Field of Blood

Thou knowest how drie a Cinder this world is.
And learnst thus much by our Anatomy,
That 'tis in vaine to dew, or mollifie
It with thy Teares, or Sweat, or Blood....

John Donne, Anatomie of the World




When first the evil Kryptonians had broken free from the Phantom Zone, gathered to themselves powerful allies intent on intergalactic conquest, and invaded Earth as their first step toward victory, all had seemed lost. 

Lex Luthor aligned himself with them, pronouncing himself an enemy of their enemies -- Kal-el and Kara Zor-El.  He worked with the Phantom Zoners and learnt some of their plans and their weaknesses. 

And yes, they did have weaknesses, beyond their vulnerability to Kryptonite.   For a start, they were insanely arrogant and vain.  Lex had suffered a long apprenticeship of dealing with such people.  He had rarely been successful in using his knowledge against Lionel Luthor, but that was because his love for his father weakened him. He had no love for the Phantom Zoners.

Clark and Kara showed up to parlay, and Lex stood among his masters, at his most arrogant. 

'Why are you doing this, Lex?' Clark asked. 

'Why?' asked Lex, in his turn.  'You dare to ask me why?  I remember your first words to me, that day at the bridge -- that I was a fool.  But I'm not.  I know how to choose the right side.  The winning side.'

Clark looked blank, and shrugged.  The parlay went on, to its inevitable end:  No treaty. 

Some weeks later, Clark requested one more attempt at peace. 

'Remember when you first came to visit me at the farm?' he asked Lex.  'My parents made you welcome, treated you like one of the family.  And you betrayed us, again and again.  And now this.'

Lex shrugged.  'I was born evil, I guess,' he said.  The Phantom Zoners laughed their evil laughs.

He gained their trust through flattery and submission to their commands, and fomented a little rebellion in the ranks of their allies as a distraction. Then, he woke his hidden, sleeping armies of Meteor Mutants and Super Soldiers, and declared all out war.  The first salvos of that war were fired at Kent Farms.

For forty days and nights now, the battles had raged.  But this, this the fortieth day, was the final battle, and General Luthor pulled out all the stops.  He stood upon his platform in the centre of the battlefield, watching his troops fight the alien insurgents.  Aides swarmed around him, fielding the conflicting reports, passing on his orders, trying to get between him and any incoming bullets.

That last bit was irritating, and not within their warrant.  General Luthor did not fear death.  He did not even try to avoid death.  He never had, and he never would, and this must be seen, by all and sundry.  It was part of his mythos, ever since this war had begun -- his utter disregard for his own safety.

His mutant army swarmed over the Kryptonians, as contemptuous of death as their general.  When only one invader remained alive, the mutants dragged him before Lex, and he fired his last kryptonite bullet into the alien's brain, and the war was over.



'You haven't slept for weeks, Boss,' said Mercy.  'It's all over but the shouting.  Get some rest.'

'I will.  I need to unwind, first,' said Lex.

'Unwind?'  Mercy asked this question as though she'd never heard the word, or understood the concept.  'You want me to find you some... entertainment?' 

Lex laughed.  'Thanks, but no thanks.  I'm just going to sit here and look out at Free Earth and feel content for a while.'

'Good enough.  But then go to bed.  Sleep.  Hope and I are just outside your door.... Oh, and do you think that's wise?'  Mercy pointed to the balcony doors.  They were standing open and unguarded for the first time since the Invasion.

'Whether it's wise or not, I don't know.  But I think it's safe enough.  The only aliens left alive fought on our side.'

Mercy shrugged, and went to join Hope. 

'Did you have to kill him?' said a voice from the balcony. 

'No,' said Lex, without turning around.  'But it felt good.  And what would you suggest I should have done?' And now he turned to face his interrogator.  'No earthly prison could hope to hold him for long -- he escaped the Phantom Zone, remember?  He'd never come over to our side.  If we let him go, he'd just run off and raise another army, and we'd have this all over again.'

'Maybe not,' said Clark.

'You know what, Clark?  I don't give a fuck.  You don't get to tell me, or any other human left alive on this planet, what to do with our own alien invaders.  If you hadn't lied and lied... "You're delusional, Lex.  There are no aliens, Lex.  I'm just an ordinary human, Lex."'

'Would it have made a difference?'

'I don't know, but that's not the point.  We might have been more prepared, but we never had the chance. That's the point.  My people died, Clark.  They died. That's the point.  You didn't help until it was too late. That's the point.  Get off my balcony.  Don't you have a home of your own?  A planet of your own?  Oh, no. I remember.  It blew up. Good riddance.  Did you have to come here and try to destroy our world, too?'

'You sound tired.  Get some sleep, Lex.'

'That's General Luthor, to you.  And fuck off.'

Lex shut the balcony doors, closing out the sight and sound of his nemesis, but didn't activate the kryptonite shields.  He was tired of kryptonite, Kryptonians, war and death.  His moment of victory had just been spoilt.  Maybe Mercy had the best idea, after all.  Sleep.

