Hello readers.
This will be AU in a lot of many and unpredictable way and yet not. Also, I reserve the right to throw in any DC universe character in there that I want.
One thing that is straight up AU is that Lena was told that she was Lionel's biological daughter and Lex's half-sister right from the start so she knows she's a true Luthor. Her true mother remains unknown…for now.
Enjoy.
Disclaimer: Not mine
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Lena Luthor
Lena Luthor was sitting primly on her small one-person bed, surrounded by her various luggage that a helpful fellow freshman had carried all the way to her dorm after nothing but a wink a small touch to the shoulder, took in her modest two-person dorm-room and thought.
This is it.
She'd done it. She'd gotten away from her insane family and her infamous last name, well for the next four years at least, but still a definite victory in her book. She felt free for the first time in a very long time and she couldn't help the giddy smile that came to her face.
She had that strange feeling that people sometimes get if they so happened to look at the right point in time in their life with the right perspective. She felt like she was seeing outside of herself, like she was witnessing a defining moment of her life as it was happening; normally those realizations always came after the fact, sometimes before, but rarely during.
It gave her the peculiar sensation of being a spectator watching a scene in the movie of the life of one Lena Luthor.
Naturally, as she thought about the plot to that movie; starting with the beginning, she started to recall the long, strange and arduous journey that had brought her to this room, in this time, as her. Hers was certainly not a common journey, nothing like the boring life-story her future roommate would no doubt regale her with this evening she was sure.
Intellectually she knew that those first few years with her mother had in fact happened, that she had been present right there with her, but it all felt like a story she'd been told. In truth she could barely remember anything about those years and her mother at all, despite her prodigious memory and to her great frustration. A few flashes here and there, a colour, a smell or a sound but nothing concrete. Except for two things: there were only two memories that she remembered clearly and they were the two she thought about the most.
The first was nothing more than the memory of a feeling: she had felt loved, happy, free and safe, like she had been exactly where she was supposed to be, like she belonged. Lena suspected that, despite children's tendency to idealize their environment, those first years with her mother living in their little cabin by the lake must have been the happiest she'd ever been (and probably ever would be).
True happiness, that's why the feeling had stuck so strongly and was still so clear in her mind so many years later.
And then it happened. And Lena never felt safe or truly happy again.
It was the first and earliest true and clear memory that she had, beyond those flashes of images, sounds or feelings; no that moment she remembered in excruciatingly painful detail.
She remembered it had been a muggy day, cold and humid. She remembered wanting to stay inside where it was warm when her mother had insisted they go down to the dock for some reason. She remembered the smell of the wet earth around her as they strolled down the path towards the small wooden pier by the lake. She remembered how they had both been walking side by side as they always did, except Lena bent down to tie her lace at one point, letting her mum go on ahead just a bit. She still remembered that damn broken lace, it had been blue. She remembered how the rotted wooden boards of the embankment creaked with every step, the way they'd had for as long as she could remember. And she remembered the sound of one of the boards finally breaking from decades of wear and tear, and of her mum's cry of surprise as she fell into the freezing water, hitting her head on the dock on the way down. She remembered her mother flailing in the water, a pool of red rapidly expanding around her from where she'd hit her head on the bank (Lena would later learn she'd suffered a concussion and that was why she had been unable to swim properly).
And of course…Lena remembered what she did. She remembered how she didn't move a muscle, didn't even cry out to her mother when she fell. And she remembered standing there and just watching her drown, at first with some hope, naturally expecting that her mother would swim back to shore; and then as the minutes dragged on, with growing dread, as her mother struggled more and more to even keep her head afloat. And as her mother kept staying under for longer and longer periods of time, plunging into the muggy water reflected by the morning sun so it looked like she kept disappearing entirely, Lena stayed right where she was, just watching. And eventually, after what felt to Lena like hours but was really less than ten seconds, her mom's head dipped below the surface one last time, her arms and upper body followed suit and the last thing the little girl saw of her mother was a single hand piercing the inscrutable water that soon disappeared with the rest of her…she didn't come back up, despite little Lena waiting for her on the shore for a good long while.
That last image of that solitary hand breaking the mirrored surface of the lake often reminded her of the Lady of the Lake in the Arthurian legend; her mom had been reading it to her just the week before. But during the whole event, Lena had been no King Arthur, no hero, she'd just stood there powerless and watching. The precocious little girl didn't cry out for help, she didn't run to the dock to try and pull her mother back up or dive into the water herself to stop her mother from drowning, she didn't even take a single step forward. Anll of those things she knew she should have done but instead she just froze and…she let her mother die.
Years later, Lena would finally gain some perspective and start to accept that she wasn't solely responsible for her mother's death, intellectually at least. After all, even if she had tried, what chance did a 4 year old girl have to support the dead-weight of a soaked full-grown woman? There had been almost certainly nothing she could have done. Lena knew that and had even come to let go of at least some of the overbearing guilt she'd felt at first by reading psychology books about loss and trauma in infants, survivor's guilt and a lot more. Knowledge was like that for Lena, a security blanket. By putting names and concepts to what she was feeling, she managed to conquer it a little.
But she knew the actual feeling, the guilt, would never go away. And nor should it whispered the devil on her shoulder (with a voice that sounded a lot like Lillian's for some reason).
True despair, that's why the feeling had stuck so strongly and was still so clear in her mind so many years later.
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After that, contrary to what eventually became, popular belief, Lionel didn't swoop in right away and adopt her. In fact, it would be seven months before he showed up.
Yes, Lena's early start in life was quite atypical for a multi-billion dollar heiress. It hadn't involved servants, shopping and staying up late; it had involved nuns, chores and getting up at the crack of dawn for Morning Prayer.
