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bagheera_sanTitle: Except Batman, possibly, that one time
Fandom: Smallville-ish futurefic
Rating: PG
Genre: crack
Warnings: Zombies. Plant parts where no plant parts should ever go. Great White Sharks. Heroes and villainesses and tales of woe. Bees.
Summary: Where do you hide Lex Luthor?
For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladydey's prompt: Smallville - Lex/Clark, "witness protection".
If Lex had had faith in humanity left, he would have lost it during Lana's trial, because during that trial, certain points about human nature were proven, repeatedly, and human nature didn't get away very well.
One: a pretty face triumphs over logic and common sense. The proof was irrefutable, the crimes numerous, and Lana's complete lack of remorse practically jumped into your face every time she opened her mouth. Even the judge kept dabbing her eyes furtively when Lana Lang told her tale of woe and shed a few large tears that slid down perfect cheeks.
"But I did it for love," Lana said in a small voice, and everyone sniffled, and Lex felt a vague, inexplicable stab of jealousy.
Two: there are no good guys. They all knew she was guilty. Clark knew, Chloe knew, Martha goddamn Kent knew it. And they all swore on truth, justice and the Holy Bible and lied through their teeth for Lana Lang.
Three: there really are no good guys when it comes to money. Lex won the trial. Well, technically, the persecution won it, as he was merely the main witness, but he won it with money and blackmail and connections. The judge kept dabbing her eyes with one hand, and patting her fat check-book with the other, and sentenced the poor pretty little girl to 20 years in prison.
When they led her away, graceful wrists circled by handcuffs, chin held high and eyes full of daggers, Lex felt strangely empty. Where was the satisfaction? Where was victory? Victory stood in the corner, glaring balefully at him: now you have me and don't want me.
Lex liked to win, yes, but once in a while he would have liked Justice to win, or Truth, or even Beauty and Compassion. Instead, the victory belonged to Greed and Money and Fear, and the beautiful monster he had slain was the beautiful monster he had made and it was all terribly circular and tiresome. Wasn't it for the sake of humanity that he kept bending certain laws and moral lines? Well, sometimes he doubted that humanity deserved not to be conquered by evil aliens.
"I'll come for you, you monster," Lana hissed as they led her past him and Lex merely sighed. He doubted she'd be even half as effectively deadly as Lionel.
He was wrong. Because Lana Lang was taken to prison that day, and made up her mind. She looked good in orange and with her hair cropped short, and made friends with the two biggest bullies in her cell block before dinner was done, and with Bertha hulking at her back and Candi's white smile flashing like fangs over her shoulder, Lana's life in prison could have been very peaceful.
"But," Lana exclaimed under the shower (she would have drawn a lot of attention to her if all eyes in the room hadn't already been on her) and shook her small, lily-white hands, brandishing the puke-green soap like a sword of vengeance, "the blood on these hands is yours, Lex!"
"What does that even mean?" someone asked into the silence of gurgling water and shower spray, and Bertha made a big fist: "It means she'll have the bastard's head on a stick!" and everyone cheered, and that was the birth of dread villainess Lana Lang. (But first they got into a cat-fight about the soap.)
Meanwhile, back in Metropolis, life went on without Lana, and did so at a drastically increased pace: Clark Kent in particular had several head-on collisions with destiny, and by the end of the month he was a mild-mannered reporter by day and Superman during lunch break and the evening hours were spent saving the world and forming the Justice League and typing up interviews with himself, while a few skyscrapers away, Lex Luthor got exponentially more evil and lonely and miserable, but most of all he got richer all the time. Life was good.
Back in prison, Lana Lang was working hard: she read all the books in the library (mostly Reader's Digest, but there was the Guinness Book of Records, too, and the biographies of several stars and starlets, and those were very inspirational), she played checkers until she beat every girl in her cell-block and all of the wardens (it took a while to convince them not to let her win), she studied martial arts under the best female judoka Japan had seen in a century (the sensei had been prison so long no one remembered what it was she hadn't done) and spent each and every of her visiting hours learning from another master of the trade: criminals and villains from all over the country who suddenly found themselves with rather alarming avuncular feelings for her.
By the time she was ready for her great escape, Lana Lang was the best at what she did. (She probably had been the best even without all the hard work, because what she did was somewhat ill-defined and Lana excelled at that kind of thing, but hard work was good for a vengeful soul and that's how they did it in the movies.)
Of course, she occasionally had visits from other people: Nell, who always brought flowers, and Senator Kent, who always brought pie (without escape tools baked into it) and good advice, and Clark and Chloe, with their chorus of "Repent, Repent!" and Lex, who always looked bitter and miserable and a bit amused by her threats (he mostly brought lingerie. His taste in that was still impeccable.)
