Work Text:
“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own."
John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
1
It's strange.
He's 15 again, for a moment. His toes are just starting to brush up against his boots. Soon he'll have to get a new pair, but a new pair costs money. For now, he'll just deal with the nuisance until his toes break through the steel, at which time the embarrassment of their son going to school like that will be reason enough for his parents to buy him another pair.
He takes two steps further into the stone and mahogany room, and he's 16, then 17, then 18, a fire lit to his right, the crack of a wood hitting a pool ball to his left. When he turns to look, no one is standing there. The felt table sits unused, alone.
Just as it has been for the last—
21. He's 21 now.
And he doesn't remember why he's there.
"My father just died, and you're already breaking and entering?"
Clark turns around and stares at him. At Lex. The reason — the reason he's here. To find, no, to ask him. To ask him about—
"Lionel would never take his own life."
The words are pushed out of him, and he doesn't even know, until they are, what they mean.
Lionel dead. A broken window. A cemetery. Lex, in a long black coat.
No, wait. That comes… that comes after. After.
"I thought you'd at least try to offer some words of comfort."
The way Lex looks at him. It's almost like he means it. And Clark forgets about after.
Had Lex ever offered him any words of comfort? When his dad… when—
He still sees it. Every time he looks at her.
The blood already crusting on Lana's motionless face.
Lex's Porsche pulled off to the side of the road.
Clark smelled it on him when he got there, speeding to the scene right in front of Lex. Didn't care if he saw, then. Didn't care if Lex had taken out a kryptonite dagger and stabbed it into his ribs.
Lana was his fiancée for less than a day, and she lay lifeless in front of them both.
Because Lex had gotten drunk and scared her.
Because he wanted Clark's fucking secret, and he knew Lana finally got it.
So fucking have it, Lex. See all the good it gets you.
And maybe if he'd let fate decide… if he hadn't gone back to change things.
Maybe his father would still be here.
And Lex would have had to carry the guilt of having taken Lana's life.
The way Clark does now. He grits his teeth against the memory of how he last left her. Milky eyes; expressionless face; sallow, icy skin.
"Get out," Lex is saying now, harshly.
"I'm not goin' anywhere."
Finally, he remembers why he's here.
Lex murdered Lionel.
Lex murdered his own father.
"I'm not gonna debate my father's mental state with you."
And then it's like Lex leaves. His attention goes to the fireplace.
To a little red-headed boy standing right beside the stone hearth.
Lex. Young Lex. The little boy who called Clark his best friend.
I'll always be here for you.
Clark can see him, too.
But then he's gone. There and then gone. It's just him and Lex again, on the knife's edge of no return, and when Lex turns back to him, it's with wide, red-lined eyes and cheeks twitching with faint tremors.
There was only one other time Clark saw him like this. Like he was unraveling right before his very eyes.
You're either with me or against me Clark. Choose right now.
"I'm grieving, Clark. I think you know what it's like to lose a father."
He's no longer on the farm, turning his back on his parents' disappointed expressions.
No. He's standing in the mansion, watching a lying Lex walk away from him.
Grieving.
How dare he.
I think you know what it's like to lose a father.
How dare he say it like that.
Like he'd had no part in it.
Like he hadn't pushed him out of a fucking window, 14 stories high.
Did Lex watch Lionel as he flew? For how long? When did he turn away? Did he turn away? Or did he watch until the very last moment, until his father's body was devoured by cement?
"Don't bring my father into this," Clark hisses.
Lex stops in his tracks, turning around to face him. "Why not?" He lifts his arms like a shrug, then lets them fall to his sides. "Our fathers were a lot alike. Smart, strong-willed, and both died prematurely."
But one died alone, cold, violently. And one died in his son's and his wife's arms, sparing one last loving glance at each of them before he went.
"You know, you're right, Lex," Clark says, closing the gap between them, boring down on Lex with merciless eyes. "Lionel did die too soon. I wanna know the truth about how he died."
Oh, but Lex isn't intimidated by this accusation. He's prepared for it. For Clark. It's suddenly painfully clear that Lex has been preparing for exactly this since last night.
Since the two of them locked eyes over the police tape.
He should have known that he wouldn't be catching Lex unawares. That he would be the one off foot. It's always been this way. Pure, dumb luck that Clark always managed to evade Lex's various attempts to cheat the truth from him, and often by the skin of his teeth.
"The truth is… our dads were alike in another way. See... they both felt that you were the kind of son a father could be proud of."
It's not dread anymore, that writhing feeling in Clark's gut. No. It gets replaced with something else when Lex says that. Something more like what he'd felt when Lex gripped his shoulders in Belle Reeve and told Clark he would never forgive him for letting him stay locked up in there.
Guilt.
Burning through his stomach lining like termites ingesting wood.
And he can't…
He can't.
It isn't his fault.
That Lionel…
You had your chance with one son, you don't get another.
It's not his fault that Lionel picked him.
What was it Chloe had said, right after Patricia was murdered?
We don't have time for guilt, Clark.
No. No. They don't have time for guilt.
Lionel hadn't picked him. Jor-El had picked Lionel.
And that wasn't Clark's fault.
If Lex hadn't gone the way he did…
If he hadn't…
Killed.
Lionel.
Patricia.
If he hadn't become someone who could do that.
"He would have felt the same way about you, Lex. If you would have tried. What happened to you?"
Why did you fall so far, Lex? So far that not even I can—
"I did try, Clark." Lex turns to face him, eyes wounded. Shining. And Clark…
Termites continue to burrow into his viscera.
Of course you did, Lex. I know you did.
So why had he said Lex hadn't?
"In fact, when we first met...you inspired me," Lex continues. "All I wanted was to be your friend, but you turned your back on me."
Turned his…
Turned his back on him?
How many times did Clark forgive him? How many times did Clark try to convince him that it wasn't too late? Even down in those tunnels, razors shredding through his bicep as he gripped Lex's wrist and lifted him back up to the ladder with a strength he didn't have.
Even fucking now. After he murdered his father for trying to protect the traveler.
For trying to protect Clark.
He's still willing.
That's the thing. Those are the termites.
That even now, after everything, Clark would forgive. He would try to forget.
A murderer.
What's wrong with him? Why can't he just let Lex go?
Turned his fucking back on him.
Right.
He wishes he could turn his fucking back on him.
"So you're the person you are today because of me." He meets Lex's flinty blue eyes, finding no trace of his old friend there. It's a fresh wound, each time.
This is not the person he knew. The person who would drop everything to protect the people he cared about.
The people Clark cared about.
Lana. Lana sits catatonic in a room now because of Lex's selfishness. His quest for power. Keeping that fucking computer drive. Collecting the ash. Experimenting with a force he knew nothing about.
It's all Clark can do to keep his voice level. "I tried to be your friend, Lex. But all you care about is power and control."
"This is Smallville!" Lex shouts, passion overtaking him, veins popping in his temples and eye sockets. Clark can hear his blood rushing through the narrow hollows like an angry, diverted ravine. "Meteor freaks, alien ships, cryptic symbols. These threats are real. Someone had to take control. Someone has to protect the world."
Protection. Right. This has all been about protection.
Trying to remove all vestige of humanity from Victor was about protection.
Promising hope to injured soldiers only to turn them into obedient, programmed assassins was about protection.
Drugging Chloe's mentally ill mother to do his bidding was about protection.
Faking a pregnancy and allowing Lana to believe she miscarried was about protection.
Hitting her when she tried to leave him was about fucking protection.
"Listen to yourself, Lex. You're so caught up in your own delusions, you've lost track of reality."
"Have I? Then let's talk about something you can't deny." Lex licks his lips, his glistening eyes piercing Clark's as he takes two steps closer to him. "After years of pleading with my father to show me some compassion, he turned to you with open arms. Now, what would a worldly billionaire have in common with a simple farm boy?"
A simple farm boy.
Lex says it with so much disdain, a tremor in his upper lip giving way to a snarl.
Clark averts his eyes, the guilt seeping into him.
After pleading with my father to show me some compassion.
He remembers, still, that day in the prison. The blinding noise in his head singing from the stone Lionel kept in his hand. The one he'd held out to his only son, planning to switch bodies with him.
To lock his son away in prison for the rest of his life. With no escape. No one to believe him.
Clark had only barely gotten free.
Lex? He would have been trapped.
His father would have locked him away for the rest of his life.
Lex's eyes hook into him, waiting for an answer. And Clark is—
He's lost. His reason for coming here, lost.
Lionel.
Lionel, who'd cloned a little dead girl and whose efforts to eradicate his cancer resulted in the prolonged, painful deaths of who knows how many.
Lionel, who had murdered the other Veritas families.
Lionel, who murdered his own parents.
Who fried his son's brain to keep the truth quiet.
But after the body switch, he'd changed… hadn't he?
He'd tried to be better.
And that had to matter. It had to count.
Because if Lionel could be forgiven…
If a slate could be wiped.
Clark looks up at Lex.
If a slate could be wiped.
"Maybe he just knew he could trust me."
Not for the first time in his life, Clark miscalculates. He sees a version of the conversation unfold in front of him. An incensed Lex quipping back, but not his own son? And Clark, his bait caught, would respond that it wasn't too late to change. That he could still be trusted. That he could still be the man he wanted to be back in Smallville, struggling to lay off workers, whipped cream dressing his upper lip.
Only that doesn't happen.
Instead, Lex's eyes flash with ire, and he scoffs, shaking his head at Clark, looking murderous.
Looking at Clark with a searing kind of hatred.
