing a silky dark blue vest. As 'Clark Kent', he usually goes for browns and drab colors in ill fitting clothing, but he isn't anyone but 'Pen' right now, so he actually chooses something form fitting and nice for once. It's very freeing. His mask is of the Kryptonian legend Nightwing, an alien 'bird' of sorts, in myth a god that incarnated as a species of the same name although in Kryptonian they were spelled slightly differently; 'nightwing' the bird versus 'Nightwing' the god was an appropriate translation.
It's a large crowd and he's not entirely sure who his partner is...
"Ready to dance, Pen?" a voice sounds from behind him.
"Leo!" Did the other sneak up on him on purpose? "It's good to see you."
The mask hides his flush at them entwining hands. Like most people, the other man isn't as big as him, but he's got some decent height on him and a deep confidence that makes him seem bigger. The other's mask fully covers their head. It doesn't surprise him in the slightest when Leo tries to lead, and Clark lets him.
Clark is very careful not to pay attention to his masked partner's heartbeat or the exact sound of their voice. He wants to respect their privacy.
He's befuddled at being asked to dance, but it's kind of nice. He'd never really thought about men that way (actually he wasn't totally sure if he'd thought about women that way either - it was complicated), but he's enjoyed talking to Leo and there have been moments where he feels like maybe Leo likes him?
And then the sharply dressed man in a peacock mask was leaning in and wrapping his arms around Clark. "I've finally got you in person."
"Would you like to cuddle?" Clark asks shyly.
"I'm sorry, cuddle?" his dance partner seems absolutely befuddled, like he was expecting something else. "Of course you would want to cuddle," he said in a very put upon tone. "Nothing else?"
"...not really?"
"...I'll talk to you and see you later," Leo said, fleeing toward the punch bowls.
And like that, Clark was dumped.
He'd messed up the human social script, hadn't he? People were supposed to make a socially appropriate amount of suggestive eye contact, frantically kiss, go on a few dates, then screw, and only after all of that they cuddled in bed, right?
It wasn't often he genuinely felt like an alien, but in that painful raw moment, he really did.
(in hindsight, if he'd known the truth he'd have said he dodged a bullet, even if he was practically made of steel. and then, shortly after that, Lois started flirting more with him, so he was even more glad it hadn't gone anywhere.)
POV: LEX
PEN - I'm sorry, I made it weird.
Lex felt annoyed. He couldn't quite describe why or at what, but he was definitely irritable. For once, he found himself explaining to another person that something... wasn't their fault. Which was not very like him.
LEO - Stop apologizing and making yourself small all the time. I'm just not much of a cuddler, that's all.
The worst part was that Lex had gotten distracted and hadn't garnered any agreement for meeting in person for projects nor really gathered much evidence at all, except that the man's height and build was a dead ringer for Kent's. And the voice was alike, though it had been pitched higher and friendlier, like a puppy dog. Did he really need that much more evidence? Probably not. Lex was rarely wrong about anything. And there had been something about the event that had given him deja vu.
LEO - How do you feel about aliens replacing us?
He might as well try to ferret out Kent's real opinions. Although he inwardly cursed himself for writing 'feel' instead of 'think' and hitting send before reading it over. He couldn't help an irrational worry that Kent somehow knew and had been trying to trap Lex to humiliate him in revenge for offending his friend Superman, that the snuggly behavior had been a personal attack.
PEN - I think that's very unlikely to happen. The Green Lanterns have been protecting Earth for about three centuries now, and humans were even more vulnerable pre-spaceflight. If we were going to be taken over, surely it would have happened before then?
That... was not entirely insensible an opinion. But that didn't make it right.
LEO - Things change. Civilizations can easily destabilize in three centuries and go from peaceful to destroyed. The Green Lanterns could meet a threat even they can't stop. Or they could get new leadership in a coup, or be bribed. They're far too cuddly with alien menaces. That Hawkwoman isn't even human, and the majority of Lanterns are alien as well. How can we trust these so called protectors to really be loyal to Earth when they owe all their powers to beings from outer space?
PEN - You sound like someone I know who really hates Superman. A lot of aliens are no smarter or stronger than your average human, they're just people.
LEO - 'Just people' is problematic enough, but I don't have a problem with powerless aliens who keep to their own planet. I do distrust super powered individuals, because they're individuals. Expecting all of them to simply have our best interests in mind is ridiculous.
PEN - you're right. I'm not asking you to trust all of them tho'. Isn't there a non-super powered person you trust who, if they suddenly gained powers tomorrow, you'd still trust?
Himself. That was it. Maybe those under his employ.
LEO - That's different.
PEN - How so?
LEO - Because I know them personally and know what motivates them, what makes them tick.
Plus he'd probably be the one responsible for their powers, and he who giveth can taketh away.
PEN - You know how to get them to act how you want, and that makes you feel safe.
Lex didn't like how he'd phrased that, like Lex was some wounded animal.
LEO - I don't need to feel safe. I merely need to know I'm not going to be enslaved or murdered.
PEN - well, you may not need to, but I want you to feel safe.
That was so saccharine.
LEO - Safe is boring. Meager, unimaginative men never gamble for a better future.
PEN - wow, kinky. OK then, I want you to feel exactly as safe as your heart craves, no more and no less. Happy?
When was Lex happy...? No, this wasn't meant to be a trick question.
LEO - Contentment is for the placid. I can be happy when I am victorious over my enemies.
PEN - u are very extra.
LEO - Never substitute u for you in front of me again.
PEN - as uuu command.
LEO - I hate you.
He hated everyone. It wasn't personal. He immediately hoped Pen would consider his impulse text a joke, however.
PEN - safe is boring. you said it yourself. so hating me means you love me. <3 sorry, I mean, vuu love me.
He should really quit this nuisance. This was a waste of time, wasn't it? Why was he allowing another person to TEASE him, Lex Luthor?
...
He kept texting back to him.
It wasn't like they knew he was Lex Luthor, so they could be forgiven just this once.
He definitely didn't LIKE having a male figure who was stronger than him who made him feel almost safe. That was stupid.
The weak were to be despised and the strong were to be feared, that was life. There was no room for an in-between.
Lionel had taught him that the hard way.
There had been a babysitter in the house that Lex had stupidly at one point thought actually cared about him, who had gone out of her way to coo over him and sneak him treats. Lionel had made a strong point to disabuse him of this notion and rub Lex's innocence in his face, giving the woman a large wad of cash in return for her hurting Lex.
He knew better than to trust anyone ever again. Even if it hadn't even scarred (Lionel wasn't stupid enough to leave evidence), he'd never forget a betrayal.
And then there were all his ex-girlfriends and ex-wives that tried to murder him.
(if anyone asked if that was why his relationships with women were so messed up, he'd fixate more on figuring out how the hell they'd dug up that part of his past and then bury them alive rather than answer.)
After some alcohol, it suddenly clicked what was giving him deja vu.
This wasn't the first time Kent had asked to cuddle.
The reason the incident had flown out of his mind was because he'd been in a highly altered state of mind at the time, just like everyone else. Marjorie, a wanna-be business partner and one of those crazy murderous ex's of his, had come up with some pheromone scent cocktail that she put in perfume. She doused the entire Daily Planet in it, but also dosed Lex in an attempt to force him to sleep with her, marry her and then die since a full dose of the perfume was actually fatal.
It hadn't worked because it lowered inhibitions, not created desire where there was none, and he'd lost all interest in Marjorie by that time. He'd been trying to flirt with Lane at the time, actually, the woman did have a nice appearance and he'd recently taken advantage of a failed Superman-destruction scheme to 'rescue' Lane. His head was foggy over what exactly had happened that day, but he was pretty sure he'd decided he thought both Lane and Kent were beautiful and, with no inhibitions, had tried to seduce them both at the same time.
Somehow, he came to in Kent's apartment, clothes sadly very much still on. Lois Lane was wearing a very revealing dress and looking similarly bewildered. His mind was still not at its sharpest, but it was no longer in the realm of total fog.
