The beauty of schoolhouse rocks

[hackthis_archive]

happyminion gave me something that I’d been missing for a while now – hope. So, this is for her.


Three is a Magic Number


Faith


Believing is something that other people do. Lex is a scientist and a realistic and a pessimist, and he doesn’t believe in anything, except Clark.

It’s hypocritical and counterproductive, and it makes no sense that a twenty-one year old man should depend on a sixteen year-old boy, but Lex has never done anything by the book. Lex follows his own rules on his own timeline, and he’s never believed in anyone before because he’s been taught that it’s detrimental. Believing in someone grants them power over you - it makes you weak; but Clark already has power over Lex and if Lex wants to call it belief then that’s his business.

Clark brought Lex back to the world and taught him how to fly, and now he’s teaching Lex how to live. It’s a whole new life, a whole new perspective being shaped by the two of them – together - and that’s the most important part: that they’re doing to together.

Together they have the potential for something great.

If Clark can offer Lex faith when everyone else is preparing to storm the gates then there’s a chance that they can salvage something beautiful from all the wreckage – because there will be wreckage, correction: there already is wreckage. Lex has a broken Porsche and a burned out Mercedes and bags of clothes for Goodwill, and those are just the material casualties. There are other things that have been ruined that aren’t tax deductible, but at least ‘they’ aren’t one of them because it is a ‘they.’ Clark and Lex are a ‘they’. They are a team, they will be legendary, and there will be more wreckage. There are cars and bullets and bruises and Lex knows that this is just the beginning. These are just preliminary tests for what the future will bring, because the future will be long, and hard, and Lex knows that it won’t be easy.

However, Lex has faith that they have a future, and there’s a chance that it just might be beautiful.

~ * ~

Hope


The problem with believing is that it requires hope, and Lex isn’t so good with hope.

Hope, Lex has found, inevitably kicks him in the teeth and tosses him out on his ass. At least that’s what he recalls about their last encounter, but that could also be the eponymous bouncer that used to work the door at Twenty-One.

Still, Lex isn’t good with hope, assault aside, it hasn’t done much for him except leave him waiting for Pam to come back from the proverbial trip to the store than never ended. Lex has been abused by hope. Lex has been lied to and manipulated, and he has no reason to believe in hope – but he has Clark, and Clark can make him believe in anything.

Every time Lex wants to say no, Clark makes him say yes.

So Lex continues to try and have hope, even though Clark lies and deceives and picks at the nubs on his cheap flannel shirts when Lex questions him too intently. Lex believes that Clark will tell him the truth someday. He has no other choice but to believe in Clark because somewhere in the deep recesses of his heart Lex just might be in love, and if he doesn’t believe in Clark and he doesn’t believe in love then he really doesn’t have anything, and he might as well get rid of that truck now.

Lex needs hope.

~ * ~

Charity


Part of belief is trust, and trust is an act of charity. It’s willingly offering faith to someone in the belief that they will not withhold secrets – that they will be honest given time and incentive. Clark is young, and Lex has time, so he waits and he hopes.

Lex has faith in Clark. He has faith in them, and he truly believes that Clark will be honest with him if he gives him enough time and space.

It’s a simple act of charity, and after all that Clark has given him, it’s the least Lex can do.

Comments

[barely-bean.livejournal.com]

fuck. what's with everyone trying to make me weep today? *sniff* I thank you for it. You do such a good job of creeping into Lex's head and making us hope, Zahra. Just beautiful.

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

It's always nice to hear from you, Caro. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[happyminion.livejournal.com]

Love you too, baby girl.

*hugs*

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

meh. it's nowhere near where i wanted it to be, but you know, i had good intentions... once, a long time ago, but that's another story.

Re:

[happyminion.livejournal.com]

Don't you *dare* sell this story short. It's beautiful and minimal and it's woven together seamlessly.

*hugs the story*

I love it. Let me have it.

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

::buttons up story and makes sure mittens are firmly clamped to sleeves::

now make sure and behave for wendi, and don't fight with the other stories, d'you hear me?

Re:

[happyminion.livejournal.com]

*sniff* It will never want for anything, Zahra.

[fearlessdiva.livejournal.com]

However, Lex has faith that they have a future, and there’s a chance that it just might be beautiful.

Lovely and just heartbreaking. This is such a wonderful extrapolation on CanonLex's generosity of spirit, and I think it's really what MR is playing (well, maybe he's not intending the Ho!Yay, but I rather think he might be). This piece outlines that fragile, delicate goodness that Lex is holding on to, that's he's wholly invested in Clark. He's taken all his funds from the bank of Not!Lionel and poured them into ClarkCorp. All his eggs are in this one basket, but he has a vision that it's going to pay off. And in my mind, it does, god dammit. And in yours too. I love that.

