Ellidyay
18th April 2004, 23:17
A/N: This is my first ever song fic. Never done one of these before but I heard this song and I was like...wow. Thats so Chlex! So, here is my attempt at songfic. Please tell me what you think.
Disclaimer:I own nothing. DC Comics, the WB, whoever owns it all. The song belongs to Hoobastank. I own Logan.
Thanks: Scifi for the beta. And anyone who listened to me ramble about the idea.
Review: Yes PLEASE!
The Reason
/ I'm not a perfect person
There's many things I wish I didn't do/
Lex hadn't been in the lab when it exploded. He'd been just outside the first set of safety doors. His department manager had called him a half an hour earlier and reported serious malfunctions in contaminate equipment and heating.
When he got there, evacuations had already begun and most of the staff in the department were working their way out.
The storage units were going to explode along with the nuclear reactors that powered them. It hadn't been a certainty before, but by the time he arrived, the vats of liquefied kryptonite were at dangerously high levels of instability with radiation levels that could inflict as much damage as a nuclear spill.
And there was no one to blame for the instability but himself. Lex and his scientists had been suffusing the liquefied meteors with deadly levels of radiation in an effort to unlock hidden chemical composites and energy stores. What they'd found was that kryptonite had a high absorbency of lethal beta and gamma radiation.
/But I continue learning
I never meant to do those things to you/
It was one of the few projects of his that his wife had been actively interested in. Chloe typically didn't like to be involved in his projects of what she liked to call "questionable nature", but this one appealed to her curiosity.
And any time she didn't spend with their seven-year-old son Logan, or writing free-lance for the Daily Planet or the Daily Bugle or the New York Times or USA Today was spent in the labs. She wanted to know what they'd find in the green liquid. He couldn't blame her. He'd started the project after all.
/And so I have to say before I go
That I just want you to know/
But when the plant exploded, she hadn't gotten out in time. The explosion sent radioactive kryptonite spewing over the entirety of the labs. Chloe had escaped in time to beat the heat and fire. But she'd been doused with the toxic liquid.
Now she was quickly dying of radiation poisoning. But not quickly enough.
/I've found a reason for me
To change who I used to be
A reason to start over new
And the reason is you/
She was sick; sicker than Lex had ever seen anyone in his entire life. Her hair had fallen out in chunks over the course of a few days. The nausea had come even sooner.
The doctors he'd called in from all over the country, all over the world, had given him the same grim prognosis. Death, soon; within the next couple of months. All they could do was prescribe medications to ease things.
And then the straight-laced doctors had ticked off the symptoms that came with acute radiation poisoning. Vomiting of bile and blood, severe body aches, ulcers in her mouth, her throat, and inside her intestines, bleeding from the nose, mouth, and other orifices, diarrhea, and dehydration so severe than no matter how much water she drank she'd always be thirsty.
/I'm sorry that I hurt you
It's something I must live with everyday/
Logan hadn't recognized her at first, after the initial rotation of doctors had ended. Her face was burned, her hair was gone, and sores covered her skin.
Lex had felt the tears well in his eyes as his son squeezed his hand as tightly as a seven-year-old hand could and looked up at his father in confusion. "Who's that?"
"That's Mom. But she's very, very sick. So she doesn't look the same as she did."
Logan studied his mother with a tilted head. He turned his blond head away from his mother and towards his father. "Her hair is like yours. Why'd she do that?"
"It fell out, son. She's sick."
Logan bit his lower lip and walked to his mother's. "Mom?" Logan was too grown up at seven to call his mother 'mommy' anymore, even though he still thought of her in those terms. It just wasn't cool. "Are you okay?"
"Logan? Come 'ere, baby. I can't see you."
Carefully, Logan crawled onto the king-sized bed, and sat beside his mother, like he did when he had a nightmare, or couldn't sleep. Only, she didn't look like she used too. She looked… Bad was the only world in Logan's young vocabulary that could cover it.
"Mom?"
"Hey baby."
"Mom? You…Dad says you're sick."
