15.
.
Lex is contemplative. He knows what the evidence looks like, how it stacks against Clark. He deliberately tested the man repeatedly, and Clark seemed confused by the change of behavior but not sly enough to catch on to what he was really doing when he asked him to look at schematics, or to obey him. He was trying to gauge if, no matter how ridiculous it seemed, Clark could really be Superman.
First, he'd tested that 'scientist caste' idea. Clark was... not stupid, even if he was a bit of an oaf. He wasn't sly, but he wasn't stupid: he absorbed all the information Lex threw at him, provided he had access to definitions for some of the words he didn't know. So he supposed, hypothetically, if he was Superman that he could be from such a caste.
The obedience part was because he was so, so sure that Superman would never agree to obey him, Lex Luthor, on anything. But Clark just shrugged and wanted to do his best to be polite, provided it was within reason. That part did make Lex want to laugh, because 'within reason' was almost certainly very different from Lex's idea of reasonable.
They were so different, really, and Lex was sure he had figured it out:
"You pretended to be Superman to lure the Kryptonians away from Kal-El, taking advantage of your very similar physical profiles."
Clark is staring in shock at his sheer brilliance in figuring it out, and Lex can't help but put on a smug grin. He can't help but note also Clark looks much nicer now that he's wearing something that actually fits him. Bigger and more muscular, too, since too-large clothes make you look smaller, not bigger. How much does that man slouch, anyway? Laying down flat now to heal his injuries, he can't hide his size in that way.
"What I can't figure out is your reluctance to kill these people after they hurt you so," Lex says. "I would not be so merciful, especially since, unless Kryptonians can be stripped of their powers, they can't exactly ever be rendered perfectly harmless."
"Do you really want me to convert to your way of thinking on this, Lex?" Clark asks sincerely. "I mean, think through the implications for a moment. You suspect me of working with Superman and having his ear, and you want me to take on the philosophy that you should kill someone who injures or tries to kill you and will continue to pose a threat? I mean, really?"
Well... when he put it like that, it didn't sound too advantageous to Lex to convince him. But that didn't mean Lex wasn't right. "I'm not about to try to genocide the human race, either, Clark. We're not exactly the same."
"That's true, but this isn't exactly the first time you've been all 'kill kill kill'. I have enough familiarity with your traps to know you don't try to just capture Superman, you try to murder him, even though he's never tried to do the same to you! He's no threat to you!" That burned. Of course he was a threat to him!
"Superman spared me because he looks down on me as not a real threat, because he's a sanctimonious prick who wants moral superiority and to get everyone to exclaim how great and merciful he is," he spits out before he even really thinks about it. Because if the Kryptonians hadn't been lying (but why would they lie? No, why wouldn't they lie? They were aliens, maybe they were really working together and this was some horrible scheme to get his guard down...) then maybe Superman was, genuinely, fully, just psychologically incapable of killing him, and that was the only reason and everything Lex had just said was just projection. Because that was the only reason Lex would ever spare a threat to itself, if it weren't really a threat and could never be, and it was safest to reason that everyone else was the same way.
Clark looks hurt, which is stupid, because Clark isn't Superman. He can't be, right?
"Just tell me your answer, Clark."
"Fine. I don't believe two wrongs make a right. I know you aren't religious, but I am, and I've always been taught that all life is precious and everyone deserves a chance for redemption before they die."
"Clark, you don't need to be religious to believe life is precious. Humanists have been believing that for a long time." Left unsaid was that Lex was very much not a humanist either. "You're aware of aliens on other planets and you still believe a sky fairy sent down a personal savior to just this one planet?" Clark flushes in embarrassment. "That makes no sense, Clark, that makes no sense at all."
"Maybe it doesn't, but it's still what I believe. It's faith, Lex, it doesn't have to make sense," Clark says awkwardly, trying to shrug before remembering he wasn't supposed to move, the fool.
"Well, it should," snarked Lex. "As I see it, it comes down to raw calculation. One life, or the millions of lives that might be cost by one of these freaks? It's not a hard choice to make. Any one of them is an unacceptable threat to humanity."