"Alright, the antidote should kick in soon," Kent had said soothingly. "Which is good because I'm not sure I can take it anymore. If you guys wanna cuddle with me, I'm game."
Lex and Lois had glanced at each other in raw disbelief.
"Smallville, are you for real?" Lois asked, then did a double take down at her outfit. "Or am I the one who lost their mind? Wow..."
"I don't cuddle. If you wanted to have an amorous threesome, however, I'd be game," Lex gave the two of them a sultry look over. Really, they were quite a fetching pair. He didn't need magic pheromones addling his mind to know that.
Lois stared in shock. "I- In your dreams! What kind of gal do you think I am?"
Clark blushed. "I'm really not one for casual sex."
Yes, that was brutally, disappointingly apparent. Every single other person dosed had tried to get their funk on. He genuinely wondered if the poor man was a romantic asexual.
Now, much later and thinking with a much clearer head, what he really wondered was how Kent had managed to synthesize an antidote. And how many times had Kent actually saved his life? He'd always assumed Superman had contacted a scientist to synthesize the antidote, but now he wondered if Kent had developed it himself.
LEO - Pendragon, do you recognize these chemicals?
PEN - Oh, yeah, are you okay??? I can help if you've been dosed.
Confirmation. Either Kent or someone in contact with him with the exact same build and origin. And he was certain Kent didn't have a secret twin brother.
LEO - I'm fine. What kind of car do you like?
PEN - I'm partial to electric cars and hybrid trucks in primary colors like red or blue. Why?
POV: CLARK
A mystery red pickup truck showed up outside of his apartment, and a pair of keys in his mailbox.
Clark was having the dawning, uncomfortable realization that his slightly egomanical, alien-fearing conversation partner miiiight be Lex Luthor. And stalking him.
He really hoped it wasn't though.
Plus, the guy had apologized once, even twice. So that meant it couldn't be Luthor.
Right?
POV: LEX
Lex was furious.
Kent had donated his gift to charity. To charity!
LEO - Let's say someone cruelly scorned your gift. How would you respond? Simper at them? Or destroy them?
PEN - If something is truly a gift, a person should be able to do what they want with it, yes? If the gift comes with conditions, like, you gave it to them because you want to gaze on them wearing it, you should say so.
Or if the gift comes with the condition that they pay you back, they may not view it as a gift in the first place but more as an attempt to own them. Clear communication is key. Maybe because of their position of power they can't accept gifts because it could be construed as a bribe or conflict of interest? Is this person responsible for investigating you?
...that made an unfortunate amount of sense. Irritant Kent and his sense of morals.
Lex would just forget about him, he resolved. He'd stop texting entirely, in fact, and see how he liked it!
...he did not forget about him. his resolve lasted up until someone else annoyed him and he badly needed to rant about it to someone.
But Pen actually brought the subject back up himself.
PEN - I've been thinking about the other day and the other person may have messed up too. If they were unclear on what you meant, they could have asked. I'm sorry if they hurt your feelings when you wanted to be friends.
LEO - My feelings are unhurt and irrelevant. I don't require friendship.
PEN - Then what is this???
LEO - A mutually beneficial acquaintanceship.
PEN - And the gift person is the same?
LEO - They could be, if they had the wit to accept.
PEN - That's a bit mean. Maybe they simply don't care about power.
LEO - You should though. Power allows you to protect what you care about, be it yourself or others.
PEN - That's fair enough, I suppose. Maybe a better way to put it is that they don't care for it at the cost of undercutting their other values, such as honesty and fairness. As a scientist, you should be well aware how it would wreck science if lying about experiments were the norm instead of heavily punished.
That... made some sense, Lex grudgingly admitted.
It wasn't too often he'd met someone who successfully fought back with him. It was even rarer he didn't feel completely mad about it. In fact, this might be one of the only times. Pen was clever, and Lex would admit that Lex wasn't always the easiest person to get along with, yet somehow Pen still seemed to like him.
It was too bad Pen was probably asexual or so intensely repressed he'd never agree to a roll even in a closet. Or worse, the wait until marriage type.
Lex was thoroughly burned on any sort of long term commitment. It just wasn't his thing.
POV: CLARK
...it was definitely Luthor. Unfortunately.
LEO - How would you feel if someone else had the AUDACITY to try to murder your enemy
PEN - uh? bad because murder is bad?
LEO - don't be ridiculous.
PEN - I don't understand.
LEO - it's alright Pen, I always knew you weren't quite as smart as me.
Clark was so confused. Leo liked murder but not this murder of someone he hated?
LEO - I am going to FUCKING DESTROY THEM.
LEO - wait nvm, they offered to go on my payroll. it's all good, they belong to me now.
...should Clark be concerned? Did he even want to know? Or should he just resign himself to some random bullshit like shark rocket launchers tomorrow? Additionally, one of the little shared problems they'd worked on together had been used for a murder attempt on Superman. Clark chewed him out about it. Leo (that was only a letter away from Lex, hm) wasn't very apologetic.
PEN - I don't want to help you kill anyone or anything.
LEO- Not even a rampaging animal?
That Lex considered Superman an animal didn't need to be stated.
PEN - I would prefer to study an animal rather than kill it.
Later it occurred to Clark this suggestion might have been, like, a mistake. Just a wee bit.
But then, probably Luthor would have tried to kidnap Superman and shove him into an illegal detention camp for immigrants and ex-girlfriends or something like that irregardless. (This detention camp didn't even need to be in a hidden pocket dimension, the government had built camps in Florida and Texas, had locked up several US citizens without a trial, and no one was doing jack shit about it.)
Thankfully, Clark managed to escape that particular attempt (Lex's obsession with using lead everywhere to block his x-ray vision conveniently gave lots of lead for him to block Kryptonite with), and destroyed a few ICE facilities 'accidentally'. Having apparently missed a piece of kryptonite, he endeavored to work with Green Lantern and the rest of the Justice Gang to do another sweep and removal of the noxious material from Earth once and for all.
He assumed with the Kryptonite gone that he was safe from Luthor.
He assumed very, very wrong.
Notes:
Clark's alien instincts are causing him intimacy issues.
Lex's everything issues are causing him intimacy issues.
Sidenote: Lex actually does have a bit of a point about Hawkwoman / being dependent on foreign powers being problematic. In one of the canon materials she literately leads an invasion of Earth. Even a broken clock is right occasionally. And historically, it rarely works well for nations to completely outsource all of their firepower in the long run to foreign territories. All it takes is one bad election or coup for an ally to stop being an ally. His problem isn't that he's totally wrong humanity needs to bulk up its own home-grown defenses, it's that he's a raging dick about it, burning down partnerships before those partners can spurn him... which is also his problem in other arenas.
The Marjorie mind altering perfume scene is taken (with modifications for bisexual Lex of course) from the Lois and Clark tv series. That one has a few fun Lex scenes in it, I recommend if you're bored and looking for something after Smallville.
Chapter 3: not true to breed
Summary:
lex contemplates the revelations, and we get flashbacks inside flashbacks.
clark last chapter: I prefer to capture animals rather than kill them.
lex: you heard it directly from him, he WANTS me to kidnap superman. I basically have permission!
Notes:
This chapter may or may not be a spoiler for future Superman/Justice League films, it contains some hints at guessed plot-lines using comic book knowledge.
also a disclaimer for Lex Luthor being an awful human being. I know I already warned for that, but... he's very yikes.
Let me know if the politics references are too depressing. Lex is very snarky.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
POV: LEX, MODERN DAY
pen - this girl I like asked me out! any advice on women?
Lex felt cold hot rage, then reminded himself he didn't want a relationship anyway.
leo - Be sure to have a very clear contract on who legally owns what if you get married, and don't let them have any medical rights over you.
pen - wow. that wasn't the kind of advice I meant, but thanks for the concern I guess.
leo - you're welcome. be sure to have sex before marriage. make sure she isn't a lesbian using you. although women can fake it more easily than men, so even that isn't a guarantee.
