Work Text:
A/N: Originally posted on Ao3 under rudderless in an ocean of stars (the_space_between_stars).
"Miss Luthor?" It's her secretary- a sweet, well-meaning young woman barely out of college. "I was just getting ready to leave. Should I call you a car?"
"No, Jess, it's fine. I'll do it myself. Just shut the lights, will you?"
"Of course, Miss Luthor." Her fingers are already moving towards the light switch, accustomed to her boss' odd request.
She smiles at the girl, hoping that the distance between them hides the fact that the expression never reaches her eyes. "Good night."
"Good night, Miss Luthor." The lights go off, and Jess leaves, shutting the door behind her with a final nod towards Lena.
And just like that, Lena finds herself alone, ensconced in the shadows of the office that once belonged to her brother. Now it's hers- the company, the legacy, the blame for his actions. She wonders what else she's inherited from her brother.
Does she share in his darkness just as she shares in his name?
There was a time when the Luthor siblings were inseparable. In their youth, their bond had been one of Lena's greatest sources of pride. They were LenaandLex, so singular an entity that when she'd been sent away to boarding school, she'd almost had to relearn how to respond to being called by her name and her name alone.
Now, the ties that bind her to her brother feel less like a gift and more like a curse. A leaden noose around her throat that tightens with every passing day until one morning, she wakes up only to realize that she's forgetten how to breathe without the weight of it.
And as badly as she wants to forget, as desperately as she longs to escape the shadow of her brother's sins, she simply can't.
Who would let her, anyway?
So she takes it, swallows the medicine meant for her brother though it burns her from the inside out. Lex, imprisoned in Cell Block X, can no longer harm the public. But the bars in his cell work both ways, and the public needs someone to blame. Someone to target, someone to crucify, someone to hurt as they were hurt.
They can't reach Lex. So they reach for Lena instead. And she lets them. Lets them drag her to the ground, lets them slake their thirst for vengeance on her blood. The public greedily accepts, and they take their pound of Luthor flesh with relish. They need it, need someone to pay before they can move forward, before they can begin to heal in the aftermath of the destruction her brother had wrought upon the citizens of Metropolis. She understands this in ways that they couldn't possibly imagine, and so she accepts their hatred with a smile.
She only wishes they could see that the extent of his sins hadn't ended with the earthquake. That they could realize how the ground had fallen out from beneath her feet as well during that horrible, horrible day.
Her brother's betrayal hadn't just broken Metropolis. It had also broken her, left her bruised and bleeding in his wake, yet another casualty of his war against the man of steel.
And it hurts, even now, an unhealed wound festering in her heart that she picks at and pokes, refusing to let it mend because she deserves this.
The pain comes in waves, like the crash of the tide against the shore- the sea merciless and unrelenting in its assault of the sand. It threatens to consume her, to drown her, to pull her from the safety of land and batter her against the jagged edges of the rocks that protrude from the waves until she is in pieces, scattered, like so many grains of sand.
Like falling snow slipping through grasping fingers, like smoke wafting from the end of a lit cigarette, like dandelion seeds dancing on the wind.
Intangible, untouchable, like fine mist on a cool morning.
The pain comes in waves, and she is utterly helpless against it.
She is was the closest person in this world to Lex, and she had failed to see his true colors until the bitter end. She deserves this. Deserves the crushing weight of the public's condemning stares, deserves the insults that they lobby against her, deserves the guilt that keeps her awake for days on end until she inevitably turns to the bottle of liquor tucked away in her desk drawer in search of a dreamless sleep. She knows this.
It is, perhaps, the one thing she is certain of in this world of aliens playing God and monsters wearing the faces of men.
The little girl she once was never thought her brother could would be one of them.
Until Kara Danvers.
She thinks she knows what to expect from the pair of them- after all, they weren't sent to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Just ask me what you want to ask me.
Clark Kent lives up to her expectations. He brings up her name within minutes of them meeting-
You wouldn't be asking me if my last name was 'Smith.'
Ah, but it's not. It's Luthor.
-and it takes all of her strength to smile and bite back instead of collapsing like a house of cards in a storm.
Kara Danvers does not. Kara Danvers looks at Clark Kent- the Clark Kent, golden boy of the Daily Planet- with reproach in her eyes. Perhaps it is that which prompts Lena into explaining herself.
I wasn't always. I was adopted when I was four. The person who made me feel most welcome was Lex. He made me proud to be a Luthor.
Kara Danvers, the blond-haired, blue-eyed personification of hope, looks at Lena- and sees. Sees past the iron wall of her family name, the steel chains of her brother's legacy, the over-confident facade that she works so hard to project.
Kara Danvers looks at her, and becomes the first- the only- person to have ever looked at her as though she is more- than just her name, than the role she has been given in the shadow of her brother, than the person she has been forced into becoming in order to survive.
I'm just a woman trying to make a name for herself outside of her family. You understand that.
She makes it sound like a demand because she can't bring herself to admit- to herself, to Kara, she isn't sure what makes her so afraid- that it's a question.
Kara smiles.
Yeah.
She lets out the breath she didn't even realize she was holding, walks over to the shelf, and hands them the flash drive.
They leave, and as she watches them go, her gaze firmly fixed on the blonde's back, she feels the noose around her neck loosen- not by much, but just enough.
Enough for a part of her she didn't even realize was still alive to maybe- just maybe- remember how it once felt to breathe freely and live in a world outside of the shadow of her family's sins.
And deep inside her chest, something begins to thaw.
A/N: Leave a review, house a displaced alien from a dead planet.
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