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

[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...