He typed so quickly he didn't capitalize anything. For some reason the subject bothered him. Pen was going to be eaten alive and get taken advantage of. Actually, could Pen even have normal sex? A question for study in the archives he copied over.
pen - leo, this may shock you with my farm boy background, but I'm not rich.
leo - She could still be using you
pen - I'm pretty sure she's wealthier than me.
leo - There are other ways to be used. perhaps she is a shrew who enjoys bossing you around and looking down on you or treating you like an obstacle in her path through the competition
pen - she's actually nice once you get to know her and if she trusts you
leo - She's nice once she wants something from you, I'm sure.
That made Pen quiet for awhile. Lex was pretty sure it had to be Lane. Obnoxious snoop and reckless, always getting into trouble. Perhaps on purpose, so Superman would rescue her; he'd always wondered if one person could really be that much of a disaster magnet or the thought of invincibility had simply made her cocky. Did poor Clark have to deal with Lane thirsting over Superman in front of him, two-timing him with himself, or did she know the secret?
To keep up appearances after the revelation that he was still reeling from, Lex still occasionally talked to Pen, who seemed exasperated with being showered in gifts but faintly confused when the gifts suddenly stopped. The other didn't want to offend him, but they were still trying to gently rebuff him, and Lex didn't like that.
Pen wasn't going to escape Lex so easily. Especially not if Pen was Superman all this time.
Lex was loathe to change his opinions, but perhaps Superman was not quite as awful as Lex imagined. That meant he could go along with Pen's wish to capture instead of destroy such an interesting research specimen. And Pen deserved to belong to him. He was very clearly wasted elsewhere.
pen - I know how much you like complaining, so I thought I'd do it if that's alright.
ugh so like this one guy is the forking worst. I drop in to help him and he gets grouchy that I'm on his turf. WORSE he's got a little kid with him he lets run wild, claims he can't control him from getting into dangerous situations and it really worries me. his kid might have DIED if I hadn't shown up. would it be that difficult to hire a babysitter? even a super powered one if that's what's required. dude isn't dirt poor. heck, I'd volunteer.
leo - You are a grown adult Pen, you can swear. And you can tell me anything.
pen - why are people so territorial?
He couldn't help but read little comments like this in a new light now. Did Kryptonians have a territorial instinct? The military caste in their historical records seemed to, but just like there were dog breeds renown for rarely barking, perhaps the scientist caste had their territorial behavior bred out long ago.
Lex wasn't exactly a forgiving man, but it did suddenly make a lot of Superman's behavior slightly more understandable if no less aggravating. Superman clearly needed things spelled out explicitly.
leo - It's like theft. You could be taking their resources away from them.
pen - but I've only given things???
leo - the resource is more abstract. it's control. perhaps he fears you will take his child from him, being that he is clearly an inadequate parent.
If Lex ever had a child, perhaps from a lab experiment, he would be sure to create them as very obedient and give them only the very best. And he could certainly deign to hire a babysitter. Even better, he'd give the child immense power so nothing could stand a threat to them in the first place.
pen - I never thought of it that way
leo - do you need me to murder him for you for looking at you funny?
pen - NO. wait, that was a joke, right?
leo - Legally, that was a joke.
pen - oh come on.
It didn't take a lot of work to figure out Clark Kent had done a brief correspondence with the Gotham Gazette recently. From there, it was a simple deduction that the man could be talking about Batman and his ward Robin. The child did seem awfully small to be fighting crime, not that Lex cared, but the thought of messing with the man amused him. If he ever figured out the man's identity, perhaps he'd call CPS. Or just have him eliminated. Batman might do well with his particular brand of Gotham crazy, who required more detective work and finesse than Superman's foes typically did, but he wasn't a meta. His house probably wouldn't survive a missile launch on its location.
But he had better things to focus on right now.
After Antarctica, Lex wasted no time getting to work on his newest scheme. The fortress itself had given him every idea he needed for it.
Building still took time, however, and he found his mind going back even further, to before Pendragon, to when Superman and Clark Kent had first arrived. It struck him with embarrassment now. How on earth had he ever missed that they'd arrived in Metropolis at the exact same damn time?
But Superman hadn't shown himself as Superman right away, but as some sort of 'angel' or 'blur' for several weeks. Kent had made his debut with some puff piece on... Lex had to look it up, as he didn't think he'd actually read Kent's first article.
It was on a theater that was threatened with demolition and how it was historically important and should be preserved. How quaint.
What else had happened three years ago? The Justice Gang had started to form, that was right...
"Luthor?" someone interrupted him with a call.
"Yes?"
"We couldn't bug Kent's apartment. He's got a really loud, nasty dog that like, belongs to Superman or something!"
"You were defeated by a dog," Lex said slowly. Incompetents.
"It reflects bullets! It took down Rudy! I barely got- ACK!" the phone cut out.
Lex frowned. He didn't recall Superman having a dog, he certainly didn't take it with him on missions. No matter, it could be dealt with. For now, they regrettably would just have to leave the apartment unmonitored. It was a shame, that would have answered a lot of his questions, like just how much Lane knew.
POV: CLARK, THREE YEARS AGO
When Clark had left home, he had been just old enough to remember his parent's faces and not a whole lot else. He could talk a little bit, and knew his parents wanted him to do... something. It was hard to recall.
The robots had been clearer, when he met them.
"We've re-created birthing chambers for you. You must start work on remaking Krypton."
"Krypton is dead, this is my home now," Clark insisted. "But it would be nice to remake some of the Krypton wildlife," he considered. "Antarctica should be fairly safe. Plants can't fly and they'll die to exposure to extreme cold just like anything else. Larger animals will be riskier, but, if I make only sterile specimens and keep them under red light it should be fine."
"Is there a species you particularly want to see first?"
"A dog," Clark said, wistful. "I've always wanted one. Our farm back home didn't really need one though."
"Your family had a dog once. His name was Krypto."
"Krypto. I like that."
He trained Krypto enough after a few months he decided to dare taking the new puppy out with him.
This... turned out to be a bit of a mistake (heeling reliably with no distractions at home didn't mean heeling would happen in a new location full of things like squirrels), and led to his first meeting with Mr. Terrific.
Krypto spotted a metal ball whirling through the air and decided to chase it. Clark caught up with the disobedient pooch just a second too late - the white mongrel bit down on the device right in front of its maker, who was standing on a bridge looking startled. It wasn't every day you saw a flying dog, Clark supposed. But he looked an awful lot like he'd been peering over the edge before looking up at them.
"Oy! What the hell?"
"I am so, so sorry!" Clark would have flung up his hands if he weren't busy gripping a squirming Krypto. "I haven't found a leash strong enough to not break on him yet."
The man sighed, looking upset but not mad. "It doesn't matter." His eyes were puffy.
"Are... are you okay?"
"My pregnant wife just died."
"Oh my god. I'm sorry," Clark found himself apologizing profusely again. "And I just made your day worse!"
"No, honestly, I needed a distraction. Although those devices ARE awfully expensive," the man glared at the dog.
"Do you want to talk it out? You're standing at a bridge," Clark took in the scene. "I really hope you aren't planning suicide. I know it might seem hopeless now, but you're still young and those devices of ours, you made them?"
"I did."
"That's really talented! You could make a lot of good in this world!" Clark said. "Um, I'm Superman. But you can call me Kal-El if you want."
"I noticed," the tall lanky man said dryly, but then added, "I'm Michael Holt. My wife Paula died in a car crash. When I looked at her body, it was the strangest thing: it was like she was never pregnant."
"That is pretty weird," Clark said. Normally, when he was Superman, he put more effort into not seeming so... Clark-ish. But these events had put him a bit off-guard. "This is Krypto. He likes you, I think."
Krypto was wagging his tail.
"Would you like to try petting him?"
The man reached his hand out hesitantly to the soft white fur on the top of the puppy's head, and as he reached the velvet-like ears, Holt's eyes began to water.
"I just-" he choked, still petting the puppy, who by now had sensed something was wrong and had started being unusually still. "I'll never see her again. I'll never hold her again. I'll never hold our boy."
Krypto licked the salty tears off his face, and this somehow induced the man to sob and hug the dog.
