OUBLIETTE

by Kitty Fisher

He awoke reluctantly. The journey from asleep to awake so slow it was as if he was rising up towards the distant light on a drift of tide, suspended in a vast ocean that enveloped him, pushing him relentlessly upwards through endless cold shadow. Upwards, ever upwards, even as he clung to the lower depths, and fought to stay hidden, to stay in the dark, alone, where he didn't hurt. Where he wasn't anything at all but a speck on the ocean's distant floor. He didn't want to wake. Didn't. But he surfaced with a gasp.

Though the sound was no more than a soft exhale of breath, he caught it in his throat. Trapped it there, and listened. Every cell of his body quivering, he held still, not breathing, focused.

Silence. Maybe no one had heard.

Curling up on his side he let his head fall back, the soft floor cold against his scalp. Every movement was sluggish, the drugs in his system shifting reality into something cloying; the smallest stretch of muscle taking a lifetime. Longer. A single thought wandering into off into labyrinthine complexities, without any hope of return.

He licked dried saliva off his lips, wished for water. Not the oceans he dreamed of, just enough cold water to wet his raw, dry throat. Some would arrive with his morning call. He frowned in concentration. If it was morning of course. But it was — surely? Listening. There was no sound of movement outside his cell. Perhaps he had awoken early — though the drugs usually kept him tied more precisely to their schedule. He blinked up at the ceiling, at the row of lights that were switched permanently on. He had so little way of gauging time; either hours or days.

Still, a moment of peace was something he had learned to be grateful for. A moment before they—

No. He wouldn't think forward. Not yet. He'd wait until it happened. Until he was back in his starring role as lab–rat, the scalpel working patterns into his skin, the machines humming around him, guiding the experiments of the butchers his father called scientists.

He pushed the thought deep into his mind. Closed his eyes. Recognised pain. A small discomfort — nothing more — in his side. The straitjacket's buckles were sharp. He moved slowly, sighing as the irritation went away. He listened again.

Lesson for the day: keep still, keep quiet. Maybe they would forget his existence.

Maybe.

He laughed softly, the sound uncannily like a sob, and pressed his face into the floor. He wouldn't cry. Wouldn't let them find him with dried salt marks on his face. Once, one of them had pitied him, and that had been worse than either their carelessness or their casual cruelty. He sniffed back the fullness in his sinuses. Breathed. Arms wrapped around himself; a virtue made of necessity.

Lex Luthor shivered. The room wasn't that cold, but since they had burned him, he had trouble keeping warm. The healing had been long and arduous. But his body had obeyed, reacting as it had since the meteors, speeding him on his way to something like health. It had still taken too long. And now he wondered if he would ever be warm again. Or if his vocal chords would ever truly mend, their substance ripped, shredded by so many hours when all he could do was scream.

Daddy, am I a good boy? He had asked that once. Which almost made him want to laugh. For he had tried to be. Wanting Lionel to see through the rebellion and the anger to him, as he was, to understand and acknowledge him. In some way to admit the familiarity that should have existed between father and son. He had done so much, whored himself in so many different ways, just to earn something, anything. And none of it had been enough.

The gift of his own difference though. That had been so perfect. The moment when Lionel Luthor looked at him and smiled and forgot the other things he was considering, like farmboys who could rip metal with their hands. Like a young man Lex seemed to love, which was not appropriate at all. Forgot even that he despised his son, in the delight he found in his difference.

For the briefest time, Lex had enjoyed his father's approbation. That night his father's bed had been a warm haven. Even while Lionel was hurting him, watching, waiting for the strangeness in his cells that speeded the healing, they had been together. Shared the moment in a way that had made his stomach twist even as he lay in his father's lap, quite still as Lionel stroked his head, fingers dipping into the blood–flow from a wide gash across Lex's scalp. Caressing his mutant son for the first time since all the lush red curls had been stripped away in the meteor shower. Even though Lionel's smile had brought a reactive clenching in Lex's gut, he had wanted the moment to last. Scraps from the King's table. A gesture, a word that showed Lionel saw him as special. Something worthwhile.

Lionel had laughed at him, seen the need and the vulnerability. But he hadn't seen the deeper motive, the need to hide a certain secret. He had simply revelled in the possibilities of his new–found son, and maybe for the first time in his life forgotten to look for the double, double bluff.

In the morning Lex had awoken from a half–sleep to find men ready to take him away. Still naked in his father's huge bed, he had fought, and lost, gasping into submission as they pricked his skin with the first of a thousand needles.

He had awoken to pain. And that, at least, was still a constant. Whatever else changed.

