Title: The Upper Hand
Author: Superag
Rating: R now...
Summary: Challenge 33. Lex loses everything in this wonderful economy that we have right now.
Spoilers: All seasons to 8 up for grabs, but not sure what yet. Lois and Kara don’t exist. The Lexana marriage WAS an occurrence and she MIGHT make an appearance. The whole Chloe power thing and crystal orb thing in season 7 is NOT part of this. Clark’s play in this is still not fully decided, and Jimmy is involved to a point.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the instances of Smallville. I get no money from any of this, even though now would be really nice. Don’t sue – you wouldn’t make any.
A/N – I wanted something different for our characters, especially Chloe. I’m not sure if I like this yet. I’ve got it framed in my mind but not sure if it’ll work. Let me know what you think.
There are TWO videos (I recommend them in the order listed).
The Upper Hand Trailer by Ultra
The Upper Hand by Superag
Chapter 1 – Gone
‘Luthorcorp Receives No Bailout.’ Lex read over and over as he stared at the front page of the Daily Planet. He had spent close to three million dollars from his own pocket lobbying the assholes in Congress to save what could be a major market crash when word of Luthorcorp failing got out.
Now it was plastered on every newspaper, website, and news channel throughout the modern world. And he sat alone in the one thing he thought he couldn’t lose, the mansion.
He huffed to himself and pinched his nose in frustration. He had spent hours in talks at the state level, bargaining with Senator Kent for what he thought was a good resolution just to find out that his board members had flown themselves in private jets to Washington. By the time he showed up to hopefully gloss things over, the Congress had voted. The car companies were a yes; he was a no.
Pulling up the latest investment charts to the company, he swallowed at the drop of his entire stock portfolio. Anything that a Luthor had touched in the last ten years was near pennies, literally. He switched to another screen and analyzed the amount of money that would be left after restitution and compensation packages were dealt with. Leaning back in the seat, he folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes.
“You finally succeeded dad.” he casually scoffed, whispering to no one there. Lionel had died the year before, his liver eventually giving out after being cured for whatever reason years before. The alcohol must have done him in after all. He shook his head and couldn’t believe he was asking the one person he cared least about something he couldn’t respond to anyway.
Leaning forward again in the seat, he opened the small box on the table up and stared at the only thing that now occupied it, his ring. “And there’s where I stopped paying attention.” He laughed at himself almost accusingly thinking about how absurd he had been thinking that marrying Lana Lang would have made a damn difference. He would at least have another ten million to hold onto if he hadn’t fucked that up from the beginning.
The marriage had been a pure sham. She wanted comfort, he wanted to know a secret. In the end, neither got what they were looking for. She never quite understood him the way he had hoped, and he constantly fought the invisible man in the corner named Clark Kent. Now, she was gone with his money.
Putting the ring back in the box, he slid it across the table and watched it nick the floor as it hit with a resounding thud. He heard the doors open to the study and looked up at the one person he really didn’t want to see. “Mr. Luthor, we need to talk.”
“There’s only one thing you need to tell me before I let you go, permanently.” His accountant sat down and placed an open folder on top the laptop. He watched as Lex glanced over the figures, already knowing what was coming. He could do the numbers in his head.
“We have to liquidate the mansion to cover the employee packages for the Smallville plant,” the man spoke quietly yet firmly. “The circled number is…”
“I know what it is.” Lex closed the folder and got up from his seat. He silently held up the bottle of scotch on the bar toward the man and he safely declined. Lex nodded his head and put the bottle to his lips without worrying about the glass. It wasn’t worth it anymore.
“Sir.”
“Leave.” The man opened his mouth again to answer Lex and thought of notifying one of the servants in the building of Lex’s condition. Walking down the hall, he noticed there was no one to see him out and the music that usually came from the kitchen was silent. No one was there. They had all been let go.
Lex finished off the small amount in the Scotch bottle and threw it across the room, breaking the glass coffee table in between the leather couches that he vowed to destroy later. He laughed as the table shattered, thinking that it was the second glass table to pay its dues in the study.
He picked up another bottle and popped the top, sniffing of the brandy that was older than he was. His father had to be laughing for some reason. He walked along the edge of the pool table, feeling of the felt that he had just replaced as he tipped the bottle back and took another swig. The old aroma didn’t suit him. Sitting the bottle in the middle of the pool table, he pulled the cue ball out of the rack and a cue. He stood at one end and carefully lined up the shot. Releasing the cue, the ball cracked against the bottle, causing the bottle to shatter and brandy to pour out over the pool table that was now useless.
He felt strange. He had torn the study apart several other times while he lived there, looking for trinkets or bugs. But somehow the anger that welled deep in him now made his moves more methodical. He took the sword off the wall that he remembered Clark was afraid that he would hit him with. He had told the young man who used to be a friend that the sword was a prop.
A small smirk came across his lips as he ran his finger lightly across the blade and felt that the prop still indeed had a little of an edge. Grabbing another bottle of scotch from the bottom of the bar, he popped it open, tipped it back, and ran the tip of the sword across the seat and back of the couches and chairs. “Oops,” he joked as he continued to drink.
Dropping the blade of the sword in the fire that was going, he pulled on the fine leather and ripped it beyond repair. “Liquidate my things. Only need to sell one goddamn item in here to make it.”
He walked over and pressed a few buttons on the hidden panel of the safe room. Opening the doors, he looked at the small cot and laughed. “I was delusional. Thanks mom,” he snidely added remembering how sweet Lana had been when he was shot for a damn ship he never should have told her about. “Could never keep your mind on the fucking prize at hand Lex. Had to always be in other people’s business Lex.”
He grabbed the box that had contained an original piece of Kryptonite before it was found it seemed everywhere you looked. The damn town probably glows green from space he thought. Walking back out with the small box, he put the scotch bottle down on the ground carefully, since now there was no table.