It occurred to Clark that this might have been the first and only physical affection Holt had received since his wife's death, or if he was completely isolated even the only sympathy. There is something about dogs or pets in general that makes people feel more comfortable and safer than they would with other, strange people. People can be incredibly cruel. Pets, at least, can't usually talk.
Holt wouldn't have cried and hugged Superman, no matter how much he wanted to hold someone again, but he could bring himself to cry and hug Superman's dog.
Unsure if it would be welcome, Clark removed one arm from Krypto and wrapped it around the man for a moment. "It's going to be okay." He gave him a brief pat.
Holt went still for a moment, but didn't try to get away. He just dried his eyes. "Thank you... I needed that. It's stupid for a man of my intellect, but I'd always internalized that men shouldn't cry, you know? So I hadn't let myself until now. Or maybe 'let' is too strong of a word. I don't know why the touch of a puppy broke me, but it did," he admitted.
"It can happen to us all," Superman reassured. "And it's not like I'm known for gossiping. You can just pretend I was never here, if you want."
"No, no, I don't think I can do that," the man said. "The next time you see me... Call me Mr. Terrific. I'll need a source of funding after my company was destroyed after a hostile takeover by capital vultures, but I hear Maxwell Lord is hiring."
"I heard about that," Clark said with sympathy. That was a lot of terrible things to have happen all at once to one man. "There are a lot of business 'managers' out there who specialize in bankrupting companies for their own personal profits, draining them dry and then moving on to the next victims."
It made him so angry, but there was nothing much he could do about it beyond peaceful protesting. As he technically wasn't even an American citizen, he couldn't even legally vote. He could offer positive press to candidates during primaries, which were the greatest opportunity for genuine change, but a lot of people didn't bother to show up to vote until the general when often the candidates who best represented change had already been weeded out. And if they did get to the general, often the corporate-backed assholes they'd defeated would come back as an independent and decry the efforts to regulate corporations as 'socialism'. The world was a mess.
Clark, however, was an optimist. They'd get through this.
POV: LEX, THE PAST
Lex Luthor was not an optimist.
"You don't like my metas plan, Lex?" Maxwell Lord said. They had just held a shareholder meeting in a company they mutually owned stock in. Lex had taken the opportunity to corner the man. "My newest guy isn't even a meta, technically, just a genius with no appetite for cut-throat business. I'd thought that would appeal to you."
"How can you be so sure they won't eventually turn on you?" Lex said in a low voice, not particularly eager to be overheard although his disdain wasn't exactly a secret.
"Money. Why would they bite the hand that feeds them?" Lord chuckled and sloshed a cup of coffee with cream. "Mark my words, Lex, the one who controls the metas will control the world in a few years."
"Perhaps. I think it would be better to have a safeguard, a fall-back in case your team that is 2/3rds reliant on aliens ends up having foreign loyalties. 3/4ths if you successfully recruit Superman like you hope." The thought irritated Lex.
(In particular, he suspected Hawkwoman, who had done a very, very brief stint as Hawlgirl before she realized how that translated into less than flattering connotations on Earth. She was clearly from a very alien culture and could not be trusted to share deep down any of its norms. And Thanagar apparently had a highly military culture, which didn't bode well. But would anyone listen to him about it? No! And who knew anything about Superman's culture, really? Perhaps he was lying about being the last survivor.)
"Like your weapons? I heard about how that fiasco went."
Yes... how could Lex possibly forget the humiliation of that event?
He had planned to have the weapons prototype 'stolen' by Kaznia in order to get around the embargo, but then Superman who had, at that early point, mostly been acting as a nonstop blur from place to place, decided to actively intervene. The scene was finally dramatic and glorious enough for him to properly debut, perhaps.
Lex hadn't slept at all the next few days, expecting Superman to show up in his high rise apartment or company office to threaten him, or scold him, or literately anything.
But Superman never did.
Instead, Clark Kent published an interview where Superman briefly speculated that Luthor may have ultimately, if the theft had gone through, profited from the theft. Then he did another interview with Lane where he revealed he was an alien. Like they had needed more of the blasted things flying around.
It was completely true that Lex would have benefited, but it didn't stop Lex from being absolutely furious.
It meant that for a brief period, Lex had been eager to dig into Kent. Who was this peon?
He arranged for a meeting and gave his 'side', and came away mostly disappointed, endeavoring to forget the man entirely. Kent was, thankfully, not a sycophant, but he wasn't terribly memorable either. (It was only years later that Lex would realize this first impression was on purpose.)
"I agree," Kent had said smoothly. "That it wouldn't be a bad idea to have backup plans in case of meta attack or alien invasion, and I'll happily say so in my writing. I think Superman himself would agree it would be preferable to have the world not rely on him entirely." Lex wondered if that was his real opinion or just his public opinion.
"I highly doubt that," Lex dismissed. "He flies around in such a flashy costume, he clearly wants attention."
Kent had looked exasperated. "Perhaps the costume is just material capable of standing up to his powers."
"Material that only comes in primary colors?" Lex said scathingly. "Now, let's be serious, or I'm done here. I have better things to do than discuss alien fashion choices." Ignore that he brought it up himself, that was irrelevant.
"Of course. Are you planning a run for office? You seem very opinionated."
"Not at this time." He was a bit too young for the presidency, but he could go for a lesser position. He wanted to cement a bit more power first, and get rid of this new Superman fellow, which hopefully wouldn't take too long.
"You seem quite comfortable with power as long as it is yourself having it," Kent analyzed. Not a completely stupid man, Lex supposed.
"Off the record for a moment if you will, Kent?"
Kent blinked, then dutifully turned off his recorder. "Alright." Time to test the man's honesty.
"A sizable minority of Americans would vote to end democracy tomorrow if they thought it would destroy their enemies in the process or benefit them personally, and others would look the other way," Lex said bluntly. "Which might not be a problem if we had universal voting, but we don't. We are living in democracy's shambling zombie corpse, put to a slow death by Citizen's United. If I don't take power, someone else will, and they may not be as merciful or as competent as me."
"I-" Kent had stared at him in raw shock, like what Lex had just said was inconceivable. What a forgettable little man. "I don't think that will happen. I have faith that people will find it in themselves to do the right thing. Although, they may get confused," Kent admitted. "by the increasingly right-wing owned corporate media. But if we can get information out to them, cut through the information bubble, I think we can make a difference."
"You have faith in people? Cute," Lex said derisively. "Let me know how that works out for you when an administration comes around that views any critics in the press as mortal enemies." Kent would be better off - (if Lex had had any interest whatsoever in giving advice, which he didn't) - in running himself and giving the working class someone who would actually fight for them; without that, many of them were just going to stay non-voters. But Luthor had no interest in giving himself competition.
(it never occurred to him at the time that maybe Kent couldn't run.)
"May I leave a note on the record that you disapprove of Citizen's United? It's quite interesting, considering your own wealth."
"Fine," Lex decided to allow it. It wouldn't make a difference; he wasn't so poor that he needed to beg for corporate donations to a dark money SUPERPAC, but he also wouldn't turn the other way at donations to lick at Lex's boots. If he wanted to avoid assassination, it was best to signal this; the corporate world was used to double-talk and dog-whistling hidden after shows of fake moral purity that looked good if you clipped them out of their full context, like in a short form video or quick-quote. "But note that just because I don't like the rules or lack thereof doesn't mean I'll handicap myself under them and hand a free victory to my enemies."
Lex wasn't stupid enough to want to live in a Christo-fascist state run by a dictator. He knew his atheist self wouldn't meet their ideological purity tests. The wealthy always liked to think they could control dictators, but that often didn't work out too well for them in practice once the law had been eroded and the looting stage of the falling empire began. No, the only dictator Lex would accept would be himself. He'd need racism (which often went hand in hand with dogma) to get the requisite support for a dictatorship before he managed to build a robot army, then he could kill off the useful fools.
Kent left looking deeply unhappy, and Lex put him out of mind, almost completely forgetting about the naive man for nearly three years. (Well, barring weird incidents like the city being doused in pheromones.)