Occasionally he had stirred his brain to think about outside. About the world. To wonder how his father had coped with the press when they queried the absence of his son. But there was probably a clone. Or a good PR reason, like he was in a Buddhist monastery in the high Himalayas. Lionel had no problems with the press. He gave them such good copy.

Lex hissed as the long muscles in one thigh cramped. Gritting his teeth until the spasm eased. He would have paid a million dollars to be able to stretch. To run along a beach somewhere warm. Whereas reality meant he could just about turn over. Forced inactivity, a drug regime that would have slowed down a horse, and food that half the time was part of their experiments, none of it helped. He had lost strength, muscle. If he really forced it, he could sit up, but slowly like an old, old man. Right now he wondered if he'd just throw up if he tried. And he didn't want to clear it up. He didn't want to have his face pressed into the vomit as if he was a puppy being trained and told not to do it again. Once really was enough for some things.

He lay still, watching the room. A square, padded box. One door. Four cameras. Lights. Nothing else. Their security was so extreme. As if he had superpowers that would let him break free the instant they gave him a moment of reprise. But the ability to heal quickly wasn't any help in escaping a cell. Nothing was. He had tried. Everything from bribery to near death. It had all failed.

A click. The door opened and Lex flinched. No words; they rarely spoke to him at all. He was just hauled to his feet and the world span into a kaleidoscope of misery. Swallowing nausea as they pulled him along, it took Lex a while to realise he was being taken down a different corridor, one he didn't recognise.

His stomach burned acid. Fear sharpening his senses. He didn't like any change. Routine he could cope with. It was safer. Change usually meant a new experiment. So far it had never been less painful than what went before.

Pale green door. They propped him up as one of them knocked for admittance. Another thing different. Maybe Lionel was back. Lex forced himself to breathe evenly. He would cope. He could. The door opened, and his guards simply gave him a little push. He stepped unsteadily forward into the room.

People. He didn't want to see, didn't want to know.

A step back and he collided with the closed door; the wood hard against the sharp bones of his spine. He let himself slide to the floor. It was easier to sit. Though something like pride kept him from curling into a fetal ball and closing his eyes to block out the world. Instead he pulled up his legs and concentrated on breathing. A room full of people. They could want anything. Anything.

It was too quiet. Slowly, hesitantly, he looked up.

And knew he was dreaming.

A slow blinking to clear his eyes. Then he looked away, sure this was some hallucination, some twisted devilment on the part of his psyche, which clearly wanted him mad as well as half–dead.

There was no way Clark could be here. Clark was dead. Killed in a lightning storm. They had showed him the newspaper, the headlines from across a world shocked by yet another tragedy in the small American town. Twenty dead. One of them Clark Kent.

He had grieved. If that was what it could be called. For a while he had even welcomed everything they did to him. The abyss of loss needed to be filled with something, and pain was as good as anything else. Until he remembered the bargain. His own bargain with himself. The one that had brought him here as a freak for his father to play with.

His one moment of altruism. His own version of love.

But what point was martyrdom, when the reason for such sacrifice was dead? He had pondered that, for once it had seemed such a good idea; one rich, but basically amoral freak offered up to hide the existence of another. A friend. More. A freak he had loved. Totally. Without reservation. Who was dead. That night they had strapped him into the jacket to stop his fingers ripping his own flesh. It was too ironic. Clark was dead — the gods had to be laughing.

He thought he had, somehow, stayed sane. Though it was a close–run thing.

Lex rocked back into the wall, head down, and stared at his knees. The grey cotton was thinning. He could count the weave. He started, slowly...

"Lex?"

No one called him by that name. Not any more. He ignored the voice. Hiding away in methodical counting.

"Lex!"

Hide. Hide in the mystery of thread woven into thread, the hundreds of strands somehow making something so serviceable. A miracle in itself. One hundred and.... Someone touched his arm and he lost count. Cursing, starting back at the beginning, ignoring the voice. One...

"...and Lex, your father is dead."

That stopped him. He considered it. Then dismissed the notion. Lionel Luthor wouldn't let himself die. That was one of the reasons he sometimes came to watch whilst they broke his son's bones, the flesh stripped back so they could analyse how the bone healed, as they photographed and catalogued every infinitesimal change in cell and tissue and structure. Lionel was going to live forever, whatever the cost.

One, two, three...

"He died close to two months ago."

Lex stilled. His mind not counting. Not really thinking. He blinked. Then very slowly, painfully, he raised his head. And looked into tired green eyes. Clark's eyes. He wanted to lift his hand, to touch. But the straitjacket held him, and he could only look. Wishing this was real. "You're dead. They said so." Slow words; half–formed, ugly sounds.

"They lied."