"I am sick, baby." She reached out a hand, it was shaking and there were skin burns on the palms. But she gently stroked her son's face, the way she always did, feeling his features as much as seeing them. Then she brushed his blond curls off his forehead.
"When will you get better?"
"I'm not going to get better, baby." Chloe had always believed in being honest with her son. But she spoke gently, trying to soften the blow.
Lex leaned heavily against the wall as he watched his wife and son. He watched his son start to cry and bury his face against Chloe's chest. He heard his wife murmuring endearments, watched her kiss his hair and stroke his back despite the pain it so obviously caused her.
He was able to let Logan continue to see his mother for two weeks, but after that, things got so bad that he couldn’t bear to let his son see it. No child deserved to watch his mother suffer and die the way Chloe was dying.
/And all the pain I put you through
I wish that I could take it all away/
Lex gently stroked Chloe's throat as she threw up heave after heave of bloody vomit. She cried in between waves and it killed him to see.
He'd do anything, anything, to save her from this. He'd trade places with her in a heartbeat if he could.
"Lex?" Her voice was hoarse from the dehydration and almost nonstop vomiting.
"Yes. I'm here." He whispered, wiping blood off her face from where her nose had started bleeding.
"Make it stop hurting Lex."
"I…” He swallowed hard. "I can't."
"I know." She gave him a sad smile. "But it never hurts to ask."
Except it so obviously hurt her.
/And be the one who catches all your tears
That's why I need you to hear/
He sat with his face in his hands, the heels of them pressed hard against his eyes, willing himself not to cry. He would not allow himself to cry. Not now. She needed him to be strong for her. She needed him to be there for her. She needed him to live for her.
He'd watched her organs destroy themselves from the inside out for a month. And the strain was starting to show. There were new wrinkles in his face where once there had been smooth skin. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. And beneath them were huge purple bags that stood out starkly on his pale face.
But all that was nothing compared to the bloody, oozing mess that remained of his Chloe.
"Lex?"
God, she looked positively green. Drawn and sickly and slowly fading in front of his very eyes.
"Yes, love?"
"I need to go."
"I know." Lex whispered, taking her thin hand in his. Her skin was dry and tight.
"Please help me."
"How?"
"Let me go. Help me go."
He couldn't stop the tears now. He shook his head in fervent denial. "No. Chloe, no."
"Please Lex. If you love me, you'll help me go. It hurts so badly Lex."
"I-" His voice cracked. "I can't. God, I can't! Don't ask me this." He begged.
"Please," she whispered. She licked her lips and the blood from her tongue painted them bright red. "I love you."
"I love you too."
"Then, help me. You made my life beautiful, Lex. But nothing good lasts forever. Help me go peacefully, Lex."
She stroked his scalp as he sobbed against her sheets. But he would do it. He would do anything for her. Even this.
/I'm not a perfect person
I never meant to do those things to you/
His hands shook violently as he filled several needles with morphine. One by one, he added them to her IV.
"I love you, Lex. Take care of my baby. Tell Logan I love him."
"I promise. I love you, so much Chloe."
She smiled, and let her eyes drift shut. Lex watched her body relax as she floated into the next life on a wave of numbness.
He kissed her scabbed, dry lips. Just once, very lightly as the last breath was expelled from her body. Deep down, Lex knew that it wouldn't be enough to carry him through until eternity came to him.
/And so I have to say before I go
That I just want you to know/
"What are you thinking, Luthor? Let him go, dammit!"
Lex glared at Superman with eyes that were so coolly sane it made the alien's skin crawl. His super hearing made the sound of the hammer cocking sound like thunder in his ears.
"Or what? You'll kill me? Do it, Superman. You know you want to. Because even at your speed there's no way can stop the bullet before it slams through his skull." Lex said flatly, pushing the mouth of the gun flush against the guard's temple.
"I heard you know. About your wife. But that doesn't make it alright for you to do this."
"Nothing's right, Superman. Just kill me and get it over with."
"Lex," He said softly, "I miss Chloe too."