Until Pendragon.
Until Kent saved his life.
POV: MR. TERRIFIC
The first official day on the job of the Justice Gang nearly ended in disaster.
A terrorist threatened to blow up city hall, and claimed to have a dead man's switch on the bomb strapped to him.
Mr. Terrific, being a better choice to talk a man down than Guy Gardner or Hawkwoman, nonetheless found the ordeal rather awkward and not the best use of his skill-set. "You don't need to do this," he told the man.
It was with mixed relief that Superman had arrived and disarmed the man's gun.
"Hey!" Green Lantern complained. "We totally had it handled!"
"The dead man's switch, I think it may actually be nonfunctional," Superman said, pinning the man's arms behind his back.
Doing a quick analysis of the bomb set up and working to fully disarm it, Mr. Terrific found Superman was correct. The bomb would never have gone off. "How did you even see that?"
"I have x-ray vision." Astounding. What was almost just as interesting was that Superman had understood what he saw. The big guy didn't look like a thinker, though admittedly that was stereotyping and he knew better than to do that.
"So the guy was incompetent? Big deal," Guy ran his mouth off.
"It's troubling," Mr. Terrific said in a low voice. Had Maxwell Lord set up their debut to be a guaranteed win? The worst part was, Mr. Terrific couldn't even really afford to confront the man about it. He was at the moment completely dependent on his funding. It was clear he needed to work on fixing that and re-gain independence, but it would take time.
Superman nodded, seeming to share the same thought. "Never unequivocally trust a billionaire," he quipped. Holt readily guessed the man was thinking just as much about Lex Luthor. He'd also heard something about a very rocky introduction to Bruce Wayne, who had flirted with Lane; everyone had the impression at this point that Lane was Superman's 'girl', although Holt personally thought it was a little too soon to call that accurate rather than just gossip.
In any case, Lane had abruptly dumped Wayne like a bag of hot rocks, possibly because of Wayne's clear (in Holt's opinion) connection to Batman. Someone was funding Batman, at the very least. He wondered if Superman would tell him if he asked if Wayne was Batman. Not in front of Green Lantern, though - that man struggled to keep his mouth shut about anything. He really felt, though, that the only reason Lex Luthor hadn't already deduced Superman's and Batman's identities was because he had a blind spot when it came to people acting like idiots or weaklings on purpose.
"How's the dog?"
"Great. Still learning obedience," Superman said a little ruefully. "I talked to Four, my robot, about it - said wasn't his breed supposed to be intelligent and highly easy going? Four responded that breed isn't everything, personality matters too. In any case, I've decided he won't be a rescue dog, he just doesn't quite have the right temperament. But maybe I could use him for therapy for people?"
"I think Krypto would make a good therapy dog," Mr. Terrific agreed. "In a supervised environment."
"What on earth are you two babbling about? Mr. Terrific, let's go! We got a job to do!"
"Care to share your speculations?" Hawkwoman asked.
"Our employer may not be what he seems," Mr. Terrific said.
"An egocentric oligarch?"
"Okay, I stand corrected. Our employer may be EXACTLY what he seems."
Unfortunately, they never did find clear evidence. The man had covered his tracks. Or perhaps fortunately, considering they weren't in a position yet to look the gift funding in the mouth.
POV: CLARK
Clark, in those early days, worked himself to the bone. He didn't know moderation. That was why he had been a blur. That and shyness at the start, though no one would have guessed that of Superman. He felt, sometimes, like an imposter in his own body, pretending to a confidence he didn't have. He didn't know how Batman played Batman so easily, like it was the real him and not the mask.
"God, Clark, you look awful," Lois had said. "Don't you sleep?"
"I have noise sensitivities," he confessed something close to the truth. "This far away from the farm with all the hustle and bustle of the city-" and all the screams, the domestic violence, the gangs, the sheer number of accidents that inevitably happened in a location with millions of people compressed into a relatively small region, "-it gets to me. But I'll get used to it eventually I'm sure."
"Hold on, I have a gift for you. It's in my apartment. We can swing by on the way to the story."
Clark gave her a surprised glance.
The gift? Turned out to be earmuffs.
"Most earmuffs don't do anything for me, I'm afraid."
"These are military grade," Lois said. "Dear old dad thought a great father-daughter bonding activity would be taking kiddo to work to see bombs go off."
And... they actually kind of worked, at least in the noise canceling sense. Clark breathed in, feeling more relaxed than he had in ages.
He didn't like to admit it, but the constant disasters wore on him. He might be able to survive with minimal sleep, but it wasn't good for him psychologically.
He was only 'human', after all.
The raw guilt niggled at him though. Was it really alright to rest?
Their interview with first responders, funnily enough, helped address that question.
"If you knew the museum was likely to be robbed of this 'kryptonite', why didn't you have a 24/7 guard?"
"You've got to be careful not to burn out. There are only so many of us, and active emergencies require our attention too," said Dan Turpin from the police force. "If you burn out, you get sloppy and make mistakes, and mistakes get people killed too."
Clark tried to sleep with the muffs, he really did.
But they gave him nightmares about not hearing a disaster in time to stop it.
He thanked Lois for the gift anyway and pretended it had helped.
He doesn't think she truly believed him, a skeptical eye at his appearance the reward for his lie. But he did indeed look marginally better over the coming weeks as he learned to balance his life better, and Lois dropped the subject. She never asked for her muffs back.
In a way, Lois and Lex were a lot alike. They were both highly inquisitive (with minimal respect for Clark's privacy), dominant, always needed to win, high-strung about physical affection and contact (though Clark could understand that toward himself as he was a very big guy and that could be scary, they were like that toward everybody) and when they did decide to give affection, they expected you to take it very seriously and were very sensitive to perceived rejection, while at the same time quick to insist it didn't mean that much and they didn't need anybody. And they had a penchant for being walking human disasters getting into trouble.
Perhaps Clark had a type.
PRESENT DAY
clark -
god, I can't believe my old high school friend Chloe joined a sex trafficker cult. did not see that one coming, she always seemed so obsessed with finding out the truth, like what the hay. (sorry if that's random, I just feel the weird urge to vent to everyone I know about it.)
lois -
my condolences. not to take away from your grieving your friendship, but there's something we need to talk about.
I'm concerned, is Lex Luthor stalking you? you did tell him the gifts were unnecessary, right?
clark -
probably. and I did.
lois -
you as in clark kent?! does that not bother you at all?
clark -
I'm careful to sweep for bugs and things like that. And all the Kryptonite is gone. What's the worst he can do to me? I'd be more worried about you. But I think maybe he's just really lonely?
lois -
only you would see the good in the literal worst person ever. he probably knows we're together and thus that you have a girlfriend, he knows you don't want gifts, he literately tried to kill you Smallville, he's a giant walking red flag. just do what I did and write lots of critical articles about him, he'll get annoyed and leave you alone after that. don't do any superman interviews, just be boring and mean.
That's right, he'd possibly nearly gotten 'Kent' killed on a number of occasions, though never directly and never proven. The first had been someone sabotaging a space mission that, if sabotaged would have conveniently given a space contract to Luthor instead. The saboteur tried to kill both him and Lois. It had just been a bunch of incidents like that, but he didn't think Luthor was actually out to get Kent or Lane specifically. Though, there had been that time he'd really been trying hard to get into Lois's pants.
Not that it made the murder attempts okay, mind you. Lois did have a point. But just chatting couldn't hurt, right? Maybe it would help. If Luthor liked him he wouldn't try to murder him presumably.
...Presumably.
clark -
I don't think I can be mean? brb armed robbery in progress, gonna report so expertly they never do it again *eyebrow waggle*
lois -
uh huh. honey, if anyone deserves someone being mean to them, it's lex luthor. and you don't have to be mean-mean, just honest, that'll piss him off as much as anything because reality says he isn't the center of the universe.
The would-be robbers didn't stick around very long. If they knew he'd come, why start the incident in the first place? It was odd.
