hackthis_archive (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hackthis_archive) wrote2004-02-26 04:48 pm
hackthis_archive) wrote2004-02-26 04:48 pm
This speaks for itself.
Spoilers for ‘Resurrection.’
Smallville
Rapunzel
Adam’s life is an observational tank bathed in white.
Everything he touches is colorless, and even the books he reads are bleached of everything except the type. He wears expensive white clothing that chafes against his too sensitive skin, and he lives in a railroad-car series of rooms, bathed in artificial white lights. At night he climbs into a bed that’s devoid of color, and even his come stains blend in eventually.
The only thing of color in his entire life is his food. That, and his blood.
Adam doesn’t bleed as much as he used to, but sometimes he can’t help himself. Sometimes the injections just make him angry, and he brings the pain on himself. Sometimes he runs into objects or gets careless in the shower. He hit himself once when he knew they were watching, because the desperation just gets to be too much.
He needs them to pay attention to him, plus, he likes to watch the liquid bloom and spread on the clothes of the other Adam he sees in the mirror.
As long as he has the other Adam, he’s never really alone.
*
Adam has no sense of time in his underground lair, which might as well be the tallest tower in the sky. He wakes up when a sexless voice tells him to, and he can always feel someone watching him no matter where he goes. There are little electrical red eyes that whiz and whirr as they wheel around, and they are little flecks of color in an otherwise pallid existence. Except they're always following him, hampering his movements, even more than the reflective glass that contains him in this cell and shows his entire life.
*
Lex Luthor is the center of Adam’s universe from the moment he wakes up, strapped to the bed, in his new home of bright, white lights. Lex has given him a piano and a library, and a television with very selective programming that he can watch for a few hours every day.
If Adam is good, Lex graces him with his presence during dinner, and if Adam is very good, he’s allowed to share Lex’s bed. If he doesn’t behave well, though, Lex has a girl named Mercy, now, and she’s even more possessive than Adam ever was.
Mercy is Adam’s only true companion, when Lex doesn’t visit. She has long brown hair, and she forces Adam to exercise. She also brings him sheet music and the books he’s required to read, and Adam calls her Mercy because that’s what Lex calls her, too.
But Adam’s fairly sure that’s not her name since Lex doesn’t call Adam by his name either.
It doesn't really matter since names aren’t important down here -- Lex is.
And Lex says that if Adam can learn everything Lex wants to teach him, if Adam will just let him run a few more tests, then perhaps he’ll be granted freedom one day.
All Adam needs is one straw to grasp.
*
Adam’s bathroom is white, the toilet is clear, and when he curls up on the floor of the shower, it’s easy enough to see the way he shakes and shivers. He’s not cold, but absolute fear has a way of reaching through his bones and twisting him painfully enough for nothing else to matter. Adam’s not sure what he should feel towards these people who might’ve saved him just to make things worse.
Every time he senses Lex on the other side of the glass, he’s not sure if it’s love or hate or respect or horror or dread. At least Lex is not his father, and the arrangement itself makes Adam rather dysfunctionally content.
*
In the morning he plays the piano: Rachmaninoff, Brahams, Wagner, Chopin, anything he thinks Lex might like to hear wherever he is. In the afternoon he studies and studies and studies until his eyes begin to tear, and the artificial light burns hot on the back of his neck.
He eats lunch alone, and he lives, breathes, eats, shits and dreams in the same three rooms day after day and year after year. He only knows he’s getting old by the lines that begin to appear on Lex’s forehead, and when he tries to study himself in the reflective glass all he sees are eyes too dilated by drugs and teeth that feel rotten in his head. Adam doesn’t know if corpses lose their teeth or not. He also doesn’t know who Superman is either, but when Lex calls him a lying bastard, Adam wonders about this person that can make his Lex so out of control.