Lena, just Lena as she still was then, then spent the next seven months of her life in the system, same as any young girl in her position: orphaned, penniless, with no one to care or even register her existence, just another dirty waif and mouth to feed in a city that was growing ever heavy with them and ever lighter in their compassion. The child of a drug addict, degenerate or prostitute they thought deep down, sinners and trash just like those who sired them, deserving of their lot in life.
Lena spent that formative time in the Metropolis St-Francis Children's Home (the word orphanage had been cycled out of the media by politicians, it didn't test well in the media apparently) where she learned many an important lesson. It was an old Gothic stone-building that was only still standing due to its nature as a "historic monument", being a former Anglican church from the late 18th, and its function as a home for the destitute (the destruction or acquisition of which, even the slimiest of politicians had trouble passing before the city council). The former convent had served as an orphanage for the last eighty years.
Except unfortunately, it had also been eighty years during which the same city-council that proved its benevolence in graciously not tearing the building down, never bothered to appropriate a single cent to its actual renovation. The result was a building that was cold, very cold during winter, filled with drafts, mouldy residue that hadn't been cleaned in decades and a fair number of vermin. Hardly ideal living conditions for children.
But the coldness of the building had been a distant second to the coldness of its, and their, keepers: hard-faced nuns with cold eyes that liked to carry a switch and believed that suffering was the way to atonement and thus that corporeal punishment was the best way to purge the sins from the riff-raff and the freaks their once proud city had vomited out on their doorstep.
The Matron in particular, had held a special place in her "heart" for Lena. As soon as she'd arrived, the little green eyed girl had instantly become the old woman's favourite freak to torment. Lena had never known why her, there was nothing special about her she thought; she was, in fact, very well-behaved and disciplined compared to the other girls, some older than her even. Maybe it had been because the brunette had been just a little too smart for her own good, too curious, not afraid enough, the child's luminous green eyes always a bit too knowing. And so, with every little thing she did, the Matron would find a way to criticise and chastise her, pulling out her wooden switch and with every whack, there came a bible verse and an assurance that this was done for her own good. She was a sinner, it was in her blood, that sin had to be washed out (in her darkest moments, Lena still heard the raspy voice of the old matron and wonders if she'd had it right all along).
Or maybe it was because the Matron could see that Lena didn't truly believe in the words they were forced to repeat at every meal and every Sunday morning. All of their words and stories told over and over again: the Saints, the Trinity, the Resurrection, the Virgin Mary, God…
After having it quoted at her constantly, five year old Lena had finally decided to read that book of theirs, the Bible. Already industrious, Lena didn't do things halfway and read the book cover to cover in less than a month. In her seeming newfound devotion to learn the word of God, the nuns had seen the first true sign of grace in the unnerving little girl with the old eyes and had probably thought this was the first step on her "journey to God".
It turned out to be the last one.
In their precious book, all she found was a nonsensical story filled with half-baked and nebulous morality and page after page of such a number of contradictions and inconsistencies as to be frankly absurd and make her wonder about the use of hallucinogens during the 3rd century (and if anyone that quoted it had actually read that thing). Even more, as a precocious child, she understood that those stories were not meant quite as literally as the nuns preached them with every swing of their stick, they were merely allegories…meant for people that lived two-thousand years ago. Now, the nuns were used to these types of questionings (although the children tended to be a lot older) and had plenty of pre-packaged answers straight from the Vatican that they were more than happy to regurgitate to her, most of them included the word Faith in it. Except, not only did she not have that faith of theirs, she wasn't sure she even agreed with the "principles" the book was meant to impart either (especially about women).
Lena more or less the decided then and there that she was done with the Big Guy (the really big guy, not the other one). They'd been on bad terms ever since her mum died anyway.
The little girl never repeated any of this to the Matron of course, but she had a feeling that the old woman knew somehow and that was the reason she had always been so hard on her (and hearing her actual thought process as only a 5 year old, the matron may have had a point, there was nothing normal about this child).
And then, in a burst of mind-bending irony that some of the nuns actually had the gall to call "God's will", her loss of faith seemed to produce a sort of miracle: something impossible came true. Lena the unwanted orphan was given what every single child here longed for with every breath…a real family.
Every single one of her fellow orphans at St-Francis under the age of ten, whether they admitted it or not, had a story. Call it a dream, a wish, a fantasy, a hope, a delusion or a prayer; it was all the same thing. It was that thing that lulled every one of those little boys and girls to sleep every night and that kept the forced smiles on their faces during the day.
Everyone one of the little boys and girls….everyone except little Lena of course.
The dream was always some version of the same story: a family with a successful and "cool" father, ranging from tech-millionaires, famous athletes, politicians, movie stars, aristocrats, socialites, rock stars and a bunch of others according to the orphan's personal preference in books, magazines or movies. Then there was the mother: a warm kind of beautiful like in the movies, tears in her eyes as she took in her long-lost child, all followed by some kind of hallmark reunion moment and the return to their real home. A few liked to throw in a sibling or two for variety: an older brother to protect, guide and look out for them; a little sister to admire them and who they could guide and protect.
And then came her personal favourite: the twist. The reason why instead of being doted upon by their loving and wealthy (naturally) family, they'd gotten stuck in this hell, getting struck on the knuckles for being two minutes late for Morning Prayer. Because it could never be that they simply hadn't been wanted, oh no, not them, they were special. So there had to be good a reason for their family to have abandoned them like this. Those reasons varied from international espionage, Romeo and Juliet sort of love affairs, political and social scandals, fleeing royalty, government conspiracies…the really nutty ones involved aliens sending them away from their home planet to save them and pods landing on Earth (I mean really? Aliens?).