And then, one day, Lex found himself tied up with a lot of rope, wet, reeking of fish and slung over Superman's shoulder, and Superman said, "That was a tank full of sharks," as if an apple had just fallen on his head and made him discover the laws of gravity (but since they were flying in defiance of said laws, that was unlikely.)
"Yes," Lex forced through his teeth, which were only chattering a little, because he was drenched in fishy shark-tank water and it was November. "That was a tank full of sharks."
Superman put him down on a rooftop like a life-sized hairless Ken doll and heaved a big, disapproving sigh from deep within his mighty blue-clad chest. "Luthor," he began, then cocked his head at Lex's shivering, undid the fastenings of his red cape, and wrapped it around Lex's shoulders. "Luthor, it can't go on like this."
"It wasn't my tank of sharks," Lex pointed out. "Do I look like I fall into my own fiendish death traps?" The question was supposed to sound sarcastic, but it came out a bit plaintive. He held up his tied hands. "Do you mind?"
"But if it wasn't your tank…"
Lex waved his hands impatiently. Superman snapped the rope. Lex took pity on Clark, who looked horribly confused. "You probably remember that Lana escaped from prison last month. Now they can add illegal possession of endangered species to her list of crimes."
"Sharks aren't an endangered species."
Lex was a heartless evil bastard (he knew that, and that fact that it only bothered him sometimes was the best proof) and Superman was his sworn enemy, but sometimes Clark still made him laugh. "I don't know, I think there was a Great White. And they've been pretty popular as pets in certain circles lately."
Even as a villainess, Lana was always fashionable.
"Oh," Clark said. "What now? Do you think I should return them to their natural habitat?"
Lex straightened his ruined, fishy tie. "Now? Now you return *me* to my natural habitat, and then presumably you will brood ineffectively for a while until you discover that, no, your sense of justice still isn't stronger than your crush on Lana, and you'll find a good reason not to find her and arrest her. Meanwhile, I'll increase my security measures."
That was what happened. Lex was a genius, after all, and he could predict this kind of thing.
In the next month, there were falling pianos and poisoned scotch, ten ninja assassins and a lethal Christmas tree, and on New Year, Lana teamed up with Poison Ivy and Lex very nearly died an undignified death by plants.
"This is worse than Smallville," Lex complained to Superman, disgruntled because Lana had interrupted his own latest take-over plan and he had plant parts where no plant parts should ever go.
Superman picked a few more leaves from Lex's suit. "Yes," he said darkly. "At least in Smallville only one of you was evil."
But then, a week later, Lex was stung by about a hundred bees (Lana had recently changed her secret identity to The Insect Queen, and was going through her bee phase. Next were ants, and then spiders, until Lex gently told her that spiders were not actually insects) and couldn't speak at all because of his swollen lips, and any normal human would have died.
"Mmmmupph," Lex said angrily to Superman, meaning, "What the hell are you still gawking at me like that?"
"You could be dead." Superman bit his pretty lips. "She could have killed you! Lex, we have to do something. Your head is the size of a melon."
"Mmuh," Lex said, meaning either, "No, we don't," or, "No, it isn't."
Clark crossed his arms. "You'll have to go into witness protection."
Lex resisted the ridiculous idea valiantly for another six months. But the harsh truth was that Lana Lang was a very gifted girl, and she was putting all her talents into this one big effort to make his life hell and kill him. Lex often reflected on the waste of energy and talent. She could have done so much good, if she hadn't wasted it on that selfish vendetta! Thanks to Superman, she hadn't yet managed to kill him, but her efforts were so disruptive that neither Lex nor Clark got much accomplished in those six months and finally, fed-up and admitting that his own selfish vendetta was going nowhere, Lex caved.
"I'll do it," he said as Clark fought off the krypto-zombies with whom Lana had locked Lex into a secret labyrinth under the sewers of Metropolis. "I'll go into witness protection."
Clark tried to shake off the zombie that clung to his hand with its teeth. "Oh, good!"
Lex gave the police several suggestions how they should fake his death, but faking his death would have been a crime, and so he was granted none of his brilliant exit scenarios. Instead he was given a new name, a new passport, a new job, a small flat in some nice suburb and a wig.
Lester Lerner was an accountant by day. By night, he lay in his bed, untroubled by a bad conscience or world domination anxieties. He cooked for himself, shopped for himself, and soon got a handle on cleaning his small apartment. He had no television, but a computer and a library card, his neighbours greeted him without suspicion, and occasionally he gave his colleagues very good advice on the stock market. In the early mornings he went jogging without a bodyguard tagging along, and since he discovered on the second day of his new life that from now on, he would have to buy all the scotch he wanted to drink himself, he simply decided not to do it, and he never touched a glass of liquor again. Sometimes, strange things happened to Lester, like the first time he took the bus and was caught without a ticket, and all he did was laugh and pay the penalty he couldn't really afford, because this was the worst kind of crime he would ever commit from now on, the kind of blood that you could wash off your hands with a shrug and forty dollars.
