Fic: Reset (Clark, Lex, PG)
Mar. 3rd, 2008 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bagheera_sanA very belated Fracture-coda. I haven't yet written anything for the other three episodes and don't know if I will, but this was easy. It's pretty ambiguous - some of you will think it has a happy ending, but I'm not so sure.
Title: Reset
Rating: PG
Characters: Clark and Lex, subtexty, but could also be read as friendship
Spoilers: Fracture
Summary: After his trip into Lex's mind, Clark finds himself with company in his dreams, pieces of Lex clinging to him. He goes to Lex to stop it.
Lex often falls asleep on the couch, close to the fireplace. There's something about the heat of flames that is almost like the touch of another warm body, and the leather is soft like an embrace, almost like skin, whereas the sheets of his bed are cool and pristine, and smell ever so faintly of cleanliness. Tonight started like another such night, with work, then dinner foregone, then too much drink, and everything keeping him company, the secrets, the questions, the knowledge, the calm shadows of defeat. His study is satiated with them.
But then, just as his sprawl was as its most languid, and his head started slipping into heaviness, wakefulness suddenly surged through him again, and blinking into sobriety, he got up. There is a bell to ring so the open fire will be taken care of, but he forgot it, or pushed back the knowledge that he should call someone, either way he walked up the stairs, showered, got into pyjamas. He rarely bothers with them these days, the bottoms at most, but he knew he wasn't going to sleep, so he stood in front of the mirror, buttoning the top nearly all the way up. They're dove grey, cotton, a simple yet luxurious affair.
He's awake, and not because something is keeping him up, but because he's well-rested. He's been sleeping well these last few weeks, and although he sometimes wakes with a gasp and the feeling that some foreign body is lodged in his skull (like a bullet), it's not a bad feeling, more like a weight that balances him.
The night is full of hours to steal, and Lex has gotten back into his old habit of reading, one that he keeps dropping and picking up again periodically – when he was a boy, he would read all night, and then there was a phase when he was seventeen and all the world was raw and bright, and then again when he was first exiled and lonely and sober and light-of-heart, empty-handed but with a heart full of longing curiosity.
In this newest age of reading, he is revisiting old haunting grounds of the mind, old favourites, reprising and re-evaluating the things that once moved his self. Which faith holds true, and which ones have been eroded by time? Which love was but a flirt, a fickle thing? What hurts still, and what has scarred-over, grown unfeeling with age?
Most things turn out to card-houses, strangely empty and blank. But he can look at them calmly.
Past one a.m., there is a clattering noise that somehow finds its way up the stairs to Lex's room. It comes from the study, and it isn't the wind that threw open the doors, yet something like the wind. Lex puts down the book and wonders, for a moment, then slips out of bed and leaves his room, closing the door softly even though he knows his visitor has ears like a cat and eyes like no creature to compare him with (eyes like God, all-seeing but blind, merciless).
He walks down the stairs at a leisurely pace, and finds Clark's hulking form on the threshold of the study, staring inside and looking a bit hesitant. Clark turns around before Lex is at the bottom of the stairs, and for a moment, they're both surprised at the other's state – Clark has only seen him in a pyjama once or twice out of a hospital, and Lex has rarely seen Clark so tired-looking. Clark could never look haggard or cranky, and there aren't even the usual traces of exhaustion, no deeper lines, no smudges under his eyes, not even a shadow of stubble or reddened eyes, but it is there, in the stiffness of his motions, the twist of his mouth and the look in his eyes: this is Clark after a battle or a sleepless night, a sleepless week perhaps.
"Whatever you want, it must be pretty urgent," Lex says when Clark fails to deliver an opening attack. "For you to intrude at this time of night." He raises a hand, slack in the wrist to indicate boredom, "There aren't any innocents to protect from me here tonight."
"I can't sleep," Clark says, but it's not plaintive, no, it sounds like he's accusing Lex, and at the same time faintly troubled. "I keep having these dreams."
Lex is used to being blamed for all kinds of things, some true, some ludicrous and entirely untrue, but this is simply ridiculous. "You can't sleep," he repeats, voice bland with disbelief. "Clark – "
"Ever since the night you got shot in the head," Clark goes on (like a tank tearing through brick walls), "and I went into your mind to find out where Kara was."
Cold creeps up his bare feet, and Lex rubs the back of his neck in quiet astonishment and confusion. Clark is telling the truth, even though Lionel went to such pains to cover it up.
"I know about that," Lex says, and because he's trying to retread, to gain the emotional higher ground, he says it coldly, without much emotion at all. Just a fact to let Clark know that he isn't in the dark.
Clark hesitates. "I thought your father – "
"Lied to me," Lex finishes for him, staring Clark straight into the eyes, "and he's very good at that, but I've gotten very good at uncovering secrets."
Not quite as good as he wants to, since Kara Kent is still not quite yielding to his gentle attempts to let his doctors examine her, but the words have the desired effect. A cagey look passes over Clark's face, then he frowns and scrubs a hands over his tired face.
"So you know what I did," he says bluntly. "Do you have the dreams, too?"
"You really want to talk about this?" Lex questions. Clark gives him a hard look. "Then let's go to a somewhat more comfortable place."