"Of course," Lex hisses, his lips curling with disdain. He grits his teeth, lifts a finger, and points it at Clark, almost poking him. "Everyone can trust Clark Kent. You're the perfect son." He picks his head up, dragging his tearful eyes across Clark's face, hesitating. Like he's deciding something. "So," he turns his gaze from Clark, speaking to the rest of the empty room. "So why did Jonathan Kent always seem so stressed?"
Clark's stomach plummets.
Lex isn't.
He's not.
"I mean, was raising the perfect son really that much work?" Lex plants his feet and gawks at Clark in feigned curiosity. Like the question was an honest one. "I wonder how much of a strain it put on his heart."
He is.
Lex is.
Accusing him.
Accusing him.
"Are you blaming me for my father's death?" Clark steps up to him, fire lighting up his limbs, his face, his eyes. "Are you?"
Control, Clark.
His father's voice.
Stand down, Clark.
His dad's silhouette, bathed in golden light.
How much of a strain…
Clark swallows down nausea, sweat beginning to prickle his forehead.
Lex looks at him, pupils dilated, like he's…
Like this is pleasing him.
To see Clark struggle.
To watch him suffer.
To make him suffer.
And that.
It reminds him why he's here.
"You're the guilty one, Lex," Clark says, his voice hoarse as he stares into the face of someone who used to be his best friend. "Not me. And this time, you're gonna own up to what you've done." He holds Lex's gaze. "I know you killed Lionel."
Lex blinks, and Clark watches a tear collect then disperse on his lower lashes.
"Who's delusional now?" Lex asks, a slight wobble to his voice.
"I have proof."
Lex's forehead wrinkles above fearful, wet eyes.
I'm grieving, Clark.
It suddenly occurs to Clark that Lex wasn't lying.
That he is grieving.
The man he pushed.
And the man who went over the edge with him.
Just like Clark is.
But it doesn't matter.
The time is long past for sentimentality.
For remembering what they had.
What they were.
The Lex he knew is gone.
And the Clark who was his friend...
He turns on his heel before he can finish that thought, his chest quaking, hands shaking, vision blurring.
The Lex he knew is gone.
The Lex he knew would never have said that it was Clark's fault.
His father's death.
No matter that he's right.
If Clark hadn't gone to Metropolis—
If Clark hadn't destroyed the ship—
If Clark hadn't been saved.
If he'd never come here at all.
Clark lurches out of the study with a roiling stomach and falls to his knees.
But they never hit the stone tile.
"My father just died and you're already breaking and entering?"
2
Back where he started, Clark stares at Lex, disoriented and confused. "Wait, what is — didn't we just—"
"I thought you'd at least try to offer some words of comfort. Get out."
Something tugs at his mind, like a lyric begging to be finished.
"I'm not goin' —" Clark trails off.
No. They did this already. This happened already and then Clark left. Because, because—
"Once you're in there Kal, the tide of memory will pull you deep. You'll have to fight against it and your body will resist."
"I'm not gonna debate my father's mental state with you," Lex says. "I'm grieving, Clark. I think you know what it's like to lose a father."
"Don't bring my—"
He smothers the words by closing his mouth. And there's that tug again, like a gravitational field, dragging him back to the beginning.
"Once you're in there Kal, the tide of memory will pull you deep. You'll have to fight against it and your body will resist."
Clark rips free of the tide this time and he can see, remember, where the conversation is headed.
"You really think I'm to blame? For my father's heart attack?"
Lex stares at him. Parts his lips. A little wrinkle appears between his brow.
"This is a memory," Clark says.
"What are you talking about?"
"This has already happened. Minutes ago. I know what happens next."
Lex blinks and then straightens, crossing his arms over his chest. "Well," he almost smiles. "I have to admit this is a creative strategy for entrapment."
"Go ahead," Clark says. "Go back to what you were saying. I'll prove it to you. I'll prove that this has already happened."
Lex narrows his eyes.
"You were saying I knew what it was like to lose a father. And I told you not to bring my father into this. And then you say…" Clark gestures for him to go on.
After a moment, Lex does, though the words come out cautiously, like he's suspicious of each one.
"Why not? Our fathers were a lot alike. Sm—"
"—art, strong-willed, and both died prematurely," Clark interrupts him.
Lex's eyes flash with something like wonder.
"You know what I say next, too."
"Well, that doesn't prove anything, Clark. I've been able to predict what you were going to say next since the day I met you."
"Can you tell when I'm lying?"
Lex's eyes flash with something much closer to menace.
"Of course," he says.
"Am I lying now?"
Clark stays deathly still as Lex steps up to him, not touching him save for his penetrating eyes that crawl across Clark's face.
"This is a memory, you said."
Clark nods. Lex sharpens his gaze.
"Project Intercept. My father. He gave you access to it, didn't he? And this is your way of trying to sneak a confession out of me."
"This isn't that, Lex."
Lex studies Clark, obviously looking for a tell. But he won't find it.
It's the truth.
"Project Intercept lets you explore different memories," Clark says.
"So he did give you—"
"He did. After you were shot. I was trying to find Kara."
"There's still good in you." Lex glares at Clark and grinds his teeth. "I was wondering where the hell that came from." Lex takes a step closer to him and Clark can smell the liquor leaking from his pores. "You trespassed," his lip curls. "Inside my head. And you're doing it again."
"I already told you this isn't that, Lex. When I went into your head, I was able to move around, through rooms and doors, and into different memories. But when I try to leave this room, it just resets."
Lex's eyes linger on Clark's for another beat before flashing to the doors behind him.
"What happens if I leave it?"
Clark isn't quick enough to reach for him before Lex moves in long, quick strides toward the French doors.
He disappears, just as he crosses the threshold. Blinked out of existence.
From behind Clark, he hears:
"My father just died and you're already breaking and entering?"
Clark shuts his eyes tightly. Okay. Alright.
Once more with feeling.
3
He does everything the same way until they get to the point where Lex asks what happens if he leaves.
No use reinventing the wheel.
"It resets. You just tried that."
Lex sniffs disdainfully. He drags his eyes back to Clark. "How do I know that you're telling the truth?"
"Because you can tell when I'm lying."
"And what if you're just a figment of my imagination?"
"Do I never lie to you in your imagination?"
A smile that's nearly fond crosses his face. "Much less frequently."
They're standing just a few inches apart, and Clark can hear his clear, steady heartbeat.
Part of him doesn't want Lex to believe him. That they've had this conversation already. That if Lex really thinks about it, he'll know what comes next.
Because then he'll remember.
He'll remember what Clark says to him.
"If. I. Would. Have. Tried."
Lex says the words slowly. Enunciating. His gaze holds Clark's until Clark looks away.
He doesn't even try to stop Lex when he moves past him.
"My father just died and you're already breaking and entering?"
4
This time, Clark sits down on the loveseat and sinks into the leather, staring ahead, defeated.
He's getting this wrong, and he has no idea how to get it right.
Has no idea what it even is.
Why he's stuck here.
Why they're stuck here.
Why he's cursed with remembering while Lex, each time, forgets.
It would be one thing to be stuck here with him.
But this…
Clark is stuck here, near him, alone.
With a Lex who doesn't remember.
"What the hell are you doing, Clark?"
Lex stands above him and Clark picks his eyes up to his face. He sighs a deep breath.
"Oh, I don't know, Lex. Thought maybe you'd want to play some pool."
Lex's brow furrows deeply and Clark is embarrassed to find his eyes beginning to sting.
A time when that wouldn't have confused Lex.
Clark, asking him for a game of pool.
"I thought you'd at least try to offer some words of comfort," Lex says.
Clark can't help the laughter that bursts from him. Can't stop it even as Lex stares at him, alarmed.
He's like a broken fucking record. One of those action figures that has five pre-programmed lines.
"Fresh out of those today, Lex. I came here looking for a key, actually. One of two. Supposed to control me. Sound familiar?"
Lex takes two steps back until his calves hit the table.
"What are you… what are you saying?"
"Oh, so you can go off-script?"
He's being mean, he knows.
But it doesn't matter.
Because he also knows that the moment he stands up, pushes past Lex, and exits the doors, all of this will be erased.
Be kind, rewind.
5
"My father just died and you're already breaking and entering?"
"Yes, and I have no words of comfort for you. Can we skip ahead to the part where we say the awful things to each other? I tell you that your dad would have loved you if you would have tried harder, and you tell me I'm to blame for the stress that caused my dad's heart attack."
Clark walks over to the couch and sits down again. "We've already had this conversation. When I try to leave, it resets. And before you ask, yes. It does the same thing when you try to leave. You've already done so twice."
After a moment, Clark feels the couch shift as Lex sits down next to him. It's not a complete, thorough silence. There's the crackle of the fire and Lex's deep, slow breaths. But it's an unbearable silence all the same.
"Meteor freaks, alien ships, cryptic symbols," Lex mutters quietly. "And now, a time loop." He sits back into the soft leather. "Which time is this?"
"The fifth," Clark says. "I think."
"Solid number," Lex says. "A prime number, a Fibonacci number. It's the first congruent number, in fact, which—"
"Lex," Clark interrupts him, before this mathematical lecture grows limbs.
Lex just nods. The two of them sit on the sofa, not speaking.
Remembering what they've already said.
"Have you tried to kill yourself yet?"
Clark whips his head to look at him. "What?"
"Groundhog Day," Lex says. "Have you never seen it? I probably have it in the media room, though we'd have to leave this room to get there, which you've indicated is verboten."
Groundhog Day. Lex is talking about Groundhog Day.
"Five times is low," Lex says. "Bill Murray didn't try to off himself until he got into the hundreds. I suppose you still have time."