"Oh, fuck you, Clark." Lex spat. "You don't know. You don't know what it’s like. I killed her! She's the only thing that ever mattered and I killed her."
"Don't make it worse," Superman coaxed. "Let him go. This is between you and me, Lex."
Lex studied him, and carefully moved the gun from the guard's temple to his own. "Yes, it is."
He chuckled as the guard scrambled out of his office. No doubt LexCorp would be loosing a fine employee tomorrow. Ah, well. Sacrifices must be made.
"Jesus, Lex, don't do this."
"Cut the crap Clark. Just say it. I know you want to so just say it and get it over with."
"I'm sorry."
"You're not."
"I am. She was one of my best friends, Lex."
There was a swirl of color and his best friend, his first friend was standing in front of him in flannel with horn rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Seeing the modest looking Clark stand before him reminded him of Chloe and felt pain shoot through his body from his chest outward.
"Shut up. Just shut up." Lex mumbled as he sank to his knees, the gun still pressed to his head.
"What do you want me to do Lex?" Clark asked, lost.
/I've found a reason for me
To change who I used to be/
"Kill me." Lex whispered softly. He let his arm go limp and stared up at his old friend. "Please. I deserve it. And I know you want to, Superman. Your old enemy is giving you an out. Take it."
Clark shook his head in disgust as he took the gun gently from Lex's hand. "No. You don't get to die Lex. That’s the easy way out, and if you really did kill her then you don't get to take the easy way out. At least not by my hand. Go home. Take care of your son. Live a life she would have been proud of. That's your atonement."
"Fuck you, Clark."
"Your son needs you, Lex. Give him what your father couldn't give you."
Lex winced as if Clark had backhanded him instead of speaking calmly and rationally to a man dying inside of grief. "I don't think I can."
"You're Lex Luthor." Clark said with a small, sad smile. "Last I heard, you can do anything."
/A reason to start over new
And the reason is you/
Lex rocked his son to sleep that night, clinging to Logan as much for his own comfort as for the child's. And for the first time since Chloe had died, Lex was able to feel something other than the gut wrenching pain of loss.
He took a month of leave from work the next day. It was the first vacation he'd taken in years. He felt secure in leaving the company for a sabbatical as he trusted his staff, and he needed time.
Time to grieve. Time to heal. Time to get to know Logan. Time to remember. And time to relearn how to love.
/I've found a reason to show
A side of me you didn't know/
Logan Luthor never went to boarding school, either in Europe or in the States. He went to a prep school in Metropolis instead.
In the summers, he and his father went to the great sites of the world. Lex would explain the history of the various sites, and the listen the stories Logan would make up about people they saw in paintings in art museums or carved in hieroglyphs.
He was there when Logan got home from school most afternoons. Most of the times, their afternoons consisted of working on laptops, side by side.
They got into huge screaming fights that had, on more than one occasion, sent Logan tearing out the door to his Uncle Clark and Aunt Lois's to wait out the anger. But in the end, Logan always came home and he and his father typically had things worked out after enough hours of sitting and talking (arguing).
He loved soccer and in his sophomore year of high school Logan made the varsity team. Lex never missed a game.
Lex grounded him for two months when he got his ear pierced without permission at sixteen. Lex tried not to cry when he graduated valedictorian from high school at eighteen.
And when Logan left for Harvard, one of the few things he took from home was a picture of his family. His father, himself, and his mother who, on the glossy paper, still looked as beautiful as he remembered her.
Lex did cry for the first time since his wife died as his only son got into his car and left for adulthood. But this time, his tears didn't last very long and were accompanied by a smile.
/A reason for all that I do/
Lex was Logan's best man at his wedding.
He watched his son's fiancée come toward them and smiled. She was pretty enough but she had a wide smile, a wry sense of humor, and a take-no-prisoners attitude that reminded him strongly of Chloe.
His son would be happy with her. Lex was certain of that.
He smiled at his son, remembering his own wedding day and feeling Chloe's presence around him. Even after all the years she'd been gone, he could still feel her love. She accepted and approved of him and the way he lived his life, just as she had in life.
