A scene of a fic that I don’t have the time to write:
Lydia walked towards him with a thousand yard stare, her fists clenched, her posture rigid. Lex’s Porsche was hastily parked besides the barn. There were skid marks on the dirt road.
Speed demon father, speed demon daughter.
Conner was seated at the steps of the Kent’s porch, a quantum physics book that may as well be written in High Martian Theory balanced on his knees for how much sense it was making for him the seventh time he read it trying to find a solution that didn’t seem too be there.
It has been a month since they have been sent to the past.
Lydia Luthor and Conner Kent, half-siblings extraordinaire, stuck in 2004.
No one knew about the half-sibling part of course. They had the misfortune of falling right when their parents relationship was starting to get on the rocks and shaking that boat even more with stolen DNA super baby was not te way to go. Childhood friends it was then.
“Conner you have to convince me.” Lydia said, walking up the steps without stopping, ignoring Clark who had just opened the door as she walked to the living room.
Conner was on his feet in seconds. Something bad happened. “Ok, sure thing.”
Clark followed him back inside.“What is she talking about?”
Grandma (she had gotten so flushed when he called her that the first time it was kinda funny. Not as funny when Clark fainted but pretty funny) was looking worried at Lydia as she paced in a circle in front of the tv set.
Jonathan (who he did call grandpa even if it didn’t come as naturally as calling Martha Grandma did. Lack of habit, he thinks) lowers his newspaper, looking at Lydia with a glean of suspicion that makes Conner want to chew the walls down.
No wonder Lex became a supervillain, he thought, if he was dealing with this shit for years.
Then he looked back at Lydia, biting her thumbnail. Not with force, not to break the purple painted nail off, just to have something to do with her teeth. She would probably scrape the nail polish clean off.
Ex-supervillain, he corrected himself. Father girlhood truly did wonders.
“Lydia uses me as a moral compass sometimes. When she asks me to convince her, she means dissuade her from doing something hasty.” He explained to the remaining people on the room as he sat down on the couch.
Lydia gaze zeroed on him like a heat guided nuke.
“I want Lionel Luthor dead.”
On his back he could hear Jonathan spit his coffee all over the table, Grandma hand cover her mouth and Clark’s breath hitch.
Taking her hands in his, he asked: “as in, you want a hit put on him or…”
“Let me rephrase it: I want to kill Lionel Luthor. I want him rotting, buried and dead and far away from my dad as I possibly can get him”
“Now young lady, I won’t seat here and pretend I like the man or any thing of the sort but aren’t you being a little extreme now?” Jonathan said, his hands raised slightly as if he was placating a wild animal.
Lydia looked at him unblinking.
“Can’t you see what he is doing? What he has already done? My father is kind.” And her breath hitched, and her pulse spiked and her eyes filled with a fury he had seen before. “My father is kind, and he is compassionate and he is giving and he is generous and somehow I am the only motherfucker in this city who fucking sees it!!”
She squeezed his hands and if he was any other boy she would have broken his fingers.
“Grandfather has done NOTHING besides cut my father with his words, shape my father under heavy pressure, lay on him sharp expectations and then mock him and brand him a failure for not remaining stoic as a stone while he pile EVEN MORE HEAVY SHIT ON TOP OF HIM.”
She let go of his hands, running her’s through her red curls, her eyes brimming with tears.
“That man is a rotten tree who looks at my father and tells him he is the same, that the apple is as rotten as the tree from where it came and anyone who bites from it will gain that knowledge and be cursed forever…”
She ran her hands over her face. “I want that man killed, for only with him in hell will my father will have a moment of peace.”
Oh, he didn’t like the silence that fell over them at all. It was the type of silence that hides away uncomfortable truths, uncomfortable feelings.
“… aren’t you worried that killing him would change the future? What if it affects you? What if you cease to exist?” Clark’s voice was soft, confused.
Of course he was, a very mean, very Luthor part of him though, what does Clark know if not self preservation at all costs?
Even when the cost was the peace of his supposed best friend?
“Lydia!!” Grandma exclaimed, horrified.
“IT WOULD BE WORTH IT!” And the rigid posture was gone. In its place was a ball of suppression. Of energy, of anger, of despair that ran deep and the sort of blind devotion only a daughter who loved her father could ever feel.
“You don’t know him like I do. You don’t look at his eyes knowing that the only joy he has in life is you.” And she paced and she paced and she paced, gripping her hair like she was a wrong move away from pulling it off.
“I-I k-know as a fact, as a certainty as immutable as gravity that if I didn’t appear on his door in a little basket he would have killed himself one day” and there it was. The flinch that hit Clark was all he needed to know that what Lydia said was the most explicit anyone was ever said about the obvious elephant in the room of any household that knew Lex Luthor for more than the surface level but that was ignored as swiftly as Lex himself did, hiding it under slight of words and hyperboles.
Lex Luthor wanted to kill himself.
“He HATES the man he became. He DESPISES the things he has done. He LOATHES himself…. But he loves me. He hates himself but he took me into his arms and called me “his” and he has been living for my sake ever since and I. Don’t. Want. That.” And she hit her chest with each word like she was punching the worlds out of herself.
Conner got up and held her hands. Enough of that, no more harm.
She was crying now, her big green eyes glassy and unfocused. Her hands relaxed on his hold. That was good.
“I want my dad to live because he wants to be alive.”
He nodded. He understands. He had to learn to want to be alive himself.
“But he will never have that if Lionel is still here, poisoning the food and the water and the fucking air we breathe with his presence. The poison drips down to my father against his will and he is branded with the same iron because as long as Lionel lives all people will think when they hear the name Luthor is evil. It’s deceit, it’s double edged swords, it’s mistrust. Lionel is a snake, so Lex must be as well…” so I must be as well was let unsaid but hit Jonathan anyway if his heart rate was any indication.
She leaned towards him, resting her head over his chest “I want my father to be happy. To fly unburdened by expectations. To touch the cobblestones of Rome with wonder without thinking about the myriad of “lessons” shoved down his throat at age 8. Only unrestrained curiosity and enthusiasm.
I want him to laugh, to fall in love without fear of being poisoned, stabbed or abandoned.
I want him to dance. I want him to paint and play and sing and read and write and be a normal man who wants to be alive.
I want my dad to be happy… and if I desapear in the process… I think I’m ok with that.”
What could Conner do but hug her? Hug her and try his best to squeeze that deranged idea from her head.
Luthors. Always all or nothing, even when it came to love.
“I’m not.” He said to the crow of her head. For he was a Luthor too and he was just as possessive of what was his as any of them. “I will not sacrifice you for him and you know he would do the same in my place.”
“If you want him happy, I’m pretty sure you have to be there for it to be real to him.”