"You're an Utilitarian, I get it," Clark said, showing off his schooling. "But I'm not, Lex. You know there's a saying about Utilitarians, right? That the most utilitarian thing you can do is convince people not to be utilitarian because that belief makes people miserable. You don't look terribly happy to me, Lex."
Lex scowls, even though he knows scowling only proves Clark's point he can't quite help it. He's just so irritating. "Whether some belief makes you happy is completely irrelevant to its usefulness or truthfulness."
"Yeah, but when the point of the philosophy is maximizing happiness it's kind of self defeating." Clark had a point there. "Also, you are the last person I expected to talk about objective morality."
"Which is why I also said usefulness," Lex retorted. "And I don't care that much about maximizing happiness, per say, but keeping our species alive? Sacrificing one for the many? That's not something that should be a controversial calculation."
"Yeah, but, you punch people when they're already down," Clark muttered. "And you asked about my philosophy, not yours. Maybe I don't like to view people as calculations. Maybe I don't see it as simple as trading one life for another, maybe I just don't share the same value system as you that sees that as acceptable unless the trade is voluntary. Real life usually isn't a trolley problem, Lex. You don't know for certain pushing the fat guy is actually going to slow down the cart, you only guess it, and if you guessed wrong then you just killed even more people than were going to die anyway. It might save more lives, but it's not okay to me to cut up someone healthy and send off all their organs to those in need. Sometimes, the option that saves the most lives isn't necessarily the most moral, if you aren't a utilitarian. And I'm not. So you can't judge me by that standard and then call me stupid for failing to perform the calculation because you assumed I should or do think that way."
"This is your fear of the sky fairy torturing people in Hell if they don't repent, isn't it? Better the young die innocent and save one man's soul than a lot of people die happy in old age guilty," said Lex a little snidely. "God Clark, you know Pascal's wager is a logical fallacy, don't you?"
"I know, but... it still bothers me." Both the killing and the thought of damnation. Southern fears didn't die down easy. It was why, when for a few seconds that morning he found himself thinking Lex actually looked rather handsome when he wasn't being a total bastard, a part of him panicked. "I don't want to kill people, Lex. I just don't, not as long as there's any other option. Doesn't it bother you?" he asks, and the confusion is clear on his face, like he can't comprehend killing being easy for anyone.
It truly just didn't compute for Clark Kent.
And that annoys Lex Luthor, because it accords with what those annoying aliens said. If Clark Kent was Superman, if he really was the offspring of some alien 'scientist caste' bred for a specific temperament, then he had a deep psychological inhibition against killing or causing harm that mere words would have a deep trouble swaying away. And he did not want Clark to be Superman. Of course, wanting had nothing to do with the truth, but... It just didn't mesh to him. Superman was such a pretentious holier than thou bastard.
How could he possibly, in any universe, be Clark Kent?
"Have you considered in this case that maybe locking them up would be more cruel?" Lex tries changing tactics finally, and is reward with dismay on Clark's face. "This Phantom Zone with no contact with the outside world isn't too different from solitary confinement, which many regarded to be torture." Lex found it refreshing not to be bothered by morons, but that was just him. "Are you really going to put a proud people into confinement in a realm where they may not even be able to stretch their legs or have a good meal, just float in perpetuity?"
Clark looks thoughtful, and reluctantly shakes his head. "I guess I shouldn't. Still, it could make for a temporary measure to subdue them at least? We shouldn't cut down on our options just because you want to be more ruthless." That affronted Lex. It wasn't like he wanted to be more ruthless, he simply viewed it as the intelligent thing to do. "Superman could maybe find some planet with a red sun somewhere for them to live on harmlessly."
"And leave them to rebuild an advanced civilization to come back after us, generations later, for revenge?" Lex retorts back. "Think it through, Clark."
Clark fidgets and looks really uncomfortable about all this. "I don't think such a small number of people could really build an advanced civilization... I mean, it takes a lot of specialization to run a modern industrial society. That's not something just a few people could manage. The knowledge would get lost pretty quickly even if you tried hard to preserve it."
