Zod

Title: Zod
Pairing(s): Clex.
Spoilers: up to Season 6 'Zod'
Category: episode-related, drama, angst
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A re-write of 'Zod.' With Clark trapped in the Phantom Zone, those still on Earth are left to fight Zod alone. The ensuing struggle tests everyone to the very limits of their character, but will it be enough?

Chloe couldn't believe it. There were bodies in the streets. Men and women, bleeding and abandoned, maybe even dying. It was horrifying. The kind of thing you expected from a war zone, not one of the most affluent cities in the Western world. And the crowds were so thick - roads blocked by lines of abandoned or burning cars - Chloe could barely even reach the wounded. Not that she'd know how to help if she did, with only a passing knowledge of first aid and a useless cell in her pocket that, like everyone else's, couldn't even order pizza just then let alone an ambulance.

Despite the logic, it tore her heart to leave them, and the young reporter would have given anything to offer those fallen figures a cure. But she couldn't, and she had her own problems to focus on. There'd been no word from Clark for the past half hour and Chloe knew she had to prepare for the worst. If the Kryptonian had failed - which she absolutely refused to believe yet - but if he had, then humanity would be forced to fight Zod alone. Seeking out Lana at the LuthorCorp tower had seemed the sensible option, back when Chloe had been in the relative safety and silence of the Daily Planet. It was the first step in forming a coherent resistance - bringing everyone who understood the threat together.

Now she was outside, Chloe was starting to have second thoughts. The tower was just down the street, but the reporter doubted if she'd even make it that far. It was literally a nightmare. A pitch black, flame-coloured nightmare. And while there didn't seem to be any children caught up in the mess - thank god -some of the gang members charging past were barely teenagers, full of crazed and youthful strength and equal immaturity, holding them back from the dreadful truth of the situation. All of them with fire in their eyes, and often lining the bottles in their hands as well. Chloe was surprised the pure white moon hadn't turned red in face of the chaos. And this wasn't even the whole town. Most Metropolis residents were wisely locked in their homes, if they hadn't already high-tailed it away, and several groups of police were valiantly patrolling the sidewalks, their plastic shields held tight together in a moving wall, trying to impose some order.

But it only took a few rowdy ringleaders to incite panic and the masses were soon to follow. The homeless, the destitute, the runaways down on their luck - all of them were fair game for the wave of hysteria sweeping the city in the aftermath of Milton Fine's virus. Because it wasn't about the loss of power. The virus was frighteningly new and impenetrable, and with as of yet no official word from Washington, the whole thing felt uncomfortably like Armageddon. And everyone knew, at the end of the world, all bets were off.

Chloe jumped into the side of a smashed up car with a yelp as a large man in a tattered T-shirt and jeans, studded leather shackles on his wrists, barged passed her, a whole trash can raised above his head. There seemed to be smoke coming from the lid and Chloe had an uncomfortable feeling it was supposed to be a giant petrol bomb. She could only watch in horror as the man threw it over the policemen's plastic barrier. Fortunately, several of group managed to raise their shields in time and push the smoking object away - the falling metal lid clashing harmlessly over the helmets of the others who hadn't been so quick.

The man shouted in anger, a harsh, grunting sound, barely heard above the continual cries of panic and pain from the other running or fallen, and as Chloe tried to back away several others crashed into her from behind, almost knocking her down. One of them was a younger man, hardly twenty, and also holding a trash can, face distorted in a wide-eyed grin of manic, misplaced hero-worship. All of them smashed into the police, almost feral in their rage, and Chloe's breathing turned erratic as panic finally took hold.

She scrambled quickly over the car bonnet, unheeding the shards of broken windshield coating her turquoise jacket and embedding in her fingers.

Once over, she ran straight to the other side of the street, giving the police and their circle of opposition a wide berth. Unfortunately, the crowd was just as strong on this side and from out of it a young woman with tears in her eyes, hands clasped desperately round a bulky cardboard box, smashed into the young blonde's shoulder.

Chloe cried out at the sharpness of the hit, right hand clutching instinctively at the area of hurt, although it did little to alleviate the lingering sting.

As several others added to the pain, it soon became apparent Chloe was fighting a tide, so after pushing her way forcefully to the far edge of the sidewalk, she ducked into an open alleyway and rested her head against the brick with a sigh of relief.

"Hey doll, come to join us?"

Chloe snapped her eyes open again, stifling a gasp. Apparently the place wasn't as empty as she'd thought.

To her right was a kid in a faded green hoodie, hood pulled down over the cap on his head, obscuring most of his face. His sickening smile and the line of similarly grinning skulls on his black top were more than apparent however, and while Chloe wasn't usually one to stereotype, she somehow doubted this guy was an advocate of respect and equality.

"No, just leaving," she muttered, turning back to the street.

Another man blocked her path. Bulkier than the kid behind her and with his hood pulled back, revealing matted brown hair and bright, lecherous eyes.

"Now, come on. You ain't gonna be rude and leave us unsatisfied are ya?" he stated, resting a heavy pair of arms on her shoulders.

Chloe might have been scared, but she hadn't lost her spirit. So with a yell of defiance, she gripped the man's elbows for leverage and yanked her knee into his groin, hard.

He released her immediately and doubled over with a satisfying groan.

Chloe darted round him and made for the street again, only to be prevented by a pair arms snaking quickly and effectively about her waist. She struggled against the hold, arms flailing wildly behind her to try and catch her attacker, but he gripped like a vice, not letting up even when her elbow connected sharply with the soft hollow of what must have been a cheek.

Instead of crying in pain, the man holding her - who was separate again from the original guy she realised, as the hooded figure stepped round in front of her - started to laugh.

"She's feisty, this one," a voice rumbled at her neck, and Chloe couldn't stop the whimper when he pushed his nose through her hair, breathing loud and obnoxious.

"Good," said Hoodie, reaching out to cup Chloe's shaking head in his hand. "It's more fun when they fight." He let her go with a shove, twisting Chloe's head to the side with a force she half expected to cause whiplash. "Pin her to the wall."

The grip round her waist changed abruptly to an arm, with the brown-haired guy moving in quickly on the other. As they pulled her back and slammed her against the other side of the alley, leaving her winded from the force, Chloe noticed the hooded guy had started to unbuckle his belt.

A burst of overwhelming terror coursed through her as she realised what was about to happen and defiance turned to desperation.

"No! No, please!" she screamed, trying in vain to yank her arms from the wide spread position they'd been held into.

By the time she'd thought to use her legs, Hoodie moved forward, pinning them down securely with his own while he unbuttoned his fly.

"That's right," he whispered, leaning forward to breathe hot, alcohol-coated breath in her ear. "Scream. With the world fucked up like it is, who's gonna care?"

Fly now undone, the guy grabbed roughly at her jacket with his free hand, fingers feeling round the lace of her white shirt beneath, and Chloe choked on her next cry, tears breaking from her wide, panicked eyes and rolling down her cheeks. Oh god. Oh god. Please...

"Let her go."

The voice was foreign. Familiar.

And to Chloe's complete surprise and relief, the man did let her go, the hand on her blouse falling to his side. His cap moved to follow its drop and the visible line of his mouth curved down.

"What the -?"

"Walk away."

And he did. Legs moving backwards while his head shook in opposition.

"What the fuck's happening?!" he yelled, even as he stepped towards the mouth of the alley, still open jeans dropping down his boxers.

As he shuffled into the street, the speaker stepped calmly into view. A man with high cheekbones and deep-set Slavic eyes. He wore a casual, dust-coloured sweater over black slacks, lightly faded white collar and cuffs at his neck and wrists, and stared at the remaining men darkly beneath overly long bangs. Mikhail Mxyzptlk.

"Hey!" the brown-haired guy yelled, dropping Chloe's arm and stepping forward. The other guy soon followed and Chloe hugged her now free arms to her chest, blinking heavily. "What the hell did you do?"

The other guy, who Chloe was now able to note, with detached interest, was bald, rolled up his sleeves.

"I'd back off if I were you," another, younger, voice piped up, and a short, Asian kid with spiky black hair and a leather jacket that had certainly seen better days stepped up beside Mikhail.

The bald guy laughed, low and deep like when he'd been holding Chloe.

"And what are you gonna do?" he scoffed. "Pea-shoot me to death?"

The kid gave a wry, unimpressed smile.

"How about I fry you instead?" he quipped back, deadly serious.

The two thugs looked to each other with a pair of equally dismissive shrugs before starting forward.

Before they'd moved two paces, the black-haired kid raised his hand, and with a sudden crackle of energy he had a ball of light flashing above it, about the size of a basketball. The men stopped in their tracks and eyed the thing in confusion. It had a weird, electric glow and seemed to be pulsing.

The kid smiled and let them stare for a moment, before pulling his arm back and pushing the ball with all his might. It sailed above the two guys' heads and smashed against the brick above Chloe in a shower of sparks, leaving a cruel, black mark in its wake. Chloe shifted out of the way as a cascade of rubble trickled past her, eyes bright with wonder as she stared at the wall. The lingering heat easily dried her tears, leaving tightened lines of skin across her cheeks that she brushed at absently. As kryptonite powers went, that was a shocker all right.

The thugs were staring too, jaws dropped in astonishment. A beat of silence, and then they were running, brushing passed the kid and Mikhail with stuttered curses and cries of 'freak.'

Mikhail and the kid ignored them, and the older man was next to Chloe in a few quick strides.

This brought all of the young girl's tension flooding back, because just over a year ago the former exchange student had tried to kill her after she and Clark disabled his unlawfully used controlling powers. Those powers had clearly returned now, thanks to Lex and his crazy ass project no doubt, and Chloe was far from certain about how he intended to use them.

Instead of attacking though, Mikhail merely eyed her up and down.

"You are unharmed?" he asked, meeting her gaze not exactly kindly, but certainly without malice.

And as their eyes met Chloe thought she might have seen a mirror of her own tension in the brown, a hint of shame. But then his lashes flicked languidly down and she couldn't be sure.

"Yeah, I'm... I'm okay," she muttered, tugging the lapels of her shirt closer than the cut called for, still feeling uncomfortably exposed. She looked away uneasily, not entirely sure how to go about expressing gratitude to an erstwhile attempted murderer. "Um... thank you."

Mikhail accepted the praise with a small nod.

"Dark corners are not safe places to be in a time of war," he stated. "You should return with us to the crowds. They are louder, yes, but there is... how do you say? Safety in numbers."

Chloe nodded tentatively and followed him to the alleyway entrance.

"Oh and hey, you know what would be even safer?" the kid snapped when they reached the street. The police and their following posse seemed to have moved on, leaving it quieter. "If we went back to the facility,"

"Het!" Mikhail answered sharply, shaking his head. "Not until we find her."

Chloe opened her mouth to question who they were looking for, when a sudden, intense screaming started up on their left and kept her silent.

A close crowd of people rushed passed them, united in a way the earlier groups hadn't been, all of them wide-eyed with panic. Several were glancing repeatedly over their shoulders, and Chloe followed the gaze to the cause of their fear.

Behind them, clawed arms outstretched, eyes flashing an eerie yellow in the moonlight, was a dinosaur. In kakis top and pants. Or at least, that's how it would seem to those already panicked and in no state to look closer.

For Chloe, who'd visited 33.1 only recently, the sight was more of a relief than anything. Because this was no threat, this was the English girl infected by the kryptonite-coated dinosaur bones. What did they call her? Raptor? Whatever her name, she was a godsend just then, dispersing the crowds and leaving the path to LuthorCorp wonderfully clear.

Raptor skidded to a halt when she saw Mikhail and the kid, and cricked her neck in apparent relief.

"Mikhail, thank god, I've been looking all over," she breathed. "You can come back. Molly's fine. Phoenix found her almost half an hour ago. She's safe at the facility. Didn't even stop to rest. Just grabbed the nearest computer and started trying to crack whatever's turned the world crazy practically the instant she stepped through the door."

Mikhail sighed, usual calm breaking slightly as his face sagged in obvious relief, and breathed out a string of guttural syllables too fast for the others to follow.

Chloe noted the look with interest, despite herself. She'd always assumed the erstwhile gambler cared only for himself - his exploitation of the Smallville High students certainly seemed ample evidence. But to choose to leave the safety of a secure facility, purely for the sake of another, suggested feelings beyond personal gain and the thought disorientated Chloe almost as much the insanity around her. And Molly Griggs too - another person who'd tried to kill her - was now also on her side it seemed, using her power over computers to try and stop Fine's virus. Well, the enemy of my enemy and all that, I guess.

"Has she had any luck?" she asked the dinosaur-hybrid, eyes hopeful.

Raptor shook her head, the brown stripes lining her skin merging with the green in the gloom.

"Not a bit," she stated. "Says it's like nothing she's ever seen before and believe me that's saying a lot. I haven't been here long, but it's enough to know Molly knows from computers. Whatever's going on, it's big."

Chloe nodded, lips thinning.

"Yeah..."

"All the more reason for us to get the hell out of here," the black-haired kid pressed. "If Molly's back that means we're done, right? We can start the lockdown now?"

"Lockdown?" Chloe queried.

"33.1 has a full lockdown procedure," Raptor explained. "The Boss pitches it as a safety measure for us, in case of natural disasters, you know? But we all know the real reason is to lock us in in case we go psycho with our powers." Chloe looked briefly uneasy, her belief in human rights warring painfully with past kryptofreak experience, but Raptor waved the look away. "Relax. It's a fair precaution. We know better than anyone how dangerous we can be. And besides, I gather Molly figured out the override less than ten minutes after it was installed so it's not like we'd be helpless if it was used unfairly. Anyway, that's not the point. With the power down it's not working to full capability, but there's a manual setting for the doors and we figure with the outside world currently a no-man's land it'll be safer if we all hole up for a while."

The Asian kid moved up beside her, nodding.

"We've been out collecting strays the past couple of hours," he added. "I was sent for Mikhail, but the stubborn bastard refused to come back without his girlfriend."

His glare at the older man was part way between exasperation and pride and Chloe realised with a shock of understanding that these people weren't just participants in the same project, they'd actually built a home together at the facility. With bonds strong enough to send them out searching for each other almost literally through hell. It was... well... pretty inspiring actually.

"Hey, you haven't seen the Boss have you?" Raptor asked, diamond-shaped pupils turning eagerly to Chloe. "The staff are worried about starting the lockdown without letting him know."

"Oh god, not that again!" the kid muttered. "Look around would you? This is hardly a normal situation, he's not gonna care. He'd probably even be impressed by the initiative, you know what Luthors are like."

"What Nick says is true," Mikhail agreed. "We must focus on our own survival now."

Raptor grimaced, revealing a row of extra sharp teeth, clearly unhappy about the plan. Chloe was surprised by the strength of the girl's feelings for her 'boss.' And equally keen to stop them keeping her from safety.

"Mikhail's right," she cut in quickly. "Lex is..." Chloe swallowed, thinking over the two decidedly undesirable situations Lex could be in at that moment. "You shouldn't wait for Lex. Go. Makes yourselves safe."

The kid - Nick - nodded briskly and started for the LuthorCorp building, only to skid to a halt again impatiently while Raptor and Mikhail lagged behind.

"Perhaps you should come also," Mikhail suggested, nodding at Chloe. "You would be protected with us."

Chloe gave him a soft smile, surprisingly touched - the smooth, liquid intensity in the Russian's eyes reminding her of the attraction she'd once felt for the guy during their early, threat-free meetings. The offer was certainly tempting as well, but...

"No," she shook her head. "Thank you, but... I have other places to be."

Raptor narrowed her eyes shrewdly, contracted pupils thinning further.

"You know what's happening, don't you?" she muttered. "You and the Boss. Clark too I bet. You know what's causing all this."

She waved a clawed hand across the street, where several people - either the bravest or most desperate - had already started to creep back, mostly to edge towards the already heavily looted shops. They eyed Raptor in much the same way Chloe was at that moment - nervous and uncertainly.

"Um..." the young reporter started, feeling a sudden unaccountable guilt at the thought of keeping the truth from these people. People who were just as mixed up in the after-effects of Krypton as she was really.

Raptor tilted her head like a bird, eyes melting to amber.

"It's okay," she relented. "We get secrets. You don't have to say. Just tell the Boss, if he needs us, he knows where we are."

A brisk nod, then she was bounding away, waving at the others to follow.

Chloe watched them slip round the back of the LuthorCorp building with a short, disbelieving smile. She'd always imagined 33.1 as a means of power for Lex - providing either the physical means of gaining it, or ways to exploit it in others. What she'd never expected was willing loyalty. During her first visit, the magic guy - Bobster - had called the millionaire a 'friend.' Could it possibly be he'd been telling the truth?

A whole new understanding of Lex flashed before her for a second then and she saw him as the protector she remembered him as during Lionel's trial - all his money and connections used as aid for others. A care that years of training under the face of LuthorCorp had made nigh on impossible for the man to show in person. Benevolence forced behind a hard-nosed façade. And she'd seen it, right from the start. The warm banter between them - verbal judo - the respect he'd shown for the Torch and her work there. He'd tried so hard, and she'd still brushed him away, just like Pete and every other Luthor-prejudice fool - too jaded to trust after her foolish dealings with Lionel, too weary and intolerant after his return from Belle Reve and, mostly, too jealous of the closeness she'd known he shared with Clark. The same jealousy she'd once held of Lana that had sent her into the arms of the elder Luthor in the first place. Pushing her where she shouldn't go and pulling her from where she should.

It made her want to cry at the friendship she'd lost. Probably forever now, one way or another.

But this was no time to be sentimental.

With a quick breath to steel herself, she ran over to the looming glass doors of the LuthorCorp foyer before the re-encroaching crowds could thicken again.

Chloe yanked hard on the ornate steel handle, but the doors didn't move. Locked, of course, at this time of night. Would that mean Lana wasn't even there anymore?

She looked up and squinted through the glass - difficult enough through the darkness, but made even harder due to multiple hand-shaped smudges littering the surface. It seemed she wasn't the only one who'd tried to get in that night.

She made out several potentially human shadows milling about by the elevators, but nothing certain, and a quick glance over her shoulder told her that, without Raptor to keep them back, the gangs and thugs causing havoc before were quickly returning.

Curling her right hand in a fist, she raised it to the glass and thumped as hard as she could.

"Hey! Let me in! Let me in!"

A sharp, responding hit from the other side stopped her cries and she looked up into the impassive eyes of a LuthorCorp security guard, his plastic earpiece hanging uselessly over his black-jacketed shoulder. He shook his head curtly and gestured for her to move on. The same gesture, Chloe realised, he must have given the authors of all the other smudge marks. And wasn't that just like fucking Lionel? To deny others sanctuary in a time of crisis, despite having ample facilities.

Another glance over her shoulder and Chloe saw the three thugs who'd cornered her in the alley. They narrowed their eyes when they saw her and headed to a group of guys holding baseball bats, pointing and gesturing ominously.

"Oh god..." Chloe whispered, turning back to the glass. "No, you don't understand, I need to see Lionel Luthor!" she tried, slapping both palms on the glass now. "Please! Let me in!"

The guard moved to turn away when another shadow stepped up beside him, tall and thin with a mass of dark hair. He rested a stilling hand on the guard and pulled at the set of keys on the man's belt, using one of them on the door. Once unlocked, he pulled it back quickly and gestured Chloe inside.

"Get in," Lionel muttered, eyeing the growing crowd behind her with a frown. "Hurry."

Chloe didn't need telling twice and rushed past him. The white brightness of the foyer confused her for moment before she realised the glass was tinted, letting in rays of moonlight but stopping anyone else seeing through.

While Lionel locked the door behind her, a smaller figure in maroon dress and jeans hurried over from the elevators, a short, black jacket now covering her bare shoulders.

"Chloe! Thank god you're okay."

Chloe returned Lana's embrace in relief.

"I was starting to think I might never see you again," the brunette continued as she pulled away, eyes shining. "Have you seen Clark?"

Chloe nodded, fighting back new tears of her own at finally being with a friend again.

"Yeah. He's gone to..." She trailed off, glancing at Lionel as he moved beside them, the unfinished 'gone to kill your son' resting awkwardly between them.

But Lionel simply nodded, face cold and unreadable.

"How will we know if...?" A short pause and Lionel looked away, breathing sharply through his nose, expression unchanged. "If he's succeeded."

Chloe and Lana looked to each other, eyes equally bright and creased at the corners. Never in their whole lives had either of them imagined feeling sympathy for Lionel Luthor.

Chloe shrugged.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I guess-"

A sharp bang! cut her off and the three of them turned to the glass doors. The hooded guy was just outside now, a group of at least ten others standing next to him.

Several shards of broken bottle slid down the window.

"Let us in you bastards!" he yelled, voice muted by the glass but still perfectly audible - holding unpleasant implications as to how loud he was shouting.

Instead of turning them down straight away, the guard looked to Lionel this time, clearly confused after his treatment of Chloe. The older man shook his head.

The guard gave a quick nod and repeated his 'move on' gesture to the others. It was like a red flag to a bull. A volley of missiles smashed against the glass instantly - bottles, beer cans, even paving slabs.

Chloe and Lana both gasped and took a step back.

"Don't worry," Lionel told them calmly. "The glass is re-enforced, built to withstand all possible forms of gunfire. A few thugs should not be able to damage it."

The two girls weren't exactly comforted as the said thugs started to rush towards the doors, some of them picking up falling missiles to try again while others rattled the handles violently or smashed at them with metal bats. And the attempt started a chain reaction, drawing in other crowds, until soon the whole foyer was surrounded by people desperately fighting to get inside.

To the right, a young girl no older than Chloe and Lana pushed her way to the front and banged her knuckles against the glass. She wore a short leather skirt over torn red fishnets, long blonde hair falling limply over mascara stained eyes. There were fresh bruises on her arms and her lips mouthed 'please' over and over, unheard above the surrounding cries.

Lana's face creased at the sight and she turned quickly to Lionel.

"Mr. Luthor, this whole building is almost empty. Perhaps you should let some people in..." she suggested quietly.

Lionel shook his head.

"Don't be fooled, Miss Lang," he stated, looking down at her. "If I let just one person in they'll all be clamouring for space, and they'll tear us apart to get it." A heavy-set man in a ripped red Tee yanked at the crying girl's shoulders and thrust her behind him and out of sight. "No. However worthy some people's claims may be, I can't take that chance."

"You let me in," Chloe challenged. "And you're letting Lana stay."

"That's different," Lionel responded coolly and Chloe gave a dry laugh, earlier sympathy dampened.

"Yeah..." she muttered. "Because you might need us if Clark fails."

"What would have me do, Miss Sullivan?" Lionel snapped back. "Open the doors and ask them to form an orderly queue?"

He waved a hand at the mass of bodies outside, now so big several other guards had started to position themselves along the glass, and Chloe sighed, eyes dulling in defeat.

"This is not a time for heroes," Lionel continued, eyes flashing with what might have been passion, although the darkness made it hard to say. "It's a time for survival, by whatever means necessary."

Chloe frowned. Mikhail had said something similar outside, and it should have reflected badly on the Slav, sharing a philosophy with Lionel. Except, Mikhail had risked the crowds outside to help find Molly, and applied his means of survival to the whole of 33.1. While Lionel intended it just for himself. It made the young girl wonder - perhaps ideas were like weapons. Not bad in themselves, just in their application. And perhaps the ideas she'd slated Lex for having didn't reflect as badly on him as she'd thought.

A couple of rapid explosions cut through the air, followed by a crisp cracking sound, and the three of them looked out to see a blonde-haired youth with a gun emerge from the crowd before the door. There were two spidery cracks in the glass where the bullets had failed to get through.

The guard Chloe had first seen jogged briskly away from the doors and up to Lionel.

"Sir," he nodded. "The doors should hold, but with the power down we can't guarantee against a breach via other means. I suggest you vacate this level for your own safety."

