fic: The Right of Truth, part 1

[xparrot]

Next week we (hopefully) will return you to your regularly scheduled fic. For now - gratuitous Clex h/c, set in late second season. If I had been watching the show back then, this is just the sort of fic I would've been writing: slash angst-fluff, pretty much, exploring an issue about Clark's secrets (and in fact most superhero secret identities) that's been bothering me.

Warnings for a bit of good old fashioned Lex!torture in the beginning, and generally woobie!Lex. Also the Kents are perhaps not very nice here, which wasn't my intent, but how it worked out. Hopefully in an IC way, but still. (And may I say *sigh* that being an asshole is in character for SV's Jonathan...)

Smallville: The Right of Truth (1/2)
R, Clex, h/c; second season
Lex is kidnapped and it's Clark to the rescue as usual, but he might not be ready for all he finds.

Read it on AO3

Comments

[attaccabottoni.livejournal.com]

Aw, it's a good thing I caught this, because angst-fluff is a great thing to take before bed.

Smallville will always be a strange town, because Clark is the biggest fish in a sea of oddities that he should have a local reputation given his relationship with the two most famous/sought-after residents in town and the rate of his involvement in many strange happenings. No one seems to want to look more into Clark Kent beyond his farm boy facade, but I'd like to think that there's always a danger of someone smart getting a clue and wanting to capitalize on it, which the show should have explored rather than rehashing the Lana stalker storyline, which makes less sense because it focuses on her virtues that she doesn't even affirm of herself.

I've been tallying at the back of my mind the relative costs that people around Clark had to pay by not knowing his secret (if Clark in the show had been more thoughtful rather than mopey, he would realize that shield/alibi allegory you mentioned in the fic). Lana and Chloe had sacrificed a lot (physical harm, heartbreak, etc.) and have repeatedly shown willingness to suffer for that, because they love and are devoted to him without knowing he's an alien (their reactions to finding out were dramatic, but not angry). Lex would have been just like Pete, who would be angry for a while but would soon prefer to deal with the practicalities of that new information about a friend that he will never turn his back on as long as it's in his power. But because Clark is Lex's only friend, because he's a Luthor and has Lionel for a father, because his life has been altered by an alien since both his arrivals in Smallville (not even including), because he's got trust issues and needed someone to teach him that you don't have to control people all the time, Lex had the steepest price to pay, because Lex may be more powerful than Lana, Chloe and Pete combined, but he's all the more vulnerable for it. Lex could become whomever he would have wanted, but since he is so inexorably linked to Clark, he couldn't have pulled away even if he knew he should.

I'm not saying that Lex had unknowingly paid enough to earn Clark's secret, but he has shown more than enough willingness to provide whatever he can for Clark and his family in ways that he couldn't profit from. How could the Kents have handled Lex's consistent gestures goodwill so badly then? I'm not putting a direct causality here, but they essentially made Lex more dangerous than he initially was.

And wow, I can't believe I've blurted out my own issue with Clark's secrets here. While I'm saying with little knowledge on how this is handled in the comics, I think the superheroes should be more conscious of the responsibility of having two identities, which Clark hasn't realized the necessity of due to his desire for a normal life, the poor boy.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Always glad to provide a little pre-bed entertainment! ^_^

I wish the show just once had really established the dangers of Clark's secret. They harp on and on about the danger of Clark being carted off to a lab - but is that such a realistic threat when no one else in the town was ever carted away? At least not until 33.1 really got going. But then everything about the freaks of SV makes no sense from a real-world perspective...there's people avoiding contemplation of the Unknown, and then there's the insane blindness of everyone in the town!

Lex...it's not that Lex has paid to learn Clark's secret, even, so much as I think he has a right to it. At least to part of it - Lex is involved. The meteors changed his life. He's got a right to investigate them...and investigating them means investigating Clark. Everyone in the show behaves as if Clark's secret belongs only to himself, but it really doesn't. It's had far too much impact on too many people for that. For that matter I think Lana has a right too, considering her squished parents. But for Lex to look into it, when Lex knows from early on that the meteors changed him - to deny him studying them, to deny him that understanding of his own self, that's just wrong.

...don't worry about blurting out your Clark-issues, I'm certainly using this as a forum to spread my own all over the place! ^^

The thing about SV's Clark, too, is that he doesn't have a secret identity yet. His other self (his true self?) is known only to his little cabal. In the future, I feel he's less obligated to tell Lois his secret, because Lois is friends with Superman - she knows the risk she's taking, being close to the hero. And she gets in trouble for it, but she thinks it's worth it...(I have different issues there, with Clark Kent getting all close to Lois and asking her what she thinks of Superman and such...that's not endangering her, it's just kind of a slimy thing to do, like spying in a way...)

As for Clark now...I think that sometime around 3rd season, Clark internalizes the Kents' directives. He has to, because it's the only way to handle the lying that is really counter to his personality. Early on, Clark protests the lying, and only keeps doing it for love of his parents - whenever he's on Red-K he loses that inhibition. I think Clark actually believes that he's protecting other people by keeping his secret; he's convinced himself, psychologically warped himself to be able to manage...