hackthis_archive (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hackthis_archive) wrote2003-03-01 09:33 am
hackthis_archive) wrote2003-03-01 09:33 am
This isn’t long enough to qualify as breaking hiatus.
Smallville
If Wishes Were Horses
The end should have come with a bang, instead it came with a lame excuse about junk mail and a goodbye letter scribbled with yellow and red colored pencils.
The end was the turned back of a high school boy and a key to a castle given to someone Lex didn’t truly love; but love was the problem, and Lex had the solution.
Solutions were always important in Lex’s life, they called innately to his love of science, because everything came down to controlling the environment. What scientist allowed his experiment to control him? And Lex had learned about control, not just from his father, but from Clark as well. It was almost impossible to go wrong.
Lex could exercise extraordinary restraint when necessary, and life with Clark required that. Life without Clark even moreso, and a part of Lex knew that an apology was due to Helen, even if he'd never say it outright. Lex's need to have everything ruined everyone else's lives, not just his own. After all, it wasn’t Helen’s fault that she did what she loved. It wasn’t Helen’s fault that because Lex couldn’t live his dreams that he tried to kill hers one by one. His actions weren‘t necessarily deliberate, but they weren‘t unintentional either.
Someone had to suffer.
Lex had loved his research. He had loved certain parts of his life before Smallville. It hadn’t all been bad, but then he discovered a different kind of love. The all-consuming, blindfold delivering kind of love, and it nearly ruined him. Eventually he had to decide what was more important: his need for the truth or his need to have the right person in his life.
In the end, science won. Not that love really mattered.
Love was the question in the first place. The answer was ‘not fit for Lex Luthor’s life.’
All the things that Lex had done to himself for Clark, they all came out to naught. In the name of loving someone too young, with too many secrets, Lex nearly lost the most important person in his life: himself. To be with Clark, Lex would have had to unlearn everything he ever knew that kept him alive. While operating in the dark.
The ends simply didn’t justify the means. It was an experiment doomed to failure.
Lex fell in love with someone with an extraordinarily high morality level who couldn’t prevaricate to save his life.
When the end finally came, Clark was so unaware of it that he couldn’t even be bothered to lie right.
*
Lex went to the bridge where he died to mourn a loss that had been a long time coming: Clark, a car, a first and last love.
The end required lots of closure on all different fronts.
Lex leaned against the railing of the bridge, and with a bit more effort he might have been able to fly. Instead he drew a penny from his pocket to mark the occasion.
A last wish made of copper and a dead president.
He threw the penny in the river and watched placidly as it was washed away by the current.
Some day his face would be on a coin, and he would never repeat this action.
There would be nothing left to wish for.
*
In the bowels of his castle, Lex kept pieces of a Porsche.
He called storage and had it taken away rather than calling the scrap company. He wanted it preserved for future study.
*
Lex rose at six forty-five sharp every morning.
He kissed Helen on the shoulder if she wasn’t on-call, and went to the bathroom to complete his daily ablutions. Afterwards, he would work out for thirty minutes on the treadmill with another thirty minutes of weights before reading The Times over orange juice and two eggs.
The drive to the plant never took more than twenty-three minutes, and by nine-fifteen he was engaged in his daily walkthrough of the facility.
Lunch happened at twelve-thirty without fail, and by five-fifteen, Lex was gathering paperwork to take home. Life without Clark worked much easier if Lex wasn’t around when Clark got off from school.
He pretended not to notice the blurs of red and blue that sometimes passed him by on the way home.
A change in diet and two new phone numbers made life much easier.
Sometimes Helen was home when he arrived, sometimes not, but Lex never wavered from his schedule.
Things didn’t change just because one experiment fell through.
Lex refused to miss what he never had.
*
The end didn’t come with a shout or a yell.
There wasn’t a wish to turn back time.
The end came with a whimper and the opening of a new file on Lex’s hard drive.
In another time and another place, the end would have signified the closing of a book instead of the start of a new chapter, but Lex had never been that kind of guy.
But once upon never, he had wished for that kind of life.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
If turnips were swords, I would wear it by my side.
