No Ordinary World, final.

14


Lex Luthor leaned against a exterior stage wall, his bent posture communicating that he was not himself. Puffs of hot air escaped his mouth, a thick coat layering his body and wrapped around him like a protective blanket.

It was cold.

Laying at his feet was the reporter he hired only days before to reprise a role his father had condemned. It took Lionel Luthor almost thirty years to build these walls, this wall as Lex leaned against it. And after a sum of only weeks, Lionel's son had brought it all down. With the help of her, of course.

Chloe, face bruised and hair frayed, looked up at him from her knees. But even through the discoloration of her blue cheeks and raw lips, she was still a beauty. It was a different type of beauty Lex had seldom crossed. There wasn't a stitch of make up left on her face, tears and rain washing all that away. She didn't need that. And it wasn't an admired appearance one was born with. This was something cultivated, grown and kindled like an internal flame. This beauty was inside of her, and had bloomed since Lex  last laid eyes on her. She appeared stronger on her knees than she did the first day she walked into his office. The woman had been demanding then, and even after all he had put her through, she was demanding something from him now.

Her hair, light yellow, like a fabricated halo.

What was she saying to him? he watched her lips move succinctly even though he was sure they stung from where their crevasses bled. He detested what those lips could do if he ever let her out. He wanted to shut them, for good. And she knew it. She had to have known it. But she was saying those words anyway. She was stronger than him somehow, and they both knew it.

"You shouldn't be afraid of his strength..."Chloe warned, dried tears on the sides of her cheeks that became crystals, "His courage... its more powerful than all of us. You can't kill him."

Lex leaned towards her, his cold, dialated eyes burying her deeper into the ground.  What she had was hope. Even after they dragged her from the stage and back here where the only light was from a heat lamp. She held onto hope. For Clark. For herself. And for everything that was outside of this place.

Lex was very careful with his words. He was never positive he could ever terminate Clark, but she didn't need to know that. She didn't know, because as far as Lex could read behind that hope in her hazel eyes, there was also fear.

"I don't have to kill him," Lex explained, "I only have to kill his spirit."

Lex stared down at her, watching as her pretty lips quivered between words. He looked down at them, thinking how Clark loved her. He would kill that too.

She no longer spoke about statistical data or the scientific value of the project. That was all gone. The only value left, was whether or not he survived. If they all survived.

"Can't you see that we need him?" Chloe plead, "His life, stands for our future."

He looked at her again, seeing the love for him, in her eyes.

  There was nothing to be done about that...

"Mr. Luthor..."

The voice came from within a small passageway behind stage, one of the few remaining sections that hadn't been lost in the fire and flooding.

A shiver passed through Lex, his shoulders wriggling in discomfort. The weather conditions had worsened since the generators died. There was no controlling the air temperature, the moisture, and they experienced a major malfunction with the rain fall last night...

Smallville had been hell, and then it froze over. And nearly everyone had evacuated the premises after that.

Lex turned towards the boy who had walked up from nowhere. He looked familiar to Lex, but that wasn't important. Lex lost interest and realized the reporter had fallen silent, uncharacteristic. He glanced over his shoulder and saw how her face was turned away, pressed into the ground. When had that happened?

"Mr. Luthor," the stage boy said again, his eyes wandering across the still form of Chloe's body laying at Lex's feet. Perhaps he was too young to understand, or maybe his news was just more important at the time, "there's word from outside. There are tanks outside. Big, army tanks!"

Lex leaned against one of the props, "Oh yea? What do they want? A show? A grand finale?"

The boy, the boy who had delivered newspapers to Clark's door, Lex suddenly remembered, looked at Lex, and very solemly said, "they want to kill him, Mr. Luthor."

Lex only nodded, sick of having people looking at him that way, and then straightened as if preparing for war, "So do I."

Lex placed his hand upon the cold of the stage door, and wrapped his coat up to his chin. He knew what they would say tomorrow morning in the papers, he knew they would either rejoice or curse his name. They would say Lex Luthor was a maniacal tyrant that destroyed his father's name, work, and dynasty. But what they didn't know, was the lies Lionel Luthor had built that dynasty on.

That the world turned farther away from its dying son.

That the world itself, was dying. And that Lionel Luthor had built his dream world, a picturesque home for a son that was not his own. And to think that the world was depending on a son that was not theirs, to rely on his fate as if twined with their own...

Lex grew up watching the world welcome Clark into their homes with cautious arms. They nurtured him, groomed him to become something he would never be.

The day the world looked to an outsider for help, was the day humanity lost faith in themselves. Lex was going to restore their faith, and he was going to do it with his own hands.

Lex wasn't an actor, but as he crossed the threshold of the stage door and pressed it open, the stale light behind it hit his face, blinding him like theater lights. Suddenly, and strangely, Lex felt a lightness in his stomach. Nerves.

Perhaps he couldn't kill Clark. And what if he didn't? Would it be his life?


