Fic: All the Difference, part 6

[xparrot]

But wait, there's more! My apologies for the delay in posting, hope folks are still interested? ^_^
Before this story proceeds any further, I must disclaim: I know very little or nothing whatsoever about economics, business theory, the stock market, architecture, zoning regs, computer mainframes, quantum physics, or in fact most of the things Lex Luthor is an expert in, making much of the plotty bits of this story an exercise in pure bullshit. Viva la technobabble!

I have to say I love writing Lex's POV, getting to use whatever wonderfully esoteric English vocabulary I can sweep up from the far dusty corners of my brain. I am very fond of my language, wacky as it is. Thanks as always to gnine for riding herd on my linguistic stampedes.

Smallville: All the Difference, 6/? {3,419 words}
PG-13, Clark/Lex, futurefic, AU (in a manner of speaking)
Lex Luthor wakes up in his own bed in his own penthouse, infinitely far from all he knows. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor wakes up in his own bed in his own penthouse, just as far from home...


All the Difference (6/?)


"What are you up to, Luthor?"

Next verse, same as the first, though this Greek Chorus had a cowl to go with the cape. His fault for working after dark. Lex didn't bother looking up from his computer. "Good evening, Batman. How'd you draw babysitting duty this fine night?"

He was more than a little curious, having not seen a sign of Superman in over two days. The last three days had passed in a haze of dismayed disbelief, waking the second morning and the next with impractical hope, only to find himself still living in this reality. His numbness now might be taken for acceptance.

The second morning, Lex had tried calling Clark four times, but true to his word Clark hung up before he could finish a sentence and would not answer again when he called back. Despite this, all that day the building's proximity alarms kept issuing sporadic warnings of a man-sized figure in the immediate airspace of the LexCorp Towers. Never long enough for any cameras to get a shot, but he knew when he was being watched. There were rooms in the towers shielded such that neither x-ray vision nor superhearing could penetrate, but he had nothing to hide.

At least, nothing he wanted to hide from Clark. Superman probably knew about most of it anyway, if such obsessive observation was the norm.

When it came to things to be hidden from the general public, the police, any given government agency, various private organizations, and his own legal department, the list was apparently endless. Lex couldn't help but be impressed. His own LexCorp had its fair share of necessary secrets, but managing this many illicit, immoral, or otherwise objectionable operations redefined multi-tasking. The mental juggling equivalent of Cirque de Soleil. No wonder this LexCorp's aboveboard business barely stayed out of the red. It was amazing its CEO had any time for it.

But yesterday, the proximity alarms had been silent, and today as well. CNN reported no international calamities, and Superman sightings were down around the world (disregarding the usual run of hoaxes, mistaken identities, and various misidentified red hang-gliders, kites, and balloons) so Lex had drawn his own conclusions. "League business off-world, hmm?"

Batman's curt response didn't answer him one way or another. "You won't get away with it."

Lex continued composing his email. "No, probably not. What was it, again?"

"I'm losing my patience, Luthor." A black glove reached across his keyboard to hit the CPU's power switch. The screen went dark.

"I was in the middle of that," Lex protested mildly. He looked up into the face of his tormentor. The cowl effectively hid Bruce's blue eyes but his glare was no less expressive for it. It might have been intimidating, if the last time Lex had stared into that mask of frustrated rage hadn't been at the International Children Fund charity banquet. Three grade-school hellions had grabbed Batman's cape in a laudable attempt to see what was underneath.

It was almost eight anyway. He should be finishing this work and calling Khronos Labs for their daily progress report. Lex had been spending his days occupied with LexCorp, the privacy of night on the problem of his altered life circumstances, and the few hours between in dream-cursed sleep.

The dreams had changed. Not a false past now, but the real present--a present he was no longer living, a life out of reach. Lex risked an implausible leap of logic, asked, "Superman's on Fralqud, right? Showing off good alien-Earth relations."

Batman might have been a statue, a stone gargoyle erected in his office to scare supplicants. Lex, studying him, could discern no change in expression, but that was telling in itself. If he were completely, insanely wrong, Batman could simply shrug it off; this stillness was shock or contemplation. Bruce was trying to figure out exactly how the Watchtower had been bugged without his awareness, implying the dreams had been accurate.

Either that, or Bruce knew him well enough to know that any information, whether a confirmation or a denial, was dangerous, and therefore refused to give him anything. Bruce always had been more difficult to read than Clark, and the cowl didn't help. "I know what you're doing, Luthor."