Lionel nodded back, eyes troubled.

"Very well. Where do you recommend we establish ourselves?"

The guard looked back over the crowd, assessing the severity of the danger.

"Perhaps the roof. Just temporarily," he stated as he turned back. "Once we've determined the exact risk involved I'll send a man up to advise further."

"Alright," Lionel answered, turning to reach an arm across the two girls, herding them towards the stairs. "Come on."

As they walked, Chloe found herself more grateful for flat-soled shoes than she'd ever been in her life, and after the seventh flight of stairs Lana copied her example, quickly slipping off her delicate boots and holding them in her hands the rest of the way.

Lionel opened the door for them at the top, while Lana rested a hand on Chloe's shoulders to balance as she returned her footwear. The rush of cold air from outside almost obscured the older man's gasp.

"Lex?"

The two girls shared a glance, before hurrying out onto the concrete surface themselves, Lana hopping slightly as her feet were forced more securely into her heels. Once out, the two of them skidded to a halt beside Lionel and stared wide-eyed across the roof in equal shock, the door slamming unheeded behind them.

Directly opposite and just shy of the backwards 'P' of the LuthorCorp sign was Lex, resting a hand on the letter's curve and staring down intensely at the city below. Overlooking how on earth he'd managed to get there in the first place, even from just his back the others could tell there was something undeniably different about the younger Luthor. Perhaps it was the way he stood - straight and still on the raised edge of the roof, without so much as a hint of concern for the twenty-story drop below. Or perhaps it was his clothes - the long, black leather jacket, so unfamiliar on Lex yet oddly fitting; neatly hugging his shoulders and flapping round his legs. The fabric seemed almost regal, somehow, the way he wore it. And the boots. Black leather to match and so tight - they gripped round his shins and tight-fitting pants like a secondary skin.

He didn't seem to hear Lionel's call so the older man tried again.

"Lex? Son?"

The three of them kept back out of unspoken fear as Lex turned, revealing a belt with a large silver clasp about his waist and a simple black top. He held his head high against the rising smoke of the fires still raging below, their grey tendrils circling the moon to his left like bony fingers, and stepped smoothly off the ledge without looking down, eyes narrow and focused on the three of them.

"Lex, are you okay?" Lana pressed uncertainly, feeling somehow responsible for the situation since she was the last to have seen the man. "What happened, did Clark find you?"

Lex turned to her slowly.

"Clark..." he murmured, lengthening the syllables as though the word were familiar but half forgotten. "What is Clark?" The others looked to each other, appalled, and were speechless for a moment. Then Lex raised his head in a gesture of remembrance. "Of course. You mean Kal-El..." He looked past the edge of the roof again, face chillingly blank. "Such a pathetic world. Even your names are small and weak."

"Oh my god..." Chloe whispered, taking a step back as she connected the dots.

'Lex' smiled at her.

"Zod will suffice," he stated, lifting his eyes to Lionel where they lingered curiously.

The older man's eyes dulled for a second, filled with a rawness the two girls hadn't seen since Lex's funeral, then Lionel too was backing away, hands reaching surreptitiously behind him for the door.

"You're the one Jor-El chose to defy me," Zod said, a light smirk touching his lips. He gave a hum of laughter. "Making me the wayward son to his father. How predictably egotistical."

"I... I never asked for Jor-El to choose me," Lionel stuttered, fingers grasping the air behind him in muted panic when the door proved just out of reach. Beside him, Lana and Chloe shifted towards each other, blue and black shoulders trembling together as they watched the exchange.

"No," Zod nodded, his calm a vivid contrast to the others' distress. "Free will was something he rarely allowed..." He narrowed his eyes at Lionel and stepped closer, Lex's deep blue boring into the older man with uncanny intensity, doubly unnerving for being an intimacy Lex would never have shown his father himself. "Too scared to face me yourself, Jor-El?" The alien pressed, voice rising. "Is even your construct such a coward?"

A beat of tense silence, then Lionel screamed, eyes shutting heavily, hands flying to his head. Chloe managed a shocked 'Mr. Luthor?' but before she could reach out to him his eyes opened again, flashing pure white.

"You will not succeed," Lionel intoned, arms dropping, and Zod curved his lips in a wide smile, genuine amusement lighting his eyes. "Kal-El will -"

"Your son has already failed," Zod cut in, with obvious relish. "He is banished to the same hell in which you imprisoned me."

"No..." Lana whimpered, clasping the arm of an equally stricken Chloe who just shook her head.

"You have lost, Jor-El," Zod continued, radiating triumph. "And your bloodline is dead. Just like you..." Lionel raised a hand, reaching for the other man's face, but Zod bat it away with a laugh. "You may have had power over the Brainiac, but you have none over me. Leave this vessel and trouble me no more."

Zod raised his own hand and laid it flat against Lionel's temple, staring in the older man's lifeless eyes. After a few seconds Lionel started to shake and Zod took his hand away with a smirk. Lionel crumpled at once to the floor, like puppet losing its strings.

He moaned loudly where he'd fallen, eyes flicking open to their usual brown, and Lana and Chloe rushed to either side of him, helping him sit. An enemy he might be, but that was no reason to let him suffer unjustly.

Zod blinked down at them, seemingly in surprise.

"Your pain is more satisfying than anticipated," he said, as though noting an unusually heavy rainfall or unexpected snow.

Chloe ignored the comment and grabbed Lionel's arm to try and help him stand, while Lana loosened her hold and frowned up at Zod, eyes flicking over him in quick calculation.

"Because Lex hates his father..." she muttered, oblivious to the potential ramifications the comment might have held for the man beside her. "Maybe there's part of him still in you." Her eyes widened with new hope and she jumped up again. "Lex! If you're still there you have to fight! You have to come back!"

"The human you knew as Lex is dead," Zod responded, voice flat.

"No," Lana argued. "Why else would you care about Lionel? Why are you even here? Lex told us to come here, to be safe."

Zod quirked an eyebrow at her, as you might a colourful bug - a glimmer of interest, before you squashed it.

"I came here because it is the tallest building in this excuse for a city," he answered. "I wished to admire the destruction. It is true, however, that certain aspects of this vessel seem to be lingering. A side affect of the assimilation. They will be gone shortly."

The moment Lana lost hope was painfully visible in the sagging of her shoulders, the creases of defiance on her face fading to an open, wide-eyed expression of defeat.

Zod's mouth curved at the side in appreciation.

"Now I have wasted too much time here already."

He turned without another word and made his way back to the edge of the building, the others watching helplessly behind him, Chloe with one arm round Lionel's back, Lana lost and alone at their side.

Lex was dead. Clark was gone. And the world was in flames. What was left?

Slowly, Lana balled her hands into fists, face hardening as Lex's last words to her played through her mind :: you have a life of your own, damn it, stop hiding! ::

"Wait!"

The cry was deep, not shrill - the rich tone of inner strength finally given voice. Chloe blinked at the sound and dropped her jaw at the sight of Lana rushing after the retreating figure.

Even Zod seemed taken by the change in the fragile girl and paused halfway across the concrete to allow her to catch up. He eyed her blandly as she moved in front of him.

"Take me with you," Lana stated, breathless, eyes focused solely on the alien's face to allow no distractions. Chloe's frantic gestures in the negative were still detectable in the corner of her vision but she ignored them. Because Lex had been right. Clark wasn't her only means of survival and it was time for her to do some saving for once. Perhaps she could finally put the helpless little girl act to good use. "You're new to this world. I could help you. Give you information."

Zod eyed her up and down, following each curve of her body with calm, methodical intent.

"There are ways you could be of use to me," he conceded. "You'll want your life, I suppose."

Lana just stared back at him quietly, not daring a response in case he construed it as weakness.

In the following silence, Chloe released the still shaky man in her arms and started to run over to them.

"Lana, no!"

"Very well."

A sudden shock wave slammed through the air, knocking the blonde off her feet.

Ignoring the sting in her shins and her palms, Chloe brushed the hair from her face impatiently, and stared, open-mouthed and incredulous, at the two embracing figures rapidly disappearing into the sky.

The whole world was grey. Every shade. And it hurt. A biting wind blew the grit in his eyes and mouth and it stuck to his tongue, leaving him dry and rasping. So this is what grey tastes like, Clark thought, delirious. He wished for something cleaner, something wholesome and straightforward, like an ear of corn from the farm, or a glass of his mom's homemade lemonade. Anything to take away the gritty texture and coppery taste.

The metallic tang seemed strangely familiar, so Clark licked round his lips to gather more of it, and winced at the accompanying pain. He managed to lift a hand to his mouth and ran his fingers, gently and slowly, over each tender crack in the skin. Blinking crusted eyes open against the wind showed him a blot of red on his fingertips as he pulled them away. Blood? But how could he be bleeding? He didn't feel any kryptonite...

And then everything came back in an agonized moan. Zod taking Lex, sending him here. He'd been crying even as he passed through the atmosphere, although the vacuum of space had stolen the tears. Then he remembered the strangest thing. It was like a sheet of glass had folded around him, compressing him, and he'd felt like that too - compressed, squashed, trapped - although he'd patted himself all over and found no physical change. It had been transparent like glass as well; because he remembered glimpsing the Earth through it - such beautiful blue and green, a perfect circle, white shadows of cloud floating gently across the surface. So much more majestic than the pictures allowed. And from that distance it almost seemed to fit in his hand - a delicate marble. He couldn't stand the thought of Zod getting his hands on it instead, taking it away from him just like he had Lex, so Clark had punched at the 'glass,' hard, hoping to smash it and break free.

But instead of smashing, the substance yielded, stretching under his touch and bouncing back when he pulled away. And the movement must have disturbed something because the next thing Clark knew he was falling, pulled down by his feet until he'd broken through into choking grey air, where he'd started to tumble, rolling over and over through sharp, pricking grit that coated his body like sand.

Slowly, he rubbed at his eyes with his fingers, removing the gravel and crystallised tears so he could open them properly. A bleary grey sky met his gaze. There was no sun, the light just seemed to emanate from the clouds, and it gave his skin a sickly, pasty colour, making his red jacket an eyesore, painfully vivid. Clark lowered his arms to his sides to escape it. He was on his back and ached all over, mentally and physically exhausted. He summoned enough energy to twist his head and watched in fascination as his already dusty jeans turned greyer as the wind blew more patches of the sandy stuff over them.

If he just lay there, Clark was sure that eventually his whole body would be covered. Buried. And for a second he welcomed the idea - closed his eyes and rested his weary head on the ground. It was soft, almost like a pillow - if he ignored the itching in his scalp - and Clark figured there were worse ways to die. Then a soft voice seemed to float through the wind :: don't give up on me yet... don't give up on me... don't give up... ::

Clark sat up with a gasp, brushing off as much of the sand as he could and shaking his head to get it out of his hair. What was he doing? Lex would be disgusted with him! The world was in danger and he was still alive, he could still stop it. Lex had fought to his very last breath back on Earth, ready to use that breath, use his life, to stop Zod, and Clark was giving up after a few bruises and cracked lips? No.

Clark braced his arms and pushed himself up, infused with new strength, and it was almost like having Lex back again - the same help and encouragement. Like Lex was still part of him, even though... Clark tottered slightly when the sand shifted under his weight, but managed to fight it and balance. Ignoring his grief for now, he forced himself to press on and look around.

Mile after mile of the same, greyish sand surrounded him. The place was a desert - cruel and lifeless. Although, not hot, the Kryptonian realised for the first time. Once you got past the biting wind and gusts of sand, the air was actually quite mild. Which was a mercy, considering his body was clearly vulnerable in this... whatever it was.

Encouraged by the fact the habitat was apparently not designed to kill him, Clark raised his arm against the wind, picked a direction at random and began to walk. Running was out of the question, even if his speed had applied, since Clark had no desire to start up a sand storm when a light breeze of the substance was troublesome enough.

A sound at his back - stronger than wind - made him turn.

Clark squinted through the colourless glare, but saw nothing.

"Hello?"

The word echoed; bouncing back and forth around him like the place was some kind of dome as opposed to the stretching wasteland it appeared.

"Is anyone there?"

...there...there...there...

No reply.

Clark turned back and took another step forward.

A second later something indefinable flew up behind him, almost through him, and knocked him off balance. Clark barely had time to recover before it was back, rushing past his other shoulder, tearing the fabric. And it just kept coming, flying past again and again, scratching his back, his arms, his cheeks.

Eventually, the onslaught was too much to stand and Clark fell to his knees, blood dripping down his temples. The pain was white hot and shocking, but even more terrifying was the way his attacker seemed to defy focus. It was just shadow - shadow with claws - and it moved too fast to follow. Clark tried to push himself up again, but it was suddenly back, seemingly more solid this time as the Kryptonian felt the claws like pointed fingers, gripping his skull.

He raised a hand to try and force the thing away, but it was like punching at water - a phantom resistance, and his arm was falling back again, useless. With a sharp tug, Clark was pulled down, shoulders pressed in the sand, clothes and skin ripped and torn. There seemed to be more of them now, although he couldn't see enough to be sure - four, eight, tens of hands ripping and scratching, as though trying to burrow inside him. It was impossible to fight, even to scream, Clark could only moan, struggles growing weaker by the second.

Then a flash of light - a beam - burst through the shadows and rested on him. It was bright, brighter than anything he'd seen in this world so far, and comfortingly yellow. It wasn't sunlight, not even close, but the glimpse of colour amidst the surrounding monotony was enough to lift Clark's spirits in itself. And the creatures fled from it - dispersing like imaginary ghosts in the dawn.

The light faded slowly and Clark looked up to the source - a small triangle branded with a symbol, one he knew only too well. He felt his chest burn at the sight, remembering the long faded scar of the same shape Jor-El had once marked him with.

As the glare died down he made out the outline of a body behind it. A woman, arm outstretched, the triangle held in her hand like a talisman. A thin, black scarf wrapped about her head and her face, protecting from the dust-filled wind, and her dress was a makeshift collection of fabric, tied and knotted together with string and a faded brown belt that might have been leather. Sandals of a tan coloured material criss-crossed over her feet and up her legs.

Clark rolled over and managed to cough out a grateful 'thank you' as he pushed himself up.

The woman's eyes were soft as she blinked down at him through the gap in her headscarf, and for the first time in what felt like years Clark felt the pleasant weight of relief.

Then, with a skilled and practiced movement, the woman kicked him, hard, in the side of the face, knocking him unconscious.

"I just don't believe it..." Chloe muttered for the hundredth time as she and Lionel stepped into the darkened office. Lionel had headed down to it as soon as Zod and Lana disappeared and while Chloe didn't know why, she'd been too stunned to do anything but follow. "Why would she do that? Why would she go with him?"

"It's the age old axiom of war, Miss Sullivan," Lionel stated, moving, a little unsteadily still, to his desk and sitting in the high backed chair while he pulled open a drawer. He grabbed a large, silver pistol from inside it and Chloe realised that was why he'd come - in times of weakness, seeking a weapon must have become instinct to the Luthors over the years. He quickly checked it was loaded and stared up at her, hands clasping and unclasping the barrel compulsively. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It seems Miss Lang has more cunning than I gave her credit for."

Chloe shook her head, more than a little disturbed at the way Lionel Luthor could find relatable motivation in her friend so easily.

"But what does she expect to do?" she pressed, terrified at the danger Lana had, apparently willingly, placed herself in.

"Gain information, perhaps," Lionel mused, as much to himself as the girl resting her hands across the desk. "When it comes to the nature of our enemy that's something we're certainly more than lacking in..."

Clark would know more, Chloe thought instinctively, before Zod's chilling words on the roof came back to her.

"What he said about Clark... do you think... do you think he's really...?"

She hardly expected comfort from the older man, but she was desperate enough to look for it anyway, face flushed as she stared across the desk. Lionel ignored her and rubbed a hand fretfully across the cut on his cheek - gained from the scrape along the concrete when he fell.

"The dagger..." he muttered, running the hand down his beard and letting it fall to glass-coated mahogany below. He looked up to Chloe again quickly, seeking an audience to establish some authority with. "The dagger that Jor-El gave to Clark. It might still be there at the farm..." He pushed himself up, wincing slightly, and headed round the desk towards the door. "We can use that to stop Zod."

"You mean kill him," Chloe called after him, voice shaking as she faced the full horror of the thing for the first time. "Kill Lex."

Lionel paused by the doorway and Chloe saw his head drop to the side, spindly hair brushing his black collar, the tips glistening with sweat in the moonlight.

She'd been desperate in the Planet before, nearly killed by a flying car and wanting nothing but for Clark to make it stop. But seeing even Lionel in pain, seeing the members of Lex's facility fighting so hard to protect each other - it reminded her that no matter how bad things got, there were some lines you just couldn't cross. If you did it was too late, you were lost anyway. Clark had known that. It was why...

"Clark couldn't do it..." she nodded in understanding. "And he was right. There must be another way... I'll head back to the Planet. See if I can find out anything else about this Kryptonian virus that's shutting everything down. Maybe I could cross reference some of the symbols to the ones that you were scribbling, figure out a code..."

"That won't help us!" Lionel snapped, spinning round. He paused straight after and raised a hand to his head, swaying dizzily. "We need..." he muttered, taking a step back and lowering himself to a seat by the door. "We need Clark to decipher them."

"But... but you were Jor-El's Oracle," Chloe protested, voice tight and close to tears. "Couldn't that give you access to some sort of Kryptonian-English dictionary?"

Lionel lifted a hand to his eyes and started massaging his temple.

"You saw what happened up there," he muttered. "Whatever Lex... whatever Zod did... the connection I felt with Jor-El and the Fortress is..." He looked up at her and raised his fingers with a shrug. "It's gone. I can't feel his presence anymore." He fell silent, lowering hand and head with a sigh, at once relieved and abandoned. "But if we can just get to that dagger, we can stop Zod, we can stop all of this."

Chloe shook her head slowly.

"No... no, if Clark couldn't... neither can I. Not murder."

Lionel looked up at her with a small nod, lips thin, eyes surprisingly warm. Chloe furrowed her brow at them in confusion because the older man looked almost admiring, even envious.

He took a deep breath and stood up.

"So be it," he stated, tone rich with resignation. He held the gun out sombrely. "Here. It hasn't exactly been a pleasure, Miss Sullivan. But I do hope we have the chance to meet again."

Chloe blinked heavily as she grasped the silver handle, not sure if it was from shock or holding back tears. Because for just a second, with a flash of moonlight bathing the older man in white, he looked magnificent - back straight, hair like a mane, blood lines like war paint on his cheek. He looked like any soldier might, ready to risk everything for his cause.

And as his fingers brushed hers, leaving the gun in her hands, she remembered the enticing warmth of his presence across that deal-making cup of coffee all those years ago at the mansion; the gentle, darkly leading touch to the small of her back as he showed her to the door. Chillingly controlling, yet enthralling nonetheless - the serpent to her Eden.

She shivered as he walked away, turning down the corridor and onto his chosen path. A darker one than she'd ever dare to travel, despite her fascination.

As she gripped the gun tighter and readied to face the outside fight back to the Planet, she wondered which of them would succeed. And what it would mean for Lionel if he did.

Lana trotted awkwardly across the concrete arena Zod had brought them to, still vaguely nauseated by the flight - the wind and the pressure had been downright petrifying. Her right elbow stuck out uncomfortably, steel fingers gripping above it, and her pointed shoes burnt her feet with every step; though, thankfully, adrenaline was doing a lot to temper the pain. Fighting the discomfort as best she could, she forced herself to look around.

The place was obviously a storage facility, possibly even a LuthorCorp one, but the continuing darkness made it impossible to tell, rendering the signs on the surrounding wire fences illegible. Masses of unlit floodlights stared down at them, black and uncanny, each a blind Cyclops, disabled of their solitary skill. And it seemed fitting to Lana, that the dawn of the cold, unfeeling being beside her should be made at night.

She tried in vain to pull her arm back to herself as the alien made a beeline for one of several warehouses, steel doors parting easily beneath his hand.

"You can let go of me now, you know," she muttered, voice unwisely sharp, a little annoyed at the man-handling after years of being nigh on revered by the opposite sex.

"Zod doesn't take orders, he gives them," Lex's voice replied. "If you are to be my consort you would do well to learn that."

He pulled at her roughly, taking them round a pillar Lana hadn't even noticed and towards the building's left-hand corner.

"Consort...?" Lana repeated with a touch of shock. "Wait. That's not what -"

A shaft of moonlight illuminated the room, revealing a large, triangular shape, and Lana cut off, heart pounding. Other than a few dead policemen, she was the only one to see the ship's original landing, so no one else could understand the terror its shape held for her. She still had nightmares sometimes about the figures inside, their frighteningly empty eyes, the smell of burning flesh...

"Oh god," she whispered. "Are you bringing back the others? The ones who came from there?"

"Aethyr and Nam-Ek?" Zod shrugged dismissively. "Mere foot soldiers here at my command. They were expendable."

He shoved her to the side - a physical demonstration of her equal superfluity - and headed to the ship alone.

His coat fluttered out behind him, evoking once again an air of majestic authority, and Lana realised that while she'd been terrified of the man's disciples, Zod himself was rapidly becoming less frightening and more... captivating. The crisp tone of his voice; his tall, commanding movements and complete and utter disdain for anything outside himself - as if he were above the lower, petty realms of life and had no need to concern himself with them. It smoothed Lex's usually creased and clouded face with the focus of a single purpose the billionaire's many responsibilities had never allowed and Lana saw an attraction there she'd never noticed in the older man before. Lex truly was beautiful. Breathtakingly so.

"Then why are we here?" Lana pressed gamely as she straightened herself up, mindful of the need to gain information. She figured she stood a better chance when Zod was distracted.

"If I am to re-build Krypton, there is something here I need," he answered, reaching a hand to the craft's pointed tip.

"Re-build Krypton?" Lana furrowed her brow in confusion.

"Krypton was a shining jewel in a vast, dark universe," Zod responded, a burning pride in his voice as he rested his palm against the milky black surface. A series of glowing red symbols appeared briefly above his fingertips. "Restored and with Zod as its ruler, it will be unsurpassable."

The symbols faded and the centre of the craft seemed to melt, black drips oozing downwards while a palm-sized, oval block levitated upwards from the hole. Zod raised his hand and the thing flew towards it, yellow markings burning into being on both sides as it touched his fingers.

Lana stepped closer, curious, until a bright flash of light forced her back, hands across her eyes, an involuntary scream at her lips. Once her eyes blinked away the glare and re-adjusted, she realised the space in front of them was empty. The ship was finally gone.

Martha shivered hard against the cold - a spasm that covered her whole body, forcing her to pause, makeshift seatbelt strap falling loose on her shoulder, hair clinging damply to her cheeks. Beside her, Jonathan did much the same, one hand raised to protect his already weather-beaten face from the wind. He'd been shivering more than pulling for the last ten minutes, actually, but Martha had been stalwartly ignoring the fact. She knew if she mentioned it her husband would only push himself harder and the crash had taken enough toll on his weakened body already. Time was impossible to judge where they were, the surrounding white glare of snow making it difficult to pinpoint the sun, but it felt like they'd been walking for hours, the twisted wreck of the plane a rapidly fading spot behind them, and she was terrified if they didn't reach shelter soon, neither of her companions would make it.

It was already a miracle they'd survived this long, considering the entirety of the plane's tail had been ripped away as it fell, along with half the left-hand wall, and Martha didn't want to waste that. Lois had been knocked half out of the tear, bent and bloodied across the frighteningly sharp pieces of metal that had once been the plane's outer casing, and the older woman had almost fainted straight back to unconsciousness when she'd woken to the sight - Jonathan equally prostrate beside his Chief of Staff from trying to pull Lois back into the comparative shelter of the plane body. But some inner, inexplicable strength had taken over the farmer's wife in that moment, stopping her from fainting and forcing her, on hands and knees since her legs were still weak from asphyxiation, across the snow covered floor to the fallen figures. Jonathan had woken at the slightest brush of her fingertips - weak but otherwise okay. But Lois flittered in and out of consciousness with alarming regularity, body too tired to even shiver at the layer of icicles coating her lashes and cheeks.