"But even stone age societies can eventually become industrial, Kent, and oral stories can be passed down a long time."
"But language won't stay the same. They won't even remember the names of who they are mad at, thousands of years later, if even the same culture still survived which is pretty unlikely: the proto-indo-europeans aren't exactly around anymore, Lex, they splintered into dozens of cultures," Clark argued. "This is exactly what I was saying. This is you, saying to push the fat guy on the trolley path, while I'm saying the real world is messy and we don't know that will really save lives the way you think it will, in which case you just cost more lives." Clark runs his hands through his hair, frustrated. It looks fairly messy, and Lex idly wonders how much hair gel he'd have to pour in it to look more like Superman, slick and gravity defying. "The calculation just isn't as simple as you make it out to be. And I just can't bring myself to make that simplifying assumption that would make it all so nice and neat and seemingly obvious, because I know that I don't know everything, but I do know we live in a world where it is way too easy for people to rationalize really nasty things like genocide and then sleep soundly at night telling themselves they did the right thing." Which was what this is, if they were really the last hope of their species. Clark didn't even know if he could hybridize with humans. Probably, considering the genetic differences, he couldn't. Even then, the result wouldn't exactly be the same species any more.
"That's what I like about you, Clark," says Lex, satisfied, finally, that they really can't be the same being. "You're humble, you say you don't know, like a good agnostic. Superman would simply come in and exclaim 'You cannot do that Luthor, you will endanger innocent lives!' and that would be the end of it. He wouldn't give an explanation, just assume his view of the situation is right."
It horribly clicks to Clark, that on this one instance, Lex is right, he really does act like that when he's Superman. He's never sat down and debated philosophy with Luthor: that would be quite strange and a little awkward, actually, when weaponry is being fired at you. But nonetheless, he's treated Lex like a misbehaving child. And of course Lex would resent the fuck out of that, although that didn't quite justify trying to murder him of course, he can see a little bit more of where Lex is coming from, why he hates Superman so much.
Fuck, he really did make a mistake. "Superman thinks the same way I do, he just... didn't think you would ever be interested in hearing his opinion, I think," he offers lamely. Although, honestly, he had thought the 'endanger innocent lives' was explanation enough! It was hard to remember sometimes Lex had such a warped and cynical view of the world. He'd cut out your organs, sell them off to the highest bidders, and exclaim he was doing the world a favor because more lives were saved at the end and that he deserved the money for his services. That was the sort of fucked up, twisted person Lex was.
And Clark was frankly really tired of trying to reach him, but he felt like, maybe, he'd made a tiny bit of progress today? At least Lex was thinking about what he said, even if probably only to try and figure out a way to rip into it. He wasn't quite sure why Lex bothered to banter with him. Perhaps Lex was bored while he worked on progressing with his traps, or maybe he just liked trying to win and saw it as a challenge.
"I doubt that very much, Clark." Lex pauses. "So you have no protests against me killing them if there is no other choice?"
"If it's really the only choice, no, no protests." He sighs, already thinking about how they'll probably interpret 'no other choice' very differently. "And it's true. He does agree with me. If we live through this you can ask him yourself." Mercy is in the room, and she gives him the oddest look at that he can't quite decipher. "I don't dislike you Lex, I wish we didn't end up fighting." Especially all the time.
"Why? I enjoyed the conversation." ...of course he did. "You need to man up, Clark. Don't be afraid to defend your opinions just because of other people's feelings."
"I'm not. I say them if I feel I have to, that's why I'm a reporter. I just don't actually like fighting," he clarified. People always got this misconception about him, thought that he wanted to smash everything with his fists, which really just wasn't true and couldn't be further from the truth. "I want everyone to get along. And I don't want or enjoy hurting your feelings, Lex, that's not what friends do." Or good people.
Lex goes still.