At this, Clark actually laughs. He rubs his palms into his eyes. "Lex."
"You still say it the same way."
You still say it the same way.
"Astonishment," Clark says, Lex's drawl suddenly manifesting inside his head. "Mixed with a hint of dread, yet...with a hopeful finish."
Lex cocks his head. "Poetic," he says. "But no. I was going to say fond exasperation."
Then what was…
You still say it the same way. Astonishment, mixed with a hint of dread, yet...with a hopeful finish.
Was it a dream?
"You have proof," Lex says, jolting Clark back to the room. "That I pushed him."
It's as good as a confession.
But it doesn't really matter. Lex is catching on. Whatever's happening here…
They're not moving forward. They're stuck.
And then, he hears it. Inside his head.
Static.
He sees Chloe lying on her side.
"You sent someone to destroy the photo." He turns to Lex. "They succeed."
Lex sits forward, leaning toward Clark. "So you can see past this room. Past this moment. You just can't leave it. Why?"
Clark looks at him and shrugs. "I—"
"You remember the variants, and I don't. Why?"
"I don't know, Lex," Clark grouses, standing up as Lex's voice starts getting more accusatory. He can't risk losing him again. Can't let him leave. Can't go through this again and again and again.
He feels a hand on his shoulder, tugging him back, as he slides his hands into his hair. It's still so long. So untamed. The way he used to wear it when—
"You may not remember any of this when you arrive there, Kal El. You may not remember any of us."
J'onn gestures to the other members of the Justice League standing in the room with them. Just Bruce and Diana, at present.
Clark feels a pang at the thought of forgetting them, and not even knowing that he had. Bruce, who always manages to save Clark with his plan B, but only occasionally says I told you so. Diana, who's always willing to accompany him in flight when he doesn't feel like being alone.
But it would only be temporary. Not permanent. Not like the way Lex has forgotten him.
"Clark, just calm—"
"—down inside the tunnel between the two connecting points. Think of it like a bridge—"
"A functional wormhole," Bruce says, causing J'onn to flash an annoyed glance at the interruption.
"A wormhole is a bridge between two points in space on the same plane of reality. This is a bridge between two entirely different planes, overlapping at one specific point."
"Whatever we call it," Diana says, "is there any risk of Kal getting stuck inside the other plane?"
J'onn shakes his head. "They cannot exit. Neither of them. There is one way in and one way out, for both of them. Should they try to leave the bridge, they will be bounced back to the start."
"So then how do I get out?" Clark asks.
"I will be monitoring the bridge while maintaining it, linked to both of your minds. I will know, either way, once it's done."
"Either way," Diana prompts.
"The desired outcome," J'onn says. "Kal succeeds in sparking the retrieval of the lost memories. Or the alternative. He does not. I will know either way."
The alternative. Lex goes to a maximum security prison for the rest of his life for the attempted murder of Superman.
Clark looks at the metal tray next to him. Lex's chest rises and falls, like he's sleeping. Just sleeping. With wrists cuffed and chained to the rails of the bed.
He'd tried to appeal his sentence — demand that the judge send him to prison immediately instead of submitting to whatever experimental rehabilitation program the martian and the Kryptonian devised. But the victim's letter was ultimately the deciding factor in the judge's determination.
Superman's letter.
Lex had looked into his eyes with so much disdain while he was reading it.
It felt like a pit opened up inside of him for his organs to fall through.
"Memory shapes our sense of self, our beliefs, and our decision-making," Clark read. "But what happens if years of our memories go missing? Who do we become, and how different are we from the people we might have been, if we could only remember?
"Alexander Luthor has confessed to losing the memory of the first quarter-century of his life. I believe it would be unjust not to attempt to retrieve those lost years and see what kind of effect the fusion may have on the man he might yet become."
Lex grabbed Clark's wrist as he passed by his bench. The courtroom went silent; not a soul flinched.
Looking up at him with hateful, red-rimmed eyes, Lex spat his words.
"There is no version of me who will not dedicate his life to eradicating this world of your filth, Superman."
"Clark."
The courtroom is gone. As is that Lex.
He's replaced with this one, whose hands frame Clark's cheeks. Whose soft, concerned gaze tracks the two tears that fall from Clark's eyes.
The memories pound into him then, like acoustic pressure waves exhausted from a rocket.
Ice against his back, searing pain inside his chest.
Lex sliding a hand behind his neck to prop him up.
The words I love you.
The Fortress, collapsing.
A husk of the man he once knew destroying Clark's life from within a suit and then—
A sparsely attended funeral.
His formal, lesser-used name on a headstone.
A boy named Alexander with Clark's eyes.
The ruins of the room they're standing in, each of them on opposite sides.
You and I, we will be great men.
Because of each other.
And then just as soon as he gets him back—
A handshake, eyes that pass over him with no recognition.
Everything they went through, forgotten.
The barrel of his gun pressed against Clark's chest.
A blackout in Metropolis after the city rerouted all its energy to defibrillate him.
There is no version of me who will not dedicate his life to eradicating this world of your filth, Superman.
More tears fall down his cheeks.
He's shellshocked. Not 15, 16, 17, 18, or 21 anymore, but 36. Older than Lex is, right now. 36 and divorced, with a younger brother — or a son — who's half Lex. And he's Superman. Clark Kent is the alter ego.
Bumbling, bespectacled Clark Kent.
"Clark?" Lex asks, cautiously.
The way he says his name.
"L-Lex?"
Lex nods slowly. "Yes?"
His hands start to slip from Clark's cheeks, but Clark grabs them, flattening them there, leaning into the warmth of Lex's palms. He shuts his eyes and feels more tears roll down his cheeks.
"Clark," Lex says, more sternly. "What is this? What's going on?"
Cologne on his wrists, smelling of herbs and oils Clark probably couldn't even pronounce. Softly calloused fingers that know how to handle a gun, a pool stick, a bale of hay.
His Lex. His Lex. His Lex. Repeating in his head like hyperventilating breaths.
"You remember me?"
"Remember you? Of course I—"
Clark throws his arms around him, and the impact knocks the wind out of Lex, or at the very least, what he was going to say next. He feels Lex's heart thumping against his own chest, and Lex, he's stock still, not returning the hug, but he's letting him.
He's letting Clark touch him.
Whiskey and his cologne and the fresh scent of his soap invade Clark's senses, and he chokes down a sob remembering this Lex is gone, where he is now. Where they both are. Not just his memories, but this body. The one Clark fished from the river, the one that helped him through the tunnels, it's gone. And it's never, ever coming back.
That choked sob becomes a real one, and he feels Lex's hands come to his waist, then slide up his back.
Holding him tightly. Lex is holding him.
And that's how they stay. For as long as Lex can bear it. Because for Clark, an eternity would still feel too short.
6
"Can I offer you one?"
Lex holds a tumbler of scotch up in his right hand. Pale, unscarred skin. Blunt, manicured nails. Unharmed.
Clark swallows a lump and shakes his head.
"Suit yourself."
He comes to join Clark on the couch again and takes a sip. His right hand rests the tumbler along the edge of the couch behind them, and Clark can feel his eyes brushing the side of his face.
But Clark can't take his gaze from his hand.
Nothing can be changed.
Fuck you, J'onn. Then why send me here?
But he remembers why, and it isn't J'onn, whose idea this was. It was Clark's. But that's always been Clark's shortcoming. Thinking through the plan. Sinking himself down into it before he was already there.
Bruce always excelled at that.
But Clark—
Clark didn't think about how it would feel to be sitting next to an unharmed, whole Lex.
He didn't think about how it would unsteady his aim, occlude the mission plan.
Nothing could be changed, but why not, J'onn? Why couldn't they?
Knew the answer to that, too. Everyone who's ever seen Back to the Future knows it. Change one thing, and you change everything, and not in the way you hope.
"Clark," Lex says.
Clark picks his eyes up to his face as Lex holds the scotch out to him again, presuming, Clark guesses, that that's what Clark can't stop staring at.
The scotch. Not the hand holding it.
"It'll take the edge off."
"It won't," Clark shakes his head. "It doesn't affect me."
Lex arches an eyebrow.
"You already know, Lex. Don't you. Who it is. The traveler."
Lex takes a sip of scotch and sits back against the sofa. His eyes carefully brush across Clark's face, softer than Clark would have expected them. Perhaps he thinks he's dreaming. That Clark isn't really here.
"The day my father brought me to Smallville," Lex says. "The day my father sacrificed my future in order to meet the traveler. It was the same day the Kents found you."
Stupidly obvious when he said it like that. So stupidly obvious that it seems impossible Lex couldn't have always known. Clark had always been so frustrated at Lex for not giving it up. His obsession, his research into him.
Maybe it's just the years he's spent retrodding the past in his mind, trying to figure out exactly where everything went sour, exactly when it became too late. But the way Clark sees it now… There was a kind of kindness to Lex's feigned obliviousness. I won't know until you tell me. And Lex, in all his attempts to unmask Clark, was merely trying to make it more difficult for Clark to persist in not telling him.
But Clark persisted. And persisted. And persisted. And if Lex's kindness was just one side of a coin, the other side was Clark's naive cruelty.
If he's still trying to find me out, then he must not know yet.
Stupid kid.
"My parents sent me here to save me," Clark says, glancing at Lex, who's just carefully watching him. He feels a pit in his stomach, wondering if this is how it would have always gone. How much could have been avoided if Clark had just trusted him earlier? Why couldn't J'onn have sent him back further, to change things?