The subject of hearing came to mind again, about three years later from the earmuff incident, when he unexpectedly found himself under red lighting in a long winding maze underground. When he'd started to chase the pair of criminals into an abandoned subway, he hadn't expected this.
Extra energy from solar power doesn't really fully explain where super hearing would come from. It turned out Kryptonians just naturally had better hearing, or more precisely had engineered it so, just like they'd engineered themselves to need minimal exercise to stay relatively fit and muscular. When you're an advanced civilization, it makes sense to make those kinds of simple edits.
That didn't mean there was no dulling of senses at all, however, as part of it was sensory processing and as his power dimmed, so did his processing speed. It was a clue something was wrong, that distant noises just sort of blurred together instead of seeming immediately distinct.
He tried to leave back the way he came before his powers could dull, but somehow the maze had shifted itself on him.
"Hello, Superman," Lex Luthor stepped out in front of a pillar with an insouciant gaze, a hulking figure beside him on the right and his bodyguard flanking the left. "Enjoying the artificial sun?"
Notes:
formatting/colors look okay? I made heavy use of this a03 guide on html if you're curious.
so, we see some contrasts here between certain canon supermen and this one; the cartoon Superman did show up to confront Lex. The 2025 movie Superman, however, we can infer never did if that was their first meeting, and has a less confrontational personality.
also, fun fact: do you know border collies when raised right can be super friendly and rarely bark? they're one of the less territorial dogs as well as one of the smartest, because being territorial isn't their job, figuring out how to herd sheep is.I wasn't expecting Lex to contemplate murdering batman in this chapter, but hey, there you go. Lex, if you do that, you gotta know that's just gonna drag Batman into it and ruin all your plans!
Mr. Terrific being stopped from suicide is canon, but not the 'it was superman and krypto' bit, that's entirely my invention because I felt it fit and because it amuses me to force Mr. Terrific and Krypto to become friends. This chapter does some setup (hinting at future Justice Gang plotlines that are probably canon), but some plot points might never actually happen depending on how long the fic is.
edit: !@#$ I had this in draft because of all the heavy formatting, and it auto-filled in the wrong day so it may not show up on updates. ughhhh. X_x
Chapter 4: bald man combs hair, news at eleven
Summary:
last chapter be like
luthor: -thinks about committing mass murder and starting a dictatorship-
clark: I think he's just lonely.
luthor: -plots and attempts kidnapping-
clark: -shocked pikachu face- who knew the literal worst person I know could do this???
lois: literately everyone but you, clark.also a summary of last episode according to one reviewer:
clark: I'm not a gossip.
also clark: omg did you hear about what batman didthis chapter:
Clark argues he's human at heart. This turns out to be a bad strategy because Lex is a misanthrope. Fortunately, Clark is adaptable.
Clark comes to conclude the real reason Luthor wants to kidnap him is because he's bald....I tried to make this completely serious, guys, I really did.
But it just wrote itself.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
GUESS WHO
lois - you think he's lonely! clark, please tell me you aren't chatting with him. you know how horribly it went last time you thought someone was 'just lonely'. Batman judo-flipped you off a building for trying to hug him.
lois - ...clark? it's not like you to take this long. And I don't see any mass disasters on the news.
lois - clark, please answer me and tell me you're okay.
clark - I am completely fine, but I have to go away for awhile. I'm working undercover on a big scoop. 'm really sorry I didn't tell you about everything
lois - give me your best swear word
clark - a boyscout like me, swearing? never. fall out of the sky for you later.
lois - unusually suave of you to say that. how long?
clark - I surmise it's going to take a few weeks, at a minimum. Perhaps the next occasion you see me, I'll be a whole new man. Goodbye now Lane.
clark - I think it's going to take a few weeks, at least. Maybe next time you see me, I'll be like a whole new man? bye bye, stay safe Lois. :3
Musn't forget the completely superfluous barn cat smiley face. And yes, Clark was insistent it wasn't just a cat smiley face, but a barn cat smiley face. Because of course he did, lest anyone was in danger of forgetting that he was forgettable, just an innocuous farm boy determined to torture you with emojis.
lois - darn you to heck.
clark - no need for such strong language. :P it's darn you to the hay. very itchy hay. the itchiest.
lois - at least you still sound like you. I was really worried for a second, but no random kidnapper would have any reason to know your tasteless itchy hay joke.
clark - I think you should give Lex a chance. There is human goodness in everyone, even someone as alien as Lex Luthor.
only Dog knows why I believe this diabetic malarkey, but I do, by Satin's rouge-wearing noneuclidean angles.
Best to delete that second bit. And submit.
lois - god, clark, you're hopeless. but for you I'll do anything. I'll try not to completely eviscerate him the next time I see him but no promises. Love you.
clark - Te tengo mucho cariño.
lois - ?
clark - it means I am very fond of you.
lois - I forgot your proclivity with languages. You know I don't speak Spanish or Portu-cheese or whatever.
clark - It's called Portuguese. good night lois.
lois - ? not going to give a second good night?
clark - good night, Lois. good night.
lois - goooood night, Clark.
There were multiple 'Love you's in Spanish. One, te quiero, was appropriate for very close friends or boyfriend and girlfriend, and so less intense than 'I love you' in English usually was. The other, te amo, was the most intense and for spouses / fiances, long time lovers or close family like your children.
Te tengo mucho cariño, on the other hand, was used for just friends you weren't in love with at all.
POV: CLARK, six hours before
"Luthor," Clark said stiffly. "What's the meaning of this?"
"I thought it rather obvious: I'm kidnapping you. Or you could come willingly, of course."
Clark decided to make a run for it. Even without his powers, he was still quite athletic. He held up his hands as if to surrender, then bolted back the way he came through.
"No need to be so diffident, Superman. Go get him."
The other figure however, seemed to be just as muscled. They tackled him to the ground and Luthor's body guard Mercy bound his hands.
"This is illegal."
"Is it? You're not even human. Does an illegal like you even have any rights?"
Clark's eyes gleamed red. He couldn't shoot lasers right now, but he still wasn't entirely human. His eyes could produce a small amount of light to help him see in the dark. Under the dim red lighting, he wasn't sure if it would be noticeable, but the brief look of worry on Lex's face confirmed it.
"Trying to laser my face off?"
"No."
"Ah, I read about this on your archives. A Kryptonian intimidation as well as flirtation display that kicks in around puberty." Wait, was that why he got heat vision when he started getting crushes on girls? "As intimidating as a cat laser pointer. Well, time to take you home."
Home?
"Someone will need to take care of the animals in Antarctica," Clark said abruptly, worried. "I restock their feed periodically, and you destroyed my care taker bots." They'd self repair given time, but someone needed to let Krypto out or he'd pee all over everything... plus he'd get hungry and potentially eat the other animals. "I'd appreciate if you didn't hurt my dog." He'd made the mistake of keeping Krypto in his apartment and came home to find it a gigantic mess. The dog had looked completely unapologetic. There had been red on his snout from leftover meat Clark had thrown in the trash, plus he suspected Krypto also got into neighbors' fridges. So back to the fortress it was.
"Cooperate and I won't have to."
Wow. Threatening to hurt a man's dog if he didn't cooperate, that was pretty low. Clark thrashed in earnest, trying to get away, but it was pointless. They put chloroform up to his face, and he faded from consciousness after a minute of breathing it in.
POV: Clark, PRESENT
When he woke, it was to a bedroom illuminated by red light with no external windows, though someone from inside the building could peer in and Clark could peer back. The glass was very thick, built to withstand a gorilla or a bullet, and it left him with little to no privacy. There was an adjoined bathroom with a toilet and sink.
He wasn't chained in any way and could move freely. Someone, he noted with discomfort, had taken off his clothing and replaced it with plain white that matched the sterile white of the walls and gleaming tile floor.
There were no books or games or TV. He idly wondered if they intended to torture him. There was, however, a camera on the ceiling pointed down at him.
Only a few minutes after waking, the door opened and Lex entered, flanked by a bodyguard.
"I need to leave," Clark said urgently. "I think there's going to be some sort of earthquake." There was a faint tremor.
