headcanon: luthor children
Lena and Lex were not close as children. Lex tried at first, clinging to a new support system during Lionel’s abuse. Someone to protect from their father.Â
But Lionel didn’t abuse Lena. Not in the ways that he did Lex. Lena became the golden child, Lionel’s favorite. Just as Lilian had predicted, she was pitted against her older brother. The firstborn was the sacrificial lamb, the one that was meant to be brought up with rod. Trained to be the heir. Not given candy and treats and affection.
Lena was the actual child, the girl to be doted on and cared for. Adopted into the family but fitting in as if she had always been there. And she had so wanted a family, a new family, still reeling from the trauma of watching her birth mother drown.
Lena didn’t realize what Lionel was doing to her brother-- she was young and she tried to look up to her older brother but at the same time, Lionel convinced her that he had earned the punishments and screaming matches. That he deserved his father chipping away at his soul. Lex took it all stoically, doing his best to protect his little sister. Better him than her.
Lena would not appreciate this until she was an adult looking back. The times that Lionel’s eyes would get dark and Lex would draw his father’s attention somehow. He had been protecting her.
Julian came along when Lex was 15, Lena only 7. Both siblings had decided to put aside their differences for a few years, until Julian was raised. To protect him from the abuse that Lex suffered. And Lena was close to admitting that the way that Lionel treated Lex was indeed unkind, uncalled for.
But then the baby wouldn’t stop screaming.
Lilian was kind once, she was good once. But post-partum and Lionel forcing her to have another child all wore on her. The baby wouldn’t stop screaming.
And Lex, being the eldest, the responsible one, took the blame for his dear mother.
Lena saw Lex-- oh, be careful little eyes what you see-- as she watched through the door. Saw him pull a pillow out of the crib and hide it beneath the changing table. Mother had run out of the room crying, waking the girl up. Lex stared down at the crib and Lionel came in to say goodnight to his youngest son. He had ruffled Lena’s hair, always soft and kind.Â
Lena had preened at the affection at the time.
And then screaming. What have you done? What have you done? A slap, no worse than others that Lionel gave Lex when angered, but this one was hard enough to send Lex crashing to the ground.
The coffin was tiny. The service was small and private. And Lena, tiny shoulders held rigid, Lionel had gripped her shoulder hard, too hard. Lilian was sobbing and Lex was sitting as far away from his family as decorum would allow. The child, only seven years old, decided then and there that she was not going to forgive Lex for killing her baby brother.
He had deserved it. Every unkind word, every slap and fist. He had killed his own baby brother-- her own baby brother. Lionel was just trying to keep him from becoming the monster that he was, trying to keep him under a father’s wise hand.
Lena stripped away the sympathy that she had for her brother long before he grew up into Superman’s enemy.
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