But then he remembers. Again. This was never about changing anything. There are no earlier memories that J'onn could have bridged. All of them are gone.
Save this one.
"A part of me always wondered if maybe you knew." Clark locks eyes with him. The close calls, the near-saves. So many times when Lex seemed to almost be baiting him.
To be honest, I don't know why I'm not dead.
"Sometimes I wished you would just say it. Clark, I know."
"And you would have said, Lex, you're delusional. Just like you did tonight."
Clark nods and bites his lip when he feels another wave of emotion threaten, remembering back to that conversation. 15 years ago. 15 minutes ago. It was one of the last times they had ever really spoken to each other.
"You're right." Clark clears his throat to disperse the thickness. He looks at Lex. "But did you, Lex? Did you know?"
Lex picks up his scotch glass again and tips it back, swallowing what's left of it. He stands and goes to refill it. Time stills for Clark until Lex sits back down.
"I convinced myself out of it as many times as I convinced myself into it. That I was obsessed and deluded was far easier to stomach than that I was right. Because that meant every time someone told me that you were just a normal farmboy with nothing to hide, they were telling the truth. It meant that you hadn't confided in my father before you confided in me."
"I didn't confide in him, Lex."
Lex lifts distrusting eyes to him.
"He caught me. Same as Chloe." Clark laughs, mirthlessly. "Same as Lana. Same as Alicia and Ryan. I tried telling someone my secret was when I was 16, and they left town a year later because they couldn't bear the pressure of keeping it."
Lex sips his scotch. "And you didn't think I could handle the pressure."
"I didn't know if you could resist the power."
Lex slams his tumbler down on the table and stands up.
"In a few weeks from now, you try to control me," Clark shouts after him, and Lex's footsteps slow. "You try to make me submit to you."
Lex turns around, and his eyebrows are wrenched in the middle.
"You go to Zurich. You find the box. You find whatever it is that will lead you to the device that controls me."
"Try to, you said." Lex walks back to the couch. "You said I try to control you." He sits down and looks at Clark. "So I don't go through with it."
"No," Clark says. "You do. It just doesn't work the way either of us expects it to."
He swallows, remembering the fortress collapsing on them. Clark would have — if Lex's body hadn't been shielding him, bearing the brunt of the impact…
Clark would have died.
Instead, Lex did.
Or he almost did.
His body was hooked up to life support, but it was cored out of everything resembling the Lex Clark once knew and was replaced with bitterness. Anger.
And why not?
Why shouldn't it have been?
Lex followed the steps. He found the map. He did everything he was supposed to in order to save the world from Clark.
And he was punished for it.
His life was stolen from him.
Clark spent a summer at a Russian work camp without his powers. Manual labor and a few beatings. That was the extent of his suffering.
He'd hated Lex so much for believing that he was a threat. Hated him so much for looking him in the eye and taking the next step to control him. To take away Clark's free will.
But as the years went on and Clark looked back at them, he started to understand.
Started to understand why Lex did all the things he did next.
In a few weeks from now, you try to control me.
Clark looks up at him.
In a few weeks from now, you cradle my neck and tell me you love me.
Lex watches him warily, with narrowed eyes.
"You remember what happens next," Lex says, slowly. "You remember what happens in this room even after one of us leaves it. And now, it seems, you finally remember why."
Because you don't remember who I am or who you are or any of what happened to us.
"So what is this, Clark. Why are we here?"
"It's a long story," Clark says. "And it doesn't start for another 15 years."
"15 years," Lex says faintly, sitting back into the leather. "Go on then. What happens next?"
7
Clark talks, and Lex pours himself more whiskey.
He has a fuller picture of the events that come after this now. Not like he did back then. Lex recorded everything that happened in this room. Including Brainiac, coming to Lex, disguised as Kara, telling him that the traveler would be responsible for destroying the world.
He could start there, but it's not really the beginning.
The beginning is the bridge. It's when Clark found out who he really was. So he brings Lex back to that day.
Lex listens and sips.
He tells him about going back to the farm after the river and sticking his arm in the wood chipper. Tells him about how he knew Lex didn't rob the bank and how he knew Amy had stolen his watch. Tells him about why he was so willing to have Lex hit him with that hammer. Why his dad was so angry when he found Lex excavating Miller's Field. Why he was so sure he couldn't have been Lex's biological brother. How when Lex asked him if he could read the symbols Dr. Walden wrote in his lab, he lied. How he'd never been writing a term paper about the caves.
Lex listens and sips.
He tells him about his summer in Metropolis and Morgan Edge. Tells him about those lost weeks. How Clark found the broken shard of glass in the mansion; how Lionel had been drugging Lex's scotch to make him look crazy; how Lex had seen Edge's car bent around Clark like a pipe cleaner; why Clark was afraid, for that reason, to break him out of Belle Reeve. Why he'd told Lionel, for that reason, about Lex trying to get his memories back.
"I…" Clark begins, but he can't finish the thought. I was afraid. It's so… puny. So childish. But that's what he was. A child. He was a child when all of this happened. Seventeen.
It's the of you, that he can't justify. I was afraid of you. It's the of you that he can't look Lex in the eyes and say.
Because what had he done, up to then, to be deserving of Clark's fear?
Lex gets up to pour himself more whiskey, but Clark doesn't hear the patter of liquid against glass. He turns on the couch and sees Lex standing at the bar, holding up the decanter, smiling faintly at it.
"My father poisoned me again, did you know that? No, judging from that face you're making, you didn't."
Worms writhe in his stomach. Poisoned. "When?" Clark manages to ask in a choked voice.
"Right after his trial." Lex uncaps the decanter and Clark watches his hand shake as he pours out the amber liquid. "I had to get dialysis that whole summer, but you wouldn't have known that. You were gone." A muscle twitches in Lex's jaw as he caps the top of the decanter. "No explanation."
He lifts his eyes up to Clark, and Clark shrinks under his seething gaze.
"I'm sure you'll have one for me now, but I don't want it." Hand still shaking, Lex lifts the glass to his mouth, but he doesn't sip it. Just holds the rim to his lips before he rests the glass down on the bar again.
"I don't want to hear about all the times you lied to me, Clark. It's absolution. For you. And you don't get to have that. It changes nothing for me. Changes none of my misery. None of my pain. It only adds to it. I nearly died twice, Clark. Because you were too much of a coward to tell me the truth. Even part of the truth." He shakes his head again, and snarls, whipping his glass against the wall behind him.
Clark turns away from him, his body going rigid, feeling very small of a sudden. Small and scared.
"If. I. Would. Have. Fucking. Tried."
Take me out, J'onn, he thinks. It's too much. He can't. He can't. He can't he can't he can't.
"He poisoned me, Clark. He fried my brain. That man you came here to vindicate. And where was my vindication? Do I ever receive it?"
Clark can't even move his head to look at him, much less answer him.
"SPEAK," Lex shouts.
"No," Clark says, and swallows, his eyes burning. He clasps his hands between his legs and squeezes them, focusing on his breath. It's coming very fast now.
He hears a rapid heartbeat approach him, leather creasing as a body sits across from him. If he thinks about it in these terms, divorcing the context, his breath comes easier. If he keeps his eyes closed—
"Did I mean that little to you?"
His breath gets caught in his chest as a sob starts to push against his ribs.
"Look at me," Lex says, harshly.
He can't. He can't look at him. It's too much. The pain on his face. In his voice. It's worse than kryptonite. Does Lex still keep some in his safe? Clark could open the door now, lock himself inside and—
"I said look at me, Clark."
His voice is softer this time. Not so like a knife. Clark opens his eyes and blinks at him, two tears escaping his brimming eyes and rolling past his lashes.
"You don't get to sit there and cry and expect my pity," Lex says, his own eyes wet.
Clark sniffs hard and wipes a hand across his cheeks. Nods.
"I don't want to know the specifics of each and every one of your lies told to me over the span of the last seven years. I want to know why you're here. I want to know where we are, 15 years from now."
"You hate me," Clark says quietly.
"Why? Have you told me what you've just told me now?"
Clark shakes his head and wipes his dripping nose.
Lex sits back and stretches his arms across the back of the couch. "I'm not interested in playing 20 questions. Get on with it."
"It might be better to ease into it."
"It's a little late for that."
Clark nods. You don't know who I am. You don't remember this. You don't remember anything.
"Spit it out, Clark," Lex says.
"You're dead," is what comes out.
Lex squints at him and pulls his arms from the back of the couch to rest his elbows on his knees and lean forward.
"I'm dead," Lex repeats, skeptically.
"Two years from now," Clark says. "You die. In an explosion."
Lex is still squinting. "If I'm dead, then how—"
"You made clones," Clark says.
Lex seems to reject this, shaking his head. "No. They were failures. All of them. Every single one since Emily Dins—"
Clark tilts his head from side to side.
"What do you mean—" Lex mimics his head tilt.
"Most of the clones were failures. They aged and degenerated too rapidly for them to live any longer than a few months at most. But you didn't need your clones to live a long time. You just needed them viable for long enough that you could use them to heal your injuries."
Lex processes this, staring at an unfixed point between himself and Clark. A wrinkle appears between his brows.
He hasn't started this project yet, then. Not at this point on the timeline.
He must not have kicked it off until after.
After the Fortress almost killed him.
After Clark's Fortress almost killed him.
All this time, Clark had considered this proof of how meager his humanity. A willingness to replicate versions of himself who could think, feel, dream, just to use them for parts and scrap the rest. Like that's all he ever cared about. Power. Control. And extending it, whatever the cost. Killing children. That's what it was tantamount to. Killing lesser developed versions of himself that carried his DNA.