He met men and women, and some fell in love with him, and some took him home with them, but none ever wanted to marry him – "You're a strange one," they said, smiling , as he stood by the window in the morning, looking out at a city he didn't own, and then he laughed at them and the world, because he was nameless and free and destiny was over.
And if this had happened (because it didn't, it was a bit of a daydream), then maybe one day he would have woken up and world would have burned, and all it would have taken was one more defender who hadn't deserted his place, or he would have woken up and walked down into his basement and switched on the light, and there would have been everything he needed to end the world, or he would have gone jogging and there'd be a car, and then, with broken bones and blood on his tongue, he would have looked up to the sky and –
Well. At this point in his elaborate fantasy, Lex never really got any further, because truth to be told, while he occasionally wished he could lead a normal, happy life, the idea of an ordinary death was when he realized that no, he didn't actually want to be normal at all, and he didn't want to die, either, because he knew the words that would leave his lips with his dying breath, and no self-respecting villain liked to admit that they were quite pathetically in love with the object of all their hatred and discontent.
Meanwhile (they had finally left the kryptonite zombies behind, and were trudging side by side through the sewers in search of a way back to the surface) Clark was also contemplating the matter.
Lex was pretty hard to hide. Not a lot of people looked like him, and Clark was pretty sure that there were no people at all who *were* like Lex. Lex was brilliant and strange and restless, and pretty damn dangerous. The list of places where he would blend with the crowd was terribly short.
At Arkham Asylum, he would have been among people who were equally brilliant and dangerous, and he'd no doubt be well-hidden there, but Clark had a heart, and a mind and both agreed that that would be a very bad idea.
There was the Fortress, which was remote and known only to a handful of people. It wasn't very safe, as you could just walk in, but would Lana go looking there? But he would have to keep Lex there, with the wonders and the solitude, and he imagined a Lex who grew as sharp and cold and strange as his new home, a Lex who waited for him in the evenings with a colourless smile, eyes shadowy as the polar night, saying, "So, Clark, if you're just going to keep me here…" And then, inevitably, there would be touching and nudity and the lighting turned into a porn fantasy, and Clark would run very far and very fast. (He had to believe that he would run.)
No, the two of them all alone was a bad idea, and so was Lex left alone with a bunch of volatile madmen and women. There had to be some kind of middle, some company that was strange but not that strange.
"Lex?" Clark asked.
"Left, I think," Lex answered distractedly.
"Right, actually," Clark corrected, because he had x-ray vision and there was a ladder. Lex nodded and followed. "Lex, I think I have an idea."
Clark told him about his idea. "Why do I even plot, when your plans are much more likely to bring about your downfall?" Lex complained. "Absolutely not!"
They climbed up the ladder and finally, dirty and smelly, emerged on a sidewalk in downtown Metropolis. Clark pulled him up with a strong hand and then crossed his arms. "It's either that or we pretend you've died and you're your own clone. Lana wouldn't hurt an innocent clone, now would she? You could be from Australia and wear a wig…"
"Very funny. Okay. I'm going along with your plan, but don't you blame me when I'm going to use all your secrets against you."
He hated Clark a tiny bit more for pointing out that Lex already did know all their secrets. The secrets of the Justice League, that is. Because that was Clark's brilliant plan: they would hide Lex among the only group of people where he wouldn't stick out that didn't consist (most of the time) of homicidal maniacs.
He left it to Lex to come up with a secret identity and some powers.
This is how Lex did it: he took the night off, fetched his best scotch and secret stash of comics, and locked himself in his study. Occasionally, snickering could be heard.
About a week (and two more of Lana's attempts to kill him) later, Lex Luthor tragically died in a car bombing.
"Oh, Lex," Lana laughed as she patted the burnt hood of the wrecked car. "You did always love irony. Remember? This is how you tried to kill me the first time."
"Uh, you faked that one, remember?" Superman asked, a little worried.
"Semantics," Lana said with a wave of her hand. Then she gave him a narrow, suspicious look. "You realize Lex is dead, don't you? You're pretty calm… are you in shock, Clark?"
Clark did what he always did when he didn't know what to say to villains. "You're going back to prison now, Luthor." (That wasn't a Freudian slip at all. Lana and Lex still hadn't gotten around to getting divorced.)
