Rebuilding Pinocchio: A Real Boy Funky Remix
Remix Author: Mara Celes
Original Story: A Real Boy by CJ
Summary: Walk on water, walk through walls.
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Smallville
Spoilers: All three seasons, to be safe.
Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another.
--The First Law of Thermodynamics
***
ONE
Lex picked up the U-238 and ran.
He could feel the material searing into his unprotected right hand, but he didn’t pause to care for himself. He didn’t have the time to provide for necessary protection--depleted Uranium was heavily defended at LuthorCorp, and the guards’ footsteps behind him were already too close for comfort.
He had around fifteen hours left to live, according to the studies he’d read. Give or take an hour or two. The amount of upgraded U-238 he’d been exposed to was lethal, but right now, it didn’t matter. One thing at a time: Break into LuthorCorp, grab the U-238, get the hell out. Those were the only factors that counted, and if they came with the requisite casualties, then that was too damn bad. Suck it up. Even if one of the lives to be lost was his own.
In any case, the fifteen hour window proscribed for him was inaccurate. Lex knew that he didn’t have hours to live—he had seconds. Seconds until the guards caught him, wrenched the uranium from his grasp, and damned his plan to hell.
There would be no second chances.
…it had better have been worth it.
Cold air blasted against Lex’s face as he reached the end of the stairwell, the air imploding as he threw the door to the roof wide open. Far too cold; he felt his body break out into wriggling goose-bumps. He had always hated that—goose-bumps were ugly, especially when they prickled along his scalp. But at this elevation, there was nothing but the cold air and the distant rooftops of the other buildings. He knew the plans for LuthorCorp like he remembered his mother’s face; there was only one way down besides the stairwell. A fast and lethal freefall.
Whether it was from radiation poisoning or a high impact fall, dead was dead. How was an irrelevancy. He only cared about time; he needed time…a minute. Maybe even half of one.
He ran straight to the roof’s edge, smacking haphazardly against the safety bar. He looked down, counted the seconds it would take for him to hit bottom. The LuthorCorp Tower was tall…would it give him thirty seconds? Forty? Fifty? Was his life worth fifty seconds? And would that possibly be enough?
It had to be.
Holding the U-238 tightly in his right hand, Lex reached with his other into his left pocket, drawing out a gleaming bit of meteor rock. He pushed the materials together as he climbed over the safety bar, ignoring his body’s natural reaction—fear of heights was a child’s weakness, and hyperventilation was something he could not afford.
The guards burst through the roof’s door.
He had no choice.
“I’m sorry, Clark,” Lex whispered, just before he jumped.
But Clark’s ghost didn’t hear him.
***
TWO
Lex knew he was dreaming, but the other side of his bed remained empty.
There was no beautiful body, no sleepy smile, no snoring. Nothing made the mattress wriggle, no one snuffled; there was no presence, nothing to signal that Clark was there or ever had been. Even when Lex was asleep, his mind never let him forget that Clark was gone.
Lex held himself still. Maybe, if he held himself to his side of the bed, he could forget that the other side was empty. Maybe if he closed his eyes, he could pretend that Clark was there, sprawling haphazardly over the bed, his elbows and knees a danger to everyone in the vicinity. At least until Lex touched him, wherein Clark would immediately transmute into a vine, his long limbs wrapping snugly and safely around Lex’s body, his breath soft against Lex’s mouth. If Lex was focused enough, if he was determined enough, maybe he could even recall the intoxication of Clark’s taste against his tongue, the smell of his lover’s scent.
Surely dreams would give him that much.
Lex reached out, and for a moment he thought he could touch Clark. With his eyes closed, he could almost imagine that he felt smooth skin, and he pressed harder, trying to get more of the sensation. But when he did so, when he reached the point where he should have been feeling resistance to his fingers, his hand passed through, and Lex was forced to concede that, no, this time it hadn’t worked. He wasn’t yet strong enough. He still couldn’t imagine Clark into being, not even in his dreams.
Lex sighed, giving up.
His subconscious was funny of late. Difficult. Instead of giving Lex what he wanted, which were happy memories of his and Clark’s few moments together, he tended to instead receive absurdities. For instance, the cookie on the bedside table next to him. He didn’t even like cookies.
