Fallout (NC-17) 8 September, 2009 - Complete
Title: Fallout
Author: scifichick774
Rating: NC-17
Category: Drama/Dark Angst Chloe/Lex
Spoilers: Anything through the spoilers for ‘Memoria’ at Kryptonsite is fair game.
Summary: Lex recovers lost memories, Chloe finds out the truth of her own past, and both have to deal with the fallout that ensues.
Disclaimer: Obviously not mine. I’m just playing with the imaginary characters’ lives for fun and not for profit.
Feedback: Yes. I’m addicted.
Archival: Sure – just let me know where.
Author’s Note: *WARNING* This fic is going to deal with really sensitive issues, including but not limited to rape, postpartum depression, infanticide, and adultery. So, if you’re squeamish or just can’t stand a dark fic, then please don’t read it.
~*~*~*~
Lex’s eyes moved rapidly behind closed lids and the thin layer of sweat that had started seeping from the pores on his head began to bead into tiny balls. As the treatment began, he inwardly cursed himself for the way he couldn’t get rid of the way his stomach knotted or the inevitable regurgitation he knew would follow. It always did.
“Try to relax, Lex,” Dr. Garner said, his voice not just looming over Lex, but enveloping him in a fog as he entered a dreamlike state. Garner checked the monitors on the equipment that Lex was hooked up to and then glanced back at the young man when everything checked out alright. After the surprise seizure activity they had encountered during his third session, almost two months ago now, Garner had been meticulously careful with Lex’s therapy. “Where are you?” he finally asked.
“L---lab,” Lex answered, pausing at the start of the word as he swallowed down a wave of severe queasiness.
Garner nodded once in understanding, even though Lex couldn’t see him. Every patient constructed an internal visual to represent how their memories were stored. The most common was a hallway with a never-ending series of doors; but Lex’s mind had immediately jumped into an enormous lab, filled with bottles and vials, some on high shelves with stoppers that couldn’t be removed. Garner knew immediately that those were the ones they needed to access.
“Look around. Does anything catch your attention?” he asked.
Lex’s breathing came in deep, yet rapid draws of air. He needed to stay off his physical reaction to the treatment in order to access his missing memories. For the last two and a half months, it had been the same frustrating situation again and again. He knew what he wanted to get to, but his body always ended up overriding his will and he’d be jerked out of the treatment by the overwhelming need to throw up.
‘Not again,’ he told himself. He wasn’t going to keep putting himself through hell for no reason. He was a Luthor, damn it. He would get what he wanted.
He scanned the imaginary lab, his eyes darting over the vast array of bottles that were within his reach in favor of the ones that weren’t. Then he saw it. The same small row of plugged bottles that always seemed to be calling to him; the liquids contained within practically glowing, taunting him with the memories that lay within.
“Yes,” he said after a bit, vaguely remembering that Garner had asked him the question with the expectation of getting an answer in return.
Garner once again looked at the monitors, his lips pursing thoughtfully when he saw a couple of the readings begin to spike, just as they had countless times before. Whatever Lex had buried in his mind, his subconscious was apparently intent on keeping it out of reach.
“Just…inch your way over to it,” Garner said. “Go nice and slow. There’s no rush.”
It was easier said than done. By nature, Lex was not a patient man, and he couldn’t get over the feeling that he had been deprived of his memories for long enough. Still though, he forced himself to do as Garner told him, proving to himself that he could get that which was out of his reach, even if it took forever.
He slid a tall ladder over the track that lined the shelves in the lab and took a tentative step onto it. It was steady, but with every rung he climbed, the feeling of heaviness and nausea pushed down on him. Finally within reach, he stretched out his arm and clasped his fingers around the neck of one of the bottles, only to lose his balance and send his body and the bottle crashing to the ground.
Garner watched as Lex’s body began to shake uncontrollably, his head lolled back on the table as a giant seizure overcame him. He rushed over to where he had set aside a sedative in case of that reaction and swiftly unwrapped a sterile syringe to plunge into the small vial to withdraw the medication.
The second the bottle shattered, Lex was transported into a memory that he had repressed long ago. Not one from his missing seven weeks of time, but from when he was much younger and his mother was still alive.
“Is Julian okay? I heard him crying,” he said, finding himself in the body of his former self instead of simply watching the memory from afar.
“He’s sleeping,” Lillian informed him.
“But I heard him crying,” Lex protested. “He ---”
“There’s nothing to worry about, sweetheart. Julian’s happy now.”
The sound of breaking glass made the memory spiral and Lex found himself reliving another instance on that same day, cradling his baby brother in his arms, the swaddled mass unmoving in his embrace. He was singing a gentle lullaby; not to keep Julian asleep, but rather the opposite, hoping for some sign that his worst fear hadn’t come to pass.
Shattered glass sounded again and Lex could almost feel the imaginary pain of the shards of the beaker cutting into his skin. Once again pulled out of the memory, he was thrust into another that had originally taken place only hours before the other two.
