AUTHOR: Nymph Du Pave
FANDOM: Smallville
RATING: PG [for heavy content]
SUMMARY: Character piece. Lex, at "a vulnerable point" makes a life altering decision.
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.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I don't know where the hell this one came from, but I felt like I had to get it out.
FEEDBACK: Please! It feels unbalanced, a little off. Tell me what you all think about everything.
AUTHOR'S EMAIL: nymph_du_pave@hotmail.com
Mama Said
by Nymph Du Pave
The view... it's... panoramic.
"So many things, Lex."
The world is circular. He can see around him all at once.
"You could do anything you want, sweetie."
But no one is talking.
"The world is like... It's like a toy, Lex."
No one is around him.
"But the consequences of breaking this toy are very serious."
Their voices. Their voices surround him.
"You can be whatever you want."
Love. The only thing he'd ever thought he'd never lose.
"Whatever you want, Alexander."
The only thing he thought he'd always have.
"What do you want, Alexander?"
The only thing that, lost, ripped his heart apart.
"What do you want, baby?"
He needed it so bad.
"Mommy's so proud of her baby boy."
But he wanted nothing to do with it.
"Never forget that, sweetheart."
Oh, God.
"I've loved you more than I've ever loved anything."
It was only thing his soul needed to stop the tears at night.
"Your mother and I love you."
The only thing he feared to find.
"And I always will."
Love was never forever.
"She'll never forget you."
People... They left you.
"Pam is gonna stay with you, baby. Stay with you just like I would. For me."
They betrayed you.
"I'll be there for you. I swear it, Alexander."
The broke your innocence right after you gave them your love.
"Don't worry. You're mom's going to a very happy place."
Right after you gave them your gratitude.
"Oh, Little Lex. I'm... I'm so sorry that I'm leaving you alone."
They died.
"I'm so... sorry."
Mom?
The view... it's... panoramic. It's panoramic white. All around him.
The world is circular. He can see... he can see it all at once.
But no one is talking. No one is around him.
Their voices surround him, but he is alone in a world of white. He's the black spot, the hole in the sun.
Nothing will ever fill him again.
Mom?
~*~*~*~
"Mom?" Lex started awake, his neck cramping up as his head jerked forward.
Pamela was asleep in her hospital bed. So pale.
He sighed. No mother here, and Pam... Pamela was his angel returned. Dirtied. Soiled. Humanized.
Lionel had found away to rid Lex of yet another entity in his life, another deity. Lillian was his Goddess, and Pamela was his angel. She had been there for him, loving him as she took care of him. It was true. She treated him like she would have her own, also dead so long ago. She had clung to Lex not because she needed him, but because she wanted him. She wanted to raise him in his mother's light, to keep him from becoming what his father wanted of him. She just wanted to give him a chance at a fair and beautiful life.
Then she was smashed. Her porcelain beauty was corrupted as her image was ruined and her being was-
"Betrayed," he whispered. She had been betrayed. Completely and wholly. By him. The one person in her life- other than Lillian- that she deemed worthy of her tears, of her love since her husband and kids bit the big one in 79. She'd loved him so much. Left for that love. Came back for that love.
His fingers caressed her hand. "It must have been so hard," he whispered. She was soiled, yes. But she was also reinstated. Fixed from her broken image. Who cared if the cracks showed a little? It the glue wasn't as transparent as it could be? Everyone had cracks. Had faults. Nothing... Nobody was perfect.
Not even Clark.
He sighed and leaned back. She didn't look as pale or strained as she had when he first came in. She didn't look lonely. She looked at peace.
His heart sped up. "Oh, God."
His mother. His mother looked at peace once Pamela swore that she would never leave Lex's side.
She had the same expression moments before she passed.
Moments before she left him forever.
He wasn't going to lose someone else. He wasn't... He still loved Pamela and the pain in his chest was gone. The hate for the woman he loved... the hate for the woman who promised then lied... She hadn't done that at all and the pain in his heart and in his soul was gone. Gone only to be replaced by this second pain, one he knew too well.
When someone you loved left you, when they died, it seared a hole in your stomach, lacerated your heart, and there was nothing you could do to fix that. That hole always burned and the laceration always shined through. It never stopped and could rarely be dulled. It had taken him five years to be able to speak of his mother without his tears flooding his senses.
He couldn't do that again.
Wouldn't.
~*~*~*~
Despite his money and connections, the many doctors and specialists, his constant supervision and her laughter- Despite it all, Pamela died.