Lex reached out anyways, snagging the imaginary pastry. The confections were everywhere these days, infiltrating every corner of his recent dreamscapes. Clark had always loved cookies, spoiled as he was by Martha’s cooking. Lex wondered if it was his own subconscious mocking him, memories of Clark held out of reach, but things that Clark had always loved taunting him with reality. The reality that Clark was no longer there to enjoy them.
Lex bit into the cookie harshly, his teeth snapping together painfully as he did so.
Screw his subconscious, anyway.
“Do it again,” Clark suddenly said, and Lex looked up, startled. Perhaps his sleeping mind was far more forgiving then he had expected, or maybe it was merely feeling generous. But then, Clark wasn’t exactly looking at him. Nor was he, it seemed, even speaking to him. Instead, Clark was looking at the man on his lap. Who wasn’t Lex.
His subconscious, Lex decided, was a real bitch.
“I’m really beginning to think I’m not sexy,” Clark spoke again, his voice in full-out sulking mode. He didn’t bother to push the man off his lap, which made Lex fume all the more. The two were both naked, for one, and for another, why on earth was Clark flirting—the nasty, evil, wrong when it wasn’t with Lex type of flirting—with a man who, well, wasn’t Lex? But apparently, Clark couldn’t hear Lex’s offended noises from his two-foot span from the bed. Being naked, it seemed, had affected his hearing.
“This is what?” Clark interjected, apparently lost in his own conversation. “The third time?”
Suddenly, Lex could hear the other man’s voice. “Just the second, Clark,” said the man, his tone soothing, but somehow distracted. Lex watched him, noticing that he had taken an interest in what seemed to be Clark’s arm. “And don’t be ridiculous,” the man spoke again. Of course I find you attractive.”
Lex watched as the man gestured. “Now do it again, only slower.”
“No, Lex!”
Lex started, but somehow he was now the one in Clark’s lap, and the other man was gone. Clark’s annoyed look was all for him, and Lex prepared to give him an indignant snarl of his own in response. Instead, however, he heard his voice plead, “Please?”
Yes, that was right. That was what he had said.
And right on cue, Clark pouted at him, and Lex felt his anger soften like it did the last time. There was no other man in Clark’s life, he should have remembered that. They had once had that argument before, and this wasn’t it. Clark’s lap had always been Lex’s sole terrain, his one favorite territory.
Lex reached out and tangled his fingers in Clark’s hair, bringing Clark forward so he could kiss the younger man’s petulant mouth. It wasn’t entirely successful--Clark was still pouting down at him—and so Lex leaned forward more insistently, lapping at Clark’s lips in protest, coaxing the boy with little, teasing licks to open his mouth into accepting a kiss.
The kiss tasted red, and cookie crumbs fell from their joined lips.
Dreams were funny things, Lex decided, staring at the cookie crumbs in his hands. Clark was no longer in his lap--nor, apparently, anywhere in his vicinity. Freud had once speculated that dreams held hidden desires, full of sexual images and longing, but this was getting ridiculous.
***
Lex had never thought to be comforted by Pete Ross, but he guessed there was a first time for everything.
The universe was a vast place, after all. A twisted and convoluted place. How else could an alien arrive on the planet, having survived the apocalypse of its own world, only to die a few pitiful years after the arrival on his adopted home. And to die at such a young age, when his life had only just moved into the beginnings of adulthood.
Lex had always hated funerals—his mother’s, his brother’s. He had never thought to attend Clark’s.
Pete shifted on his feet where he stood next to Lex, and Lex gave him a sidelong glance, half-surprised that no blame from that party was forthcoming. Clark’s death hadn’t been his fault, but that technicality—his lack of blame--hadn’t ever stopped the young Ross in the past. Lex suspected that Lana, who stood slightly in front of both of them, had something to do with that, as did Chloe Sullivan, who stood beside her. They had never been close as a group, but Lex suspected that was soon going to change. Mutual grief tended to do that to people, if it didn’t wrench them apart first.
There was no grave. Clark hadn’t left a body behind; Lex had seen him disappear right before his own eyes, had watched Clark come apart in translucent pieces. Lex clenched his hands at the memory, allowing the thorny stems of the flowers he held bite into his palms. Roses. Clark had always been the traditional sort. When, of course, he wasn’t being completely alien.
