Chapter 12: Ransomed
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?
—Emily Bronte
Lex Luthor awoke with a splitting headache. No, not awoke — came to, he realized with irritation, taking in his surroundings. He was in the dark, dank power center still — the place where he had found Dolman, who lay dead on the ground ten feet away.
He recalled shooting Dolman; he was just not sure why. He painfully stood up, every muscle aching. Then he saw the gun that had apparently spilled from the physicist's pocket as he had fallen, and remembered: Clark.
He rapidly crossed to the corpse and crouched next to him to retrieve the gun and inspect it. It held green bullets — Kryptonite. And the chamber was full. He felt some cautious relief at that. Dolman could have been lying, trying to impress Lex; that was entirely possible, even probable. A stupid, fatal lie.
He pulled out his cell phone, but couldn't get a signal. He'd make that call once he was less buried underground, when morning was nearer.
If indeed morning dawned the same, he realized. To the business at hand. He turned to the rickety table where Dolman had set up the Chrono-etalon, hoping it could be salvaged from whatever had caused the overload that had knocked him out …
It wasn't there.
"What were you even doing down here, Dolman?" he asked aloud with exasperation. "Where is it?"
Dolman's conflicting stories were coming back to Lex. He had claimed that Superman had taken the device and that Dolman had killed him to get it back.
No, wait — he had simply tried to impress Lex by bragging about the Kryptonite bullets. Did he actually say he had used them? He said that Superman had stolen the device and he had lain in wait for Clark outside the Daily Planet building — Damn him, digging into my private files, Lex thought, suddenly recalling how Dolman knew Superman's identity — but Clark had never appeared. And Dolman had come here hoping Clark might show up to try to use the thing. Lex didn't doubt that Clark might get some do-gooder notion in his head to change time, prevent some "crime," by his lights, from occurring. But he was also sure the proximity of the Kryptonite embedded in Level Three's electrical system would cripple Clark.
So Dolman was that much more a fool. No surprise there.
But the fact remained that by confiscating the device, Clark had robbed him. Robbed him of years of resources, years given to aggravation dealing with that idiot scientist …
Robbed him of his mother. He pulled from his pocket a sheet of paper. It was so simple — now. A cure for Lillian's heart condition, found over twenty years too late, and all he had to do was get it back then, when she was alive, back to her doctors … and the means to do so had been snatched out of Lex's hands.
"Damn it, Clark," he muttered in the gloom. "You can never, for once, just trust me."
He ascended to the vast room of Level Three itself and tried his cell phone again. This time it worked, and he placed a call. "Mercy," he said to the woman on the line. "I need you both at Level Three. There's a mess to clean up. I'll wait until you get here." He had to make sure the area remained secure until they arrived to take care of Dolman's body. Lex had successfully escaped his Secret Service detail the night before; he could only hope he was still clear of them when he left. At least the Porsche he had driven here was well hidden — they couldn't spot him that way. Secret Service could be an enormous inconvenience at times.
He stared sullenly at the pile of mangled metal that had once been a catwalk, now cluttering the center of the room, and tried to will himself not to place another call. Dolman had not used any of those bullets — everything was fine.
He rubbed the back of his head, which temporarily diverted his thoughts: If the device had not been here to overload, what exactly had knocked him backward? Now he could vaguely recall the shockwave coming from the panel itself, but he wasn't entirely convinced that was what happened. Against all evidence, he could swear that Dolman had had the device there at one point. Yet another mystery in his life, but just now, he couldn't summon the concentration to puzzle it out. His mind kept drifting back to another matter …
He lost the battle, and dialed Clark Kent's cell phone.
"Hello?" The answering voice was groggy, woken from sleep.
"Just checking," Lex said coldly.
"Lex?" Clark was suddenly alert and, strangely, almost pleading. "Wait —"
Lex disconnected the call and settled down to wait for reprieve, when he could leave Level Three behind, free to go above ground.
At his desk in the Daily Planet offices, Clark Kent stared, almost mesmerized, at the cell phone in his hands. That was his second call from Lex in — how many hours? He looked at his watch. It was just six o'clock in the morning. Fourteen hours ago, then, he received that strange first call — Lex from another world, a world that he, Clark, had created. And apparently, now, destroyed.
A light, playful smack on the back of his head jolted him back to reality. He looked up from his contemplation of the phone to see his wife standing over him, laden with coffee and an untidy stack of paper and notebooks.
"You know, I kind of figured you were out saving the city last night, but from the looks of you, now I'm thinking you never left your desk."
"Uh … I was trying to work on the water contamination story — I'm buried in environmental reports here — but I was … distracted. Then I feel asleep."
