Chapter Text
Two words dominated the beating hearts and waking minds of every Luthor that existed — power and control. Power and control. Power, so as to dominate the will of the lesser and impose their will on a world that continually resists them. Control, so as to be able to predict and prepare for every possibility that can arise to challenge a Luthor’s claim to their own destiny.
Power and control. The methodology and way of the Luthors. Like his father before him, it was a simple evolutionary mandate to cull any notion nor vestige of humanity. Every edge and every inch of cell were primed, calibrated, and optimized to razor sharpness of surgical grade. Nothing of the softness nor emotional species characterized by humanity is spared the extinction event in a Luthor’s lifespan.
There was nothing left for them to be soft about, to be soft for, and to be vulnerable to. A Luthor’s survival depended on their ability to mandate the extinction of their own humanity, at will and on demand. Because it was the Luthor species that held this form of radical evolutionary programming — they firmly believe that the evolution and survival of humanity as a collective whole depended on their sole ability to shed their own humanity.
And it was, simply put, a tragedy.
Because to this day, not even one Luthor has succeeded in accomplishing their own compulsive, self-imposed regressive prison sentence. In the act of shedding its own humanity, one Luthor drove many to insanity, an ironic act in violation of their own programming. An older Luthor, in possession of the more demonic familial strain, orchestrated the deaths of his own parents in ages past, for a mere lump of fortune. Another Luthor, a more recent one, nearly condemned an entire city to destruction because of mere vanity.
All in service to the idols — power and control.
Not one Luthor is fated to shed its own humanity. And when it cannot, how can a fragile, human, mortal shell ever hope to hold itself together when its fractured pieces are all razor-sharp claws designed to prick, rend, and draw blood as efficiently as possible?
How can a Luthor live with themselves when all that remains of them are fragmented and jagged edges of discarded titanium and other alloys? When even the crucible of their own self-imposed suffering and isolation can hardly succeed in destroying their base impurities?
The answer: most cannot live. They either die in a blaze of hell fire borne of their own making, or they die in the shadow of the people they wounded and threatened to destroy.
Cruel fate awaits the Luthors, indeed. But the question of whether it was undeserved or not, remains to the dear reader.
And yet, one Luthor dared to shed a tear. To shed a tear, for the wings he immolated for chasing the Sun of humanity, in mad and fevered pursuit for answers and vindication for his own self-inadequacies and the wounds he inflicted on his own flesh.
One Luthor who orchestrated, created the string lines for his own marionettes, fashioning and weaving them in intricate knots and connections and making them dance to the tune of his own whimsy.
One Luthor, who had all of the evolutionary gifts to command, plead, negotiate, and persuade with the masses of humanity — only to fail in receiving what his mechanical and optimized existence truly needed.
Their love. Their adoration. Their acceptance.
Love. Acceptance. Belonging.
For such a universal set of human needs, only the Luthor species can succeed in using unsightly, artificial methods in their mad pursuit to fulfill it.
It should be perplexing to the outside observer who never had the tragic privilege to be born into a Luthor reference frame. To understand it, to comprehend this compulsive need that the Luthors are infected with that convinced them to compulsively deny and starve their humanity.
And therein was the tragedy — it was a sickness so cosmically frightening and infectious that many simply choose to distance themselves, in the hope of never contracting it, and spreading it to their precious fellow beings.
The last Luthor stares at the Sun of humanity through tempered glass windows, a crippled limb in a sling, his own eyes streaked in crimson and inflamed in bitter agony. His own wings, charred and immolated beyond recognition due to his hubris.
He can only recall the stark and existentially shocking reflection of his own doomed eyes, as he gazed into an iceberg abyss that mirrored his own — the Sun of his species, genuinely hurt, genuinely puzzled, genuinely disappointed.
Disappointed.
It claimed to be human.
It claimed to be one of them.
It claimed to love.
And the same Sun — was not able to comprehend why a Luthor such as he, could not understand it. It was a claim that corrupted Luthor’s biological programming.
The iceberg abyss that humanity loved, found him lacking and deeply disturbed.
Or was it his own biological disintegration confounding him, twisting bits of fact into slight crookedness that spin the narrative into a different path?
It mattered not, in the end.
Because all Luthors end as they began — ruthlessly and without mercy.
Lex met his own haunted iceberg gaze, proud and bitter to the end, his reflection insultingly shattered and twisted by the broken mirror in his own isolated cell. He swallowed the bitter rock behind his throat, refusing to acknowledge and bow to the Sun that gently beckoned to him from the far corner of the mirror edge that remained whole and unbroken.
The Sun, still daringly and audaciously clothed in the nitrogen-blue hue of humanity’s skies. A colour so exclusive to Earth, that it felt insulting to see it worn so fittingly and effortlessly by an alien he could never accept.
