Endless Legacy Ch. 7 (DC Comics) (Patreon)

A/N: In which a choice is made~

-x-X-x-

He doesn’t think Mercy will hurt him or anything like that, but he can’t just say nothing. Damage Control it is. Making himself squirm a little bit, Lucien puts a worried look on his face, even as Mercy holds his cock in her hand.

“I… it started this morning. I don’t really know how to describe it if I’m being honest…”

Mercy’s eyes narrow for a moment, but then her gaze softens as she sees exactly what he wants her to see. That is, a young man in over his head and scared of being found out. Technically, that’s exactly what he is right now, but at the same time… he has power he didn’t have before. If he wanted to in fact, he could knock Mercy out right here and right now. He could even kill her with his abilities.

He won’t do that. He doesn’t want to murder anyone, even knowing that he’s sending him on to the beautiful Death of the Endless. Nor does he want to make Mercy his enemy by attacking her. Still, he can’t tell her EVERYTHING. That would be the height of foolishness. If he told her about Death and the Time Travel, she’d probably think he was insane and have him committed to an Asylum in a heartbeat.

“Try and do your best, Lucien. You’ve had a long day. Just tell me what’s going on.”

… At the same time, he knew Mercy was interrogating him, possibly for her own purposes, but more than likely to take information back to his father. Sure, she was being quite gentle about it, but there was no denying that this was an interrogation. Luckily, he could rely on his powers to make himself seem completely sincere… even as he decided to lie straight to Mercy’s face.

“Ever since I woke up this morning… I’ve been able to feel things I couldn’t before. I can… it’s like I have this extra sense that I didn’t have. When I touch someone, I can see inside of them. I can understand every aspect of their biology.”

It’s not technically a lie. But it is an omission of the truth. He’s not intending to tell her the rest. The full breadth of his powers is… frightening. Lucien understands that. If he tells Mercy everything about what he can do and she delivers that information back to his father, her actual employer… than Lucien is up shit’s creek without a paddle. Lex Luthor will have him strapped down to an examination table in a lab somewhere before Lucien can even blink… or, in the event that Lucien manages to use his powers to escape, he’ll be on the run, with none of the resources his father has at his disposal and ALL of them turned towards his capture.

At that point, his options will be entirely limited. That’s why Lucien chooses not to give Mercy anything more than the extrasensory part of his powers. And by using the rest of his powers, he can perfectly regulate his reactions and biological responses, making it look as though he’s telling the truth even when he’s holding lots back.

“That’s how I saw the nanochip in my father’s head. It was a foreign entity, one that my power couldn’t help but notice. And I guess… I got too curious for my own good. S-So now you know… please don’t tell my father.”

Mercy studies him, as he knew she would. She’s Lex Luthor’s right-hand woman. She’s the fixer and bodyguard for one of the richest, most dangerous men on the planet. Lucien has no misconceptions about what that means. Her eyes narrow as she takes in his visage, with Lucien affecting a perfect mixture of earnest honesty and fear. Finally, Mercy tilts her head to the side… and nods.

“If he asks me point blank, I won’t lie to him Lucien. But I won’t offer up the information freely either.”

That’s probably the best he can get. Lucien trusts her too. Thanks to her touching his cock as she speaks, he has something of a biological lie detector going through her right now. She’s not trying to deceive him when she says what she says. So long as Lex doesn’t ask her point blank, Lucien’s secret is safe.

Then, quite suddenly, Mercy’s hand leaves his cock. The blonde rises from the bed and begins getting dressed just like that. Lucien blinks at the abruptness of her departure, watching in silence as she puts her clothes back on, covering up that gorgeous body of hers. Once she’s done, the blonde femme fatale pauses and looks back at him, a slight frown marring her features.

“Was there anything else you wanted to tell me, Lucien?”

Blinking, Lucien spends a moment trying to think about why she would ask that. But in the end, he can’t. He just shakes his head.

“No, that’s it… that’s my big secret. Thank you for… f-for everything, Mercy.”

He blushes and ducks his head, playing up the fact that she just took his virginity and what not, along with extracting his great big secret from him. By all rights, he’s playing his role to the hilt. In fact, he would make an excellent movie actor, thanks to his powers.

