Chapter Text
Clark, briefly, wonders if the kryptonite is making him hallucinate.
One moment, Lex Luthor was standing there, pistol in hand, about to murder Malik for… for what? The crime of being associated with the man he loathes so dearly? Or is the crime Clark’s own, for putting Malik in this situation?
The next, there is a flash of blinding light, and a snap ( was it in that order? )—vibrant colors, pastel and neon in equal measure, jutting out into reality like someone threw a cherry bomb into the air. It was as though the explosion itself was candy-coated. Luthor goes from being a stoic, fully-formed, three-dimensional figure to a startled, scrambling, literally cartoonish caricature. The words “Love & Peace” pop up behind him, static screeching echoing through the pocket dimension as visions of street signs, adorned with a slashed circle with a gun inside of it, and an image of Clark himself on a poster—facing forward, with a beaming thumbs up—flitters by.
Then, Lex is gone. Clark can’t hear his heartbeat, or his breathing, or even the sound of the bullet that should have been echoing through the prison. Now, all he hears is the sound of the gun clattering onto the skimmer, and ‘Mr. Handsome’ letting out a chittering cry of fear. Even Rex seems startled, backing to the other end of the cell. It is only a mild respite, as Clark still feels utterly drained.
He follows Malik’s eyeline—shocked, scared —down to the gun itself.
Lex is staring back at him from within the pistol, hands pressed against the side of the gun as if it were a window. His mouth is open in a silent, rage-filled scream.
Malik’s gaze snaps to the side, suddenly.
Clark follows it.
He blinks.
There is a snappy dresser standing where Luthor once had, decked to the nines in a nearly all-white suit; the shoes, pants, waistcoat, and jacket were all stark white, contrasting his black undershirt and red tie (itself adorned with an X-shaped tie-bar). His jacket’s cuffs are chromatic, almost shifting colors from red to blue to gold to green—it just keeps going and going, kaleidoscopic in hue. A pair of orange-tinted, square-shaped, massive sunglasses almost distracts Clark from just how pale the man’s slicked-back hair was. He hadn’t seen hair that white since Ma and Pa had taken him to see Santa on one of their few trips to Metropolis.
The man kneels down, picking up the gun with Luthor’s visage trapped inside. The man inspects it with disinterest, spinning it in his fingers—Clark catches brief glimpses of Luthor’s expression shifting into dismay and disorientation the faster the stranger spins the pistol.
Then, with an almost comical, near-silent sound of surprise—
The man lets the gun slip from his finger.
From the platform.
It sinks into the depths of the dimension, fading from view.
Clark watches it fall, helpless—hoping, praying that the Luthor inside was just… an illusion, or some kind of trick.
Because if it wasn’t, he had just watched a man die.
Slowly, agonizingly, he looks up at the man, forcing himself to use just enough of his strained vocal cords to ask: “Why?”
The man tilts his head, as if unsure of the words he just heard. He turns toward Clark’s cell, holding up his right hand. He spares a brief glance to Rex, to the direction he’s looking—
To Joey, still in the hands of Luthor’s guard.
Who, himself, seems to get his wits about him, about to fire off a bullet into Joey’s skull.
“Don’t you dare! ” Rex snarls, making to move.
The tips of the stranger’s middle finger and thumb touch together. Then—
SNAP!
Clark watches in awe—or is it terror?—as the world around him, for lack of a better word, animates to life. Colors swirl around them, around the whole of the prison. The walls fly off in all directions, but nobody falls to the ground. They all float, whether on their cell block floor (now as mobile as Aladdin’s magic carpet, as some of the inmates quickly discover), or in mid-air, like the hapless guard. Joey is free—and, thankfully, so is Rex, who immediately bolts over to the other side of the ‘room’ like a rocket.
The stranger lets Rex pass by, adjusting his glasses as he zeroes his attention in on Clark. Malik moves to stay behind Clark—understandably so; he’s had a rough day.
It’s now that Clark notices something has changed about the man. Before, he looked like any other person—nicely dressed, for sure, but not too unusual. Now, however, his face has taken on a softer, almost hand-crafted expression. Briefly, Clark thinks the man looks like he should be on an album cover with the Gorillaz—
—and then he sees his own reflection in the man’s sunglasses. It looks much like the poster he saw earlier, if a little younger.
He certainly thinks he would remember looking like an anime character when he woke up that morning.
“O…kay,” he manages, Rex’s distance finally granting him greater relief from the effects of his kryptonite poisoning (for how long, he doesn’t know). “That’s a neat trick.”
The stranger smiles, holding his hand up once more. The X on his tie glints in the light of his own creation.
Without words, he seems to say, “There’s more where that came from.”