‘Do you have any idea how you do that?’ Lex had asked.
Clark shrugged. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It just happens.’ The boy blushed. Any measure of Lex’s attention tended to do that to him, now. Their physical relationship was still too new for the both of them.
Lex smiled at him, charmed. A new relationship, indeed. ‘What does it feel like?’ he decided to ask. ‘Is it like being in a car? A convertible, but faster?’
Clark reached out, hefting Lex off of his feet and into his arms. When Lex next blinked, he was traveling around the study, going so fast his vision blurred. Then Clark stopped, jarring him back into normal space-time, and raised his bushy eyebrows in question. ‘Is that what it’s like for you?’ he asked Lex.
Lex tensed slightly, making himself heavier, a subtle demand to be put back on the ground. Not that he didn’t like being held by Clark, or like the so-called ‘superspeed,’ for that matter, but he was not a damsel in distress. As a Luthor, it was his place to have both feet firmly on the ground. ‘Yes,’ Lex finally answered his grinning lover, who obviously thought that Lex being demanding was terribly cute, ‘something like a rollercoaster, anyway.’
Clark looked wistful as he set Lex down. ‘I’ve never been on one of those.’
Lex stepped back into Clark’s personal space, gathering him close, and kissed him gently on the lips. ‘No?’
Clark shrugged. ‘Naw,’ he answered. ‘At first, my parents were afraid I’d get too excited and wreck the whole thing. And now…’ Clark shrugged again.
Probably a money thing, Lex decided. He’d fix that at his first opportunity. ‘So what is it like for you?’ he asked, wanting to erase the rueful expression from Clark’s face. Clark truly enjoyed his powers when it came right down to it, and talking about them with Lex always seemed to make him smile. In any case, Lex genuinely wanted to know.
‘Weird,’ Clark told him, his eyes narrowing in thought, but Lex noticed that he did look happier. ‘Really weird. Everything changes. There are colors and smells…’ Clark shook his head. ‘I can taste you when I run,’ he told Lex, ‘and it’s a different taste—it’s not the way you smell. It’s…you. I guess. And there are other things, and…I don’t know. Sometimes you even have a sound.’
‘A sound?’ Lex asked him.
Clark shrugged again, and it seemed a perpetual habit to Lex. ‘Yeah.’
Completely alien, Lex thought in wonder, letting his hand trail gently over Clark’s memorial stone. Amazing.
Lex tried to blink the tears from his eyes. It wasn’t long, however, till he failed to notice them spilling over and onto his cheeks.
***
Lex knew he was dreaming, but the world never materialized around him.
There was nothing. He was standing in the middle of a listless, floating grayness, and he frowned, looking around him.
“What’s the point?” he finally sighed.
The world dimmed.
“Clark’s gone, you know,” Lex told it conversationally. “There isn’t much else I get out of these dreams. You might make him show up, or at least give me a memory.” He shrugged. “Although the cookies are sometimes…interesting.”
The world dimmed further, and pulsed.
“Electricity?” Lex guessed. “I know it’s a non-sequiter, but you’re beginning to remind me of a light-bulb.”
The world brightened slightly.
“Getting warmer, am I?” he told it, considering. Then he shook his head. “I’ve never liked charades, and I currently don’t care about what my subconscious has to say about me.”
The world pulsed once again, urging him on, Lex thought.
“Ok,” he shrugged, deciding to ignore it. “Whatever you want.”
A red cookie appeared in response.
Lex raised an eyebrow, but decided to reach for it. “This just gets better and better,” he muttered to himself as he bit into it. He stood there, munching on the cookie, and suddenly realized he was ravenous. Starving. About to collapse.
Luckily, when he reached in his pocket, he found another cookie, a yellow one. About to bite into it, he looked up. “You hungry?” he offered the dream.
The sun rose.
***
Pete, it seemed, had known more than he’d let on.
“When we were little, we’d play catch,” he was saying, “and I’d always throw the ball off course. Clark always thought I was just really, really bad…” Chloe snorted beside him, and Pete glared at her, “…but it was a trick, see? A test. Sometimes Clark’d get too excited, and he’d run off, and…woosh…”
“Woosh?” Lana asked.