However, when he looks back up, Mercy’s face appears a little drawn, her eyes slightly tight around the edges. In the end, she sharply nods… and leaves the apartment without another word. Lucien watches her go somewhat confused, wondering why she was suddenly so… distant. After what they’d done together, he hadn’t expected her to just… shut down around him like that.

Was it solely because she now knew he was a metahuman? What he’d told her… could it be that she was a little violated because of what he’d said his powers could do? But then, the Mercy he knew wasn’t squeamish as far as he was aware. Pushing himself off of the bed, Lucien realizes it’s just about time for lunch. He’s still thinking about Mercy’s strange reactions near the end of their encounter as he pulls up his phone and orders delivery of his favorite food.

It’s about ten minutes later, while he’s still waiting for said food to arrive, that it hits him. Lucien’s eyes go wide and he has to set his phone down or else he’ll throw it.

“… FUCK!”

He’s an idiot. He’s a complete and utter idiot. Never mind that he clearly inherited some of his father’s genius, never mind that he FELT like he could think more clearly than he’d ever been able to in his last life… he’d just fucked up big time and in the process proved to himself that he was FAR from infallible.

He’d lied to Mercy and withheld information about the full extent of his abilities, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was, he’d lied to Mercy in such a dumb fashion. Trying to hide the full extent of his powers from the blonde was… it was the height of idiocy. Worst of all? She knew he’d lied to her. No wonder she’d been so cold and businesslike to him at the end there.

Maybe if it was just the tests she’d seen him pass with flying colors, Lucien could have gotten away with telling her that he only had extrasensory abilities. But even that was pushing it. However, Lucien had also decided to go out of his way to exhaust Mercy with his cock. He’d taken the gorgeous blonde femme fatale for a real ride, pounding her until she was putty beneath him and fucking her nonstop until he’d really driven home his sexual prowess. All on what was supposed to be his first time ever having sex.

And she was supposed to buy that his metahuman ability was only SENSING biology? Mercy wasn’t an idiot. She wasn’t fucking stupid. She’d know something was up with that shitty explanation of his. It didn’t matter that he could perfectly regulate his biological reactions to make it look like he was telling the absolute truth and hiding nothing from her. Because the proof was in the pudding. Mercy knew he wasn’t telling her the full truth about his powers because she’d experienced more of his abilities than anyone else.

Shit… he was fucking screwed, wasn’t he? Lucien glances at the door, fully expecting one of his father’s hit squads to bust it down and come for him at any moment. He needed to run, probably. Except… except he still had her promise at the end there. When she’d still been holding onto his cock, he’d felt the truth of her words through every biological reaction she’d been having at the time.

Lie detectors weren’t full proof, but he thought his brand of lie detection was pretty damn strong. And Mercy had to have known he was withholding information from her then.

In his mind’s eye, Lucien can see the bridge he’d been trying to build with his father’s right hand woman. And it’s on fire. But… it’s not completely burnt just yet. Just a little charred. Meanwhile, he thinks she still believes him about the nanochip. Which means Mercy still believes THIS Lex Luthor is a clone that she wasn’t informed of and her real boss is in the wind, doing something he didn’t tell her about.

If Lucien’s bridge with Mercy is charred, then Lex’s is in a similar state right now. He thinks… he thinks Mercy won’t tell his father about him. Certainly, she won’t bother telling his father’s CLONE a damn thing about Lucien. It’ll depend on what excuse the real Lex Luthor has when he gets back, Lucien imagines. But for now… for this moment at least, he’s in the clear. He doesn’t have to run.

He still screwed up though. Telling Mercy about Death and his first life was definitely not the right call, but being honest about his powers might have been. Shit…

In the end, he spends the rest of the day beating himself up for his mistake. He also toys around with his powers a little bit, but his heart isn’t fully in it. When he finally goes to sleep, he finds himself tossing and turning, expecting to get taken by someone at any moment.

-x-X-x-

When he wakes up again, it’s not in his bed nor in his apartment, and for a moment Lucien assumes he was kidnapped in his sleep after all. But then he looks around the meadow he is in… and knows immediately that he’s not actually awake. He’s still asleep. This is a dream.

“Hello again, Lucien.”

