Chapter 43 - Son of Demons

Lex could feel all of his muscles tightening. The last time he had done this, his memories had flashed back too far, and he had wound up reliving the first time his father ever beat him. The time before, it had been much worse. The solution hadn't taken him back nearly far enough, and he had instead found himself remembering his first and only Thanksgiving with the Kent's.

"Just try to relax. Let your mind take you back."

"I know the drill, Dr. Garner."

Dr. Garner fell silent, and Lex relaxed, as much as it was possible to relax in a metal basket being lowered into a huge tank of kryptonite laced solution. Stripped to his underwear, probes taped to his head. It was vulnerable, which was something he didn't care to be.

Still, he let his head fall back, feeling the tingling warmth of the solution on his skin, the way the fumes made his mind fuzzy, and he drifted off.

It was like dreaming, except it wasn't like dreaming at all. Waking up from a dream, one could sense that something had been wrong in the dream world. Waking up from the memories, he only felt that they had been more real than the way he previously remembered them.

He opened his eyes, and they were his 12-year-old eyes.

It was late at night, an ordinary night, and he was headed up the stairs with the tray. Normally, that would have been the servant's job, but his dad had given the servants the evening off. To give Mom time to bond with Julian.

He could hear Julian crying. Julian cried a lot, but Lex couldn't blame him. Mom had been scary lately. Crying all the time, but it was more than that. She kept gripping onto Lex too tightly, sobbing, saying she was going to save him. That she was going to protect him from his father. Both him and Julian.

He always heard his parents arguing about him and his brother. His mom thought his dad was going to turn them against each other, and his dad said he didn't know what she was talking about. Usually, he would trust whatever his mom said, but she was making so little sense lately, and she wouldn't even hold the baby. Lex was starting to wonder if maybe Dad was right. Maybe she was going insane.

Julian's crying was getting louder. It usually happened that way. Eventually, the cries would start getting a little softer, then softer still, dying down to whimpers, and then he would sleep…

The cries cut off abruptly.

That was not supposed to happen

Lex dropped the tray and bolted up the stairs. In all of the fighting between his parents, Lex hadn't gotten to think much about Julian himself. He hadn't really gotten to spend time with his little brother. Now, though, all he could think was how devastated he would be if something happened. That was his baby brother; Lex would do anything to protect him.

Lex was breathing hard by the time he got there. Julian's spinning lantern cast erie blue and red lights around the nursery, shifting shadows on the curtains in the crib and his mom, standing over it.

"Mom?"

She didn't say anything.

"Mom!"

She turned to face him, lifting the pillow out of the crib. It fell to the floor at her feet.

Lex's blood ran cold. He knew.

Still, he kept his eyes on her as he stepped toward her. "What did you do?"

A smile came over her face—a fake, plastered smile. "Shh. Don't wake the baby. He's sleeping." She came over to stand before Lex, her face right in front of his. Still smiling, though her voice was thick, like she had been crying. He didn't even recognize her.

He stepped past her, and he looked down into the crib.

His baby brother. The one he was supposed to protect, the one he hadn't given a second thought to. Skin purple, body unmoving, lifeless.

"No, no." He turned back to face his mom. His baby brother was dead, and his mom was, too. Dad was going to kill her. "What about Dad?"

"Shh. There's nothing to worry about, sweetheart. Julian's happy now." She kissed him on the forehead, and she left him alone in the nursery. Alone with the dead body.

He would be alone with his father soon.

The official story wouldn't say that his dad had killed his mom. Lex was sure his dad would get himself out of any real trouble. But Lex would always know it had been him. Mom might have been going crazy, but Dad, he didn't love her enough to allow her to live when she had taken the life of his heir. Dad would fear Lex was in danger, and then he wouldn't have an heir at all.

Lex knew why, in her twisted mind, she had killed Julian. Lex was less certain why she hadn't killed him.

But madness could be cured. And now, with Julian gone, her postpartum psychosis, or whatever Dad was calling it, wouldn't bother her anymore. Crazy or not, Lex would take his mom over his dad any day. There was no way he could bear to be raised by his father alone.

There was nothing Lex could do. His father wouldn't believe the death had been an accident.

Unless…

Lex stayed by the crib. He looked down at the pillow by his feet; it wasn't exactly a smoking gun, but it was enough. Maybe he was the one who was going crazy. Maybe his mom didn't kill the baby. Maybe Lex did. It was an accident. Julian had been crying, and Lex had tried to pick him up and rock him and comfort him, and somehow, he had died. Maybe he was smothered, or maybe Lex just wasn't gentle enough. It didn't matter. As long as his mom wasn't the one who had killed Julian.

His father might beat his one remaining heir, but he would never kill him.

Lex snapped awake in the tank.

"Good session," Dr. Garner said. "I think that's enough for today."

Lex allowed the employees to help him out of the kryptonite solution, to towel him off, to get him back into his clothes. He felt numb for the whole thing.

He hadn't killed Julian. He wasn't a murderer.

Of course, it wasn't strictly true that he wasn't a murderer. He had killed Duncan, though that really was an accident. He had killed Nixon, though that had been in self-defense, or rather in defense of someone he cared about. And he had killed his father, though the bastard deserved it.

Still, Julian has been the hangup. The proof that Lex would never be anything but a murderer, because what had Julian done to deserve that? He had been in Lex's way, a competitor. A defenseless baby. It was the crime of a weak man, a pathetic act of cowardice. And that was all he would ever be.

But he hadn't killed Julian. He was innocent. All these years…

"You going to start talking now?" Lex asked aloud as he drove back to Metropolis. "Tell me I'm not hopeless?"

His weakness was silent.

That was the last thing he was expecting. "Thought you would be all over this. I'm not a murderer! Sound the alarms! Tell me there's hope for me yet!"

Nothing.

Lex grimaced. "Of course, my mother is. But that's nothing new, having a parent who's a murderer. Dad's got to have murdered dozens. Anyone who got in his way, right?"

"Both of them," the weakness said, so soft he almost couldn't hear it.

Lex felt his jaw pulse. "You're realizing I'm right, aren't you?"

"No," it said, but it even sounded like a lie.

"Because if Dad is a demon and Mom is an angel, that means we're half angel. There's still hope, even if we made a mistake. But if they're both demons…"

"It was a mercy kill," it said.

Lex chuckled. "Give it up. I'm right about this."

The voice didn't say anything. He couldn't even feel its presence.

Lex smirked and pressed the pedal to the metal, feeling the seat press into his back. He should've been happy, but instead, he just felt sick to his stomach.