AUTHOR: Nymph Du Pave
FANDOM: Smallville
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Angsty character piece for Lex. After everything that has happened, Lex wants something...
DISCLAIMER: The WB, DC Comics, MillarGoughInk, Tolin, Robbins, and Davola [along with whomever else] own this wonderfully cute show. I am merely borrowing the characters to use in my own evil ways and will try to return them as mentally cognizant and stable as when I took them [with the exception of the incredibly handsome and elegant Michael Rosenbaum of whom I might never let go ;)], but I can't make any promises. The Muse controls these fingers.
FEEDBACK: Please, please, please! I love it all and live for the stuff. Sad but so very, very true.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: For me, this is deeper if they are just good friends but (for all you hopeless slashers and slashettes out there) it's there if you look.
AUTHOR'S EMAIL: nymph_du_pave@hotmail.com
AUTHOR'S THANKS: Beethoven, baby. Beethoven all the way.
In the Arms of the Angel
by Nymph Du Pave
On top of the plant. So far up.
I'm closer to you this way.
Icy wind blows, but I can't feel the chill. It goes around me, through me, the cold plastering my clothes against my body, but I'll be damned it I can feel it.
I finally find the nerve to stand. The dark is below me now, so far below me that I cannot see the bottom, but then again, I really don't want to. As long as I cannot see the bottom, I can pretend that I'll be flying.
Flying to you.
So when I jump, when I fall, Mom, remind me to close my eyes.
I take a deep breath and find myself not yet ready. The bottle is still here, in my hand, it's solid form exuding a certain level of corporeal comfort. So does what sloshes within, though only temporarily so. Heat and liquid, to the brain, to the stomach. But it doesn't last. This one is still half full, but the other two… They lay empty, bravado exorcised, bodies broken and discarded on the long trek here.
I walked. Didn't trust myself to drive. Had I crashed in my inebriated state… Well, he might have come to save me again and I don't want him to do that. Though I know he cares, I also know he is the only one on this plane of existence that does, and that is why the ocean of dark beneath me is of real comfort, an honest comfort, not one borne of man's confections. It offers me something else. The opportunity to fly to you, Mom.
But I need help to get there.
Not from him, though. He won't save me now, though if he knew I was up here, he'd try, and that gives me a high to go out on, the last laugh. Someone cared. Someone other than you, Mom. What a way to leave.
It scares me too, though. If he tried, I know he would win, because I'm so desperate right now, Mom. So lonely and scared of what I might become. I need affection, even if from a caring friend instead of a loving mother. Were he to offer that affection, I know that I would give up on seeing you. Again.
I know you have seen them. The many attempted "suicides". But do not shed tears for my pain, my desolation. These failed attempts at ending my life, at stopping my wounded heart... I see them as failed liberation. And they were only attempted as such because I didn't have the help, the courage.
But now I do. Cassandra... Her death was a sign, Mom. I cannot wait, cannot linger in a world where I fear what I will bring to tomorrow. Where to look at my own reflection brings me to my knees, scared of what I might see, fearful of the perverse deeds that I might later render.
No, if he were here I would run to him and beg him to hold me, to please tell me that everything will turn out fine. To reveal that Cassandra died out of old age, not out of fright of the monster before her. Not out of fear from the vicious yet oblivious demon holding her hand, praying that she will tell him that he breaks from his father, that somewhere in time he stays from the path his father is leading him along.
I would cling to him and beg that he proclaim that my future holds good things, great things. Like love. I can't live without love any longer, Mom. I've done it for far too long.
No, I don't need help from him, don't want the help, and it's best for me not to even think of him. I need help to bring my courage to it's peek, and he's the exact opposite of that necessity.
So that's what the bottles are for and, remembering this, I take a swig. I want to be with you, Mom, so bad that I cry when I hear your voice in my head. I don't hear it as often as I used to, though. It's being replaced by Lionel's and that petrifies me.
I need help to get to where you are because I think- I think that I'm afraid that you won't be there and I need you to be there when I get home.
Home is anywhere you are and I've been away for so very long. Please tell me you haven't forgotten about me, that you haven't changed the locks, because I just wanna come home, Mommy, and I want you to hear me say something. I didn't say it enough and you died not able to see how much I adored you. It's so hard for me to care anymore, but not about you. I could never stop when it's about you.
