Wow, so many people to thank. Guess it does take a village. Thanks to Seana and Dae for encouragement, Nix for helping hammer out an ending, and LaT, the spike and Sarah T. for wonderful beta work. The lines of poetry at the beginning of the story are from 'Mac Flecknoe' by John Dryden. Which is a satirical poem, yes, but I'm such a sucker for ambiance...

All human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.

It's cold as hell, but then, it's November in Kansas. At least it's not raining. As you head for the Kents' front porch, you rub your hands together swiftly, trying to warm the stiff leather of your driving gloves enough to pull them off. You only forced your fingers into them about five minutes ago. It's a short trip from the estate to the Kent farm, especially the way you drive. A smile escapes as you approach the house, recalling the concern Clark expressed on that very subject just the other day. Not so much the concern, really, as Clark's easy inclusion of you in the category of people he'd been warned to worry about. People he considered himself close to. (Very close.)

Mrs. Kent's sunflowers rustle in the breeze as you pass. A few of them are beginning to wilt brown around the edges. Your lip curls, and-- you remember kneeling down, touching one. Soft petals slide over your gloved fingertips, but you can't feel it, can't feel anything you touch any more. The scent of mud and rot invades your nostrils, and the sky swirls red above you, clouds heavy and pregnant with--

The hell? Squinting into the wind, you stand frozen on the hard-packed dirt driveway, one glove off and one glove on. What the hell was that? Like a memory, except you don't think you've ever actually been closer to a patch of sunflowers than you are right now. They're not exactly the kind of foliage that's common in the sort of gardens you're used to.

Not to mention the bloody sky, and the hand you could control but not feel, in some strange twist of dream logic. The remnant of a nightmare, then? Or perhaps a flashback, a delayed side effect of some little red or blue pill, the kind you used to accept, no questions asked, from pretty strangers in various Metropolis hot spots. Some complex chemical chain curled into your brain just waiting for the right trigger, the right stimulus. A shudder crawls up your spine as you stare at the yellow, nodding flowers, their color drawing the eye, their motion almost hypnotic.

It's unsettling. You've fought hard to be an uncontested monarch at least within the boundaries of your own skull. Not to mention that, no matter the source, the content of your vision was certainly. Unsettling. God, that horrific boneyard stench-- a slaughterhouse might smell like that, you think, though you've even less experience with slaughterhouses than sunflowers. Still. It's like you'd know that stink anywhere, like there's still traces of it lingering in the air. Scorched earth and rotting plants and... something else.

Exhaling, you move again. Towards the shivering sunflowers. There's a little voice in the back of your brain telling you to turn around. To get back in the car, and the fuck away from this farm. But you were never any good at listening to that little voice. (Just ask your father. Just ask any of the pretty boys at Club Zero who ever offered you a handful of colorful pills.)

There's a white picket fence around the sunflower patch. You ignore it too, reaching out with your gloved hand to touch one of the sunflowers, cupping its head and pulling it down. Intently you study the cheery yellow petals, the neatly spiraling seeds. The plants are almost as tall as you are, and that's wrong somehow. They should be shorter. They were shorter. Or maybe you were taller. Set above everything, you could see from horizon to horizon. The huge Kansas sky was angry and red. And then you looked up--

"Lex?"

"Jesus!" you snarl, jerking your hand away from the sunflower, and whirl to face Jonathan Kent. With an effort, you manage to swallow the fuck! ready to leap off your tongue. He's standing on the other side of the driveway, just outside the doorway of the barn. Perhaps you startled him as much as he startled you, although somehow you doubt it. Deep breath, Lex. In through your nose, out through your mouth. It helps. "Mr. Kent."

There are dark stains on the knees of his jeans, and he's steadily rubbing grease or dirt off his hands with a ragged towel. His eyebrows are raised in amusement, but his voice isn't quite mocking. "Didn't mean to startle you there."

"You didn't." It's only a half-truth from your point of view, an obvious lie from his. But. Screw it. You're too off your game right now to even think of a possible explanation for your strange behavior. For his part, Kent regards you with the all-too-familiar tolerance of someone who's not even going to bother calling you on your ridiculous bullshit. A thoroughly paternal look. Slowly you manage to loosen your grip on the leather glove you're clutching in your bare hand.