For some inexplicable reason, Clark ignores the motion Lex makes with one hand towards the study, and nods, going past Lex and trudging up the stairs, one heavy booted foot after another (like elephants climbing the Alps) and unless he wants to stand like an idiot in the hall while Clark goes uninvited to his room, Lex has to follow.
It's been several redecorations ago that Clark was last in Lex's room, and except for the walls and the wooden floor, nothing will seem familiar to him. But he just walks in, doesn't turn when Lex closes the door, looks around like someone looking for flaws, for clues, inspecting the bed, the wardrobe, the desk, the window.
"So they're not just dreams," he says, exhaling a bit shakily.
"Clark?"
"This – your room, it looks just like this in my dreams… well, sometimes the sheets are a different colour, or it is day outside, or there's…" He stops, abruptly, and crosses his arms, no, hugs himself. Clark is distressed.
"There's what?" Lex asks sharply.
"People. Bodies, once." Clark walks to the window, presses one large hand against the pane. "Once it rained outside… it rained blood."
"Maybe you should be talking to a therapist and not me," Lex says, wondering from where Clark's mind took the imagery.
Clark faces him. He stares at Lex as if the lies will be written on his face like they're written on Clarks. "Do you have the dreams or don't you?"
"I haven't been sleeping a lot," Lex replies. He leans his hips against the bedpost, studying Clark in turn.
"Do you?"
"I can't say I have been dreaming of this room, no." For some odd reason, he has dreamed of Chloe once or twice lately, but they were very odd dreams (once he walked through a museum, and found a statue of a pieta: he was the messiah, and she the virgin mother. They were carved in stone, smooth marble, but the tears running down her face were real.) He doubts Clark wants to know that.
"It's not just this room," Clark says, even more distressed, then calms a little again, steeling himself. "Do you remember what happened at all?"
"I had a bullet in my head," Lex points out. "I was dying while you were trawling my mind. So, no. I don't remember."
Clark swallows. And then, suddenly, unexpectedly, he opens his mouth and starts talking, hands moving, pacing a little, voice rising and falling, from agitated to soft, almost tender. By the time he's finished telling Lex what happened, Lex is sitting on the edge of the bed, and Clark is standing a few feet away, staring down at him full of doubt.
"It's an allegory, Clark," is the first thing Lex says, terribly reasonable. "Your mind's way of making sense of mine, I presume. You cannot take it literally. Or do you really think I have multiple personality disorder?"
Clark frowns unhappily, like he does when Lex fails to meet expectations – just what did he expect? For Lex to rip open his pyjama top, buttons popping, and reveal a suit of white silk, a bloody grin?
"Do you?" he asks.
"Is that why you're here? To ask me about my state of mental health? Don't worry, Clark, I'm still only one man, not a collection of angels and monsters."
"You could be lying," Clark puzzles. "I mean, if your bad part was in control."
There are a number of philosophical arguments that could be started here, but although Clark, as a teenager, was surprisingly willing to engage in them, Lex doubts the grown-up version has the necessary patience – and neither has he.
"So what are your dreams now? Any more signs and symbols?"
"I keep dreaming of the two of you," Clark admits. " Sometimes we talk, or we fight. Alexander says that its just an echo… like there's parts of you still clinging to my mind." Clark makes it sound like the mud clinging to his boots. "The other you says that I… that he's conquering me. Infecting me."
"Clark, do me a favour and stop talking about me as if I'm a room full of people."
"But that's what it's like in my dreams!" Clark insists stubbornly. "And we've been in some of the places I went in your mind, but others too. New ones, you see? Places that only you could know about, like places where you used to live, like your school, or the apartment in Princeton –"
"Really? I'm not sure I want to know the exact nature of that dream," Lex says wryly, an odd moment of humour rising in him at the sudden reminder of that time.
Interestingly, Clark flushes, dropping his glance nervously, then swallows and gives Lex a stern look. "What you do in those dreams doesn't matter. I don't think it's real anyway, not like memories."
"That stands to reason – you're dreaming, so what you got must have been dreams. So what do I do?" With a thin smile he adds, "And which of me?"
"Both," Clark mutters, as if that's the worst part – and god knows, some of the things Lex imagines might be happing might be even more disturbing perpetrated by a sweet eight-year-old kid that he can't quite remember being. Well, the kid is a metaphor for a part of him that is considerably more grown-up, he supposes. "But it doesn't matter. I need it to stop."
With a twist of his insides, Lex realizes that the notion of parts of him residing in Clark's mind was flattering. "You need to exorcise me."
Clark stills, pales a little. He looks caught. Maybe he hasn't admitted it to himself before.
"I just need it to stop."
"You look a bit rough." If this is what living with parts of him does to Clark, why is Lex still alive? But maybe Clark isn't quite as hard to wound as he thought. Maybe this is his Achilles heel. "But I don't have any suggestions, Clark."
Clark clears his throat. "Actually, you do."
Oh, this is surreal. "Let me guess, my noble part told you in your dreams."
A shake of his head. "No. It was the other one. He said there's things you do when… you want to lose yourself."
"Somehow I doubt these suggestions are going to be terribly constructive."
