Fic: Mirrorball (Smallville)

[latxcvi.livejournal.com]

Title: Mirrorball

Author: LaT

Fandom: Smallville

Spoilers: S5’s "Vengeance" and S7’s "Gemini", "Persona" and "Fracture"

Notes: For the purposes of this story, I decided that Lex’s pretty, snarky, competent auburn-haired assistant from the end of S6 and beginning of S7 is Miss Teschmacher (rather than Mercy Graves, as has been speculated in more than a few places).

Summary: Necessity isn’t the mother of invention. Revenge is.

Feedback: Doubles my pleasure.

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Mirrorball
by LaT
February 2008

Based on this image.

~*~

Lex turned the disc over in his hands as Ms. Teschmacher entered the room. He’d have to remember to triple her bonus given how above and beyond she went to secure the footage. Loyal associates were a rare commodity for him, loyal and smart even rarer, and in the eight months she’d been with him, Eve proved her worth several times over.

"If you’re going to obsess over that, wouldn’t it be more comfortable at home?" Her tone was crisp and wry, her right eyebrow slightly cocked. In spite of himself, the thing Lex most liked about her was her capacity for simultaneously laughing with and at him.

"I’m leaving soon, although I can’t help but note the pot-kettle situation, since you’re also still here."

"Yes, but I’m working, sir. You’ve been staring at that disc for the better part of an hour." She handed him a portfolio. "One of us has to make sure you’re fully briefed for tomorrow’s presentation to Damascene Technologies."

He won’t tell her that he watched the contents multiples times within the last hour. "Have the car ready in 15 minutes."

Mr. Teschmacher nodded, turned to go and then thought better of it. "Are you sure you’re all right, Mr. Luthor?"

Lex snapped the disc case shut and flashed a smile that he hoped reached his eyes. "I will be."

~*~

The detour on the way back to Smallville gave Lex time to think. He wasn’t surprised his father lied to him about what happened in the wake of his ill-fated trip to Detroit; Lionel Luthor lied with the same ease that most people breathed. The scope of the lie galled Lex, the transgressions and mysteries it covered set his teeth on edge: Lionel and his strange little cabal of Lana, Chloe and Clark, Clark signing up to traipse through Lex’s mind with the blithe ease of a person wholly unaware of his own hypocrisy, Chloe’s tantalizing, almost-biblical ability. If it hadn’t all unfolded while Lex was unconscious and dying, he might have been impressed.

The most insulting thing about Lionel’s lie was its assumption of Lex’s stupidity, as if Lex wouldn’t be curious about his "miraculous" recovery, as if he’d take anything Lionel said at face value.

Dr. Donovan barely looked up from the Petri dish in front of him, but his voice had warmth as he greeted Lex. "Mr. Luthor. This is a pleasant surprise." Donovan did something both complicated and delicate to the specimen, then raised his head. "Scuttlebutt around these parts is that you’re pulling the plug."

Internally, Lex bristled at the implication of Project Gemini’s failure. The volatile and ungracious unpredictability of the Julian models notwithstanding, the production of fully functional adult clones was a remarkable scientific achievement.

"You should never put too much stock in gossip, doctor, particularly when it’s about me." Lex peered into a nearby microscope. "In fact, the project’s why I’m here." Donovan’s near-imperceptible shift closer told Lex that he’d secured the man’s attention. He looked up from the kaleidoscopic patterns on the microscope slide. "I have a special assignment for you."

~*~

One of the pleasures of working with a bona fide scientific genius of dubious moral character was that no proposal was too outrageous as long as advancement was on offer. Donovan committed full-throttle the minute Lex explained the clone was to be outfitted with the memories of a living subject.

"It won’t happen overnight," Donovan cautioned, capping a vial of blood. "And the likelihood of several false starts is higher than normal."

Lex shook his head as he rolled down his sleeve. "I’m a very patient man. As long as it eventually works, I don’t care how long it takes."

~*~

Lionel once insisted that Lex didn’t have the capacity to plan a perfect crime. In the months of waiting for Donovan’s breakthrough, the thought of proving his father wrong kept Lex focused.

~*~

Donovan’s promise of false starts was an understatement. The ones with hair were destroyed immediately, as were the ones whose memories failed to extend beyond the day of the first meteor shower. Nine months after approaching Donovan, Lex finally got the call.

It was even better than looking in a mirror.

~*~

From Lionel’s office window, the citizens of Metropolis were colorful dots on the map of an empire. When Lex was a boy, he hated the view because it made him dizzy. Now, he watched with the steady ease of a man who knows the empire is his for the taking.

"Lex?" Lionel sounded surprised. "I thought you were at the Black & White Ball."

Lex turned from the spectacular view and simply said, "I am." He raised the vintage revolver – "a piece of history," Lionel called it – in a gloved hand, grateful for his father’s arrogant insistence that there be no security cameras in his office.

Lionel sighed, removing his coat with remarkable calm for a man with a gun aimed at his head. "It’s been a long day, Lex. I’m not in the mood for your theatrics."

In the months of planning, of meditatively running through the scenario hundreds of times, Lex never imagined the final spur would be the bored dismissiveness with which his father treated the idea that Lex had grievances. The gun’s report is singular, definitive, as unambiguous as the blood blooming between Lionel’s eyes. As Lionel fell, Lex wondered if he himself had crumpled like that in the Michigan rain before his father decided to use him as a pet science project.

Lex placed the revolver back in its case, the sudden sense of peace washing over him a real surprise. As he stepped over his father’s body, he decided that he’d let the Planet have its way in reporting this particular bit of news. His alibi was, after all, unimpeachable.

Striding down the alley, his hood pulled up until he reached the car, Lex contemplated his next move. For the first time in his life, the world was truly his.