He had watched warily as, in the few weeks he had left with her, she began to pale, thin, weaken. But he noticed that she never lost her spirit, or the twinkle in her eyes. She told him a million times that she was happy, she was so happy. That he was a terrific man and that his forgiveness meant the world to her.
He loved her. He told her a few times and she cried each time, so happy that she had not left him in bitterness, that he didn't think her a whore for the Luthor estate, that he didn't think her a Judas to his childhood persona, left in the dust of her tires. He was there for her, and she couldn't believe that her last wish was coming true.
His forgiveness.
Lillian, she said, must have been watching over her.
~*~*~*~
The study was dark, draped with black. Two pictures on the mantle. Both women had stunning red hair. One had blue eyes, the other had green.
Both of the pictures had their perfect beauty marred by black, silk straps.
Mourning bands. He hated them.
Clark had once come in here while Lex was on the balcony above him. Clark had no idea Lex was there and walked over to the mantle. He'd frowned at the picture, touched the face of Lex's dead mother. "Find a way to tell him you're proud," he whispered just barely in Lex's range. "Please. It would mean everything to him. And to me."
He had coughed and pretended to be completely enamored with his reading.
But he'd never forgotten Clark's words. And he figured that Pamela's return was his mother's way of letting him know. His mother's way of giving him a second chance.
His mother had cancer. Pamela had cancer. He couldn't save his mother. Maybe... maybe he could save Pamela.
Didn't happen. So it hadn't been a gift from his mother after all.
He took a sip of his brandy and looked down to the parchment.
Once between the darkness
hidden in the woods
a friend I had breathed heavily
to let me hear her there
She kept me burning brightly
a fire in such cold
the rain my father doused upon us
would never kill that flame
She was the perfect keeper
of a soul that felt such loss
but as she travels far away
she takes with her this list
One heart, strained and broken
from years of unspoken abuse
becoming less so open
single flame within the fire
One mind unseeing of friendships
what a cost this would offend
left with a broken brain
to navigate through the chaos
One soul so proudly damaged
that the ice could not break through
and the sight of a loser benign no more
becoming what he can afford
My friend comes back into my life
I'm hurt to see her face
there's something in the paleness there
I just can't find the strength
To look takes too much courage
to see takes little doubt
in the fact that the person I once was
never left this mind nor will
And now, through I've just found her
placed back into my space
she tells me that our lives are short
Grabs my hand in pain
She knows that I've forgiven her
thinks that I'm of good men
My only mitigation here
is the darkness she'll soon receive
She won't be here to watch me fail
or observe my transformation
but I'll have to stay and see her die
so long to my second coming
Left alone to a world so cruel
I've walked this path before
The woods are painfully different now
the darkness I see has changed
My friend no longer breathes
to let me know she's there
and soon I'll be forced down those steps
not towards her; my angel's far
Once between the darkness
hidden in the woods
a friend I had breathed for me
to let me feel her there.
Something he'd written. Something he'd tried. One thing he and Pamela shared was a love of poetry. And he'd tried his best.
~*~*~*~
If you hate the world, if you love nothing, than you can lose nothing of value because you have already lost everything.
Lex didn't want Clark to die, but he knew the kid would eventually. The strange kid who must have been affected by the meteorites like everyone else in the town but for some reason feared to tell his best friend, shaved bald and made tremendously resilient from the same shower.
Or...
Maybe he wouldn't die. Maybe he would just leave Lex. Betray him. He wasn't sure which would hurt more. It didn't really matter either way. He would lose Clark eventually. So Lex formed a plan. He would move back to Metropolis and scheme to take over LuthorCorp. It was the only thing he truly knew, the only thing he could handle. Business. Money. Backstabbing when it wasn't personal. When it was about acquisitions and gold and being on top. He knew that.
He was king there.
He'd tried to live in another world. He'd tried for a dead woman who's body was nothing but bones and dust and rotted red hair. Who's memory was not enough to save him, to make him real. To make him like her.
He hated people and emotions. None of it was worth the pain that it all brought on. Not even Clark. Because Clark... His departure would be as painful as his mother's and Pamela's. Maybe worse depending on how long their friendship lasted.
"Our friendship will be the stuff of legends."
He needed too much and that need was how other's used you. How others broke you. How you broke yourself.
He would just stop needing.
If you hate the world, if you love nothing, than you can lose nothing
of value because you have already lost everything.
FIN