Like Kon.
It doesn't justify it. Not completely. Knowing that Lex hadn't started producing and using these clones until his life literally depended on it. But Clark… he can at least understand it, now. Better than he had.
Lex was only 28 when the Fortress collapsed on him. 28 when he was put on life support.
He hadn't wanted to live forever. Just for a little longer.
"You said there was an explosion," Lex says suddenly. "So how… if there wasn't even anything left to salvage. How?"
"You managed to create a composite clone before you died, using the best parts of each version. But you didn't finish it before you died. You never got around to creating the heart for it."
"Okay," Lex says, stretching out the word. He stares at Clark. "I am adequately held in suspense. Go on."
"Do you believe in alternate realities?"
"A philosophical tangent? Now?"
"Just answer the question."
"That's like asking me if I believe in life on other planets."
Clark snorts and the noise almost surprises a smile onto Lex's mouth, so quick that anyone without Clark's reaction time might have missed it.
"I was trapped in a different frequency," Lex says. "One might consider that an alternate reality. Some circles believe that's what our dreams are, Clark. Haven't you ever had a dream where someone you haven't seen in years shows up, and the very next day you run into them out of the blue?"
No, Clark thinks. You're never the same you.
But he says, "yes," anyway, because of Sarah. The girl he'd never met before she invaded his dreams.
"How would you explain that?" Lex asks. "Coincidence? That's one of your favorite words, isn't it?"
Clark almost rolls his eyes, but thinks better of it. "I'm not sure, Lex. The alternate reality I'm talking about can't be accessed through dreams. Only through a device from my home planet. It switches you with the parallel universe version of yourself."
Lex's eyes flash with familiar curiosity. He would have loved to get his hands on the mirror box. Only to have found out in a parallel universe where he and Clark actually were raised as brothers, Clark murdered him.
For Lionel's love.
All of the pieces had always been there. The whys. How could someone kill their own parent? That's what Clark had asked Chloe 15 years ago. And she'd told him:
Total absence of love.
And so there was. A total absence of love. Right up until Jor-El reprogrammed Lionel to love and look out for Clark.
That love had never extended to Lex.
On either Earth.
Whether or not Lex tried.
"Where did you go, Clark?"
Clark looks up at him. "He was never a good father to you."
Lex blinks at him and sits back. His eyes drag across Clark's face, hard and flat. "That's meaningless, now."
A younger version of him might have just shrunk down at that; sat mute while his palms, the back of his neck, stung with shame.
This version of him knows better. "Is it?"
Lex swallows and clenches his jaw, looking off to the side.
Not meaningless. It matters. Even now. Even here. Perhaps more than ever.
"I assume there's more," Lex says, in a hushed voice. "Or is the end of your yarn simply the revelation that just as we are not alone in the universe, neither is our universe alone in the multiverse? You do remember I grew up reading comic books, Clark. None of this is shocking to me."
"Your dad," Clark begins again, then swallows, his mouth feeling dry with the terror of what comes next. "He had this device. In both realities. I managed to get my hands on it in this one, but he still had it in the other one. He transported himself to this reality so that he could… do right by you. The way he hadn't where he'd come from."
Clark pauses, glancing up at Lex, at his slowly rising and falling chest. His expressionless face.
"He worked to finish what you started. Complete your clone. Supply it with a heart." Clark's own heart seizes in his chest before adding, "His."
Lex blinks. He nods, sucks a breath in, and sits back. He lifts one of his hands up to stare at it. Flips it over. Rubs at his cheek. Then lowers that hand to his chest. Right over his beating heart.
"His," Lex repeats, as Clark watches tears collect along his lower lids.
If Clark could feel his legs, he'd use them to stand up, walk over to Lex, and sit down next to him. If Clark could feel his hands, he'd slide one of them under Lex's so that he could feel it. His heart. So that he could try to memorize the beat of it against his palm.
"So the me that you know now isn't even me," Lex says, jarring Clark from his fantasy. "He's a clone, with a black heart."
"He's you, Lex," Clark argues, his voice watery, wobbly. Unconvincing. Like he's still trying to believe it himself. If he looks like Lex, and thinks like Lex—
"You grieved me," Lex says. It isn't a question.
Clark dashes more tears away from his eyes.
"You don't believe it's me, either."
"Of course I do," Clark volleys back, all desperation. He has to. "Whatever way I can —" Clark cuts himself off before he finishes that. Whatever way I can have you.
"He's you," Clark says. "And you're him."
"Replace the parts," Lex says, "and is it still Theseus's ship? What makes a soul? That is the fundamental question, isn't it? The soul, the self. Is it still mine, when everything else has been switched out? What do you think, Clark? What makes you you?"
His life. Everything he's ever been through. Every person he's ever met.
His memories.
"I don't know, Lex. Is it any one thing?
"It was Aristotle who said that our ability to remember is what separates us from lower animals. The process by which our sensory experience of our lived experience is stored in our cells. Our memories make us who we are. That was the most important component of the cloning process, and we didn't know, at first, how to transplant them. Turns out, we didn't have to. Given time, the memories would naturally manifest as the body fully developed. Call it the science of the soul. The embodiment of the immaterial. Memory."
Clark looks down between his boots.
"Clark."
Clark continues looking at the floor and down down down. Down through the parquet, down through the dirt, down through the earth's tangled roots and wriggling worms.
"Clark."
Clark finally picks his head up and looks at him.
"Earlier, you asked if I remembered you."
Clark stares at him.
"Why did you ask me that?"
Do you think that'll ever happen to us?
I think our friendship will be the stuff of legends.
"Clark."
It fucking hurts. To get him back again, but only temporarily. A Lex who knows who he is. A Lex who remembers him. A Lex who doesn't refer to him as alien filth. A Lex who would never point a gun at his heart and shoot.
But maybe it doesn't have to be temporary. Maybe he really can get him back.
Bruce always chides him for his naive optimism. His unwavering hope. But the truth is: it's all an act. A disguise he dons, just like his cape.
He stopped hoping for things a very long time ago.
But this. This.
A stray tear rolls down his cheek as he imagines it. Lex, waking up next to him, looking into the face of Superman, and saying, "Clark."
Remembering him.
Is it possible? Can he really get him back?
Not if Clark repeats the pattern that broke them in the first place.
Not if he can't tell Lex the truth.
The only way out is through.
And it starts here.
"There was a neurotoxin you created," Clark tells him, once he's sure his voice won't break. "It erases a person's memories."
"How far back?"
"All of them."
"You're saying I don't remember any of it," Lex says.
Clark looks at him, trying to keep his face carefully blank. You don't get to sit there and cry and expect my pity.
"I don't remember you," Lex continues.
Clark holds his whole body still. Doesn't blink, doesn't breathe, doesn't look away.
"I don't remember you," Lex repeats, almost to himself this time. And then with no preamble, he stands. Stands, turns around, and walks toward the doors.
8
"Lex."
There's no stutter to his gait.
"Lex, wait."
He doesn't.
Clark almost trips on his way to block Lex from leaving. He never trips. Not unless he's unfocused. Panicked.
The way he is now. Lex was nearly at the threshold by the time Clark sped in front of him. One toe just an inch further and all of this would have been reset. Clark's organs liquefy at the prospect.
Of having to do this all over again.
"You can't go, Lex."
Lex looks down at Clark's hands, planted on his chest. He grips his wrists and flings them off. Stormy, overcast eyes land on Clark's. Dark enough to drown in.
"Why not?" He asks, with menacing quiet. "I forget all of this once I do, don't I?"
"Yes, but—"
"I FORGET MY ENTIRE LIFE, CLARK."
The furor of his outburst sets Clark off balance and he realizes, too late, that he's falling back.
Just an inch.
It's just an inch.
But it'll take less than that to—
He's back, flat on his feet again.
And he waits for it, with a sinking gut.
My father just died, and you're already breaking and entering?
But the words don't come.
Because it hasn't reset.
Clark never fell past the threshold.
Lex's fist is bunched in his shirt. He whips it back like Clark has burned him when he realizes what he's done.
Spared Clark. Protected him.
From having to go through this all over again.
This was the man who Clark was afraid would hurt him if he found out his secret.
Why?
Fury boils his blood. A seething, blustering disappointment.
For not trusting his gut all those years. For listening to everyone else who said Lex couldn't be trusted.
It was confirmation bias. They looked for the signs, few and trivial as they might have been, that proved their deeply held beliefs. That Luthors were bad. Selfish. Driven by their bottom line. They ignored the contradictions. Perhaps they didn't even know the contradictions. Because Lex was never one to boast about the things he was doing right.
But Clark. He was supposed to know better.
He did know better.
So why?
Clark almost misses Lex turning on his heel, heading for the other exit, while he's deep in contemplation.
This time, he doesn't trip.
Lex shoves at him, his palms landing against Clark's chest like infant dandelions. Clark doesn't budge and Lex releases an anguished grunt, before dropping his hands to his side. He steps up to Clark, close enough than Clark can see the swirls in his irises, like raging seas. "Let me go, Clark."
"That's the whole problem, Lex. I can't."
He can finally take a breath again when Lex steps back from him. There's enough space between them that Clark can take one more step inside the room. And there. A deeper breath. His chest relaxes some. They're not so close to the reset switch anymore.
"Who am I to you, Clark?" Lex stares at him, all curious, searching eyes. "Where you come from. You said that we hate each other."
"I said that you hate me."
"How is that possible if I don't even remember you?"
"Because… in the future, I'm not Clark Kent to you. Clark Kent is just a middling reporter at the Daily Planet who you never give a quote to. The person you're obsessed with killing is known to the rest of the world as Superman."