“Yeah,” Pete said, his voice sad. “Woosh. Come on, you had to notice that something was different about him? He’s always been weird, our Clarkster.”
“Our weird little—okay—big, Clarkbar,” Chloe added, nodding, tears in her eyes.
“I would always make him move his arm,” Lex said, his thoughts distracted. “It used to drive him crazy.”
They were in the Talon, where the funeral party was being held. Everyone had decided that the older Kents were too distraught to do any organizing themselves, and the Rosses had wanted to hold the occasion. As had Lex. Mutual animosity between the two families had almost reached the breaking point as each demanded equal claim on Clark’s life, and everything would probably have ended badly had Lana not intervened. To Lex’s surprise, both he and the Rosses had acquiesced to her calm demand—and Pete, it seemed, had somehow been convinced during the fight that Lex’s concern for Clark had been real.
He was grateful, now. They all belonged together; they were all Clark’s friends. And the Talon was something that linked them--Lana had made a true effort at saving it because of Clark’s urging, Lex had given it as a favor, trying to make Clark happy through his one-time crush, and all of them had, at one point or another, spent time with Clark there. It was mutual ground and somehow safe; private memories were left private. And the décor in the place, while…bright…was somehow appropriate.
Osiris, Horus, Anubis, and Isis. Ankhs and sesen, all a part of an Egyptian motif. From the New Kingdom, and though Lana didn’t know it, some of the pictures lining the walls were from ‘Formulae For Going Forth By Day,’ otherwise known as ‘The Book of the Dead.’ Common symbols, almost trite in their current popular usage, but still a reminder that nothing ended, that somehow and somewhere, Clark could still exist. Lex didn’t know if it was true, if there was an afterlife, heaven, or hell, but considering what had happened in life, anything was possible.
“Move his arm?” Lana asked, interrupting his thoughts. Chloe gestured rudely beside her. “I’m not sure I want to know.”
Lex raised an eyebrow. “Nothing like what you two are thinking about.” He raised a hand, fingers touching his thumb and then exploding outwards. “Just…woosh.”
“Can we please stop with the woosh-ing?” Chloe asked. “It’s offending my sense of journalistic accuracy. What exactly are you guys talking about?”
Pete shrugged. “Woosh,” he said noncommittally. “Just woosh.”
Lex nodded. “Exactly.”
Chloe glared at them.
It was a remarkably similar glare to the one Emily Dinsmore had given him.
She had been all grown up, and true to form, had tried to kill somebody. Him, in fact. It was a long and convoluted explanation that he gathered from her psychologists, but the long and short of it was that somehow she had learned that Clark was no longer interested in Lana because of his involvement with Lex, and had decided that such a thing constituted a direct insult to her ‘best friend.’ As Clark was indestructible, she had focused on Lex, since he was, as she put it, “a grownup,” and therefore responsible.
He would have said her face and the glare she gave him were burned into his memory, but frankly, by that point so many had attempted to kill him that the experience was almost commonplace. He wouldn’t have bothered to lose any sleep over it, if it hadn’t been for Clark.
Lex still didn’t know how she had managed to kill him.
They had fought, he gathered. He really hadn’t been able to see most of it, they had been moving so fast, and even if they hadn’t been, it’d been dark. They’d been outside on a moonless night. He’d been able to see points in their battle, a quick instant under a lamp where Clark had her in his hands, another where she had flung him across the field, point and counterpoint, a continuous battle. She was faster, he was stronger; she could phase through matter, he could set things on fire. They were rather equal, except for the fact that Clark had Lex to protect, and that had decreased his effectiveness by half. He couldn’t really focus on containing Emily if he had to keep Lex from getting killed.
Until finally, the end had come. Emily lay on the ground, finally unconscious, and Clark stood above her, panting and weaving. Lex had reached out for him, and Clark turned to smile at him, to accept his support…and Clark stumbled.
“Hey,” Lex said, pulling Clark’s arm over his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah, she just took a lot out of me,” Clark told him. His head shook, brown curls swinging over his face. “I think she’s a little like me, Lex,” he said. “Maybe a kind of human version?”
“I’ll find out,” Lex promised.