All of the stories were slightly different, some kids believed in them more than others and the older kids who had stopped believing in theirs (or at least pretended to) mocked them for it, called them naïve and fools; but they all had one. All except Lena.
This was because the little girl knew that she'd already had her perfect life, her perfect family, her perfect best friend…her perfect mum…and Lena killed her. She didn't want or deserve another and would never let herself believe otherwise.
So you can imagine her surprise when, of all the children in all of the children's homes in Metropolis, it just so happened that the story she was the only one not to believe in…actually came true, for her.
He appeared one day with his chauffeur in a luxurious car: tall, bald and clad in an expensive suit. He walked with confidence and determination, like someone important. He spoke to the nuns for only a half an hour and then Lena was called into the Matron's office.
She'd thought she was getting punished again, turns out, she was here to meet her father (later, she would wonder if those two things were one and the same).
Lionel Luthor he said his name was, she'd heard the name before of course, everyone had. He was her father he said. She was suspicious, her mother had never said his name (but then she had refused to show her pictures or even to talk of her father…but hadn't there been that time when he was on television and her mom got so angry for no reason?) and she didn't see much of herself in him, except maybe for the eyes…But he had pictures, of him and her mother from long ago, from "before you were born" he said. Her mum had looked happy and so young. He told her that he'd loved her mother, she was suspicious. He told her that he loved her, she was afraid.
But Lionel Luthor wanted his bastard daughter, so his bastard daughter he got. Lena went home with him on that very day, her tiny little suitcase clutched in her trembling hands. No one ever once asked her if she wanted to go.
She didn't say goodbye to anybody. First of all, none of them had really been her friends but most of all, she knew that they wouldn't want to see her. She was getting what every one of them had wished for their entire life. There would be only bitterness and jealousy there, she knew that. She did make a stop by the Matron's office though, just as she was about to leave. The little girl hadn't said a word, not one, she had just fixed her luminous, unnatural green eyes on the aged nun and for once, didn't look away. Because she no longer had to. Her lips simply curved into an enigmatic little smile when she was done, and left that life behind. His father watched his daughter from behind, an eerily similar smile on his face.
The Matron would think about those eyes and that little smile everyday till the day she died.
And so…in yet another life-changing day in the life of a girl that was only five, everything changedonce again.
Lena was brought to her new home that just so happened to be a mansion, and was introduced to her new "family": her "new mother" Lillian and her "new brother" Lex. They'd been playing chess together in the "drawing room" (which was apparently a thing, she would later learn).
She'd seen the hate and contempt that had been Lillian's instinctive reaction to her unexpected presence before she schooled her features. But Lena had caught it, eyes too much like the Matron, this woman didn't know her but believed her to be "lesser" in some way. She'd learned to recognize the look.
But Lex…oh how she missed the way Lex used to be. In her half-brother, she had only seen warmth, curiosity and acceptance, more than in their cold and aloof father even. He was the one who made her believe for the very first time that this could be her family too. For better or worse.
He gave her a tour of the "house" that was actually about the same size as the orphanage (only it housed a thousand less people) and that included such beauty, history and so much obvious wealth that she felt so small, and unworthy standing next to it all. Only Lex's hand in hers kept her moving forward into the lion's den. The mansion included rooms like the aforementioned "drawing room", a music room, three libraries of varying sizes, multiple studies and leisure rooms, a reception hall, a dining hall, a gallery, a solarium, a number of guest rooms in their own unique styles, a conservatory, a gymnasium, a pool, a billiards room, dressing rooms and extensive gardens. Not to mention the servant's quarters and little things like multiple kitchens and bathrooms.
The threadbare clothes she'd been given at St Francis were taken from the side of her bed when she woke up the first morning and never reappeared. What did appear however, was an entire wardrobe filling her walk-in closet (for real) containing dozens upon dozens of outfits all at the height of elegance even for a little girl (and perfectly sized she suspected, now realizing what that embarrassment seance with the tailor taking her measurements had been all about).
Her closet was in her new room. Decorated in greens and light brown woods, every piece of furniture spoke of wealth and taste that was both completely alien to her and at the same time just right. She loved her room.
After meeting and being intimidated by the staff (the concept of people having to do what she told them instead of the other way around was still a little jarring) and getting a mere two days to get settled in, her new life began in earnest.
It started on the third morning when she was given practically an entire day's worth of the strangest tests, reams and reams of them, all under the watchful eye of one of the staff. There were math questions, English questions, logic questions, science questions; peculiar exercises involving shapes, drawing, colours or memory. It all felt very pointless to Lena, especially as every question was just so easy, but her father had been there before she went in and told her that this was "important" in a grave voice. She felt sure it was some kind of task she had to accomplish if she wanted to stay in this nice house with her nice clothes and with Lex, so little Lena applied herself and did her very best.
It had taken her nearly six hours of gruelling writing, every test she ended was followed by another then another, but then she was finally done. Her father had already been long gone by then and Lillian had merely whispered an ominous "we shall see now" before leaving her to her own devices. Nobody told her if she'd passed or failed or anything and it kept her up all night.
The next day, her father was there at breakfast (a rarity since he often left with the dawn) and actually got up from his customary morning paper, coffee and "silence" to walk up to her and hug her. It was maybe the third hug she'd ever received from her father, the first being on the very day she met him.
"I knew you were mine" he whispered in her ear in a tone he might have meant as proud but only came out as possessive. And then he just left for work for the day.
Across from her, she could see Lillian's eyes staring daggers into her own. Guess she must have passed.
After that, began her education.
For the next few years this would mean isolation and tutors, many, many tutors. She was more or less confined to the house with the family and staff as her only human connections.