Lex raises his eyebrows. "Superman."
"I didn't pick it."
"Who did?"
"Is that really important?"
"Indulge me."
"Lois."
"Lois Lane," Lex says, his tongue curling around the consonants. Clark squirms under his penetrating gaze until something switches in Lex's expression. It's quick. Seamless. A mask slipped on without Lex ever lifting his hands. Placid eyes and a joyless smile.
"You're with her now. Lois."
Says it like…
No.
Maybe.
It's impossible to tell whether it's actually how he says it or if it's just what Clark wants to hear.
He's gone back and forth on it over the years. The lingering looks. The way Lex hugged him using every cell of his body. The way he held him for a beat longer than what might have been considered friendly.
Clark had always chalked it up to his intensity in all things.
That was just the way Lex was. Odd. Excessive. Nothing more.
Then the dreams started. Not long after Lex started trying to kill him.
Lex showing up to the farm in the middle of the night telling Clark he remembered.
Kissing him.
And Clark…
He'd always kiss him back. He'd kiss him the way Lex always hugged him.
Using every cell in his body.
And then came the waking. Lois's steady breathing in his ear. Tears wetting the creases of his eyes.
Chagrined. He was chagrined that he'd never know what it felt like.
To kiss him.
Chagrined that he'd never know if those lingering looks, those long embraces, belied deeper feelings that were all too easily masked beneath his reputation for unseemly passion. For frightening intensity.
You're with her now. Lois.
Jealous. Could Lex have been jealous?
"We were together," Clark says. "We were married. We divorced a few years ago. It just wasn't…"
Right feels like the wrong word.
"Working," is what he settles on. And it's true. It wasn't working.
Lois was many things. Is many things. Fiercely loyal. Stubbornly independent. Bristly around her edges. Soft at her center. A terrible speller. A formidable investigator. His family. His best friend.
But one thing she is not is an idiot.
It didn't take long once the dreams started, once Lex Luthor began harpooning Superman in the press, once Clark started burying himself in saving the world to avoid sparing any thought toward the emptiness that fixed on him any time Lex managed to draw him into one of his traps…it didn't take long for Lois to understand that the Clark she married was no longer the Clark she was married to.
After Oliver, she told herself she'd never let herself come second to her partner's supposed calling.
This is what she told Clark when he came home to her bags packed by the door.
It was kind of her to frame it that way. To let both of them preserve their dignity. To prevent Lois from becoming the woman who stayed and Clark from becoming the man who left.
Even though he already had.
But this was years ago now. Three years. They've been divorced almost three years.
It was water under the bridge.
More water under the bridge.
"What happened to Lana?"
Lana. God. Last he heard, Lana was hanging up her figurative cape in Chengdu, heading up a covert reconnaissance op for Diana. She sends him letters occasionally that smell of her signature jasmine and are...
Usually asking after Diana.
Something must give way in his expression because Lex asks, in an anxious voice: "Dead?"
The Lex of this moment doesn't yet know that the Lana of this moment has been set in a trance by Brainiac and sits catatonic in a room.
Days later, he'll come to Clark's loft and hurl a football at his chest, asking him if there's anything he can do to help her.
He loved her, in his own way.
That's another thing the passing years have allowed Clark to understand.
Being with Lana was never about spiting Clark.
She was a refuge. Someone who believed in him. Someone who told him things.
Someone who Clark used to be.
His friend.
Which is why he can't bring himself to tell this Lex what he does to her in the future. The pain he causes her.
Because of you, Clark says, I can never be in the same room with her again.
It was a hateful, spiteful Lex who did that.
And this Lex isn't him yet.
"It's complicated," Clark says. A version of the truth.
"Always was with you two."
"Lex," Clark says, exhaustion seeping from him. "I'm not here to unpack my relationship baggage with you." How did they even get here?
"Are you not, Clark? And here I thought that's exactly what we were doing. You're looking for forgiveness. From a version of me that no longer exists. So you can sleep again at night. Is that it? That's why you're here, isn't it?"
"This," Clark gestures to the room around them, "isn't real. It's a memory. It's our memory. Nothing we say to each other here changes anything that's to come. The next 15 years still happen exactly the way they already have."
"Then why?"
"If your memories were all erased, Lex, why does this one still exist?"
Lex just looks back at him, a wrinkle in his brow. He turns away from him, walks toward his desk, and Clark follows him, giving him little room to escape.
"Memory is a complex process. It doesn't just happen in one place. It happens in several. Like the nervous system. It stores the physical experiences of memories."
"Picked up a neuroscience degree in your future, Clark?"
"More like a few intelligent friends." And about a thousand logged hours reading through academic journals, internet conspiracy threads, and the Summerholt research that was seized during an FBI investigation, but somehow found its way into Bruce's hands. But he didn't need to let Lex know that trying to get his memories back had become basically his only hobby outside of seeing the occasional matinee.
"The point is, memory is resilient. You remember when I lost my memories? Even when I forgot everything, I still remembered."
"Remembered not to trust me," Lex snipes.
Ignoring that, Clark continues. "The neurotoxin attacks the pathways for cognitive recognition in the brain. Not the body. Not the cells. Think about how many of your serums failed, Lex. Think about how many of Summerholt's failed. But this one worked perfectly?"
Lex turns his gaze away from him and crosses his arms.
"If this memory exists, I think there might be more of them. And I think you're keeping them hidden. You, inside this moment."
Lex picks his eyes up to him. "And why would I do that, Clark?"
"You tell me, Lex."
"You're the one with all the answers. You know what's coming."
"I don't have all the answers."
"But you do have a theory."
"Just that…" Clark looks at him. "It's almost like…"
"Spit it out, Clark."
"Like this is a scar. Not a memory. That's why it's different from the others. It left a deeper mark."
Lex purses his lips. Nods his head slowly. "It's an interesting thought, Clark. Some faiths believe that that's what causes hauntings. A trauma so deep it causes a tear in the fabric of time. It creates a scar. You walk through a hallway and feel a chill, like someone's watching you. Perhaps you hear a clock ticking when there's no longer a clock there. You smell the perfume she used to wear, though she'd been in the ground for nigh on a decade. In some ways, all memories are scars. Don't you think?"
"I think," Clark says, "that you already started trying to forget me here. On this night. After this fight. I think you already started trying to forget yourself."
Lex's eyes flash quickly away from Clark and fix on something in the corner of the room. When Clark turns, he doesn't see anything. Just hears the patter of footsteps on the stairs.
"He's here, isn't he?" Clark asks.
Lex turns to him, eyes wary.
"The boy. Alexander."
Lex blinks his eyes and tears them from Clark as Clark steps in front of him. "I saw him earlier. He's trying to tell you the same thing I am, isn't he? He's telling you not to forget who you are."
"Get the fuck away from me, Clark," Lex snarls, shoving his hands into his chest and moving past him.
"Don't leave, Lex," Clark calls after him, and Lex stops beside the pool table.
"You know," he says, his back to Clark. "When I was a kid, I saw my mother kill my baby brother. Did you know that?" He spins around to face Clark. "Did my father tell you that?"
Clark stares back at him, mute. How does Lex even — how could he have—
His mother.
Lex loved his mother.
How could he have loved someone who—
"It was to spare him from my father's parenting," Lex continues, jolting Clark from his thoughts. "In her deluded mind, she was keeping him safe. That's what she said, when I found her. Now he'll be safe."
Lex drops his gaze, but not before Clark sees his haunted expression.
"My father thought that I did it, and I never corrected him. I changed the memory in my mind. To protect my mother from my father. To protect my memory of her. I suppressed it, for years, because the truth was worse than the hole its absence left in my mind."
Like he's approaching an easily startled animal, Clark takes slow steps toward him, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground, tracing the geometric lines of the parquet floor until the shapes are interrupted by Lex's black leather dress shoes. With a deep breath, he drags his eyes up his legs, up his chest, until he meets Lex's pained, watery eyes.
"If. I. Would. Have. Tried."
Clark shuts his eyes as if to close the door on the seeping guilt that's already beginning to twist his intestines.
"I realize, when you say that, that I've already lost you. And yes. You're right. It begins now. This night. My forgetting you. Because I realize it's better to forget you entirely than to remember a version of you who would say that to me."
"And what about what you said to me? I wonder how much of a strain it put on his heart?"
"I was angry with you," Lex says in a quiet voice. "I am angry with you."
"And I was angry with you," Clark says, his throat feeling clogged, eyes stinging once again. "That's the opposite of being lost to someone, Lex. I was 21 when we had this fight. The same age you were when you hit me with your car. I was young. A kid."
They're almost tucked into each other now, Lex's face just below his, their chests inflating in sync.
"What about now, Clark?" Lex says, his voice nearly a whisper. "Where you come from? Is this all some kind of trick? I finally have power. I finally have control. And you want to take it away from me."
Clark shakes his head. "I want you to remember me."
"Why? What does it matter to you?
He barely has to bend his head before his lips find Lex's.
9
Timid. Bodies both held taught.
That's what it's like at first. One pair of lips pressed against another, neither moving nor shifting, except to breathe.
And when those breaths are finally taken, Clark pulls back to look at Lex. See if he's … if this… if Clark's alone in this. If he's misread all the signs.
Lex lifts his fingers to his lips, as if mesmerized. When he picks his eyes up to Clark's, his pupils are saucers. Clark can hear his pulse racing. His heart thudding heavily. Blood rushing south from his extremities.
"I always wondered," Lex says. "What it would be like."
