Nascence

Intro

"I plan on being great all by myself," Lex Luthor once proclaimed to ex-flame Victoria Harwick. But he has also always understood that to become a legend, one needs to master the sharpest swords of all -- people. So he watches, he weaves, and on rare occasions he snatches an rare eaglet to be honed into a weapon loyal only to him.

But what happens when a move, Lionel against Lex, forces a premature show of his hand?

This is a Lex/other friendship retake of the season three episode Asylum. Note that "friendship" is always a questionable word with regards to a Luthor. The storyline grafts on somewhere near the end of the episode Shattered, after Lex confronts Lionel and before he takes off to hunt down Morgan Edge. It will not make sense unless you have seen Shattered, and it is recommended to watch Asylum as well -- if nothing else because of the superb acting.

Insert standard disclaimers for borrowing the concept of Smallville and its inhabitants.

Author's Notes

I have a love-hate relationship with Smallville the TV series, so do forgive (or ignore) this rant. Due to this internal tug-of-war I have watched nothing past mid-season three; please keep in mind that the following and this story assumes only history up to Smallville 2003. If the state of affairs have changed in seasons four and above, I would be thrilled to be notified so that it may coax me back to watching the rest of the series.

That said, the one thing I consider as exceptionally well done is the Luthor complex. Lex and Lionel are the most intriguing villains I have had the pleasure to meet. They are personable, each thread of their character flaws easy to identify with, yet twisted into such magnificent knots that one wonders if there is beginning or end. These are no run-of-the-mill psychopaths, but human beings that we may be not too surprised to see walking down our streets. Their terrible beauty lie in how their actions can so easily be justified.

The major problem I have with the series is its terrible take on female roles. Lana Lang is the quintessential victim, sweet and "good" but without the strength and/or power to stand by her alleged convictions. Still, I do not dislike her so much as I dislike the emphasis placed upon her value to the world in general, though I suppose there's no arguing matters of the heart so I will not critique her role as the sum of Clark Kent's world. Martha Kent is similarly pleasant but just as ineffective, mostly content to let her husband be "the man of the family" at least in public, though her private opinions sometimes differ.

Chloe Sullivan is by far the most interesting female in the series, yet receives so little screen time that she is almost a mere prop device to magic away the 99 hard work that is necessary in order for Clark Kent to whiz by and saves the day. Her plights throughout the episodes all but blazes in huge kryptonite-green letters: curiosity and dedication are Very Bad Traits, and will only earn you hatred from your friends, disregard from your peers, and an eventual Horrible Fate. I see that we are a generation of cynics, with the lowest possible expectations for intelligence within our teen population, but please! It is only dichotic to have a triumph-of-the-hero type saga and yet disparage all less-flashy forms of heroism.

So, what does this leave us with? Glossy, manipulative beauty queens whose sole strategies are to use their feminine wiles to charm livings off the nearest eligible male... extra effort for persons named Lex Luthor?

Yikes. And to think that I really don't care to spend much time on the feminist soapbox.

With that as context, let's steer a little closer back to the point. Ordinarily, I would never even consider writing an "insert wish-fulfillment character" type of story, but we've all been there and done those things we vowed never to do. The season three episodes Shattered and Asylum were feats of acting by Michael Rosenbaum that left me deeply and thoroughly disturbed, and this change-of-history piece just upped and wrote itself. It is a retake of Asylum with an additional, non-decorative body. It does not follow the Asylum storyline, but is a "what could have happened" in an alternate universe where she (yup, you guessed it) existed.

Permit me a few words on the choice of the mystery female. She is not an average Jane, for I must confess some irritation at the plethora of average females in Smallville when the male cast is so much more substantial. The other reason is that I wanted her in a position to address another grossly-mistreated aspect of Smallville: science. I am not insisting that the twenty-first century laws of physics be accounted for -- here be aliens, after all, and we all know that our theories are incomplete. But I do feel that there should have been more scientific incredulity over Smallville phenomena than is revealed by the series. As a biochemistry graduate who nearly went on to get a PhD., it is inconceivable to me that Lex Luthor had not packed more scientific muscle than the wayward and inevitably mad-or-rotten persons that pop up once in a while.

Hence "she" was born, most assuredly not from the convenience of kryptonite. The rest, I hope you will read.