Lionel Luthor went to Smallville in search of the traveler, but in the mess of the meteor shower, he nearly lost his son. What if he had found the Kryptonian, and took the boy home, made him part of the family, raised him like a normal little boy. Takes place around season one (Clark age 12, Lex age 16) when his abilities first start to show up. Warning some hints of child abuse, molestation, swear words, Luthorcest (Clark aka Lucas Luthor and Lex) as well as a few other things.
Chapter One: in which Lucas Luthor decides to trust his older brother with a secret.
"I can't stand to
fly;
I'm not that naïve.
Men weren't meant to ride,
with
clouds between their knees.
I'm only a man in a silly red sheet,
digging for kryptonite on this one way street.
Only a man in a
funny red sheet,
looking for special things inside of me," John
Ondrasik.
Standing in the hallway watching as my father yells at Mr. Teague, I can't help feeling scared, even though I know I'm not supposed to be like that. He wouldn't like it. He'd be mad. Then the door bursts open and Dad storms out of the room with that usual angry look on his face, the one he gets right before yelling and throwing someone around or—hurt me, but he doesn't do any of those things now.
"Ready to go on an adventure, Son" he asks, in the nice voice. So I nod, and pretend I wasn't spying on him before. "Alright, where's your tie?" Then Dad gets down on his knees, bent low so our faces are level. "We are going on a helicopter ride to a friendly little town, called Smallville."
"The rest of the day is pretty much a blur, sorry," I explain as my brother sits, watching me with his cheeks puffed full of air. It's like there's something the kid wants to tell me, some big, important detail about his past. What Lucas doesn't know is that Dad—Lionel—didn't say anything to me or Mom, when he brought home the little raven-haired boy who smiled all the time, except that "his parents passed away, in the meteor shower. This poor, little tyke doesn't have anybody in the whole wide world."
"Technically I was unconscious when he found you, but according to his version of events, you were just standing there, bent over so you could touch my face. Then—I don't know. E waved down this farm couple and they drove the three of us to the hospital to get checked out—and when they released me, everyone went back to Metropolis, which is where we've been for the last nine years." Luke nods again, but his eyes are questioning, wide-open, and (maybe) a little scared.
"So the people from the farm didn't know who I was? They didn't know anything about my real family?" I have absolutely no idea what he's trying to get at, not that I really care all that much. Ever since the day we brought the kid home. Dad barely even looks at me—except in disgust and—but Lucas was everything he had ever wanted in a son, and couldn't have because I was born sick, and weak, and pathetic. The kid was strong, healthy, with a full head of hair. If Lionel could be forced to choose between his biological child and the one he found in a cornfield, it wouldn't be difficult.
"Look, I know adopted kids always wonder about their real parents but you—Lionel probably told them we were both his kids. Lying is second nature to him. Hell, he probably lies more easily than he tells the truth. Besides your real parents are dead. There's nothing to find out. They probably got disintegrated by a falling meteor," I said coldly, knowing it would make the kid cry, and not giving a damn. I knew I shouldn't hate my (adopted) little brother. After all, it wasn't his fault Lionel was a complete creep who pitted us against each other, making us fight for the tiniest scraps of affection. He can't control how strong he is, my baldness, my father's cruelty, or any of the situations we found ourselves in. None of what Lionel did to me, said to him, (or vice versa) was this little boy's fault. I knew all these things, but I hated my kid brother with a passion, and yet at the same time I was still ridiculously jealous of him. Lionel loved, loves him, or at least he acts that way to make us fight (and it works). So when Luke came up to me this afternoon and started asking all these questions about how he came to be part of our family, it's only natural for me to want to tell him to go away and leave me alone, but I don't.
"Did Dad say something to you?" I asked, carefully touching his shoulder. "Did he—touch—hurt you or. I don't know how to say this, but did Lionel. What exactly do you want?" I finally manage to spit out, running a hand over the flat surface of my own head. I feel like my brother might be working up the courage to tell me that our father is messing with him.
"I think there's something wrong with me," he blurts out, his big blue eyes unable to make contact with me.
"I know it's scary, and sometimes the stuff he dos it hurts, sometimes, and sometimes it feels good and bad at the same time but that doesn't mean you're a bad person or anything."
"What are you talking about?" he asks, as only a nine-year-old can.
"What are you talking about?" I ask, and then the kid takes me by the hand, practically dragging me down the hall, out to the yard. "I wanna show you something, but don't freak out…and don't tell Dad. No matter what, don't tell him any of this."
"Don't worry," I promise. "I'm almost as good at keeping secrets as he is. You probably are too, and if you're not, you will be someday. It's part of being a Luthor, a survival technique if you would." The kid stops when we get out to the yard, and looks around, sucks air in, and then does something I can't really explain. He sort of "zooms off" like a cartoon character, by which I mean, there is this loud sound, whoosh, and Lucas is gone. It's like he ran off, but at 30 or 40 miles an hour. And, before I can even stop and wonder what he's done, where he's gone, or how any of this is possible, he's back, with a Metropolis Sharks stadium dog in his hand. The field is more than fifteen miles away from our house, and there's no way he could have driven there, gone in, gotten the hot dog, and come back this quickly. He couldn't have had someone waiting, because the hot dog would be cold. I really don't know what to think. "How did you just—what did you do?" I ask, still in a bit of shock.
"I'm not completely sure. The first time it happened, I got really scared, and I freaked out so bad I didn't leave my room for a week, but I think I've got it under control now." He was always weird. Things have a tendency to break when he's around, and even though he's strange, nobody had tried to beat him up since Kindergarten when some bully pushed him, and nearly broke his neck when Luke pushed back. Still, that was a freak accident; at least I used to think it was.