Lois raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Fell asleep?"
"Just a couple of hours ago, I think."
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah … I don't know. It's been a weird night."
She frowned with concern, but then he saw her eyes caught by the sight of a melted black lump on his desk. "Oh," she said, "do not tell me that is Dolman's time device."
"It is."
"What the hell happened to it?"
It hadn't even occurred to him until now: She was not going to take this well, and rightly so. "I used my heat vision and destroyed it," he admitted.
"Clark, I tailed that guy for months, investigating what he was up to, discovered his connections to Lex Luthor, before I turned it over to you to let you swoop in and grab the thing. I deserved the chance — as you promised me — to inspect it before we both decided what to do with it. Instead, you pulverize it."
"I know. You're right, and I'm sorry. But something happened — it just became very important to destroy it before it could be used."
"And then you couldn't come home last night to face me?" There was exasperated humor in the question; she might yet let him off the hook, he thought.
"No, I honestly stayed here to work on the story, to take my mind off things."
"So what happened?"
"I'll tell you everything tonight, I swear — at least, as much as I understand it myself. But right now … I think I'm going to take a sick day. You'll tell Perry for me?"
She closed her eyes briefly. "You're really not working at keeping on my good side, are you?"
"What?"
"The mayor's press conference at noon? The one you were going to cover for me?" He realized that he must have looked as haggard as he felt when she continued, despite her aggravation, "And, yes, I'll do it. You don't seem to be in any shape to do the job right anyway."
"Thanks."
"You owe me."
"Don't I always?" he asked, giving her the best grin he could muster.
She laughed. "You got that right, Smallville."
Within his hearing, but not hers yet, he could tell that some other workaholic was arriving at this early hour. They wouldn't be alone for long.
"Lois?" he said as she moved to her nearby desk. "If you could have used this thing to change the past, what would you have done?"
She paused in thought, but shortly declared, "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"I'm not saying there aren't things I regret along the line, but I'm pretty happy where I am now."
"What if it were for someone else? To help someone?"
"What makes you think you would know what they might have wanted changed?" She studied him as he prepared to leave, pocketing the remains of Dolman's device, and then she asked, "Is this about Lex Luthor?" His expression apparently gave her the answer she expected, for she said with a wry but sympathetic smile, "Face it, you're an open book. Plus, Luthor's the one who financed the device that has you so concerned about this, so I figured. Go on home, and … sleep it off. Or whatever you need to do."
"I love you," he said, and kissed her goodbye as the door to the newsroom was noisily flung open.
"Oh, keep it at home, you two," Perry White grouched as he headed for his office.
Lois rolled her eyes. "Go on. I'll deal with him."
Clark made his escape before his editor could take any further notice of him. Instead of heading for the street, Clark made for the roof, and next to the Planet's rotating globe, he took flight in the direction of Smallville, not troubling to change from his disheveled clothes from the day before. His destination was vague — talk to his mom, wander the cornfields, take in an aerial view of home before returning to Metropolis?
Some part of him had decided, he realized as he alighted on Loeb Bridge. His subconscious had taken him where he didn't want to be this morning. Back to the beginning. Back to the place where, if time could indeed slip back as he leaned on the parapet, he really could start fresh. Change the past and the future. Maybe, no matter what they had done, they still would have ended up on opposing sides, but maybe it could have seemed less personal.
It was that conversation with Lana that had done it. He had spoken to her recently, the first time since Lex had lost his bid for reelection last fall. Out with him, of course, was Vice President Pete Ross, Lana's husband and Clark's childhood friend. The Luthor presidency had survived an impeachment, which had been brought on, in large part, by Clark and Lois's reporting on corruption and Superman's efforts to expose Lex's crimes. Lex had ridden the impeachment out, but when his four years were up, he had been voted out of office.
Through the years, Clark had mainly kept updated on Pete's life though Lana, and in this most recent phone call, Clark and Lana had talked of Pete's plans for the future, dancing around the issue of why he no longer had a job.
Clark couldn't remember now what he had said to provoke it, but finally Lana had said gingerly, "You have to admit, sometimes it seems you do everything you can to ruin his life."
"Lana, you know this had nothing to do with Pete …"
"And you know I'm not talking about Pete."
No, no, no. That was not his intention. He had an obligation as a journalist to expose corruption, an obligation as Superman to protect the weak. And Lex kept stepping in the way. He had told this to Lana, and she had said she understood, but he was not really sure she did. The conversation had ended awkwardly, unresolved.