As Clark led Lana towards the policemen who were going to take her back to prison, she was strangely silent. It was a kind of afterglow, a golden serenity, but Clark mistook it for remorse. "What you did was wrong," he said softly, "but Lana… it isn't too late. You can still change. Let Lex's death have one last good effect. He would have wanted it like that."
Lana looked up at him with her large, expressive eyes and sighed. "Oh, Clark."
"Lana," he said, his big heart moved almost to the point of breaking. He touched her hair. "You know I forgive you, don't you?"
Lana made a face. "God, Clark. You forgive me? Who do you think you are? I've changed my mind. Lex was an evil creature, but you… you're the person who's really responsible for where I am now in life." She paused for a second, because actually she liked it quite a bit where she was now in life, except for the handcuffs. And her costume was riding up again. "Lex is dead, but my revenge has only just begun!"
That night, as he helped Lex getting moved into his new secret lair (he had to make sure Lex didn't do anything evil while pretending to be a hero) Clark told him the news. Lex sighed, but didn't look up from his critical examination of his new supercomputer. The silver wasn't quite the right contrast to the volcanic rock of the cave. "I'll never know why it didn't work out between us," he said.
For about thirty seconds, Clark's heart beat very fast, but of course Lex was talking about Lana.
"Yes, you were obviously meant to be," Clark spat and flounced off at superspeed.
He was still sulking a bit when he introduced Lex to the League.
"Cool costume," the Flash said, "you sure you're not a Bat?"
"Purple," Batman grunted.
"So? Catwoman wears purple."
"Oh," Diana said with friendly interest, "I was not aware that you and Catwoman had entered into such a tight alliance, Bruce."
"Woah, woah, woah!" This was the Green Arrow, waving his hands. "Let's keep it at code names while we discuss our social lives, kids! We're not that close with our new member yet."
J'onn spoke up. He was in on the secret, of course, because although Lex had suggested a gadget that would inhibit mind-reading, it would have caused unnecessary suspicion. Clark had no idea what J'onn thought about the plan, but he hadn't disagreed. "Superman and I know his real name, Arrow."
"Why don't we let him introduce himself," Wonder Woman suggested gently, because she mistakenly thought that Lex was a bit shy and this rowdy bunch was intimidating him. Lex gave her his most charming smile from beneath his cowl.
Here, Clark tensed a bit, because that smile turned slightly sinister. "I," Lex said, with a flourish worthy of a hero, "am the Witness, because as long as I live, I shall witness no crime and let it go unavenged!"
("Unavenged?" Clark later asked. "Is that even a word?" – "It is when you're a hero," Lex said, only a little sulkily.)
The Witness never told anyone his origin story, but soon there were multiple rumours. The Green Arrow said that the Witness's parents had been killed in front of his eyes, possibly by the bolt of cosmic rays that gave him his powers. Diana believed that he was the reborn soul of an ancient hero, who got mystic powers by swearing an oath to each of his ancient gods. Batman said he was working on it, and already had several promising leads (he wasn't particularly concerned about the Witness, because Batman didn't trust *any* of them.)
Lois and Chloe simply said, "He's hot, Clark, who cares?"
"Trust me," Clark said, when he had finished choking. "You care."
"Oooh," Lois said, "he has a dark secret!" and Clark's head dropped to the table in defeat.
What Lex really had was the time of his life. He had power, he had control, he was doing great good and was loved and admired for it. And in those inevitable moments when so much good luck sent him into a sort of panic, he could soothe himself with the thought of the sudden betrayal that was inevitable: either he would betray them or they would betray him. He was doomed, just as he always was, and when it came, he would be better prepared that ever to fight them. The two souls that had always been at war inside him, the ambitious Luthor scion and the man who had dreamed of being a hero, finally were at peace.
Lana, who had inherited LexCorp as Lex's sole legal heir, discovered that being Superman's nemesis really was sweet deal, because he was just too good for any of your real horribly evil schemes to succeed, but not quite good enough for the profitable ones to fail, and you got to be in the papers a lot, and Clark never failed to mention how good she still looked even when he was writing about how depraved she was.
Lois eventually got over her crush on The Witness and married Green Arrow. Chloe eventually discovered the Witness's secret, but she never told a soul. Batman made a lot of contingency plans for the day of inevitable betrayal, a day Lex kept waiting for as well, but somehow it never quite happened.
And unexpectedly, they all lived happily ever after.
(Well, except for that bit where Lex went through mid-life crisis and called himself the Eggplant Avenger, no one was particularly happy about that, especially not when they came to the part with the, "Fools! I have deceived you all this time. In truth I am – " but then Clark dragged him away to the Fortress and said, "Look, I know you're forty and bald and you're not exactly close to accomplishing any of your goals in life, but... at least you've got Superman on his knees? Not a lot of guys can say that." And really it weren't a lot of guys who could say that, except Batman, possibly, that one time.)