He programmed his computer to play classical music, went into the bathroom, opened the cabinet, found a bottle of sleeping pills, shook one out into his hand, added another for good measure, and swallowed them with a glass of water from the tap.  He ran a bath, stripped out of his blood-spattered uniform, and sank into the hot water to relax before bed. 

The music spun around him, the notes dancing before his eyes, as if he were playing all the instruments.  It was strange, wonderful, heady stuff. 

A voice was singing about Sex and Sleep and Despair... and Death  -- and that was odd, because he was certain he had only programmed instrumental pieces.  The music lured him into deeper waters. 

He floated downstream, down toward the sea, and the whales came to sing him to sleep.  He sang along.  He was far out into the ocean now, and feeling a bit like Captain Ahab, tied to the whale.  Or maybe he was the White Whale -- Moby Dick?  He was bald, and sleek and white, like Moby Dick.  And Captain Ahab had come a cropper trying to kill him.  Yes.  He was Moby Dick, sinking down, down, down, into the depths of the ocean, deeper than any whale had dived before.  The bottom of the sea lay ahead of him, so dark that nothing could be seen, but it could be felt, and he could sense it just ahead, and then he hit it, and heard a crash, and a voice calling his name, and someone else screaming at the freak to leave her boss alone, and the freak screaming that Lex was dying, but no, he wasn't, he was Moby Dick and Immortal, and he laughed and laughed and laughed. 

An evil laugh, like the Kryptonian Overlords had taught him. 



'Lex?'

'Go away,' Lex muttered.

'Lex? It's me.'

'Who's me?'

'It's me, Clark.  Can you hear me?  Can you speak?'

'Me Lex.  And I am speaking, you idiot.'

'Just sleep.  You'll be fine.  I brought you to the Fortress, and....'

'You what!'  Lex sat up, screamed bloody murder, and reached out to hit Clark. 

Clark caught his hand, gently.  'Careful,' he said.  'You'll break it.'

'It would be worth it,' said Lex.  'And what do you care?  You want me in perfect condition for your alien computer to torture.'

'It won't.'

'It hates me.  It thinks I'm evil.  I'm not evil.  I'm Moby Dick.'

'You're what?'

'Moby Dick. The White Whale.  Go away, Clark.  I was having a great dream.'

'You were dying, Lex.  You took poison.'

'No, I didn't.  I took... I took a sleeping pill, to help me sleep.  Hadn't slept in....'

'Weeks.  Mercy told me. She told me about the hospital.  About your friends.   I'm sorry, Lex.'

'Thank you. That will be all.  You can go now,' said Lex.

'I'll go,' said Clark.  'I'll check about the pill, and the poison, and I'll be back.  In the meantime....'   And Clark bent, and touched his lips to Lex's, in a gentle kiss, and Lex fell into darkness once more.



For the first time in months, the media was reporting the real news.  Lex watched the huge, flat media screen.  In living colour, he watched the crowd tear the woman to death with their bare hands. 

'To repeat,' said the reporter at the scene.  'General Luthor is alive. Superman has him in protective custody, at an undisclosed location.  Moira Tombs, who was a servant in his household, admitted to attempting to assassinate the General, because she was in love with one of the Kryptonian invaders.  She has been executed by fiat.  To repeat, General Luthor is alive, and will be returning to public life shortly.  He has appealed for calm, under the present circumstances.'

'I don't remember appealing for that,' Lex noted.  'And I don't remember testifying at an attempted murder trial, either.'

'What would you have said, if there had been a trial?' asked Superman.

'I would have asked for clemency,' said Lex.  'I liked being Moby Dick.  You kissed me. Why?'

Superman switched off the media screen.  He came to face Lex.  'I was trying to take your memories away.  Some of them, at least.  It was wrong of me, but you were in pain, and I thought... I thought you wanted to die.'

'I see,' said Lex, after a long silence.  'People are always making free with my mind.   I should be used to it by now, but I'm not.'

'It didn't work,' said Superman.  'You still have all your memories, I'm sure.  I got to share them, though.  And your pain.  I shared your pain.'

'That must have been fun.'

'I know how the Phantom Zoners treated you.  I know how you felt to watch your soldiers die.'

'And you know how I feel about you, I guess,' said Lex.

'Yes, but Lex....'

'It's nothing,' said Lex.  'I'm used to loving people who despise me.  I wouldn't have it any other way.'

'Lex... When I take you back to Metropolis, we can hold a press conference....'

'And announce our engagement?'

'And I'll make a formal apology for misleading the human race for so long.'

'And you're so pretty, the human race will forgive you on the spot,' said Lex.

'All I care about is your forgiveness,' Clark declared.   'Would you....'

Lex thought of a dozen responses off the top of his head, some of them obscene, all of them negative and ultimately self destructive.  The truth was, he thought, if he was Moby Dick, and Captain Ahab tried to kill him for years, but died himself instead, tied to his side forever, stabbing at him impotently as they sank beneath the waves... well, as an ending to a novel, it was dramatic  --  melodramatic even.  As an ending to a life, it was less satisfying.

'I'll forgive you,' he said.  'If you promise never to lie to me again.'

'I... I'll try,' said Clark.

'And one more thing,' Lex went on.  'I was really out of it the other night.  Kiss me again, and mean it this time.'

***The End***