bagheera_san | Fic: Elseworlds (1/5)

This is not technically a WIP, since each of the parts will be independent from each other, so no need to scold me for starting another WIP ;)

Title: Elseworlds (or Five Identities Lex Luthor and Clark Kent never had)
Rating: teen
Pairing: Clex
Genre: AU Crack/Angst
Warnings: Crack, non-graphic violence
Note: "Elseworlds" is what DC calls its AU comic stories in which cracky stuff like "What if Bruce Wayne was a pirate?" or "What if Clark Kent and Lex Luthor grew up as brothers?" happens. This is in the vein of that, with the theme of: What if Clark and Lex became other heroes and villains than Superman and, well, Lex Luthor?
Disclaimer: All DC characters and concepts belong to DC and related companies. All Marvel characters and concepts belong to Marvel. Smallville characters belong to CW and Millar/Gough.

Let's start with maybe the crackiest part... no, that's Bat!Lex and Clark. But this one is a close second. This happened for no reason other than Lex being bald and Superman having a red cape.

Cover by

theclexfactor!

Old Friends

They're a strange, sickly pair of old men in this crimson cell.

The red light throws harsh lines on Kal-El's face, lines that only the yellow sun can erase. His eyes look sunken, hollow, and his lips chapped. His hair could be cut with scissors now, but it falls long and unruly into his face, a tiny rebellion in this sterile prison.

Lex's sickliness, on the other hand, is the same here as under the sun. He has aged gracefully, but the wounds Kal-El gave him have never healed. He is bound to his wheelchair, and only his mind is agile and free.

They're playing a game Lex taught Clark, a very long time ago, in a room where the light was red because it fell through stained glass.

"The meta-human registration act went through your Congress," Kal-El says as he moves a bishop. He plays haphazardly, without finesse, even though Lex knows that Clark once could beat even chess computers when he put his mind to it.

"Registration could be a good thing," Lex insists, as he does when his students voice the same doubts. But it is harder being confident in front of Kal-El.

"You could be President," Kal-El counters.

"And I would still have to listen to Congress," Lex replies mildly.

"You listen to everyone. It doesn't mean that you actually listen to them."

Kal-El only sounds vaguely bitter. He's almost mellow under this red light, and it bothers Lex every time he visits Kal-El. He wants him to be angry, just once. A real kind of anger, not the tainted red rage the ring gave him when he put it on. Lex wants him to shout, in righteous fury, at his imprisonment, the way Clark shouted at Lex when he first learned that Lex had brainwashed dozens of people, even his own father. No one could lie to Lex, and Clark never lied to him after that one first time, so Lex had finally broken and told him the truth, that he had controlled his father for years, to protect himself and his mother and later just out of habit. Clark threatened to leave then, said that it was over, that Lex was evil, despicable. It was the first real argument they ever had, after months of being the tightest of friends. Lex begged him to give him a second chance.

Promised that he'd never violate another mind again.

It's funny how things turn out sometimes. Who would have thought that Clark, righteous and pure and true, would end up the villain of this piece?

"I can keep to myself," Lex smiles.

"I wish you wouldn't," Kal-El replies with at least a small bit of vehemence. "Stop standing at the sidelines – "

"I mostly sit."

"You're going to lie, soon, if you go on like this."

"I have hope yet."

Kal-El swears in Kryptonian that the cursed Fortress has taught him. If he had never found the stones and built that place after he escaped from the government lab, Superman would never have happened.

"In what, Lex? In the people you don't even trust enough to let them remember that you were here? In the people who caught Clark like an animal and cut him up like a corpse? Where the hell do you find hope?"

"You taught me," Lex says.

Kal-El stares at him, the cold hard stare he gave Lex right before he broke Lex's back.

Lex could have stopped him then, just as he could stop him now. But he can't see the green of Kal-El's eyes, and Kal-El is wearing white prison scrubs, not the red cape over his blue super-villain suit. And he just stares on, a harmless glare out of powerless eyes.