/And the reason is you/
The End
Disclaimer:I own nothing. DC Comics, the WB, whoever owns it all. The song belongs to Hoobastank. I own Logan.
Thanks: Scifi for the beta. And anyone who listened to me ramble about the idea.
Review: Yes PLEASE!
The Reason
/ I'm not a perfect person
There's many things I wish I didn't do/
Lex hadn't been in the lab when it exploded. He'd been just outside the first set of safety doors. His department manager had called him a half an hour earlier and reported serious malfunctions in contaminate equipment and heating.
When he got there, evacuations had already begun and most of the staff in the department were working their way out.
The storage units were going to explode along with the nuclear reactors that powered them. It hadn't been a certainty before, but by the time he arrived, the vats of liquefied kryptonite were at dangerously high levels of instability with radiation levels that could inflict as much damage as a nuclear spill.
And there was no one to blame for the instability but himself. Lex and his scientists had been suffusing the liquefied meteors with deadly levels of radiation in an effort to unlock hidden chemical composites and energy stores. What they'd found was that kryptonite had a high absorbency of lethal beta and gamma radiation.
/But I continue learning
I never meant to do those things to you/
It was one of the few projects of his that his wife had been actively interested in. Chloe typically didn't like to be involved in his projects of what she liked to call "questionable nature", but this one appealed to her curiosity.
And any time she didn't spend with their seven-year-old son Logan, or writing free-lance for the Daily Planet or the Daily Bugle or the New York Times or USA Today was spent in the labs. She wanted to know what they'd find in the green liquid. He couldn't blame her. He'd started the project after all.
/And so I have to say before I go
That I just want you to know/
But when the plant exploded, she hadn't gotten out in time. The explosion sent radioactive kryptonite spewing over the entirety of the labs. Chloe had escaped in time to beat the heat and fire. But she'd been doused with the toxic liquid.
Now she was quickly dying of radiation poisoning. But not quickly enough.
/I've found a reason for me
To change who I used to be
A reason to start over new
And the reason is you/
She was sick; sicker than Lex had ever seen anyone in his entire life. Her hair had fallen out in chunks over the course of a few days. The nausea had come even sooner.
The doctors he'd called in from all over the country, all over the world, had given him the same grim prognosis. Death, soon; within the next couple of months. All they could do was prescribe medications to ease things.
And then the straight-laced doctors had ticked off the symptoms that came with acute radiation poisoning. Vomiting of bile and blood, severe body aches, ulcers in her mouth, her throat, and inside her intestines, bleeding from the nose, mouth, and other orifices, diarrhea, and dehydration so severe than no matter how much water she drank she'd always be thirsty.
/I'm sorry that I hurt you
It's something I must live with everyday/
Logan hadn't recognized her at first, after the initial rotation of doctors had ended. Her face was burned, her hair was gone, and sores covered her skin.
Lex had felt the tears well in his eyes as his son squeezed his hand as tightly as a seven-year-old hand could and looked up at his father in confusion. "Who's that?"
"That's Mom. But she's very, very sick. So she doesn't look the same as she did."
Logan studied his mother with a tilted head. He turned his blond head away from his mother and towards his father. "Her hair is like yours. Why'd she do that?"
"It fell out, son. She's sick."
Logan bit his lower lip and walked to his mother's. "Mom?" Logan was too grown up at seven to call his mother 'mommy' anymore, even though he still thought of her in those terms. It just wasn't cool. "Are you okay?"
"Logan? Come 'ere, baby. I can't see you."
Carefully, Logan crawled onto the king-sized bed, and sat beside his mother, like he did when he had a nightmare, or couldn't sleep. Only, she didn't look like she used too. She looked… Bad was the only world in Logan's young vocabulary that could cover it.
"Mom?"
"Hey baby."
"Mom? You…Dad says you're sick."
"I am sick, baby." She reached out a hand, it was shaking and there were skin burns on the palms. But she gently stroked her son's face, the way she always did, feeling his features as much as seeing them. Then she brushed his blond curls off his forehead.