"They're kind of not," Clark admits, sighing.
"Drugs?"
A nod combined with a stern, disapproving look.
"Violence?"
Even more reproachful. "He's twisted, Lex. He said I should try self-harm – lethal if possible. Or just killing you might do the trick. Have you – "
"Killed people to have a good time and forget my problems? Sure, Clark. Hasn't Lana told you? It's what we did on Friday nights." Lex seethes. "No, of course not. Since I'd like to live a bit longer, I hope that's not your pick of coping strategies, either."
Clark glares, too. "The only other thing he suggested was sex."
There is something in the tone of his voice, the straightness of his look, that makes Lex suspect that whatever he did in Clark's dream, it was a little more than suggesting. He can only imagine, but that is quite enough. So after all this time, he has corrupted Clark's mind in the end.
"Has it worked?" It's not like he expects Clark to reveal any deeper insights into his sex-life with Lana. He's just trying to provoke him now.
To his surprise, Clark looks startled. "Worked?"
"You haven't tried? Clark, are you *here* to try?"
"No!" Clark takes a step back. "Of course not!"
Clark is going to bolt any minute now, and Lex would let him – it's not as if he particularly enjoys Clark's company these days, and this is actually a pretty painless note on which to end this encounter – but he knows that will Clark is embarrassed now, in the long run it will be he who has revealed a weakness if he doesn't say something now.
"Clark." He can do deadpan. "I'm joking."
Clark is still very young, and very nervous. He stares at Lex for a second longer, and then he suddenly laughs. Giggles. Whatever. It's not a sound Lex has heard in a very long time, not a sound he ever expected to hear again. Clark drops his glance, his bangs obscuring the slight flush he still carries. "Yeah. Sorry. I'm a bit – "
"Worse for the wear? I can see that. You don't usually apologize for anything."
He looks up again, lips parting in protest, but then he doesn't say whatever he wanted to say. "What do we do now, Lex?"
"You have other rich friends, don't you? Get them to get you some medical help. Even Lana should know a good doctor or two – not that I can vouch for their trustworthiness."
"I don't need a doctor! Lex, this is something we need to solve between the two of us."
Lex has always felt ambiguous about Clark's demands for help. And yet they're usually not favours he can deny. This one, though… he doesn't even know what Clark wants him to do or say. He doesn't think Clark knows. "It doesn't seem to be my problem. I'm not affected – if anything, I feel better than I have in a while."
Sometimes he thinks death has a strange, cleansing effect on him. Every time Lex dies, he comes back clear-headed and very much alive, as if something in him has been reset, like the coil of a watch that has been freshly wound up. For a while then it seems like he could easily make a fresh start, but soon the purity subsides and his life, his self falls apart again.
Clark is staring at him with wide eyes, as if he's witnessing a strange transformation. He swallows. "Lex… what if it's because I'm now carrying around parts of you that... that weren't good for you?"
Lex rubs the back of his neck and sighs. "I have seen some weird science, Clark, but do you really think – "
"Something like that has never happened before! You died, and none of the other subjects were brought back! We can't know what might have happened. Do you remember the time your father took over my body? Or when you were possessed by Zod?"
Clark is frantic, and making mistakes – he has never before admitted that these incidents happened quite so clearly. Not that Lex doubted it, but he likes confirmation. (Why he trusts the truth from Clark's lips more than his own observations is another question. It's not like Clark makes a habit of speaking the truth.)
Clark is walking around the bed, to the window, back to the door. "If some part of you really was transferred into me, something that wasn't good for you, it might affect me badly, too. And you might get better."
"I'm not a sick person," Lex protests, but the protest sounds hollow even to him, with so many dead, so many spectres of failure haunting him.
With his back to Lex, Clark stills. He stares at the wall in silence, then turns around, chin high, eyes a bit glazed with determination and lack of sleep. Bare-armed and broad-shouldered, his dark hair tousled, he looks both like a youth and a hero from a movie poster, a classic painting, something far too dynamic for a bedroom. "Lex, we can't reverse the effect. If there's any chance that it might… be good for you, then we can't risk it. I can handle this."
Lex gets up on his feet. "And I can't? Or do you think I don't deserve the chance to make my own choices?"
Clark deflates a little around the chest, but his mouth remains firmly set, his brow furrowed. "I think you made a lot of bad choices, Lex. And I don't think you'll ever stop on your own. I'm afraid one day I'll have to stop you." Clark's voice is tight, shaking slightly. Lex feels his own chest contracting similarly. "But if I can stop this by helping you carry that burden..."
It's a heartfelt plea, and Lex has to acknowledge that. Clark, for all that he has the sensitivity of a thirteen-year-old, means well. And perhaps his wild ideas about the migration of souls are true, and he really has received a few of Lex's demons. Some of them he wouldn't wish on anyone. Least of all on someone as volatile and capable of destruction as Clark. He gives him a small, firm smile, takes him by the elbow and leads him out of the room, down the stairs, through the hall into the kitchen. Everything is clean and quiet there at night, only a small light over the oven is burning.
