Imprisoned, Chapter 1

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

Clark/Lex
Season 7
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Sequel to "Redshift."

Clark Kent is bored out of his mind.

He's been sitting in this cell for quite some time, waiting for something to happen. But nothing has.

When he woke up and found himself here, he did his best to get out. He tried to rip the cell door off its hinges, but it stayed stubbornly attached. He couldn't smash through the wall, either. All he got for his effort was a badly bruised shoulder.

He's stark naked, but that doesn't make him feel nearly as vulnerable as the fact that his strength is gone. Somehow he's lost his superhuman abilities, and iron and cinderblock can hold him just as well as they can hold anyone else.

Deprived of his superhuman strength, he spent a long time carefully going over the walls and the door, trying to find a weakness that mere human strength could take advantage of. But he couldn't find anything.

At last he sat down on the hard sleeping surface to wait.

He's still waiting. He's bored and he's pissed and he's scared.

He's also baffled as to why he's here. He and Lex Luthor have had their share of problems, because Lex finds it supremely difficult to trust anyone. Lex is particularly paranoid about aliens, and when he found out Clark was an alien, he was, not surprisingly, totally freaked out.

But Clark had thought Lex had made the decision to trust him, to accept him, when he'd flung the kryptonite bracelet away.

Well, he'd hoped Lex had made that decision, anyway.

Against his will, his mind drifts back a few hours, and he thinks of being with Lex that last time, the way they'd kissed, the way they'd touched each other.

The way they'd made love.

It wasn't making love, he tells himself fiercely. Obviously to Lex it didn't mean anything at all, or you wouldn't be here now. It was just fucking.

He wishes he could say it hadn't meant anything to him, either. But he all too clearly remembers the sound of his own voice, whispering a truth he just couldn't keep inside any longer: Oh, God, Lex. I love you.

God, he's stupid.

He gets up and starts to pace the too-small confines of his cell again. He doesn't like being caged this way. It makes him irritable and edgy. He can run across the continental United States in less than thirty seconds, and does so fairly frequently, so being in a space this small makes him feel like a cheetah in a shoebox.

He forces himself to quit worrying about the small space, and to try to figure out Lex's thought process. But no matter how hard he thinks about it, he just doesn't get it.

If Lex wanted to confine him, to experiment on him, then why throw the kryptonite bracelet away? Lex had him totally at his mercy earlier. Why let him go, then capture him while he was asleep?

He sighs. The difficulty with Lex is that you never quite know what he's going to do, or why, because Lex has a strangely complex way of approaching problems. As Clark's friend Chloe Sullivan once put it, he belongs to the Rube Goldberg school of villainy. And that makes it very hard to figure out what he might do next.

Clark has thought before that he could predict what Lex was up to, only to be very unpleasantly surprised. He can't quite follow Lex's train of thought here, can't figure out why Lex would throw away the bracelet and trap him later, but he's sure that inside the dark, winding labyrinth that is Lex's brain, it all makes perfect sense.

It doesn't really matter, anyway. Because he is here, and he's at Lex's mercy.

Assuming Lex is capable of mercy.

He can't figure out what Lex has done to him, either. The only substance he knows of that can painlessly depower him is blue kryptonite. Chloe and his ex-girlfriend Lana Lang are aware of blue K and the effect it has on him. But as far as Clark knows, Lex doesn't.

Of course, Lex shouldn't have known about red kryptonite, either, but Lana had apparently told him all about it earlier today. Maybe she'd told him about blue kryptonite, too.

But the really baffling thing is that he isn't wearing a piece of jewelry. In fact, there doesn't appear to be any kryptonite of any color, anywhere in the cell.

And yet his powers are undeniably missing in action.

At last he hears a door open, and footsteps ring against the metal flooring, coming closer. He halts his anxious pacing and stands next to the door of the cell expectantly, adrenaline surging through him. He may not have superstrength right now, but he's nevertheless a big, strong guy, and no one is dragging him out of this cell, and into some laboratory, without a fight.

And if he manages to get free, then he and Lex are going to have a little... conversation.

Lex, he thinks grimly, all his muscles tensing in angry anticipation. You're going to pay for this, damn it.

He expects to see either Lex's bald head, or one of Lex's many minions. But instead a familiar, slender figure pauses in front of his cell, and big, dark eyes stare at him intently.

"Hello, Clark."

He gapes for a long moment, then manages to close his mouth, and answers.

"Hello, Lana."

Read Chapter 2 here.