She'd had the best tutors and instructors money could buy: everything necessary to transform her from an orphaned waif from the slums of Metropolis to a girl worthy of carrying the Luthor name. Those included, tutors in: academics of all kinds (from maths, science, grammar, history, etc.), music, etiquette, art, business, languages, sports, speech (really), and many more besides, skills a woman in your position will need said Lillian. She had hours upon hours of lessons and training with very little time to herself. The teachers came and went like the weather with Lena expected to learn everything they had to teach and move on to the next.
For perhaps any other little girl, it would have been an arduous nigh impossible task to survive in this shark pit she had been dropped in and expected to navigate without knowing how to swim. Not to mention, having to suffer having her worth tested every hour of everyday: during her first few years with the family (and still now sometimes) she'd been convinced that her "lessons" were actually tests and that failing at any one of them in the slightest would get her sent straight back to the orphanage (or so had intimated Lillian anyway).
But Lena was no normal little girl, she was a Luthor. Everything they threw at her, she not only passed or succeeded, she excelled at. Every tutor, every teacher every expert that left the room after his first lesson spent teaching Lena Luthor was left in a state of awe. She heard words like "genius" or "prodigy" through the door when they gave their report to her mother, but Lillian never said such words to her.
Her father was more or less a non-issue as he barely spent any time at home whatsoever, always off on some business trip or other, or at the office. His absence was deeply felt in every corner of the house though. The few times she saw him were in passing or on the rare occasions when he was home for dinner and she was expected to call him "father" or "sir" and the whole conversation between the "family" was stilted and filled with tension.
There was the even rarer occasion though, when Lionel would take her into his office, pour himself a glass of scotch and just ask about her. How she was doing with her studies, if she was eating well, if there was something she wanted that she didn't have, those sorts of things. Fatherly things.
Her dad was clearly uncomfortable in this position of "doting father" he was going for (something he definitively wasn't with Lex) and it showed, but Lena loved him all the same. He cared, that was enough. He would also, very, very rarely, talk of her mother sometimes, but only when he'd had one too many and never at her urging. In fact, that was one the "rules" that had been established before she'd even stepped foot in the mansion: no mention of her mother, of her life before she came here at all actually, ever.
Lillian, or "mother", had taken to avoiding as much she could almost from day one, which suited Lena just fine, but she had also counselled Lex to avoid her, which bothered Lena a lot. And when they did have to interact, Lillian was always ready with a clever and cutting remark to remind Lena of her place (that is, when they were alone of course, she would never dream of speaking that way to her "darling daughter" in front of her husband or son).
Luckily, Lex tended to ignore his mother when it came to this particular rule and made it a point to spend some time with his new little sister. Which was a good thing, because Lex had become her new favourite person. He was the only one who didn't treat her like a porcelain doll, a stain on his family or as "Miss Luthor"; to Lex, she was just Lena.
That's not to say that Lex was the perfect brother by any means. Even as a teenager, (especially as a teenager) could be arrogant and mercurial, switching between the cold aloofness of their father and a short, sometimes even cruel, temper. He also had the natural disdain that the whole family seemed to have for "sentimental displays".
But she was a Luthor, and to Lex, that meant she was worthy of his time and attention at the very least. And so when he was home from boarding school, in between her many tutoring lessons, Lex would come to her and they would play a game and just…hang out and talk. Like any brother and sister would. Lena loved those moments and those were the times she liked to think about when thinking about Lex now.
After her first victory at chess that day that he claimed was just "beginner's luck", Lex took it upon himself to school her in chess, Shogi and Go in the same way he himself had been (very rarely he said), taught by their father. Lena excelled at the strategy games with an almost preternatural ability to spot patterns and predict moves that she wasn't sure was making Lex jealous or proud (because, he'd never said it, but she had feeling that she was learning faster than he had been at her age).
Those games defined a lot of her relationship with Lex over the years. Lena eventually understood that if she wanted to have her brother interested in and proud of her, it had to come from feats of intellectual prowess. Those were always what drew Lex in: when she did what other kids couldn't do, when she proved herself extra-ordinary; such as playing Chopin's Etude in G# minor flawlessly after only two weeks of practice (not realizing that most people practiced for years without ever reaching her level), playing with those long string of numbers Lex called equations and making them fit just right, or learning to read and write computer code at the same time and with same ease as she was learning French and Russian.
When she did those things, all to impress Lex, she would sometimes be rewarded by a rare and fleeting proud smile on his face and he would ruffle her hair affectionately, called her his "little Lena" and would agree to read to her while they drank hot chocolate with marshmallows (she had tried to get him to watch movies with her but Lex had drawn the line there and would only agree if he could read the classics).
Little Lena had lived for those moments. Moments that got rarer and rarer until they stopped altogether. She would try to recreate them as she got older, inventing devices and writing proofs that were sure to impress her brother so they might regain their former closeness but she never truly succeeded.
Eventually came the time for her rejoin the outside world and to go to her first boarding school (but certainly not the last), as seemed to be the educational norm in the Luthor family. Lionel being far too busy to look after his children and Lillian having no desire to do so, especially for "that little bastard" as she once heard her mother call her to her father while Lena was hiding in a corner.
And so, little Lena, the scared, clever and guilt-ridden little orphan grew into Lena Luthor, a brilliant, beautiful and confident young woman.
Her angelic child's loveliness grew into fine aristocratic features that were the envy and desire of men and women alike, her child's body grew in size and sensuous curves: milk-white skin, flowing raven hair and the same luminous green eyes that seemed to see through everything and everyone. Everyone agreed that Lena Luthor was a true beauty.
The remarkable potential she had shown as an infant was sharpened, honed and refined into one of the most brilliant minds of her generation. The guilt was still there though.