And ifs and ands were pots and pans
There would be no work for tinkers
-Scottish proverb
If Wishes Were Horses
The end should have come with a bang, instead it came with a lame excuse about junk mail and a goodbye letter scribbled with yellow and red colored pencils.
The end was the turned back of a high school boy and a key to a castle given to someone Lex didn’t truly love; but love was the problem, and Lex had the solution.
Solutions were always important in Lex’s life, they called innately to his love of science, because everything came down to controlling the environment. What scientist allowed his experiment to control him? And Lex had learned about control, not just from his father, but from Clark as well. It was almost impossible to go wrong.
Lex could exercise extraordinary restraint when necessary, and life with Clark required that. Life without Clark even moreso, and a part of Lex knew that an apology was due to Helen, even if he'd never say it outright. Lex's need to have everything ruined everyone else's lives, not just his own. After all, it wasn’t Helen’s fault that she did what she loved. It wasn’t Helen’s fault that because Lex couldn’t live his dreams that he tried to kill hers one by one. His actions weren‘t necessarily deliberate, but they weren‘t unintentional either.
Someone had to suffer.
Lex had loved his research. He had loved certain parts of his life before Smallville. It hadn’t all been bad, but then he discovered a different kind of love. The all-consuming, blindfold delivering kind of love, and it nearly ruined him. Eventually he had to decide what was more important: his need for the truth or his need to have the right person in his life.
In the end, science won. Not that love really mattered.
Love was the question in the first place. The answer was ‘not fit for Lex Luthor’s life.’
All the things that Lex had done to himself for Clark, they all came out to naught. In the name of loving someone too young, with too many secrets, Lex nearly lost the most important person in his life: himself. To be with Clark, Lex would have had to unlearn everything he ever knew that kept him alive. While operating in the dark.
The ends simply didn’t justify the means. It was an experiment doomed to failure.
Lex fell in love with someone with an extraordinarily high morality level who couldn’t prevaricate to save his life.
When the end finally came, Clark was so unaware of it that he couldn’t even be bothered to lie right.
*
Lex went to the bridge where he died to mourn a loss that had been a long time coming: Clark, a car, a first and last love.
The end required lots of closure on all different fronts.
Lex leaned against the railing of the bridge, and with a bit more effort he might have been able to fly. Instead he drew a penny from his pocket to mark the occasion.
A last wish made of copper and a dead president.
He threw the penny in the river and watched placidly as it was washed away by the current.
Some day his face would be on a coin, and he would never repeat this action.
There would be nothing left to wish for.
*
In the bowels of his castle, Lex kept pieces of a Porsche.
He called storage and had it taken away rather than calling the scrap company. He wanted it preserved for future study.
*
Lex rose at six forty-five sharp every morning.
He kissed Helen on the shoulder if she wasn’t on-call, and went to the bathroom to complete his daily ablutions. Afterwards, he would work out for thirty minutes on the treadmill with another thirty minutes of weights before reading The Times over orange juice and two eggs.
The drive to the plant never took more than twenty-three minutes, and by nine-fifteen he was engaged in his daily walkthrough of the facility.
Lunch happened at twelve-thirty without fail, and by five-fifteen, Lex was gathering paperwork to take home. Life without Clark worked much easier if Lex wasn’t around when Clark got off from school.
He pretended not to notice the blurs of red and blue that sometimes passed him by on the way home.
A change in diet and two new phone numbers made life much easier.
Sometimes Helen was home when he arrived, sometimes not, but Lex never wavered from his schedule.
Things didn’t change just because one experiment fell through.
Lex refused to miss what he never had.
*
The end didn’t come with a shout or a yell.
There wasn’t a wish to turn back time.
The end came with a whimper and the opening of a new file on Lex’s hard drive.
In another time and another place, the end would have signified the closing of a book instead of the start of a new chapter, but Lex had never been that kind of guy.
But once upon never, he had wished for that kind of life.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
If turnips were swords, I would wear it by my side.
And ifs and ands were pots and pans
There would be no work for tinkers
-Scottish proverb
no subject
So beautifully painful. Poor Lex. Like Ingrid said, Ow. Just Ow.
no subject
Yes, there is beauty in pain, despite whatever your mother told you. I'm glad you enjoyed this.