The chandelier was hand-cut crystal.
The immense mahogany dining table that dominated the room had been hand-carved by artisans two centuries past. The matching chairs, thirty in number, were padded with velvet.
Lionel Luthor sat at the head of that huge table, the light of the chandelier glancing off his brown and gray hair. Even without the assurances of lackeys and minions, Lionel knew he looked the part tonight, the rich man in the rich room. His suit that cost more than most family cars and the Rolex gleamed without glaring.
He glanced at the other end of the table, beyond the centerpieces and settings, all designed by a woman Luthorcorp's publishing houses would be marketing as the next Martha Stewart. The chair at the end was empty, his son and heir, Alexander, was elsewhere this Thanksgiving.
Lionel seethed.
Elegantly.
The large turkey, ready to be carved, sat to his right, the ivory handled carving knife in its ebony stand alongside the bird. The knife, like the house, the table, the chairs, and the chandelier, were all things inherited with the Luthor name.
Lionel looked back at the empty chair, and for a second - just for a second - he saw her, her red hair shining in the lights. He closed his eyes. When he looked again, in the gleaming light of the room, she was gone.
She was always gone when he opened his eyes.
Katherine McInnis Luthor. Wife. Mother. Beloved of both husband and son; that's what it said on the marble tombstone in the family cemetery. If Lionel were an honest man, he would say he thought of her often.
But Lionel Luthor wasn't an honest man.
He did know if Katie Luthor had been at this table, so would her son. Hell, Katie probably would have invited Lex's new obsession, Clark Kent. And his parents. Lionel pondered for a minute, wondering if Bubba would have accepted the invitation. Only Katie Luthor would have dared to invite the sixteen-year-old boy and his parents that her twenty-one year old son was crushing on to Thanksgiving dinner.
Of course, Katie had been sixteen the day she dragged twenty-five year old Lionel to her home. His own upbringing hadn't prepared him for a family that made their own food and did the dishes afterward. She had always praised him on that first meeting, though. Assuring him that it, and he, had been a success. After all, she had teased, her father hadn't pulled his shotgun out of the front closet and chased him off. Indeed, ten months later, her father had only told her three times on the way to the wedding that she could change her mind and they could all go home.
Another victory for Lionel Luthor, was that wedding.
Katie had had the most amazing red hair. Lionel could still remember the first time, still feel it against his skin as he lay next to her, satiated and complete. The long strands sticking to their sweaty skin as he turned to her again, joyful as she pulled him tighter.
It was the most honest feeling Lionel Luthor could ever remember.
They had been married five months before she announced she was pregnant. She had looked worried, and when he asked her what was wrong, she had given him a long, searching look. Finally, she had told him. She wasn't sure he could share, even with a child. Even with his own blood.
Truth was, he hadn't known either. But he told her not to worry. For this was the way of empires.
Caesar must have an heir.
He had watched her body change; a kind of fascinated revulsion growing inside him as his son grew inside Katie. The child's birth had been the first in the new Katherine Luthor Maternity Ward at Metropolis General. All the best that money could buy, doctors, equipment, all to please Katie.
The tax write-off and positive publicity had been side benefits.
It had been a pleasant day, the day of Lex's birth. He had taken over a bank in Japan, and had gained control of the last automotive factory in Germany. He was a man replete, ready to meet his son, his heir. And what did he get?
A squalling, squirming, red thing.
This was his son?
His Heir?
This was the thing that had taken so much of Katie's focus and energy for the last nine months? And if the books he had his assistants read and summarize, would take about the next eighteen years of her energy?
Alexander Joseph Luthor.
Lionel knew if he had tried to name the child after himself, Katie would have hurt him. She giggled when the double L's where taken out. His father, Leonard. Lionel. So she broke that tradition, only to have her son christen himself Lex at age five.
Maybe he was his father's son, after all.
Like his mother, the boy was fascinated with science first, business second. Far, far second.
Completely unacceptable in a Luthor heir.
So Lionel began taking Lex with him, to business meetings, to job sites. Teaching him to be a Luthor.
And then Smallville.
A dead-end little town until Luthor money started to revive it. Until Luthor factories began to bring jobs in, keeping the children in Smallville. Anxious to stay, now that they knew they didn't have to be stuck on the family farm.
Of course, there were some, like Bubba Kent, who hated that change. Lionel had bought two farms the day God started throwing stones. He knew that Bubba was trying to buy the Guy property. But Lionel needed the space for the fertilizer plant, and what Lionel wanted, he got.
But then God threw his stones, and Lionel's world started to collapse.