"Milk? Cocoa?" Lex asks and doesn't quite meet Clark's eyes, because, god. Clark is looking at him as if he can barely bear it. As if he wants to jump across the kitchen and hug Lex. As if he's going to cry, or make more of his heartfelt declaration. As if he's utterly determined to defend him with his life against enemies only he can see.
"Milk," Clark says.
Lex heats the milk, puts in a spoonful of honey and hands the cup to Clark. They sit at the long, empty counter on their high chairs and Lex watches Clark sip. He doesn't notice that the milk is hot enough to burn his tongue. Kara Kent also never does when they drink coffee together. What strange creatures they are. Clark thinks if only he can exorcise one part of Lex, all the others will be tame and honest and good. But Lex suspects that in that allegory of his self, it's the young, innocent part of him that gathers pieces of Clark and puts them into secret sanctuaries. It's like collecting cards, like a cut-out and stick-together poster. A very childish, obsessive activity.
"I think," Lex starts slowly, gathering his thoughts, "that it doesn't work that way, Clark. You can't make a man's choices for him, and you can't fight other people's demons for them. Suppose you're right. You cured me of the things that make me a worse man than you want me to be. What does that mean for me? It means that from now on, with every choice I make I will ask myself – would I really have done that? I've been 'cured' before, Clark. I've taken medicamentation, gone through therapy. It all boils down to one thing: free will. One day, I'll do something just to prove that I'm still my own master. And it most likely won't be something pretty. Because I'm still myself... and I'm not very good at accepting help."
Clark mulls over than, staring down at his cup. He shakes his head. "A couple of weeks ago, you wouldn't even have told me that."
"A couple of weeks ago you wouldn't have been here to listen. Cause and effect, Clark. You have to watch them very closely."
Clark yawns, hugely. "Why does it have to be so complicated?" he mumbles afterwards.
Lex glances down at his hands and laughs softly. "I don't know."
"It would be easier…," Clark starts, then hesitates, then finishes, "if there were really two of you, and one was good and one was evil. I'd know what to do."
It does make it easier for Clark, doesn't it? Lex studies him. Maybe Clark chose to perceive Lex's mind as this fractured entity because only if he can separate the parts that a clean from those that are unclean is it possible for him to save him. The marbled, complicated truth of the human condition is much harder to accept.
"You know," Lex says thoughtfully, "my point earlier wasn't all that good."
Clark looks amused. "Now I know you're not the same."
"Perhaps not. Because that was my premise, wasn't it? That I'm still the same, and that will want to prove it. But the reasoning falls apart if I'm not in fact the same person I was before."
People change all the time. They live, they gather up things and thoughts and dreams, and they also discard them, lose them along the way. People die and come back and start anew. Lex remembers what Clark told him of the two parts of him that passed from his mind to Clark's: the one sees himself as a conqueror, the other as a refugee. But both a conqueror and a refugee are agents of their own fate. And that is all Lex needs to know to accept change. (How many times has he tried to change and it didn't work? He doesn't mind to be proven wrong on this.)
If Clark believes Lex has changed, then what he gains, in Clark's eyes, is a clean slate. A new start. A reset.
What Lex gains is someone who will listen and share his demons and his dreams.
And what Clark gains is a devil to fight in Lex's stead.
Lex smiles. He pats Clark's shoulder encouragingly. "I'm not sure we'll ever know. Go home and get some sleep. But if you want to tell me about your dreams... or just talk, you're welcome to come over again."
Clark returns the smile. He looks tired, but hopeful. "I will," he promises. "I missed you."
Title: Reset
Rating: PG
Characters: Clark and Lex, subtexty, but could also be read as friendship
Spoilers: Fracture
Summary: After his trip into Lex's mind, Clark finds himself with company in his dreams, pieces of Lex clinging to him. He goes to Lex to stop it.
Lex often falls asleep on the couch, close to the fireplace. There's something about the heat of flames that is almost like the touch of another warm body, and the leather is soft like an embrace, almost like skin, whereas the sheets of his bed are cool and pristine, and smell ever so faintly of cleanliness. Tonight started like another such night, with work, then dinner foregone, then too much drink, and everything keeping him company, the secrets, the questions, the knowledge, the calm shadows of defeat. His study is satiated with them.
But then, just as his sprawl was as its most languid, and his head started slipping into heaviness, wakefulness suddenly surged through him again, and blinking into sobriety, he got up. There is a bell to ring so the open fire will be taken care of, but he forgot it, or pushed back the knowledge that he should call someone, either way he walked up the stairs, showered, got into pyjamas. He rarely bothers with them these days, the bottoms at most, but he knew he wasn't going to sleep, so he stood in front of the mirror, buttoning the top nearly all the way up. They're dove grey, cotton, a simple yet luxurious affair.
He's awake, and not because something is keeping him up, but because he's well-rested. He's been sleeping well these last few weeks, and although he sometimes wakes with a gasp and the feeling that some foreign body is lodged in his skull (like a bullet), it's not a bad feeling, more like a weight that balances him.
The night is full of hours to steal, and Lex has gotten back into his old habit of reading, one that he keeps dropping and picking up again periodically – when he was a boy, he would read all night, and then there was a phase when he was seventeen and all the world was raw and bright, and then again when he was first exiled and lonely and sober and light-of-heart, empty-handed but with a heart full of longing curiosity.