Then Dr. Shawn Dolman and his time communicator had entered the picture. After Clark had taken it away from the scientist, he had brought it to work with him for safekeeping yesterday, but it had preyed on his mind. He did wonder what Lex could have intended to do with it; unfortunately, Clark had to conclude, it couldn't be anything good. By late afternoon, he was playing a little internal parlor game: How would you use it? What kind of message would you send to the past?
It was a moot point; he knew from Lois's investigation and from examination of the device itself that it need an external source of Kryptonite to work, which meant, of course, that he wouldn't be able to send a message himself. Perhaps because he knew he was safe from actually putting it into motion, perhaps because Lana's words were haunting him, he had imagined a message in a fit of wishful thinking.
How else could he have used it? He could have sent a message to his younger self — before he stood on this bridge, was hit by a Porsche and saved a man's life — and try to convince him to detangle and avoid the thousand wrong choices, wrong words, wrong lies that had led to this moment in time. Impossible. Make it a clean sweep. Save Lex from his father, the real culprit, and then maybe Lex wouldn't be Clark's friend today, but he wouldn't be his enemy either.
And so when he looked up to notice that his area of the pressroom had been emptied — Clark had forgotten about the impending staff meeting — he found himself actually thinking of recording it, an exercise in dreaming that he knew was futile. Maybe it would make him feel better. That was when Perry called him into his office. And there, on the phone, was Lex telling him to stop. Clark hadn't meant to send the message, but someone had, and it had gone horribly wrong. It hadn't worked.
Except that it had, Clark thought.
The world had gone to hell around them in that changed time, but there, Lex was his friend. Clark had won him back. A gulf had been bridged, and in return, Lex had saved Clark's life and the world with it. For here Clark was, Smallville peaceful and bucolic, undisturbed by insane bombing raids.
It was a bit self-centered, thinking Lex had righted all that for Clark. Saving Lex couldn't be at the expense of humanity, he had told Clark. Or at my expense either … Clark clung to that. "I know what you'd do for me," Lex had told him, and there was that, too.
Except if Clark had sacrificed himself for Lex, traded places with him in that other world, it had been unwitting: He hadn't intentionally given up anything. That was Lois's voice talking to him. She might say that very thing tonight, when she heard the story. Her love was unconditional, but her tolerance for Clark Kent's rationalizations was not, he reminded himself, a thought that prompted a fond smile.
For now, he would accept his mother's lighter touch. He'd tell Martha he was playing hooky, and she'd chide him a little if he also confessed to dumping the press conference in his wife's lap. He'd help with some chores, do some heavy lifting, and eat a home-cooked lunch. For a morning, all would be right with the world.
From his jacket he pulled the remains of the device he had taken from Dolman. He contemplated throwing it in the river, where random loose parts of Lex's car could still lie beneath the waters. Burying this here as well would be fitting.
And littering, Clark thought. Sighing, he replaced it in his pocket. It would be dumped unceremoniously in the garbage tonight.
He straightened, preparing to fly to the Kent Farm, but waited for a car to pass behind him. A Porsche sped behind Clark's back and vanished down the road.
When it was out of sight and the road was empty again, Clark headed home.
The End
Author's Notes
On comic book canon, or the lack thereof: I pretty much only know Smallville, but I did a little research into the comic books for this story. From that, I took what I found useful and interesting, and ignored what didn't suit my plot purposes. Specifically, I know now that Lex's presidency did not end in such a prosaic way as a lost election, but when I read about the complicated and fantastical events in the comic books that led to Lex being an ex-president, it seemed far too much for me to delve into at that stage — as I was writing the final draft of the last chapter. (Plus, they left him penniless, which would prevent him from financing Dolman's work, or still owning the LuthorCorp factory, etc.) So I stuck with my imagined version of events, because it worked better for me.
The story's title and the quotes in the first and last chapters are from the Emily Brontë poem "Remembrance," also called "R. Alcona to J. Brenzaida." The latter name seems to be attached to the version of the poem I used, but I could be mistaken. (And for some reason I can get the umlaut above the "e" to show up here, but not at the top with the quote.)
Finally, I've been randomly thanking people in various chapters, but I got so much help along the way, I want to make sure everyone gets his or her due. So my gratitude goes out to:
Mary S. & Maria, for brilliant plot suggestions
Cecelia, for being a sounding board, and for giving me all those deadlines I kept breaking
Maria (again) & Doug, for technobabble and real-life science (hope I didn't mess it up too much)
Meri, for character discussions and reader input
Noah, whose hatred of the reset button kept me cognizant that stories should have consequences
Crossbow, my most excellent beta reader
All my reviewers, for the encouragement and insight — glad you came along for the ride (and let me know about it)!