"When will you get better?"
"I'm not going to get better, baby." Chloe had always believed in being honest with her son. But she spoke gently, trying to soften the blow.
Lex leaned heavily against the wall as he watched his wife and son. He watched his son start to cry and bury his face against Chloe's chest. He heard his wife murmuring endearments, watched her kiss his hair and stroke his back despite the pain it so obviously caused her.
He was able to let Logan continue to see his mother for two weeks, but after that, things got so bad that he couldn’t bear to let his son see it. No child deserved to watch his mother suffer and die the way Chloe was dying.
/And all the pain I put you through
I wish that I could take it all away/
Lex gently stroked Chloe's throat as she threw up heave after heave of bloody vomit. She cried in between waves and it killed him to see.
He'd do anything, anything, to save her from this. He'd trade places with her in a heartbeat if he could.
"Lex?" Her voice was hoarse from the dehydration and almost nonstop vomiting.
"Yes. I'm here." He whispered, wiping blood off her face from where her nose had started bleeding.
"Make it stop hurting Lex."
"I…” He swallowed hard. "I can't."
"I know." She gave him a sad smile. "But it never hurts to ask."
Except it so obviously hurt her.
/And be the one who catches all your tears
That's why I need you to hear/
He sat with his face in his hands, the heels of them pressed hard against his eyes, willing himself not to cry. He would not allow himself to cry. Not now. She needed him to be strong for her. She needed him to be there for her. She needed him to live for her.
He'd watched her organs destroy themselves from the inside out for a month. And the strain was starting to show. There were new wrinkles in his face where once there had been smooth skin. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. And beneath them were huge purple bags that stood out starkly on his pale face.
But all that was nothing compared to the bloody, oozing mess that remained of his Chloe.
"Lex?"
God, she looked positively green. Drawn and sickly and slowly fading in front of his very eyes.
"Yes, love?"
"I need to go."
"I know." Lex whispered, taking her thin hand in his. Her skin was dry and tight.
"Please help me."
"How?"
"Let me go. Help me go."
He couldn't stop the tears now. He shook his head in fervent denial. "No. Chloe, no."
"Please Lex. If you love me, you'll help me go. It hurts so badly Lex."
"I-" His voice cracked. "I can't. God, I can't! Don't ask me this." He begged.
"Please," she whispered. She licked her lips and the blood from her tongue painted them bright red. "I love you."
"I love you too."
"Then, help me. You made my life beautiful, Lex. But nothing good lasts forever. Help me go peacefully, Lex."
She stroked his scalp as he sobbed against her sheets. But he would do it. He would do anything for her. Even this.
/I'm not a perfect person
I never meant to do those things to you/
His hands shook violently as he filled several needles with morphine. One by one, he added them to her IV.
"I love you, Lex. Take care of my baby. Tell Logan I love him."
"I promise. I love you, so much Chloe."
She smiled, and let her eyes drift shut. Lex watched her body relax as she floated into the next life on a wave of numbness.
He kissed her scabbed, dry lips. Just once, very lightly as the last breath was expelled from her body. Deep down, Lex knew that it wouldn't be enough to carry him through until eternity came to him.
/And so I have to say before I go
That I just want you to know/
"What are you thinking, Luthor? Let him go, dammit!"
Lex glared at Superman with eyes that were so coolly sane it made the alien's skin crawl. His super hearing made the sound of the hammer cocking sound like thunder in his ears.
"Or what? You'll kill me? Do it, Superman. You know you want to. Because even at your speed there's no way can stop the bullet before it slams through his skull." Lex said flatly, pushing the mouth of the gun flush against the guard's temple.
"I heard you know. About your wife. But that doesn't make it alright for you to do this."
"Nothing's right, Superman. Just kill me and get it over with."
"Lex," He said softly, "I miss Chloe too."
"Oh, fuck you, Clark." Lex spat. "You don't know. You don't know what it’s like. I killed her! She's the only thing that ever mattered and I killed her."