In this newest age of reading, he is revisiting old haunting grounds of the mind, old favourites, reprising and re-evaluating the things that once moved his self. Which faith holds true, and which ones have been eroded by time? Which love was but a flirt, a fickle thing? What hurts still, and what has scarred-over, grown unfeeling with age?
Most things turn out to card-houses, strangely empty and blank. But he can look at them calmly.
Past one a.m., there is a clattering noise that somehow finds its way up the stairs to Lex's room. It comes from the study, and it isn't the wind that threw open the doors, yet something like the wind. Lex puts down the book and wonders, for a moment, then slips out of bed and leaves his room, closing the door softly even though he knows his visitor has ears like a cat and eyes like no creature to compare him with (eyes like God, all-seeing but blind, merciless).
He walks down the stairs at a leisurely pace, and finds Clark's hulking form on the threshold of the study, staring inside and looking a bit hesitant. Clark turns around before Lex is at the bottom of the stairs, and for a moment, they're both surprised at the other's state – Clark has only seen him in a pyjama once or twice out of a hospital, and Lex has rarely seen Clark so tired-looking. Clark could never look haggard or cranky, and there aren't even the usual traces of exhaustion, no deeper lines, no smudges under his eyes, not even a shadow of stubble or reddened eyes, but it is there, in the stiffness of his motions, the twist of his mouth and the look in his eyes: this is Clark after a battle or a sleepless night, a sleepless week perhaps.
"Whatever you want, it must be pretty urgent," Lex says when Clark fails to deliver an opening attack. "For you to intrude at this time of night." He raises a hand, slack in the wrist to indicate boredom, "There aren't any innocents to protect from me here tonight."
"I can't sleep," Clark says, but it's not plaintive, no, it sounds like he's accusing Lex, and at the same time faintly troubled. "I keep having these dreams."
Lex is used to being blamed for all kinds of things, some true, some ludicrous and entirely untrue, but this is simply ridiculous. "You can't sleep," he repeats, voice bland with disbelief. "Clark – "
"Ever since the night you got shot in the head," Clark goes on (like a tank tearing through brick walls), "and I went into your mind to find out where Kara was."
Cold creeps up his bare feet, and Lex rubs the back of his neck in quiet astonishment and confusion. Clark is telling the truth, even though Lionel went to such pains to cover it up.
"I know about that," Lex says, and because he's trying to retread, to gain the emotional higher ground, he says it coldly, without much emotion at all. Just a fact to let Clark know that he isn't in the dark.
Clark hesitates. "I thought your father – "
"Lied to me," Lex finishes for him, staring Clark straight into the eyes, "and he's very good at that, but I've gotten very good at uncovering secrets."
Not quite as good as he wants to, since Kara Kent is still not quite yielding to his gentle attempts to let his doctors examine her, but the words have the desired effect. A cagey look passes over Clark's face, then he frowns and scrubs a hands over his tired face.
"So you know what I did," he says bluntly. "Do you have the dreams, too?"
"You really want to talk about this?" Lex questions. Clark gives him a hard look. "Then let's go to a somewhat more comfortable place."
For some inexplicable reason, Clark ignores the motion Lex makes with one hand towards the study, and nods, going past Lex and trudging up the stairs, one heavy booted foot after another (like elephants climbing the Alps) and unless he wants to stand like an idiot in the hall while Clark goes uninvited to his room, Lex has to follow.
It's been several redecorations ago that Clark was last in Lex's room, and except for the walls and the wooden floor, nothing will seem familiar to him. But he just walks in, doesn't turn when Lex closes the door, looks around like someone looking for flaws, for clues, inspecting the bed, the wardrobe, the desk, the window.
"So they're not just dreams," he says, exhaling a bit shakily.
"Clark?"
"This – your room, it looks just like this in my dreams… well, sometimes the sheets are a different colour, or it is day outside, or there's…" He stops, abruptly, and crosses his arms, no, hugs himself. Clark is distressed.
"There's what?" Lex asks sharply.
"People. Bodies, once." Clark walks to the window, presses one large hand against the pane. "Once it rained outside… it rained blood."
"Maybe you should be talking to a therapist and not me," Lex says, wondering from where Clark's mind took the imagery.
Clark faces him. He stares at Lex as if the lies will be written on his face like they're written on Clarks. "Do you have the dreams or don't you?"
"I haven't been sleeping a lot," Lex replies. He leans his hips against the bedpost, studying Clark in turn.
"Do you?"
"I can't say I have been dreaming of this room, no." For some odd reason, he has dreamed of Chloe once or twice lately, but they were very odd dreams (once he walked through a museum, and found a statue of a pieta: he was the messiah, and she the virgin mother. They were carved in stone, smooth marble, but the tears running down her face were real.) He doubts Clark wants to know that.
"It's not just this room," Clark says, even more distressed, then calms a little again, steeling himself. "Do you remember what happened at all?"
"I had a bullet in my head," Lex points out. "I was dying while you were trawling my mind. So, no. I don't remember."
