You Trap Me
Rating: PG-13/T
Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Angst/Drama
Summary: Fill for the hc_bingo challenge, prompts "Orphans" and "Poisoning". Tess has started to recall some memories from her time at St. Louise. Warning for Child Abuse.
Author's Note: Yes, yet another angsty, hurt-comforty dive into Tess's screwed-up life. She's my favorite character, all right? I write her best.
Disclaimer: I don't own Smallville. It belongs to Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and the CW. The title comes from the song "Pretty Poison", by 12 Stones.
()()
After the visit to the orphanage, dim memories came in flashes. Tess found herself cycling through a slow-moving, hellish parade of flashbacks. She remembered exactly how bad her time at St. Louise's Orphanage had really been.
The training sessions were where Tess, back when she was gentle, quiet little Lutessa, struggled the most. Where Granny Goodness, with that sickening smile on her face, would put a knife in her hand and tell her to cut the dummy that would one day be another person. Tess would give a half-hearted try and then start crying, "I can't, I can't," with a slight whine to her already high-pitched little girl's voice.
"Just try, Lutessa." So sweet, so positively goddamn saccharine-
"No!"
Granny did not like crying. She did not like to see "her girls" upset. She would coo and coddle and try to comfort them. But Tess found that even her younger self had been fairly intolerant of bullshit and resisted, pushing Granny away and curling up in a corner to wail and howl. "Lutessa, Lutessa, you mustn't cry now-"
In her moments of real spite, Tess would scream louder, because though her fear of Granny Goodness had paralyzed her most of the time she had had her moments of bravery. She sensed the control over her life, her actions, her future though she wasn't at an age where she could fully comprehend it. Something in her yearned to rebel, to fight back.
The girls that weren't rebellious screamed and cried because they were scared, or in pain, or they still remembered and missed their parents. And there were many girls there, a few of which Tess actually pinpointed as the women on Granny's wall of successful girls. The noise might have become unbearable if Granny hadn't had her ways of keeping them all quiet.
"Do you need some medicine?"
That one sentence was enough to chill to the bone, enough to stop most fits of tears and screams in their tracks. Most of the time, the girls became quiet and withdrawn, whimpering as quietly as they could, wiping away the tears as they came. No one wanted the medicine. Everyone knew what the medicine was. Well, not really- they didn't know what it was so much as what it did.
But sometimes, Tess or one of the others would keep right on screaming. Sometimes from that rebellious instinct, other times because they just couldn't stop. That was when Granny would grab them by their chins, grip not outwardly imposing but still painfully firm, force their mouths open and pour the 'medicine' in; sometimes she enlisted the help of the older or more obedient girls.
The worst part about the 'medicine' was that it didn't work immediately, but you knew it would. When Granny let go and gave that smile, you would know it was only a matter of time until you started to feel the effects. Tess would sometimes crawl to her room and curl up on the bed, waiting for it to hit, or continue screaming herself hoarse until she couldn't anymore.
First it was light-headedness, and then dizziness. Then came the nausea, severe enough to be debilitating but, strangely, never severe enough to make them vomit (Granny would never do that, cleanliness was next to godliness after all). Sometimes, the shadows on the walls mutated into monsters that hovered over Tess and touched her with long, slimy fingers, but the 'medicine' had robbed her of her ability to scream.
It lasted for a minimum of two hours and a maximum of four. Once it was out of your system, you didn't move much. Any and all energy was gone for a fair amount of time, but Granny didn't care: She'd get your time eventually. Many girls she had their entire lives, until they were eighteen. She had plenty of opportunity to teach what she needed to teach.
Tess, as little Lutessa, had swung back and forth between hopeless depression and fierce determination; escape was impossible, but she had to do it. She didn't have a chance, but she had to take it anyway. Granny would make her pay if she tried to escape, but really, what could she do that she wasn't already?
The night of her almost-escape haunted Tess the most, because she could recall the desperation, the fear and most of all the hope that once again ended up being taken away from her, not for the first- or last- time. To come so close to freedom only to be defeated, to know she was being dragged back to that world of misery again- no wonder she was so screwed up.
The memories left Tess shaken, literally and metaphorically. They came at home, at both the Planet and the Watchtower, day and night, and were a rude and highly unpleasant interruption into her normal routine. She meditated on them, tried to process and deal with them as calmly as she could (Therapy was not an option, she'd get hauled off to the nearest asylum) and tried to move on with her life.
Still, Tess hated Granny Goodness for what she had done to her and all of those other girls, and hated Lionel twice as much for abandoning her with a complete lunatic. He cared enough to pull her out of the orphanage and put her into a foster home, but not enough to figure out what Granny was up to in the first place? She tried to deal, but Tess's hatred for Lionel grew more toxic.
More than anything, it deepened the rift between her and the others on the team. Not only was she a Luthor, but she had almost become a disciple of Darkseid. Had things gone differently, Tess might have been against them in a much darker way than she was when she'd been with Zod.
Tess would sit back and rub her temples and meditate on that alien, screaming little girl of her nightmares, wondered how all of that bravery and determination had gotten lost. Then she remembered how it was lost: Too many years of being used and abused and treated like dirt. Sweet little Lutessa had turned into Tess the corporate bitch, the monster, the murderer.
I should have died. I should have just lain down and died. It would have saved a lot of people a lot of trouble. In her darker moments, Tess was able to convince herself of that. She would have never hurt Lana or Oliver or Chloe or Lois or Clark, and Lex would have never had a vehicle to meet his ends after his supposed death. Zod might not have made the headway that he had. That was all on her.
You're not alone anymore.
Clark's words were a welcome intrusion that warmed Tess in a way that she hadn't been warmed in a long time. They implied friendship and support, and Clark was not the kind of person to offer something of that nature if he truly believed that you were an irredeemable, lost cause.
It gave Tess something like hope, and soothed Lutessa's sobs at the back of her mind.
-End