*
Adam practices his scales over and over and over and over again when there’s nothing to do. Flats and sharps and chords and notes filling his three little rooms like blood running through a circulatory system. Music keeps Adam alive like the injections that Mercy brings him at regular intervals every day, and if he behaves, Mercy will spar with him so he can practice his jujitsu. Occasionally, Adam wonders if she would ever use her moves on Lex, but he doubts it very much. She seems just as fanatical about Lex as Adam is, and Adam supposes it could be much worse. It’s not as though he’s competing against another guy or anything, even though there’s nothing more satisfying to Adam’s sense of self than tossing Mercy against the polarized wall and hearing the creak of his surroundings as they shake in awe.
Adam grows stronger every day, and some day Lex will let him out, and then everybody will see the great things that Lex is capable of.
Adam knows that Lex will save them all.
-end-
Notes: I said ‘I’m bored.’ Serial Karma said ‘write me some Adam/Lex.’ I said, ‘Okay, but it’s going to be fucked up.’ She said ‘cool.’
Beta and Improv (hamper, straw, bloom, curl, wheel, hot) also by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
serialkarma.
I suspect my fucked up Adam wouldn't be possible without Wendi and Hope, so here's to them too.
Smallville
Adam’s life is an observational tank bathed in white.
Everything he touches is colorless, and even the books he reads are bleached of everything except the type. He wears expensive white clothing that chafes against his too sensitive skin, and he lives in a railroad-car series of rooms, bathed in artificial white lights. At night he climbs into a bed that’s devoid of color, and even his come stains blend in eventually.
The only thing of color in his entire life is his food. That, and his blood.
Adam doesn’t bleed as much as he used to, but sometimes he can’t help himself. Sometimes the injections just make him angry, and he brings the pain on himself. Sometimes he runs into objects or gets careless in the shower. He hit himself once when he knew they were watching, because the desperation just gets to be too much.
He needs them to pay attention to him, plus, he likes to watch the liquid bloom and spread on the clothes of the other Adam he sees in the mirror.
As long as he has the other Adam, he’s never really alone.
Adam has no sense of time in his underground lair, which might as well be the tallest tower in the sky. He wakes up when a sexless voice tells him to, and he can always feel someone watching him no matter where he goes. There are little electrical red eyes that whiz and whirr as they wheel around, and they are little flecks of color in an otherwise pallid existence. Except they're always following him, hampering his movements, even more than the reflective glass that contains him in this cell and shows his entire life.
Lex Luthor is the center of Adam’s universe from the moment he wakes up, strapped to the bed, in his new home of bright, white lights. Lex has given him a piano and a library, and a television with very selective programming that he can watch for a few hours every day.
If Adam is good, Lex graces him with his presence during dinner, and if Adam is very good, he’s allowed to share Lex’s bed. If he doesn’t behave well, though, Lex has a girl named Mercy, now, and she’s even more possessive than Adam ever was.
Mercy is Adam’s only true companion, when Lex doesn’t visit. She has long brown hair, and she forces Adam to exercise. She also brings him sheet music and the books he’s required to read, and Adam calls her Mercy because that’s what Lex calls her, too.
But Adam’s fairly sure that’s not her name since Lex doesn’t call Adam by his name either.
It doesn't really matter since names aren’t important down here -- Lex is.
And Lex says that if Adam can learn everything Lex wants to teach him, if Adam will just let him run a few more tests, then perhaps he’ll be granted freedom one day.
All Adam needs is one straw to grasp.
Adam’s bathroom is white, the toilet is clear, and when he curls up on the floor of the shower, it’s easy enough to see the way he shakes and shivers. He’s not cold, but absolute fear has a way of reaching through his bones and twisting him painfully enough for nothing else to matter. Adam’s not sure what he should feel towards these people who might’ve saved him just to make things worse.
Every time he senses Lex on the other side of the glass, he’s not sure if it’s love or hate or respect or horror or dread. At least Lex is not his father, and the arrangement itself makes Adam rather dysfunctionally content.
