Season and Episode: Season One, House of Luthor
Series your one character is from: Lucifer
A/N:
Endelda: So Feli saw Kerth Challenge #3, “Pick any episode of Lois and Clark and plant one character from a TV series you enjoy (old or new) into the plot,” and had an idea about inserting a character we already had some practice with inserting into the L&C Universe. She asked me if I was interested in helping, and naturally I peed my pants with excitement over writing with her again said yes.
Feli: We had so much fun writing City of (Fallen) Angels and this challenge seemed like the perfect opportunity to continue the adventures of our bizarre new friends. Couldn’t have done it without you, E!
This is set between the end of City of (Fallen) Angels and it’s epilogue, and will make absolutely no sense if you haven’t read that one first. The Lois and Clark setting… well, read on! ***
Lex Luthor raced up the stairs from the wine cellar, forcing himself to focus on the next steps to take. The ark. He needed to take whatever personal papers from his desk he could get his hands on, and go to the ark. From there, he could try to piece together what had gone wrong. How the police had assembled evidence against him when he’d been so careful to cover his tracks. How Lois had turned on him. How Superman had escaped. This was just a setback. His legitimate businesses may collapse, but he could continue to control Metropolis’s underworld from the ark. Even if the police knew of its existence, they would find it nigh impossible to displace him.
He pushed through the hidden entrance to his penthouse, leaving the door swinging wildly and stopped short at the sight of a tall figure lounging at his ease behind Lex’s desk, his feet propped up on the glossy surface of the wood and his fingers steepled before him.
“Hello, Alexander,” his visitor greeted him with a look of unholy glee on his face.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Luthor snarled at his uninvited guest. He hadn’t seen Lucifer Morningstar in over a decade, and he couldn’t fathom why the man had suddenly sprung back into his life today, of all days. He was surprised he’d recognized the other man so quickly, but Lucifer had a certain presence that made him difficult to forget, no matter how hard Lex had tried. A thought occurred to him. Was it possible that this— all of the humiliations he’d suffered today— was
his doing? “Are you working with them?!” He demanded harshly.
“Oftentimes, yes. Although not today, as a matter of fact. No, I came to a wedding. Uninvited, I’ll admit.” Lucifer shook his head, a mocking smile on his face as he dropped his feet to the floor and rose to move around the desk. “Tsk tsk. After all I’ve done for you.”
“What do you want?” Lex ground out as he circled around the desk in the opposite direction and yanked open the drawers, rifling through them for documents with hands that trembled with barely-suppressed rage.
“Well, if you insist.” Lucifer chuckled slightly. “I was waiting for the whole ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ part, but I suppose here is as good a place as any.” The grin faded, leaving his face as cold as Luthor’s. “I’ve come for payment.”
“Payment?” Luthor echoed incredulously.
“You were granted a favour. And the nature of favours is that they’re repaid. After all, a deal's a deal. Especially one with the Devil." Lucifer gave him a wide, unsettling grin. Luthor scoffed. While he would admit only to himself that this Lucifer Morningstar made him… somewhat uneasy, the notion that he was the Devil was preposterous.
Nevertheless, something about the other man’s demeanour made the hairs on the back of Luthor’s neck stand up. Instinctively, he stepped backwards, forgetting about paperwork for the moment and trying to hide his incipient panic as he surveyed Lucifer’s face. The grin was back, but somehow the curve of his lips had become almost predatory as he stalked closer to Lex.
“You can’t break a deal with the Devil, Luthor,” Lucifer told him in a voice that had become silkily dangerous. “Did you really think you’d get away with it?”
"Come now, you're being ridiculous! You don't honestly expect me to believe you're the actual devil, do you?" Lex straightened and tried to stare Lucifer down as he loosened his collar and tugged at his cuffs. "Granted you have a certain talent for making timely introductions and a definite knack for obtaining useful information, oh and let's not forget your skills at getting into restricted areas." Lex gestured to indicate the penthouse space, empty aside from the two of them, and sneered, "But there's no such place as Hell, and if there were some
nightclub owner certainly wouldn't be its ruler."
Lucifer took a step closer, suddenly radiating menace. Feeling cold panic coil in his gut, Luthor stepped backwards, accidentally brushing the button that controlled the doors to the balcony and cursing inwardly, annoyed at himself for displaying weakness.
“Oh, but being a nightclub owner has its advantages, Alexander.”
“The name is Lex,” Luthor insisted.
Lucifer continued as if he hadn’t heard Lex’s interjection. “It gives one access to certain tidbits of information. Information that occasionally can be used to benefit another— for the right price. Which I believe was the point of this… little chat.”
“A price?” Lex hooted disdainfully. Did this petty imbecile, this idiot, think he was in some position to bargain with
Lex Luthor? “I have no idea where you get your information, Morningstar, and it’s not really of any concern to me.” He looked away with an effort and resumed rifling through the drawers for the papers he wanted with a nonchalance he hoped the other man couldn’t tell was faked. “Any business we might have had was concluded years ago.”
“To your satisfaction, perhaps, but not to mine.”
