“Well,” he said after a moment. “Are you real? ‘Cause if I’m going mad now, I don’t want to be the last to know about it.” He smiled in a knife-like flash.

Clark stared at him and swallowed, trying to ignore the taste in his mouth. “You’re not,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I’m real.”

“Oh. Good,” he said dispassionately. He put his chin on his arms and went on studying Clark. He seemed completely engrossed by him. Clark could hardly stop staring as well.

This is me; the panicked thought kept running though his mind. He’s me. He can’t be. No, this is wrong! This can’t be happening!

“Genetic sequencing, tissue samples, testing his abilities, his body chemistry… Very few of them are painless… What’s been done to him is inhuman…”

Lex’s words came back to him suddenly. He thought he’d been expecting the worst, only to find out what the worst truly was.

“Who are you?” his double asked suddenly.

“My name’s Clark.” He hesitated and then felt he had to go on. “We’re brother’s… in a way.”

He stared at Clark, his eyes going wide. “I have a brother…” he said slowly.

“Yeah, in a way…” Clark tried to explain. “It’s hard to explain…” He glanced at the ceiling briefly and remembered that Lex had said it was a one way mirror of sorts used for observation. They hadn’t discussed it, but Clark guessed that explaining everything to his double in front of the LuthorCorp scientists might not be a good thing. He tried to focus his eyes so he could see through it, but try as he might, the glass remained opaque. His double saw what he was doing and shook his head.

“Won’t work: there’s lead in all the walls and ceiling. Keeps me from watching them. They don’t like when I watch them.” He stared at Clark intently. “I never had a brother before.”

“I never had one either,” Clark admitted. “What’s your name?”

His double bowed his head and seemed to shrink into himself. “Never had one of those either. Nobody ever bothered to give me one.” He frowned and then looked up, wondering. “How did you get one?”

“My parents gave it to me,” Clark said, surprised. He’d never even been given a name, he wondered to himself. It was such a simple thing, and he’d never even had one. “You never knew them, did you?” he asked, trailing off.

He thought for a moment and then said, “How about Joseph,” he suggested. “It’s my middle name; Clark Joseph Kent, so maybe for you, Joseph Clark Kent. Maybe they would have picked that.”

“Joseph?” his double tried it out quietly. His double stared at him and then looked up nervously. He moved closer to Clark and whispered quietly, “Are you going to take me to them?” Clark stared at the helpless, desperate look in his eye and before he could think better of it, shook his head.

Joseph saw it though and he let himself fall back, clearly devastated. Emotions flickered across his face, too fast to register, as he stared at his lap. “No, you’re not. Of course not,” he muttered sullenly and gave Clark an angry look.

“No,” Clark tried to explain, glancing up at the ceiling. He could just imagine the people watching them up there, taking down every word they said. “I didn’t know you were here until a little while ago. I never even knew about you.” Joseph avoided his eyes and stared at the floor. “And I don’t know if I could take to them; I’m trying to get back to them myself.”

“Why did they leave me here?” his brother asked suddenly. The question stopped Clark because it was one he’d asked himself countless times before. Then even more surprisingly, he found himself able to answer.

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“They didn’t want to; but something happened, something they couldn’t control,” he said quietly, the words coming from someplace deep inside of him. “And now they’re gone and you’re here. If they could see you, if they could talk to you, I know they’d tell you how much they loved you, and how much they wished they could be here for you.” He paused and then said, “When I heard that I had a brother, that’s why I came here. I’ve heard that’s what brother’s do.”

His double blinked in surprise and stared at him, the metal on his patch glinting. He seemed completely lost and confused by what Clark was telling him. Lex had warned him this would be the hardest part, getting his trust. Brutalized, picked apart by science, all his life, not one person showing him any affection at all; it was a wonder he was sane enough to even talk.

But I guess I’ve got a better chance of doing it than anyone else, Clark thought as he watched him. After all, if he can’t learn to trust me, who else is left?

“Joseph…” his brother said finally, trying it out slowly. His hand reached up to rub at the band on his face absently. “Joseph,” he tried it again, and Clark was thrilled to see him smiling a little. He saw the hand go up to rub at the band again.

“Does that hurt?” he asked quietly. Not able to stop himself, he reached out to touch it, but Joseph flinched away, his hand coming up wildly. They touched briefly and–

Pain. Pain and noise echoing through his head, rebounding off his skull, and drilling into his ears. He could hear voices, disjointed and mixed together, babbling together incoherently.

