Morire

When Lex was seven years old, he pithed a frog.

It was living anesthesia, his teacher had told him. The frogs wouldn't feel anything; it couldn't cause pain-the students were merely destroying their nervous systems. Lex knew he had to sit quietly in his chair as the man explained the procedure: it was really quite humane, and it was necessary.

Lex understood the ethical dilemma. He knew what they were doing was in the name of science, in the name of learning. He understood that some of his classmates would probably go on to become doctors, scientists, people who would save some portion of the world. But when Lex looked at the frogs, looked at them jumping blissfully around their tanks and croaking happily, he could only think that he would be vivisecting a living, breathing being.

He did it anyway, of course. He held the tiny animal in his hands; it didn't really try to get away. The frog squirmed a few times, trying to get comfortable, but after a few seconds it stopped fidgeting and stared at him with great liquid eyes. Lex petted it, feeling the smooth skin-the creature would have made a great pet, a wonderful buddy. Instead, Lex found the two small bumps on the frog's head-the two small bumps that dictated where his needle would pierce its skull.

Lex placed the needle carefully, determined that if he had to do this thing, he would make it as quick and painless as possible. It didn't work out that way, however. He pushed the needle down; it rocked against the frog's skull and slithered down the creature's spine, and Lex felt the animal twitch in his hands.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to it, again placing the needle between the two bumps. He would be more careful, he would make sure that the needle did its job. He didn't want his frog to suffer. Then Lex rammed the needle down one more time, and he felt something breech...but the frog was still squirming. Bile rose in Lex's throat as he positioned the needle once more.

This time, he felt the needle reach the softness of the animal's brain. The frog spasmed in his hands; it stiffly extended itself and then fell limp. Lex touched its eyes, but the creature didn't blink. The creature was still alive, but it could no longer respond. Lex was finally successful.

As he cut the frog open, Lex wondered what it would be like. He wondered what he would think if he was still conscious enough to watch someone pulling the skin away from his belly; he wondered what he would understand if scissors positioned themselves against that same skin and begin to cut away at him. Would he truly feel nothing, just because his nerves were destroyed? Or would he just imagine the pain instead? And what if the person made a mistake, what if the experimenter had merely crippled him and he could still feel everything? He would have to sit there, watching as someone tore him open, watching as they took out his organs and played with them. He would have to feel it all, and he would be unable to scream.

When he told his mother about what he had been forced to do, he could tell that she didn't really understand. She said she was sorry, and she hugged him tightly, but in her eyes he could see her puzzlement. She didn't know why the frog had upset him so much; it made no logical sense. He ate frog meat; he liked frog legs. Lex didn't know how to explain to her that the situation had been different because that frog had been his. The frog had been happy in his hands, had blinked at him with wonderfully trusting eyes, and he had cut it open while it was still breathing. His frog would never croak happily at him again.

Lex never told his father about the incident. His dad would only have frowned at him, would have told him that he was being overly sentimental. And Lex wasn't sure that his father wasn't right: it was, after all, only a frog.

* * * * * *

When Lex was twenty-one years old, he shot a man.

Roger Nixon had been about to kill Jonathan Kent; there truly had been no other way. Lex watched as the pole was raised overhead, and he knew that if he didn't do anything, if he continued to watch and be as useless as he was being, then Jonathan Kent would be killed. Clark's father would die.

And so, Lex raised his gun and killed his employee.

Lex had been standing behind the man; he didn't see Nixon's face. He could imagine what Roger was thinking, though. Too many times had Lex been in the same position, too many times had he seen a gun pointed at his head and thought, "This is it." He had also been carved open, once--he had bled all over the seats of Toby's car-and he understood how it felt to realize one's own mortality.

Later, Lex washed his hands furiously; there was no blood on them, but he felt like there should have been. Nixon had worked for him, and in some ways, that made Lex responsible. As he watched the clear water going down the drain, he wondered how many other people he had also killed in that one act; he wondered over the children that would never be born, over the widow whose life was now over. He wondered what other possible futures had ended because of his too-clean hands.

Lex tried to talk to Clark about it, but he could tell that his best friend wasn't capable of understanding. The boy was too full of gratitude; he was happy for his father and to him, Lex was nothing more than a savior. And Lex supposed that it was true; Jonathan Kent lived because of him.

He had saved a man, and he had killed one. He supposed it was a fair enough trade.

* * * * * *

When Lex was thirty-six years old, he destroyed an alien.

It's during a moment of stillness that Lex finally sees, that the world finally comes together with a startling clarity. Everything before had been fast paced and ever moving, quick blurs of color tempered with random pulses of inhibition; Lex had never stopped to analyze their battles together. Between them it was point and counterpoint, lunge and thrust, fly and fall. No time for thinking, no room for interpretation beyond the obvious. Lex had only ever seen one thing, and that was an alien, an outsider who had always believed that he had the right to dictate Lex's decisions.

Things had come to a head; he had Superman pressed up against the wall, Kryptonite (meteor rock, he should have known) shoved up and under the creature's throat. And because Lex believed an executioner should have the courage and decency to look his victim in the face, he stared hard into the alien's eyes and waited for death to take residence there.

Suddenly, everything clicked. He looked into the face of his adversary, and instead he saw his greatest friend glaring back at him.

Lex made his escape quickly.

He sat alone in his penthouse for days after that, unsure of what to think or feel. Sometimes, he felt amusement at the situation's irony. Other times, he felt himself swell and choke upon his own rage, seething over Clark's betrayal. In the end, though, he pushed all of his feelings aside, and made his way over to his best friend's apartment.