Clark swallows. And then, suddenly, unexpectedly, he opens his mouth and starts talking, hands moving, pacing a little, voice rising and falling, from agitated to soft, almost tender. By the time he's finished telling Lex what happened, Lex is sitting on the edge of the bed, and Clark is standing a few feet away, staring down at him full of doubt.
"It's an allegory, Clark," is the first thing Lex says, terribly reasonable. "Your mind's way of making sense of mine, I presume. You cannot take it literally. Or do you really think I have multiple personality disorder?"
Clark frowns unhappily, like he does when Lex fails to meet expectations – just what did he expect? For Lex to rip open his pyjama top, buttons popping, and reveal a suit of white silk, a bloody grin?
"Do you?" he asks.
"Is that why you're here? To ask me about my state of mental health? Don't worry, Clark, I'm still only one man, not a collection of angels and monsters."
"You could be lying," Clark puzzles. "I mean, if your bad part was in control."
There are a number of philosophical arguments that could be started here, but although Clark, as a teenager, was surprisingly willing to engage in them, Lex doubts the grown-up version has the necessary patience – and neither has he.
"So what are your dreams now? Any more signs and symbols?"
"I keep dreaming of the two of you," Clark admits. " Sometimes we talk, or we fight. Alexander says that its just an echo… like there's parts of you still clinging to my mind." Clark makes it sound like the mud clinging to his boots. "The other you says that I… that he's conquering me. Infecting me."
"Clark, do me a favour and stop talking about me as if I'm a room full of people."
"But that's what it's like in my dreams!" Clark insists stubbornly. "And we've been in some of the places I went in your mind, but others too. New ones, you see? Places that only you could know about, like places where you used to live, like your school, or the apartment in Princeton –"
"Really? I'm not sure I want to know the exact nature of that dream," Lex says wryly, an odd moment of humour rising in him at the sudden reminder of that time.
Interestingly, Clark flushes, dropping his glance nervously, then swallows and gives Lex a stern look. "What you do in those dreams doesn't matter. I don't think it's real anyway, not like memories."
"That stands to reason – you're dreaming, so what you got must have been dreams. So what do I do?" With a thin smile he adds, "And which of me?"
"Both," Clark mutters, as if that's the worst part – and god knows, some of the things Lex imagines might be happing might be even more disturbing perpetrated by a sweet eight-year-old kid that he can't quite remember being. Well, the kid is a metaphor for a part of him that is considerably more grown-up, he supposes. "But it doesn't matter. I need it to stop."
With a twist of his insides, Lex realizes that the notion of parts of him residing in Clark's mind was flattering. "You need to exorcise me."
Clark stills, pales a little. He looks caught. Maybe he hasn't admitted it to himself before.
"I just need it to stop."
"You look a bit rough." If this is what living with parts of him does to Clark, why is Lex still alive? But maybe Clark isn't quite as hard to wound as he thought. Maybe this is his Achilles heel. "But I don't have any suggestions, Clark."
Clark clears his throat. "Actually, you do."
Oh, this is surreal. "Let me guess, my noble part told you in your dreams."
A shake of his head. "No. It was the other one. He said there's things you do when… you want to lose yourself."
"Somehow I doubt these suggestions are going to be terribly constructive."
"They're kind of not," Clark admits, sighing.
"Drugs?"
A nod combined with a stern, disapproving look.
"Violence?"
Even more reproachful. "He's twisted, Lex. He said I should try self-harm – lethal if possible. Or just killing you might do the trick. Have you – "
"Killed people to have a good time and forget my problems? Sure, Clark. Hasn't Lana told you? It's what we did on Friday nights." Lex seethes. "No, of course not. Since I'd like to live a bit longer, I hope that's not your pick of coping strategies, either."
Clark glares, too. "The only other thing he suggested was sex."
There is something in the tone of his voice, the straightness of his look, that makes Lex suspect that whatever he did in Clark's dream, it was a little more than suggesting. He can only imagine, but that is quite enough. So after all this time, he has corrupted Clark's mind in the end.
"Has it worked?" It's not like he expects Clark to reveal any deeper insights into his sex-life with Lana. He's just trying to provoke him now.
To his surprise, Clark looks startled. "Worked?"
"You haven't tried? Clark, are you *here* to try?"
"No!" Clark takes a step back. "Of course not!"
Clark is going to bolt any minute now, and Lex would let him – it's not as if he particularly enjoys Clark's company these days, and this is actually a pretty painless note on which to end this encounter – but he knows that will Clark is embarrassed now, in the long run it will be he who has revealed a weakness if he doesn't say something now.
"Clark." He can do deadpan. "I'm joking."
Clark is still very young, and very nervous. He stares at Lex for a second longer, and then he suddenly laughs. Giggles. Whatever. It's not a sound Lex has heard in a very long time, not a sound he ever expected to hear again. Clark drops his glance, his bangs obscuring the slight flush he still carries. "Yeah. Sorry. I'm a bit – "
"Worse for the wear? I can see that. You don't usually apologize for anything."
He looks up again, lips parting in protest, but then he doesn't say whatever he wanted to say. "What do we do now, Lex?"
"You have other rich friends, don't you? Get them to get you some medical help. Even Lana should know a good doctor or two – not that I can vouch for their trustworthiness."