And then it happened. Clark reached out to pick up Emily, and as Lex watched, Clark’s shape contorted, became grotesque and skewed, as if he were only half there. Clark didn’t seem to notice at first; he continued walking, until finally, he stopped, a confused look crossing his face.
“Lex?” Clark called uncertainly, “I’m feeling really…”
And Clark began to bleed, redness seeping out of every inch of his skin. Lex reached out for him, horrified, but as he did so, Clark screamed, a scream which Lex would hear for the rest of his life, both in his waking days and in nightmares.
Then Clark had vanished.
Lex stood suddenly, breathing heavily, and shook himself from the memory. He looked around the table. “Excuse me,” he said softly, and left them, suddenly looking for something else, maybe someone else…his eyes lighted upon Martha Kent, who stood next to her husband. The two of them were lost in their own little world, staring blankly around them. Lex was loath to disturb them, but he had something to give, and if he was honest with himself, he wanted to take some comfort from them as well.
He approached them quietly, fingering the object in his pocket.
“Mrs. Kent?” he said softly, and then nodded to Clark’s father.
“Yes, Lex?” Martha answered, wiping her eyes on a handkerchief someone had provided her. She tentatively smiled up at him. Lex stepped closer, bringing out the object.
Lex opened his hand, showing them the watch that sat heavily on his palm. The visage of Napoleon glinted back at them from within the watches’ face. “This was my mother’s,” he told the Kents quietly. “I want you to have it.”
“Lex, we couldn’t…” Jonathan began, but Lex fumbled on.
“Clark was my family, Mr. Kent,” he said as he placed it in Martha’s hands, and closed her palms around it.
***
Lex knew he was dreaming.
In this dream, Clark fought, and died, and vanished.
In this dream, he kissed Clark, and cookies fell from their lips.
“Synesthesia,” Lex said aloud. “It doesn’t really happen. The brain merely mixes the signals together.”
Reality, his dream told him.
“Impossibility,” Lex countered, and to him it didn’t seem odd that the dream was finally speaking back. “Colors do not have tastes. Neither does light, not as such. Smell comes from little particles of a substance reaching the olfactory senses, and...”
Cookies taste red, the dream responded.
“Only here,” Lex said. “Which hardly counts.”
The Beholder, the dream told him, and Lex flew in response, faster and faster through the skies, and then he was running, jumping, soaring over buildings, gravity be damned....
The dream stopped him, held him still. Rollercoaster?
“No, not really,” Lex answered it truthfully. “It’s…different. Clark once tried to describe it to me...”
Cookies taste red, the dream repeated.
Lex blinked, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. In his mind’s eye, he saw Clark chewing on his lip, his green eyes narrowed with thought as he tried to describe his experience with superspeed. Lex looked down, his own eyes narrowing as he considered. “...and I,” he finally said, “have a sound?”
Cookies taste red! The dream was triumphant.
Lex’s eyes widened, and he woke.
“I can’t believe it.”
“Lex, stop muttering to yourself. Tell us what’s going on.”
“I mean, I saw him die, I thought there was no way…”
Hands on his shoulders. “Lex, son, what is it?”
“He might not be dead, I mean, it’s possible…the dream, that damned dream…”
“What?”
“Clark... Mr.and Mrs. Kent... he might still be alive.”
***
THREE
Lex fell.
He blacked out before he reached the bottom, thanking whatever deity was listening for the fact that at the very least, he wouldn’t feel any pain upon landing.
Hell was kinder than he had hoped, for when he opened his eyes, Clark was there.
The down-side was that he was in mid-rant.
“I swear, Mom,” Lex heard his lover saying, “he’s going to kill me. One of these days, I’m not going to be able to take it, and poof! No more son.”
“Clark, don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Jonathan’s voice.
“No, Dad, I’m not!” Clark replied. “Did you hear what he did? Pete told me, at least the parts I didn’t figure out for myself. Lex broke into LuthorCorp. Which isn’t a surprise, I know, he tends to do it all the time, in one form or another. But did you hear? He picked up a bunch of radioactive Uranium!”
“He’ll be ok, Clark.” Martha’s voice. “The doctors have checked him out. The finest in Metropolis, according to Lionel.”
“Like he cares,” Clark spat, then continued on his previous rant. “But anyways, he picked it up with his bare hands! The idiot! The suicidal moron! He couldn’t have just taken the time to put on some gloves, a suit? It’s not like I was fading away out there.”