Her father, forever absent but still with the random moments of kindness and intimacy. Her "mother", forever lurking and critiquing with the occasional burst of true motherly wisdom. Her brother, transforming from a shy and brilliant teenager into a confident, ruthless and genius business-man and scientist; graduating MIT at 16 and basically running the R&D of Luthor-Corp since he was 20 (and not out of nepotism either, if anything Lionel was harder on Lex than anybody else but her brother's intellect could not be denied).
Still, in this strange little family, as the years went by, Lena occupied a very peculiar position.
Hated by her mother, her ever-elusive father's "favourite" and being either ignored or doted upon by Lex.
But in the public eye, she was something of a ghost.
While the media was aware of the fact that Lena Luthor in fact existed and was legally recognized by her father as a Luthor (such things were public record), there existed a veritable black hole of information surrounding her. None of the three publicly recognizable Luthors had ever confirmed or denied her existence in the media, they'd never even said her name. Unlike Lex who had yearly professionally taken pictures for press and PR purposes since he was a child himself, Lena never had her picture taken and the only ones the media had ever gotten were wide-lens shots from hundreds of yards away of a black-haired girl who could have been anybody. The Luthors had already been fanatical about their privacy and actively financed their own paranoia with the help of the world's most expensive security firms, but at Lionel's urging, they took it up even another notch where Lena was concerned. Her father had been absolutely adamant and industrious in keeping her from the public eye since the very first day he took her home from the orphanage. Lena had never known exactly why, sure there were the obvious reasons: she was the bastard child of a married and preeminent businessman and Lillian was obsessed with maintaining the family "good name". Those were certainly reason enough to keep her hidden, but her father's constant insistence on it, sometimes bordering on the irrational, had actually caused a few arguments between him and Lex. Her brother had refused to act like he was ashamed of his brilliant little sister and didn't want to hide her away; and she had loved him so for that, but her father had never budged. It had deeply bothered her at times while growing up, believing like Lex did that her father was ashamed of her (Lillian certainly was and wasn't shy about letting her know), but she had also found herself enjoying her anonymity more and more as she grew up. After all, she might be the only female multi-billion heiress in the world without a single picture of her in the press, or the accompanying slew of paparazzi.
The boarding schools Lena went to actually made teachers, parents and students sign non-disclosure agreements about the names and location of any student in the school. It was also better guarded than the white-house.
As for social media, not only had Lena been told time and again to avoid it, she also quickly realized that her father must have hired some kind of tech expert because any time she accidently showed up in her friend's Facebook page or was caught in the background, her face just blurred or she disappeared entirely. She'd even tested it herself, she'd taken a picture of herself and put it on the internet…it and the copy she had on her own computer, had disappeared in under minute. I Mean damn, who did her dad, have working for him, the NSA?
It was certainly proving to be a godsend for a current situation, that she was certain would have never been possible without it.
It had also been a very welcome relief when Lionel Luthor died in a car explosion when she was fifteen and the family was put under worldwide intense scrutiny for weeks. Lena had been in boarding school in Japan at the time and Lillian didn't even allow her to come to the funeral.
So now, Lena found herself more thankful than ever with that aspect of her life that her father had fought so vehemently for. Privacy was perhaps the only thing in the world that the wealthy could not truly buy (by virtue of being wealthy and therefore interesting to somebody), but Lena had both. She had been a legally recognized child of Lionel Luthor when he'd perished and while he did leave the company to Lex (not that she would have wanted it or even could have handled it), he practically cut his personal wealth in half and bequeathed one to each of his children, making her an actual billionaire before the age of eighteen with one stroke of the pen. Lillian (who had received a considerably more modest inheritance) had been beside herself with rage and had tried everything short of having her killed to gain access to Lena's money but had never managed it.
Despite the fact that, since he learned of her existence when her father brought her back from the orphanage that first day, Lex must have realized he might have just lost half of his future inheritance (Lillian most assuredly did), he was always there for her when she was little and never once made her feel as if she had taken anything away from him. If anything, he appeared absolutely delighted to have a new little sister to dote upon and protect and who would look up to him in admiration. Lex may not have been a perfect brother, he was quick-tempered, arrogant, selfish and she had witnessed his cruel and sometimes even sadistic streak (he got that from their father); but she had always known he loved her, that she at least, was special to him.
Lena had feared that her brother might resent her for the inheritance though (like his mother did, it was a lot of money), but he never appeared to, not even a little. Of course, Lex quickly proved he had no need of her money and was more than capable of making his own. He took the empire that their father had spent his entire life building and immediately started playing very fast, very loose, and very big, on the market and he won.
Lex doubled the price of shares of the company in under a year of being CEO. Lex had done so by playing the stock-market like a music-conductor with ridiculous ease but mostly by managing the genius move of establishing himself as the first and foremost supplier of weapons and technology to practically the entire United States military and Intelligence apparatus (along with other militaries as well, but the US would only find out about that much later) after Wayne Enterprises had pulled out of the Defence field entirely when his old boarding schoolmate Bruce Wayne took back control of his family company after his seven year "sabbatical". Lex had been the very first to react to the insane business move that no one had seen coming even a little bit (no one in business willingly let go of such insanely lucrative exclusive contracts that the company had held for decades, it was unheard of, people had and did kill for those), and he jumped into the gap before anyone else, ruthlessly snatching just about every contract Wayne Enterprises had just let go of in a matter of hours.
And then he took it further, allowing his R&D to push the fringes the way Wayne Enterprises had never dared and with the government voluntarily closing its eyes hoping for better weapons and to stay relevant in a world where technology was expanding at terrifying speeds. After he personally created a number of terrifying new weapons and technology for the military (they had a growing meta-human problem), he had gained their trust and in the next few years he used his newly acquired government contracts and contacts to launch his business into the stratosphere. Genius move after genius move, the company expanded and diversified more than ever, although almost always in the tech, bio or com sectors, spreading everywhere.