"I don't need a doctor! Lex, this is something we need to solve between the two of us."
Lex has always felt ambiguous about Clark's demands for help. And yet they're usually not favours he can deny. This one, though… he doesn't even know what Clark wants him to do or say. He doesn't think Clark knows. "It doesn't seem to be my problem. I'm not affected – if anything, I feel better than I have in a while."
Sometimes he thinks death has a strange, cleansing effect on him. Every time Lex dies, he comes back clear-headed and very much alive, as if something in him has been reset, like the coil of a watch that has been freshly wound up. For a while then it seems like he could easily make a fresh start, but soon the purity subsides and his life, his self falls apart again.
Clark is staring at him with wide eyes, as if he's witnessing a strange transformation. He swallows. "Lex… what if it's because I'm now carrying around parts of you that... that weren't good for you?"
Lex rubs the back of his neck and sighs. "I have seen some weird science, Clark, but do you really think – "
"Something like that has never happened before! You died, and none of the other subjects were brought back! We can't know what might have happened. Do you remember the time your father took over my body? Or when you were possessed by Zod?"
Clark is frantic, and making mistakes – he has never before admitted that these incidents happened quite so clearly. Not that Lex doubted it, but he likes confirmation. (Why he trusts the truth from Clark's lips more than his own observations is another question. It's not like Clark makes a habit of speaking the truth.)
Clark is walking around the bed, to the window, back to the door. "If some part of you really was transferred into me, something that wasn't good for you, it might affect me badly, too. And you might get better."
"I'm not a sick person," Lex protests, but the protest sounds hollow even to him, with so many dead, so many spectres of failure haunting him.
With his back to Lex, Clark stills. He stares at the wall in silence, then turns around, chin high, eyes a bit glazed with determination and lack of sleep. Bare-armed and broad-shouldered, his dark hair tousled, he looks both like a youth and a hero from a movie poster, a classic painting, something far too dynamic for a bedroom. "Lex, we can't reverse the effect. If there's any chance that it might… be good for you, then we can't risk it. I can handle this."
Lex gets up on his feet. "And I can't? Or do you think I don't deserve the chance to make my own choices?"
Clark deflates a little around the chest, but his mouth remains firmly set, his brow furrowed. "I think you made a lot of bad choices, Lex. And I don't think you'll ever stop on your own. I'm afraid one day I'll have to stop you." Clark's voice is tight, shaking slightly. Lex feels his own chest contracting similarly. "But if I can stop this by helping you carry that burden..."
It's a heartfelt plea, and Lex has to acknowledge that. Clark, for all that he has the sensitivity of a thirteen-year-old, means well. And perhaps his wild ideas about the migration of souls are true, and he really has received a few of Lex's demons. Some of them he wouldn't wish on anyone. Least of all on someone as volatile and capable of destruction as Clark. He gives him a small, firm smile, takes him by the elbow and leads him out of the room, down the stairs, through the hall into the kitchen. Everything is clean and quiet there at night, only a small light over the oven is burning.
"Milk? Cocoa?" Lex asks and doesn't quite meet Clark's eyes, because, god. Clark is looking at him as if he can barely bear it. As if he wants to jump across the kitchen and hug Lex. As if he's going to cry, or make more of his heartfelt declaration. As if he's utterly determined to defend him with his life against enemies only he can see.
"Milk," Clark says.
Lex heats the milk, puts in a spoonful of honey and hands the cup to Clark. They sit at the long, empty counter on their high chairs and Lex watches Clark sip. He doesn't notice that the milk is hot enough to burn his tongue. Kara Kent also never does when they drink coffee together. What strange creatures they are. Clark thinks if only he can exorcise one part of Lex, all the others will be tame and honest and good. But Lex suspects that in that allegory of his self, it's the young, innocent part of him that gathers pieces of Clark and puts them into secret sanctuaries. It's like collecting cards, like a cut-out and stick-together poster. A very childish, obsessive activity.
"I think," Lex starts slowly, gathering his thoughts, "that it doesn't work that way, Clark. You can't make a man's choices for him, and you can't fight other people's demons for them. Suppose you're right. You cured me of the things that make me a worse man than you want me to be. What does that mean for me? It means that from now on, with every choice I make I will ask myself – would I really have done that? I've been 'cured' before, Clark. I've taken medicamentation, gone through therapy. It all boils down to one thing: free will. One day, I'll do something just to prove that I'm still my own master. And it most likely won't be something pretty. Because I'm still myself... and I'm not very good at accepting help."
Clark mulls over than, staring down at his cup. He shakes his head. "A couple of weeks ago, you wouldn't even have told me that."
"A couple of weeks ago you wouldn't have been here to listen. Cause and effect, Clark. You have to watch them very closely."
Clark yawns, hugely. "Why does it have to be so complicated?" he mumbles afterwards.
Lex glances down at his hands and laughs softly. "I don't know."
"It would be easier…," Clark starts, then hesitates, then finishes, "if there were really two of you, and one was good and one was evil. I'd know what to do."