His first night here, Lex had dreamed of Clark telling him about an off-planet mission, had dreamed of telling Clark to go. Shortly after, Superman had disappeared off this planet, and the odds were too small for that to be a fluke. As small as the possibility of tripping over a crack in the space-time continuum and ending up in the wrong universe. Significantly smaller than the odds that he was suffering another psychotic break and either this life, or his past memories, was a delusion.

The night after that, Lex had dreamed of spending hours on his computer alone in his office, searching his database for records already memorized, watching and reading as if he had never seen them before. He had called up spectrums of yellow sunlight emissions contrasted with red sunlight and in the dream it hadn't occurred to him to wonder why.

He hadn't dreamed last night because he hadn't slept last night. Lex rubbed his tired eyes. Four days and the skin on the artificial hand still felt noticeably rubbery and unnatural to him. "I was writing an email to the director of Cadmus Labs," he told Batman. "I don't know what I'm doing now, so feel free to enlighten me."

From the depths of his black mantle, Batman withdrew a folder and flicked it down on the desk. Lex opened it, paged through the copies within. He didn't have to read the memos; he had sent out all of them himself over the past three days, addressed to various LexCorp offices, and delivered by secure email or intra-corporation courier. He definitely hadn't cc'ed any copies to the League. "Interesting. I hadn't realized corporate espionage was one of the Batman's areas of expertise."

"Are you planning another political bid?"

"Not especially." Which was a lie, but as those plans wouldn't be implemented for another couple years, it was a white one. "Perhaps I'm making my peace with God."

At Batman's look Lex said, "I'm joking, of course. I made peace with God years ago--I agreed not to believe in him if he agreed not to believe in me." He closed the folder, pushed his chair back from the desk and steepled his fingers. "Batman, I'm a busy man. If we could cut to the chase--preferably skipping the part you dangle me by one foot thirty stories over the street--what do you suspect me of doing?"

"I know what you're doing," Batman said. "You're closing up shop. Shutting down LexCorp ventures around the world, opening corporate laboratory resources to public and private interests, committing previously earmarked funds to new projects--you're systematically dismantling LexCorp, and you're trying to do it in a matter of days. What I want to know is why."

"Impressive," Lex said, raising an eyebrow. He honestly was impressed. Whatever vacuous facade he maintained in this universe, Bruce's business acumen was sharp as ever. To have put together so big a picture from these few misleading pieces...not a single LexCorp executive was yet close to reaching that conclusion. Admittedly he hadn't allowed any of them access to this combined evidence--simple enough to manage; his self in this universe apparently believed in delegation not at all. Most of his employees were in the dark about most other company operations, which proved quite fortunate for his present purposes. "You're wrong; I've hardly shut down any facilities, and I have no wish to tear apart my own company. Still, a remarkable deduction."

Batman stood silently for a moment, his cape hanging down like a sheath of shadows. "Not dismantling," he said finally. "Re-imaging. These closed-effective-immediately projects are all placed under legally sanctioned cover businesses."

Lex nodded.

"So you're converting the illegal operations to legal activities, and promoting the dummy companies to legitimate status in LexCorp."

"I can't comment about illegal operations, but I've decided LexCorp's interests would be better served by less unnecessary paperwork. What's the point of maintaining two distinct budgets for single facilities?"

"This isn't a press conference. Enough obfuscation." Batman's gauntleted hands came down on the desk hard enough to rattle the onyx top. "Why, Luthor? Why now? And why so quickly? If you do this any faster you'll be risking bankruptcy. Already your stock stands to plummet when these changes go public."

Lex could have laughed at the absurdity. A corporate watchdog was one thing, but a corporate watch-bat? "Why worry? I'm sure if LexCorp does go under, Wayne Enterprises will be quick to snap it up."

Behind the cowl Batman's eyes narrowed. "You're not liquidating nearly enough capital for anything major. You're opening laboratories to new ventures, not locking any of them down for secret projects."

There was one exception to that, but Lex wasn't going to point out Khronos if Batman had missed it. He said nothing.

"What's the game, Luthor? Why?"

It was the easiest of questions. Far easier than to explain why LexCorp was this way to begin with, why they were playing these games at all. Those answers he could only guess at, an educated guess, true, psychological inference; but it would only be extrapolation, with the experiences and steps in between mostly unknown to him. But why he was doing this now? That question was easy.

"You shut down the bayside labs," Bruce went on.

That had been Lex's first memo. The EPA officers' insinuations and Clark's reference had piqued his curiosity. His second morning, he had awoken after two hours of sleep, gasping from a too-vivid dream, sweating from the memory of Clark's arms around him. At six AM he had gone to his office and spent the morning researching his own facility.

