The Bitter Truth, by Glacis. Not rated. No copyright infringement intended. Spoilers for Onyx; in appreciation of Michael Rosenbaum’s incredible performance.

"I have loved truth...Where is truth?...Everywhere hypocrisy,…even among the most virtuous, even among the greatest…" The Red and the Black, Stendhal

Many years later, he would find it ironic that he took his first step toward the future after a meteor-induced weekend straight out of a classic Star Trek episode.

At the time, it was merely terrifying.

And liberating.

If there was one thing Lex Luthor did not do, it was lie, to himself or to others. His presentation of the truth might be incomplete, shaded toward a particular meaning, held in abeyance until the decisive moment in a battle… but he did not lie. He faced the truth.

No matter how bitter it might be.

Clark lied constantly, with his words, with his bravado, with his desperation. His eyes told the truth, showed fear and confusion even as he put up an innocent front that screamed guilty to anyone with discernment to see it. Lex remembered, when he was only Alexander, telling Clark that he should have seen the truth, but he was blinded by friendship, which was no longer the case.

Not the complete truth; it was friendship, but not blindness. Willful ignorance, really.

Much as it was Clark’s willing suspension of disbelief to think Lex remembered nothing of his time in two bodies. Two minds.

One soul.

His time in chains, and his time free to wreak havoc with everything he’d tried to control since the first time he felt the shadows creeping over him.

He looked up as his father swept into the office. Lex exclaimed about the mark on Lionel’s face, but was more distracted by the man’s hair. He knew as soon as he saw his father that the bad old man was back.

If the black suit hadn’t given it away, the excessive use of styling product certainly would have.

Their conversation was short, bitter, and all-too-familiar. Lionel drank his brandy, reminded him of his patrimony, and repeated the family mantra: We are Luthors. You can’t deny fate.

Not for the first time, but for the last, Lex fought to believe otherwise, and failed.

Staring down at his hands, still on the keyboard in the silence that reigned in the aftermath of his father’s stormy visitation, he willed himself to relax. As the tension drained from his shoulders, down his back, bled away, his eyes closed.

Flashes of memory came out of the dark like punches to the head.

Shooting the guard and folding him easily into the storage locker; had it been so easy the first time? Had that been to save Jonathan, or to save himself? Who pulled the trigger at Club Zero that night? It was all starting to blend together. Noise, squeeze, flash, blood, light going out, flesh growing cold, his victim’s, his own…

Cold. Down into his bones. His memory swayed drunkenly, and he was screaming, but he couldn’t scream too loudly. It echoed. It ached.

No one could hear him, anyway.

Manacles cutting into his wrists, weighing down his ankles through the fine woolen slacks. Heat under that god damned metal mask, and Alexander was right, but he’d gotten it backward. It wasn’t that Louis couldn’t bear to look at his weaker brother; it was that he couldn’t bear to see what he’d had to leave behind in order to keep his kingdom.

Lex wouldn’t leave it behind.

He would bury it.

Another flash, light-dark-light again. Pain in his chest like a stab wound as the concrete crushed Clark, and Chloe, but his mind was on Clark, even if his sociopathic other half didn’t let it show. Startlement, wonder, ideas blossoming of exactly how he could use this unexpected gift as Clark stood upright and shrugged off several tons of concrete as if they were grass cuttings.

“We have a destiny, Clark! With my intellect and your powers, we could –“ Ah, but they couldn’t. Because Clark wouldn’t.

Or would he?

An older memory pricked him: red glow on Clark’s hand; invitation in Clark’s eyes. Eyes that went cold and dark and falsely innocent when the red glow was gone.

Lex wanted to kill him. Wanted to hold him. Wanted to make him bleed.

A shift, weight of the gun in his hand, pulse of the ring on his finger. The sheer exhilaration of shooting Jonathan in the leg, deliberately aiming high, as satisfying as it would have been to kneecap him. Really wanted to put a second one right in his sanctimonious face, right between the disapproving eyes, but Martha would have cracked, and Lex would have lost his leverage over Clark.

Lex blinked, and the agonized look on Martha’s face disappeared, along with the blood on Clark’s cheek. He was in his office. Staring at the monitor on his laptop. Trying to remember what the fuck he’d been doing when he spaced out.

