It was only about an hour and a half when help finally arrived. The scientist they spoke to earlier—now visibly horrified—found the collapsed hallway, the dead plant husks, and finally Lex and Lucinda trapped on the far side of the wing.
The extraction took another thirty minutes. And true to his earlier claim, Lex stood there in the cold night air not even shivering, while Lucinda sounded like she was inhaling her last soul fragment back into her lungs.
"Lucy, the hospital is a couple minutes away. You should get checked," Lex said, tone dipped in genuine concern.
The helicopter touched down behind the Luthor mansion. Darius hurried over, extending his arms to help Lucinda down—mostly because her legs were far too short to reach the landing skid without risking a dramatic face-plant.
Lucinda shook her head the moment she touched solid ground. Lex's coat was still draped over her shoulders like a trophy she had absolutely not earned.
"I'll be fine, Mr. Luthor, sir," she said, sniffling hard enough to echo.
"It's Lex, Lucy," he corrected patiently.
Darius nearly choked on his own suppressed laugh. A coat around a woman's shoulders and a first-name pass? Scandal. Suspicion. Possibly romance. Definitely gossip for the staff lounge.
Lex shot him a look. Darius immediately straightened like an ironing board and stared into the void.
"Alright," Lex said, returning his attention to Lucinda. "Go get some rest."
He gestured toward the mansion entrance.
"What about you?"
"I need to handle some… business arrangements," he smiled enough to make her understand what business he's talking about.
Lucinda nodded and hurried inside. The moment she stepped into the foyer, Molly launched at her left arm like a cheery barnacle.
Lucinda froze. Molly's grin was so wide it bordered on a health hazard.
"You have Mr. Lex's coat," she whispered with enough excitement to power Metropolis. "And I heard you two were stuck inside a room together."
Lucinda squinted at the blinding smile.
"So, did something happen?"
"Yes," Lucinda deadpanned. "We almost died, Molly. I think I saw my ancestors. One more hour and I'd be watching you from the heavens."
"Oh." Molly's face fell. "I heard it was a gas leak. Good thing you're both fine."
Lucinda blinked. Right. Standard Luthor Cover-Up Protocol. No mentions of murderous vines or meteorites.
"Yeah," Lucinda said, nodding. "Very lucky. Almost-too-lucky."
"You should rest," Molly insisted when Lucinda let out a chest-deep cough. "I'll bring tea and honey. No arguments."
Lucinda trudged in her room and slipped off Lex's coat, placing it on the bed with ceremonial care. She stared at it for thirty long seconds. Then melted into a full-blown meltdown.
"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!" she screeched, pacing back and forth. "What have you done, Lucinda?! How are you going to fix this now?!"
She grabbed her head, froze dramatically, then muttered, "Well… technically, I am fixing it. Lex and Clark's friendship is literally Smallville's emotional backbone—" She groaned. "But it's still wrong! So wrong! Very, very—"
Lucinda flinched when someone knocked. "Oh, Molly, thank god—" She yanked the door open but on the other side isn't Molly. It was Clark Kent looking like he'd sprinted through a cornfield and three moral dilemmas just to get here.
"Clark—what are you doing here?" she asked, fighting the urge to slam the door quickly to avoid another ruined dialogues, but of course she hadn't, she only stood there.
"Molly said you were back, so I came," he said quickly. Too quickly. He slipped inside without waiting for an invitation and shut the door behind him like he was hiding from the FBI or probably Lionel's men.
"I'm really sorry for barging in, I know this is weird—" he said, wringing his hands. "But I really need your help."
His voice cracked. The farm boy was genuinely distressed.
"Why? What happened?" she asked, suddenly anxious.
Clark cleared his throat, looked everywhere except her face, then finally blurted,
"You know about my X-ray vision, right?"
"Yeah?" she said. "What about it?"
"I—I can't control it." His shoulders tensed. "Dad tried helping me but I keep seeing… things. Things I'm not supposed to see. And Mom thinks maybe you could help."
He was blushing. Hard.
"You mean Lana's naked back?" Lucinda grinned, wiggling her brows.
Clark erupted into a shade of red previously undocumented by science. She giggled—briefly—before a cold realization smacked her across the face.
Clark shouldn't be struggling anymore by now. By this point, he should've already stabilized his vision—right before Tina Greer attacked him… which should've happened last night. But did that even happen or the plot had completely been ruined?
"Of course you did, Lucinda!" she internally wailed. "Why ruin one timeline when you can ruin the entire franchise?!"
She scratched her head, marched to the closet, and grabbed the pink kid's hair clip Lex had given her. The one that came with the Barbie underwear no adult should ever mention aloud.
Lucinda returned, hiding the clip in her hand.
"The secret is focus," she said, trying to sound wise. "Blur your vision. Then unblur it. Now—guess what I'm holding."
Clark grimaced. "Wow, Lucy. That was very helpful," but then he obediently concentrated on her hand.
"Squint, Clark," she instructed when Clark started glaring on her hand.
He then squinted. But then his eyes suddenly widened in absolute horror—before he whipped his head away so fast his neck probably cracked.
"C-Can you—move your hand away from your body, please?" he stammered, voice cracking like a puberty remix.
Lucinda froze. Then the realization hit her like a frying pan.
"OMG!" she gasped. "You didn't just—did you—?! You litt—!"
She stopped herself from calling him "little," because first of all, Clark Kent was decidedly not little in any dimension physics could measure.
She groaned and rubbed her temples. Why was she even entrusted with a superhero's puberty arc? "Clark, focus on my hand. Not—NOT ANYWHERE ELSE." Her voice cracked like a teacher on her last strand of sanity. "Now follow my hand."