The leather creaks under your grip. You glance back at the sunflower patch, but they're just plants now. They don't make you think of anything, and all you can smell on the wind is dust and wood and motor oil. You feel lost, suddenly. You don't think you've felt this way since your first day in Smallville. (Your first first day in Smallville.)

God, you wish you hadn't thought of that. Though you know the sensation's false, you can suddenly feel black dirt underneath your fingernails, and you have to resist the urge to take more unnaturally deep breaths. To dig viciously beneath your cuticles, over and over. For you the memory is stained red: a crow, a tightness in your chest. A boy on a cross. Smoke covering the earth, and the sky falling.

You really wish you hadn't thought of that, not now. The similarities between your initial memories of Smallville and the images in your mind just a moment ago... they're far too apt. Hallucinatory, horrific, and, as it turned out the first time around, an eerily accurate mirror of events to come. Trying to smile, you clear your throat and ask, "Is Clark around?"

Mr. Kent has thrown the towel casually over his shoulder, and now jerks his head back at the barn. "Yeah, he's up in the loft."

"Thanks." You move past him with a curt nod, and he heads for the house. But you don't quite make it to the door before he calls after you.

"Lex."

You glance back.

"Everything all right?" he asks, head cocked inquiringly.

This is where Clark gets his good nature, you remind yourself. This is why Clark is the way he is. Silently repeating that (though you've never actually managed to make yourself believe it) helps you fight back your instinctive snarl. It shows only as a smile that feels far too brittle, but perhaps Kent is too far away to tell. "Perfectly all right, thank you for asking."

Retreating into the cool, dark barn, you take a deep breath. In front of you, Kent's motorcycle is half disassembled, bleeding oil into a plastic gallon jug cut in half. There are stairs in front of you that you didn't pay any attention to the last time you were here, and Clark stands at the summit. He's wearing all black: jeans, jacket, shoes and sweater, which is odd enough to make you look twice. But of course. You saw the announcement in the Ledger, among the obituaries. The Carver woman's memorial service.

Clark's hands rest gently on the railing as he leans over, looking down at you. "Lex?"

You had something to say. You really, really did. But with a short sigh you accept that you're too fucking rattled to deliver any of your lines convincingly. Today. "Hi."

"Are you all right?" He tilts his head, staring down, and you just can't believe that there's nothing special about this boy. Because he hasn't done anything, hasn't really said anything, and... you feel better.

You feel better. And you tell the truth. "I hate this place."

Clark's look of concern deepens as he comes down the stairs. You have to turn away from his regard, running a hand over your sweating skull. You're shivering. You have been for a while, and you know it's only because the sweat is pulling the heat from your body, and you're more susceptible to that than most other people. But it feels like more than that. It feels like this place is sucking the life right out of you.

"God, how can you live here?" you ask, your voice echoing in the empty space inside the barn, thick with confusion and loathing. "This place." Everything rusting, molding, eroding away. Coated with dirt and scum. An optimist might see only the growth, the bounty.

You're a realist. You see the bones beneath the skin.

"It's not so bad," Clark says, behind you. Honor-bound to defend his hometown, of course, but it comes out rather weakly.

"Of course it is." Of course it does. Clark's lived here all his life, and he's not stupid. In the midst of life we are in death. You've always known that, and Smallville is crawling with it. Change. Decay. You know that the clean steel of Metropolis is an illusion, but you prefer the illusion of perfect order to the primal chaos Smallville represents. You haven't a chance of understanding it, let alone controlling it. Living here, you'd hardly be surprised at a rain of frogs, or blood. "I've never seen one shred of evidence that would make me believe that this town, this land, is anything but cursed." Life and death and change and filth.

Touching you.

Trying not to shudder, balling your hands into fists to keep from rubbing them on your coat, you stare up at the high ceilings and rafters of the barn. A shaft of November sun slants down through the air from an upper-story window, illuminating a thousand points of dust, chaff drifting slowly in the air-- Christ. It's in your lungs right now and you're so fucking weak you have to close your eyes and just concentrate on continuing to breathe. Breathe, Lex.