After that, whenever the government was faced with a technological or scientific problem that their thousands of scientists and dozens of think-tanks couldn't solve, they would throw it to Lex. And that is where her brother's genius truly began to shine, his brilliant yet highly unconventional way of thinking (many would call it amoral) and his now-endless resources allowed him to solve some of the country's toughest problems and mysteries, this led to many advances and benefits for the U.S government and, naturally, Lex-Corp along with it. Lex only had one rule, well aside from getting paid a truly outrageous sum of money, and that rule was simple: no oversight. He agreed to tackle all of those projects too sensitive or complex for the government on the condition that he would have complete freedom to do his work. That included freedom from ethics and senate appropriations committees and the mutual understanding that had long worked for the military of: don't ask, don't tell.
The government promised not too look too closely as to how exactly Lex achieved his results, just so long as he achieved them. And he did, in spades.
Lex had managed in just less than five years, what their father had spent his entire life sweating, bleeding and breaking his back for. He had reclaimed their family's long lost and squandered legacy and name. He had become one of the big ones; not just rich, famous and powerful, those came and went according to the market, no Lex had done something more, he had become an institution. The name of Luthor now once again stood alongside Wayne, Queen, or Teague; just as it had in the past and the way it was always meant to. This wasn't about only about money and power for Lex (well, not entirely), this was also about respect, pride. The respect he'd wanted from the father who ignored him, from peers who ridiculed him, from the media who used to mock him. This was the reason Lex had been so close to his mother…and to her she remembered wistfully.
His success is probably why Lex was never bothered by the will. It says something about who you are when you can find a multi-billion dollar inheritance paltry and superfluous to your success and turn out to be right. No matter her feelings for her brother, one that would never go away was respect for his intellect and sheer willpower. She only wished he could have put them to better use; aside from her personal feelings, it felt like such a waste to see such genius as she knew her brother had, disappear into madness and megalomania. Lex could have done so much good for the world, Lena was sure of it, if he had only wanted to. The heart-breaking part of course being that he didn't.
When she'd been fifteen and during one of her long rants to Lex about how easy school was and how stupid she found her peers, he had, in a spur of the moment decision, decided to give her a bunch of random aptitude tests, most of them focusing on maths (her best subject by far). She blew through them in a couple of hours and found them all too easy as well, if a tiny bit more challenging. As her reward, when her brother read her results, he gifted her with one of the brightest smiles she could ever remember getting from him and proclaimed her a true genius and a true Luthor. There were very few times she could remember feeling more proud, especially since their father had died not long ago. This was followed by talk of pulling her out of boarding school and enrolling her into college early as she very obviously had the intellect for it. Lex had wanted her to go to MIT early like he did and revealed that the "mock-test" he had given her was actually the entrance exams for the school. When she scored in the top 3%, he had seemed so arrogantly delighted that the two youngest candidates to have been accepted into the most prestigious technical college in the world in the last decade were both Luthors.
It had been her step-mother who put a stop to that idea. She claimed it was all done for her "beloved daughter's" protection and well-being, that her identity would surely get out if she were to take centre-stage like this. Of course, Lena knew that the real reason Lillian didn't want her to follow in Lex's footsteps was because she just couldn't stand the idea of anyone surpassing her precious and rightful son, especially not some "half-Luthor".
Lex and Lillian actually argued for quite a bit about that. It was not long after her father had died and Lex had taken over Luthor-Corp, renaming it Lex-Corp (which was a bit much in her opinion, but she understood why he did it, Lex's relationship with their ominous father had been nothing like her own).
But for once, as the tie-breaker, she was able to make the decision for herself and to the surprise of all; she decided to stay in her age-group in high-school. Genius she may have been, she was also a teenage girl after all and for her, having friends and fitting in at school was way more important than the nebulous future and success her brother talked about. Because, while she would have loved to finally be challenged in her classes, she feared being labelled a "freak" even more, and she just knew that's what awaited her if she showed up at college as the 15 years old bastard Luthor girl: mocked, ostracized, spied upon…alone.
What her brother had never known, because she wasn't about to tell him, was that the main reason she didn't want to go to college early and be inevitably treated as a Luthor, was because of him. She loved her brother, but she saw how lonely, isolated and angry he slowly became. She had seen it as he joined MIT at 15, always alone because his peers were both several years older than him, and intimidated by his last name. That was the real reason Lena didn't want to follow in her brother's footsteps. She didn't want to become as unhappy as she knew he was.
She started seeing Lex a lot less after that. As he took the reins of Lex-Corps and quickly pushed it to even greater heights than ever before, he became a very busy man. He'd taken their father's death harder than any of them, despite (or maybe because of) the very contentious relationship they'd had. And also…he never said it in so many words but he was disappointed in her and her choice to put her social life over her ambitions (probably because this was something he'd never actually done himself and therefore couldn't recognize in others), it felt like she had lost some of his respect and it hurt her rather badly at the time.
Lex had always been so different with her than he was with anybody else, so much so that it took her years to understand why so many seemed to fear her brother. Her dad, she understood, he was scary, but Lex? Except, eventually she came to realize that the beloved brother she adored so, had a vindictive, selfish, arrogant and sadistic streak (she recognized that one from Lillian) a mile wide that he'd exercised freely on the staff in a number of subtle and highly convoluted way that she'd never even been aware of (she did remember how all the servants had been afraid of him and how she could never understand why). She even remembered hearing rumours once that he had pushed and manipulated his roommate at boarding school into killing himself and that was why he had been pulled out of that one boarding school that time. She hadn't believed them then. She did now.