Between them, Martha and Jonathan had created a stretcher of sorts for their injured friend out of the plane door they'd found broken off a few paces away. They'd gathered blankets and carpet and even a couple of now useless parachutes to line the metal and cover her body with - anything to keep her warm - and had gently lowered her into it, cleaning her up as best they could and wrapping a ripped section of the parachute about her head and over her ears to try and keep out as much cold as possible. During their search they'd also found a hefty brown jacket - a spare of the pilot's they assumed - which Jonathan immediately draped about Martha's shaking, red-suited shoulders, insisting his own formal jacket was more than enough for himself. Martha hadn't believed a word, but she was pragmatic enough to realise that Jonathan's weak heart and Lois' prone condition left her as the most able bodied of the group - if they were to have any chance of survival, she had to keep herself as strong as possible, even if that meant, temporarily, taking warmth away from her husband.

With that in mind, it was her who'd made the way carefully through the now broken cockpit door, squeezing through gap where the metal had fallen off its hinges. Jonathan argued, of course, fearing Milton Fine might still be inside, but he literally had no strength to stop her and they'd both known that, lost in the middle of nowhere like they were, the plane's radio was their only chance.

Once inside, the vacant pilot seat had been hard to miss. Seemingly burnt into it was a man-shaped hole, as though whoever sat there had melted into it somehow - heated into nothing. Fine's explanation while they'd still been in the air was pretty fuzzy, considering the rapid loss of oxygen, but Martha thought she remembered him saying something about time running out. She could only assume it literally had for him, which was why they'd crashed instead of being left somewhere for Zod, like the AI claimed was to happen. Looking round at the broken equipment and frosted window, Martha had to wonder whether their apparent 'escape' from that was really an advantage or not. And when she'd picked up the headpiece of the radio and rattled off a couple of 'maydays,' only to find the thing dead, she'd finally reached the point of giving up, the shape and strength of her final embrace with Jonathan already planned out.

That was when she saw the Fortress.

It was just a glimmer through the frost at first, catching her eye, but as she focused properly through the small, open patch of glass, there was soon no mistaking it.

Clark had been reluctant to talk about the place after its initial creation - seeing it as nothing but more unwanted inheritance from his alien father. But lately he'd started to warm to the subject - describing the different rooms he'd found there, the way colours reflected through the crystals, giving praise to the architecture and using phrases about structure Martha was sure her simple, farmboy son could not have known without outside help, most likely from a rich and worldly millionaire he'd also started to warm to again with new vigour.

It had worried her for a while because it felt very much like, for the first time since they'd discovered him, Jor-El was winning. Taking her son from her not with false and short-term brainwashing but more effectively by encouraging him to leave willingly. But for every night Clark spent at the Fortress now, he still spent a good three or four at home, and always returned with the rising sun for a hug and hearty breakfast, and so Martha's fear had slowly faded.

And as the crystalline palace reflected through the glass and in her eyes, she was more than grateful for the recognition her son's vivid descriptions allowed. It gave her and Jonathan a place at aim for, and new hope of a way home, both of them well aware of the connection between the Fortress and the Kawatche caves in Smallville - caves within walking distance of the town's Medical Centre.

So they'd used the plane's seatbelts to convert Lois' stretcher into a sleigh and begun the trek.

Tensing her muscles once more against the frozen air, Martha took a deep, teeth-numbing breath and pushed on, Jonathan shuffling slowly beside her. What had started as a relatively short and simple journey had quickly become more taxing as the wind blew icy flakes in their eyes at every step, obscuring their destination. Martha was just starting to fret that they might have got turned around during the walk when Jonathan stumbled forward. Dropping her strap quickly, she rushed to grab him by the shoulders and prevent the fall.

He grabbed her heavily about the elbows, breath quick and deep for a moment, before looking up, brown eyes dark with pain. He opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head, breathing still too erratic, and lifted a hand to her face instead. Martha leant into it with a warm, gentle smile, closing her eyes in both acceptance and dismissal of the apology.

Jonathan's sorrow turned to curiosity as he stroked his wife's cheekbone, and he pulled his hand back slightly, rubbing thumb and forefinger together with a frown. His hand was wet. Not frozen and laced with snow but covered in newly dripping water. And as his fingers moved, spikes of shooting pain trickled down them - signs of his long numbed skin beginning to thaw.

Martha blinked her eyes open in concern as he stepped back and a few drips of water fell from her previously iced eyelashes. She touched her face in surprise and felt it flush beneath her fingers. It was then she realised the cold - the biting cold they'd been shrouded in for what felt like forever - was completely and utterly gone. She raised her eyes to Jonathan in confusion but his gaze was fixed beyond her shoulder, eyes wide with awe as he looked up and around.

Martha spun round instinctively and gasped at the glinting crystal walls now surrounding them. They were vast - stretching higher than she could see and twisted into all manner of intricate shapes and designs. Everywhere had a faint, reddish tinge that seemed wrong somehow - Clark had certainly never mentioned it as part of the colour scheme - but it didn't detract from the breathtaking beauty of the place in any way.

"I..." Jonathan muttered behind her, equally lost for words. "I never imagined..."

Like Martha, he'd considered the Fortress simply another extension of Jor-El, and as such, as dark and dangerous as the ship and the caves had been before it. That it might have a value of its own, and one so wonderful, had never crossed his mind.

A soft whimper from the stretcher finally tore their eyes from the unearthly glow around them and they turned to find Lois shifting slightly beneath her covers, scarf covered head twisting to and fro, face creased and fearful. They rushed to her side immediately, hearts beating with equal shame at the way they'd been ignoring the injured girl, and, taking a side of the door each, they hauled it deeper into the crystal palace, seeking greater warmth.

After a few minutes the narrow corridor they'd been traversing opened out into a wider, circular space that seemed to be a central chamber of sorts. With a quick nod of agreement they stopped, settling Lois and her 'bed' carefully onto a flat portion of the floor. The young girl's eyes flickered open for a second at the sudden lack of motion and Martha lay a pair of soothing hands on her neck, shushing her gently.

As Lois slipped smoothly back to unconsciousness, Jonathan noticed a cluster of smaller crystals jutting from the floor a few paces behind the two women. Could they be the control panel Clark had often mentioned? If so, he knew one was the key to returning to Smallville. Standing up quickly, he moved round the others and started across the room.

"Jonathan and Martha Kent."

Martha gave a cry at the sudden, booming voice and looked round wildly. Jonathan merely flinched.

"Jor-El," he responded, voice even colder than the wind and snow outside. But much as he wanted to rage against the man - alien, whatever! - who'd caused his family so much pain, Jonathan knew Jor-El was probably their best chance of getting some answers now, so he formed his anger into a question instead. "Milton Fine crashed our plane here. He said he was taking us to Zod. What the hell's going on?!"

"The Brain Interactive Construct, known to you as the being Milton Fine, created a vessel for Zod to inhabit in order to escape his prison in the Phantom Zone. I gave Kal-El a dagger to kill the vessel. Instead he chose to use it against Fine."

Jonathan turned his head back to Martha and their eyes creased in mutual confusion. Vessels and daggers? They'd heard none of this.

"W...where is he? Where's Clark?" Martha stuttered, looking round anxiously for something to address.

"The dagger is part of this Fortress. Plunging it into Fine destroyed all copies of him, which forced down your plane, but it also damaged this structure and released Zod."

Martha's face hardened at the seemingly evasive response.

"What happened to my son, Jor-El?" she cried.

"Banished forever by Zod."

The answer froze the two of them all over again. Jonathan shook his head and muttered a quiet 'no,' while Martha took in a shaky breath.

"Bring him back," she whispered, voice tight and pleading. "You have to bring him home!"

"Not within my power. Zod has already dispelled me from my chosen Oracle. There is nothing I can do."

Jonathan gave a sharp, bitter laugh that echoed around them.

"Nothing?" he spat. "You're telling us that after everything you've done, all the games you've put us through, that's it? It's over? We've finally lost our son because of you and that's all you have to say?!"

"We have both lost much Jonathan Kent."

Jonathan turned his head with a scoff.

"But you must put aside your anguish if you are to save your world. Kal-El's mission must be completed. Retrieve the dagger and kill Zod's vessel - Lex Luthor."

Jonathan blinked and raised his head, lips parting in shock. Lex? Lex was this vessel? On the floor beside Lois, Martha raised a hand to her own open mouth, eyes wide and shining, the reason for Clark's silence suddenly all too clear.

"You want us to murder Lex? This is what you asked of Clark?" she muttered, disbelieving, unwilling to imagine her son wrestling with such a terrible decision.

"Zod has taken over his body and given him all the powers of a true Kryptonian."

Jonathan shook his head firmly. He might not be fond of the Luthors, but to go as far as kill...?

"No. No!" he yelled. "We are not like you. We don't kill!"

"Nevertheless, you must find a way. Or all is lost."

A deep silence fell over them, during which Lois' shallow, laboured breathing became all too obvious. Martha put a hand on her shoulder and turned to her husband, expression clear - we need to get out of here now.

Jonathan turned to the crystal panel and it seemed huge suddenly, the red glow making it raw and gaping like a wound. Who knew how long it would take to find the crystal they needed and learn how to work it - if, indeed, it would work at all after the damage Jor-El claimed had been inflicted on the place.

The dilemma was almost textbook. Refuse Jor-El and try and find a way to Smallville themselves and Lois almost certainly wouldn't make it. Agree, and Jor-El would no doubt send them back himself, Lois could be treated, and Lex... well, Lex might die. One life saved at the potential price of another. Jonathan had always hated choices like that - human lives reduced to number crunching utilitarianism. And this one was especially agonising since he was in no way convinced of his ability to follow through with the promise if he made it, and breaking his word was almost worse than agreeing to something so immoral in the first place. Being Senator had shown him the right thing wasn't always simple though, sometimes you had to sacrifice moments of nobility, submit to outside pressure and keep your true opinions secret, waiting for the right time to use them effectively.

He tensed his jaw, forcing out the words.

"Alright." His voice was low and reluctant, but still clear. "Alright, I'll do it."

He walked slowly to the other side of the stretcher, refusing to look at Martha's proud yet pitying expression, and laid a hand on Lois' arm.

"Send us back."

The continuing silence was deafening, and for a second Jonathan feared the alien didn't believe him, or that Jor-El's power was even more lacking than he'd realised.

Then a white flash engulfed them and the Fortress was gone.

Waking up again was agony. Clark's throat was parched and it hurt to breathe. Needles of pain bloomed all over his body from the phantom attacks, and his left temple and cheek were wet and sore with new blood and bruises where the woman had kicked him.

Memory of that jolted him back to full consciousness and he groaned as his head throbbed in resistance. He caught a glimpse of black, crystalline poles with dusty sheets of fabric pulled between them before he was kicked again, this time in the stomach. Another groan as he tried to curl into a foetal position, but a pair of small, powerful hands stopped him by grabbing his shoulders and hauling him up, back thrust against a pole, legs outstretched on the shaded sand. Clark blinked, and saw the crystals converge in a central point just behind the woman's head. A tent. Clever.

"Where are you from? Where?" the woman demanded, lifting a thick, dull-bladed knife to Clark's throat. The bottom half of her scarf had fallen away, revealing a smooth, heart-shaped face and gently pointed nose. Her voice was soft and equally feminine, despite its roughness, and the violence seemed out of place in her somehow.

Clark took a few breaths, swallowing quickly to wet his throat enough to speak. He thought about Lex in the barn, how he'd held Jor-El's dagger to his own throat much as the woman was holding hers now, how he'd pulled the young Kryptonian out of the way of Zod's beam at the last minute, ensuring Clark's survival. Clark's blue eyes turned bright and clear and he met the woman's gaze defiantly, refusing to feel afraid.

"I was born on Krypton," he replied, voice scratchy with dust. "But I was raised on Earth."

He closed his lips in a hard line, giving her no more than she'd asked for. If she was another enemy - a friend of Zod, perhaps - he wasn't going to give her a chance to learn anything she might be able to exploit, like Zod had done with his affection for Lex.

His words had a more dramatic effect than he'd bargained for when the woman jerked her head back in shock, lowering her weapon instantly and looking Clark over, eyes wide.

"Earth?" she repeated, low, almost with wonder.

Clark softened slightly at the lack of hostility, the muscles in his shoulders relaxing as he allowed himself a couple more deep breaths.

"Kal-El?" the woman continued, voice quiet now, the smooth skin of her brow - pasty like Clark's in the monochrome light - furrowed uncertainly.

Clark's eyebrows moved together in a new look of distrust.

"How do you know that name?" he asked, wondering if a connection to Zod might still be on the cards.

She looked him over again; full lips, that should have been soft and glistening but were dry and chapped instead, curving in a gentle smile of recognition.

"I knew your father," she answered.

Clark looked her over in return, face still clouded, and noted the triangle she'd used to save him before was now displayed proudly round her neck, the curving symbol inside etched in blue over the chunky, off-white crystal. All things considered, Clark wasn't sure if this was a positive development or not.

As the girl pulled him up and into a real seat, though, padded with surprisingly soft strips of what felt like cotton, and quickly presented him with a bowl of water to clean himself up with, Clark figured it was at least an improvement.

His jacket was torn beyond repair, so he chose to discard it; wincing as some of the red fibres broke from the skin they'd been plastered to, re-opening wounds that were still too fresh for the usually invulnerable Kryptonian. The girl took the pieces of slashed material from him to add to a collection in the tent's corner - presumably of what she made her own attire from - and Clark watched her drop it not without sorrow. He'd been very fond of that jacket.

As he attempted to wash the grime and dried blood from his face and hands, the woman removed her scarf completely and shook her hair free with a sigh of relief - it was golden, like corn, and tumbled a good few inches past her shoulders. Just for a second, the colour reminded Clark painfully of Chloe and a feeling of homesickness, so strong it was almost nauseating, washed over him. He couldn't help but sigh.

The woman tilted her head at him enquiringly, but Clark just turned back to the bowl on the rickety wooden table beside him, not willing to discuss himself further with her yet. He picked up a small piece of faded white fabric she'd placed beside the makeshift wash-basin, presumably for use as a cloth, and dipped it in the tepid liquid. He'd been trying to hide his pain as much as he could, but having barely felt any all his life he didn't have much practice and winced again automatically as a sharp ache pieced his shoulder when he raised his hand.

The woman hurried over and took the cloth from it carefully.

"Here, let me," she insisted, pulling up a seat before him and leaning forward to gently dab the dampened fabric against Clark's cheek. For someone who knew my father, Clark thought, as she continued to softly and methodically wipe away the blood, she's being remarkably accommodating.

"Who are you?" he ventured quietly, feeling fresher and sharper now most of his face was clear again.

"Raya," she replied, adding a few more drops of water to part of a cut below Clark's eye. "Not that names matter here."

"Where is here exactly?"

She lowered the cloth and looked at him seriously.

"Jor-El created this place to hold criminals from the twenty-eight known inhabited galaxies," she replied.

Clark nodded, lightly so as not to disturb the still tight cuts, and his eyes turned distant.

"The Phantom Zone. So it is a prison," he muttered. He blinked quickly back to focus and eyed the woman again with new uncertainty. "Which makes you... an inmate..."

She frowned at him and reached over to press the cloth back to his cheek, hard, making him hiss. When she pulled away again two new spots of blood showed on the white, giving at least a vestige of legitimacy for the act, Clark supposed.

"I may be trapped here but I'm not one of the prisoners," she stated, tone hard.

Not too long ago Clark might have felt chagrined at the put down, but too much had happened in the past twenty-four hours to make him inclined to apologise now.

"And I'm supposed to just trust you?" he responded, his own voice equally hard-edged. "I'm running a little low on that."

"Good," Raya nodded, standing up and raising a hand to a dark crimson cloak hanging from a jut in one of the crystal poles. "In the Zone trust can get you killed." She pulled at the fabric, something soft and woven and a little like wool, and it fell into her hands. She turned and threw it to Clark, who caught it with another wince. "Or worse. The most vicious offenders are condemned for eternity. Their corporeal bodies destroyed, their essence haunting the wasteland."

"Like those things that attacked me," Clark responded, resting the cloak on his lap, a tiny rush of excitement awakening somewhere inside him as an understanding started to form. 'The thrill of discovery' Chloe would have called it.

"The Phantoms," Raya clarified, fingers moving to unconsciously stroke the pendant at her neck. "The crystal your father gave me is the only thing they fear."

Her eyes met his in obvious admiration, gained by Clark simply through blood, and he looked down awkwardly. To be in the same space with someone who'd actually known the father he'd been so opposed to for so long was... weird. The fact that she'd clearly liked the guy making it doubly so.

"How did you know Jor-El?" he asked eventually as she stepped over to pick up the now finished with water-bowl and cloth.

"I was... one of his assistants," she answered, a little haltingly.

Clark frowned. Aside from the odd hitch in her tone, there was math here that didn't add up.

"When you were five?" he pressed sceptically.

Raya lifted a flap in the tent and tipped the used water away with a sigh, body suddenly bent and heavy beyond what her years should allow.

"Time is meaningless here," she answered as she slipped the empty bowl in a corner, cloth hung over the side to dry. She stood up again slowly, back straight, face angled away. "I wanted to stay with Jor-El in the final hours... but he wouldn't hear of it. He thought I'd stand a better chance in the Phantom Zone."

Clark tilted his head, aches momentarily forgotten as he furrowed his brow with interest. He'd had so many conflicting ideas about Jor-El by now - Jor-El the invader, Jor-El the manipulator, Jor-El the drifter, Jor-El the tyrant - his father had become less a man and more a concept. And a poor one at that. But this woman had known him, worked with him, and, if Clark understood the wistful tone of her voice correctly, had even had feelings for him. It humanised the alien in a way Clark hadn't thought possible and made him want to know, for the first time, what his parents were like, made him care about the who, instead of the what.

"Why didn't he and my mother come with you?" he asked, voice small. He felt six years old again suddenly, lost and alone like he'd been after his first bout of speed - desperate to see mom and dad again.

Raya turned with a soft smile - clearly for his benefit, as her eyes remained shaded and grey like the world around them.

"Because he wouldn't stop trying to save Krypton and your mother wouldn't leave his side," she answered, the sharp hint of bitterness in her tone masked by prevalent resignation.

When Clark met her gaze he saw sorrow there, but respect as well, and knew that, as much as Raya would have loved his father to abandon his planet and live with her, she was glad he hadn't, because it would have tarnished him. He averted his eyes a little shamefully; afraid she might be able to read his disapproval of the man within them. Jor-El was quite clearly a hero to her, and to be the man's son and not agree about that seemed painfully disrespectful. Clark just didn't know what to make of it all.

She gazed at him a bit longer, grieving expression hardening to resolve. Then she slowly raised her hands behind her neck and untied the string the crystal pendent was attached to. Clark shifted his gaze back and watched as she held it up for a second, letting it swing like a pendulum before her face, before dropping it quickly into her right hand.

"This is all I have left of your father," she said; voice a whisper, reverent. "Everyday he still saves my life..."

Clark swallowed. He had a terrible feeling she intended to give it to him and the last thing he wanted was yet another potentially life-destroying, Jor-El-given inheritance, especially when the loss of it would probably break this already long-suffering woman's heart.

"I have to go," he muttered, pushing himself up. A series of familiar pangs shot through him but he forced himself to ignore them. He had to learn sometime. Although there was little he could do about the slight limp in his step as he moved past her towards the rolled up tent entrance. "I have to stop Zod."

"Zod?" Raya repeated, voice rising with obvious shock.

Clark nodded, stopping short in the opening and turning back with new purpose. Of course - Raya was from Krypton. She knew about Zod, about this place. Perhaps she could help.

"He's on Earth because of me," he explained, moving back to her urgently. "Raya, you were my father's assistant, you helped him create this place. Is there a way out?"

But Raya was shaking her head at him as though he were crazy.

"Zod is a soldier. He will kill you," she said.

Clark thought of Lex, dagger in hand. A drop of blood on the wooden floor of the barn.

"If there was a way for you to save everyone you loved," he said. "Wouldn't you risk dying?"

Her eyes narrowed, glinting in a war between pride and regret.

"You truly are your father's son."

Lana felt an odd rush of relief as Zod led her through the familiar corridors of the Luthor Mansion. It wasn't that she knew the place well or anything - she'd never once been upstairs, for instance - but the rich, oak panelled walls and expansive marble floor were still vaguely comforting. They were little different from the grandeur of the museums she'd visited in Paris, really - a grandeur she'd been quietly intimidated by - and yet, somehow, the stateliness of this particular castle felt less overwhelming and more like an old friend.

She reflected that she probably had Lex to thank for that. He had a way of making the extraordinary seem so delightfully commonplace, so easy to navigate - inviting her in again and again, with a breezy smile and wave of his hand, as if the rooms lined with tapestries and priceless antiques were no more significant than those of a frat house or down town apartment. And always so informal, despite his obvious head for business, even though a lot of their time had been spent organising the Talon or discussing the black ship - as though the business wasn't as important as her company.

She glanced again at the man beside her, striding ahead without even bothering to hold her this time, no longer caring if she came and went, so entirely different from the man she'd once known. She remembered telling Clark how she'd planned to essentially spy on Lex to safeguard the Kryptonian's secret and was shocked at how callous she must have seemed. She hadn't intended it like that, as a personal attack. She simply hadn't seen beyond Clark, beyond the frightening truth of the man she'd loved for so long, and it had her jumping at shadows. Blinded by love and terrified any little thing could leave her fiancé exposed. It was only as she ran her eyes over Zod's cold, expressionless face, pale as the patches of moonlight they were passing, that she realised - too late - the threat she feared had never been Lex.

"Why are we here?" she demanded as they stepped through the glass-inlaid double doors to Lex's study come sitting room.

A faint green glow permeated the darkness and gave Lana light enough to see the laptop still where she'd left it on the desk. She couldn't see the reason for the sickly green, flashing out of it and towards the back wall, but suspected it was another example of the virus all the computers at LuthorCorp had been hit with.

"Your questions grow tiresome," Zod responded as he headed to the desk, black attire blending him naturally into the shadows.

"If I'm to help you," Lana pressed as she hurried after him. "I need to know what we're doing."

Zod spun round so quickly she almost crashed into him and could do nothing to stop the sudden, piercing grip about her chin, the forefinger and thumb squeezing her cheeks painfully against her gums.

"There is no 'we,'" Zod stated, tilting her head and forcing her to stare in his dark, icy gaze. "Do not think because I have suffered your presence I trust your allegiance. It was made too hastily to be reliable. No less than I would expect from a primitive."

A sudden anger rose in Lana at the description and her eyebrows pointed down, her own dark eyes sharpening.

"If you think me so unreliable," she spat, each word a struggle against the pressure round her mouth. "Then why waste your time?"

Zod's lips curved very slightly, blue eyes glinting with a hunger Lana found disturbingly familiar as they tracked her body down and back up again, lingering at the crumpled waist of her short red dress where it had hitched almost above her jeans.

"To re-populate New Krypton, I will need heirs," the alien explained. "I thought you too weak at first, but you hide a fire behind your beauty. I find that... desirable."