Fandom: Smallville-ish futurefic
Rating: PG
Genre: crack
Warnings: Zombies. Plant parts where no plant parts should ever go. Great White Sharks. Heroes and villainesses and tales of woe. Bees.
Summary: Where do you hide Lex Luthor?
For
ladydey's prompt: Smallville - Lex/Clark, "witness protection".If Lex had had faith in humanity left, he would have lost it during Lana's trial, because during that trial, certain points about human nature were proven, repeatedly, and human nature didn't get away very well.
One: a pretty face triumphs over logic and common sense. The proof was irrefutable, the crimes numerous, and Lana's complete lack of remorse practically jumped into your face every time she opened her mouth. Even the judge kept dabbing her eyes furtively when Lana Lang told her tale of woe and shed a few large tears that slid down perfect cheeks.
"But I did it for love," Lana said in a small voice, and everyone sniffled, and Lex felt a vague, inexplicable stab of jealousy.
Two: there are no good guys. They all knew she was guilty. Clark knew, Chloe knew, Martha goddamn Kent knew it. And they all swore on truth, justice and the Holy Bible and lied through their teeth for Lana Lang.
Three: there really are no good guys when it comes to money. Lex won the trial. Well, technically, the persecution won it, as he was merely the main witness, but he won it with money and blackmail and connections. The judge kept dabbing her eyes with one hand, and patting her fat check-book with the other, and sentenced the poor pretty little girl to 20 years in prison.
When they led her away, graceful wrists circled by handcuffs, chin held high and eyes full of daggers, Lex felt strangely empty. Where was the satisfaction? Where was victory? Victory stood in the corner, glaring balefully at him: now you have me and don't want me.
Lex liked to win, yes, but once in a while he would have liked Justice to win, or Truth, or even Beauty and Compassion. Instead, the victory belonged to Greed and Money and Fear, and the beautiful monster he had slain was the beautiful monster he had made and it was all terribly circular and tiresome. Wasn't it for the sake of humanity that he kept bending certain laws and moral lines? Well, sometimes he doubted that humanity deserved not to be conquered by evil aliens.
"I'll come for you, you monster," Lana hissed as they led her past him and Lex merely sighed. He doubted she'd be even half as effectively deadly as Lionel.
He was wrong. Because Lana Lang was taken to prison that day, and made up her mind. She looked good in orange and with her hair cropped short, and made friends with the two biggest bullies in her cell block before dinner was done, and with Bertha hulking at her back and Candi's white smile flashing like fangs over her shoulder, Lana's life in prison could have been very peaceful.
"But," Lana exclaimed under the shower (she would have drawn a lot of attention to her if all eyes in the room hadn't already been on her) and shook her small, lily-white hands, brandishing the puke-green soap like a sword of vengeance, "the blood on these hands is yours, Lex!"
"What does that even mean?" someone asked into the silence of gurgling water and shower spray, and Bertha made a big fist: "It means she'll have the bastard's head on a stick!" and everyone cheered, and that was the birth of dread villainess Lana Lang. (But first they got into a cat-fight about the soap.)
Meanwhile, back in Metropolis, life went on without Lana, and did so at a drastically increased pace: Clark Kent in particular had several head-on collisions with destiny, and by the end of the month he was a mild-mannered reporter by day and Superman during lunch break and the evening hours were spent saving the world and forming the Justice League and typing up interviews with himself, while a few skyscrapers away, Lex Luthor got exponentially more evil and lonely and miserable, but most of all he got richer all the time. Life was good.
Back in prison, Lana Lang was working hard: she read all the books in the library (mostly Reader's Digest, but there was the Guinness Book of Records, too, and the biographies of several stars and starlets, and those were very inspirational), she played checkers until she beat every girl in her cell-block and all of the wardens (it took a while to convince them not to let her win), she studied martial arts under the best female judoka Japan had seen in a century (the sensei had been prison so long no one remembered what it was she hadn't done) and spent each and every of her visiting hours learning from another master of the trade: criminals and villains from all over the country who suddenly found themselves with rather alarming avuncular feelings for her.
By the time she was ready for her great escape, Lana Lang was the best at what she did. (She probably had been the best even without all the hard work, because what she did was somewhat ill-defined and Lana excelled at that kind of thing, but hard work was good for a vengeful soul and that's how they did it in the movies.)
Of course, she occasionally had visits from other people: Nell, who always brought flowers, and Senator Kent, who always brought pie (without escape tools baked into it) and good advice, and Clark and Chloe, with their chorus of "Repent, Repent!" and Lex, who always looked bitter and miserable and a bit amused by her threats (he mostly brought lingerie. His taste in that was still impeccable.)