In the morning he plays the piano: Rachmaninoff, Brahams, Wagner, Chopin, anything he thinks Lex might like to hear wherever he is. In the afternoon he studies and studies and studies until his eyes begin to tear, and the artificial light burns hot on the back of his neck.
He eats lunch alone, and he lives, breathes, eats, shits and dreams in the same three rooms day after day and year after year. He only knows he’s getting old by the lines that begin to appear on Lex’s forehead, and when he tries to study himself in the reflective glass all he sees are eyes too dilated by drugs and teeth that feel rotten in his head. Adam doesn’t know if corpses lose their teeth or not. He also doesn’t know who Superman is either, but when Lex calls him a lying bastard, Adam wonders about this person that can make his Lex so out of control.
Adam practices his scales over and over and over and over again when there’s nothing to do. Flats and sharps and chords and notes filling his three little rooms like blood running through a circulatory system. Music keeps Adam alive like the injections that Mercy brings him at regular intervals every day, and if he behaves, Mercy will spar with him so he can practice his jujitsu. Occasionally, Adam wonders if she would ever use her moves on Lex, but he doubts it very much. She seems just as fanatical about Lex as Adam is, and Adam supposes it could be much worse. It’s not as though he’s competing against another guy or anything, even though there’s nothing more satisfying to Adam’s sense of self than tossing Mercy against the polarized wall and hearing the creak of his surroundings as they shake in awe.
Adam grows stronger every day, and some day Lex will let him out, and then everybody will see the great things that Lex is capable of.
Adam knows that Lex will save them all.
-end-
Notes: I said ‘I’m bored.’ Serial Karma said ‘write me some Adam/Lex.’ I said, ‘Okay, but it’s going to be fucked up.’ She said ‘cool.’
Beta and Improv (hamper, straw, bloom, curl, wheel, hot) also by
serialkarma.I suspect my fucked up Adam wouldn't be possible without Wendi and Hope, so here's to them too.
no subject
no subject
Shhhhhhhh! Stop analysing me and giving away all my secrets. Where's the fun in writing if everybody knows about the cards you're holding?
no subject
Adam knows that Lex will save them all.
Oh yes, I like the tweaking done to this last bit. Because like A. said, it really is still all about Lex. Excellent.
no subject
I'm, like, transparent, aren't I? I'm so ashamed. Now I'll have to move to Antartica and change my name to Jimmy Hoffa.
no subject
See? I'm circular. But I liked it! I like it when you get experimental!
no subject
See? I'm circular. But I liked it! I like it when you get experimental!
I write you porn and weirdness in the same day and you go for the weird. I see how it is! *laughs*
no subject
no subject
As I was reading, I got a little wary at the direction it was taking but I kept reading and the characterization of Lex is just so eerily dead-on. I really have a thing for manipulative Lex even as I dread him turning into the man he's going to be.
Great job with this!
no subject
It was rather creep, wasn't it? I suspect that's what I liked the most about it: that it quite clearly wasn't a nice story.
no subject
Every time he senses Lex on the other side of the glass, he’s not sure if it’s love or hate or respect or horror or dread. At least Lex is not his father, and the arrangement itself makes Adam rather dysfunctionally content.
Loved this moment in the story. It struck me as all too true.
Thanks for sharing!
no subject
no subject
What a high price to pay for survival. So utterly chilling to see Adam's life constricted to this level. This is Lex in total and absolute control. It's disturbing but as
no subject
As long as he's alive, I will take what I can get. It's a bit maudlin, but it felt good to explore. There's also the possibility that he will be Lex's right hand forever and ever and he's get to flaunt everything that Clark throws away. It's not recycling, it's being smart.
no subject
That is what's so frickin' brilliant about this exploration. The way you hone in on everyone's obsessive qualities, even Mercy's. Mmmmmm. I like the idea of Adam being there for Lex, forever and ever. Yes I do.