By That Sin, Chapter 1

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

Ten years earlier

Lex Luthor stood in the rain. It drizzled over his bald head and dripped from the end of his nose, but he scarcely noticed. A vast crowd of bystanders stood with him beneath the gray clouds, watching as a gleaming wooden coffin was slowly lowered into the dark earth, but despite the throng, he felt utterly alone.

His archenemy was being laid to rest today. He should be glad.

And yet all he felt was a bleak sorrow.

Clark Kent was dead.

And Lex Luthor's world was empty.

*****

His world had been bleak and vacant for ten long years. But now, at last, he felt some sense of rightness, some lifting of the clouds that had hung over him for a decade.

Even in the sterile white confines of the lab, Clark was as beautiful as ever. Perhaps more so. He'd always possessed an unearthly beauty-- not surprisingly, since he was an alien-- but now his features seemed more handsome than ever, his body even more defined. At least that was what Lex thought. It was hard for him to get a really good look at Clark-- the creature, he reminded himself. There was a sort of glow around him that made it impossible to look too clearly.

The glow of the supernatural, he thought.

There had been a time when he didn't believe in the supernatural. He certainly hadn't believed in angels. But after Clark died, he'd become obsessed with studying tales of life after death, and the afterlife.

And the more research he did, the more he began to believe in angels.

At first he thought it was merely the foolish delusion of a man who'd lost his greatest love/enemy. He worried he'd finally gone completely insane. But he slowly began to realize that angels did in fact exist, although they normally didn't manifest in the earthly plane.

Of course, angels were traditionally considered to be a whole different category of creatures. Despite the cartoonish view of the deceased wearing wings and a halo after death, the Judaic and Christian traditions held angels to be something entirely different from humans, something greater and far more remote.

And yet Lex's relentless research eventually proved otherwise.

*****

The entity in front of him now was proof that angels did exist, and that they were not a separate class of creatures, but merely humans-- or other earthly entities-- who had moved on to a new plane of existence. He stared at the beautiful winged creature in front of him, unable to hold back the gratitude that welled up inside him, making his eyes wet with tears.

He had proof of life after death. He had proof that life went on even after the corporeal body faded away.

And he had proof that the person he loved more than any other still existed, somewhere in the vast reaches of time and space.

And now he existed right here and right now, made corporeal through LexCorp technology.

And at Lex's mercy.

*****

Lex. Please. Let me go.

There was anguished pleading in the voice now, rather than command, as the creature-- Clark-- struggled against his bonds. They were not bonds in the usual sense, not forged of leather or iron or steel-- none of which could have held Clark, either in his original body or as an angel. Instead, they were a glowing band of energy that wrapped around Clark's wrists, forcing him into corporeal form and stopping him from shifting back into nothingness, as well as preventing him from simply flying away.

No matter how much Clark fluttered his wings, he couldn't escape his bonds.

Lex stalked toward him, in slow, measured steps. Clark's wings quivered more than ever, raising a breeze, but he couldn't pull free. Lex stopped just in front of him, looking up into eyes he hadn't seen in ten years, eyes the color of a summer meadow in the sunlight. The ebony wings fluttered wildly.

And then Lex stood on tiptoe, and pressed a kiss against Clark's lips.

More to come...