For a moment, Clark wonders if he's mis-stepped. It's been a very long time since he's actually referred to them as friends, after all. He isn't sure what else they'd be. Friendly enemies?
"Fair enough, Clark," Lex says with a pleasant smile which Clark returns. Friends. It's crazy, but it seems he really is friends with Lex Luthor, of all people.
Not, he's sure, that this will likely prevent Lex from trying to murder him in the future. It's a very messed up friendship.
.
When Clark gets up, good as new, just as the artificial red sun lamps and flashlights and the phantom zone device are finished, Lex is disturbed.
"Clark, what the hell are you doing? You shouldn't be done healing yet. You had broken ribs, for fuck's sake."
"I'm good," he stretches. "I feel fine. I told you, I'm a fast healer."
"I'll be the judge of that," Lex practically growls. "Sit." Clark sits, and patiently waits while Lex prods him again, looking more and more dismayed. "Well, I'll be damned. Not a single sign of your old injuries. How the hell did you manage that?"
"I eat my vegetables?"
"You're not Pop-eye the Sailor, Clark," Lex snarks. "God. Fine, since I can't find anything wrong with you, you can get up and move. But nothing too strenuous unless you want to break something again, you lunk head!"
"Sorry, Lex, I'm sure Lois is worried sick about me. I gotta go."
Lex does a very good impression of a snarl at him as he tries to flee down the hall, and tries to move in front of him. "I order you to stay!"
"If I'm leaving that means I'm no longer your guest and don't have to listen to you!" Clark retorts, ducking and weaving around him, only to come face to face with Mercy. She holds up a familiar flashlight and he pales. Somehow, she knows. But why hasn't she told Luthor yet?
"If you go out there, they'll kill you, you moron," Lex grumbles. "Mercy, why are you pointing that at him? You know he's not Superman." Ah, right, that was probably it, because Lex was completely delusional. Mercy probably knew because she knew everything Lex did but didn't share his delusions.
"If we want to lure the Kryptonians into a trap, we'll need bait," she says bluntly.
"Clark doesn't have the spine for this," Lex says, and Clark feels a little insulted, although he also wonders if he's being played.
"If it's the future of humanity at stake, I'm willing," he states, folding his arms. "Shall I pretend to be Superman?" The irony is killing him.
"I suppose that might work," Lex says with a calculating air. "Are you absolutely certain they'll buy it, though, once they get a better look at you?"
"For god's sake, yes, Lex, I'm pretty sure they'll believe I'm Superman," Clark does his best to keep himself from getting sarcastic at him. For once, someone else in the room shares his exasperation, although Mercy is a bit more professional about it he does see it flicker on her face.
.
It is an absolute mess. They manage to deduce the projector is in a lead box before they can manage to spring it on them as a surprise and decide the safest method is to crush it to smithereens. From there, it's an all out brawl.
Lex throws everything except pretty much nukes at them, and this does take down Nod, who hasn't fully adjusted to the sun yet and isn't quite fast enough to dodge a kryptonite bullet. It nearly scares Clark out of his wits when he sees the man has decided to show up inside a power suit: what the hell is he thinking? But with the Kryptonite he's radiating he at least manages to stand his own, and this fight would be pretty much impossible if Clark had to do it all solo.
He doesn't comment on how Superman got there so fast when Clark was supposed to be the one playing bait, or how he knew to put on a radiation suit.
The red sun flashlights are good, but have the definite problem of not draining their power, only blocking them from getting more, so it's a race to try and keep it focused on them while also keeping the lamps from getting destroyed for the several seconds it takes for them to depower. They get Mala this way when she loses her temper and spends a little too long trying to bash one, and nearly get Jax-ur when he goes to rescue her, but he decides to prioritize his own skin when he sees it's not working.
The other two are more wily, and keep their attentions split so they can't cooperate too closely together; not that he thinks Lex is very interested, but he knows Lex is enough of an opportunist that if he gave him an opening and shouted, Lex would probably take it.