"And?" Clark prods, feeling his blush extend all the way to his ears.
"I'm not sure that was long enough to decide."
Clark steps up to him again, his heart pounding in his chest, hands gone numb. His eyes flick over Lex's face, nervous. Nervous that… maybe all this time…
All this time.
And maybe it won't even be good.
But then Lex's hand slides along his jaw. His fingers thread into his hair. His other hand comes to rest on his shoulder.
And Clark no longer wonders if it'll even be good.
He just doesn't care.
His mouth is on Lex's again and this time, it's all heat, when Lex parts for him. Clark's arm comes around his waist and now both of Lex's hands have slid into his scalp, sending shockwaves of pleasure to his core. Clark walks him backwards until he feels Lex land against something solid.
The pool table.
Lex's tongue is in his mouth as Clark's hands slide along the felt, his swollen cock pressing against Lex's. Lex's hands drop from Clark's scalp to drag down his chest and up his shirt and Clark moans into Lex's mouth when his thumbs swirl his nipples.
When they break, they're both panting. Lex's fists are balled into his shirt and Clark is pressed as hard against him as physically possible without crushing him.
"Okay," Clark breathes. "Verdict?"
"How long?" Lex asks him, instead of answering. "How long have you…" Lex trails off.
I love you like a brother, Clark.
It was the one of the last things he'd ever said to him.
After the dreams started, Clark began to wonder if it might have been careful hedging.
The way he phrased it.
Like a brother.
Clark's feelings for Lex… they were like a coin flip. He didn't know what they were until the decision had been made for him. Until there was no longer a decision to make.
But if he's honest with himself, the seeds of the feelings he has for Lex now…
They started taking root a long time ago.
He was never able to understand it at the time. That clawing feeling in his chest, the buzzing in his ears, when Lex kissed Desiree in front of him. When Victoria had her hands all over him. It couldn't have been jealousy.
Except… that's exactly what it was.
Jealousy.
He was just too young, too unacquainted with his deeper desires, to understand how that could be possible.
"I think I've always…" Clark begins, then licks his lips, nervously. "Had feelings for you. That I didn't fully understand. But it wasn't until recently that… I mean the last few years."
"The last few years," Lex says. "When I've been trying to kill you."
Clark nods.
"Should I be reading into that?"
Clark smirks. "No. I think it's just that… this is going to sound bad. But once you were closed off from me, like really well and closed off from me, I realized that. Well."
"Tale as old as time, Clark. You wanted me once I became unavailable."
"It's not like that."
Lex raises an eyebrow.
"Thinking about you… like that. I couldn't. It wasn't—"
"Clark." Lex's hands go to his arms. "You grew up in a red state under the unrelenting pressure to exude normalcy. Banality. Exploring your feelings for your older male friend..." Lex breaks off with a sharp inhaled breath that trickles back out as a laugh. "You would have had a nervous breakdown. Certainly, your parents would have strung me up by my toes if they so much as caught you smiling at me the wrong way."
Somehow, Clark thought it was less that he hadn't smiled at Lex in all the wrong ways, and more that his parents were just oblivious.
"But you thought about it," Clark says. "With me."
Lex nods. "I had enough sense of self-preservation to resist making a move."
"For how long."
"You don't want to know the answer to that."
"Yes I do."
"Basically from the moment I met you."
"The river," Clark says, feeling a tug behind his naval and a phantom caress between his legs.
"You were what? 15? I don't know what was wrong with me. I couldn't get you out of—"
Clark's mouth silences him as his hands come to Lex's waist. His thumbs graze his hip bones right before they slip down beneath his waistband to untuck his shirt. Deftly, he undoes the buttons, restraining himself from tearing the shirt asunder. It wouldn't matter. It's not real. None of this is real. But even in a memory, he wants this, with Lex, to be soft. Intentional. The way it might have been. Had they—
Unbidden, an awful memory pops into his head. Lex, his hands like claws on his face, forcing Clark to watch him ravish Lana.
And was the memory corrupted now, or had Lex been hard then, as he made Clark watch?
Was it corrupted, or had Clark been hard, too?
Imagining himself as Lex.
Imagining himself as Lana.
I always knew there was a voyeur lurking behind that telescope.
"I wish you would have tried something," Clark gasps on a breath, his mouth hot and dragging messily down Lex's chin.
Lex huffs a laugh. "No you don't, Clark." He leans back from him, steadying Clark with two hands on his shoulders, thumbs pressed against his collarbones. "It would have ruined everything."
"Everything was ruined anyway."
"But you weren't," Lex says. "Not by me."
Clark presses forward until Lex drops his hands so Clark can capture his mouth again, penetrate it with his tongue. He wraps his hands under Lex's thighs and lifts him up until his ass rests against the felt of the pool table, and Clark steps between his legs, continuing to taste his tongue, his cheeks, his throat. He moans inside Lex's mouth when he feels Lex palm him between his legs; breaks the kiss before the slip in his focus results in his weight breaking the pool table.
"Fuck," Lex rasps in an almost whisper. "Does the Lex of the future know what you're packing, Clark? There's your solution. You don't need to worry about any of this guerilla memory recall. All you need to do is seduce him. He'd be on his knees for you."
Clark rubs his palms up Lex's thighs. They span more than their entire width, fingers to wrist. With a warmth rising to his cheeks, he tells Lex the truth.
"I actually tried to hit on you. As Clark Kent. During an interview."
It was earlier this year. Lois had finally gotten serious with someone new and she'd been on Clark to get out there himself.
If she was able to strangle him, she would have, when she found out who Clark decided to set his targets on first.
"And what happened?"
Clark had twirled his hair a bit, went without a tie, unbuttoned a few buttons toward the top of his shirt. He'd tried a fancy cocktail just so that he could ask Lex if he wanted to try it. And when Lex commented, as Clark expected, that it was a little too sweet for his taste, Clark said he might have something that would change his mind about that.
"I think you were interested."
"You think."
A smile that Clark hadn't seen in years touched Lex's lips that night, as he stared over the table at a bespectacled Clark. One who'd never pulled him from the river. One who hadn't managed to save him, in the end.
Oh? This Lex asked him. And what would that be?
I have it on good authority they make a mean rice pudding here.
"I aborted the plan before it could go any further than drinks," Clark tells the Lex whose thighs are warm under his hands.
"Why?"
"I thought… I thought if we went home together…. I thought it would probably be meaningless to you."
"Clark Kent," Lex rubs a hand up his jaw, a look of fondness on his face. "15 years into the future and still the enemy of casual sex."
"I didn't say I wasn't having casual sex."
Lex quirks an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Just...not with you. It couldn't be casual with you."
Clark almost whispers the last part, attempting to cast his embarrassed eyes to the side, but Lex sticks a finger under his chin and lifts until Clark holds his gaze.
There's nothing teasing in it. All sincerity.
"You're right, Clark," he says. "It couldn't."
Lex stretches up to kiss him, sliding himself off the pool table and pressing his chest up to Clark's. Pressing his swollen arousal up against Clark.
Wants him.
Wants him.
Lex wants him.
And Clark wants Lex.
So ardently, he might prematurely erupt.
And wouldn't that be a nice first and last time to remember him by?
Lex pulls away from him, pressing another soft kiss against his lips. "It wouldn't be meaningless now," he says in a husk.
"But aren't you angry with me?"
"Yes."
"About all the times I lied to you."
"Yes."
"About my secrecy endangering you."
"Yes."
Lex kisses him again, deeply, his tongue slipping into his mouth, his arms crossing around his neck. He pulls his head back, just slightly, just so their mouths break, but Clark can still feel the graze of Lex's nose against his.
"I knew you were lying to me, Clark. Every single time. And I loved you anyway. Why should now be any different?"
Because you won't remember it, Clark thinks. You won't remember this, and when we wake up, you might still not remember me. And it will hurt, so much more, when that happens. If we do this.
But Lex's hands are on him. His eyes are dilated and fixed tenderly on Clark's face, looking at him with all the tenderness Clark never thought he'd see coming from Lex again. Lex is here. A Lex who knows him. Loves him. And if this is Clark's only chance to be with him—
Then hell. He's going to take it.
10
He would have had him in a bed.
Soft, silk sheets. Lit candles. Gentle French composers playing quiet enough in the background he'd think the music was coming from his head.
Lex had thought about it. He'd put a lot of thought into it.
How he would have Clark.
Fantasies that ended right around the time that—
Well. They never truly ended.
At least this is what Lex tells Clark.
But a bed is out of the question, since they can't leave the room.
Instead, they slide the coffee table off the rug and pull the chairs back. Lex pulls blankets Clark has never seen from a trunk Clark figured Lex was storing ancient artifacts or maybe weapons in and together, they drape the furs and cashmere across the persian rug.
Then they kneel, knee-to-knee, in front of the fire, pretending it's Lex's candles.
Overhead, the French music starts to play.
And Lex—
And Clark—
They reach for each other.
11
Afterwards, they recline sweat-slicked, fire-warmed, and cocooned in one of the furs, upstairs. In the library.
It took some cajoling on Lex's part to convince Clark that this did not count as another room.
Cajoling in the form of Lex's hand holding on tightly to his, leading Clark, eyes welded shut, step by step up the narrow stairs.
The first words he heard, on the rising:
"My father just died, and you're already breaking and entering?"
Clark might have fallen backwards down the stairs if not for Lex's hand still holding onto his.
He opened his eyes to see Lex roaring with laughter.
"Not funny," Clark told him.
"Oh come on, Clark," Lex wheedled. "I'm a dead man brought to life by my late father's heart. Let me have my small amusements where I can."