"They've killed Clark. He's dead."

"But I remember him."

"Yeah, Lex? And do you tell your students where you were when you return to the mansion? Do you tell them you visited Superman in prison? Or do you tell them you visited the grave of an old friend?"

"Neither."

Kal-El deflates. He slumps in his chair, looking old and defeated.

"Will they even ask, Lex? Or are you keeping them quiet now, too?"

Lex wishes Clark would trust him. He has been a good man, all these years. Never strayed from the path Clark led him onto.

The second time Lex met Clark, Lex could still walk and Clark was a boy tied to a cross in a field. There was never a secret between them, ever since then, never a bit of shame. For Lex sees all and hears all and knows all. It was the thing he wanted most, the gift the rocks gave him when they fell from the sky.

Never to be left alone.

No one touches Lex since he's in the chair, but he touches everyone. Feels everyone. A king of infinite spaces, confined to a half-dead shell. Clark gave him half of his life, and took half of it away from him again.

'Together we can rule the world,' Kal-El said before he broke Lex, after they had broken him with green rocks and scalpels, long after Clark took a broken young man and put him back together.

'I know you can be a good man,' Clark had told him, eyes full of love and trust.

'You and I aren't human. There are others like us. We need to protect them, you and I,' Superman said, eyes feverish red like the ring. 'We're superior to the human race. We deserve to rule it.'

Lex said no, back then, declined Superman's offer, because Clark taught him wrong from right, and Superman only knew revenge. It wasn't what Clark would have wanted.

Lex was loyal to a dead boy and betrayed the living man, all for the sake of being good, being a hero. The road to hell is slippery, and the path of righteousness straight, allowing no straying, not a single misstep. Clark has taught him that.

Years have passed since then. Years of being enemies and now years of visiting him in prison that have changed Kal-El. He's level-headed now when he wants to, old and bitter. He will be young again, if Lex takes him from his cross and lets the sun kiss his skin. Young and beautiful and full of glorious power, but he will still know the lessons he has learned, of patience and good planning.

Even if he'll put on the red cape again, he will not wear the ring this time. Lex has gathered all the meteor rocks in the world, in years of patient and good planning. The red ones and the green ones, and all the others, the rage and the pain and the fear.

They've long since vanished in the vast distance of space, like demons dispelled.

"I'd be a little busy keeping the children quiet as well. I've asked Bart and Alicia to take over teaching for a little while."

Bart and Alicia are the oldest of Lex's students, teachers now themselves. After they took Clark, Lex gathered meta-human children everywhere, and turned the mansion into a sanctuary, a haven and a school. Superman called them an army, but they're something else.

They're the future. They're the seed to the kingdom they'll build, a kingdom of justice and truth. Lex has told them wrong from right the best he could, the best he knew how, out of books and what Clark taught him.

The lights flicker. One by one, the red bulbs shatter. They sit bathed in sudden blackness. Lex can hear Kal-El breathe as he hovers on the event horizon of his old friend's mind, waiting to be granted entry.

Then he hears a distant rumble, and a loud explosion. A warm body throws itself over Lex, and then they're showered in dust and rubble.

Through his eyelids, Lex sees the light, the star of Clark's mind being reborn. He opens them slowly, and looks up at Clark's face, framed in sunlight that falls through the broken ceiling, the lines all softened away, young and eternal, beautiful body and beautiful mind.

"I knew you'd come through," Kal-El says and kisses him, too roughly, revelling in his returning powers. His hands sneak up to Lex's neck, cradling his skull, the seat of his life and his power, and Lex closes his eyes and waits for absolution. Salvation.

Instead, Clark gathers him up in his arms and stands, and Lex is free of his chair, free of the ground and they're flying, into the brilliant blue sky that fills them with colour other than red.

They're the Last Son of Krypton and the most powerful telepath in the world. They can do anything. Save it. Rule it. Destroy it.

Clark has taught Lex wrong from right.

And Lex is doing the right thing.