And then, one day, Lex found himself tied up with a lot of rope, wet, reeking of fish and slung over Superman's shoulder, and Superman said, "That was a tank full of sharks," as if an apple had just fallen on his head and made him discover the laws of gravity (but since they were flying in defiance of said laws, that was unlikely.)
"Yes," Lex forced through his teeth, which were only chattering a little, because he was drenched in fishy shark-tank water and it was November. "That was a tank full of sharks."
Superman put him down on a rooftop like a life-sized hairless Ken doll and heaved a big, disapproving sigh from deep within his mighty blue-clad chest. "Luthor," he began, then cocked his head at Lex's shivering, undid the fastenings of his red cape, and wrapped it around Lex's shoulders. "Luthor, it can't go on like this."
"It wasn't my tank of sharks," Lex pointed out. "Do I look like I fall into my own fiendish death traps?" The question was supposed to sound sarcastic, but it came out a bit plaintive. He held up his tied hands. "Do you mind?"
"But if it wasn't your tank…"
Lex waved his hands impatiently. Superman snapped the rope. Lex took pity on Clark, who looked horribly confused. "You probably remember that Lana escaped from prison last month. Now they can add illegal possession of endangered species to her list of crimes."
"Sharks aren't an endangered species."
Lex was a heartless evil bastard (he knew that, and that fact that it only bothered him sometimes was the best proof) and Superman was his sworn enemy, but sometimes Clark still made him laugh. "I don't know, I think there was a Great White. And they've been pretty popular as pets in certain circles lately."
Even as a villainess, Lana was always fashionable.
"Oh," Clark said. "What now? Do you think I should return them to their natural habitat?"
Lex straightened his ruined, fishy tie. "Now? Now you return *me* to my natural habitat, and then presumably you will brood ineffectively for a while until you discover that, no, your sense of justice still isn't stronger than your crush on Lana, and you'll find a good reason not to find her and arrest her. Meanwhile, I'll increase my security measures."
That was what happened. Lex was a genius, after all, and he could predict this kind of thing.
In the next month, there were falling pianos and poisoned scotch, ten ninja assassins and a lethal Christmas tree, and on New Year, Lana teamed up with Poison Ivy and Lex very nearly died an undignified death by plants.
"This is worse than Smallville," Lex complained to Superman, disgruntled because Lana had interrupted his own latest take-over plan and he had plant parts where no plant parts should ever go.
Superman picked a few more leaves from Lex's suit. "Yes," he said darkly. "At least in Smallville only one of you was evil."
But then, a week later, Lex was stung by about a hundred bees (Lana had recently changed her secret identity to The Insect Queen, and was going through her bee phase. Next were ants, and then spiders, until Lex gently told her that spiders were not actually insects) and couldn't speak at all because of his swollen lips, and any normal human would have died.
"Mmmmupph," Lex said angrily to Superman, meaning, "What the hell are you still gawking at me like that?"
"You could be dead." Superman bit his pretty lips. "She could have killed you! Lex, we have to do something. Your head is the size of a melon."
"Mmuh," Lex said, meaning either, "No, we don't," or, "No, it isn't."
Clark crossed his arms. "You'll have to go into witness protection."
Lex resisted the ridiculous idea valiantly for another six months. But the harsh truth was that Lana Lang was a very gifted girl, and she was putting all her talents into this one big effort to make his life hell and kill him. Lex often reflected on the waste of energy and talent. She could have done so much good, if she hadn't wasted it on that selfish vendetta! Thanks to Superman, she hadn't yet managed to kill him, but her efforts were so disruptive that neither Lex nor Clark got much accomplished in those six months and finally, fed-up and admitting that his own selfish vendetta was going nowhere, Lex caved.
"I'll do it," he said as Clark fought off the krypto-zombies with whom Lana had locked Lex into a secret labyrinth under the sewers of Metropolis. "I'll go into witness protection."
Clark tried to shake off the zombie that clung to his hand with its teeth. "Oh, good!"
Lex gave the police several suggestions how they should fake his death, but faking his death would have been a crime, and so he was granted none of his brilliant exit scenarios. Instead he was given a new name, a new passport, a new job, a small flat in some nice suburb and a wig.
Lester Lerner was an accountant by day. By night, he lay in his bed, untroubled by a bad conscience or world domination anxieties. He cooked for himself, shopped for himself, and soon got a handle on cleaning his small apartment. He had no television, but a computer and a library card, his neighbours greeted him without suspicion, and occasionally he gave his colleagues very good advice on the stock market. In the early mornings he went jogging without a bodyguard tagging along, and since he discovered on the second day of his new life that from now on, he would have to buy all the scotch he wanted to drink himself, he simply decided not to do it, and he never touched a glass of liquor again. Sometimes, strange things happened to Lester, like the first time he took the bus and was caught without a ticket, and all he did was laugh and pay the penalty he couldn't really afford, because this was the worst kind of crime he would ever commit from now on, the kind of blood that you could wash off your hands with a shrug and forty dollars.