He was eavesdropping outside of the room his parents and Julian were in. The sound of his wailing baby brother was calling to him, but he knew better than to interrupt his parents when they were arguing. And there was no doubt in Lex’s mind that they *were* arguing – even if he couldn’t make out their words over Julian’s crying, he knew by the tones of their voices that yelling would likely ensue, and that hitting and throwing things would soon follow.
Suddenly Julian calmed and Lex poked his head into the room for just a second to see what happened. The image of his father holding his brother in his arms was enough to calm his nerves and spark his jealousy at the same time. His father never gave him the time of day unless it was to berate him for berate him for something, to ‘toughen him up’ for the real world. And yet, here was the same man, lovingly holding his younger sibling.
And then he heard his father speak.
“It’s unnatural for a mother not to bond with her child.”
Lex could almost sense his mother glaring at the man.
“You’re going to let down Julian like you let down Lex,” Lionel continued. “Is that what you want?”
“I didn’t *want* any of this,” Lillian replied harshly, making Lex’s heart sink and his hands tremble ever so slightly. “And don’t you dare imply that I don’t love my son. Just because Lex is a sweet, sensitive boy instead of a cold-hearted bastard, you think I’ve failed him as a mother?! How dare you?!” she ranted.
“He’s a Luthor, Lillian,” Lionel said simply. “And I might remind you, despite your efforts to the contrary, you are as well. It’s time you started acting like it.”
Parts of the three memories began to spin through Lex’s mind, buzzing around until the pieces of the puzzle finally fit together and he awoke from the medicine-induced hypno-therapy session with a struggled gasp for air.
“Lex – are you alright?” Garner asked worriedly. “I thought I lost you there for a minute.”
His breath now coming in heavy pants, Lex attempted to focus on Garner. But his vision was blurry, and the need to throw up rapidly took over his body. He broke off the partial eye contact and turned his head to spew the contents of his stomach onto the tiled floor.
~*~*~*~
The next day…
The ‘treatment’ at the Summerholt Institute had been early the previous day and Lex still didn’t feel well. Unfortunately, now he had a feeling it was due to the repressed memories that had resurfaced and not the drugs that had been pumped into his system – though the sedative Garner had injected him with had made him feel lethargic well into that morning.
He was glad that his father wasn’t set to come back form his business trip until the next day. He needed time to sort through his revelations and the emotions he had that surrounded them.
His mother, one of the only lights in his otherwise dark and dreary existence, had killed his brother – or at least that’s what he firmly suspected. He had blamed himself for the death for so long, as his father had to engage in very little manipulative conversation to convince him that he was the responsible party. It had forced him to have a breakdown when he was younger and, apparently, to block out anything relating to the incident at all.
Lex rubbed at the dull ache that was starting to grow in his neck. His mother killed Julian. He was sure it had something to do with severe post-partum depression, mixed with twisted guilt over allowing his father to impregnate her again in the hopes of getting a son who was more like him than he was.
In a horrific way, Lex could almost understand her reasoning. She didn’t want another child to endure the same emotionally torturous upbringing he had. And even though he didn’t approve of what she had done, he could certainly forgive her for it.
A sharp pain stabbed behind Lex’s eye and he winced before raising his hand once again, this time to massage his closed eyelid.
‘Maybe I should have taken the day off like Garner told me to,’ he thought ruefully.
No. He didn’t need rest. He needed…what? Revenge? Restitution? An apology from his father for driving his mother to the brink of insanity and then beyond? An explanation for why his father had been such an asshole to him his entire life?
Lex let out a sigh. He knew he’d never get any of those things and the headache that was drilling through his skull was a more pressing matter than contemplating what his ‘new’ memories meant for him.
He unlocked and opened one of his desk drawers and then pulled out a bottle of prescription pain medication. He had to take the capsules more and more frequently, since the experimental medication that Garner used left him with a hangover-like effect for days after the treatment had been done.
Swiftly removing the lid, he tapped a couple of the red and white colored capsules into his hand and placed them on his tongue, pushing them down his throat with a swallow of water he took from the glass on his desk.
Lionel, who stood in the doorway unnoticed, arched an eyebrow.
“Are you ill, son?” he asked in a taunting, mocking manner, taking a few steps into the office when Lex turned his throbbing head to glare at him.
“Headache,” Lex informed him curtly. “I thought you were in Edge City until tomorrow.”
“You sound unhappy to see me,” Lionel observed with some amusement.
Lex wanted to shrug, or roll his eyes, or *something*, but all he could do was give his father a blank stare. This was the man who single-handedly made his mother go crazy, who he alone now held responsible for his brother’s death, and who had made his life nothing short of a living hell because he couldn’t stand for him to possess any kind of a soul.
Perhaps it was the lingering after-effects of the medication, or his long-buried memories brought to light, but Lex found himself unable to keep his next words from slipping off his tongue.
“When have you ever known me to be happy to see you?”
Lionel smirked and then tsked, shaking his head with false hurt.
“Such hostility. So, tell me…what have I done to earn your disdain this time?”
TBC...