"What do you mean, the first time it happened? Are you trying to tell me that you've been able to do this for a while? How long? How many times has this happened, and…you—think you have it under control? So what, there are still problems? What kind of problems? How did all of this happen in the first place? Why are you able to do these things?"
"I don't know. That's why I asked," he explains, looking up at me with big, bright eyes, a mixture of fear, confusion, and love on his face. "We're brothers; we're supposed to help each other, right? I'm supposed to come t you with my problems. I would have told Mom but…" he looks at his feet again. "She's so sick, and I'm a little scared of what would happen if Dad ever found out."
"He'd probably put you on display somewhere and sell tickets. Sorry, that was meaner than I meant it to be." Lucas sighs, giving me another look, as if to say, maybe so, but you're right. "Besides, the speed thing, is there anything else you can do? I mean, uh—boy this really…I—you, I'm freaking out a little here, so cut me some slack if I react a bit crudely." He nods, and I continue. "What—I mean, uh, is there anything else you can do?"
"I'm really strong—a lot more than when I was in kindergarten too. I mean, of course I'm stronger than a six-year-old, but…I hafta be really careful in gym class so I don't hurt any of the other kids, and…remember last year when my dirt bike went nuts, and crashed into a tree at the bottom of that big hill? Well, I told everybody I jumped off right before it hit, but I didn't."
"You were on the dirt bike when it crashed right into the tree? They said it was going at least 50! You would have gone over the handlebars, flown through the air and slammed into the ground. The doctor said you're lucky you don't have a skull fracture or worse."
"I'm more lucky than he knew. I hardly ever get hurt by anything, and a couple of weeks ago I was playing catch in my room and the ball rolled under a sofa. SO I pushed it a little, to get at my ball, and the couch almost smashed into the wall. I can show you that too, if you want." Lucas took a few steps back scanning the yard, looking all around. "I don't see anything heavy enough to really demonstrate."
We go back inside and the kid shows me, lifting up a pool table over his head. Then he goes up to my room, and we just sit there, watching each other, both of us too stunned or too scared to think of what to say. "I think there might be something wrong with me. Why am I able to do these things otherwise? Why is this stuff happening to me?" To be perfectly honest I have no idea. I don't have any answers for him, no excuse. None of what is happening to him is normal.
If he were older, going through puberty, I'd know exactly what to tell him. It would be weird, and I wouldn't like it much, but I'd understand. I'd be able to help him, even if he confessed to me that Lionel was hurting him (the way my father hurts me) but this… This is just so strange, so alien. I have no idea how to deal with it, and neither does he. "It's okay if you don't know the answer, but can I use your computer? Dad always looks over my shoulder when I go online."
"Why what are you gonna do, Google kids and superpowers?" I say, trying to make myself feel more comfortable. This whole situation is so weird, even for my family. I'm still uncomfortable with my little brother, and can't help but feel like he and Lionel were somehow working together to trick me, hurt me somehow. Lucas had—what he's doing, this is impossible. Nobody can do the things he is doing. It is impossible. "Okay, come here we'll look some stuff up together. What should we try?"
"Well maybe it has something to do with that day in Smallville, like your—like the way your asthma went away and how you never get sick now. It could be some sort of a weird thing. Maybe a lot of people are different because of it."
"You're a weird little kid," I tell him, with a small chuckle. Lucas and I have our problems, but the fact that he trusted me with this is sort of a big deal. It's like a breakthrough. He doesn't really talk to people, and ever since he nearly killed that kid in kindergarten, even Lionel couldn't buy the kid's way back into Excelsior. Personally, I think he likes having one of us close by and one far away. It messes with both our heads. I wonder why the kid is allowed to be at home, close to his family, in a seemingly happy environment, and he wonders why I get to go to one of the best schools in the country while he's stuck at some crummy public school in downtown Metropolis. "But you're not entirely stupid."
So I login to my computer, fire up the web, click on Google, and type in Smallville Kansas, meteor shower 1989. What come up are mostly old newspaper articles written around the time of the meteor shower. Kansas town recuperates from tragic meteor shower or something like that. Then there are some sites written by science geeks, reporting what happened, why it may have happened, and detailing all of the astronomical facts anyone could ever want to know. Last but not least, there was a website written by some high school student from Smallville, listing residents of the town who have developed certain abilities after the meteor shower.
"There's an email address there. You should try and contact this person. She sounds like she knows what she's talking about. Look at all of these stories. This Sullivan person seems to know a lot about what's happening. Maybe I'm one of these meteor infected people. Maybe she can help me."
"Okay. Let's see, a Miss. Chloe Sullivan. I don't know, this just sounds like a bad idea. The people in Smallville don't exact love our family. We sort of destroyed their town, even more than the meteor shower did."
"Dad did that, not us."
"I doubt she'll see the difference."
"There might be something wrong with me; I need to figure out what that is! I'm the one who might go out to grab the morning paper and end up in Vancouver or something! I'm scared and she might be able to help me. Please, Lex. You're my brother. You have to do this for me."
"Okay, I'll try and email here, but I can't guarantee that she'll listen to us, let alone do something to help," I told him, and sat there for an hour and a half trying to think of the right things to say to this girl. Then I had Lucas look over the email, and hit send. We waited more than two weeks for a response, durring which time I felt hopeful and gave up at least a hundred times, but she did write back to us. It was the summer time, and we were both off of school, so it wasn't hard to get my brother up to my room in private (Dad was at work) so we could read her email.