He drew her face closer, scarred lips almost touching her own, and Lana had a vivid flash of those lips pressing against her in her old apartment at the Talon. She remembered resisting, but for just a few seconds the touch had been firm enough to hold her anyway, beautifully smooth skin - bar the one, endearing, imperfection - invading her mouth, so much power; a wildness barely contained :: you could live like a queen at my side ::

Then Zod was pushing her away, discarding her with a swish of his jacket and striding to the desk. Leaving Lana to cup her face with a shaking hand, filled with the same confused feeling of rejection she'd known after Lex's apology for the crimes his black kryptonite double had committed :: whatever my feelings are, I'd never do anything to jeopardise our friendship ::

Whatever my feelings are. It had excited her, that confession, despite her then affection for Jason, her lingering love for Clark. The thought that Lex, Lex Luthor, resident prince, almost, might have been harbouring something stronger for her than she'd realised. Part of her had almost started to hope, had been upset he'd never tried anything.

But then came the nightmare of Countess Isobel, the death of Genevieve Teague and the second meteor shower :: Lana, your safety is more important than any of this. You mean a lot more to me than you know :: Telling words. But not in the way she'd expected. She'd seen his desperate fumble for the missing stone in her bag; the manic look his eyes as he gently held her face with both hands. She'd thought he'd been using her then, but it wasn't that, he'd been latching on to her while everything else fell apart. His quest for the stones, his friendship with Clark and even, she'd learnt later, the life of his father, was slipping away in that moment, that terrifying, precarious moment, when the sky had started to fall down on them, again. He hadn't looked to romance or manipulation then, he'd looked for something more constant, more stable - seeking a friend in her, a sister. Just as Lana had found in Chloe when Aunt Nell moved away. Any and all potential for more the black kryptonite might have released burnt away by the fires above them.

Lana lowered her hand with a sigh, eyes pricking with the first signs of grief for the loss of her friend and partner, her almost brother. Extended family to fill the gaping hole the lack of one had left in both of them. It was cruelly funny how death made things so much clearer, granting understanding while denying the chance of using it.

"If you must know," Zod called over his shoulder, breaking her thoughts. "I need information you cannot provide and the virus crippling your technology can only be stopped at the original point of infection. It's the only reason I'm here."

He spoke casually, throwing the information like a bone to a dog, and Lana used her resentment of the tone to strengthen herself again. This man wasn't Lex. Lex was dead. She could mourn him later, but right now she had to focus all her energy on fighting back.

When Zod reached the desk he spun the laptop round and towards him briskly and pulled the oval-shaped object he'd taken from the ship from his inside jacket pocket. He held it in his right palm for a moment, the fingers of his other hand tapping across it in a series of quick, methodical movements, until it gave a soft beep, yellow symbols on the surface glowing brightly in the gloom. He nodded with satisfaction and balanced it upright on the corner of the laptop. After a quick wave with his hand, it started to spin.

While Zod focused on the screen, Lana let her gaze wonder and noticed the pistol Lex had used earlier still lying beside the machine. Useless of course, Lex's terrifying test with it earlier had proved that, but as she stared at it her eyes lit with quiet hope - because a pistol wasn't the only thing Lex kept in that lead-lined drawer...

She moved forward slowly, feigning a similar interest in the computer, and edged towards the side of the desk. As she reached it, the screen cleared and the long-forgotten MSN image re-appeared on it. At the same time the elaborate light-fittings above them began to flash on and off, eventually settling to a dull, but consistent, orange glow. Lana stopped at the far corner of the desk and looked up.

"Power..." she breathed.

"It would take your people days to restore it," Zod muttered, eyes still focused before him. "If they had that much time."

The screen was starting to change, flicking quickly through multiple pictures and texts, although he wasn't touching it. Lana assumed the alien device had been programmed to find whatever information he needed by itself. As she watched, a familiar, five-sided building flickered into being and stayed there, lines of statistics of some kind running down the screen beside it.

"The Pentagon?" Lana queried before she could stop herself.

"There is something there I need," Zod replied.

Lana swallowed down a wave of fear. Returning to the mansion had made the whole thing feel personal somehow, but this reminded her how much bigger Zod's plans were. The whole world was at stake.

"What are you going to do?"

"Finish what I've started. The black ship's destruction will have sent a pulse around the world but it's not strong enough for my purpose. It's hard-drive has enough power to amplify it, but I need access to your satellites to keep it broadcasting. It is the only way to successfully re-shape the planet's crust."

Lana gasped in understanding.

"Oh my god. When you said about re-building Krypton... you meant it literally..." The scale of the thing was incredible.

Zod turned to her, cruel smirk once more in place. He seemed glad to have rattled her.

"Yes. Only this time it will be perfect. The start of an empire." He gave her another lustful sweep up and down. "Ruled by the bloodline of Zod."

Lana took in a shaky breath and raised her chin defiantly.

"No. I won't let you do this," she responded, pulling at the drawer beside her and gripping the kryptonite inside firmly in her right hand. She raised it quickly and stretched out her arm, gaze hard and unforgiving as she thrust the stone at the newly resurrected Kryptonian.

Her breathing turned erratic as she waited for the twist of pain she'd always seen in Clark whenever he was exposed.

But nothing happened.

Zod just stared at her, eyebrows raised.

"The Brainiac warned me the debris from my home was toxic here," he muttered, eyeing the stone with detached interest. "But I had no idea you'd learnt to make it a weapon. Perhaps this inferior human form has advantages after all."

Lana's adrenaline-fuelled bravo started to fade and she took a step back, eyes wide with growing apprehension. There was no talking her way out of this one.

"I..." she started anyway, but was cut off in the next second, a steel tight grip round her neck and her wrist, forcing the stone from her fingers.

There was a flurry of movement, wind across her face and through her jacket, and then her back hit corrugated wood with a painful thump that would have made her yell if the grip round her throat hadn't prevented it. Zod had her pinned to the wall between the bookcase and the fireplace, right arm still outstretched and flat against the oak, the kryptonite rolling unheeded beneath the desk.

"Your betrayal is unsurprising," Zod remarked as the young brunette struggled against him, his hold unrelenting. "And as such, I am willing to give you one more chance. The fate of your race need not be yours if you give me what I want. Think on it while I am gone."

He released her neck and Lana relaxed slightly. If he planned to leave her here she could run down to the Kent Farm, perhaps there'd be news of Clark... But as she made to step away, the grip round her wrist tightened.

She turned her head in confusion, brow furrowing, and was barely aware of what happened next until it was over a split-second later. She certainly didn't remember seeing Zod pull one of the pokers from the stainless steel rack beside them, or how it felt as the pointed end sliced through her palm and fixed in the wood behind it.

"And know this, defiance against Zod does not go unpunished."

Lana didn't notice him stalk dismissively away from her, too engrossed in the shaft of metal now piercing her hand, flecks of blood tarnishing the shine where the steel met torn and ragged flesh.

She screamed.

Patches of dawn trickled slowly through the Daily Planet basement, as though reluctant to peer further, afraid of finding more chaos.

Trails of dust floated elegantly down the beams, giving a deceptive impression of calm, until even the jutting car bonnet still poking through the smashed window seemed more comical than ominous.

Crossed-legged and hidden beneath one of the central desks, Chloe didn't notice the warm glow of hope lighting up around her. She knew only that the pages in her hands were more visible. Not that it helped. Literally hours of work and she still didn't understand a damn thing.

She'd used the basement exit to leave the LuthorCorp building and managed to avoid most of the outside danger this time by weaving quickly through the thick of the crowds. Mikhail had been right about dark corners - those were the vulnerable places. If you pushed through the masses instead you might suffer a knock or a grope, but if you were strong enough to shrug it off and keep going attackers usually moved on to easier prey and left you alone. Which was how Chloe managed to return to her place of work relatively unscathed.

The main building had been thoroughly ransacked like everywhere else, with computers, telephones, scanners - anything people could get their hands on - ripped from their sockets and pulled away. Or else smashed on the floor where they'd been dropped. But the basement remained untouched.

Chloe wasn't sure if the jutting car was acting as a deterrent, or if the place was just so unimportant people didn't know about it.

For the sake of job satisfaction, she'd assumed it was the former, and quickly made camp there, safe in the knowledge that Clark's superhuman catch would have left the seemingly precarious vehicle safely balanced and therefore not the threat it appeared. She hoped.

In an effort to stay as hidden as possible in case any of the rabble outside did venture down, she'd pulled three of the desks together in a kind of U shape, their wooden fronts facing out to act as a barrier while she hid in the cubby hole beneath the middle one, a pile of all the scrap paper she could find in her lap. She'd then spent the next three hours or so painstakingly copying down the symbols displayed on the nearest laptop she'd pulled down with her, writing slow and uneven with only the sickly green glow to work by. After that, she'd counted out the images that occurred most frequently and listed them in number order on a fresh page of her own notebook she'd found still lying, quite naturally, in her desk. The simple, everyday reality of the object seemed almost absurd amidst the surrounding turmoil.

The most common letter in the English alphabet was 'e,' so as the first rays of light broke through the thin, coloured windows, Chloe tried substituting the most frequent Kryptonian symbol for that. She was just flicking back through her original pages to see if the surrounding symbols could be grouped into words when she heard the distinct sound of a door opening and closing, followed by the shuffle of footsteps.

The young blonde tensed, holding the paper tight to stop it rustling and cursing the jingle of her earrings - each a small, silver hoop, surrounded by dangling, turquoise gems that clinked together with frightening volume. She'd bought them to match her jacket, she remembered. Last time I'm a slave to fashion, she promised herself, steadfastly ignoring the quivering part of her that insisted it might soon be the last time she was anything at all.

A small clatter came from the corridor outside - a pen knocked off the fax machine's desk perhaps?

Very slowly and carefully, Chloe lifted the pages from her lap, uncrossed her legs so she was kneeling, and lay down the papers and pen. She then stretched a hand across the floor.

Lying, almost carelessly, on the faux-marble a few feet away was the chunky pistol Lionel had given her. Fearful of keeping it on her person, Chloe had discarded it as soon as she'd sat down and it had remained there for the rest of the night, just outside her vision - a coiling snake ready to strike any moment. Remembrance of her near miss in the alley outside overrode other fears though and she curled her fingers round the metal without a second thought, raising her other hand quickly to the barrel to cock it as Lois had once shown her.

Ignoring the heavy pull of the stylish, Celtic knot pendant dangling from her neck, she crawled slowly along the desk facing the door and peeked around it. A couple of blonde locks fell across her forehead, brushing against a raw looking cut one of the more enthusiastic members of the crowd had caused during her run from LuthorCorp, but Chloe ignored them and fixed her eyes on the office door. It was open. Even though she knew she'd shut it when she came in.

Her heart started to race and she fought to control her breathing. There was no one else in sight. Perhaps whoever it was had just opened the door to look inside and left when they'd found nothing of interest?

She hovered uncertainly for a moment, but figured staying where she was was a sure-fire way of getting herself trapped if someone else really was inside the room. She'd better leave her hiding place and check...

Lifting a hand to the corner of the desk of support, she braced her palm against the wood and hauled herself up as quietly as possible, trying to hush the heavy breaths she desperately wanted to release.

As she reached her feet, someone passed the street above with a crunch of gravel and the jumpy reporter turned instinctively to the main stained-glass window behind her, raising the gun with both hands at the artistic orange and white flare across it. At the same time a further shuffle sounded from near the office doorway and Chloe cursed herself for her stupidity - with her back turned she was exposed!

An involuntary spasm shook her arm as she whirled round, clenching her finger round the trigger, and she winced at the force of the explosion, fringe falling fully across her face as the badly aimed bullet smashed through one of the glass panels above the doorway.

"Woah, woah, woah! Don't shoot!" A fast, frightened voice yelped through the falling shards, and as Chloe shook her eyes clear she saw a young man step nervously from behind a fern arranged to the left of the doorway.

He had short, slightly curly, brown hair and a fresh, boyish face - still strangely cute even while wide-eyed with fear - and he wore a thick, black, cotton shirt - half undone - over a white Tee.

He raised his hands to his shoulders, palms out, and moved them back and forth in a stilling gesture as he spoke. Although more from anxiety than actual desire to calm, it seemed.

"Look, okay, I work here," he stuttered. "You don't have to..." He trailed off, wide-eyes calming, head tilting in surprise.

Across from him Chloe lowered the gun, finally freeing her breath in a sigh of relief at both the lack of hostility in the man and the lack of damage her unintended gunshot had caused.

While she composed herself the guy stepped closer, hands falling to his sides, eyes fixed on her now with intense curiosity. Before Chloe could question this, the guy spoke again.

"Wait. Chloe?"

She blinked in astonishment. How? But then she really saw him for the first time - familiar pale grey eyes, tinged with just a hint of blue, slightly uneven teeth beneath the oh so familiar nervous smile he was now flashing at her.

"Hey, ah..." he muttered, breathing out his own tension with a shaky laugh. "This isn't cos I didn't call you back, is it?"

He shot her an impish grin, eyes light and friendly and entirely free of angst and hidden complications. Which was exactly what she'd found so attractive in him at the Planet internship all those years ago, she recalled - desire without baggage. And for just a second, Chloe forgot about the apocalypse surrounding them, forgot about the alien symbols she'd been sketching all night, and felt her heart skip, just a little, with an old, long-discarded excitement, the ache Clark always filled it with - made sharper by his telling lack of passion during their kiss - starting to lift.

She grinned back.

"Jimmy Olsen."

The red, wool-like cloak and accompanying off-white scarf - attached to Clark's head with a band of string - felt heavy on the Kryptonian in a way he'd never known before. It made walking, already a chore because of the sand and his still throbbing wounds, even more laborious. And the stupid thoughts running through his head about how much the girls would laugh to see him, or how much his mother would coo didn't help. They only made him ache harder for home. Lex wouldn't laugh, of course. No doubt he'd admire the practicality. Hell, he'd probably worn something similar over in Egypt, right? And he'd have a string of advice ready to rattle off about the best way to wear the stuff and what was fashionable or respectful and why. Just like always. The geek.

Thoughts of Lex still hurt the most.

Clark knew if he dwelt on them his heart would collapse and he'd lose all of the small hope he'd managed to claw together. But the little flashes of memory, the fleeting impressions of the man as he was, stung him just enough to keep him alive, to spur him on. So he clung to those. Pushed the awful reality to the back of his mind, where it hovered like a shadow, and let himself believe Lex would be waiting when he got back, open-armed and smiling.

And he ploughed on. Step after heavy step through the grey-white sand, ignoring the grit seeping into his trainers and keeping his eyes firmly on the woman before him.

Raya had her scarf back now but with her mouth left exposed - presumably to make directions for Clark easier to hear. Not that she'd made any for while - how long had they been walking? an hour? two? Clark assumed they reached the final stretch towards the exit - something Raya called 'the gateway' - and complicated turns across the sand were no longer necessary.

"Why haven't you used the gateway yourself?" Clark asked - to break the monotony more than anything.

"It won't open for anyone except the House of El," she answered briskly and without slowing, legs moving with practised ease over the rocks and sinking potholes Clark kept stumbling on. "Your father kept it a secret. A back door in case anyone tried to imprison his family here."

Clark staggered after her with a small nod. That sounded more like the Jor-El he knew. Cunning and potentially criminal.

"Why would he have to worry about that?" he pressed, curious as to how Raya's hero-worship of the alien explained this one.

"Jor-El was a great man," she replied instantly and with emphasis, eyes still fixed on the path ahead. "And like all great men there were those who wished him ill... Aaargh!"

The attack came so fast Clark didn't know what was happening at first. Just that Raya was pulling a bloodied, star-shaped piece of metal from her shoulder and a coarse rope was being wound about his neck.

As he choked against the hold he saw a dark figure in the corner of his eye, coated all in black, scarf pulled tight over their nose and mouth. They kicked Raya in the face and she fell to the ground with a yell.

Clark felt a sharp punch to the small of his back and truly understood the phrase 'like a hot poker' for the first time. He buckled instantly, sliding to his knees, head held back painfully by the grip round his neck. He scratched at the rope with his fingernails.

The figure stepped past the fallen Raya and towards him, reaching out a hand to yank away Clark's scarf and a fistful of hair along with it.

Clark looked up weakly, still struggling with the rope, and watched as the figure pulled the fabric from under his eyes. The younger man's stomach dropped in recognition at the face. Dark skin. Piercing, inhumanly vivid, green pupils. The man from the black ship. So the figure holding him could only be the pale-skinned woman. The pair he'd sent back through their own portal. This was where it had led them. Clark somehow doubted they'd be happy about that.

"Kal-El," the man muttered, eyes growing brighter with the thirst for revenge.

He pulled a knife from his robes.

"Nam-Ek! Wait! Don't kill him!" Raya cried, lifting her head from the ground. The man paused and Clark held his breath.

"Why should I spare his life?" the man - Nam-Ek - demanded. "The one who sent me here."

Raya pushed to her feet and stared at him calmly, the cut on her shoulder forgotten.

"He can open the gateway. I was bringing him to you. He can free us all."

Clark stopped struggling and stared at her, breath realised in shallow bursts of shock.

Jonathan sat down heavily at the bottom of the stairs, staring with blank eyes at the dagger in his hands. The barn loft was broken up a bit, pieces of railing scattered at his feet, and the farmer come Senator didn't want to think what must have happened up there between his son and Lex the night before. Clark had tried to obey Jor-El and Lex had resisted, perhaps? The older man's chest tightened with a shadow of familiar pain. Because much as he distrusted the younger Luthor, he could hardly blame Lex for wanting to live. And how terrible a confrontation that must have been for his son...

But, no. In the end Clark had refused. Jor-El had told them as much. He'd destroyed the mechanical Milton Fine instead, and there on the hay-coated floor had been the dagger to prove it. And Jonathan was proud of his son for that. It was the one thing in this whole mess he was sure of.

He held the weapon over his lap with a sigh - thick, crystal handle gripped in one hand, the flat of the strangely marked blade resting gently in the other. He'd swapped his dirty, tattered dress suit by now for a faded pair of jeans, red and white patched shirt and his green work jacket, but the familiar clothes did nothing to ease his anxiety. What the hell did he do now?

As he pondered, Martha stepped in through the main entrance. She too had changed her sopping wet clothes and now wore a red zip-up top over slightly darker, and significantly better cared for, jeans. She paused when she saw the dagger, swallowing a gasp, but forced herself on.

"The phone lines are working again," she stated, moving to rest a hand on the rail to Jonathan's right. "I called the medical centre. They say Lois is going to be fine. Everything's so crazy right now they didn't even question how she got her injuries."

Jonathan looked up and nodded dully. The news about Lois was wonderful, of course. They'd dropped her at the centre just over two hours ago, but with the place only just re-gaining power the doctors already had their hands full tending to current patients and couldn't say how much they could do for the girl. Jonathan and Martha had themselves checked out for frostbite and the like and stayed half an hour more waiting for news, but with Jor-El's command forever in their minds they'd found it impossible to stay longer. Anxious to find this mythical dagger and see if the story from the Arctic were true.

Now it was confirmed, even the assurance of Lois' recovery seemed cold comfort in the light of what Jor-El claimed should happen next.

"You don't have to do it," Martha said softly as her husband turned back to the blade.

"I gave my word," he replied.

Martha shook her head.

"Jonathan, that... that 'man' has brought us nothing but heartache," she said sharply. "We don't owe him anything."

Jonathan sighed again, turning away from his wife and the dagger to fix his eyes on the pitchfork and other farming equipment stacked in the far corner. What Martha said was true; he already knew that. He'd eased his conscience of that betrayal before they'd even reached the medical centre. And yet still he agonised. Making the citing of his promise all the more pathetic an excuse. A mask for the awful truth his mind was beginning to accept.

"What if it's the only way, Martha?" he asked, his voice - usually so deep and assertive - suddenly small, almost pleading. "The only way to stop everything."

They didn't know the full extent of the damage caused by Zod's escape, it seemed no one did, but the snippets they'd gained from the hospital had been shocking enough. Loss of power, not just in Smallville but worldwide; riots; looting; death. Everywhere, all over the world, people were dying. It was beyond Jonathan's traditionally small town comprehension. Being responsible for Kansas had seemed vast and daunting enough! He didn't even know if it was possible make a difference to a disaster so large...

But he knew he couldn't just sit back and do nothing either.

A cry from outside cut off any reply Martha might have thought to make.

"Clark? Clark!"

Both Kents turned in astonishment as a tattered and bloody Lionel Luthor rushed into the barn.

Lionel paused in the doorway to mirror their surprise, sunlight climbing up the pale blue sky behind to place him in silhouette.

"Martha...? Jonathan? What..." he panted, stepping closer to reveal lines of sweat mingled with the blood on his forehead.

It seemed almost as if he'd run the miles between Metropolis and Smallville, which was, in fact, only partly untrue. His LuthorCorp limo had been trashed in the early stages of rioting, so security had 'commandeered' a car for the trip out. A decrepit Beetle no one had bothered to attack. It conked out just outside the town, and while his driver tried to get it working again, Lionel really had made the rest of the journey on foot.

"Lionel..." Martha observed, unnecessarily, as she stepped away from the rail.

An awkward silence descended over the three of them as the Kents failed to establish their usual cold shoulder. As unforgiving as Lionel's recent manipulations had been, the situation rather took them beyond personal grudges.

"How are you here...?" Lionel muttered eventually, breathing slowing.

"Our plane crashed," Martha replied; glad to have a practical line of conversation.

On the steps behind her Jonathan nodded.

"Milton Fine hijacked it," he added, so Lionel understood there was more than a LuthorCorp failure involved.

"My god. Are you alright?" Lionel stepped forward, reaching out a hand, only to drop it at the last minute, eyes flicking quickly to Jonathan. "Both of you?"

Jonathan gave a piercing look in reply - proving not quite all grudges forgotten - but it was the dagger in his hands Lionel focused on, with a gasp of recognition.

"We're fine," Martha nodded before him, reluctant to give up her practicalities just yet. "Lois is in hospital but she's going to be okay."

Lionel tore his eyes from the dagger to give her a soft nod.

"But... I still don't understand. How did you get back here?" he asked.

Martha opened and closed her mouth uncertainly at that before turning to Jonathan. Lionel followed her gaze, previously wild eyes narrowing with a more familiar curiosity, and the Senator looked down, lips curving with the hint of a scowl. The idea of discussing anything Clark-related with the other man still felt unnatural, but considering Lionel's direct involvement in Jor-El's command Jonathan knew he couldn't just push the Luthor away this time.

"Jor-El sent us," he replied.

Lionel took a breath, eyes turning distant for a moment with something very like envy.

"You found the Fortress..." he said quietly and Jonathan looked up, curious, at the sense of awe in his voice - so like his own had been upon finally seeing the structure.

Lionel had been to the place himself once, Jonathan remembered, while possessed by Jor-El. He wondered if he remembered it. The odd softness in his face certainly looked like the re-living of a fond memory and Jonathan supposed some wonders were great enough to touch anyone. It wouldn't have surprised him to know the shining palace had found its way to even Lionel Luthor's heart.

While Jonathan pondered, Martha was viewing Lionel's expression with open distress.

"Oh Lionel, we... while we were there... Jor-El told us that Lex... your son..." She trailed off with a shake of her head as he looked back, eyes starting to water as motherly instincts overpowered her.

Lionel's face hardened again quickly and he nodded, straightening his back as though donning invisible armour. He turned his head to stare at a spot between the two Kents.

"He is no longer my son," he stated.

Martha put her hands to her face, eyes closing against the painful truth of it all, while Jonathan fixed his eyes on the other man. The hard line of his lips parted, brown eyes dulling, as he saw in Lionel something he hadn't known since their first meeting on that meteor-wrecked cornfield - affinity. This was no CEO before him now, no power-hungry businessman. Once again Clark's heritage had stripped that all away. And Jonathan saw a man. A man like him. A father.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

Lionel raised his eyes slowly and for a second the two men stared at each other in perfect understanding. One father to another.

Then Lionel blinked and stepped forward, taking advantage of Jonathan's sitting position to loom over him.