If it's what it would take to get me up there in your arms, I would scream for a thousand years that I love you, that I always did. You were my strength. My oh, so delicate and fragile strength. I never knew what I had until Lionel took it away. He's gotten very good at that over the past few years. Taking things away. I've gotten very good becoming numb at will, so that when he takes, I can't feel the hole growing deeper, expanding.
I shut my eyes to the black and for a moment I think I'm about to jump, but there's something missing. Ah, yes. The courage.
I take a sip and the heat burns my throat, my stomach, my soul. It's working, Mom. I'm coming.
You'll be there. I know you will. You'll be there, not because the drink tells me so, but because I can hear your voice in my mind telling me to stay. But I know you don't mean that, Mom. I know you want me there with you.
Fate. Destiny. Good things. Great things.
Bullshit. Fuck it all. If I stay here too much longer, my insides will rot. I can already feel them starting to decay, soiled with a hatred, a rage instilled by the loss of you and the increased presence of the czar.
He's right you know. I'm just like him. Or will be. I'm a Luthor on Earth.
But in Heaven by your side, Mom, I'll just be Lex. Little Lex. Your Little Lex. Forever.
No pain. No tears.
Sudden fear grips me. What if I'm not good enough to get to you, Mom? What if I'm too dead, too murky inside already? What if the angels become furious at my presence and rip me from your arms, from your eyes, your voice, throwing me into the void between?
At least I would have had a moment, but... But what if I don't even get that?
I swallow because now the black is frightening. I start to wonder if maybe I'll just fall forever. If I jump and Heaven deems me inappropriate material for it's soft and sanctioned afterlife, Lionel would never open the iron gates of Hell for me, knowing the greater agony awaits in limbo.
Cold tears stream down my cheeks as the wind becomes fiercer, rocking me. I lean into it.
"Take me," I whisper. "Please."
This is it. Now or never.
I take one final sip of courage, then toss it aside, hearing it crash behind me, splintering into a million pieces. The sound is jarringly familiar, like a million shattered souls screaming for release from the depths of some unknown inferno. But I don't have to worry, because Dad won't let me in with them, and I won't fall forever. You will let me in, won't you, Momma? You'll be there with the wings that were woefully invisible during your brief stay here, and with the halo that I remember. In the right light I could always just barely make it out above the strands of fire.
You'll give me my hair back, won't you? My hair so that I can be like you. Just like you, all over again.
You'll give me my hair back. Of course you will. I smile and look down into the blackness. "I'll be there in a minute, Mom." My voice is a mere breath, but you always told me that, if you wanted them to, the angels could hear your thoughts. So I know you can hear me speaking. "Just, please, help me. Help me to close my eyes."
You are my beliefs, my truths, my desires. You are the good inside of me that clings on despite my actions. I can feel you in my chest. I can feel you when I bleed because of Lionel. I can feel you when I hurt.
I can feel you in him, the one I shouldn't think of because I might want to stay. Might want to let him try and save me.
I can feel you when I sleep, when I see a genuine smile. When I look into a kind woman's eyes, or see a child's hand. I can feel you when I see the see the good in the world, the good that I can't be a part of as long as I am here. That hurts because the good is a thing of pure beauty, and I just want to be beautiful. Like you.
I can feel you when I breathe, Mom, and I want to be able to keep doing that, so I'm coming home.
Ready to jump. Ready to fly. Ready to be held by you.
"Oh, God, Lex! Don't!"
I cry out at the sound of his voice and sob once, deeply. The agony cuts me and I try to shout, but it comes out a gasp. So many words that I cannot say are forever lost. In the howling wind he didn't even hear my wretched sob, filled with the longing to end my life as a human, the craving to begin anew with the only other angel I've ever known. Other than him, and he's come to late in life to turn me, so why doesn't he just let me be?
The tears are falling now, cold and empty and fast because I know why he cannot do such a thing. How else could he even know that I was here? How could he have ever guessed? Unless you sent him.
And you did.
To save me.
From myself.
I look up to the cold, starry sky but it holds no warmth.
"Don't you want me to be with you!?" I can scream to the stars, to you, but will it do any good?