What he had found was worse than anything he had conjectured. The pair of acid-destroyed bodies in the bay were the least of it. The photographs of the most recent viable test subjects turned his stomach.

Human subjects. Volunteers, so the reports assured. Paid victims, trading their bodies for the money to survive Metropolis's streets. The files listed the reprimands laid on Dr. Sevarius throughout his career, the warnings from boards of ethics and corporate supervisors entered onto his official record. Dutifully noted slaps on the wrist, and meanwhile the doctor continued his work, continued to submit his findings in all their fascinating and graphic and undeniably profitable detail.

Lex had picked up the phone and fired the man, effective immediately, all access privileges instantly removed, and his research confiscated according to his contract--as ironclad here as in his own LexCorp, and with even more provisos for possession. That Sevarius's methods were horrific didn't discount the merit of his discoveries.

"You've known for years what was happening there," Batman accused.

"Almost definitely," Lex agreed.

"Why stop it now?"

"Because I could," Lex said, not exactly a lie. As much of the truth as this Bruce would want or accept.

"That's not good enough, Luthor. Are we supposed to believe you've reformed? That after all these years you've found your conscience?"

"Hardly. My conscience's where it's always been." Soaring around the universe in absolutely ridiculous tights and a cape. "Where's yours?" Lex shoved back his chair, pulled himself erect. He wasn't as tall as Bruce, but he had never needed the advantage of height to look down on a smaller man. "You're the heroes. Years--this has been going on for years, you said, and you did nothing!"

"Nothing? How many times has Superman brought down those labs, freed the victims and handed Sevarius over to the police? Your lawyers had him out in days, you had new installations built--"

"--And there are always more victims. No. It doesn't work like that. Superman knows what I am--you know what I am. You could have done something even if Superman couldn't."

"I'm no murderer, Luthor, any more than your nemesis."

"Murder? That's a stopgap, not a solution. There's always more scientists out there, too, who are willing to put research above morality. You could've found your own way--you have your own lawyers, Bruce."

Batman's growl was so bass it all but vibrated the floor. "What are you saying, Luthor?"

"There are other ways to fight crime than putting on those glorified pajamas and terrorizing thugs. That has its place, and it must be cathartic, but there's so much more you could do. Hell, if you'd put your money behind your little black riding hood, you might've taken LexCorp down--you should've tried. You could have stopped this years ago." He was breathing hard, fists clenched with a rage he hadn't recognized until now.

Senseless rage. Undeserved accusation. He could feel Batman's stare through the cowl. Even a superhero couldn't save the world every time, and these sins were his own and no one else's. Lex Luthor's crimes, and that he had not made the choices himself did not mean that he was not a man who could make them.

What were the moral logistics of cross-dimensional culpability? The existential guilt of a potential decision was harder to dismiss when he was looking at photographs of an innocent, mutilated girl, knowing that somehow, somewhere or when, he had authorized it, allowed it, supported it.

God, he was going to be sick again. Three days of purging those images from his mind, of erasing them as totally and completely as could possibly be managed, but it wasn't enough.

Too much blood on this artificial hand to wash away, but he would do all he could, while he was here.

And if this were his real life--if the guilt had triggered a psychotic break and caused him to imagine a world where it didn't matter, and this was in truth the only existence he had ever had--then too late or not, he would do what he could do.

Clark's embrace had been so warm in his dream, his hands so gentle on his shoulders. How many times had they shared leftovers together in his office, late at night? Clark never took a chair, unless he was stealing Lex's. He always sat on the desk, the same desk Lex's knuckles were pressed to now, smooth, cold, onyx top. They'd had sex on this desk more than once, Clark willingly, eagerly, submitting under him; or Clark pushing him against the edge, Metropolis's night skyline glowing behind him, silhouetting the hero in the neon starlight of their city.

"Luthor," Batman said into his silence, "We're watching you. Whatever you're playing at, don't think for a second that you'll get away with it."

"Why not?" Lex asked bitterly. "It seems I always have before."

He heard the whisper of the window on its frame, gliding open. Bruce apparently had a transmitter to trigger the remote lock. Lex groped at the rim of his desk, hit the button to slam the window closed again and trap the superhero inside. "Batman," he said, not turning around. "Just tell me this, please. Superman's on Fralqud II, on a diplomatic mission. Is that correct?"

He could hear no more of the man behind him than the slide of cloth over cloth, a susurration like the flutter of leathery wings. "Where are you getting your information?" Bruce asked.