Get a fucking grip.

You can feel Clark's presence behind you, an almost palpable sensation at your back, hovering nervously. Poor kid. The only other people who ever had to listen to you almost have a nervous breakdown all possessed advanced child-psychology degrees and were paid by the hour. Very well paid, you're sure. You wonder, idly, if you should advise your father to get a refund, and it helps you manage a smile as you turn. "Well, except for you... Clark?"

You'd expected one of those soulfully encouraging looks he's always seemed able to summon up at the slightest provocation. But instead Clark has a terrible bruised tightness around his eyes. There are hollows underneath them that his black clothes accentuate horribly. He's looking at you as though your words have struck him like physical blows-- as though by just standing in front of him you're somehow fulfilling his worst nightmare.

"Clark?"

"I-- it's nothing." He steps back as you move closer. Your sweet boy, your own private miracle.

You don't know how he did it. All you know is that Clark pulled you from death's jaws. Gave you life. And that makes him different. How, and why, you don't know. But you will. "No," you murmur, cocking your head. "I said something wrong, didn't I."

Or maybe something right.

"No, I just. I didn't realize." he says jerkily. "That you hated it here so much." How did it get to be that he's better at lying to you than you are at deceiving him? Not that he's any good at it, exactly. But at least he's giving it the old college try.

"I don't hate it here." you clarify. "My life here, the actual day-to-day living of it, is tolerable. With the occasional bright spot. What I hate is this place."

"Why?" he protests, wide-eyed in the dim barn, and you let your snarl show.

"Why shouldn't I? It's the reason I'm a freak, Clark!" He shakes his head, not understanding, and you can't fucking believe it, but you're going to have to spell it out for him. "It's why I'm bald. I was here, in Smallville, when I was nine--"

"Oh god." Clark actually blanches beneath his tan, and his hands jerk up reflexively, palms out, as if he could physically block your words. He covers his reaction just as quickly, forcing his hands down and turning away, a slim black shade. But.

You're intrigued, now.

Intrigued, and calmer. Almost deadly calm. Predator's instinct, something in the primitive lizard-portion of your brain taking over. Because suddenly you know that you're closer to cracking Clark open than you've ever been before. That witch at the nursing home is rotting in the ground, but maybe you didn't need her after all. "I was nine," you repeat. "I came to Smallville with my father."

"I didn't know," he whispers, and his secret is here in the room with you now. You can almost feel it. Breathe it in. Gently.

"It was a business trip. My father was negotiating the purchase of some land, east of Riley Field. Where the fertilizer plant is now." A little closer, now. Slowly. A little closer. "I wandered off and got lost in the corn..."

"Lex, I don't." Clark crosses his arms, glancing away. "I don't know if I can hear this."

"I actually saw the meteor," you say conversationally. "Like the sun coming down out of the sky-- too bright to look at, except the meteor was smaller. Just this pinpoint of light, streaking down with this huge smoke-trail, spreading out to cover the sky. Black as hell." Your voice is suddenly scratchy, rough, but you ignore it, tightening both your hands into fists. Clark is hugging his arms to his chest now, and you're close. So close.

"I was so scared." The confession comes a little too easily, startlingly so, and you realize, perhaps a bit late, that this is a story you've never told. Not even to those cloyingly empathetic child psychologists, back in the day. There may be no way to let it out without cracking, shattering some inner fortress. But if you have to break yourself open in order to break Clark of his annoying insistence on keeping secrets, well.

So be it.

"The afterimage stayed for hours." You slash your hand through the air. "Like something had scratched my eye, like a crack in my head... but that was later. I saw the first meteor come down and I saw it hit, and the sound was. Unearthly. The world cracked open." And your voice is uneven now but you clamp down on it and continue. "Another one struck behind us, and this huge cloud of, of dirt and dust and leaves was coming at me like some kind of monster or God knows what. I couldn't breathe, but I ran--"

"Stop it!" Clark shakes his head pleadingly, but he can't drag his gaze away from yours. "Please."

Your whole body's shaking now, but from anger, not the cold. "I thought I was dead." That was not a stammer. You don't stammer. There's an irritating stinging behind your eyes, but that's all right as long as you don't blink, and you're not going to blink first. "I wasn't hurt. Not really. But I couldn't-- I couldn't even fucking move, I was so afraid. And I hadn't even realized what had happened to me yet."

