Fic-ish

[rivkat]

dvd_commentary is open! Sign up here if you're okay with your stories receiving a commentary, sign up here to claim a story. I put mine up.

A long time ago, I asked for timestamp or DVD commentary requests, and percysowner asked for a coda to Ruat Caelum (now at the new version of my site). I have been thinking about this for a while, and I can say what happens but I can’t exactly write it. percysowner asked: “Did Clark manage to tame Lex and keep him, or did Lex break free? I always thought both Clark and Lex were such messed up control freaks in that and I wasn't sure that Clark's blithe assumption that if he had enough time Lex would cave was right.”

Clark won. They are both messed up control freaks, that’s for sure, but with Lex locked up and unable to interact with other people, he had nothing to push against but Clark, and Clark had the rest of the world to keep him stable. After a few months, Clark’s prediction was proved right: enough people developed an interest in not having Lex around that the rest of the world pretty much gave up on getting him back. Lex saw the world going on around him and it hurt. He couldn’t stand being disposable and he certainly couldn’t stand being uninfluential, even if it had to be by proxy, so he did the scientific work that Clark brought him. And it was extremely comforting to be praised by Clark for his successes, even if he understood that he was being trained. He’d always been tempted to make Clark his whole world, and now it was true.

It took Clark a while to realize that he had done what Lionel had never managed: he’d broken Lex to harness. Lex was still brilliant, charming, and perceptive, but the fire was out. He was—or he seemed—happy, and sometimes that was the worst part of all for Clark. Clark thought he might be able to bring the real Lex back out, but that would require not just loosing Lex on the world but using all Clark’s own powers in Lex’s service. So this was his penance: to come back to Lex at the end of each day and have all of Lex’s attention, but not because Lex had chosen that.

Comments

[percysowner.livejournal.com]

I find that a credible and incredibly tragic ending for the story. Thank you for fleshing it out.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for prodding me to do so!

[auroramama]

And yet... just because Clark likes this better than Lex dead or Lex in a League cell doesn't mean it's a worse thing. I don't think it was Clark's training that broke Lex. As you say here, it's being truly caught, with no place left in the world, that did it. Clark just made it more tempting to give in. But a Lex who can't escape, and comes to believe it, is a broken Lex. The only way to have the real thing is to put him somewhere he can break out of.

This is a fascinating story, and it got me writing when I've been too belly-aching to do it all day.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I agree, this is certainly not the worst result that could occur and might be the best. It's just that Lex would rather be dead. And the funny thing is: Lex breaks because he believes his father's teaching that Luthors are sharks who must swim or die. Truly captive, with no (even unrealistic) hope of escape or rescue, he can't survive as himself.

excellence

[sapphoq.livejournal.com]

A right excellent ending.
spike

Re: excellence

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I wish I could have managed to write it, but it became obvious that that wasn't going to happen.

God, I love this story so much

[jackycomelately.livejournal.com]

In a sense Lex wins in that he forced Clark to do something so controlling so openly. He loves Lex enough that he chooses to force him to virtue even through it damages both of them. In Ruat Caelum, Lex is truly shocked at the length Clark is willing to go to. Clark finally fixed the game openly and I think Lex would in some way see that as a victory. Lex feels that Clark could, and really did, fix the game all along and was a hypocrite for denying it. That it was never a level playing field with Clark's advantages and Clark should allow Lex to raise to the top naturally. Of course the ironic kicker is that the only thing that made Clark finally do it is fear of losing Lex to death. However, I think Lex would take a certain bitter satisfaction in this turn of events, and in some sense it would give him what he needed, even if it was never what he wanted.

One of my all-time-favourite-stories, and I'm so glad you summarized the coda.

Re: God, I love this story so much

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Clark is definitely putting everything on the table, and Lex prizes honesty. I suspect he prizes world domination more, or at least he thinks he ought to -- but you're right, there's a part of him, a part the rest of him thinks is craven, that just wants to be the center of Clark's universe.

Re: God, I love this story so much

[jackycomelately.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely agree. I think until this point, Lex always bitched in his head that Clark never really, truly, respected his career of world domination :)

[jakrar.livejournal.com]

Totally awesome coda...but it makes me want to cry. *curls into ball and weeps for Lex-that-was*

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Lex would have preferred a different ending. I just couldn't see it.