He met men and women, and some fell in love with him, and some took him home with them, but none ever wanted to marry him – "You're a strange one," they said, smiling , as he stood by the window in the morning, looking out at a city he didn't own, and then he laughed at them and the world, because he was nameless and free and destiny was over.
And if this had happened (because it didn't, it was a bit of a daydream), then maybe one day he would have woken up and world would have burned, and all it would have taken was one more defender who hadn't deserted his place, or he would have woken up and walked down into his basement and switched on the light, and there would have been everything he needed to end the world, or he would have gone jogging and there'd be a car, and then, with broken bones and blood on his tongue, he would have looked up to the sky and –
Well. At this point in his elaborate fantasy, Lex never really got any further, because truth to be told, while he occasionally wished he could lead a normal, happy life, the idea of an ordinary death was when he realized that no, he didn't actually want to be normal at all, and he didn't want to die, either, because he knew the words that would leave his lips with his dying breath, and no self-respecting villain liked to admit that they were quite pathetically in love with the object of all their hatred and discontent.
Meanwhile (they had finally left the kryptonite zombies behind, and were trudging side by side through the sewers in search of a way back to the surface) Clark was also contemplating the matter.
Lex was pretty hard to hide. Not a lot of people looked like him, and Clark was pretty sure that there were no people at all who *were* like Lex. Lex was brilliant and strange and restless, and pretty damn dangerous. The list of places where he would blend with the crowd was terribly short.
At Arkham Asylum, he would have been among people who were equally brilliant and dangerous, and he'd no doubt be well-hidden there, but Clark had a heart, and a mind and both agreed that that would be a very bad idea.
There was the Fortress, which was remote and known only to a handful of people. It wasn't very safe, as you could just walk in, but would Lana go looking there? But he would have to keep Lex there, with the wonders and the solitude, and he imagined a Lex who grew as sharp and cold and strange as his new home, a Lex who waited for him in the evenings with a colourless smile, eyes shadowy as the polar night, saying, "So, Clark, if you're just going to keep me here…" And then, inevitably, there would be touching and nudity and the lighting turned into a porn fantasy, and Clark would run very far and very fast. (He had to believe that he would run.)
No, the two of them all alone was a bad idea, and so was Lex left alone with a bunch of volatile madmen and women. There had to be some kind of middle, some company that was strange but not that strange.
"Lex?" Clark asked.
"Left, I think," Lex answered distractedly.
"Right, actually," Clark corrected, because he had x-ray vision and there was a ladder. Lex nodded and followed. "Lex, I think I have an idea."
Clark told him about his idea. "Why do I even plot, when your plans are much more likely to bring about your downfall?" Lex complained. "Absolutely not!"
They climbed up the ladder and finally, dirty and smelly, emerged on a sidewalk in downtown Metropolis. Clark pulled him up with a strong hand and then crossed his arms. "It's either that or we pretend you've died and you're your own clone. Lana wouldn't hurt an innocent clone, now would she? You could be from Australia and wear a wig…"
"Very funny. Okay. I'm going along with your plan, but don't you blame me when I'm going to use all your secrets against you."
He hated Clark a tiny bit more for pointing out that Lex already did know all their secrets. The secrets of the Justice League, that is. Because that was Clark's brilliant plan: they would hide Lex among the only group of people where he wouldn't stick out that didn't consist (most of the time) of homicidal maniacs.
He left it to Lex to come up with a secret identity and some powers.
This is how Lex did it: he took the night off, fetched his best scotch and secret stash of comics, and locked himself in his study. Occasionally, snickering could be heard.
About a week (and two more of Lana's attempts to kill him) later, Lex Luthor tragically died in a car bombing.
"Oh, Lex," Lana laughed as she patted the burnt hood of the wrecked car. "You did always love irony. Remember? This is how you tried to kill me the first time."
"Uh, you faked that one, remember?" Superman asked, a little worried.
"Semantics," Lana said with a wave of her hand. Then she gave him a narrow, suspicious look. "You realize Lex is dead, don't you? You're pretty calm… are you in shock, Clark?"
Clark did what he always did when he didn't know what to say to villains. "You're going back to prison now, Luthor." (That wasn't a Freudian slip at all. Lana and Lex still hadn't gotten around to getting divorced.)
As Clark led Lana towards the policemen who were going to take her back to prison, she was strangely silent. It was a kind of afterglow, a golden serenity, but Clark mistook it for remorse. "What you did was wrong," he said softly, "but Lana… it isn't too late. You can still change. Let Lex's death have one last good effect. He would have wanted it like that."