When did he start melting things by looking at him? When did that happen? I was sitting in health class and it just… happened you know. I don’t know, something must have jumpstarted it! We’ve got to find the way to turn it on, Clark, before we can figure out how to turn it off. Can’t we do something about it? We’re studying it now!

It was agonizing, like having his mind dragged through someone’s private nightmare. And the more it went on, the more fragmented it became.

I’ve got it under control… We’ve got it under control… Never let this happen again, I want him to learn what happens when he… three fence-posts, our scarecrow, and a mailbox later… We’re planning something about that… An extraction, best way to study it, and teach him a lesson… He won’t try it again, that’s for sure…

Then there was a stabbing, blinding pain in his eye. It was on fire, every nerve ending screaming. He threw his hand up instinctually to cover it and the connection was broken.

Clark found himself lying on the floor at the other end of the cell. He could feel his heart pounding away in his chest. His eye burned dully, but didn’t feel like it was being boiled in acid anymore. Shakily, he pulled himself to his feet and looked across the cell. Joseph was getting to his feet as well, looking equally pale and nauseas. “What was that?” Clark asked, stunned.

Joseph crouched down, shivering suddenly. He touched the metal patch on his face and shivered again. Clark stared at him and was surprised to see that he was crying slowly, the tears dripping one side of his face. “I felt it again,” he whispered. He stared up at Clark. “When they took it… I felt it happen…” he clasped his hand to his face, covering the patch and let out a dull scream. “Why? What happened?”

“I don’t know…” Clark said. He watched Joseph and swallowed, touching the skin under his own eye briefly. “I felt it too. I heard them talking about it… but how?”

Joseph looked up at him, frowning in confusion. He dashed away his tears with one arm and stared at him. “You heard them? But you weren’t here…”

“No… but you were.” Clark stared back at him. “And there was more… there were things I remembered… Did you hear anything?”

Joseph frowned harder and looked away. “Something about a scarecrow…” he said slowly. “You had a scarecrow?” he asked, confused.

“On our farm,” Clark said, distracted. Those had been his memories of when he had learned to control his heat vision, he realized. But it hadn’t just been them alone, for some reason, he had seen Joseph’s memories as well. But why, he had to wonder. They were his memories, why would Joseph be able to see them?

But in another world, they might have been Joseph’s memories after all, he thought suddenly. They were the same person after all, maybe not psychologically, but physically identical. Maybe that was all it took, physical contact to make a bridge between them. There was only one way to test it. Clark started to reach out towards him, but then Joseph moved slightly away, pulling his sleeve up his arm in the process.

There were scars running up the side of his arm, some smaller, like little burns from a cigarette, to much larger ones that looked like charred rings around his arms. And everywhere, dotting his arm, were red, little scabs, the marks of countless needles.

“I don’t… Don’t want to remember that…” Joseph said slowly, pulling his sleeve down. Clark nodded after a moment and lowered his hand, feeling sick to his stomach. He moved away from Joseph quietly until he was sitting against the opposite wall.

“I didn’t mean for that…” he started to apologize. “I didn’t know that would happen.”

Joseph looked at him and shrugged. “I’m used to pain,” he said in a dead sounding voice. Clark stared at him sadly. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking, that could have been me sitting right there. It could still be me…

How much had gone wrong to change this world so much, he wondered. How much, or how little. Whatever it was, it had made all the difference here; to him, to so many lives. They might never know.

“Did you really have a scarecrow?” Joseph asked suddenly, breaking through his thoughts. Clark stared at him, surprised to see that he was smiling.

“Yeah, on our farm. Why, what’s so funny,” he asked as Joseph’s grin only got wider.

“Like in ‘The Wizard of Oz’?” Joseph asked, smiling.

“Wait, how do you know, ‘The Wizard of Oz’?”

Joseph nodded towards a flat panel on the wall. “They let me watch movies sometimes if I’m quiet. ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is my favorite.” He smiled even broader. “Do you really have a farm? Like Dorothy?”

“Honest. You do know we’re in Kansas right now too, right?” he couldn’t help grinning in spite of everything. The look of wonder on Joseph’s face made him laugh out loud briefly. The sound hung in the air, seemingly out of place in this tiny, hi-tech prison. For a moment, Joseph seemed almost frightened at the sound of it, but then he smiled shyly at Clark.

“I never knew we were in Kansas,” he admitted, though very quietly.

“Well, it’s not like any Kansas I ever knew,” Clark said back to him, his smile fading a little.