What saves them is unexpected reinforcements. Extra missiles that weren't part of Lex's arsenals that he suspects came from Batman, then Wonder Woman, and the Green Lantern blotting out the yellow of the sun and projecting protective shields as needed. There aren't many heroes who can safely go toe to toe with a Kryptonian for any time, so he's glad and relieved they even got this many. It's enough to make the fight even, even when the Green Lantern ends up having to beat a hasty retreat when he can't quite keep up any longer with the sheer speed and unceasing brutality of their blows.(*)
And it's only because of Wonder Woman at his side that when he hears Lex's suit break open he's able to break off on Jax-ur and rush to his aid. Luthor isn't too happy to be rescued by him, of course, but Clark could care less. It's enough that he's alive.
Clark has to admit, in the after-math? He feels deeply depressed.
They ended up killing three of his own kind, the last of a dwindling race, and barely subdued two of them. The double whammy of kryptonite and red sun is enough to keep them docile, but it's obviously not safe to keep them long term on Earth. He talks things out with Green Lantern who agrees to find a good, safe planet for them.
Two, he thinks, are very unlikely to revive a species. Just not enough genetic diversity. But they won't be alone, and they'll be able to stretch their legs.
Lex looks smugly delighted at the dead bodies, and childishly kicks them just because he can, and less than pleased about the plan to put the survivors on another planet, but doesn't waste a lot of time complaining. He's probably done the calculations too, and realizes there's almost no way, barring some other power grabbing them, that they're coming back to haunt humanity. It's a relief, but also incredibly saddening, because it didn't have to be this way. They didn't have to fight.
Why? Why couldn't they just get along?
"Where did you run off to, Clark?" Lex asks when he pops his head up again in more comfortable, more human clothing, although not quite as comfortable as he'd like. He feels really awkward wearing one of Lex's suits, and he's aware of Wonder Woman's stare at what is quite strange attire for him, as well as weird behavior of approaching Lex Luthor in his civilian guise. "You look horrible. Cheer up, Kent, the alien invasion is finally over! Well, almost over. They didn't get rid of Superman, unfortunately. It would have been nice if they'd killed each other off and done the rest of us a favor."
"God, you can't cut it out for two seconds can you Lex?" Clark fires back, then sags, tired. He knows he probably should have called him Luthor in front of Wonder Woman, but he doesn't actually like to lie. "People still died. Yeah, it's great that it's over, but this isn't exactly what I'd call a happy day." Fuck, it's all his fault. He pauses and looks to her. "Were you waiting for Superman to show up before starting your own fight?"
"Batman calculated our chances would be better with Superman, provided he hadn't died of his injuries," she affirms, and turns away.
It's nice that someone thought things were better with him, but honestly, Clark found himself wondering if maybe it would all be better if Superman just went away.
.
He tries it for exactly a week, disappearing, until he hears a kitten in a tree that's on fire and can't take it. Felt guilty if he did, felt even guiltier if he didn't. Sometimes you just can't win.
Then he spots Lois in a death trap again and of course he has to go rescue her. He's not going to just let her die because she has no self preservation.
Lois asks him if this means he's done moping, and he's too flabbergasted to come up with a proper response. "I wasn't moping."
"Sure. Just recovering from your heroic injuries, I'm sure? It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact you apparently came up with a plan with Luthor and he had time to dig into your head and get to you?" she says with a rhetorical air to her questions.
"...probably nothing to do with that, sure," he sort of fibs unconvincingly.
.
"What if I told you I was Superman?" he finally gives up and asks Lex one day, when they're working on a science project together.
"I'd say stop kidding around, Kent, and hand me that spanner."
Clark laughs.
Some things never change, no matter how much an odd part of you wishes they would.
Although when Clark oh-so-not-very-subtly brings along with their next take-out some texts on current attempts to cure cancer, to 'work on' by himself in front of him one day, Lex does sigh at him and tell him to move over, that he can't stand seeing his cringe-inducing efforts any longer.
What really does freak out Clark is when Lex wants to put his name on one of the scientific papers.