Death of the Endless steps out from behind a tree, leaning against it with a soft smile on her face. Lucien jumps to his feet, excited to see her for all of a moment before remembering how he felt when he finally went to sleep.

“Death! I… I didn’t expect to see you again so soon…”

It’d only been a day, after all. Even if that day felt like an eternity. Chuckling softly, Death pushes off of the tree trunk and walks over to him. Lucien resists the temptation to reach out and grab her… until that is, she grabs him by the wrists and places his hands on her hips. Then, he finally gives in to the urge to pull her into a kiss, a giggle leaving her lips just before he presses his own lips into her mouth. Her arms wrap around his neck, and Lucien groans as he makes out with… Death herself.

It feels like all of his worries wash away, but it’s a brief sensation at best. As soon as they pull apart, Death’s next words bring his previous thoughts back.

“I won’t be able to visit you every night, Lucien, but… my brother Dream was kind enough to set up this meeting for me, so we could have a little get together. This is his realm, you see. I wanted to check in on you and congratulate you for surviving your first day back~”

Flushing, Lucien scowls as he averts his gaze.

“… I might have survived one day, but I don’t know about the next. I already fucked up, Death. Mercy, my father’s chief henchwoman, knows I lied to her. I don’t know what she’s going to do in the long term with that knowledge.”

Death shrugs her bared shoulders at that, eyes twinkling in amusement.

“Mortals are mercurial creatures at the best of time, dear Lucien. She will make her decisions and you will have to respond accordingly. Still, I don’t think for a second that you’d go down without a fight, even if your father did try to make you his latest lab experiment. Would you?”

Clenching his jaw, curling a hand into a fist, Lucien shakes his head.

“No. I wouldn’t let him do that to me. I’d… I’d do whatever was necessary to stop it.”

Death smiles knowingly at that.

“You can reset again, if you were wondering. If you die, I will have to send you back to reincarnate into yourself once more, and I will let you choose precisely where you land. However… I must urge caution against using this ability of yours too often. You must not seek death, Lucien.”

Lucien frowns at that, parsing what she’s saying, processing her words… but also catching on her final sentence above all else.

“… Why not? Aren’t I… whatever I am to you? A Death Vortex or whatever?”

A fond chuckle leaves Death of the Endless’ lips and she shakes her head.

“Not a Death Vortex, my dear. What you are to me, and what Dream Vortexes are to my brother… are not a one-to-one comparison. But yes… you are mine, Lucien. Even still, there is a limit to everything. Even you. I do not know how many times you can die before your soul is so fragmented that you lose the memories of all the lives you lived before. A hundred? A thousand? A hundred thousand? I would rather we take our time in finding out, my dear.”

Fragmented? Memory loss? Oh, that sounded bad. Death was right. If dying too much eventually destroyed his memories… he’d stop being himself. And that would be bad.

“… So I probably shouldn’t wake up tomorrow and kill myself so I can reset to this morning and do everything better…”

Death shakes her head.

“I would say not, no. You… navigated your first day back as well as can be expected of you, Lucien. Perhaps you made your mistakes… but nothing that can’t be fixed… without resorting to a final measure.”

Even if it wouldn’t BE such a final measure for him… he nevertheless knows she’s right. Sighing, Lucien’s shoulders slump as he resigns himself to living with the consequences of his actions. Mercy knew he’d lied to her. That was just something he’d have to deal with going forward.

A moment later, he DOES perk up however, looking at Death hopefully.

“Do we… have time for anything besides talking?”

The beautiful, oh-so-pale personification of Death grins at him at that, her black lips curling into a toothy smile.

“Always, my beloved. How shall you claim Death, hm?”

Lucien blushes profusely at that. What a question…

-x-X-x-

A/N: Just to be clear, just because Lucien beats himself up in the text doesn't mean I'm projecting his feelings onto you guys. While I was writing it, part of me worried that some of you would feel like I was calling YOU idiots for voting for Option 3. This is NOT my intention. Lucien just has some internalized issues to get over from how he was treated in his first life.

But yes, after taking Mercy to pound town like he did, there was no way she wasn't going to be able to extrapolate 'extrasensory' ability into something vaguely approximating his true power. She still doesn't know the full extent, but she's smart enough to realize he's lying to her and more than that, can hide he's lying to her.

Hope that feels like it makes sense to people!