"I'll do it," he stated, holding out a hand.

Jonathan just stared at the open palm, a sense of relief melting in his eyes. Then he grimaced as a foreign feeling of pity for the older Luthor washed over him. He stood up quickly and stepped to Lionel's side.

"No," he muttered, shaking his head. "No father should have to..." He took a breath and faced Lionel sombrely. "I'll do it."

Lionel eyed him blankly for a moment then lowered his arm with a short scoff.

"You always have to be the noble one, don't you?" he responded, voice laced with disrespect, reducing Jonathan's heart-wrenching decision to little more than a playground taunt - 'anything you can do I can do better.'

Jonathan shook his head again, brisker this time, a small tut of irritation escaping his lips.

"For god's sake, Lionel, I'm trying to help you," he answered, suddenly struggling to keep calm. "Damn it, he's your son!"

"Yes," Lionel nodded, expression clear and full of his usual, arrogant cool - doubly enraging considering how absurd it seemed in the current circumstances. "Which makes him my responsibility. How dare you try and take that from me."

And then Jonathan was angry. They were talking about murder here, filicide, and Lionel was making it sound like some kind of privilege. It wasn't right!

"This isn't a game, Lionel!" he shot back, affinity lost as the wild-haired man before him became an unreadable stranger again. "What? Do you think if you do this people will thank you? You'll gain their sympathy? Or are you just trying to get control of LuthorCorp again? I will not let you turn this into some sick attempt at personal gain. Jor-El asked me to stop Zod for the sake of the world and I'm damn well gonna do it!"

"Jonathan..." Martha breathed, moving towards her husband, eyes flicking pleadingly between the two men, when a sudden gasp turned all of them to the barn entrance.

Leaning heavily against the right-hand side was Lana, breathing deep as though she'd just ended a long walk. Her face creased in obvious pain and her left hand gripped the wooden doorway tightly in reflection of that. Her other hand was cradled to her chest, a length of thick, white bandage wrapped inexpertly around it.

"Lana -?" Jonathan started with a frown, but Martha was already running towards the hurting girl, the frighteningly large stain seeping through the fabric round her hand making the red-head's heart beat frantically.

"Oh my god!" Martha exclaimed as she reached her, noting how pale and shivering Lana looked beneath her short, black jacket.

It might be sunny, but it was only early morning and wasn't warm. Even with the jeans, Martha couldn't help thinking the thin, maroon dress the young girl was wearing couldn't be offering much protection. She put an arm about Lana's shoulders and led her gently into the building, hoping it might shelter her from the outside wind at least.

"Miss Lang," Lionel started, before either Kent could offer more care. "What happened? Where's he gone?"

No need to ask who the 'he' was. Lana raised her head to the other man with more camaraderie than Jonathan was comfortable with and he wondered what had happened between Lionel and his one-time future daughter-in-law during the past few hours.

"The Pentagon," Lana answered softly, breathing hard against the pain she'd clearly not overcome yet. "But he's coming back. There's something at the mansion he needs. He'll... he'll have to come back for it."

She'd thought about trying to stop the still spinning 'hard-drive' from the ship before she left, but a small flair of static as soon as she'd got close had been enough to warn her against it.

"Lana, your hand..." Martha said, dismissing the issue of Zod in face of more immediate concerns. She reached, very softly, towards the bandage, but Lana flinched away, stepping for the older woman's hold and gripping at her wrist with her good hand, holding the damaged one closer.

"It's fine," she muttered, refusing to let the injury hold her back.

Adam's arrogant insistence on 'pushing through the pain' kept running through her head and it made her think perhaps her relationship with the guy hadn't been such a write-off after all. Because if that's what she had to do to stop Zod she'd promised herself back at the mansion that was damn well what she was going to do!

It was difficult, as the wound throbbed constantly without release, but the pain now wasn't anywhere near as bad as when she'd pulled the poker out - that had been even worse than her previous broken bones. Somehow the concentration of the injury to such a small area had made it all the sharper and more unbearable. But she'd got through it and stayed conscious long enough to uncover a First Aid kit in the mansion's downstairs bathroom with enough bandage to stem the bleeding at least. She'd blacked out a little after that and woken screaming as she felt the pain afresh.

Thankfully Lex kept... had kept the place stocked with a large selection of painkillers. So she'd quickly downed a couple of the strongest in water from the bathroom tap and started her trek to the farm. Hoping, if not for news of Clark, at least to find a place she could rest in safety for a while as she planned her next move. Finding Lionel and the Kents was surprising, but Lana was too tired to question it. Instead, she stuck with what was most important.

"Have you seen Clark?"

Jonathan and Martha flicked their eyes to each other instinctively, re-living the grief.

"Jor-El said he was banished," Martha answered, voice cracking, although she managed to once again hold back the tears that had been building since the Fortress.

Lana's face crumpled, but she closed her eyes against the breakdown and succeeded in composing herself. When she lifted her lashes again it was to find Jonathan staring at her with a mixture of horror and pity.

"He did that, didn't he?" the Senator questioned, nodding to her bleeding hand. "Zod."

Lana nodded.

"I was stupid. I made him angry," she muttered, turning away with all the shame of a beaten, yet self-blaming, wife. "I tried to attack him with kryptonite but... it didn't have any effect..."

A pregnant silence followed this, during which the others turned inevitably to the weapon still in Jonathan's hand - now, officially, the only one they had. He looked over the drying blood on Lana's bandage and his eyes hardened, lips thinning to a stern line of resolve. He nodded briefly.

"You said he was coming back to the mansion," he stated, not even waiting for Lana's nod of confirmation before starting forward. "Then that's where I'll find him."

"Is that the dagger?" Lana asked quickly as Jonathan stepped past, making him pause and blink at her in surprise. "Chloe... Chloe told me Jor-El gave Clark a dagger..."

Jonathan and his wife shared another look, acknowledging the absolute ignorance their son had kept them in with a kind of weary resignation.

"Yes," he admitted. "It's the only thing that can stop Zod now."

He turned to leave again, but Lana halted him with a hand - her bad one. Small, delicate fingers not quite able to curve over the bandages round the palm, forcing her to rest them flat against his arm instead.

"Jonathan," she said, lips curving a little as he met her eyes at the continuing first-name intimacy between them. "He's so fast he... you wouldn't get close enough to even use that."

Another pause as no one found a way to refute her.

"But I can."

A wave of silent shock passed over the others and Lana let it settle before continuing.

"He wants me to be his consort," she explained calmly. "If I can convince him I've agreed, I might be able to..."

Martha shook her head at the suggestion almost immediately and Jonathan soon followed.

"No, Lana, I can't ask you to -"

"Please," Lana cut in, fingers flexing awkwardly as she tried to grip the older man's sleeve, face chillingly sure. "A lot of people are going to die if you don't let me do this."

She looked at him steadily, waiting, while Jonathan turned to Martha, then Lionel, already aging face haggard in distress. Martha merely shook her head with a helpless shrug while Lionel tilted his upwards, eyes looking down at the other man, daring him to let the young girl carry the burden he'd already been denied.

Jonathan turned back with agonising slowness, shoulders sagging in defeat as he met Lana's brave and determined gaze. Because, at the end of the day what could he do? She was right - he was no match for Zod, and was more likely to be killed than... And then who would look out for Martha? For Lois? He could let Lionel try, like the older man wanted, but he was no better an opponent really and even had a few years on Jonathan. So, no. Lana had the better chance and, with the stakes so high, they couldn't pass that up.

With all of his heart burning against it, Jonathan held out the dagger.

Lana didn't know whether it was the pills she'd taken dulling the pain, or if her current apprehension was simply stronger in comparison. Because not only did her hand not seem to be troubling her, neither did her sore and blistered feet, still trapped in their impractical boots for want of better footwear. She was just numb, inside and out.

She was planning to kill a man, a man who had once been one of her closest friends, and while the details of the plan troubled her immensely - leading her mind through countless scenarios and responses and counter-responses as though in preparation for a macabre cheer routine - about the act itself she felt nothing. Nothing at all.

Which was just as well, she supposed.

She'd been waiting for over two hours for Zod's return, not including the time it had taken her to walk back to the mansion, and in all that time her tension hadn't lessened once. Her body was still as tightly strung as it had been when she'd first walked back in - untroubled by security who had long since fled back to their families - and even moving to sit on one of the sofas had failed to calm her.

Looking ill at ease could harm her chances of deception, of course, she was aware of that, but since there was little she could do about it she'd realised early on it was something she'd have to factor in to her plans. She figured it could be played off as nervousness easily enough, providing she played the rest of the part right. And she had that worked out almost to perfection now - what she'd say, how she'd move.

It felt so much like cheerleading, in fact, she kept half expecting to feel a red and white leotard beneath her jacket instead of the light cotton dress; a small, pleated skirt across her legs instead of her jeans. The performance, like all the mundane ones before it, was so meticulously memorised. Her whole future laid out for her in all the ways she didn't want.

But she'd escaped cheerleading, she had. Despite Whitney and despite Aunt Nell. She was free of it now. And she'd be free of this too. She just had to get through this one game...

She was so focused she actually missed her opponent's arrival. Zod was just suddenly there, staring at the fallen poker and surrounding pool of blood, face impassive, a heavy metal suitcase in his hand.

He turned away without so much as a shrug and placed the suitcase on Lex's desk, pushing the laptop with its still spinning oval aside to make room.

It wasn't until he opened it up to reveal a state-of-the-art computer screen and compact keyboard wired inside that Lana realised he simply hadn't noticed her, hadn't cared enough to look after finding her no longer pinned to the wall.

A brief tremor coursed through her at the callousness, at the sheer indifference the alien held towards her and the rest of humanity. A shiver that intensified when she noticed the dry red flecks coating the metal casing of the stolen computer.

She stood up quickly, desperate to act before she lost her resolve.

"That's all it takes to end the world?" she asked, stepping forward.

Zod raised his head and paused without turning, apparently surprised.

"And begin a new one," he stated eventually, twisting slowly to face her, black leather curling round his ankles, blue eyes still and focused. "You freed yourself but didn't run." He didn't move in the slightest, but somehow seemed closer to Lana anyway. "Why?"

And as she met his gaze, the roar of a crowd filled her ears - whistling, cheering and clapping; a faint chant of 'crows'. All of it distraction. Like this was. Lex's face, the silken tone of his voice - it was nothing, just background chatter. And just like she had with the people in the stalls all those years and games ago, she let the distraction fade to the back of her mind, unheeded, barely noticed, and focused on what she had to do. The old habit returned quickly, enough to depress her if she'd been aware of it, and as she gave herself up to the performance all her tension vanished, as though another girl had been carrying it, one who was no longer there.

"I realised there was nothing to run to," she answered, calm eyes locked on Zod's as she moved before him, bandaged hand held to her chest as a reminder of what she'd endured and yet refused to escape.

For a second an image of Clark crossed her mind - the man she'd always run to before but was now lost to her, not just because of Zod but by her own choosing.

"Sometimes," she continued. "To survive, you have to give up the things that you care about, and just give in to your fate."

Zod turned his head to look at her sideways, gaze unrelenting. Then his indifferently lined mouth curved upwards in a smile of triumph.

"You would give me an heir," he stated, taking a step closer, leaning near enough for Lana to feel his breath on her cheeks. "Willingly."

Lana curved her own lips in reply.

"The first of many."

She raised her good hand slowly to Zod's cheek - Lex's cheek - and trailed her fingers down it, leaning forward... And then it was happening, just like she'd planned. Her lips on his, her hand curling round his neck.

He didn't respond at first - body and lips still and hard as a statue. A test. So Lana just kept going. She pressed harder against his impassive mouth, closing her eyes as she forced her tongue inside - not much room to move, but enough to feel a scar on his upper lip. A heart-breaking reminder of the humanity the body she was exploring had once held.

Still nothing from Zod, so Lana pulled back. And was startled into breathlessness at the deep, open-eyed gazed being fixed on her. Passionless and calculating.

She ran her hand down taut, black leather and grasped the fingers falling loosely from the sleeve, the sticky heat from her palm cooling against the dry, temperature-less skin.

"Come on," she whispered, turning to the sofa before the fireplace and pulling gently.

Despite his continuing cool, Zod followed, and allowed himself to be positioned carefully on the right hand side, the crease where the two cushions forming the couch met just inches from his right shoulder.

Lana climbed lithely onto his lap and began another round of kissing, flicking her hair aside so she could mouth across his cheek this time and down to his neck.

After a minute, Zod made a low, humming sound in the back of his throat and rested a pair of warm hands on her shoulders. His lips brushed Lana's ear, blowing hot breath inside, and Lana was shocked to find her body responding with a heat of it's own, a wet tremor shaking between her legs.

But with her eyes closed it was so easy to forget what was really happening. And the touch and the feel - skin so smooth, body so agile. Far from overpowering like this, the other man seemed to mould around her, so much more accessible than Clark had ever been, and oh, it had been so long... It was everything she'd wanted to imagine of Lex, but never dared to. Too scared to leave Clark's shadow and dream for herself. But if she just kept her eyes closed then perhaps she could... Just for a moment...

"Your response to my proposal is certainly more pleasing than Kal-El's. Perhaps I have underestimated the females of your species..."

The comment was murmured. No more than an aside. But it was enough to dispel Lana's half-formed fantasies. Kal-El. Your species. Things Lex would never say. Because this wasn't Lex in her arms, this was an alien, a malevolent alien who'd, oh my god, tried to seduce Clark as well?

Lana raised her head very slowly from Zod's neck, not wanting to make him aware of the sudden disgust flooding through her. She slid her hand off his shoulder and between the two cushions, fingers gripping round the crystal handle of the dagger she'd hid there earlier.

"Or maybe you just underestimated me," she hissed, unaware of the tear escaping her left eye as she pulled the blade free and raised it above her.

She pushed down with all her might, aiming for Lex, no, Zod's chest.

But a grip round her wrist stopped her dead and she gasped.

Zod stared at her calmly.

"You shouldn't play with things you don't understand," he stated. Before pulling the knife from her grasp and hurling her across the room.

She spun round in the air several times before hitting the floor again and skidding into the wall beside the double doors. Her teeth bit down hard on her lower lip as she fell and she felt blood trickle down her chin as she turned her head vaguely back to the sofa. Her eyesight blurred and she had to blink several times to get a clear picture again, making her aware of a sharp pain in her right temple - another cut perhaps? From where she'd hit a rough edge of the wall.

As her body tried to recover itself, Lana watched aghast as Zod stood up from the couch, quickly and dismissively breaking humanity's only weapon against him in two and letting the broken shards clatter to the floor.

Another stride had him back at the desk, where he waved a hand across the spinning hard-drive to still it. After a few taps to the yellow symbols on the surface, he transferred it to the Pentagon's computer.

A line of Kryptonian writing flickered across the top of the screen followed by a flash of blue in the centre that claimed the device was 'accessing satellite.'

While Zod watched the screen with a thin smile, Lana rolled herself onto her hands and knees and tried to crawl away. She barely got two paces without crying out, deep needles of pain shooting from her bandaged hand as soon as it touched the marble floor. Her feet were hurting again too and her head pounded with the black ache of impending unconsciousness. Apparently failure had removed her pain-numbing adrenaline.

She felt sick, and hopeless, and pathetic. She'd had one thing to do, just one, with the whole world depending on her for it. The first, real responsibility in her whole life. Something that would prove herself forever. And she'd failed. She'd let everyone down. Lex had been wrong. She was a lost little girl, and that was all. No secret power hidden away. There really was nothing to her. Nothing.

She swayed above the floor, sending new flurries of pain up her arm - so woozy it felt like the ground was shaking.

There was a crash in front and beside her and Lana raised her throbbing head to see a slab of what looked like plaster crumbled a few feet from her hands. As she watched, another slab smashed beside it. And another. It took a sudden jerk and fall to her side to make her realise it wasn't her mind - the floor really was shaking.

An earthquake? No. This wasn't San Francisco. Smallville didn't get Earthquakes... Unless... Unless a powerful alien had just sent a signal to re-shape the Earth's crust.

Another part of the ceiling smashed by her ear and she rolled back to her hands with a yelp, desperately trying to fight the pain enough to crawl to the doorway for shelter.

Then a hand gripped her jacket collar and pulled her off the floor completely.

The next thing she knew she was on her back, shoulders pressed against leather cushions, Zod's chillingly calm face looming above her, all the more terrifying contrasted with the chaotic falling ceiling behind. He ran a couple of fingers through the loose hairs across her face and Lana jerked away.

"A pity," he said. "Your co-operation would have been pleasing." He gripped Lana's wrists and raised them above her head; locking them together on the armrest and holding them there neatly with his left hand while his other moved down her body. "But it isn't necessary."

His hand slipped expertly beneath her dress and the ripping of her jeans seemed louder to Lana, suddenly, than the continuing crashes around them.

Clark tried not to say anything as he was frogmarched the rest of the way to the gateway, pursing his lips against the continuing burns of broken skin and the sharp angle of his arm the pale woman held behind his back. He didn't want to give his captors the satisfaction of a show of weakness, of the lingering hurt and anger he felt at Raya's betrayal and his foolish belief in her in the first place. The silence proved easy after a while once he'd realised he had more practice in it than he'd thought - because, really, it was remarkable how similar this kind of dignity was to sulking.

Eventually they reached a small valley with six jutting black crystals pushing up from the sand. They were about as tall as the poles from Raya's tent, but their thick, uneven surfaces and the white glare behind made them seem tall enough to be threatening. They were grouped in pairs in a line stretching forward - the middle two met in a point, forming a triangular arch, while the ones on either side leaned towards each other but didn't quite touch. In the centre of the arch was a smaller crystal, about the size and shape of a tree stump, which Clark supposed was what controlled everything.

"The others will be here soon," Nam-Ek stated, ominously, as they moved closer, his hand clamped firmly to Raya's forearm as he walked.

Once they'd reached the first set of crystals he thrust the blonde Kryptonian away and turned to Clark. With a nod of his head, his partner released her grip, moved round and smacked Clark hard across the face with a satisfied grunt.

The move was so sudden Clark couldn't help crying out as he fell to the ground, sharp stings piercing his shoulder as the sand embedded itself through his torn Tee and into the still fresh cuts there.

Above him, Nam-Ek once again pulled his knife from his makeshift black belt.

"Open the gateway!" he demanded.

"He doesn't know how," Raya responded while Clark tried to cough the dust from his mouth. "But I do," she continued, stepping closer to face the dark-skinned man. She held a hand out. "Give me the knife."

Nam-Ek twisted his lips in irritation, but handed the weapon over.

Once she had it, Raya knelt at Clark's side and grabbed his right hand. Clark tried to pull away, but the other woman bent down to grip his side, holding him in place.

Very slowly, Raya ran the tip of the blade across Clark's palm, leaving a red, seeping line in her wake.

Clark bit back a yell and growled with the pain instead. Bitch! How could he have been so stupid!

"His blood," Raya explained as she finished. "The blood of the House of El. It's the key to opening the gateway."

She stared at him, looked him straight in the eye, and Clark was shocked at the nerve of it, that she could be so indifferent about her betrayal in the face of the man she'd supposedly befriended. The son of the man she'd idolised. The man she was probably going to watch die when his usefulness was over.

"I trusted you!" he hissed.

Her eyes softened then, lids falling down in a gesture of sorrow, and the look awoke something in Clark. A memory of a similar expression :: Ever since I met you I've been defending you. Making excuses for you to people like Pete, like my parents. Telling them you can trust Lex Luthor; he's a good guy! He's nothing like his father... I was wrong :: He'd believed the worst in Lex that day. Jumped to the wrong conclusions without thinking. Was he doing it again?

A flash of hope warmed inside him. Because Raya had her own knife. Why would she ask for Nam-Ek's?

"Trust is for the weak," Nam-Ek scoffed above them, sharing a grinning look with his partner, her smile visible only in the cold glare of her eyes through her headscarf.

Raya nodded, expression hardening.

"You're right," she said, spinning round and slashing the blade in her hand cleanly and quickly across the other man's neck.

He raised his hands instantly to cover the wound, but it was already too late, the flow of blood was too strong. Clark gasped as Nam-Ek fell to his knees, vibrant green eyes turning dull and lifeless as he pitched face down in the sand. The younger Kryptonian had been more acquainted with death than he cared to think about, but the sight of it still made him sick at heart, the way something so full of life and power could turn so quickly to dead meat. It was a fate he couldn't even wish on his enemies and he was shocked that Raya could have inflicted it so calmly.

Behind him, the pale woman pushed herself up, her own knife in hand, voice surprisingly frantic as she called her partner's name.

Raya rose to meet her and their shoulders tensed as they faced each other off.

The scarfed woman made the first move, swiping at Raya fast and too eager. Raya blocked her with ease and spun round to kick her opponent in the shoulder, knocking her down.

As they fought, Clark had been slowly climbing to his feet and Raya turned briefly from her fallen prey to address him.

"The gateway. Go, Kal-El!" she yelled, yanking the string from round her neck and throwing it with its precious talisman at his feet.

For a second Clark hovered, uncertain, wanting to help the woman he'd been misjudging so recently. But then, three dark and blurry shadows appeared on the slope above - presumably the first of 'the others' Nam-Ek had spoken about - and Clark released why she'd thrown the talisman to him. While fighting a corporeal enemy, Raya had no way of protecting herself against the Phantoms. But if Clark took the crystal now, he could open the gateway before too many arrived and use the talisman to keep the criminals back while he and Raya both escaped.

With a quick nod he scooped up the fallen crystal and ran towards the central arch.

A couple more Phantoms whizzed past him as he ran, but didn't fight - as eager as he was for the gateway to open, Clark supposed.

When he reached the centre crystal he found no control panel on it as he'd suspected, just a larger engraving of the emblem on the talisman - the serpentine infinity symbol, trapped in a diamond. He paused for a second. His blood, Raya had said...

He glanced briefly at his bleeding palm, before placing it carefully in the centre of the carving. As soon as he touched it, the background glowed a dazzling blue, while the triangle and serpent-like line inside turned yellow - the colour was almost too beautiful after so much grey.

A thick, agonized scream turned Clark's head just in time for him to see the pale woman pull her knife from Raya's side. Distracted by a couple of Phantoms still circling her, the older Kryptonian had been turned around, leaving herself exposed. A violent shove knocked her to the ground, where she lay panting and helpless.

"Raya!" Clark yelled, free hand fumbling with the crystal inside it.

But before he could figure out how to use it, a bubble of white filled the space between the surrounding pillars. There was a sickening jerk pulling him from behind, like when Zod had first sent him to the Zone, and then suddenly Clark was falling again.

He caught glimpses of blackness, bright red fire and brilliant blue sky. Then a plain of grass-covered earth rose up to meet him.

The impact was strong enough to leave a significant crater and Clark was forced to clamber out of it before assessing his position. Bright yellow sunlight beamed down at him as he climbed, quickly healing his torn and bleeding skin. Almost certainly Earth again then.

Clark sighed in relief at the lack of pain and scanned the surrounding field. He didn't recognise it. The ground was uneven, recently ploughed, and had a dustier feel than the soil he was used to. There was a soft vibration beneath it as well, like an aftershock of an earthquake, or the early tremors of an approaching one.

It certainly wasn't Smallville in any case, but as Clark's enhanced hearing kicked back in he made out the sound of traffic not too far away and figured he could work out his way home via road signs without much trouble.

That sorted, he turned back to examine the crater more thoroughly, hoping Raya might have been pulled through the teleport with him. But it was empty. Her hoarse cry played back through his mind, the sight of the dagger being ripped from her side, leaving a wound that could have been cured in seconds if only she'd made it here. Instead she was probably bleeding to death at that very moment... if she wasn't dead already. And she must have known, mustn't she? That the gateway would zap Clark away the instant he touched it? The second she threw him the pendant she must have known she'd never be able to escape...