Green eyes sparkled at him--pleased, as always, with his arrival. For a second Lex thought he was mistaken, that this endearing and charming boy could not possibly be the man who threw him through walls and destroyed his life's work.

But then Lex remembered the hardness that could fall over Clark's eyes, the film of disappointment and determination that Lex had seen when they both were younger, when Clark had actively pushed against him and questioned his morals. Lex hadn't seen the look for years, and as time passed Lex had come to believe that he had somehow passed Clark's tests. Now he realized that Clark merely sublimated his behavior--he had taken their contest of wills to a newer and more ruthless battlefield, where it was strength that triumphed rather than compassion.

Lex fingered the box in his pocket. He could be ruthless, if it was demanded of him.

Clark couldn't see the small package, coated with lead as it was. Lex contemplated the death within his hand; it was a rapid end, if an unavoidably painful one. An injection of Kryptonite--it would be over very quickly for the alien. It was the most humane ending he could devise for the being that had once been his best friend, and the memory deserved mercy, even fraught with deception and falsehoods as it was.

"Clark," Lex finally spoke, interrupting Clark's chatter. "You trust me."

Clark tilted his head in puzzlement, startled at the non-sequiter, and then shrugged. "I guess so."

Lex reached forward and spoke quietly. "Give me your hand."

Clark's puzzled look didn't disappear, but he slowly acquiesced. Lex watched him stumble forward, puppyish in his bumbling; he pushed away the coffee table that separated them. Clark settled in a clumsy tangle of limbs as he sat cross-legged at Lex's feet, and presented his hand.

Lex took it gently. He smoothed a hand across the silky palm, (had he never noticed how unlikely that should have been?), touched the pulse that fluttered at Clark's wrist. He slowly traced the line of the vein to Clark's elbow; a little higher and he would be in perfect position. Soon. It would all be over.

"I've seen this comic, you know," Clark suddenly told him, ducking his head as he muttered the words.

Lex eyed him, thumb still smoothing over the skin of Clark's forearm. "What do you mean?" he answered softly. One prick. That was all.

Clark grinned wryly, looking slightly embarrassed. "I saw this thing in college," he began, "some TV show. The characters did something like this," he twirled his fingers in the air, made a face, "with their magic, I mean."

Lex didn't want that, didn't want those to be the last words to their legend. "What made you think of that?" he urged. Just one last mystery.

Clark quirked an eyebrow at him. "Just being stupid. It's nothing, really. And anyway," he jerked his head at Lex's hands on his arm, "what're you doing?"

And that was to be that. Sometimes, Lex guessed as he squeezed Clark's arm, one really wasn't allowed to write one's own story. This was how life's changes were dealt; this was how one destroyed the last of a wondrous species-over vague absurdities. It struck Lex as profoundly unfair.

"You know," Clark had continued talking, "I'll need my arm back, when you're done drooling on it. And hey, I'm hungry. Mind if we order pizza?" Lex watched in mute startlement as Clark jumped to his feet, regaining his arm in the process, and shuffled over to the kitchen in an abrupt quest for the telephone number.

Some things also did not lend themselves to drama, Lex added in his mind. The demise of 'The Friendship of Legends'...over a Papa John's delivery?

Lex started to laugh.

He couldn't stop. It struck him as profoundly funny, their situation-here he was, considering the birth and death of races, the fate of their planet, and his greatest adversary was ordering a pizza. It wasn't right-in the very least, it offended his sense of drama. He wondered if Shakespeare ever had this type of problem when writing his tragedies.

Clark eventually noticed his hilarity. "Did I miss something?" he asked wryly.

Lex could only shake his head in negation. "It's nothing," he paraphrased Clark's earlier words, "Merely something moronic cluttering my mind."

Clark teased him then, and Lex laughed as he pushed the Kryptonite injector deep inside his pocket. Clark might have been born an alien, but when push came to shove, he was still the boy who laughed too loudly, who would blush when flirted with, who would shine when Lex smiled at him.

Lex wasn't willing to give that boy up.

It became difficult, later. Lex would leave his penthouse after his fights with Superman, Kryptonite clenched in his fists, swearing up and down that this time he'd had it, that this time Kal-El was going to die. He would march up to Clark's apartment, grit his teeth at Clark's pretended innocence, and finger the injector in his pocket.

But then Clark would always do something so very...Clarkish. And Lex would forget why he was angry.

"You know," Clark finally whispered to him months later, curled up and around Lex's body, face buried in his neck, "you need to get a new needle."

Lex froze in his lover's arms.

Clark bit at his collarbone. "The Kryptonite in there has solidified. It won't work anymore." He snuggled deeper into Lex. "Just thought you should know."

Lex tried to pull away, but Clark merely held him tighter, nuzzling and snuffling happily against his skin. Lex then tried to question him, but Clark wouldn't answer anything; he would only curl up closer and pretend to fall asleep.

Lex stared into the darkness for a long time. He lay still in his bed and listened to the sound of Clark's breathing.

They never spoke of it again; Clark wouldn't allow it. Lex eventually agreed with him, was even grateful for the decision; he took the injector out of its usual place and finally had it destroyed. It was a post-facto decision, for in his mind, the injector was no longer necessary--he had destroyed the alien a long time ago. Only Clark remained to bother him.

He thought he could live with that.

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