Another amusement. Reading to Clark while he rests his head on Lex's chest.
Clark is admittedly a much bigger fan of this one.
Lex's voice is different when he reads. It's lower than his regular voice. A little raspier. But that might just be because he's been reading for hours now.
A fact brought about by the chirping of birds.
"'Poor Frederick,' said he at last," Lex reads. "'Now he must begin all over again with somebody else. I think we must get him to Bath. Sophy must write, and beg him to come to Bath. Here are pretty girls enough, I am sure. It would be of no use to go to Uppercross again, for that other Miss Musgrove, I find, is bespoke by her cousin, the young parson. Do you not think, Miss Elliot, we had better try to get him to Bath?'"
"You and Victoria must be getting pretty close."
"Did you say something Clark?"
"I—" Clark starts. He hadn't. But that was his voice. He'd heard it, too.
"You seem surprised."
Clark feels Lex sit up behind him and he places the book beside them, fanned out to mark the page they're on.
"She just doesn't seem like your type."
"Relationships aren't always about love, Clark. Sometimes they're about mutual goals. Not every girl is Lana Lang."
Lex snorts, and it startles Clark away from his chest. "Sorry," Lex says when Clark turns to him. "It's just…" he trails off. "Not funny. You're right."
Clark continues to stare at him as Lex and Clark continue to talk on the first floor.
"Yeah, sorry. It's none of my business really."
"It's okay. I admire your standards. Don't lose that."
"You know, I decided to fight for Lana."
"Good for you. Why the new attitude?"
"I decided to take the advice of a friend. Don't you have another watch?"
"When you lost your watch," Clark says, but Lex is already pushing up to stand with the blanket around his shoulders. It drags across the floor on his way to the banister.
"I don't see it."
"What are you, part bloodhound?"
Lex slips the blanket around Clark when he arrives by his side. "Right there in front of me," Lex mutters, looping his arm around Clark's waist, letting him hold the other edge of the blanket. "Rubbing my nose in it."
"I was trying to help you find a family heirloom."
"And you did, in the end." Lex turns under Clark's arm to look up at him and Clark bends down to kiss him, just as the sound of wood striking a pool ball hits.
"Clark. I've been expecting you."
"Really?"
"You can save the awkward silences. Desiree told me everything."
"Oh." Lex smiles against Clark's lips. "I have to see this."
He slides in front of Clark and leans over the banister while Clark folds over him, resting his chin on his shoulder so that he can watch the scene unfold with him.
They're not transparent, the versions of themselves below. At first glance they appear just as solid as they are. But their borders are all wrong. Smudged. Like rubbed chalk.
"Lex, I really don't know what to say."
"All my life, I've had to second-guess the intentions of others. I'd reached the point where I'd started to think friends were a luxury I couldn't afford. Till I met you, Clark. From the day you pulled me out of that river, you've been the one person I could trust completely."
"I'm glad you feel that way, Lex."
"Maybe that's why I find your infatuation with my wife so... troubling."
"My infatuation? Lex, I don't know what she told you, but she came on to me."
"Oh, you expect me to believe that? Come on... I saw the way you looked at her the other day. She told me you've been eyeing her in class..."
"No, Lex... you have to see this. Your wife's real name is Alison Sanders. She grew up in Smallville. I bet she didn't tell you that, did she?"
They're laughing so hard the banister creaks, but their younger versions don't notice. Clark feels a tear roll down his cheek, and his chest hurts from trying to be quiet.
It's surreal, standing here, his bare chest pressed against Lex's bare back, watching the scenes of their life play out beneath them. Clark barging in to alternately accuse Lex of crimes and ask him for favors. Countless philosophical lectures that Lex now mutters jesus christ at when he has to watch himself deliver them in real time. Their arguments and their pool games and the way they looked at each other.
Clark is so immersed, he doesn't even realize, until he starts feeling a tug at the back of his head, what it all means.
They're coming back.
Lex's memories.
"Look at your moves, Lex. They're rash, no thought to their consequences."
"If I wanted a running commentary, I'd buy one of your books on tape."
Lionel's voice replaces Memory Clark's below, and Clark watches father and son fence each other, bodies sheathed in white. Lionel has Lex on his back, chin poked with the tip of his foil.
"You know what your problem is?"
Clark wraps his arms around a frozen Lex, his breath shallow in his chest. He presses his cheek up to his and pretends he can breathe for him.
"Enlighten me."
"You're ruled by your emotions. You always have been. And that can be a fatal flaw. I want those workers gone by noon tomorrow. Meeting adjourned."
Memory Clark replaces Lionel again, and he and Memory Lex start talking again about something or other.
But Clark isn't listening. And he knows neither is Lex.
"I didn't hate him, you know," Lex says quietly, sinking back against Clark.
"I know," Clark says, equally as softly.
"Not even when I pushed him."
"I know," Clark says again.
"It was the opposite of that," Lex says, his voice breaking slightly. He tips his head back, and Clark watches the tears collecting in his eyes drip from the corners. "I just … it was either he went, or I did. I couldn't bear to watch him replace me. Again."
"I know." It seems to be the only thing Clark knows how to say.
Lex turns around and faces him. "Do you? Or do you think I'm a monster? I don't get any better after this. You said I try to kill you. That I'm obsessed with it. Trying to kill you. And I'm guessing there's more you haven't shared for my own sake. How can you love me, after all of that?"
"It's not a matter of can, Lex. It's just…" he shrugs. How to put this in terms that Lex understands?
Poetry. That’s Lex’s language.
Farming. That’s Clark’s.
"The sun rises in the East. Water runs downhill. And I love you. They're just facts."
Lex smiles and lifts a hand to his cheek, shaking his head like he can't believe it. That Clark is here. Saying these things. To him.
Understandable. It took Clark 22 years to work up the courage to even think them.
"I wish I could see you where you are," Lex tells him, his voice hushed, like the versions of themselves downstairs might hear him. "What you look like. What your life looks like. What the world looks like."
Clark swallows against the emotion welling up inside of him. "Maybe you will."
Lex smiles sadly at him. "Now, come on, Clark. I know we didn't explicitly promise to tell each other the truth, but please. Don't start lying now."
A tear slips from Clark's eyes, and his heart throbs like a leaden fist is squeezing it inside his chest.
Lex is right. He deserves the truth.
He always has.
"You won't remember any of this," Clark says, his voice thick from a clogged throat.
Lex. He just keeps smiling at him. "I know. That's why I can't remember what happens when it resets, right? The me up there is contained, so he can't slip in here and thwart your efforts. When you're gone, it'll reset again."
Clark nods, tears rolling down his cheeks.
"Maybe he'll remember," Lex says.
"Maybe he won't."
"Then make me. Don't give up on me until I do."
Clark bites his lower lip, trying to quell his emotion, but it breaks through anyway, his chest heaving with a sob. "What if you remember and you still hate me? There's so much you don't know, Lex. So much that—"
"It doesn't matter, Clark," Lex says, laying a hand on his chest, rubbing slow, smooth motions over his lungs, his heart. "If he's really a clone of me. Then it doesn't matter. It's like you said. It's just a fact. The sun rises in the East and water flows downhill."
"And you love me," Clark whispers.
Lex nods. "I love you."
Clark lays a hand against his chest, feeling his heart thump beneath his palm. Closing his eyes, he tries to memorize it.
"Besides," Lex says, while Clark still has his eyes closed. "You really have nothing to worry about. You've had loads of practice now figuring out how not to tell me the truth."
Clark laughs, wetly. He opens his eyes and blinks wetly, too. "You're going to give me such a hard time."
"Oh, I'm sure I'll be brutal with you."
"And Frederick hasn't even gotten to Bath yet."
Lex smiles. "I'm sure he'll be able to pick up where I left off."
Clark feels his face fracturing again under the weight of his grief, but Lex doesn't wait to watch it this time. He pulls Clark into an embrace before another sob breaks through, arms squeezing tight around his waist.
"It's not really me down here, Clark," Lex says in a consoling voice. "I'm up there. Waiting for you."
Clark nods and squeezes him tighter.
It's true.
This Lex isn't his Lex. Not really.
Clark still has so much to answer for. So much to atone for. And this Lex isn't the one who can absolve the aching guilt that still burrows deep inside his gut.
Another tight squeeze against his waist, but Clark can hardly feel it.
"I think you were the best thing to ever happen to any of us," Lex says against his shoulder. "Including Jonathan Kent."
Clark takes a deep breath of him in as his limbs start to feel fuzzy.
"And I think... all you ever wanted to do was help. And you tried harder at that than I ever had to."
12
He doesn't know if he manages to say it before he's pulled out. His back is cold against the metal and the room is quiet save for the beeping of monitors. He's aware of J'onn standing to the side in his peripheral vision, but his head feels heavy. Groggy. His mouth feels like it's been filled with cement.
No. Correction.
He feels like he's been filled with cement.
If Lex wakes up…
No. When Lex wakes up.
When Lex wakes up…
At least it'll be quick. They'll know immediately. Whether it worked.
Because Clark won't be wearing glasses.
He'll be wearing Superman's face.
Which means he'll know, immediately, which Lex is waking up.
The one who remembers him.
Or the one who doesn't.
Beside him, he hears his body shifting. Lashes blinking.
Then make me. Don't give up on me until I do.
Clark decides right then. No matter what it takes. No matter how much it hurts. If Lex doesn't remember him, he'll make him. Memory lives in the body. They're there, somewhere, inside of him, dormant. And if, when Lex wakes up, he still doesn't remember him—
13
"Clark?"