Clark closed his eyes, forcing back new tears. Another life sacrificed for him by a friend he'd misjudged. And this time he wouldn't get the chance to make it right again, to even get to know the woman who'd so readily given everything for him.

When his eyelids lifted they revealed determined eyes, the look of a man with nothing to lose, a man reduced to a single purpose.

Lex. Raya. Even Krypton. All of them were gone, lost to Clark forever. And all because of one man - Zod.

As he sped away, the focused Kryptonian didn't notice the six shadows on the horizon, falling like missiles across the sky and scattering across the Earth's surface.

At the Kent barn, Martha, Jonathan and Lionel were struggling against the shaking ground - falling wooden beams and surrounding farm equipment turning their once quiet resting place into a death trap.

After Lana left they'd been strangely reluctant to leave the structure, despite the near-by comfort of the farmhouse. A penance, perhaps, for the unforgivable act they'd sent the young girl away to commit. Or, at least, that's how it seemed to Jonathan, who'd stumbled back to the staircase to sit down, gazing vacantly at the wall opposite and refusing to speak. Lionel had no doubt stayed for Martha, who wouldn't leave her husband.

But, although her eyes shone with obvious concern for him, Martha had been unable to address Jonathan - like him, equally lacking the words - and instead she'd allowed Lionel to lead her a little way towards the entrance, where he offered murmurs of comfort and attempted defence of their actions.

It was then, with the two parties separated, that Zod's devastating signal began to take effect.

It had been slow at first. Just a few floating bits of hay and broken wood. Enough to make the three of them raise their heads in surprise. Then, very quickly, it turned dangerous.

A violent jerk shook the barn's foundations, sliding two or three beams out of place and bringing a section of the roof down on them. Martha lost her balance with a scream and a cascade of wood and old metal tractor parts Jonathan had been storing in the loft prevented him from rushing to her aid.

A quick pull on her arm had her safely upright again and cradled to Lionel's chest.

As he held her there protectively, the older man's gaze met Jonathan's across the still falling debris in simple alarm.

Too afraid for his wife to care about the compromising position, Jonathan only nodded in relief and waved a hand to the entrance.

"Get her outside!" he yelled, stepping jerkily after them.

Lionel and Martha had just made it to the threshold when the old boat hammered to the rafters, one that had once belonged to Jonathan's grandfather, shook itself loose and smashed to the ground just inches from its owner's grandson.

Tensing in shock, Jonathan lost his footing and fell on his back. Just as the banister pulled away from the stairs and began to descend, now aiming straight for the fallen man's chest.

"Jonathan!" Martha shrieked, halfway back to him before Lionel gripped her round the waist to stop her. And even then she continued to struggle, her own safety forgotten in the face of her husband's imminent danger.

Glad to know that, if nothing else, Lionel could be counted on to protect Martha if the worst should happen, Jonathan closed his eyes and waited for the blow that never came.

He blinked his eyes open again in confusion, and watched as a pair of arms lifted the banister up, muscles beneath the dirty blue T-shirt not even tensing with the strain. As the wood lifted further, Clark's sombre face came into view.

"Clark," Martha breathed behind the younger man, voice laden with relief, body subduing in Lionel's hold now she knew Jonathan was safe.

Jonathan, breathing too shallow to allow speech, simply smiled, hot tears stinging his eyes.

Clark transferred the wooden beam to one hand and held the other out to his father.

Grasping it tightly, Jonathan hauled himself up and away from the banister's intended destination, before turning to lay a hand on the other man's shoulder.

"Son..." he muttered, squeezing fingers and tight expression conveying all the emotion at having his missing child back better than words ever could.

Clark nodded, grateful and immensely touched by the display. Not to mention confused about why his parents were even at the barn. But this was no time for a family reunion.

Turning his head, he looked across the broken carcass of the boat, bypassed his mother's glowing face and focused straight to Lionel. Clark needed answers and he needed them fast and he knew, out of everyone, the elder Luthor would be the one to ask.

"Where is he?"

It took less than a second for Clark to find Zod's location in the mansion and he'd barely switched out of x-ray before he was running inside.

He stopped just outside Lex's office and peered through the open doors, assessing the situation. And his best means of attack.

Zod was at the desk by the far window, turned slightly away from Clark and tinkering with a large, metallic computer of some kind there. His back was straight and perfectly balanced, despite the continuing shudders through the floor and the occasional falling object, and the stillness emphasised the close-fitting, black leather jacket he'd draped about Lex's slender shoulders. As the alien turned to better view the screen, Clark noticed a pair of matching leather hot pants held up by a thick, silver-clasped belt that fitted snugly round the millionaire's waist. A simple black T-Shirt topped off the outfit and if it had been Lex in the clothes Clark would have thought he looked amazing. As it was he felt disgusted by the change, because it was just another way of showing how thoroughly Lex's body, his life, had been stolen.

Ignoring the alien for now, the younger man turned his gaze to the rest of the room and soon spotted Lana crouched on one of the sofas by the fireplace. Her knees were pulled to her chest and held tight in position with both hands; small, fresh patches of red blossoming on the bandage round her injured one as the strain proved too much for it. She ignored them though and stared straight ahead, apparently unaware of the pain or the long strands of hair encroaching on her eyes. After a second, she pulled compulsively at her dress, yanking the already low skirt further down her jeans, before moving to grip her jacket tighter round her shoulders.

The absolute emptiness in her eyes was almost painful to look at, but Clark didn't have the time to figure it out. Aside from her bleeding hand, which his parents had already told him about, the girl seemed relatively unharmed at least and that was the main thing.

Lowering his eyes, Clark scanned the surrounding area, looking for the necessary weapon he'd need to finally end everything. He'd been shocked when Jonathan explained how he'd given it Lana, but then, he supposed he couldn't blame the older man. The situation was impossible.

It didn't take him long to notice the broken shards of the dagger, scattered carelessly on the floor beside the couch, and his heart fell at the sight. Perhaps that was why Lana looked so distraught. Humanity's last defence. Lost.

Clark slipped a hand in his jeans' pocket, fingers curling round something hard and angular. Maybe, just maybe, there was still a chance...

Seeming to sense the movement, Lana turned her head to the doorway.

She stared at Clark for a moment, not daring to believe. Then a flash of excitement filled her eyes.

Clark put a finger to his lips to stop her crying out and her gaze flicked over her shoulder, just shying away from actually facing Zod. Her lips thinned and she nodded.

'What's happening?' Clark mouthed as she looked back to him.

Lana opened her mouth, then faltered, face clouding in distress as she realised there was too much to say.

Clark waved a hand to get her attention again, then tapped an ear, trying to show some encouragement through his tension. From him, the meaning of the gesture was obvious - 'don't worry, I'll hear you.'

Lana nodded again and looked down, arms crossing about her chest, eyes scanning the nylon and cotton across her knees. She wanted to look as inconspicuous as possible as she explained, so Zod wouldn't be distracted.

"The computer," she breathed, barely a whisper. Even Clark had to tilt his head to hear through the constant, earthshaking rumbles. But hear he did. "The device on it. Causing the earthquake. You have to stop it..."

At the desk, Zod lifted his head with a frown. With hearing just as super as Clark's he'd caught every word, of course, and while Lana had tried to make it sound like frightened rambling, perhaps the address to a third party had been just too suspicious, because the alien started to turn.

Fortunately, it was in the opposite direction to where Clark was standing, Lex's leather-coated back facing the younger man while Zod twisted his head to the girl on the sofa, and Clark took the opportunity step further inside. A quick study of the machine Zod had temporarily vacated revealed the spinning hard-drive and Clark focused his eyes on it without delay.

The ray of heat hit it straight in the centre, melting half and sending the other part flying across the room.

The quake ended almost at once and Zod whipped his head back round.

His cool eyes widened for a second in complete and utter shock when they found Clark. Then narrowed with dark, long-festering hate. The younger man felt his heart start to break at the sight of Lex's face shaping the expression, so completely focused on him and so completely opposed to the affectionate ones he'd come to love, but he ignored the feeling.

"Kal-El," Zod spat, with just the slightest emphasis on the 'El,' years of bitter, unknown, history with Clark's father fuelling his gaze.

And Clark met it calmly, rolling back his shoulders so his chest thrust out a little, chin held high. The weak blue fabric of his shirt stretched tighter with every breath and the bloodied rips across the shoulders and sides only made him seem stronger in comparison as he curved his lips in a look of pride, as though welcoming the connection to the long dead Kryptonian. Because if that's what it took to make Zod angry, to get past his defences, Clark would use it. He'd been living out a secret identity all his life; he could play another part if he had to. Mild-mannered Clark Kent might not be able to fight this man. But perhaps the son of Jor-El could...

With a bellow of rage, Zod rushed towards him.

Clark raised his arms to ward off a blow, but instead a pair of powerful hands gripped his shoulder and waist and pulled him into the air.

There was a tinkle of glass as the two of them smashed through the back window and the sound of Lana gasping, then the world became nothing but a whirl of sun and sky, gravity a thing of the past.

Clark knew if he turned his head to look at the impossible height they were reaching the vertigo would be paralysing, just like every time he dreamed of Kal-El. And not because of the drop either - he'd fallen beyond the atmosphere, more than once now, so he knew he'd survive - but because of the pure, vast openness of the sky, the absolute freedom it represented. It was just too much, he couldn't handle it. All his life had been about boundaries and restraints - don't push too hard, don't run too far, hold yourself back, keep yourself hidden - Clark didn't know how to cope without that, was afraid of what he might be capable of if he tried. So, no. This flying thing? So not ready.

Although, ironically, if anyone could get him to do it, he'd been sure it would be Lex. And here he was doing just that, only just as emphatically not. Because Clark had no choice or control at all over this journey, and as he focused his gaze on the other man to avoid the vanishing ground below, the eyes that matched him stare for stare were only Zod's. None of Lex's warm sea green rippled below the surface of this icicle blue. The look was hard and fixed and unwavering, with the alien not even bothering to break it to direct their movement. It was like everything else he'd escaped for, everything he'd tried to accomplish on Earth, meant nothing in comparison to this moment, to the vendetta against the man Clark represented. The younger Kryptonian was almost awed by the sheer single-mindedness of it and he wondered what the hell could have happened between Jor-El and this man to inspire such passion.

But then all he was wondering about was when and why their flight had started a downward turn and where the branches and tickling leaves brushing his forearms had come from.

Then both of them were slamming into the forest floor below, a small mound of soil building up as they slid along it to finally put a halt to their momentum.

Clark shook his head a little to remove the grit and pieces of moss from his hair, confused by the abrupt and seemingly impromptu landing. Zod didn't bother with such niceties. Whether he'd intended to bring them to their current setting, or if the flight had been simply the result of pent up aggression, was unclear. But in any case, he certainly didn't seem bothered by the change of scenery and was content to ignore it completely as he jumped to his feet, his still tight grip on Clark dragging the younger man up with him. Without even pausing for breath, Zod thrust Clark away.

For a split second Clark was nothing but a blue streak between the trees. Then he hit the trunk of a particularly ancient oak, sending the unfortunate flora crashing to the ground, where Clark also toppled soon after amongst a shower of broken twigs and scattered leaves.

The force was strong, even with the yellow sun there to back him up again, and Clark could only groan at the greenery beneath him, too stunned to try anything else.

And then Zod was once more beside him, sharp, nimble fingers gripping the younger man's shirt, sliding through the three especially vivid scratch marks across the right shoulder as he yanked Clark to his feet.

"I don't know how you escaped the Zone," he muttered as Clark tried to bring his bleary vision back into focus. "But you were safer where you were."

A sudden, inhumanly fast spin and push down had Clark on his back again, shoulder blades slamming against a moss-covered boulder beside them. The younger man felt the stone crack from the force, thousands of unseen, hairline fractures continuing to vibrate into existence inside it.

He moved to take a breath, but a small, biting fist smacked against the side of his face, stealing the chance. And again it came at him. And again. Always deadly accurate, until blood was almost literally pouring from Clark's mouth, either from the tears in his lips caused by the other man's fiercely pointed knuckles, or from where Clark himself had bitten down on his cheeks, leaving the insides open and raw.

The speed of it all! There was just no defence. Clark had been living on the planet for years and never developed anywhere near as much control, and yet Zod had achieved it in under a day. Like Raya had said - Zod was a soldier. Clark was no match. All he could do was take the blows as best he could and pray he didn't die before getting a chance to set the half-formed plan he'd thought of at the mansion into motion.

After the eighth or ninth punch the rapidly deteriorating stone finally gave up the ghost and collapsed under the pressure, pulling Clark down with it and thankfully away from Zod's punishing hands for a few seconds.

The respite was short, though, as the Kryptonian General extracted Clark from the rubble almost instantly, drawing the younger man towards him so they were face to face.

Mind fuzzed and body wracked with new pain - somehow doubly strong after such a short time of healing since his last injuries - the intimacy and slightly unfocused image Clark experienced was so very Lex it made him want to cry.

The sharp, angry hiss in his ear dispelled the illusion.

"Did you really think you could win, Kal-El?" Zod spat. "You're an idealistic fool. Just like your father."

Clark had an irrational urge to laugh. Idealistic? Were they even thinking of the same man? But then... surely the Jor-EL he knew, the controlling 'I will brand your chest and wipe your mind until you do as I say' Jor-El, would never have permitted the existence of the unhinged individual Clark was fighting now? Surely, with all the powers and tricks and manipulations he'd had available to use on Clark and his family over the past few years, the Kryptonian would have been more than a match for Zod, more than capable of preventing the destruction the man had supposedly caused on Krypton. Unless... unless the Jor-El Clark knew, the computer construct from the ship, wasn't such an accurate reflection of the man after all...

Clark had a split second flash back to the sixties, re-living the memories of Jor-El's time on Earth the Kryptonian had stored in the pendant-like computer chip he'd left behind. He remembered the man's instinctive dash across the road to protect Louise, then no more than a stranger, from the purse-snatcher. Remembered the honest gratitude his father had felt towards grandpa Kent when he'd led him safely to the caves. Remembered the simple confusion when Lachlan Luthor had shot him - no fear, just complete disbelief that anyone would do something like that, would even think of such violence. The horror that followed as he saw the blood on Louise's shirt.

And Clark imagined a man facing an even greater horror, ten thousand times greater, as he watched his whole planet start to bleed. Imagined the pure incomprehension such a man might experience when, having just come to accept the concept of murder, he was suddenly, shockingly presented with genocide. He imagined a man blaming himself for the crime, others blaming him too perhaps. A man with a young wife and child, knowing he was about to die.

Clark could almost taste the guilt, the sickening knowledge that the world his father had put so much hope in, the world he'd tried so hard to better since leaving Earth maybe, had betrayed him. He imagined a man tinkering with a small, crystal shaped computer while the earth shook around him, desperate fingers tapping the surface with no time to check the details, his wife tucking their son into a small, metallic craft a few paces away. Imagined the instructions that man must have given the craft in those last few moments, instructions that would later form the artificial construct intended to guide Clark through his childhood... Make my son strong. Don't leave him helpless like me, world at another's mercy. Don't let him be deceived by those around him. Give him power. Give him control. This mustn't happen again, and sending my son away to live isn't enough...

:: your father was a great man :: Raya had said. But with his world crumbling around him, how could Jor-El have believed that? No. Greatness would have seemed the exact opposite of his life. Of his idealism. Idealism that had stayed his hand and permitted the life of a man evil enough to destroy a whole civilisation. Of course Jor-El would have raged against himself then, no man was infallible. And when the ones you loved were hurt and dying your mind wondered, it took you down dark and twisted paths and made you capable of things you'd never have dreamed of. Clark understood that now. No, living wouldn't have been enough for little Kal-El. Jor-El would have wanted him to lead all others away from Krypton's catastrophe. He'd want his son to rule :: rule them with strength my son, for that is where your greatness lies :: Not in fair-minded justice, but in the total suppression of those who would threaten you and yours. It was a philosophy not born of a desire to enslave the Earth, as the Kents had assumed, but out of personal fear. And the hatred of one man.

And for that one man, it was a philosophy Clark found himself in sudden, violent agreement with.

So when Zod pulled him up and threw him away again, sending the younger man flying through the remaining trees and crashing down into the yellowing grass of the field beyond, Clark shook his head, wiped the blood from his lips, and turned right back to face his attacker, ready now to do what he had to. Willing and proud, for the first time in his life, to be his father's son.

As Clark made to stand, Zod's figure glided smoothly through the path the younger man had so recently been thrown across. The General pulled his body upright at the last minute so he floated down before his opponent, jacket flapping neatly about his feet as they touched the ground like a kind of miniature parachute.

"So easily beaten," he stated, eyes flashing contempt at the fallen man. "Disappointing."

Clark scrunched up his nose at the insult and pushed to his feet. There was a moment of silence as the two men faced each other, expressions full of equal loathing.

Clark let the sun bring him back to full strength before speaking, so his voice would be firm enough to carry across the expanse of softly waving grass surrounding them.

"I won't let you destroy Earth like you did Krypton," he said, repeating his last words to the other man before being sent to the Zone. Re-enforcing his opposition. Because it was important, suddenly, that Zod understood there was no middle ground between them now. Now they were enemies. Absolute. The first completely mutual enemy Clark had ever known.

"Jor-El couldn't stop me and neither will his son," Zod growled back in kind.

Clark took a breath.

"Then I'll die trying."

Zod curved his lips in a brief smirk, as though in admiration of the claim, and stepped forward, gaze locking on to the other man with a menace almost more shocking than his previous attacks.

"You won't be the only one," he said, stopping two or three feet away. "These humans you care so much about... Swear your allegiance to me and I'll allow the ones you love the most to live."

Clark paused, breath coming heavy through his nose. Nothing would have given him more satisfaction than to spit in the other man's face - Zod's face now, completely - and turn the offer down. But... if he failed today... he needed to think of his parents... his friends...

The shadow of a smile broke through Zod's glare as he watched Clark consider and he claimed the younger man's attention again with a slight raise of his head. Small but commanding. Eyes full of hidden conceit that had Clark holding his breath.

"Kneel before Zod."

A shudder racked through Clark's body at the words and he barely stopped himself jerking back :: kneel down... :: He focused on the other man's face, scanning every arrogant line, every challenging bolt of blue in Zod's eyes. Did he know? Did he have access somehow to Lex's memories? That night at the mansion. Lex looking down at him. Hands on the back of his head :: kneel Clark, right there :: Controlling him. Shaping him. Claiming him.

Zod smirked.

"Kneel," he repeated. Just like Lex had. An answer to the unasked question.

He knew. And the demand was a final, cutting blow. Because there'd be no more kneeling to Lex. There was only Zod now. He wanted to make sure Clark understood that.

The younger man curled his lip in a muted snarl, incensed by the humiliation of it, that the loving submission he'd shared with Lex should be reduced to this callous, one-sided subjugation. It wasn't just hurtful to Clark; it was a crime against his lover's memory! To even consider accepting the parallel tainted Lex's original, well-meaning intentions beyond anything even approaching acceptable. Twisted the mutual joy they'd both taken from the experience into nothing.

But Clark let himself fall anyway. Cheeks burning with shame as his knees hit the ground, hands balling into fists, which he shoved in his pockets. His head dropped immediately to avoid the smug expression he could almost hear the other Kryptonian forming. Because the people he loved were dead or soon to be dying and he'd do what he had to.

Zod was still for a moment - savouring it, Clark supposed - and the intensity of the silence made Clark remember the alien's brief seduction in the barn. His body tensed at the thought and he worried, suddenly, that Zod might be intending to take the parody of his and Lex's intimacy even further.

But instead of reaching for his belt, Zod simply held out a hand. A demand for a more sophisticated show of loyalty.

Clark raised his eyes and stared at the hand through his lashes, fingers clenching compulsively inside his jeans.

After a quick breath to psyche himself up, he lifted his right hand and gripped the offered one decisively inside it.

Zod gave a small hum of satisfaction and Clark gripped tighter. And tighter. Come on, come on, please...

A sudden tension straightened the fingers beneath his own - a show of pain, or fear perhaps - that seemed to course up the older man's arm, and then Zod was pulling, tugging, desperate to get his arm away and force their joined hands apart. But Clark held him. A deep, dark defiance burning in his eyes as he looked up again.

Zod's eyes were wide as he stared back, gritted teeth replacing his smirk, and the veins in his forehead flared with sheer incredulity as he turned to their still clasped hands.

A faint, blue glow had started to emit between their fingers and the other man's hand started to shake as it intensified. He gasped, face creasing with greater strain, and Clark realised Zod was still trying to pull away. And failing. If not full paralysis, it was certainly enough.

The younger man slipped neatly from the hold, mouth twisting with cold, joyless pleasure as he stood up. Zod stayed prostrate before him, arm outstretched. And because, for Zod, this fight had never been with Clark, Clark decided to rub in the extent of his enemy's defeat.

"My father sends his regards," he spat, just as Zod summoned enough strength to uncurl his fingers and reveal Jor-El's diamond-shaped crystal talisman with its serpentine prisoner. The one Clark had lifted from his pocket right before taking the General's hand.

A beam of light burst from the crystal's centre, just as Clark had seen it do against the Phantoms in the Zone, and Lex's already pale face turned ashen at the sight.

"Jor-El..." Zod hissed, bitter and unbelieving that his erstwhile nemesis had the power to stop even in death.

Clark wasn't sure what would happen now. In the Zone the pendant had repelled the Phantoms, but since Zod was a Phantom in corporeal form there was really no telling what affect it might have. As far as Clark knew before starting his daring manoeuvre the crystal might not have done anything at all, and he'd been prepared for that, prepared to give in to protect the people he loved. But as he watched the obviously devastating results of his plan, he wondered if whatever power the crystal had might actually be able to kill Zod in his current form, as opposed to just incapacitating him.

As Zod continued to stare at the ray of light bursting from his hand, a low, anguished sound erupted from his throat and soon developed to a fully-fledged scream. And his face seemed to distort as he yelled, a secondary one appearing like a shadow before it, or from it, and although smoky and indistinct Clark thought he could make out a pair of small, deep-set eyes, a thin moustache curving down to a goatee...

Then the face was blurred again and a larger, man-shaped shadow, like the ones Clark had been attacked by earlier, snapped back and forth from Lex's body like a demonic rubber band, each time veering closer and closer to the pulsing beam of light, despite the resistance. And the agonised scream kept up, growing stronger and more desperate all the time. It certainly sounded like a man dying.

Good, Clark thought.

But instead of bringing destruction, the crystal's light drew the shadow inside it and sucked itself, along with its captive, downwards. A split second later Zod and the light were gone, with no more than a waft of smoke from the diamond shaped talisman left of either.

And Lex's body stared eerily at Clark, wide-eyed and panting.

After Zod's insistence on his vessel's death, Clark had assumed there was nothing left of Lex anymore and steeled himself to witness his lover's corpse once Zod was dispelled from it. To see that corpse now regarding him with something very like intelligence was unnerving to say the least.

And also absurdly unlikely.

A rush of wild, unfettered joy surged through the younger man's heart and pressed outwards until the whole of his skin seemed to tingle with it.

"Lex?" Clark breathed, voice a whisper, green eyes dilating with a hope the rest of him daren't yet acknowledge.

The other man blinked at him for a second. Then promptly collapsed. So suddenly and completely Clark didn't even get the chance to reach out to him before Lex's shoulder was hitting the ground, eyes firmly closed, the knuckles of his still outstretched hand tapping the earth with enough force to dislodge the smoking crystal, sending it rolling into the grass.

It left a cruel looking burn in its wake that alarmed Clark by the way it seemed to sizzle into Lex's palm, the inconsistent manner in which the crystal had been held there turning the looping figure of eight into a kind of 's' shape where parts of the curve had failed to touch the skin.