Pulling back over his shoulder, he wondered if his aim from Excelsior had deteriorated since school. Pulling his leg up, he launched the box of green meteor rock at the fireplace but missed high and the large titanium urn crashed to the ground. Walking over, Lex picked up the bottle and took another swig from it. “Sorry dad.” Looking at the rug, he half-hearted laughed. “I’ll get the vacuum later.”
Lex moved around and sat back in the chair behind the computer, sliding the folder of his wealth off into the trash. Account numbers be damned; it was all gone anyway. Punching up the computer again, he watched as the numbers changed on LUC, the abbreviation of the company. “Red, red, red.” Slamming the top of the laptop down, he cleared the desk with one arm while saving the bottle of scotch in the other hand.
He finished off the bottle and set it carefully on the floor as if it was more important than any of the other objects in the room. He eyed the different books in the small library upstairs and wondered how big of a fire he could get going. Pulling the folder out of the garbage, he went over the final amounts again.
“Personal monetary assets after liquidation $100000. Other assets zero.” He never thought things could come to this. His father had created the company out of nothing, actually his grandparents’ blood money and made it successful. They had fought tooth and nail for shares of the company over the years and somehow made it work. But as soon as his father’s body descended into the ground the last year, Luthorcorp seemed to follow.
Maybe, Lex thought, he hadn’t paid enough attention to details. Luthorcorp seemed to run itself for years, with him sitting in the office on the top floor reaping the benefits. Moving money around from legal accounts to those not so legal. Whether possessed or something else, his father warned him about chasing little green men.
The experiments, 33.1 were already a thing of the past. From the information Lex gathered, Lana had taken care of that along with pocketing the money for it, again thanks to his own father and Clark. The Isis Foundation had not been much of a hidden secret, seeing as Lana passed out leaflets at what amounted to 33.1 escapee support meetings. He had never given her enough credit, least of all for disappearing.
Then, he learned from an inside source that his dad had done most of the work on the crooked business contracts before he died. Finding out that more than half of Luthorcorp was being sold off to the lowest bidder was cold, even for his father. Those contracts went out behind his back and only days after his father’s three month prognosis came back from the doctors. Lionel had always warned about getting in bed with the enemy, and all the while he had been the enemy. Lex wondered how many times his father had talked out of one side of his mouth while doing the other. Never said he loved Lex, just carefully chipped away everything he had.
Then the market happened. Gas prices spiked, the housing market took a dive from a tall cliff, and everyone stopped buying. Buying stock, parts, anything. And the bottom of Luthorcorp went with the automakers, credit and investment banks, and every other stock known to man. He had tried unsuccessfully to stave off the fall for almost 6 months taking most things and parceling out the amounts to persons that worked for Luthorcorp as compensation packages for unemployment that started piling up. He had given his accountant stamp approval to just sign his name to it. He sold the Daily Planet among other miscellaneous acquisitions that brought him only more debt now. He was now the cause of a 1% global hike in unemployment. Most people thought that Luthorcorp was the bane of Smallville’s existence; now it really was.
Smallville had not been immune. The Ledger reported a run on the banks after workers showed up and were turned away by security guards at the gates. Only after some pleading had they at least had time to retrieve their things and go home with simple severance checks and promises of some more money to come. People egged his car as he drove through town, blaming one person for the entire globe’s problems. Smallville was the last place he needed to be. He wondered without security at the gate when the storming of the Bastille would begin.
The latest was now a scandal to decimate what was left of the Luthorcorp holdings. The accountant from two years earlier had taken his leave evidently with most of the IRS owed taxes. Too many minions made things muddy for CEO’s he now understood.
Leaning on top of his desk, he groaned. He stared at the green rock sitting on the floor and shook his head. Pulling himself up from the start of a drunken stupor, he walked down to the basement and pulled out one of the candle lighters. Opening the door with a secret code, he looked as the room illuminated and rolled his eyes. Years he spent on their friendship, then his parents, then finding out his secret, and for what. Now, they didn’t speak, his mother tried to be the civil one but threw him to the wolves in Washington, and his now ex-girlfriend, his own ex-wife, ruined his research.
Lex popped on the small candle starter and looked at the different research that he had acquired. He was surprised it was still there knowing that Lionel knew full well about the room. He lit several items and sat on top of the mangled car, watching as the items burned to ash and the flame carried to the next item. Walking up the steps, he shut the door and dropped the small flame thrower.
Walking into the main area of the basement, he looked at all the priceless pieces of artwork and shook his head. They only needed the original manuscripts from King George and a couple of other irreplaceable Egyptian artifacts that were in the fireproof safe room to pay off the debts. Watching as the fire peaked out from under the door to the room he was just in, Lex’s wrinkled up the end of his mouth and walked back upstairs.
He sat down at his desk after dismantling the alarm, for he could care less if his dad’s eyesore of a family heirloom house burnt to the ground. He sat behind his desk and stared into space. He wasn’t drunk, yet. There was more alcohol in the basement. “Dammit,” he said to himself as he realized the fire would easily send the wine collection up in flames before destroying the rest of the family heirlooms.
He walked over to the safe room again and pulled one more box down off the top shelf and put it on the desk in front of him. Opening it up, it contained the last birthday card his mother had given him and his mother’s wedding ring among other items. Shoving the card and the ring in his pocket, he dumped the rest of the trinkets from his childhood in the trash. Looking back in the garbage, he grabbed a picture that he had forgotten all about. Shoving it in his pocket, he leaned forward, sighed, and buried his face in his hands on top of the desk.
“I said leave. You’re released from the payroll,” he muffled at the sound of hearing the door open.
“You did that when you fired me.”
TBC
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