Lex entered the staged realm, cracking the door open unleashing the  blinding, white light that bounced  to his retinas and forced him to close his eyes. Flood lights played havoc with the sheen ice that had formed over the soggy terrain. Everything was a shade of gray, or crystallized version of itself. There was no color. There was no sun. A permanent winter thrown across Smallville forever.

Paper white, paper thin skies. The sky dome that was once an array of illuminating chroma panels were all dead, denied of power and life. It's wrinkled state resembled wall paper, aged and torn by neglect and fire.

Walls in a abandoned home.

There was a tear in the sky.


All was quiet in Smallville.

The rains had stopped, once the fire had, and now there was only a fine mist of smoke rising above the snow.

Snow.

And ice.

Without power, and with the gaping hole in the dome, controlling the temperatures was impossible. And so the snow drifted inward, along with the chilling wind from the outside. The Earth had been in long arctic cycle now, and in its third decade.

Lex saw Clark Kent emerge from a hill of snow in the distance, his carbon crusted jacket still red enough to pin point in the storm of white.




**


It wasn't real, Clark muttered to himself, trying to understand it all.

His eyes longed upward at the tear in the sky. So fragile, and lost like a sheet of paper blown upward, and stayed there. He could see the crispness of a color he hadn't known before. Could it have been, blue?

For so long, Clark had thought his home had been too small.. this town, too small. Now he feared the world was too small. He looked up at the hole in the sky. Light danced beyond it, a blue light. Was he staring at a portal, an opening to somewhere else? Was that where she had gone? And how would he get there?

Clark looked down at the axe in his hands, something he had borrowed from the fire station. Of course, he had borrowed other things, like the engine and a few hundred gallons of fuel. All of it was parked behind the barn and strewn towards the cellar where Clark was now. If Martha were there, she would have raised cane about the mess.

But Martha wasn't there. Neither was Lois.

They weren't real, she promised. And vanished like waking from a dream. She had never lied to him, but he had hoped she was still here. He hoped, she was real, and somewhere out there.

Clark swung his upper body with the axe, and slammed its force into one of the supports of the cellar in one mighty blow. He reaped the earth, and planks of the cellar ceiling like harvesting a golden crop, or digging a large grave. Either way, Clark worked until he thought it might have been sundown. But the smoldering, black ball laying in the distance told him he would never see another sunset.

Clark unearthed the cellar, and shed light on the large, tarped object that lay hidden underneath. Today was as good a time as any.

Quickly, he siphoned the fuel from the fire engine's tank and ran a line from it down to the cellar...

That's when he saw it.

A man.

No ordinary man, and certainly no one he had ever seen before.

 "You're Lex Luthor."

The man watched him, dressed as if he were expecting this sudden winter. He certainly hadn't expected Clark to know his name.  "And how would you know who I am?"

"I know everyone in this town," Clark replied, "I know everyone's face, except yours. You're not from here. I wasn't sure how long it would take to find the man that matched the name... but now that I see you here, I know, that you're him."

Lex narrowed his gaze, "You know my name, you know my face. But do you know who I really am? Or who you are?"

"My name is Clark Kent," his eyes steadied like a calm, blue ocean, "and you're the man who tried to destroy me."

Lex curled his lip, "You are the man who almost destroyed the world, Clark.. Do you want to know how?"

Clark blinked, but said nothing. He looked at his feet, and then at the torn sky.

Blue.

 This was the final test.

"Your world here," Lex waved at the stage around them, "it almost promised my world a better future. A future with the likes of you in it. But there is no world for us there. Do you know why? Because relying on a  man like  you is about as reckless as soaring into the Sun."

 "Do you know where Chloe is?" Clark answered.

Lex paused, "What? Is that all you have to say?"

 This was the final test.

 Lex faced Clark, ten meters away. He reveled in the way Clark's nostrils flared in impatience and anger. He was beginning to understand now. Consciously or not, Clark understood what this meant.

"Chloe!" Clark yelled, "Where is she?"

Lex's nostrils flared larger with the sharp odor of fuel in the air, "Is that all you care about?"

Clark frowned, his chest rising higher and harder, "What am I supposed to care about when everything is gone?"

He watched as Clark turned from him and walked towards the revived prop plane he had watched him tow from the cellar. Lex was unaware of its presence on the Kent farm, but given the lack of surveillance in the last days, he supposed Clark had scavenged it from somewhere. It's wings were of different parts, but they were elongated like a glider, and glinted in the reflected white light. It hardly looked like a plane more than it looked like scraps. It wouldn't fly. It couldn't.

Clark couldn't fly.

Clark's hand took hold of the propellers in his two hands.

"What's the matter with you," Lex shouted suddenly, "Don't you want to face the man who took her away from you?" The anger he felt was directly more at himself than towards Clark. Clark made no moves against him, no act of aggression. It wasn't normal, or human...