Lana looked up at him with her large, expressive eyes and sighed. "Oh, Clark."
"Lana," he said, his big heart moved almost to the point of breaking. He touched her hair. "You know I forgive you, don't you?"
Lana made a face. "God, Clark. You forgive me? Who do you think you are? I've changed my mind. Lex was an evil creature, but you… you're the person who's really responsible for where I am now in life." She paused for a second, because actually she liked it quite a bit where she was now in life, except for the handcuffs. And her costume was riding up again. "Lex is dead, but my revenge has only just begun!"
That night, as he helped Lex getting moved into his new secret lair (he had to make sure Lex didn't do anything evil while pretending to be a hero) Clark told him the news. Lex sighed, but didn't look up from his critical examination of his new supercomputer. The silver wasn't quite the right contrast to the volcanic rock of the cave. "I'll never know why it didn't work out between us," he said.
For about thirty seconds, Clark's heart beat very fast, but of course Lex was talking about Lana.
"Yes, you were obviously meant to be," Clark spat and flounced off at superspeed.
He was still sulking a bit when he introduced Lex to the League.
"Cool costume," the Flash said, "you sure you're not a Bat?"
"Purple," Batman grunted.
"So? Catwoman wears purple."
"Oh," Diana said with friendly interest, "I was not aware that you and Catwoman had entered into such a tight alliance, Bruce."
"Woah, woah, woah!" This was the Green Arrow, waving his hands. "Let's keep it at code names while we discuss our social lives, kids! We're not that close with our new member yet."
J'onn spoke up. He was in on the secret, of course, because although Lex had suggested a gadget that would inhibit mind-reading, it would have caused unnecessary suspicion. Clark had no idea what J'onn thought about the plan, but he hadn't disagreed. "Superman and I know his real name, Arrow."
"Why don't we let him introduce himself," Wonder Woman suggested gently, because she mistakenly thought that Lex was a bit shy and this rowdy bunch was intimidating him. Lex gave her his most charming smile from beneath his cowl.
Here, Clark tensed a bit, because that smile turned slightly sinister. "I," Lex said, with a flourish worthy of a hero, "am the Witness, because as long as I live, I shall witness no crime and let it go unavenged!"
("Unavenged?" Clark later asked. "Is that even a word?" – "It is when you're a hero," Lex said, only a little sulkily.)
The Witness never told anyone his origin story, but soon there were multiple rumours. The Green Arrow said that the Witness's parents had been killed in front of his eyes, possibly by the bolt of cosmic rays that gave him his powers. Diana believed that he was the reborn soul of an ancient hero, who got mystic powers by swearing an oath to each of his ancient gods. Batman said he was working on it, and already had several promising leads (he wasn't particularly concerned about the Witness, because Batman didn't trust *any* of them.)
Lois and Chloe simply said, "He's hot, Clark, who cares?"
"Trust me," Clark said, when he had finished choking. "You care."
"Oooh," Lois said, "he has a dark secret!" and Clark's head dropped to the table in defeat.
What Lex really had was the time of his life. He had power, he had control, he was doing great good and was loved and admired for it. And in those inevitable moments when so much good luck sent him into a sort of panic, he could soothe himself with the thought of the sudden betrayal that was inevitable: either he would betray them or they would betray him. He was doomed, just as he always was, and when it came, he would be better prepared that ever to fight them. The two souls that had always been at war inside him, the ambitious Luthor scion and the man who had dreamed of being a hero, finally were at peace.
Lana, who had inherited LexCorp as Lex's sole legal heir, discovered that being Superman's nemesis really was sweet deal, because he was just too good for any of your real horribly evil schemes to succeed, but not quite good enough for the profitable ones to fail, and you got to be in the papers a lot, and Clark never failed to mention how good she still looked even when he was writing about how depraved she was.
Lois eventually got over her crush on The Witness and married Green Arrow. Chloe eventually discovered the Witness's secret, but she never told a soul. Batman made a lot of contingency plans for the day of inevitable betrayal, a day Lex kept waiting for as well, but somehow it never quite happened.
And unexpectedly, they all lived happily ever after.
(Well, except for that bit where Lex went through mid-life crisis and called himself the Eggplant Avenger, no one was particularly happy about that, especially not when they came to the part with the, "Fools! I have deceived you all this time. In truth I am – " but then Clark dragged him away to the Fortress and said, "Look, I know you're forty and bald and you're not exactly close to accomplishing any of your goals in life, but... at least you've got Superman on his knees? Not a lot of guys can say that." And really it weren't a lot of guys who could say that, except Batman, possibly, that one time.)