"Lex!" Clark called again, sharper this time, as he knelt down, one hand grabbing at the scalding crystal to stop it causing more damage, while the other gently circled the older man's injury, trying to assess the severity of it. But even as he did, the painful mark began to fade, cooling away into nothing and leaving the older man's skin smooth and flawless as ever.

Clark held off his sigh of relief until after he'd moved his fingers down to Lex's wrist; the warm, rhythmic thumping through the veins inside matching the soft puffs of air curling round the corn-coloured stalks by Lex's mouth. Alive. Oh god. Unconscious, but alive.

Slipping the now ice cold talisman into his jeans pocket, Clark knelt forward and placed a hand on Lex's shoulder.

"Hold on," he whispered, stroking softly, lips against Lex's ear and kissing just above as though to punctuate the demand.

He ran his hand down Lex's back and pulled the older man upright and to his chest for a moment, eyes closing as he rested his chin on Lex's head and relished the hot breath seeping through his T-shirt. Then he scooped the fallen man up in his arms and sped away.

Kneel... a blade flashed in the twilight... gunshots followed... and screams... deep, masculine, military... a silver briefcase... blood... dripping... down... the side... a diamond... a serpent of light...

Lex woke with a gasp, body snapping upright, heart pounding with a fear he couldn't quite place. It was on the edge of his mind, floating round his consciousness like a fading dream, but when he tried to reach for it the knowledge just slipped further away, leaving him with nothing. Nothing but shallow breaths and an odd image of Clark in a field staring at him, expression stony, pure hatred in his eyes.

Enough to explain his fear perhaps, but where had the image come from? The last time he'd seen Clark in a field the younger man had been concerned, hadn't he? Loving. What the hell was going on?

Lex patted his chest in an effort to relieve the frankly painful beats against it and his fingers found coarse, shiny nylon. He looked down. Blue hospital garb. And not the full PJs he was usually provided with either, it was one of those throws that tied at the neck that most people who weren't sons of the eighth richest man in the world had to make do with. The ones with the annoying habit of opening out at the back and exposing your rear. Lex frowned and raised his eyes around the room.

Except it wasn't a room, it was a ward. A ward with a bizarrely low level of lighting that he had to squint through to make out the bland, pale green décor he recognised as that of Smallville Medical Centre. It was also very full. Every bed taken up with obviously wounded people - blood staining their temples and arms and legs and anything that could be stained really, although thankfully not all at once. The wounds were significant, but not life threatening. Although, some people did have nasty looking shrapnel or bits of rubble embedded in their injuries that an almost military-like team of nurses were taking turns to pull out, while others brought in fresh patients on stretchers which they deposited at random in any available space.

There were few reasons why Lex Luthor would have been housed in a place as crowded and... well... common, as this, and so poorly clothed. One was that no one had recognised him and he'd therefore been treated like any other Joe Public, which was an oddly appealing but unlikely idea considering the sheer number of officials running round. Another was the occurrence of a significantly shocking natural disaster, enough to fill up the private wards and leave the relatively unharmed rich boy to fend for himself, and from the amount of injured bodies surrounding him, this was the answer Lex was veering towards.

He tried hollering at the passing nurses for an actual explanation, but they waved him away, always with someone else to hurry on to, some with sympathetic smiles, some with dirty looks. And as Lex grew more awake, enough to feel every part of his perfectly formed, pain-free body, he understood those scowls a little better. The ward was full of people in need of medical attention and a bed, and here he was, an apparently healthy young man, taking up one of those greatly desired commodities for no good reason.

He jumped quickly from the constricting green sheets, even more confused as to why he should be in hospital when he clearly wasn't sick, and looked round for a way out. It was then he noticed, with an immense sense of relief, that someone had provided a set of fresh clothes on a chair beside the bed. Black slacks, silken purple shirt and a black cotton jacket draped over the seat's plastic back. They were folded inexpertly, without the usual care Lex was used to from his staff, but tended to lovingly nonetheless, with all the creases brushed away.

An obvious candidate came to mind, but why would he have dropped Lex here and left? More important business to attend to? Dangers to fight? Milton Fine? The possibilities were vast and daunting and Lex was only wasting time considering them. He needed to get out of here and find some answers! So with a flick of his wrist he pulled at the curtain surrounding the bed, allowing him at least some privacy as he slipped on his clothes.

He whispered a few words to one of the nurses as he made for the door to indicate his bed was now free and she shot him a sparkling smile of gratitude in response that almost renewed Lex's pounding heart. Were things really so bad that even the simple, everyday acts were heroic now? What had happened while he was out? How long had he even been out in the first place? And why? And what? And why? And WHY?

The corridor outside was little help to his unanswered questions.

The lighting there was the same dull white, pitiful gleam as inside the ward, coupled with the odd red flare of an emergency light and the pale glow through the various tinted windows lining the walls. Crowds of doctors and patients and anxious looking people criss-crossed his path at every turn.

He managed to navigate his way to the reception area and found even that had been utilised for treatment. Queues of people spiralling around it, clutching at hurriedly scrawled prescriptions, as they waited to be given drugs from the makeshift pharmacy counters set up at the room's various tables.

As Lex scanned wide eyes across the methodical madness a small patient in an off-white jacket, black blouse and belted jeans caught his attention. She was sitting, rather uncomfortably, beside one of the tables and took a pot of pills from its improvised pharmacist. She slipped them in her handbag with a timid 'thank you,' then stood and headed to the double-doored entrance on the left; long, dark hair falling flat across her face as she turned.

Lex dodged a moving stretcher and it's passenger with sudden impatience and rushed towards her.

"Lana!" he cried, hurrying beside the moving girl and touching a hand to her arm. "Are you alright?"

The relief he'd felt at the familiar face evaporated as she turned to him, body tensing hard as rock beneath his fingers, eyes wide and bright, with shock was it? Or something stronger? She didn't say anything, apparently too paralysed - even to pull away as well, although she clearly wanted to - and Lex dropped his hand in confusion.

"What happened?" he breathed.

Lana looked down, a set of conflicting lines marring her brow, and as she raised a hand to pull her bag more securely over her shoulder Lex noticed it was heavily bandaged, an almost perfect red circle staining the professional white strips just below her knuckles. A coldness started numbing his skin and creeping to his heart as he mixed the injury with Lana's current fear.

He reached towards the hand, but flinched away when Lana blinked up at him.

"Is that why you're afraid of me?" he asked - face tight, breath turning shallow again as he looked up and around the crowds surrounding them with new suspicion, wrist tingling as it recalled Fine's touch, the sharp pain of a syringe piercing the skin. It certainly wouldn't be the first time an alien substance had taken control of someone. "Is all this because of me?"

Lana's eyes softened just slightly, gaze almost pitying, but her reply was cut off by a deep, desperate shout from across the room.

"Lex! LEX!"

Lex twisted his head and faced a wild looking Clark - practically unrecognisable, for the moment, to the man he'd last known him as, as he all but pushed his way through the throng. Because Clark was ignoring the vulnerable people around him, almost to the point of negligence, and moving his neck in desperate, panicked jerks within his blue plaid collar, zip-up blue jacket flapping against his chest every time he turned. Which was a lot.

Idiot! Idiot! his mind chorused. Why had he even thought of leaving Lex alone? He'd known his parents were fine, he hadn't needed to rush back to the farm to check, hadn't needed the change of clothes his mom had practically stripped him into. And then there were the new clothes Lana had requested for herself when he'd stopped at the mansion to get some for Lex, again unnecessary - she already had a pair of jeans, why would she need a new pair? And then, finally, his foolish stop in to visit Lois in her room on the second floor after dropping off said clothes for Lex. Like his mom said, she was fine, and sleepy, and delirious apparently - claiming the brief glimpse of the Fortress she'd seen after the crash as a near death experience of heaven, of all things. Probably a wasted journey for both of them, even, as Lois had zonked back into sleep almost the instant he made for the door.

It was good to have seen their safety for himself, of course, and he'd actually been planning to stop in on Chloe next, but now Lex was missing, again, and Clark couldn't stand it! His heart was barely pausing between beats. If he lost the other man now, because he hadn't been there...

"Clark."

The name was softly spoken, with a little more surprise than usual, but it had an inflection Clark had come to know inside out and feared to never hear again.

His head whipped round to the entrance and met a pair of shining blue eyes - warm and safe and real and alive. Oh god. Really Lex and really alive. Clark had to choke back the relief it was so physical.

Without a glance at the people he was jostling along the way, the Kryptonian bounded over and wrapped his arms about the other man's neck.

"Lex. Thank god," he said, closing his eyes as he buried his face in the smaller man's shoulder.

Lex breathed out a gasp over the other man's back, more than a little winded by the force of the embrace, and waited for Clark to let go and explain. Only he didn't let go. He stayed. Heart pounding through the plaid against Lex's chest, face lifting 'til his cheek was resting on the older man's, as though the touch of skin was paramount, and Lex knew, from theory as opposed to practice at least, that the appropriate description was 'clinging.' And the affection was so strong, so honest, Lex couldn't help smiling, couldn't stop the light touch to Clark's waist, the tilt of his head in return. Because this - the touch, the hold, the deep, grateful breaths on his neck - it was all for him, a care greater than the older man had thought to imagine, so strong it went beyond outside concerns, left Clark oblivious of the hospital foyer around them, unaware that Lana was right beside them. Fuck. Lana was right beside them.

"Clark," Lex repeated, more firmly, hands pushing now, and the younger man finally pulled away, face raw as he met the other man's, eyes - god - almost wet? "What the hell is going on?!"

Clark's open expression clouded at the question.

"I... Lex, you..." he floundered, a tremor in his voice. He sounded almost... scared?

Lana was more pragmatic.

"You don't remember," she stated.

The two men glanced at her for a moment, Lex with simple relief at her focus, Clark with shock, either at her presence or her assessment, or both. Lex was not comforted by the expression when he looked back.

"I was in the field with you. Then everything went white," he explained to the younger man, trying to keep his growing anxiety in check as the last confrontation with Fine and the black ship came flashing back to him. "The next thing I know I woke up here."

"The field...?" Clark repeated, face continuing to crease for a second, before clearing in wide-eyed understanding. "With Fine? That field? That's... that's the last thing you remember?"

The emerald shine in his eyes dimmed to jaded disappointment, as though his greatest fear had just been confirmed, and it was like coming home from Belle Reve all over again - the instinctive awareness that something vital had been lost slamming into Lex and leaving him mentally reeling.

For his part, Clark felt gutted, insides light and cold as though all the important ones had been ripped away, leaving him hollow. Lex had forgotten? Again? Everything they'd shared in the barn before Zod? Everything they'd said? Gone in the blink of an eye, just like the older man's first few sightings of Clark's powers? He remembered Lex's faith in him that night in Belle Reve :: I knew you'd come for me :: His heartbreaking, memory-wiped declaration afterwards :: there is one thing I'll never forget - how important your friendship is to me :: But he hadn't known. Didn't remember how that friendship had failed him. And Clark, the coward he was, had been too scared to put him right, too scared to face his failure and watch the other man's beautiful belief crumble into the bitterness of betrayal. So scared, he'd almost convinced himself it was Lex's fault anyway - it was him who'd forgotten after all, not Clark, and how could he when Clark had revealed something so personal and tried so hard to help? It wasn't fair he hadn't succeeded! It wasn't fair Lex should forget it! And when it hurt that much, that sharply, turning to anger had been a relief.

But this time there was no anger. No loving parents once removed from the situation there to ease his remorse and insist he'd done the right thing. No threat of Lionel to hide behind to excuse any potential lack of action. No, this time everything was very very clear, and all Clark had was loss and pain and heavy, oh so heavy, guilt, that Lex's body and mind had been victim to such a savage violation, all because of him.

The shock of it was overpowering and kept Clark silent.

Lex's face blanked as he watched. The hard, razor-edged truth finally bearing down on him.

"Clark," he said, far too calmly, head turning in a brief glance at the continuing turmoil round them. "Did I do this?"

Clark swallowed and shared an anxious look with Lana. Both of them shook their heads in a gesture of helplessness, not knowing how to break the answer, or even exactly what it was. Because, no Lex hadn't done it but... his body had. It left him technically absolved, of course, but Clark knew enough to realise how much it would still hurt the other man to know, how much guilt Lex would bear even though the atrocities Zod had committed had never been his.

Lex's next word was a question, a plea for more information. But Clark heard it as the accusation it should have been.

"Clark?"

Clark was in such a daze as he entered the Daily Planet later he didn't even notice Chloe until she was shouting at him through the surrounding clean-up crew now filling the basement, made up of an ever growing group of dishevelled reporters and various volunteers working in shifts to clear away the rubble and make the place presentable again. The jutting car was gone already, and most of the fallen glass, so it was really just a case of rearranging the desks and fixing the broken furniture and electronics now. Tasks which Chloe found herself significantly unqualified for, leaving her somewhat stranded in the centre of the room and gazing in delight at the re-shaping of her paradise.

A huge sigh shuddered its way through her body at the sight of her previously lost friend and she ran over at once, navigating moving brooms and desks with a skill any gymnast would have been proud of.

"Clark! Oh my god I thought you were dead," she breathed, all but jumping into his arms.

And despite everything Clark felt a rush of joy at the response - certainly much warmer than Lex's or Lana's had been at his return.

He'd wanted to stay with the older man, of course, more than anything. Hours ago Lex had been dead, but now here he was, returned, like a precious gift Clark daren't risk losing again. But after he and Lana explained everything Lex had been more than subdued, he'd been impenetrable, refusing comfort and insisting on heading out to the mansion to get his head together. Clark offered his company, but Lex had refused that too, quite calmly and politely, leaving the younger man totally stumped. The idea that, after everything Lex had been though, he wouldn't want someone with him had been so unexpected Clark had been too speechless to protest, and Lex had snuck away in the ensuing silence. Not long after Lana, too, had quietly slipped away, claiming a need to check on her Aunt Nell.

Clark didn't know what he'd imagined after returning home, defeating Zod and, you know, saving the world - wasn't even sure he'd imagined anything, in fact, considering he hadn't known he would for most of the time - but he was sure the lukewarm partings and reunions in the Medical Centre hadn't been exactly appropriate for the situation. They'd been anticlimactic somehow, or something worse. A lingering sense of guilt and shame tainting the victory.

Chloe's gushing welcome was much more satisfactory, and as she gripped him round the shoulders, warm sunlight seeping through the green and white striped jumper she'd found time to pop out for and seemingly melting into Clark by proxy, it even made him forget his own lingering guilt and shame. For half a second.

"Hi," he answered over her shoulder, lips curving in a grateful smile, palms resting lightly on her sides and relishing the warmth beneath them. Just a little bit of the home he'd been missing so much. "Um... So did I. For a while there."

Chloe pulled back at the confession, blue eyes sharp and caring and seeking him out - everything, Clark realised, that Lex's shaded ones hadn't been - and the rest of the world was ignored as she focused on her friend.

"What happened? Where did you go?" she asked, tone fearful and encouraging all at once.

And while Clark had been assuming Lex or his parents would make this heart-felt enquiry, he was suddenly extremely relieved that Chloe should have brought it up first. Warm, kind, light-tongued Chloe, who wouldn't force him into anything too deep or too painful. No, something simple would be enough, the bare facts, just enough to give Clark a quick once over of the day's events that would serve to psyche him up to a more in depth reflection later on, when he was ready for it. She was quick enough to fill in the blanks on her own.

"A place I never want to go again," he answered, voice a little thicker than intended as flashes of blood stained grey sand filled his mind, and Chloe nodded very lightly at the unspoken fear, eyes flicking over him with deliberately muted calculations. "Are you okay?" Clark finished.

Chloe didn't even pause, just accepted the response for what it was - acknowledgement of something terrible but over - and burst into a joyful smile. Because having Clark back was more important than whatever story he had to tell.

"Yeah. Everything's great now you're here," she beamed, pulling him into another tightly held embrace, the three thick, green, red and orange bracelets she'd slipped on at her apartment - an impulsive effort to bring some coloured optimism back to the world - pushing up against her wrist as she spread her hands as wide as possible across the Kryptonian's back, as though trying to cover every part of him to make sure he was really there. "And Lana? And... and everyone else, are they...?" she added after a moment, continuing reluctance at pressing her still recovering friend flattening her voice a little.

But Clark nodded calmly into her shoulder. This wasn't undue focus, these were facts she needed to know, and the garbled voicemail he'd left her from the, now working, hospital payphone saying 'I'm safe, we're all safe' probably hadn't made much sense without a context.

He pulled back and leant away to see her face again, although his hands stayed firmly on her shoulders - sharing the desire to prove existence through touch.

"They're fine, they're..." He paused before the intended repetition, because after the awkwardness in the Medical Centre 'fine' seemed a rather dubious description. "They're alive," he amended, voice stronger at having found a more accurate term, and as the truth of this - a truth the tense atmosphere before had been dampening - finally sunk in, a wide smile lit up his face. "Lex is alive!"

Chloe opened her mouth in astonishment.

"Wha-?" she breathed, eyes soon lighting to match. "Thank god."

Their gazes met for a second, linked by a thread of a shared experience, Clark's hands on her shoulders, Chloe's at his elbows. Then they sighed their relief together, arms falling, the knotted connection snapping apart. Over. It's over. The fear and the tension and the agonising choices of the past two days were finally over. They were done. They were free. They could rest now.

Their smiles softened after that, returning to the more everyday ones their friendship usually shared, and Clark found himself growing a little flustered at the persistent eye contact Chloe was maintaining. It was natural enough, considering he'd been effectively dead to her just recently - he'd been just as incapable of taking own eyes off Lex at the hospital - but as normality continued to re-establish itself the gaze was seeming more and more unusual and the last few moments the two of them had shared before he'd rushed out to find Lex at the barn flashed back to him with uncomfortable implications.

"Err... Chloe..." he muttered, ducking his head to glance at his dust and mud spattered boots - still remarkably intact considering everything they'd been through. "Before I left I... we..." He flicked his eyes up and away from the still smiling blonde, a faint heat crossing his cheeks and making him feel ridiculous. Less than twenty-four hours ago he'd faced down a murderous alien soldier, and won, but acknowledging a crush without blushing? Oh no. "We had this moment... um..."

"You mean when I laid one on you?" Chloe surmised helpfully, no-nonsense tone and laughing eyes brushing Clark's discomfort away.

The Kryptonian quirked a small grin in return, but his arching eyebrows spoke of apology. Lana wasn't the only one who'd suffered through a fog of mixed signals from him relationship-wise and he knew Chloe had been hurt more than once because of his lack of eloquence. Meaning he was trying desperately hard to be tactful while bringing the subject up again now.

It was a wonder the long-suffering girl had bothered to stay friends at all, really, the way Clark had downright ignored her in favour of his mistaken desire for Lana at times, let alone become someone he'd come to respect and rely on so very strongly. It was time he finally put things straight and ended this confusing 'could be more than friends' situation her kiss the other night had proved still in existence once and for all. He cared about her too much to allow confusion like that to continue.

But before he could explain, Chloe was shaking her head in a curt dismissal.

"Don't worry, Clark. It was the end of the world. It's not like I'm expecting us to hook up."

Her eyebrows rose and fell in a non-verbal laugh and the act was so casual and genuinely light that part of Clark made a complete u-turn and felt shunned. She'd been pining for him the better part of five years and now he'd actually done something heroic and worthy of the adoration she, what, didn't care any more?

"Oh, you don't?" he blinked back, almost wincing as the pathetic, high-pitched tone of hurt and surprise played back to him. Get a grip Kent - this is a good thing. "I mean, um. Yeah. Me neither."

His grin softened and a warmer atmosphere descended. Only to be pierced by a call from the entrance.

"Hey bright eyes."

Clark turned to find a kid with close-cut, fluffy looking hair walking towards them. He wore a red shirt, faded from too many washes, and a wide, toothy grin. A clunky, not-quite state of the art camera hung about his neck and his gaze was focused on Chloe. As had been the greeting, Clark realised belatedly.

He flashed the guy a polite smile and glanced at his friend in amusement, eyes saying 'crazy guy we've never met calling you that, huh?' Only Chloe wasn't sharing his humour. She was staring back at the guy with a bright, white-toothed smile of her own.

"Hey," she answered, and Clark watched with still greater surprise as Chloe straightened herself up and fell into uncharacteristic silence as the other man stepped up to them, eyelashes slightly flickering as he drew nearer in an odd mix of anxiety and excitement.

Clark turned his head between the two of them, trying to figure it out, and the kid's smile wavered as he noticed the movement.

"Oh, err..." he muttered, a mask of tense politeness covering his face to match the Kryptonian's. "Bad time?" His eyes flicked uncertainly from Chloe to Clark and back again.

Chloe frowned for a second, not understanding the confusion. Then her eyes widened as the fact Clark and Jimmy didn't actually know each other filtered through.

"No! No," she insisted, shaking her head. "I was just..." She shot Clark a soft, friendly smile, acknowledging all the things they were 'just' talking about they'd now have to deny. "Talking to a friend."

Clark quirked his lips in response, glad of the amity, but was, all the same, a little put out by the slight but significant emphasis on the term 'friend' and the lightening flash movement of Chloe's head away from him and back to the stranger.

Having no better idea of what to do, Clark mimicked the turn, and the camera-welding guy lifted his head in response by way of a secondary greeting. His grey eyes both guarded and relieved.

"Woa," he grinned. "Grow 'em big in Kansas don't they?"

Another polite silence fell as the two men continued to flash awkward, not quite understanding smiles.

"I'm sorry," Chloe muttered, shaking her head at her unusual lack of explanations. "Jimmy Olsen, this is Clark Kent."

A short hand gesture completed the introductions and faces cleared a little all round.

Jimmy. Okay. So, a friend from work then, I guess... Clark theorised as he held out a hand. Jimmy took it with another of his, apparently default, grins, which faltered as their hands touched.

"Actually it's err... James. Olsen," he insisted as he shook, schooling his expression into something more serious in a rather glaringly obvious attempt to impress.

Chloe raised her eyebrows.

"Really?" she mocked. "Since when?"

Clark furrowed his brow slightly as Jimmy squirmed beneath the teasing.

"Um... since..." he gave a brief shrug, smile and happy tone returning as he continued, making the following - pathetic - explanation oddly endearing. At least to Chloe. "Now. Ish..."

He chuckled quietly and Chloe gave a small laugh in response. An apparently authentic one too, which Clark couldn't understand in the slightest. Chloe was smart; she didn't usually find something lame like that so amusing, why would...? But then Chloe's laugh turned into a broad, curving grin and she ducked her head, eyes looking up between her lashes in a coy, hopeful expression Clark had shied away from too many times, and the truth of the thing became all too clear. He flicked back to Jimmy and found the younger man certainly not shying away, not even a bit.

"You wanna, grab some dinner at the vending machine?" he ventured with another faux-casual shrug.

Chloe nodded, teeth showing through her smile again.

"I'd love to," she answered. "James."

'James' merely grinned at the jibe and sat back on his heels in satisfaction, waiting to lead his newly acquired 'dinner-date' away.

Caught up in the moment, Chloe seemed to have once more forgotten about Clark and she opened her mouth in an 'oh yeah!' expression a few seconds later.

"Clark. Are you hungry?"

Her brow furrowed just a little and, past the surface friendliness of the gaze, Clark noticed a pleading in her eyes he'd never known in his friend before - an honest desire for him not to be there. On his other side, Jimmy's expression had also become anxious and Clark knew a 'third wheel' situation when he saw one.

"Me? No. I'm okay," he answered, as upbeat as he could muster, hands waving for emphasis. "You guys go ahead."