Before his father stormed in and turned his world upside down again. Or, perhaps, righted it. So, no foundation, no more useless charity, and the old man back on the war path. Lex would have to watch his ass and his back, or Lionel would find a way to steal, cheat or manipulate his way right back into the middle of things at LuthorCorp, court orders and son’s sanity be damned.

The sound of his own dry chuckle startled him. Perhaps it was a little late to be worried about the son’s sanity after all. Another memory attacked him, and he rolled with it.

Lana, big eyes startled and blank, staring up at him; she tasted like cherry lip gloss and dried flowers. Dusty. Preserved in her little museum coffee house and carefully-constructed life. Boring little pinned butterfly, dead but not knowing it, still enough of an innocent to provide an evening’s entertainment, even if constrained by threat of eviction from her musty little dreams.

Particularly if so constrained. Without that fillip of coercion the chase would be too dreary to commence much less conclude.

A sideways slip, as another memory ambushed him. The solid impact of his fist against Clark’s face, one good punch for all the times Clark railed at him, the height of hypocrisy, decrying Lex’s so-called lies while all the time lying through his perfect white teeth.

Perhaps he’d gone about this backward. Perhaps it would have been more satisfying if he’d punched Lana and kissed Clark.

His lip curled into a smirk. Maybe seduction would have worked where intimidation had not.

The smirk softened into a thoughtful frown as the memory blended with others, circling around to the contemplation of catalysts. Clark, as catalyst for Lex, giving him life but refusing him an understanding of how that gift could be given. The balance of hero and villain, the only thing needed to re-cast the story being a slight change of perspective. Lies, and truth, and truth obscured by lies, then lies showing the truth more clearly than if it was plainly spoken.

And at the center?

Meteor rock.

Potential. Greatness. Weakness. Threat. Control.

Release?

For himself, release found in the black rock, a release he’d fought his entire life, a battle he now knew was over. Not being one to fight for lost causes, even his own, Lex allowed himself to follow the thread of logic he’d spun.

In the raw green form, the rock had a different function, Threat, to Clark, from Lex. Control, of Clark, by Lex. It made Clark weak, made him bleed. Made him obey. With the constant threat that the moment the green rock was gone, Clark would rebel. Escape. Lex would lose him.

Yet, in another form, the rock was a release for Clark, as well. When the meteor rock was red, it released Clark’s dark side, the complement to the beast Lex had barely reintegrated into his mind, the voice whispering to him from the shadows whenever he closed his eyes.

The voice that whispered truth.

Clark was a bastard when exposed to the red rock, crude and loud, vicious and greedy… and truthful.

Nakedly truthful.

The memory of a conversation stung him; Clark, offering to leave with him, go to Metropolis, bring the world to its knees. Himself… calling Jonathan.

Opportunity missed.

That was when Lex still believed in salvation.

He told Clark, once, that the only thing keeping him from putting an end to his life was Clark’s friendship, Clark’s belief that allowed Lex to believe that there was something other than darkness in his soul. Well, now Lex had proof.

And the bitter truth of the matter was, when the darkness was gone, the only thing left was the lie.

The friendship founded on a lie and fostered by willful ignorance.

The crack of plastic beneath his fist brought him out of the fugue of memory that had claimed him. His laptop lay in pieces, scattered across the surface of his desk. A thin trickle of blood oozed from his knuckles where he’d cut himself when he smashed it.

Absently licking at the blood, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and hit the third number on his speed dial.

“Harris? I have a job for you.”

Perhaps, if he couldn’t fight the shadows in himself, he shouldn’t. Perhaps if he shifted that perspective, they could be his strength, not his downfall. Denial hadn’t worked. No one would give him the benefit of the doubt, that was proven, and now, he couldn’t even extend that grace to himself. It was time to introduce Clark’s red reality to Lex’s own black one.

Division brought weakness. Unity, strength. That truism held for both self-knowledge and alliances in the pursuit of power. Clark would be his partner; if not his partner, then his weapon, one Lex would take great pleasure in wielding. Perhaps, since the threat of green meteor rock wouldn’t give him the truth, the freedom in the red rock would.

end

"Truth, the bitter truth." Epigraph from The Red and the Black by Stendhal