"You can still sense that? Interesting. Another thing to research."
"I know I've offended you in some way by being an alien," Clark said, "But I'm human in the ways that really matter. I make mistakes. I cry, sometimes, when I can't fix things or didn't get there soon enough."
"It's not merely being an alien," Lex scoffed. "It's your arrogance."
"Then consider me humbled," Clark said readily enough.
"You know, I really had thought you would approach me on your own at least once," Lex said. Was that what he was offended about?! Really? "You could have floated on in, and we could have discussed things of global importance. Or at least come to an agreement that you stay out of my way and I stay out of yours."
"I didn't think you'd want to hear my answer," Clark said, trying to be diplomatic. "I don't want to hurt people, nor do I want to see them hurt. If it's property damage you're worried about, I assure you that wasn't my intention. But I have absolutely no desire to conquer people."
"Even if that was the mission your parents assigned you?"
Clark gave him a confused look. "The message was damaged." He knew the gist of what it was and had deliberately not fixed it, but Lex shouldn't have known that.
"I fixed it." And then, like a nightmare, Luthor played the message. Scientist caste. A mission to clone up an army of Kryptonians. The warning that he'd be forever alone, though, that hurt the worst. "I'm curious how much is really true."
Lex reached out and grabbed Clark's chin, forcing a wary and confused Clark to look him right in the eyes.
"You're not going to attack your kidnapper, hm?" Lex drawled. Clark could still hear his heartbeat, and despite Lex's apparent calm, it was thumping, waiting for Clark's placidity to be revealed as just some facade, some elaborate plot to fool Lex. Unfortunately, the existence of the scientist caste was all true.
"I've told you I have no desire to hurt anyone." Being human was supposed to give you human rights. It felt backwards, but suddenly he found himself reaching for the opposite argument from before: arguing for his inherent alienness. "And I'm not territorial." That statement caused a contemplative shift in Lex's eyes for a moment, like he was remembering something. "You keep wanting to insist I'm not human, well, then you should consider the evidence and see what that really means, instead of accusing me of human-style aggressions." It felt like a betrayal of himself, of his dream of normality, but he added: "I can't hurt you." It felt like a terrible weakness to expose, but if it made the other understand. "So let me go."
"I've never had someone who couldn't hurt me before," Lex mused. "Leave us," he said to Mercy.
"Sir?"
"I'm gambling this information is correct. He can't hurt me, Mercy, so your services for the moment aren't needed here."
She nodded and left the room through a lockable door, entering a hall that was itself swathed in red light and ended with another locked door. Like a butterfly house, designed to capture butterflies that got loose past the first door.
"You were Pendragon," Lex said simply.
Clark's brows furrowed. He decided not to lie, since the other seemed so convinced. "Are you angry? I wouldn't have reached out if I'd known right away you were Leo."
"Did you think it was fun to play with the poor innocent human?" Lex's lip curled.
"I wasn't trying to mock you! I was genuine in my discomfort. You were even sympathetic, was that a lie?"
"And the lies about living on a farm?"
"Those weren't lies," he said hotly before he could think better of it. "I did live on a farm for awhile. Maybe you would choose to live as Superman all the time, but we established I'm an alien, remember?" God, he was going to learn about his real identity, wasn't he? Or did he already know? If so, why the comment about the 'lie'? "I'm not motivated by power, that's, uh, that's what the military caste is for."
"So is it science you want?" Luthor was eying him critically. "I can easily bribe you with that."
"Um... that's nice, and I certainly enjoy it, but the word 'bribe' there makes me think you want me to hurt someone for it, and I thought we just established I won't do that. Because... I'm an alien?" He wished he could have said 'because I have human decency' but he had the weird vibe that this would make Luthor trust him *less*.
Luthor seemed pensive, which, at least, wasn't angry.
"Food will be in thirty minutes from now," Lex said and moved to leave.
"Hey! You can't just leave me in here with no stimulation except hearing people's screams through the walls!"
Lex didn't pause through the first half, but the second caught him off guard. "People's screams?"
"There's a domestic abuse situation in the building across the street. Can you deal with it?" Clark said with visible and audible distress, pacing back and forth.
"That's a bit below my pay-grade, but I'll see what I can do."
The red lights turned on and off in a way that mimicked day-night cycles. He wasn't starved and the food was adequate, but he was left very bored for several hours.
When Lex finally returned, with a familiar pair of earmuffs as well as some sources of entertainment (a radio and a few books), it was with a mixture of relief and horror. It was quite clear what this signaled: long term confinement and the 'death' of Clark Kent. Or was it?
"I told Kent to go to ground if I ever disappeared," he tried. "He let me pretend to be him when I wanted to experience life as a normal human."
"Did you?" Luthor said with amusement. "I suppose you grew up on the same farm."
"Yes." He got the feeling Luthor might just be playing with him.
This feeling was only increased when Luthor took out a comb of all things.
"Is that why you kidnapped me?" he quipped. "Because you're bald and you wanted someone to brush?"
"NO." Luthor glared at him. "Are you aware grooming signifies different things in different species? In bunnies and apes, a superior may demand more grooming than they themselves give back, though there is some tit for tat. In other animals like cats, however, it is usually the dominant animal that grooms others. Can you guess which category Kryptonians fall into?"
That... was not what Clark had been expecting. He blinked instead of answering.
"You do a remarkable witless gorm impression," Luthor muttered, before speaking more clearly. "Kryptonians are psychologically different from humans. They instinctively expect the dominant party to do most of the barbering. It was a common duty of the religious caste."
"I see what you're doing. It still feels kind of weird, though." He didn't try to stop the man from combing his hair, though. Privately, he felt a little sorry for the bald man. He could also hear how his heart raced as the other drew near, like they still expected on some level all of this to be an elaborate trick before Clark hurt Luthor.
"You are the one calling your own species weird, Kal-El, not me."
He couldn't help but flush a little, remembering that warning. That he would be alone. The implications that no human would understand him or care about his differing psychological needs. Clark had spent years trying to shove himself into a human shaped role, made conveniently easier by the fact he looked rather human. He'd imprinted on them and wanted their love and approval.
And here was a very clear message from a self proclaimed genius: I can understand you, but I expect you to submit.
If he ever escaped from here, how on earth could he tell anyone 'Lex Luthor wanted to be my barber... and I kind of liked it'?
He could joke about it easily, 'bald man got weird over hair', but that wouldn't really capture all the nuance of what really bothered him about the interaction. No, he wasn't sure he could ever tell anyone about this at all.
And that was half the point, too. It was a power play, and all the more so if you couldn't tell anyone about it without fear of embarrassment.
POV: LEX
Lex had over-simplified slightly. Kryptonians did sometimes demand grooming from subordinates depending on the culture, but for the most part, it was like he said. Kal El's seeming ignorance of his own society spoke to truthfulness of his story of being raised by humans, at least.
Kryptonians for the most part weren't a touch heavy society. Actually, that was something of an understatement. Most families hadn't reproduced by old fashioned sex for centuries.
A species with fully human psychology would never have made that social transition. Humans were just too wedded to using sex for social bonding, and too promiscuous (or serial monogamous). Kryptonians were more like one of those endangered species that needed very special conditions to breed in captivity. They had to be induced into what one might call a 'second puberty'.
It was likely Superman had never felt any sexual desire in his entire life, but plenty of romantic.
He'd initially thought of him as like some immortal alien god, untouchable, unfathomable, doomed to wreck the world in a quest to save it. Now his captive little deity. But that wasn't quite fully accurate, was it? The alien was now a mere mortal animal, like everyone else. And animals had needs.
They were, Lex found himself thinking as he very carefully touched just the head, like birds. And he didn't just mean the capacity for flight.
Many birds kept in captivity would only naturally receive touch below the neck from a mate. This led to a lot of extremely distressed parrots tearing out all their feathers, and then being abandoned by the very humans that had mimed wanting to be their 'partner for life'. The poor bird had no way of wooing their human 'partner' who had started petting them inappropriately for their own amusement with no thought to the true needs of the bird, and this led to acting out like screaming and biting which ultimately chased their favorite person even further away.