Lex said nothing, letting his silence speak for him. Answer mine and I'll answer yours.

"It's hardly a diplomatic mission," Batman said finally. "How did you hear about it?"

His dreams were real. Or had some association with reality. A reality where Clark could tell him about League business and no one would take him for a traitor. A reality where he would shake Batman's hand as he left and thank him for his help.

A reality he had somehow been separated from. Though parallels remained. "I dreamed about it," Lex said.

He didn't hear anything. When he looked behind, the hero was gone and the window was closed. Probably Bruce had used his own query to cover the sound of it opening and Lex's reply to shut it.

The Batman's question still hung in the air, unanswered. Lex dropped his head into his hands, scrubbed at his face, skin against smooth synthetic epidermis.

Why?

Because Clark wouldn't approve. Because Clark didn't approve, obviously, recalling Superman's sour frustrated temper, and Clark had been Lex's conscience for fifteen years. Long enough for him to decently guess what Clark would say, even when he wasn't here to say it. For fifteen years Lex hadn't made a major business decision, hadn't charted his company's course, without talking it over with Clark, discussing, debating, arguing until they reached consensus.

Clark would surprise him at times--Lex still didn't understand his opposition to the carefully controlled Sao Paulo experiments, but then, to this day Clark still got irrational about the "meteor rocks." He would surely come around on that eventually. But most of this LexCorp's activities Lex would never have asked him about. Would never have wanted Clark to know he had even considered them. Illegal experiments without the subjects' knowledge or consent; profits from a thriving black-market weapons trade; scientific achievements and patents hoarded for private investments instead of the public good.

Unjustifiable.

Clark would deny it, he knew. Would say that Lex's rejection of these tactics wasn't his influence but Lex's own instincts. That Lex had closed down Sevarius's operation so hurriedly because of how his stomach had turned at those photos of the subjects. That nausea, Clark would insist, was Lex's own conscience, nothing to do with him.

What Clark never understood was how little that mattered. The Lex Luthor of this universe might feel just as sick when he saw those pictures, but it wouldn't show on his face and it wouldn't change any decision he made. Necessary evils, essential sacrifices. Nothing was unjustifiable in Lex Luthor's world. He had been trained his entire life to be strong enough, hard enough, to do what needed to be done, for the sake of his all-important goals. He wouldn't stop for a weak stomach or nerves.

Even Superman, for all his power, wasn't enough to stop him.

Too often Lex had leaped without looking, moved without thinking, overconfident of his ability to repair any accidental damage after the fact; too often Clark had hesitated at the brink, deliberated and second-guessed himself and taken no action until it was too late. Together they achieved the optimal pace, the ideal balance.

There was no balance here. There were only victims of his own ambitions, and an impotent hero failing to save everyone in time.

This was Lex Luthor's world.

It was after eight o'clock; he should contact Khronos Labs and see if they had made any new inroads today. Oddly, they hadn't been surprised by his request; Lex's demands for multi-universe research were apparently a stepping-up of a program already in effect. In the LexCorp he knew, Khronos was a center for advanced theoretical and temporal physics, but had no specific projects on alternate realities. He wondered what had inspired the study here. At least having an established project conveniently raised no new suspicions. Mercy had enough of those already. But for whatever reasons she was decidedly cool on Khronos Labs, and not inclined to ask questions about it.

He should call them. Instead he booted up his computer again, completed the email to Cadmus's director and started on another. Most of Cadmus's projects were reasonable, many of them in effect in his own LexCorp, but their methods needed modification. Scientific progress was worth only so much sacrifice. Then there was the matter of the recent arms shipments; the official inventories showed no losses, but there were a few deliveries he couldn't account for.

Bruce was right. He was making too many changes, too quickly and too drastically. A perceived loss of confidence could be deadly on the market. This LexCorp's legitimate investments were precariously balanced on the brink of solvency as it were. If he sank the company--

If he sank LexCorp, so be it. Clark would rather have it gone, if that were the only way. Lex could do no less. Sometimes a house is so riddled with rot that the only answer is to raze it and rebuild.

This was his world, and he would tear it down brick by brick and cent by cent, if he had to.


tbc...

---

Notes:

Dr. Anton Sevarius: A little cameo crossover. LexCorp must have snapped him up after Xanatos Enterprises let him go.

Comments

[lastscorpion.livejournal.com]

I really love how you're doing Lex in this story. This alternate-universe story is great!

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm having a lot of fun with it myself ^_^