Lucinda deliberately stretched her arm far from her body, sweeping her hand sideways like she was conducting a very reluctant orchestra, then slowly moved it toward him.
Clark's eyes tracked the motion, and little by little, the tension on his face shifted. "Lucy… I think it's working." A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "It's a pink hair clip."
"Really, Clark?" she deadpanned. "Or did you really just come here to inspect my body?"
The effect was immediate. His control snapped like a twig under a tractor. His x-ray vision vanished so fast he physically flinched.
"My goodness, Lucy—" he gasped, horrified. "I didn't— I wasn't—"
"I'm merely distracting you," she sighed, rubbing her forehead. "If you were focused, you wouldn't even hear me."
Clark's ears turned so red they practically glowed through the dim lighting. He gave her a sheepish, boyish grin— the kind that would later ruin Lex's entire life, actually.
"Just keep doing that," she instructed. "The focusing part, not the accidental nudity part. Once your brain gets used to the feeling of narrowing your sight, you'll be able to control it."
She tossed the pink clip at him. Clark caught it effortlessly, because Smallville's golden boy could catch a bullet if it politely asked.
"You can use that," she said. "Familiar items help anchor your vision."
Clark studied the clip like it was a sacred relic. "Thank you, Lucy. Really."
"You better leave before Lex arrives," she added, turning back to fold Lex's coat on her bed. Her voice softened, just a little. "He'll get suspicious."
Clark frowned. "Why? He's my friend. He'd be fine knowing I'm here."
Lucinda slowly looked up, her expression patient, resigned— and impossibly tired for someone who wasn't even in the right universe. "Clark. You're usually here for him, not for me. Even if he trusts me because I saved your mom… he'll always wonder. That's just who he is."
Clark's face softened in understanding. "You're right. I should go."
He headed toward the door, hand already on the knob, when Lucinda's voice called him back.
"Oh, and Clark."
He turned, eyes gentle. "Yeah?"
"Stay friends with Lex, okay?" she said with a smile so small it barely appeared—yet it carried weight, fear, hope, everything she couldn't say aloud.
Clark blinked, puzzled. Something unspoken hung between them, but he wasn't sure what. Still, he nodded.
"I will."
Night came, and Lucinda did what any self-respecting emotionally-conflicted woman would do: lie dramatically across her bed like she was auditioning for a Filipino Soap Opera. She groaned into her pillow for the seventh time that hour.
Molly—saint, menace, and number-one shipper—had even started bringing food to her room, still wearing that smug grin because every time she glanced at Lex's coat neatly folded on Lucinda's bedside table, she made a noise suspiciously close to ehehehehe.
By 6 PM, Lucinda had rotted long enough. Molly and Jess didn't even let her do any chores, saying Lex might get mad. Lucinda had no choice but to leave. She couldn't take all of their delusions, she might snap and throw herself in the psychiatric ward.
Worse still, she had forgotten to look for the ghost child back in the lab, a realization that deepened the hollow ache in her chest, knowing she might never see any ghost again. She had been too preoccupied with the White Kryptonite—obsessed, really. How had it even ended up in this verse?
Probably… the same way she had found herself in Smallville.
Lucinda perched on the big window in boredom, chin on her knees, hair in a tragic mess that she refused to fix out of principle. That was when she saw it—him—pulling up in a new car.
A new car. Naks! Because apparently Lex Luthor's emotional coping mechanism was filing paperwork, pushing people away, and buying vehicles like they were discount items on sale.
He stepped out with the kind of elegance that should be illegal at this hour. Tonight he wore a fitted black turtleneck and a long black coat that swayed in slowmotion in the evening wind—it's giving quiet and mysterious ferson vibe.
The street was already swallowed in darkness, but somehow—someway—his polished bald head still managed to glow. Lucinda didn't understand the physics behind it. Perhaps it was pride. Perhaps it was divine intervention. Perhaps it was imported wax. Who knew.
He paused, one hand on his coat, as though something pricked his instincts. Maybe he sensed her gaze. Maybe he just wanted to look cool. Maybe he was simply double-checking he didn't leave the stove on in his lab. Hard to say with him.
But then—he looked up and smiled when he saw her.
Just a small, soft curve of his lips. Nothing dramatic. Nothing over-the-top.
Yet Lucinda felt the universe tilt.
She swallowed hard. She had seen Lex's face countless times—on TV, on posters, and in those high-definition interviews. Him playing as Lex Luthor and him as Michael Rosenbaum with hair. She'd even seen him in person now, close enough to count his eyelashes.
But this?
How in the sacred laws of attraction had he become this beautiful?
He wasn't sharp-featured like Clark, whose face practically screamed I lift cars for fun while saving Lana. No, Lex was soft. Soft angles. Soft eyes. Soft smile. Soft everything—except the part where he emotionally destroyed her without her even knowing.
And that softness… that was the problem. Because it made him so painfully, devastatingly beautiful in her eyes.
Her heart suddenly bolted into overdrive, thundering so violently she grabbed the windowsill like she might pass out. "Oh no," she whispered, genuinely alarmed. "Not cardiac arrest from immaculate bald male beauty. Not today."
Down below, Lex lifted a hand, palm facing her, a casual greeting at chest level—simple, understated, but somehow intimate. The kind of gesture that said, Yes, I see you. And I'm glad you look fine. Or something far from that. Must only be Lucinda's delulu.
The moment Lex stepped inside, Lucinda froze, then slapped both hands over her face.
"Oh shit," she hissed, smacking her chest like she could beat the feelings out of it. "The first plan was to not ruin the plot, Lucinda. And you still did! The second plan was to preserve the friendship—FRIENDSHIP, you emotional gnome!"
She gasped. "There was NO third plan on the list! He's merely a character! Stop improvising disaster."