A bitter laugh catches in your throat; your hands are trembling with fury and you clamp them into fists. You're so close you can smell Clark's fear, see the knowledge in his eyes--

No.

Not knowledge. Guilt.

You suck in a breath, tasting muddy river water in your mouth, tasting blood along with the rage, and the words come from someplace deep inside you, murky and red and so very carefully chosen. "I didn't know then that I was a freak of nature, Clark. That my own father would never be able to look at me in the same way again. That I'd have to spend the rest of my life making up for being weak, strange, a medical mystery: nine years old and bald and short and different than I'd been before."

Moving closer still, you let yourself laugh, and Clark's shoulder hits the edge of one squared-off timber post. His eyes widen as he realizes he's been backed into a corner, and this is it, the only chance you'll get-- you know exactly what to say, and you say it without thinking-- "God, you call yourself my friend, and you won't even tell me why?"

Clark's head jerks as though you've slapped him. His eyes are wet and dark and huge and he's shivering, staring at you, lips parted and breathing through his mouth. You just stare back, not caring what kind of expression is on your face. Not bothering to hide anything at all. It doesn't matter now. Let Clark look. You don't know what he's going to say, but that doesn't matter either. You've won.

"Because of me." Clark's voice cracks when he finally speaks, and he stares at you, still pleading, but not for mercy. For what, then? Forgiveness? Why? "It was... It was me."

His breath hitches, and he slumps against the post, head tipped back. But he doesn't look as though he's been defeated; no, more like he's put a heavy burden down. A tear escapes, sliding swiftly down his cheek, and he sighs and lifts a hand to scrub wearily at his face. He's embarrassed, he's shaken, but he's not trying to hide. Not from you. Not any more.

Well. It looks like you really have won.

Lifting your gloved hand, you push Clark's hand away from his face and stroke his cheek gently, brushing away the tear. "It's all right, Clark."

"It's so not," he says bleakly, then forces a watery laugh and a halfway-sincere smile. The guilt is still there, in the way he can't quite look you in the eye, the way he turns his head away from your hand. Not in rejection, but as though, bizarrely, he doesn't deserve to be comforted.

Because of me. At this point, you can't even formulate a response to that, except: that's interesting. What you want to ask is 'Are you a criminal mastermind? How could this be your fault? How old were you, three?' He has the answers, and you want them, and you're going to make him explain the whole impossible thing in great detail, very soon. But when he does, he's going to do it calmly. Clearly. And without that horrible bruised look in his eyes.

"It is." You thought showing Clark the Porsche would jar him enough to make him reveal some part of the truth. You came here today, truth be told, to twist the knife. But you might've altered your strategy if you'd known that he was concealing a guilty secret. "It will be. I promise," you continue, but Clark turns away, a bitter smile twisting his mouth. You raise your hand again, grabbing his jaw, forcing his head around. He resists and your gloved fingers slide off his face, but you try again and this time Clark reluctantly meets your steady gaze. "I forgive you."

The words surprise you both, Clark more so-- enough to make him jerk out of your grasp and back away again. "You can't." He stumbles into a worktable strewn with tools, knocks it off-balance and whirls to right it, a blur of black. Retreats further, eyes as wide as searchlights. "You-- you don't even know." There's a gleam of wild hope in his voice, sharp as pain. He may not even know it's there. "Lex, you..."

"I do, Clark."

He stares searchingly, and you look back. Odd as it is, you really do mean it. Clark gave you life. Pulled you out of the muddy, scummy river and brought you back, and you'd forgive him anything for that. Theft, lies, murder... whatever possible hand he could have had in your fate.

It doesn't matter.

Smiling crookedly, you jerk your head towards the barn door. "Come with me."

He looks automatically, then blinks at you, squaring his shoulders. "Where?"

You're tempted to say 'The future,' but you manage to refrain, simply reaching out instead. He takes your offered hand with no hesitation, and you reward him with a reassuring squeeze. Feeling the warmth of his skin so clearly.

Even through the black leather.