He could remember running through the corn, looking for his boy. Pushed by adrenaline and something more than duty, but slightly less than love. Finding the boy, his red hair, his mother's hair, nuked off his body by some intergalactic joke.
Katie's face, later, at the hospital, as their son shook, not responding to her voice. Three months until Lex even looked at them. Seven until he spoke.
In it all, Lionel had felt some relief. The boy looked like a freak, yes, but at least the asthma that had been pestering him for years had apparently been burned out of him.
A positive, that. A weakness removed.
So they continued on, Lionel teaching his son to be tough, by word and deed. Katie argued some points, and Lionel knew some of his lessons were re-taught and others countermanded by her own, less ruthless hand.
It was two years after the Creamed Corn Capitol of the World had found its new calling as God's skipping pond that everything fell apart.
The cancer started in her uterus, and Lionel couldn't help thinking that maybe if she hadn't had the boy…
Then it was everywhere. The doctors suggested aggressive treatment, promising time only in months, not years.
She lost weight, energy, and the red hair he had seen across a college campus and followed until he found her. And like her son before her, innate pride made the idea of a wig ridiculous.
With the same ruthlessness that he ran his corporation, Lionel Luthor searched for a cure. But unlike his business dealings, one year, five months, and ten days later, Lionel failed. Leaving him without the bridge to his son, who stared at him with her eyes, accusing Lionel of not solving the most important problem.
The sun was shining the day they buried her, father and son standing over a grave feet apart and miles away from each other. They barely talked after that, and when they did, business became their language.
Then Lex turned sixteen.
The first boy, Lionel had ignored. The second, he bought off and sent into the night. Then the girls. And girls and boys. The nights at Club Zero had been harder to cover, but he had sent professionals with professional amounts of money to deal with them.
And he had sent for Victoria. Always a good girl to send for a wayward youth, was Victoria's kind. She looked innocent the day she was introduced to Lex, not at all calculating. And she had calmed him, made him settle down. A few months later, with the headmaster's gonads firmly in Lionel's iron fist, Lex had graduated high school with honors.
College had gone well, until Victoria and Lex had argued about something that made Victoria pale when questioned and Lex furious. It was one of the few things that Lionel had never been able to find out about, and it still irked him. Three nights later, Lex had found himself in the middle of a bust at Club Zero, and working quickly, the lawyers gotten the one and only Luthor heir out of town. The house in Bern had made as good as place as any for a confrontation, and Lex and Lionel had had it out.
He had taught his son well the art of pig-headedness.
So he sent the boy, and he would admit it only to himself that there was a certain viciousness involved, back to God's skipping pond.
Let the boy shovel shit, so to speak.
And what does he do? Falls for the produce boy. Almost kills himself and the produce boy at that. Idly, Lionel wondered if Lex had seen her that day on the bridge, in Smallville. Lionel could have sworn he had seen her, at the snowmobile accident in Gstaad, the car crash in Monaco. Had Lex seen her? Had she pushed Lex's savior at him?
He thought sometimes, that she must have, for he could feel his son moving away from him, little by little. Even basic information was becoming harder and harder to get on his son. He was proud that Lex had finally learned that the best henchman were the ones you bought and paid for yourself. Dominic's utter uselessness was a case in point, Lionel thought in annoyance.
Lionel looked up as Geoffrey came into the room, his black suit shining as he came to stand next to the table.
Lionel glanced at the empty chair again, a faint bitterness in his mouth, as he thought of his son and heir, eating at a table on a Smallville farm. He would be willing to bet the bird had been homeraised, and had had a name like George. Afterwards, when the meal was done, would Lex wash or dry? He wondered if Bubba had a clue what the smooth man at his table really wanted. Martha, as she had asked him to call her when she phoned yesterday to ask if he wanted to join them, probably did.
Katie would have.
Lionel sighed softly, putting his misery and his contemplation aside, taking the napkin out of the napkin ring and spreading it on his lap.
He nodded to Geoffrey, who began to carve the turkey, serving a thick slice of breast meat to Lionel on the fine china plate. Then he elegantly piled mashed potatoes, cranberries, and stuffing made with pine nuts and oysters on the plate. Nodding to Lionel, he and the maid started to remove the serving dishes.
"Will there be anything else, Mr. Luthor?"
Lionel looked down the empty table, to where his son should be.
"No, Geoffrey, I don't think there is anything else."
The butler nodded, leaving Lionel to his thoughts and his dinner.
Alone.
© EAS, November, 2001
Disclaimer: All canon based Smallville characters belong to WB and/or DC Comics.
I am making no money, just enjoying playing in the sandbox.
Home | CLexicon Fic | CLexicon | Cerebral Mutation | Email