The Sun, even now, gazes at him with its characteristically genuine and infuriatingly patronizing, iceberg eyes. A hulking stature, so deceptively human, slowly approaching him as if he still had fangs to bite with.
Lex could see the vestigial traces of Ultraman’s laser assault on the Sun’s eye corners, as if the very faint burn scars took their merry time to heal. A cosmic nebula of fury, anger, and putrid hatred sprung forth from his charred cardiac organ. He cranes his head around and pins it with a cosmically scorching glare, because the universe that once existed in him has collapsed to a hungering black hole.
For someone hailed as the Sun, the alien instead became the living embodiment of Lex’s emptiness and failures.
He can feel the gravitational tug from his own collapsed star, a dull and throbbing ache inside his chest. Lex feels it pulsing, a terrible maw of writhing void that hungers for it, the Sun. Hungers for its extinction, hungers for its light, hungers for its essence. The void in him was growing and Lex fears it, dreads it — because the Maw hungers for the human softness that the Sun possesses and protects. Lex fears it so, because the Maw twists him and incites him to draw near to the Sun, so that it could learn.
Learn why his own father scorned him.
Learn why his own father spat at him, insulted him, berated him, wore him down until none of his softness remained.
Learn why his father refused him affection.
Learn why so many cast him in the shade of his father, before they could see him as his own person.
Learn why everyone is so hellbent on hating him.
So he could finally understand why his own star collapsed, and why he had a black hole for a heart instead.
And ultimately, understand why Lex Luthor was unlovable by anyone and everyone.
He doesn’t want pity. He just wants to understand, why.
“Lex.”
Level, soft, and a baritone that could lull a broken man to sleep.
Why did he have broken razor shards?
“Lex.”
Again. Level, soft, a gentle lull.
Why did he have broken shards?
“Lex.”
Standing. Behind him. Soft, a gentle lull again.
Why did he have broken shards for a human existence, while everyone else stayed whole?
Answer: a broken life has left him born to burn.
“Lex. Hey there.”
Near, collision-imminent levels of near. His own cardiac organ betrays him in this grand symphony, for it starts a whole movement independent from his direction and whims.
“Come to gloat?” Lex bares his fangs, a hissing music forming behind his throat, a Luthor’s last natural mode of warning his mortal enemy of imminent annihilation. “It doesn’t matter how long they keep me in here. One day, I’ll —“
Every inch of razor-sharp edges inside Lex, flinches and freezes in unanimous fear. Large and searingly warm hands were grazing the planes of his bruised cheeks, finger pads that were oddly soft and warm that it rendered the hungry Maw in his chest into fits of frenzied stillness. His chest aches and aches, because the Maw hungers.
He finds himself staring into an iceberg abyss. And in the same vein, the iceberg abyss also gazes into him.
Lex is frozen at the grand and cosmic sight of blue fire ablaze and alight with galactic fury. The odd sight of it freezes the hungering maw in his chest to submission.
“What did they do to you?” A cosmic growl, an imminent sandstorm brewing on the surface of Mars. The visible red dot of Jupiter, a writhing crimson mass rebelling against physics.
Lex flinches.
But the Sun holds him steady, holds him so gently in his wobbly orbit.
Lex sees and witnesses the same iceberg abyss flickering and softening, and he watched in muted wonder as the cosmic flames were dimmed to a tolerable heat intensity.
“Hey, easy there, Lex. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I sent you here. If I had known —“
For the first time, Lex could believe it. Believe that maybe it wasn’t the Sun that will burn his wings. But it doesn’t stop the black hole inside him from hungering, scheming, yearning.
He aches and yearns, with diabolical need, for the Sun’s essence.
Lex is resolute — he will not be moved. And so he bears his draconic fangs once more, with dull and tired muscles that beg collectively at him for mercy and respite from their unnatural stage performances.
“I’ll destroy you,” Lex breathes his noxious gas and ignites the fire blazing down into the soft inner tissue, and watches with muted vindictiveness when the Sun freezes at the violence of his flame. “I’ll destroy everything you ever loved. I’ll make you watch —“
Lex freezes, because he hears the most unlikely of melodies to ever grace his ears. A resonating baritone that ebbs and flows, a series of staccato sounds that elicit a frenzied beat inside his chest, and sends shivers down his spine. A series of wavelengths of specific pitch and frequency, that had his cardiac organ freezing and fluttering.
Was he laughing? Was it laughing at him?
“Oh, Lex. You never change, do you? Still proud,” a smile, a lightening in the iceberg abyss. “Still the same prickly kitten. You’re adorable.”
Lex hisses.
“I’m sorry,” a few more laughs, “I should shut up.”
Yes, he should.
“I’m here to tell you, Lex, that I’m getting you out of here.”