“I’m certain you’ll learn to live with the disappointment, Morningstar. After all, your life must have contained so many of them already.”
Lucifer tilted his head inquiringly, his eyes suddenly a deep, foreboding red that took what felt like an eternity to fade back to their usual dark brown. His jaw slack with horror, Luthor shrank away from the looming figure, staggering blindly backwards.
“You’ll pay what is due, Luthor. One way or the other.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Lex blustered weakly, still automatically trying to flee the relentlessly stalking menace his visitor had become.
“Really?” Lucifer asked in a conversational, almost bored tone.
A shriek of terror was ripped from Luthor’s throat as Lucifer’s features seemed to vanish, replaced by a charred skull throbbing with a thin layer of exposed muscle and raw skin. Tiny flames licked around the edges of his temples and jawline as he grasped Lex by the shirt-front and leaned closer until he and Luthor were nose-to-nose. “Not the tiniest bit afraid?” Lucifer asked, almost playfully. “Are you sure?”
Lucifer turned his head as he heard the elevator behind them rumble to life. His eyes narrowed briefly as the elevator car came to a stop on the penthouse floor.
Luthor drew a shaky, shallow breath as the iron grip on his shirt loosened. With an annoyed grunt, Lucifer stepped back, his face once again able to pass for human. “Well, it seems the cavalry has arrived.” He gave an apparently casual shrug. Enormous wings with feathers of the purest white burst from between his shoulder blades with a snap. “I believe that’s my cue. Ta ta, Alexander!”
Lucifer strolled casually out onto the balcony and leapt into the air, taking flight with a loud rustling sound. Recovering his wits, Luthor closed his mouth and rushed to the balcony railing, twisting to look upwards, searching the sky for any sign of Lucifer. Finding none, his knees went weak as the full import of the last few minutes struck him.
The Devil.
He’d made a deal with the actual, biblical Devil.
It was all real. Heaven, Hell, angels, the Devil, all of it.
He began to laugh hysterically, staggering back to the desk and punching in the code to seal the office only to be interrupted by a squad of uniformed officers bursting through the doors. He scooped up his planner with the vague recollection that he’d originally come for some paperwork, then spun and bolted for the balcony again as the peon who'd tried to arrest him downstairs stormed in, clutching at the railing to prevent himself from falling as a myriad of images flashed across his mind. Lois, spurning him at the altar; the police trying to arrest him in front of the cream of Metropolitan society; the tauntingly empty Kryptonite cage; Mrs. Cox in handcuffs, clearly having betrayed him. Overlaying it all was the haunting image of Lucifer’s face— his true, Devilish face. Luthor’s manic laughter gave way to sobs as he stared, unseeing, at the police officers that were advancing slowly towards the balcony.
He leapt to the top of the wall. “Lex Luthor will not live in a cage!”
There was no way he could allow them to cage him. He’d never be able to escape if Lucifer knew where to find him, and he was desperate to never again see that infernal creature. He looked down at the plaza below. There was Lois, his own Mata Hari, brilliant, beautiful, and surprisingly treacherous to the last. She had truly been the ideal choice for the next Mrs. Lex Luthor. The unprepossessing dark shape wrapped around her must be that insolent giblet, Kent. Kent was beneath her, but Lex supposed that after him there was nowhere to go but down and the hack made as good a consolation prize as anyone else. He turned to face the detective who’d followed him outside.
“Did you know that this is the tallest building in Metropolis? Hmm? Didja?” It was all he could do to contain his laughter, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was so amusing.
“Luthor,
no!” The detective took a step toward him, waving an admonishing finger.
Lex had always hated being told what to do. He looked down, attempting to banish the guilt that had been trying to creep in and overwhelm him since the moment Lucifer’s face had turned into that— that monstrosity—and he’d realized everything he’d been taught as a boy about good and evil was true. Guilt for the people he’d killed. Guilt for the lives he’d destroyed. He pushed it away, knowing it would come back. Another reason to escape.
“Top of the world!” He leapt for freedom.
***
Lucifer stood unobtrusively at the edge of the crowd that had gathered in front of LexTower, watching tensely as the tiny figure of Lex Luthor plummeted from the uppermost floor. He could see Clark holding Lois from where he stood, so why didn’t he use his much-vaunted superpowers and save the man? Was he— like Lucifer— simply letting Luthor get what he so richly deserved?
Somehow Lucifer doubted it.
At the last moment, he saw Clark strain to take off and sighed. Something was wrong. And if his reading of Clark’s character was right, Clark would blame himself for not saving the man, no matter how justified his death had been.
“Damn.”
There was little doubt in Lucifer’s mind that his revelations of divinity had played at least some part in Luthor’s inelegant swan dive. In fact, he rather thought he owed Clark an apology— although how he could have predicted that Clark would be somehow unable to prevent the billionaire from becoming a messy puddle on the footpath was beyond him.
Finding an unoccupied alleyway, he let his wings unfurl. He’d make certain that Luthor’s soul remained exactly where it should be— in a private cell in Hell. It was the least he could do for a friend, after all.
End
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