Chloe shot him a smile of gratitude, while Jimmy gave a sigh of relief - a sigh he tried, and failed, to hide beneath a nod.

"Okay. Catch you later, CK," he waved, before leading Chloe into the corridor, one hand hovering timidly over her shoulder for a moment, only to fall back to his side as they reached the door.

Clark tried for another smile as he watched them go but could manage only the ghost of one at best. It was great Chloe was moving on, it was, she deserved a relationship with someone who obviously liked her back, and it wasn't like she was deliberately neglecting him anything, but... as her homely, yellow-haired form with its bright and clear-cut, green and white top stepped out of sight Clark couldn't shake the sense that yet another of his friends had been partly lost to him as a result of Zod. Another happiness taken. Another fixed and definable colour faded to grey.

To think he'd spent all his time in the Phantom Zone dreaming of getting out of that nightmare, only to find twisted elements of it haunting him even now. It felt like, despite his dramatic breakout, there was just no escape, even for those who hadn't been there. Like his mom and dad, who both looked haggard and frighteningly ashamed, despite how hard they'd been trying to hide it. Or Lana, who was, literally, still suffering; the raw and bloody hole in her palm bringing more pain even as it healed, while the matching emptiness in her eyes seemed to hold no guarantee of healing at all. And, especially, Lex, who was as usual bearing the weight of sins that weren't his own, and cutting himself off to do so.

And now Chloe had distanced herself from the supposedly victorious Kryptonian as well. The final element required to leave him just as stranded and alone as he'd been while inside that monochrome prison. Clark supposed it was a blessing one of them had managed to walk away untainted, at least.

Too tired to move all of a sudden, he just stood and gazed about the still busy room, watching as the staff and yellow-jacketed volunteers continued to clear the floor of rubble and fallen debris, expressions grim but determined - facing the disaster head-on and working through as best they could, one step at a time.

A heavy sigh tugged Clark's head and shoulders downwards. It was time he started picking up the pieces of his own life the same way.

Lex's staff had gone beyond the call of duty at the mansion, returning to their place of work only hours after the earth had stopped shaking and lingering well into the evening to ensue the first floor, at least, was fully cleaned and restored to its former glory. Lex hadn't even needed to ask for them - he just walked in to find a piecemeal group sweeping quietly through the hallways, apparently taking comfort from the familiar, if menial, tasks and, if their friendly murmurs were anything to go by, forming bonds with each other the millionaire knew for a fact had been distinctly absent in his power-hungry employees before the onslaught of a potential apocalypse. Fuck, even his assorted butlers had grabbed cloths and brushes and joined in the tidying, despite how cleaning was usually something they were very vocal about not being part of their duties. The madness of it was almost as effecting as he suspected the earthquake ravished home he'd been denied the chance of seeing would have been.

He knew the supposed altruism wasn't for his sake, of course. The compulsive workers' own homes had probably suffered destruction enough over the past day if what Clark and Lana had told him was true, especially considering a lot of his staff had families in Metropolis, where the looting and riots had no doubt been strongest. Coming to the quiet outskirts of the state to clean a stranger's house, whose personal knick-knacks and treasures meant nothing, was simply of way of dulling the pain of their own tragedy by immersing themselves in another's. It had nothing to do with loyalty. But Lex made a mental note to pay them double for the work they'd done anyway. Maybe even the people who hadn't turned up as well, as a kind of compensation for however much future work the disaster would cause them to miss... yes, that might sound plausible as a financial reason, stop them viewing it as charity. Now Lex knew he was effectively the one responsible for their pain, he felt it was the least he could do.

It was thanks to his frightened gaggle of staff, then, that Lex was able to walk into a clear and spotless office once he got in. An office practically identical to the one he remembered 'christening' so ardently with Clark at a time not quite as recently as he'd previously been aware of. Identical that is apart from one small, silver, bloodstained difference propped up like a dead animal on his desk before the smashed remains of the window behind. As he stepped closer, he noticed two further differences laid out neatly by the side of the thing, grouped with the silver case by a well-meaning maid who'd thought it best to keep all foreign objects together - the charred remains of a black oval and the broken shards of a blade.

His gaze lingered on the objects as he sat down, but he didn't touch them. He couldn't face that reality, not yet, not until he had the full picture. So instead, he twisted his sleek, known, and lightly humming laptop towards him and powered it up. The connection was slow, but Lex was patient, waiting through the delay between pages in silence as he gradually uncovered the extent of his crimes.

When Clark found him a few hours later, still warm from Chloe's embrace and a good set of additional ones from his parents - he'd figured after being kept completely in the dark about Zod they probably owned the rights to the first explanation - Lex had finally moved on to the alien paraphernalia. As opposed to his usual, piercing examinations of such things, however, he seemed to barely focus on them. His left hand held the mangled 'hard drive' to his face, but his eyes slid across it and away, the setting sun behind him obscuring their colour and sending light reflecting out of them, pupils nothing but flashing mirrors.

"Hey," Clark muttered as he inched to the centre of the room, an agonising tension knotting inside him. Because for him, the two of them had come so far and so close, rushing over and gripping the older man tight against his chest felt like the most natural impulse in the world. But for Lex... for Lex they weren't there yet. Not anymore. Never had been. And comfort in the aftermath of a tragedy might not be something he would appreciate from a man who was only just more than a friend. A man who was responsible for the tragedy in the first place. Another painful tug of war, and when, exactly, had his relationship with Lex become a battle?

Lex didn't look up.

"That's... err... that's the hard drive Lana was talking about," the Kryptonian ventured, referencing the quick, hushed explanation in the Medical Centre. "Guess that means the black ship and Fine are really gone now. One less thing to worry about, at least..."

"Eighteen thousand," Lex interrupted. Still not looking up. Voice quiet but perfectly legible.

"What?" Clark answered, shifting awkwardly in his central position a few feet away.

"That's how many people died today," Lex continued as he placed the burnt object back on the desk, voice flat and toneless, eyes still blank.

"Wha-?" Clark started again, Lex's monotony and his own misconceptions of their reunion masking understanding for a moment.

Because this should be a time of joy now, shouldn't it? Now Lex had had time to take everything in. There should be comfort and gratitude and togetherness, like with his parents. And touch and tears and so much more because it was Lex. Shared relief of their survival. Awkward and hesitant renewing of lost confessions, stronger for having them repeated.

But then a whole crowd of images burst through the younger man's mind instead - mothers, children, lovers, friends, crying and shouting and running, just like he'd imagined them before, back when their lives had been no more than a growing possibility. Before Zod. Before he'd been stupid and slow enough to get trapped in the Zone. They'd been painful enough then, when every face was a cry for help. But now they were damning accusations, every look a silence scream - 'you did this! you killed us!'

The first time Clark knew what it felt to be winded was way back during Eric Summers' initial joy ride with his powers when he'd thrown the Kryptonian across the school parking lot, smashing him against the bonnet of one of the football jocks four by fours. Not so bad in the end, once he'd come to terms with the cracked ribs and realised, despite the momentary lack of oxygen, he wasn't actually dying. And various spells, electric shocks and parental punishments had certainly helped get him more acquainted with the experience since then. But what he felt now was like living out that first shockingly unknown force all over again, every particle of air in his lungs punched out of him without warning, leaving him gasping.

"I..." he breathed. "That many?"

"That's just an estimate," Lex's dulled voice answered back, and Clark realised the eerie stillness the other man had been maintaining wasn't the same embarrassment he'd entered the room with and assumed the older man would share, but shock. "And it doesn't even take into account the injured, or the missing or whatever the hell happened at the Pentagon, it... It's not so surprising really. Whatever Zod did... the quakes were worldwide, and not every country is prepared for something like that. A falling rock here, a crack in the gas mains causing a fire, coupled with the riots and all of it happening everywhere, all at once. We're fragile, Clark. It doesn't take much for us to die..." He shifted then, head moving down, gaze flicking, just for a second, on the broken dagger to his right. "But then... I guess you wouldn't know."

Clark tried to take in another breath, wanting to tell Lex he did, he knew only too well, but the crowds were still bearing down on him - all those lives, all those people! If it wasn't for him would they still be alive? He didn't even know how to begin with that question. The number was high enough to be practically incomprehensible to the small town farmer - less than a day ago the hundreds living in Metropolis had seemed a multitude - taking Clark beyond guilt into a kind of numb, empty void. A series of grey walls seemed to build up around him, completing the imprisonment.

"They're calling it Dark Thursday," Lex continued, either unperturbed or simply unaware of Clark's lack of response. "Just one Thursday, that's all it took..." He shook his head. "I thought there'd be more time. I knew Fine had started something when he injected me but I figured I at least had until morning, I never thought... Never imagined he'd be capable of so much, so soon -"

"None of us did, Lex," Clark cut in, encouraged by the negatives. Because if Lex hadn't seen it coming, how could anyone else have been expected to? A selfish thought, perhaps, an attempt to dodge the circling blame, but comforting nonetheless. "It happened so fast, there was nothing we could do, we-"

"No." The monotony and frenzied self-absolutions shattered together beneath the force of the syllable, and Lex looked up. His face was still shuttered but his eyes were sharp again, seeing Clark, like the younger man had been so wanting him to, and yet, faced with the reality, was starting to regret wishing for. "That's not true. Is it?"

Clark just stared back at him, mouth open but lacking the words. Because this was the Lex of his nightmares, from even before the older man knew the truth. Lex his judge and jury. Lex his accuser :: all you had to do was come to me, Clark, I was your friend, I would have protected your secret, I would have protected you :: If you'd just done it differently, if you'd just done it right. If, if, if... but he hadn't. So he had to pay the price.

Lex was standing now, moving round the desk and towards the paralysed Kryptonian. If he'd still been wearing the jacket Clark would have thought him a vulture, coming to drain away the last dregs of life. But... No. He wasn't wearing a jacket at all anymore, just the smooth, silky shirt Clark had left at the hospital. And he wasn't a bird of prey, he was just Lex - expression firm and cold and challenging, but just Lex.

"You knew what was happening for almost a whole day before Zod took me," he stated as he walked, stopping a few feet from Clark to wave a hand. "Why didn't you do something?"

Clark looked away, feeling his face tighten as he fought against the hurt blossoming from the question. He realised now that's all it was, not the accusation he'd been expecting - like him, Lex just wanted to make sense of the disaster that had exploded so suddenly around them - but it didn't stop the pain from having such a question directed at him. Probably because it was the same one he'd been asking himself over and over ever since Fine had ripped Lex away from him.

"I tried, we all tried," he muttered. "But we couldn't find you at first and every other idea we had came to nothing and -"

"Every other idea?" Lex asked, rhetorical and pressing on without giving Clark time to dwell. "Why even bother with other ideas? There was only one thing you could do."

Clark turned his head at that, and met a deep blue passion identical to the one he'd seen in Lex twenty-four hours ago in the barn, an unbroken dagger in his hands. He tried to swallow, pushing at the tears climbing his throat.

"I couldn't kill you, Lex," he answered quietly.

"Why not?" the other man countered, stony expression cracking a little as his face also started to tighten.

"You have to ask?" Clark gasped back, eyes wide and appalled.

"Clark, I'm one man!" Lex answered, voice rising. "I'm not worth eighteen thousand! I... god..." He spun round suddenly and ran a shaking hand across his scalp, trying to calm himself, to hide the emotion Clark could read just as clearly in the taut muscles of the older man's back as he would have from the lines on his face. "If I'd had the chance I would have done it myself..."

Clark closed his eyes, a dismal deja vu washing over him. This again. An argument plausible enough before and now with eighteen thousand reasons to support it. He didn't just feel trapped any more, he felt like he was falling, further and further away - the Earth, his home and everything he cared about vanishing into the distance.

"You tried..." he said, opening his eyes again slowly. "I stopped you."

Lex twisted his head, brow creasing in a frown the younger man read easily and at once as deep, pervading confusion, pure and simple. And it broke Clark's heart that the other man would consider the saving of his life so unexpected.

"Why?" he pressed, honestly dumbfounded, and Clark shook his head.

"My god, Lex, I couldn't just watch you die!" he answered; fear, growing guilt and painful memories lifting the volume of his voice as well.

"But you could watch eighteen thousand?!" Lex shot back, turning to face the younger man full on, arms stretching wide to emphasis his point as he took the momentum of Clark's response and doubled it.

"I didn't... I didn't know it would be that many..." Clark stuttered, trying to keep up.

"You didn't have to. You knew enough for it to be a possibility, to know the world was at risk!" the older man insisted. "And I know you Clark. I know how much you care. You would never allow that! Not while you had power to stop it. So tell me why. Why did you stop me? Why was I more important than the rest of the world?"

"Lex, it wasn't... I didn't..."

"Don't you dare, not this time. Just give a straight answer for once in your life, Clark, and tell me why? Why, for god's sake?"

And as Lex blazed at the other man, grateful for the respite from his other emotions the quick and consuming anger was offering, he realised this had always been the question when it came to Clark, hadn't it? Not who, or what, or, as he'd so often asked, how - but why? Why won't you tell me? Why are you lying? Why don't you trust me?

"Because I was afraid! And because I love you!" Clark exploded. And if it wasn't quite the right answer for the issue at hand he was pushed too far to notice. "And you said... in the barn before, you told me... you..."

Clark trailed off, because Lex was just staring. No reaction. No emotion. Nothing.

"This was... a lot more romantic the first time... I mean, morbid. But romantic..." He was babbling now and he knew it, so Clark gave up on speaking altogether.

A heartbeat later, Lex was walking to the drinks table.

He lifted the crystal stopper from the decanter with a quiet clink, pulled a glass forward from the collection at the side, and slowly and precisely positioned the neck of the container against the rim, breathing deeply as he watched the amber liquid splash against the sides.

It hadn't escaped his notice that he'd been favouring scotch a great deal more than he used to over the past few years - and not always at appropriate times either. It was an indulgence veering dangerously towards becoming a crutch and he'd recently been stocking up on mineral water again to combat the problem. But at that moment he needed the alcohol more than he'd ever imagined he would. Needed the movement and ritual of the thing, perhaps, even more than the substance itself. Because he didn't know how else to cope with the stabbing pain in his gut without losing it completely.

:: I love you :: He'd waited all his life for someone to say that to him and mean it. Been wanting Clark to say it ever since he first laid eyes on the boy. And now he finally had it was at the cost of eighteen thousand lives? It felt like a knife to the heart - some cruel, black-bearded personification of fate twisting the blade and laughing; 'isn't this what you wanted? someone to share this with? is it everything you expected? is it worth it?'

And the worst thing? It was. It was everything he wanted and beneath the cool performance of recapping the decanter and raising the three-quarters full glass to his lips Lex was ecstatic. Clark loved him and it was beautiful. It didn't even matter he'd forgotten the original encounter, because the fact Clark had brought it up again, himself, voluntarily - as opposed to the usual silence he maintained in regards to the gaps in the older man's memory - spoke volumes as to how much Clark felt about the experience, how much Lex's confession, which must have been of love, had not scared him away.

Which only made it harder.

To have let the boy get so close, so deeply under his skin, so completely endeared to him - meant pushing Clark away now was going to be so very trying and painful as hell.

But Lex had to, there was no question. His desire and happiness weren't worth the price. Pathetic really - a millionaire several times over, but he wasn't worthy of the one thing he cared about. He wasn't worthy of Clark. Because Clark had given up the world for him, and the world deserved better than that.

So he needed to give up Clark.

"People say anything when the world's ending," he stated eventually, lowering the half drained glass back to the table with a smooth, controlled drop of his arm. "You don't weigh the fate of the world on something that arbitrary-"

"Lex, no," Clark cut in, voice sharp. He's denying it? No, he can't, he just can't! "It wasn't like that. What we said, what you said, it..." He inched closer as he spoke, palms turning up at his sides in an unseen gesture of protest. "You're wrong, it was real. I know it was. You don't have to-"

"No, you're wrong, Clark!" Lex insisted, spinning round, a small scraping sound of glass on glass punctuating the words as he released his drink. And the two of them faced each other - inches apart and yet somehow just far as Clark had felt facing Zod. "You don't understand. If our roles had been reversed, if it had been your life on the line - I wouldn't have hesitated. I would have done it. I would have killed you!"

Lex was surprised when Clark didn't flinch. He'd assumed the statement - truth or not - would have been a decent first blow. A thick enough wedge to build on. But Clark just swallowed, eyes dulling but meeting the older man's calmly.

"I know," he replied, voice shaking just a little but infused with enough acceptance to negate the fact. And beneath the tremors he sounded almost... proud?

Lex gave a dry laugh and looked away.

"Does that sound like love to you?" he muttered, not even faking the bitterness. Because he couldn't deny the possibility - that he was capable of murdering the only living person who still cared about him. No, the reality of that was harsh and honest enough. And had he really tainted Clark so much the farmboy was just accepting it? Assuming that's how a relationship was supposed to work?

Clark didn't know which of them doubted Lex most in that moment, and that only made him more desperate to dispel the uncertainty, to prove the older man's heartfelt declarations in the barn as the truth. So he reached out, brushing a hand over Lex's elbow to try and physically reconnect with the man he'd shared so much with so recently.

"Lex-"

But Lex jerked away, elbow hitting the glass table behind with a dull thump, causing the tumbler on top to shake some of its contents over its gold-trimmed sides.

"Don't. Just don't," the older man hissed, the ever-increasing tinkle as the glass resettled adding extra sharpness to his tone. He flicked a pair of cold, pale blue eyes onto Clark's and stayed there. "I think I've suffered enough at the hands of aliens recently, don't you?"

When in doubt - resort to verbal put-downs. Lex was good at those. If there was one thing he knew how to do it was hit where it hurt. Learning to exploit another's weaknesses was something Lionel had never stopped teaching him.

This one hit dead centre and Clark just stopped, arm still outstretched, body tensing hard as steel. Lex had used the a-word more than once in reference to him before and had Clark getting slowly used to it, even - but all that ended in that moment. Because he'd never said it like that, not in the plural, never lumping him with the other killers from his planet, denying individualism. Even when he'd suspected Clark of working in conjunction with the other Kryptonians it'd been Clark and 'them,' never 'them' outright.' But now...

Lex dodged away through Clark's paralysis, shaking his head.

"God, I was such an idiot to think this would work," he muttered as he stepped away. "I should never have..." He trailed off, letting the ambiguity stand for greater effect. Clark could fill in the blank. "And you know the worst thing?" He questioned, turning back. "I actually thought having you in my life would be good for me."

He added a twist of arrogant sarcasm to the end, lifting his head and curling his lip. He played a snooty rich kid well enough, when it suited him, and that element was vital here. He didn't want to guilt trip Clark, he wanted the younger man just sorry enough to resent him for the accusations. Enough to stop him caring about a pathetic excuse for a lover during the next apocalypse, and leave him focused on everyone else. Lex remembered well how easily the younger man's guilt had once turned to anger and it was that he was trying to recapture, trying to focus onto himself - because he needed to push Clark into hating him. With the two of them as close as they were now, it was the only thing that would keep him away.

When Clark finally turned though, arm floating unheeded to his side, it wasn't in the blaze of fire Lex was hoping for, but slowly and softly, face clouded with hurt.

"What are you saying?" he asked, quiet and unassuming, and Lex realised the anger he wanted would be a long time in coming for this confrontation. Clark had finally mellowed away from those hasty, juvenile responses. Which figured - the one time he actually wanted the boy's immaturity would be the time he'd grown out of it.

Still, in the absence of anger, there was always fear.

"I'm saying we're done. Whatever we had, it's over," he stated, tone crisp and cutting.

Before learning the truth, the impact of such words would have been largely ambiguous - Clark had a whole army of friends, losing Lex was no hardship. But having seen the Kryptonian's overt otherness for what it was now, the way it held him back from everyone, it hadn't been too difficult identifying solitude as the other man's greatest fear. The Fortress of the same name that inspired so much anxiety practically embodied the fact and Lex hadn't forgotten Clark's agonised whimper during Fine's attack - coming not when the AI was threatening his life, but those of his friends. No. Losing someone, anyone, was the be all and end all with Clark, because it reminded him of the terrifying possibility that one day he might lose everyone.

But he wouldn't. He'd just lose Lex. And any pain from that would soon be eased by the antagonism the older man would continue to foster, Lex was sure of it. That was how it happened before after all.

"I wish I could at least say it's been fun," he finished scathingly.

Clark couldn't breathe. And not in an alien way. He wanted to, but his throat was closing up, an odd pressure bubbling around him and muting his senses. It was like he was seeing Lex underwater - murky and indistinct, with algae and flecks of river bank getting in the way - and all the time knowing the longer he left his rescue, the further the older man would slip away. But this time there was no Porsche roof to rip apart and Clark had no idea how to reach the drowning man.

"Lex, wait..." he tried, voice thick, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.

"Just leave, Clark. I don't want you here," Lex pressed, stepping further back with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"But..."

"Get out of my house, Clark."

Clark stayed rooted to his spot, head shaking lightly as his open mouth searched in vain for further speech, the ice in the other man's gaze burning through him and surrounding his chest. Tighter and tighter.

Lex frowned.

"Get out!" he spat again, but Clark heard something else - another cry of anger, the venom even greater with it's inner sting of betrayal.

:: I'll never forgive you for this, Clark. Never! ::

He was gone before the final syllable of Lex's shout had died down.

But if part of Lex was satisfied with a job well done he didn't know it.

Instead he paced back to the glass on the table and grabbed it tight, spinning towards the fireplace. He arched his arm back - spilling most of the remaining liquid inside - then stopped his intended throw with a jolt. Cathartic it might be, but with inhumanly sensitive hearing Clark would probably notice the shatter and the last thing Lex needed was a reason for the younger man's return. He didn't think he could keep the act going much longer tonight.

With a sigh one part frustration and two parts weariness and sorrow, Lex turned back and slammed the glass back where he'd found it.

The table was re-enforced with joints of metal running through it, so it merely clicked under the pressure, but the tumbler itself was thin - or rather, 'fine' as the manufacturers described it - and an irregularly shaped fragment cracked away under Lex's hand, embedding into his palm.

Lex was so focused on repressing the waves of emotion crashing down on him he didn't notice the pain at first. When he did, a series of red drips had already mingled with the gold trim at the top of the broken shard. He lifted his hand and the jutting glass with it and the drips trickled down the gold in a couple of curving zigzags - a symbol of pain in a casing of beauty.

He pulled the thing out without a flinch and stared at the wound, glad of the complete emptiness of mind its carnal throbbing had caused.

And as the blood reached his wrist and his body acclimatised, he reflected how the torn and bleeding skin wasn't all that would be slow to heal after today.

A few thousand miles away, his own skin looking equally bloody under the raw, red-tinted glow of the Fortress, Clark was crouched against the wall leading to what had once been an erotically decorated bedroom, knees against his chest, head buried between them.

He clasped his hands tightly over his shins and took some deep breaths, but when he looked up a cascade of the tears he'd been trying to quash fell down his cheeks regardless.

He didn't blame Lex. Not for anything. After all that had happened, he suspected everything the older man said had been right - he'd been weak and he should have done more. And it was better for Lex if they ended things, if Clark stayed away. The other man would be safer. Happier. But mental agreement didn't stop it hurting like a mountain-sized lump of kryptonite. Or change the fact that, given the chance to do the day over, Clark knew he wouldn't change a thing.

And it was worse because the thought was so selfish! So many had lost family and friends forever today. At least Lex was alive - and Lana, and Chloe and his parents. In the grand scheme of things the outcome was positive. His friends and family were safe. The Earth was safe.

But Clark never had been good at seeing the bigger picture. All he knew was people were dead because of him, and Lex was in pain. In pain and, if not hating him yet, certainly well on the way.

He might have saved the world, but it didn't feel like it. It felt like he'd failed. It felt like he'd lost everything.

It felt like Zod had won.

——end credits——