Almost literaly.
---And boy, did those people never ever let him forget it.
Not that Alexander Joseph Luthor really minded that Jonathan Kent had somehow ended up cozening him into covering his bank loans, after making all that fuss about returning the brand-new truck Lex had tried to give him, too---And was rude to him ever after, too boot. It's wasn't as if he didn't have the money or anything, after all.
Not to mention that he was pretty used to dealing with people with wierd things swimming around in their heads, all things considering.
It wasn't even that Martha Kent kept looking at him and looking at him, especially when he was talking with her son. When she wasn't spaced out, that is.
Which was often.
She's almost died when she'd been pregnant with Clark---some kind of complications, blood poisoning or whatever---And really hadn't been the same woman since, according to the gossip mill. Though Lex personally thought that all those pills she took might have had something to do with the problem too.
Even all the problems with the fertilizer plant he was theoretically supervising didn't bother him all that much. Or the problems with the townspeople. Or the problems with his acquaintances that had somehow decided to follow him to this little town in the middle of nowhere.
Those things were mostly understandable and there were ways of dealing with them. Time. Brainpower. Money. Something.
---Most of the time, anyway.
No, those problems weren't the ones that bothered him.
"---Hiya, Lex."
And here she comes, like a great green and blue blimp with orange highlights. The "biggest" girl he's ever seen---in person, anyway---in his entire life, and somebody he probably wouldn't have even had a nodding acquaintance with if not for---
"---Chloe. You look superb tonight, you know that?"
---Actually, she does. The new party dress he strong-armed certain dressmakers into making fits her quite well. Why not be a colorful and gracefully shaped blimp, after all?
"Thanks to somebody who knows all the people who where just dying to practice making nice stuff for big girls like me, right?"
Chloe, Chloe, Chloe. To think he would have never known her keen intelligence and bitchiness.
"---Hey. ---Clark's?"
Ouch. She would notice, wouldn't she?
"He says it's a birthday present. I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was about half a year off."
He holds up the sketchbook, which she takes rather eagarly.
"Hmm. OK, you and your cars, your cars and you...nice. He's got the comic-book touch down pat, doesn't he? Though I'm not sure what this one is supposed to be..."
"I think it's supposed to be me as a Supervillian. Though I'm not sure what kind of powers I'm supposed to have..."
"..."Criminal Mastermind", probably. He once said you're the smartist person he ever knew in his life, y'know?"
Oh, he knew. How could he not?
"And this is the heroine? Oh, Clark, Clark..."
Well, it didn't take much to see just who Clark was idealizing when he made that charactor, he supposed...
"Actually...That isn't all Lana Lang, I don't think. ---She's supposed to be a journalist, you see."
Chloes blinks.
And blinks again.
"---Really?"
And then she smiles, and Lex feels something strange deep inside that he can't quite give a name to.
"---Really."
It's quite odd, really.
"---Where's Clark, by the way? I wanted to make sure he did his Kumon drills before we went to the prom, you know?"
Lex wondered sometimes if Chloe knew that he was the one who made sure that Ms. Lakeshore opened her Kumon franchise right here in Smallville in the first place. Not that it's any great secret. Not that.
Because there had to be some way of teaching Clark Kent how to read a newspaper and make sense of it. Not to mention count without useing his fingers.
At least. At the very least.
Once upon a time, he'd been saved from near-certain death by a kid who'd managed to smash the supposedly bullet-proof windows of his car with a coin in a plastic bag, swung around for maximun velocity. Clark had told him later that he'd saw something like that on the TV once.
Clark Jerome Kent. The Smallville village idiot, nerd, and geek.
---Actually, he was pretty sure by now that Clark's basic intelligence levels were quite within normal levels. If it wasn't for all those learning disabilities, and even worse, the interpersonal cognative problems---
But that was neither here nor there.
And tonight was for Clark and Chloe, and all the rest of the children. Not for him.
Clark Kent sometimes wished that he'd never seen the car, never got almost run over, and never remenbered how to smash a window that wouldn't open.
Just sometimes.
Because then Lex would be dead, and dad wouldn't be so irritated about Lex all the time, and keep looking at him up and down, and---
And he wouldn't have to do those stupid Kumon drills all the time, because he probably wouldn't be helping Chloe with the school newspaper if he hadn't saved Lex in the first place.
Though not getting to be friends with Chloe would be bad. Even if Pete and everybody else kept making fun of him because he was friends with the fattest girl in school.
Even the Kumon drills probably were good for him too, even if they made him feel like crawling up the walls most of the time.
And not getting to be friends with Lex would be bad, too. Even if Lex made him feel---weird, sometimes. Like---
---He wanted to pat him on the head or something?
OK, now that was really weird. Better think of something else.
Like Lana Long. Beautiful, beautiful Lana. Even though she kept avoiding him like the plague.
Like dad. Who always complained about the Kumon fees, even though there weren't that expensive and mum said that she had no problem with it, that she'd get money from grandpops if she really had to.
And he still kept on complaining that he got bad grades, and why wasn't he playing football, and how he---dad, that is---had gotten a football scholarship to Metropolis Uni---
He sometimes wished he was adopted.
---Well, not really. But sometimes...
Adopted. Nobility? Hell, why not an alien. He felt like somebody from a different planet most of the time, anyway.
A orphaned and adopted alien Superhero. Of noble birth.
-----------Hmmmmmmm?---------------
Clark Kent took out his sketchbook---he always had one with him, sometimes more---and started sketching. The loft was cold, but who cared?
He was utterly oblivious to the green and blue and sunset-red ribbon starting to weave itself accross the night sky.
In one Timeline---the rip in space-time had been small. And had closed up in less then a hour.
Only a very small sprinkle---by cosmic standards, anyhow---of something that looked like a multicolored mineral but really wasn't would enter Earth's atmosphere in that Timeline, and even less would reach the ground.
To incounter a teenager. And a Dream. And a Wish that warped that World to it's core.
Not that he was the only one to Wish upon a Dream.
But this was not that Timeline.
Tsukino Usagi looked up at the moon, and the clouds. And the multicolored Gap that howled across night sky.
It was time.
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(Posted Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:31)
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