"Don't make it worse," Superman coaxed. "Let him go. This is between you and me, Lex."
Lex studied him, and carefully moved the gun from the guard's temple to his own. "Yes, it is."
He chuckled as the guard scrambled out of his office. No doubt LexCorp would be loosing a fine employee tomorrow. Ah, well. Sacrifices must be made.
"Jesus, Lex, don't do this."
"Cut the crap Clark. Just say it. I know you want to so just say it and get it over with."
"I'm sorry."
"You're not."
"I am. She was one of my best friends, Lex."
There was a swirl of color and his best friend, his first friend was standing in front of him in flannel with horn rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Seeing the modest looking Clark stand before him reminded him of Chloe and felt pain shoot through his body from his chest outward.
"Shut up. Just shut up." Lex mumbled as he sank to his knees, the gun still pressed to his head.
"What do you want me to do Lex?" Clark asked, lost.
/I've found a reason for me
To change who I used to be/
"Kill me." Lex whispered softly. He let his arm go limp and stared up at his old friend. "Please. I deserve it. And I know you want to, Superman. Your old enemy is giving you an out. Take it."
Clark shook his head in disgust as he took the gun gently from Lex's hand. "No. You don't get to die Lex. That’s the easy way out, and if you really did kill her then you don't get to take the easy way out. At least not by my hand. Go home. Take care of your son. Live a life she would have been proud of. That's your atonement."
"Fuck you, Clark."
"Your son needs you, Lex. Give him what your father couldn't give you."
Lex winced as if Clark had backhanded him instead of speaking calmly and rationally to a man dying inside of grief. "I don't think I can."
"You're Lex Luthor." Clark said with a small, sad smile. "Last I heard, you can do anything."
/A reason to start over new
And the reason is you/
Lex rocked his son to sleep that night, clinging to Logan as much for his own comfort as for the child's. And for the first time since Chloe had died, Lex was able to feel something other than the gut wrenching pain of loss.
He took a month of leave from work the next day. It was the first vacation he'd taken in years. He felt secure in leaving the company for a sabbatical as he trusted his staff, and he needed time.
Time to grieve. Time to heal. Time to get to know Logan. Time to remember. And time to relearn how to love.
/I've found a reason to show
A side of me you didn't know/
Logan Luthor never went to boarding school, either in Europe or in the States. He went to a prep school in Metropolis instead.
In the summers, he and his father went to the great sites of the world. Lex would explain the history of the various sites, and the listen the stories Logan would make up about people they saw in paintings in art museums or carved in hieroglyphs.
He was there when Logan got home from school most afternoons. Most of the times, their afternoons consisted of working on laptops, side by side.
They got into huge screaming fights that had, on more than one occasion, sent Logan tearing out the door to his Uncle Clark and Aunt Lois's to wait out the anger. But in the end, Logan always came home and he and his father typically had things worked out after enough hours of sitting and talking (arguing).
He loved soccer and in his sophomore year of high school Logan made the varsity team. Lex never missed a game.
Lex grounded him for two months when he got his ear pierced without permission at sixteen. Lex tried not to cry when he graduated valedictorian from high school at eighteen.
And when Logan left for Harvard, one of the few things he took from home was a picture of his family. His father, himself, and his mother who, on the glossy paper, still looked as beautiful as he remembered her.
Lex did cry for the first time since his wife died as his only son got into his car and left for adulthood. But this time, his tears didn't last very long and were accompanied by a smile.
/A reason for all that I do/
Lex was Logan's best man at his wedding.
He watched his son's fiancée come toward them and smiled. She was pretty enough but she had a wide smile, a wry sense of humor, and a take-no-prisoners attitude that reminded him strongly of Chloe.
His son would be happy with her. Lex was certain of that.
He smiled at his son, remembering his own wedding day and feeling Chloe's presence around him. Even after all the years she'd been gone, he could still feel her love. She accepted and approved of him and the way he lived his life, just as she had in life.
/And the reason is you/
The End