By that time she barely ever saw Lex anymore, workaholic and loner that he was, as he hardly ever bothered with any kind of "family time" that didn't have an ulterior motive. But she still loved and admired him like any little sister loved her big brother. And how could she not be proud of him when she saw his face on the cover of Forbes, Wired or the Daily Planet with captions like "Man of the Year" or "Luthor's winning streak continues". It seemed to her that for every professional success her brother managed, he lost a small part of himself; until bit by bit, she hardly recognized him anymore.
Despairingly, over the years after their father's death, she had watched as her intense, wilful and smart big brother became increasingly erratic and unstable, how his outlook and philosophy became radical, dogmatic and violent and filled with so much hate all of the time. Her brother may have loved her, but he hated everyone else, and she had never been able to reconcile those two facts.
The last few years, she no longer looked forward to his visits. The brother that she had loved and respected so much growing up had turned into this stranger. A stranger that, she was ashamed to admit it, scared her.
And it was all Superman's fault.
Well, she knew it wasn't his fault really, but a part of her couldn't help but blame the mythical alien superhero for her brother's descent into madness. Because that's when it had started, or at least that was when she'd first noticed the very real madness in Lex's eyes. Oh, it had been brewing for years, her brother had straddled the fine knife's edge between genius and madness for as long as she'd known him. But it had been the arrival of the Kryptonian that had pushed him over, she knew that for a fact.
After the dramatic first appearance of the alien on earth; she, like everyone else, had quickly become entranced by the kind and beautiful visitor from another world who had come to save them in their hour of need. And of course, like every other girl on the planet, she had tiny crush on him (despite the fact that she'd found herself looking a bit too closely at her girlfriends changing in the locker room lately).
When she had first mentioned her admiration for the superhero to her brother, he didn't react like she'd expected. He went into a very long rant that she only half-followed, even as smart as she was, switching from biology, to philosophy, sociology and quantum mechanics. It was an enraged and maddened rant that lasted over an hour in which her brother threw expensive knickknacks against the walls while he explained that he was convinced that Superman was the beginning of the end for the human race. He had a very long and convoluted explanation for that but Lena had never agreed with it (or even understood it really). He seemed to take the alien's every action as a personal affront to him and started to become obsessed with proving his superiority over the man of steel. It was in this that she recognized their father's poisonous words echo in her brother's voice, whispering to him that a Luthor must always be on top, always in control, always the most powerful no matter the situation or the enemy. That poison made it so Lex couldn't stand the idea that there was someone out there with whom he couldn't even compete, to whom he was inferior. It was the first true sign of his madness she ever witnessed and the first time her brother truly scared her. But far from the last.
So a part of her will always blame Superman, whose sheer presence and unreachable perfection had been enough to destroy her brother.
But, despite all of that, life had continued and Lena continued to grow until sh reached her final year of high school and she was forced to confront those decisions and expectations that had been haunting the back of her mind for years now.
First, of course, was college, she had early acceptance letters from literally every single Ivy, and her school records would allow her entrance into any other college as well she was sure, so she could technically take her pick. Lex was still adamant on MIT however and had been slowly convincing her by sheer virtue that it was an excellent school with excellent programs and she needed something to occupy her brain. She was less convinced whenever he mentioned the future plans he had for her in various positions in the company after she was done and never once asked her if working with him was what she might want.
But there was another aspect to all of this and her impending legal majority that Lena dreaded even more. When she reached eighteen, Lena was expected to become a fully public and recognizable Luthor, including photo-ops and press interviews. She was to step out of the shadows after all this time and announce herself as a Luthor for all to see and Lena was terrified.
She didn't want to do it, but both Lex and Lillian were as adamant about it as Lionel had been in keeping her hidden and she knew this wasn't a fight she could win, it was only through Lex's continued money, connections and interference that she even had her anonymity still.
But then, just a month before she finished high school, in what was becoming a trend for Lena, her entire world changed once again.
Her sweet brother Lex was arrested for enough crimes to potentially gain him 32 consecutive life-sentences and was currently sitting in a jail-cell in some super-max awaiting what had already been dubbed "The trial of the century".
His crime the attempted murder of one Superman and one Lois Lane, and coming closer to killing the invulnerable alien than anyone, ever. Oh, and also killing 1259 men, women and children in the attempt.
The superhero had eventually stopped her villainous brother and saved the female reporter like in any good superhero tale, but her brother's schemes had taken a great number of lives already by the time it was over. Not long after her rescue, Lois Lane had published a scathing expose depicting the numerous illegal activities she claimed her brother and by extension Lex-Corp was involved in.
The FBI, under enormous external pressure, finally disregarded their deal with Lex and followed through and eventually started to peel back more and more unsavoury layers about her brother and the way he ran his "business" during the course of their investigation: illegal, untested and dangerous technology, immoral experiments, all manner of fringe science…It made her brother out to be some kind of evil Doctor Frankenstein. It made her ill to even think about it.
For his part, Lex seemed to have picked the "completely bat-shit crazy" strategy as his defence by appearing completely mad whenever she saw him: constantly spouting off complete nonsense about creatures from other worlds and the apocalypse to the media and during his trial (along with something that made even less sense, something about some Canadian 70s rock band, Stepwolf or Steppenbear or something equally ridiculous…Lex was now using "disco" as his defence). The most heart-breaking part was, she wasn't sure if this was just a strategy to avoid real jail by being judged "unfit to stand trial" (something her brother was more than smart enough to pull off she knew), or if her brother had truly succumbed to the madness she had always seen lurking behind his eyes, it certainly looked real on television. The same madness she used to see in her father's eyes sometimes before he was killed in an "accident" when his car mysteriously exploded. The same madness she could see in her step-mother's eyes, despite the woman being a master at concealing any kind of real emotion.