His mind couldn't help but go back to when Pendragon had tried to cuddle with him.
Kissing was not a Kryptonian sexual behavior. Some Kryptonian cultures did it out of affection between family, but above-head touch simply had no special romantic meaning like humans often imparted it. Pendragon - Superman, he mentally corrected - must have been very confused and frustrated by his own behavior and desires many times in his life, unsure why he didn't quite fit into the narratives he had been taught.
So many things had to 'go right' in a human courtship. If something was off, like amount of eye contact or body language or failure to follow the appropriate signals on when to decrease personal space, one could trigger uncanny valley of 'not quite human'. It was a wonder Kal-El hadn't done even worse than he had, really.
After a week of mostly good behavior (Kal-El in his boredom seemed to invent a game of moving what little furniture he had around, and kept tilting his bed on its side to obscure himself from the camera; he didn't like to be watched when he peed, and Lex suspected him of looking for weak points in the walls to try to borrow through like a rat), Lex decided to risk spending more time in the cage of his new pet. He also decided to give a couch and a TV as a reward, and made it clear they could be taken away at any time.
Kryptonians were social animals as well as intelligent and would need a lot of mental stimulation. Lex might as well get some of his work done, and if Lex became associated with everything positive in Kal-El's life, well, that was a nice bonus.
"What are you planning on doing with me? Well, besides collecting my spit apparently," Clark said, accepting a swab without complaint. He was probably aware if he didn't cooperate they'd just collect his saliva from his dishes instead.
"I haven't decided yet," he said honestly. The clone had been useless and was beginning to degrade already. He needed to make tweaks, and he could learn a lot from the Kryptonians on how to do better cloning. Military caste might be too aggressive, although with the red light it was worth testing. Perhaps some human DNA in the mixture? Humans could be their own source of problems, of course.
"He's so placid," one of the scientists he'd hired to do tests had remarked. "I think we could easily get more samples. We haven't gotten a sperm sample yet." Superman turned quite pink, looking absolutely mortified at the subject. "Electric shocks via anal rod under anesthetic are the industry standard for-"
"You don't touch him without permission," Lex hissed. He didn't care if it technically wouldn't cause Pen pain, it might still be considered harm. And Lex was many things, but not a rapist. "Only I touch him, you hear? Get out of my sight."
"Yes, Mr. Luthor."
"...thanks, I think?"
Birds were best kept in pairs. He didn't want them breeding, though, not without permission at least. Of course, what he'd been reading strongly suggested this really wouldn't be much of a problem.
Kal-El tried to read over his shoulder. Lex let him. Occasionally, perhaps for lack of anything better to do, Superman offered commentary. Some of it was even intelligent. He had to grudgingly admit a part of him missed Pen.
"You're reading a lot on Krypton."
"Why wouldn't I? I'm surprised you haven't read all this yourself."
"There's entire cultures with thousands of years of development to go through, even if Krypton was less culturally diverse than Earth it's still a lot. It's actually pretty hard to read through an entire world's worth of knowledge," the alien pointed out. "This one I did read before though. I couldn't help but wonder what it was like on a different world." Lex could relate to that curiosity. "Krypton has a lot more cold deserts which are relatively rare on Earth; the higher gravity means the mountains don't get as tall, but the greater land mass means it is a lot less wet. Some of the flat plains in temperate regions are a lot like Kansas, others more like Africa's fynbos, with entire fields that require fire to grow. Some species require both a snow event and a fire event to complete their life cycle."
"It explains a lot about you. How you're so readily comfortable with wild temperature swings. Why you don't have an external pair of balls, a feature that on mammals acts a cooling mechanism but if you can survive being nearly thrown into a sun you don't really need that, now do you?"
Kal-El seemed uncomfortable talking about himself, or perhaps adult subject matters in general, blushing deeply. "R-right," he squeaked. "Did you learn anything from your experiments so far?"
"You seem to have no Kryptonian microbes whatsoever in your body. Your gut flora seems to be pretty familiar, except for an iron eater extremophile."
"I was born in a sterile birthing matrix," Kal-El said. "I don't think my parents wanted to cause an ecological disaster on Earth with flying super powered microbes. And the iron eater might be because sometimes I eat bombs and grenades? It's a fast method of disposal if crude."
"Would your microbes fly?" Lex asked, curious. "If they were anaerobes living in darkness inside your body."
"Um, yeah. You know that weird amoeba looking thing I had in my zoo? That was an actual single celled organism called a Shoggoth, and it naturally flies on Krypton too. One meter single celled microbes exist on Earth too but they're rare and confined to the deep sea. Thank you for not dissecting my pet already, by the way; I can infer by your question that you did not do so." Lex could always dissect it later after it croaked, there was no need to be hasty.
"I surmise that's where your flying ability came from, some ancient common ancestor could even under the red sun. Why did evolution steadily select against the ability for your multicellular organisms but not get rid of it completely?"
"Well, it's nutritionally costly when active, but when passive the solar organelle that powers it collects energy from the sun. That amoeba is an obligate predator that survives in extreme cold by going dormant most of the time, the cold helps slow its metabolism further so it can survive for literately hundreds of years between ambush-flights. If it stays active for even two hours without a meal, it just straight up dies. Kind of like shrews. In summer if the ice melts, it switches to a plant-like lifestyle. Unlike Earth, most of our 'plants' shared a common ancestor with our 'animals' a bit more recently, 'only' about half a billion years ago, so our plants are a lot more like coral, some of them have a youthful mobile stage before becoming completely sedentary." Clearing his throat awkwardly and realizing he'd been rambling for awhile, Superman added, "But you probably knew some of that already if you've been reading a lot."
"I knew about your weird land-coral-plants, but that was about it," Lex told him honestly. "Why don't you tell me about the specific needs of your zoo pets so we don't accidentally kill them?" Why Pen had so many pets, Lex didn't know, but he had to admit studying them was quite fun, so maybe that was the only reason.
"Sure!" Pen perks up at that. "Did you read anything on Kryptonian agriculture yet?"
Lex never thought he'd talk about farming for an hour and enjoy it, but somehow Kent managed to keep inter-relating it to other things that Lex found fascinating and the experience ended up quite tolerable.
"Thought-Beasts, those are the ones that look like a cross between rhinos and ceratopsid dinosaurs, their frills are telepathic. They induce nightmares in anything that triggers their fear or instinct to avoid predators, so be sure to not make eye contact. If you keep a couple of them with the domestic zuurt, the fluffy goat-pigs, they'll naturally help fend off the fuzzy serpentine drang predator. They don't get along well with rondors - those are the water buffalo looking beasts with turtle shells on their backs and downward facing horns - despite both being herbivores, rondors are kind of like hippos in temperament, they're mean and they'll kill anything that looks at them funny, so they were never properly domesticated."
"And yet, you kept some as pets anyway."
"Well, my father apparently did the same, and I was curious. Besides, it's not like I didn't have plenty of space. It was interesting to try to experiment to get a stable terrarium going. The rondor enclosure should be fairly self sufficient, barring the 'plants' having a bad year. Oh, that reminds me, make sure the black leafed ones don't get exposed to yellow sun, they're adapted to dim light and taking in all that they can, so they'd cook themselves. The purple won't won't do so hot either, but they can take a little bit of it."
Lex couldn't believe he was finding himself taking notes on alien corn. It was actually quite relaxing. Not that he'd admit it out loud.
Notes:
Lois has an in-joke with Clark, taken from the Lois and Clark TV show. When they were in a honeymoon suite together, Clark once said goodnight twice to Lois because she didn't say goodnight back to him. Bomb eating is also from that.
Mercy is the brunette bodyguard from the Animated Series.
The heat-vision at puberty is a Smallville reference. It may become a plot point.I kinda gave Lois Lex's colors in this chapter. Hopefully I won't have to do any more message formatting for awhile now that we're officially in the 'Clark is kidnapped oh noes!' phase of the fic. :P
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