“We didn’t know that, Clark,” his mother said.
“He could have died!” Clark cried out.
“Lex isn’t the most rational of people when it comes to you, son.”
Lex finally mustered the energy to speak. “You needed the energy, Clark. Badly, I’m assuming, if you managed to take the radioactive elements out of my body. So I got it for you.”
Clark rounded on him, his face furious and worried. Lex had never seen a sight more beautiful. “Damn it, Lex,” he was told, his lover’s voice shaking, “if I had gotten back and you were dead—“
“Doesn’t matter,” Lex interrupted. “I needed you to be safe.”
“It matters to me! Damn it, Lex—next time, I’m going to say, ‘Get lost, be safe,’ instead of trying to reason with you—“
“Cookies taste red, Clark.”
“And what is with your fixation with cookies, anyway? You were even on the right track, you said, ‘electricity,’ but no, it went back to the stupid cookies for you. Red ones, yellow ones, you are wacked in the head!”
“I can hardly be responsible for my dreams, Clark. And you started it with the cookies bit.”
“I even tried to show you the connection to superspeed! But no, it wouldn’t make sense that you of the ‘do it again, Clark, do it again,’ with the arm thing, would figure it out! Instead, you go back to the red cookies!”
“You can hardly have expected me to concentrate.”
“Why not?”
“You were naked on my lap.”
A choking noise came from beyond them, and Lex turned to see Jonathan’s face turning red.
“But moving on,” Lex continued hurriedly, “why didn’t you just come out and say what you needed to say?”
“No,” Clark replied, “How ‘bout we ask first why you decided to jump off the LuthorCorp roof?”
“You did what?” Martha Kent’s voice came.
“That’s right, Mom!” Clark said triumphantly, pointing his finger in the air. “Our resident genius here was ten feet from being a total splatter on the pavement when I rematerialized. Oh yeah, real brilliance there!”
“Did Lex just say that Clark was...that he was…undressed?” Jonathan asked his wife in the background.
“Rematerialized, Clark?” Lex asked. “So I was right?”
“Be quiet, Jonathan. I’m listening.”
“Oh, no!” Clark shouted. “Tell me why you thought you had to jump off LexCorp, first!”
Lex arched an eyebrow at him. “Cookies taste red, Clark. You figure it out.”
“Now you’re just being annoying.”
“That—the undressed stuff—it doesn’t mean that they’re--it doesn’t mean anything!”
“You heard the naked bits, Jonathan.”
“Probably, Clark. Now tell me, why didn’t you just come out and tell me you needed energy to convert back? That you were stuck in superspeed—which, by the way, has now been proven to be an absolutely moronic name?”
“Lex!”
“They don’t seem like they’re together, Martha…”
“More of a state you enter, then something you do…” Lex theorized. “A change of state? Human, into not-human…”
“Do I even have to say ‘married couple,’ Jonathan?”
“Lex, answer my question.”
“You first.”
Clark sighed. “You said it yourself: human into not-human. While I was not-human, I could barely speak with you, and you could barely hear me. Thus the dreams.”
“Vague dreams.”
“It was all I had, Lex.”
“And I was desperate, Clark. I spent the whole week thinking you were dead.”
“Jesus, Martha.”
“I know, Jonathan.”
A silence, then “…I’m sorry, Lex.”
“Me, too.”
“Couldn’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t.”
Clark smirked down at him. “I’ll make it up to you.”
Lex smiled slowly at that, his eyelids drooping half-shut. “Oh, yes, you will indeed.”
“And, why yes,” Martha called out, finally coming closer, “there are parents in the room. Look at that. Now, Lex,” she placed a blanket over him as he lay on the couch, “you need to get some sleep. It’s been a long, long day.”
Clark settled next to him, looking rebellious.
“And…yes, Clark, you may stay with him.” Clark began to grin widely. “But your father will stay with you.”
Clark blinked. So did Jonathan.
“You really didn’t think anything was going to happen in your parent’s living room, did you?” Lex asked him, his own smile beginning to spread across his face.
“Cookies taste red,” Clark muttered under his breath, snuggling next to him under the covers.
Lex smiled.
The End
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