A shiver rippled down Lex's back, rattling the metal buckles. And he watched as Clark cursed, and dropped to his knees, beginning to work the fastenings loose.

Clark. So close. Still smelling of air and soap and sunshine. Real.

Lex groaned as his arms fell to his sides. He swallowed the pain and let Clark finish stripping his prison away. Closing his eyes, hiding, hating the moment his chest was bare, and Clark stilled.

"Don't look." Lex slowly shook his head. "Don't..."

He flinched as a hand touched him. Eyes slitted open he watched as Clark traced a finger over one livid scar. The finger was so warm. The hand slid sideways, cupping around his side, and Lex gasped as Clark bent forward and brushed a kiss across his shoulder.

Sharp, indrawn breath catching in his throat, Lex shivered, watching, wondering how Clark could bear to touch the damaged, ridged scarring. He only healed some things all the way. They had enjoyed finding out exactly what triggered complete regeneration, and what didn't.

Lex watched as Clark lifted his head. Green eyes so angry. So alive. Clark. Not dead. "Clark?"

"Yes." Soft smile. Tender. He looked older. No less beautiful. "I'm getting you out of here. You can come home."

"Home?"

"To the farm. Until you are better."

Long sigh. Lex leaned back into the wall and lifted his hands, looking at them unbound for the first time in almost as long as he could remember. "The farm. Mr. and Mrs. Kent."

"They know. They're waiting to hear."

"To hear?"

"That we found you — there have been a few false alarms."

There was more. Lex looked into Clark's eyes and saw the remnants of desperate fear. "How long... How long have I..." The words dried in his throat.

"Eighteen months, just over."

Lex closed his eyes. Leant his head back. So long...

"You were reported dead. Your father wouldn't release any details, not one. So I investigated."

"Mr. Kent?"

Lex peered around Clark at the room full of people. So many suits. Lawyers. He fought the surge of fear that threatened to swamp him. His father's lawyers.

"What?" Clark turned, impatient, his hand reaching and holding one of Lex's. Comforting.

"We need Mr. Luthor to sign the papers."

Lex blinked. "Papers?"

"To finalise your release, to say that you are you."

"Oh." Lex took a breath, one so shallow it felt like there was no oxygen in the air. Release. Gods... "Show me." They did, though he could hardly read the page. But Clark was there, urging him. So he signed.

The man in the most expensive suit took the papers, nodding as he scanned over them. Hesitated. "Thank you, Mr. Luthor. We will be at your disposal when you are fit and well."

Lex just stared at him.

"Is that all you need?" Clark asked.

"For now."

"Then get out."

The man nodded. Sketched a half bow at Lex, then ushered everyone out of the door at the far end of the long conference room.

The silence was bliss.

Clark was alive. Lionel was dead. Simple, linear concepts. Maybe if he dealt with them one at a time they would make sense. He sighed as Clark shifted slightly, and reaching forward took his other hand, weaving their fingers together.

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't."

"But I am."

"You're not dead." Lex stroked his thumb over Clark's palm. "You came for me."

Clark swallowed, the sound quite audible. Then he smiled, and in a gesture as familiar as breathing, leant forward and kissed Lex's mouth. Just a soft brush of skin on skin. Lex felt the warmth of tears. Muscles aching with the effort, he raised his hand and wiped Clark's cheek. Cupped it. Smiled.

"Hey, can you stand?"

Could he? Not that it mattered. Clark stood and, bending down, simply lifted Lex to his feet. Lex gasped as his body protested. But Clark was there. Warm enough for them both. He leant into strength. Took refuge. Let Clark hold him with gentle hands.

"Lex." A whisper. "I really thought I'd never find you."

"Find me?"

"Your father was such a clever bastard. He hid you. Really hid you, as if he never wanted you to be found."

Lex shivered.

"I never believed you were dead. Never."

Lex lifted his head. The room was spinning gently. "Clark." He smiled. Said it again. "Clark. I... Can I really leave?"

"God yes. Right now. Doctors, a hospital, anything you need."

"No more doctors."

"Real ones. Just at first, I promise. Then you come home. And get well."

Clark seemed to hesitate then, with a sudden dizzying shift, Lex found himself lifted, cradled. Held in Clark's arms. "You can't walk far; this will be the easiest way."

It was all so dreamlike. A good dream though. Clark carried him up through the facility, past rooms he remembered, others he thought he had only imagined, out into a wide atrium. Into daylight. He tugged at Clark's shoulder. "Let me down."

Brief hesitation, then he was lowered, like glass, so carefully. An arm stayed around him. Support and more as Lex took a step, then another, and walked back into the world.

END