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

This piece outlines that fragile, delicate goodness that Lex is holding on to, that's he's wholly invested in Clark.

Ooooh, look at the pretty feedback. *g* Okay, now I feel obligated to discuss motivations because you know, you brought it up.

I think - I think that Lex is suffering from a very nasty Catch-22 right about now. He *knows* that believing in Clark could turn out to be a bad idea, in that way that you always know that making this sort of leap of faith is a bad idea. Not that believing in Clark is a bad idea, more in that, jumping without a parachute way. Lex knows from experience that trusting someone is a bad idea, but Clark is, well, Clark is really his sort of his last chance saloon. You call it the eggs in the basket, I call it the last ditch effort, whatever it is Clark really is the last stop before all hell breaking loose. And Lex knows that, and it scares him and it makes him hesitate and I think that's why he's as patient as he is with Clark because he knows that if he tosses this away then there's really nothing left. Not that it's not killing him, because you know, it's Lex. Patience is null and void for him, and waiting is completely foreign. It's not that he doesn't want to know, it's not that it's not killing him not to know, but I think he knows that it's a process. That this is as much about Clark as it is about him.

Just an idea.

[barely-bean.livejournal.com]

That this is as much about Clark as it is about him.

And this is why I've very much fallen for him. You know the whole town gives him crap about being a Luthor and not putting anyone before him. And it's so not the truth. The fact that he does in fact put Clark's needs into consideration is even more important considering that he's never been actually taught to do that. Lionel's not the kind of man that teaches temperance and patience; Lex grew up in a world where he's expected to take what he sees fit and the fact that he's giving time to Clark, just is another indication of how much better a man Lex is than people give him credit for. I mean, in the face of everything he's grown up with, in the world he's grown up in, what's to keep him from saying "screw this small town and it's people." Clark would be his last chance at believing in something and knowing how it ends up, that just kills me.

sorry for the rant...

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

I don't think you're ranting, a little idealistic perhaps, *g* but ranting, no. I agree that Lex has good intentions, but the thing about good intentions is that's they're only 'good' - not great - and they tend to be susceptible to a lot of other things, like sheer curiosity.

Now, it's true that Lex has clamped a lid down on his curiosity 'for now', but let's remember what got us here in the first place. Lex asked Nixon to look into the Kents and it was all 'snafu'd' from there. I'm not trying to short shrift him, because god knows he's come a long way in an extraordinarily long time, but you know Lionel has put some prime conditioning into his heir and it's only a matter of time before it rears its ugly head again (you know since Hamilton is so not dead yet).

[barely-bean.livejournal.com]

but let's remember what got us here in the first place.

Oh I know. In a perfect fictional reality, Clark and Lex would both confess to each other and work through all their problems. Sadly, it doesn't work that way. And the truth is that while Lex is in a lot of ways a better man than people give him credit for, yeah, there is enough of Lionel in there to also bring it all to damnation. If he wants to know something, he wants to know. And he doesn't think through the consequences, the possible people that he might hurt in the process. He believed he had control over Nixon. And maybe that's the Luthorian flaw in him, that belief that he has control over everything, over every given situation that doesn't allow him to properly analyze the situation from a perspective where he would have been able to forsee things going terribly wrong. In some ways I almost think of it as a childlike naievete, that belief that your plan will always work out as you intend it, and that's not a word I use with Lex usually. There's a good part of me that can see the eventual rift not being so much a result of an action that is evil in intention but rather a result of bad consequences of the simple fact that Lex cannot forsee that what he envisions is not how the end result will work out.

Hee, get me started on Lex and I can't shut up. Anyway, great fic. It's got my mind all worked up too.

[seren-himitsu.livejournal.com]

You know, I've just realised that you're Zahra, the same Zahra whose fics I've recced to just about everyone who's ever asked me for an SV rec. Have I ever told you how well you write Lex? No? Well, you write Lex extremely well. I love his voice in your fics.

*gazes with much adoration*

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

::looks around. looks over shoulder. checks for other people in room::

you mean me? i mean 'yes, zahra - that's me' but um, wow. thank you! *g*

[cyclogenesis.livejournal.com]

I love the way you focus on possibility here- it's something you do often, and so well. I really like Lex's thought processes, and his unwillingness to give up. Because, you know, it could happen, and it could be so right, and this really makes me feel it. Yes.

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

you are always so great with the feedback, sara. hurry up and write something so i can reciprocate! also, you know, yay - i'm glad you liked it.