"What will people think of a reporter writing one of these? And I didn't contribute that much, anyway." He did type up a lot of the notes, since he was a fast typist and he might as well, but that hardly counted, did it?
"But you did contribute some, Clark. That's how collaborations work."
In the end? Lex gets his way.
But so, in a way, did Clark.
.
(* I actually have no idea what Green Lantern power level is, they make things out of green light, like not exactly the most intuitive power to gauge ever, very easy to make totally broken. His concentration only needs to falter for a second though for them to totally butcher him, so I'm guessing he's not quite on their level for any extended period of time where stamina has to come into play.)
Author's Rant:
Okay, ugh. I profess I was so excited when I saw I had over 10 new reviews for one chapter. Then I see it's this one person, a guest, who appears to have basically spammed a bunch of content, a lot of which has absolutely nothing to do with this fic. Anyone who doesn't want to read a rant, just skip this section.
One thing did seem relevant in the spam:
They posted 'if you kill them you are just as bad excuse, why do authors keep using this?'
What? No, did you actually read my damn fic? If you did, you would have noticed that I heavily implied Clark's alien psychology from Kryptonian selective breeding makes it really hard for him to kill, and outright stated that he's the alien equivalent of a golden retriever, so that he doesn't want to kill. Where the hell did you get "If you kill them you will be just as bad" from him saying last chapter "Killing should be a last resort"? Don't spam people's fics with your pet beefs about things they didn't even fucking write. I have no idea why you are ranting about religion, either, except maybe the fact I mentioned Clark is religious: I'm not fucking religious. I did write that Clark is, because I'm trying to have fun doing a character analysis and it makes logical sense that he should be with his upbringing being in the South. Believe it or not, but you can be an atheist without hating religious people, and you can write the views of fictional characters without agreeing with everything they say.
Character analysis, by the way, doesn't mean I suddenly make all the characters god damn perfect. Why the fuck would you want that, anyway? That would be so boring. Yes, someone should shoot the Joker, but it makes no psychological sense for Batman to do it when the man is, frankly, a basket-case with essentially a gun-phobia, and far more interesting a character for it! And why are you even ranting about Batman when Batman hasn't even done much beyond 'noted to exist' in this fic? Are you off your meds or accidentally, somehow hit send 12 different times on the wrong fanfic?
On your note about the economy, I have no idea why you are bringing far left versus far right into this, but that 'pursuit of happiness' you spoke of? Is a hell of a lot harder if you are working 3 jobs just to feed your children and pay rent or if you bankrupt yourself trying not to die of disease. Leveling the playing field is not that radical. I don't know too many people who actually want to metaphorically eat the rich like you seem afraid of; they just want health care and decent wages that actually cover their needs, and they're scared of the massive disruption climate change will bring if we don't stop it. Whether or not 'most' corporations have 'decent' CEOs is totally irrelevant when the largest corporations like Amazon often literately pay people cents (look up online "microtask" jobs that one can sign up for if you don't believe me) and force them to work in a pandemic without adequate protection / paid sick leave because it would cut into their profits.
What moron wants a sick person coughing on their packages, or their Happy Meal? No one sane, obviously. Yet that's how our country (I assume you are from the USA) is set up because we don't have guaranteed paid sick leave. When people try to fix this, people scream 'socialism!'
'people don't deserve cancer cures as long as...' Wow. Doesn't matter what the rest of that sentence is, that's just, like, fucking sadistic?
I think I give up. I'm just gonna get this finished up and done with. I hadn't changed my plans on the lethal means used by the characters in any way, by the way, I was planning on this from the previous chapter to have one or more of the Kryptonians die. It's pretty obvious almost no one is reading it anyway, not even this dude. I semi-got to where that other reviewer asked, where Clark tries to tell Lex the truth. Lex, of course, is a bit of a monomaniac (he literately didn't buy it when a computer spat out that Clark Kent was Superman) so he just totally ignores him. That's the tragedy part of their story.
Anyway, I think this works as an ending. Clark and Lex, publishing cancer cures, while still dueling to the death every Monday thru Friday. It fits them.