Was it the same madness she saw when looking in the mirror? The Luthor curse? Genius and power on one hand, madness and evil in the other.
She could hardly deny the first part: Every teacher she'd ever had (except for her step-mother of course) in every discipline from art to maths to sports, had called her a prodigy and a genius, just like her brother. She picked up knowledge and skills with amazing speed, be it playing the piano, doing combinatorial mathematics, speaking German or doing a flying high-kick in Jujitsu. She'd been receiving early acceptance letters from prestigious colleges all over the world since she was fourteen. Everyone always said she was a genius, a prodigy and that used to make her proud but now she couldn't help but wonder if the coin was about to flip. After all, everyone had always called her brother a genius too, her father as well even and the both of them turned out to be evil men.
Did this mean that, like her father and brother before her, she was destined for madness? Was it in her blood?
Every day, the newspapers would publish some new horror Lex was supposedly responsible for, and the name of Luthor became associated with "evil", "criminal", and "mad". She tried to ignore it as much as she could, preferring to focus on memories of when they were young and those rare moments she'd had with Lex just the two of them acting like siblings.
Lena had adored her brother for that growing up and there was certainly a part of her that loved him still, that would most likely always love him, but that didn't mean she thought he was innocent either. No, Lex had done all of those things (and probably a lot more that nobody would ever find out about), he had hurt all these people, he had lied, cheated and killed, she was certain of it. All so he could kill Superman and he could finally prove, according to him, the superiority of Man over God. The fact that killing a God like Superman, would in turn make him a God was never discussed. It was painfully clear from her side of the table; but she knew no words she could ever say that would reach him. She had tried them all before.
And ironically, the fall of her family into ignominy was the reason that Lena got to do what she truly wanted for once. She had argued with her step-mother that the plan to reveal herself as a Luthor was hardly feasible now and would gain them nothing so had to be put on hold (but not forgotten she was sure). In fact, her anonymity was now more important than ever. She told her mother that being close to any business, property or holding associated with the Luthor name would only draw attention to her in this time of extreme scrutiny for her family. So it only made sense for Lena to distance herself from the family and since she was an eighteen year old girl, the idea of sending her to college under a false name was really the most logical. After all, college was where eighteen year old girls were supposed to be.
Lena had been the one to suggest National City University. It was no MIT or Harvard like Lex had wanted, but she argued that she felt the need to get out from the world of high-brow academia she'd always known and meet a different kind of people and that going to an Ivy meant she was almost certain to run into someone she'd known in boarding school which could compromise her anonymity. Besides, their physics and maths programs were actually extremely good since National Labs wasn't far and many famous professors (some of them Nobel Prize laureates) who worked on projects there would periodically lecture or teach a class at the university; so she hoped she wouldn't be too bored with her classes.
The best part (and the real reason she decided to go here specifically) was that National City was both close enough to Metropolis that her step-mother wouldn't show her face there if she didn't want to be seen, and far enough that when she was in Metropolis legitimately (visiting Lex or the company and such…), Lena was far enough away not to be expected to visit her. She was basically using the scandal of her brother's arrest as a buffer and way to escape her mother for four years, as the old bird was even more afraid of scandal than she was fond of making her step-daughter's life miserable.
It had still been a tough fight, convincing her step-mother Lillian to let her attend National City University as a regular student for the next four years. It had taken every tool in her considerable arsenal, and she had played every card and pulled every trick she knew: from blackmail, to business, to scandal, to family. She'd tried anything and everything because she just wanted it so much
It was made easier by the fact that, for now, Lillian was primarily focused on Lex's trial and keeping as much wealth and company assets out of the government's hands as possible and didn't have the time or inclination to pay too much attention to her. Which suited Lena just fine.
And it had worked! She had argued, blackmailed, cajoled, lied and held her ground and finally, her step-mother had relented and allowed her to enrol as Lena Davies in National City University for a double major in physics and mathematics.
This meant that Lena had managed to wrench out four years of freedom from her step-mother's grip, from the media, from her brother and their infamous last name, from anyone who might know her from her turbulent years of boarding school. Four years to just…be herself, to be just Lena. Whoever that was.
Just Lena was excited to find out.
The first step, as she looked around at the bare walls of the simple college dorm room she'd been assigned and at the empty bed facing hers, was to meet her roommate. Of course, she'd had more than enough money to buy a place close to campus if she'd so desired but she had elected against it, deciding to be adventurous and try to meet new and different people rather than the money-hungry sharks and shallow trust-fund kids she'd known her whole life.
The ridiculously small size of the room, almost inexistent closet space and lumpy mattress had been almost enough to make her change her mind then and there. Lena didn't like to think of herself as spoiled or materialistic but after almost an entire lifetime of high-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and walk-in closets bigger than this entire room, she had been forced to admit that her standards might be a tad "higher" than most people's. Of course, there had been a time in her life when her room had been even smaller and danker than this and when the mattress had the pointy edges of broken springs digging into her back every night and- No! We don't think about that place. This room was fine, it was good. Everything was fine.
There remained one feature of the room she hadn't discovered yet, perhaps the most important one of all: her roommate.
Given what she knew of the typical teenage girl, she didn't have particularly high hopes, but Lena hoped it would at least be someone she could have an intelligent conversation with and not just some dumb blonde cheerleader-type obsessed with Justin Bieber and partying.
A few moments later, the door was forcefully pushed open and one Kara Danvers came crashing into the room and into her life in a flail of luggage, limbs and blond hair.
Lena palmed her face, this would be a long year.
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End new chapter 1.
I've decided to shorten my chapters so my one big-ass chapter (because 20k a chapter was really too much) has now been divided in 3 but new content is coming soon.