It does make it easier for Clark, doesn't it? Lex studies him. Maybe Clark chose to perceive Lex's mind as this fractured entity because only if he can separate the parts that a clean from those that are unclean is it possible for him to save him. The marbled, complicated truth of the human condition is much harder to accept.
"You know," Lex says thoughtfully, "my point earlier wasn't all that good."
Clark looks amused. "Now I know you're not the same."
"Perhaps not. Because that was my premise, wasn't it? That I'm still the same, and that will want to prove it. But the reasoning falls apart if I'm not in fact the same person I was before."
People change all the time. They live, they gather up things and thoughts and dreams, and they also discard them, lose them along the way. People die and come back and start anew. Lex remembers what Clark told him of the two parts of him that passed from his mind to Clark's: the one sees himself as a conqueror, the other as a refugee. But both a conqueror and a refugee are agents of their own fate. And that is all Lex needs to know to accept change. (How many times has he tried to change and it didn't work? He doesn't mind to be proven wrong on this.)
If Clark believes Lex has changed, then what he gains, in Clark's eyes, is a clean slate. A new start. A reset.
What Lex gains is someone who will listen and share his demons and his dreams.
And what Clark gains is a devil to fight in Lex's stead.
Lex smiles. He pats Clark's shoulder encouragingly. "I'm not sure we'll ever know. Go home and get some sleep. But if you want to tell me about your dreams... or just talk, you're welcome to come over again."
Clark returns the smile. He looks tired, but hopeful. "I will," he promises. "I missed you."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 04:37 pm (UTC)I loved this! I really hoped there would be more fics set around this episode but there's only been a couple
Great job! It's so rare that we get to see the boys having a calm conversation like this
no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 10:59 pm (UTC)I really hoped there would be more fics set around this episode but there's only been a couple
I'm surprised by that, too! I mean, the opportunities a perfect, aren't they? This is one of the few moments in canon where Clark got really, really close to Lex, and "Fracture" occurs at a moment in canon when the rift isn't all that bad: Lex hasn't been terribly evil all season, Clark doesn't know yet about Grant's assassination, Lana has shown herself not to be a saint, and Lex has now been shot trying to rescue Kara *twice*.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 05:17 pm (UTC)What Lex gains is someone who will listen and share his demons and his dreams.
And what Clark gains is a devil to fight in Lex's stead.
Lex smiles. He pats Clark's shoulder encouragingly. "I'm not sure we'll ever know. Go home and get some sleep. But if you want to tell me about your dreams... or just talk, you're welcome to come over again."
Clark returns the smile. He looks tired, but hopeful. "I will," he promises. "I missed you."
I'm not sure I'd call this a happy ending ether, but an inevitable one, that binds them together through Clark's desperate, but ultimately ill-founded hope.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 11:00 pm (UTC)Yay! I'm glad that got through.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 06:12 pm (UTC)Lex watches Clark sip. He doesn't notice that the milk is hot enough to burn his tongue. Kara Kent also never does when they drink coffee together. What strange creatures they are.
I loved this, because, yeah, so true...in reality, if Lex were a tenth as smart as he's supposed to be, the little things would've given Clark away years ago.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 11:07 pm (UTC)Ha! I didn't notice that, but, yes. But then, soulless Lex was based on "Asylum" Lex, and this has shades of "Asylum", too. Though in this coda it's possible that it's all just something Clark is imagining and Lex is willing to pretend is true (the way I see it, if anyone has changed anything, it's Chloe by healing him), whereas in Devil's Deal, the situation was much clearer.
And Clark would most definitely not be strong enough to handle all Lex endured (come on, who would?) but since he gained only memories/second-hand experience, he might be able to deal with it because he has his own, better memories and childhood. I don't know. Originally, I wrote the story so that Lex got a few of Clark's demons (red!Clark, etc) in return.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-03 11:10 pm (UTC)Thank you! Whenever the Lex-voice in my head really comes alive, his thought processes are terribly clear and structured. Twisted, but following their own logic. He's thinking everything through, and where there is no order, he imposes it on things. Clark is way more muddled.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-04 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-04 08:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-04 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-04 08:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-04 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-05 10:03 pm (UTC)It was hopeful! Even if Lex was being his manipulative self, it WAS Lex, and Clark was so Clark
*squees a little* YES. That's how I see it, so it's the reaction I was going for.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-06 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-06 08:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-07 08:52 pm (UTC)Clark deflates a little around the chest, but his mouth remains firmly set, his brow furrowed. "I think you made a lot of bad choices, Lex. And I don't think you'll ever stop on your own. I'm afraid one day I'll have to stop you." Clark's voice is tight, shaking slightly. Lex feels his own chest contracting similarly. "But if I can stop this by helping you carry that burden..."
Like Clark's choices have never been bad? *gnashes teeth* Abandoning Lex in Belle Reve for a month? Lying to him after he'd been brain-fried? Betraying him to Lionel? And all the while claiming to be his friend?
*takes deep breath to regain calm and coherency*
Truly, this is a fascinating story, whether one sees the ending as hopeful or not.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-11 02:45 pm (UTC)we are not neatly separated entities, that can be cut of, whenever we want, and be whoever we want....
lovely!
no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 08:54 pm (UTC)Thank you !