It was a brief moment before Clark turned around, but when he did, he saw the glint of Lex's pistol aimed at him.

Clark froze, hands in the air, but his eyes looked warningly at the other.

"You wont make it out of Smallville, Clark." Lex said, looking at him through the sights, "You were never meant to leave."

Fuel spilled from Clark's siphon tube and onto the ground.

The cold breeze from above mixed with the fuel and spread the mixture around them. The smell, made both men tear.

"Don't fire, " Clark warned, and then grabbed the axe laying in the ice.

Lex tightened his grip and took a step back. This was what he wanted, wasn't it? For Clark to confront him like any red blooded man. But as Clark moved towards him, he felt the vibrations over the ice with ever heavy foot fall of Clark's boots. Clark was no longer an image in a screen. He was no longer a subject in an experiment or a summary of numbers on a spreadsheet.

Clark was real.

Clark Kent was real, and he was moving towards him with an axe.

Lex stumbled backwards.

This was the final test.

Lex squeezed his finger against the trigger, and as he did he saw Clark's eyes widen and then--

There was an explosion, small at first, a tiny spark at the end of Lex's specialized weapon. A small combustion contained within the muzzle of a pistol. The green tinted round spiraled from its long mouth and rocketed towards Clark's direction.

But in that moment, the small, contained combustion met with the furl of fuel vapors in the air. The mixture was uneven, but enough to feed the flame long enough for it to become out of control.

The blast send Lex flying backwards, with a wave of fire spreading out like sunrays.

Clark took cover in the exposed cellar, his body shielded by his father's old plane.

Clark winced, his hand gaining purchase against the cold metal of its wings. Blood trickled down his sleeve and left a bloody imprint. That's when he knew.

Clark emerged from the cellar and saw the scorch marks on the ground. The explosion neutralized the fuel in the air, and seemed to neutralize Lex as well. Clark found him laying flat on his back in the snow. Face burned and blistered, and clothes burned away down to his flesh. Whatever hair Lex had before, it was definitely gone now.

Clark knelt down to him, and took a handful of snow and pressed it into Lex's chest to stop the burning. It was rudimentary, but it was something. He saw Lex open his eyes, and one of his arms swat Clark's away.

"Don't.. help me," Lex coughed.

"You'll die like this."

Lex coughed again, "I wonder which will be first."

Clark blinked, and then should down at his chest. His wound was dark, and wet. The coldness of the outside was slowly seeping into his body. He knew.

"Why don't you... just kill me?"

Clark looked at Lex as he panted in the snow, "Killing you wouldn't bring her back."

Lex flicked his eyes, the swelling constricting them, "You fool! She's not real. She doesn't exist."

Clark swallowed down a sense of nausea, fighting if it were true. He bit down his doubts, and turned away from the pain in his chest. His shirt, soaked with the evidence.  "Guess I'll have to find out for myself."

Lex watched as he left him and made for Jonathan Kent's old prop plane, waiting for him in the distance. Above them was the gaping hole in the sky, a blue tear, a painfully beautiful color that had been absent from this world.

Lex laid helpless in the smoldering earth, his fingerings clutching at the snow as he watched Clark spin the propellers, once, twice...

The engine hummed to life, a miracle.

"They're waiting for you.." Lex mumbled, knowing that Clark could not hear him over the sound of the engine, "They're waiting for you Clark Kent."

Clark graced the exterior of the plane, with his fingertips, a faint trail of blood smearing across the metal. He climbed into the cock pit of his father's plane, and began his taxing across the snow. His body felt light, elated, his mind with it in the sky. He anticipated the wings taking on air, for his feet to finally be off the ground. He had waited for the moment since he was born. He couldn't remember that far, but he could feel that this was what he was born to do.

As he worked the instruments and changed the degrees of his rear flaps, he looked over at the small brown box he had ordered from Metropolis weeks ago. Slowly, he opened it and revealed a snow globe of the city. A futuristic place, a place of Tomorrows and the place where he was going.

She was there, he knew it in spirit. And no matter how much other men promised that his ideals were foolish and unreal, he knew that all his life that he loved her.

That was real.

Clark's body felt lighter now, the center of gravity falling away as the wheels departed the earth and he felt the plane fight the forces that kept it grounded for so long. His hands felt weak as he squeezed the yoke, pulling back higher and higher...

He looked down briefly at Smallville, a white mass now. He could barely see the barn, the house, and the black sun resting in the field. They were small. Gone, forever.

Instead, Clark focused his eyes ahead. He saw the blinding light above him. He imagined it from some greater world than his own, a powerful force that he desperately wanted to see. He could feel its warmth even through the plane's windows, his chest rising with every labor breath he had left.

Clark smiled, the blue turning deeper, and richer... the tear in the sky becoming wider and then--


And then Lex closed his eyes for the last time. At the fine, white smoke, in a stream above the sky, in the air, drifting away.





























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