Don't you want me? Don't you want your baby boy in your arms once again? So you can take away the paleness, the baldness, the fear? One touch from you would erase all the sorrow. Just one touch.
Why won't you touch me?
"Lex! Please! Come down!" I hear the pleading in his voice, can feel his desperation, the responsibility he feels for me and my life.
At the same time I find myself wondering how he can feel anything for me, I know that his desperation is yours. You share it. You don't want me to die, do you? You think I'm better off here than…
Than where? Where would I go? If your so scared that you don't want me to die, then does that mean that I have already lost all hope to be with you again? That I am even now soulless and destined for a fate worse than the caliginous blazes of damnation? Does that mean that an eternally requisite purgatory awaits?
"Lex." Softer now. Closer. He knows I'm not going to jump, I'm not going to fall. We both know. We both know that he has saved me, yet again. What's his tally now?
Oh, Mom, why didn't you just let me come home?
I should have just let go of Earl that day not long ago. I was given my chance to see you then, but... Clark told me he believed me, believed me when everything else in the world enforced my place as a Luthor. He believed me when no deity, no archangel ever would have. I was honest, and he knew it. So I stayed. I hung on hoping that he would reach me. And he did.
I'm so sorry, Mom.
"Come on, Lex. Come here." Strong hands grip my waist. I know that I'm not going home, maybe ever, and I fall weakly back into him, knowing that he is somehow strong enough to catch me.
He examines me. My face, my limbs, my eyes. Making sure I'm still in one piece. "God, Lex," he says, wrapping his arms around me, no questions, no judgements.
He's so soft and affectionate. Caring. Does he already know? Did you tell him, Mom?
I pull back and glance up, into his eyes. They remind me of yours, Mom. Different color, same hue. Same love. I see understanding, but a lack of complete comprehension.
He doesn't know and I have to tell him. Have to explain. "My mom," I croak and he looks at me, intense. I see a sympathetic grasp of the situation and he pulls my cold head under his chin, holding me tightly.
My cold head. My cold torso, limbs and fingers. I can feel the warmth coming from his body.
I can feel.
I am suddenly wrecked with sobs, painful, loud and humiliating for a Luthor, but I have never been farther from being part of that lineage that right now. Right now I'm not even Lex. Right now I'm just a lost little boy who's mother left him and isn't coming back, won't ever come back. I'm just a small child who wants for nothing but the sole thing that he will always have, that he will never have.
His mother's love.
I'm shaking badly as he lowers us to the ground, his hands running in circles over my back trying to console me, trying to calm me, but he does not tell me to 'shush, be quiet' and for that I am grateful without end.
He does not dare say that everything will be alright, because somehow he knows. He knows something that even you, Mom, in what I assumed to be your infinite wisdom could never have guessed, or at least admitted to. You were too naïve, so sweet. To hopeful.
But he knows. He knows that sometimes some things will never be okay, will never turn out right. So he just holds me, not knowing, but understanding.
I calm a little and try to pull away from the strong arms that grip me, but they tighten and, stunned, I realize he is shaken. Shaken at how close he came to losing me. I am warmed at the thought that he considers me to be a friend, someone worthy of his time and love and thoughts. I wrap my arms around him, needing the comfort. I don't think I will ever have another moment of reciprocated devotion without ambiguous intent again, so I take what I've been lucky enough to receive.
I hear him breathe in deeply and let out an unstable breath. The fact that he is here sinks in. I believe that I already know the answer, but feel the inquisition is necessary. "How did you know?"
"Bad dream," he whispers unevenly. His hand moves to cup my head, back under his chin, and it reminds me of you. "Very bad dream, Lex."
I sigh and bury myself in his warmth, warmth that I can feel.
You've saved me, Mom. You sent him and his heart and his arms. You've saved me, but in doing so, you have destroyed me. With your pure and honest love, the love only a mother could have for her child, you have blindly killed the good in me. Now I fear you will watch me throughout the years, in whatever pain you might be able to feel up there. You'll watch the little of you I have left in me vanish completely. Because Clark may delay the inevitable, but even he, my guardian angel sent from my mother's pining soul, is not strong enough to save me from myself. Only you were and, by accident, you have averted from me. Soon, Heaven will no longer be an option for me.
I fear that I will not again find the courage to return to you before
the gates close.
FIN