(no subject)

My current mood is a ghastly combination of exhausted, nauseated, impressed, and suicidal.

Because I read this.

Hit me hard, it did, in a way that I don't think any story, in any fandom, has ever struck me.

I mean . . . I couldn't *sleep* all freakin' weekend. Every time I closed my eyes, I kept thinking back to Grail's "Immortality".

I'm devastated, I'm telling you. I don't know if I'll ever be able to reread this story -- though part of me wants to. Sort of hoping that it will lose its punch if I do.

Jenn said some great stuff here that really put into words how I felt. In fact, she said it so well . . . I don't have to say it at all.

I once inflicted this sort of traumatic breakup on a guy. I will never, ever, EVER do it again. I didn't even have some sort of desperate, half-crazed Clarkian excuse of not being able to stand to watch Lex die someday.

I did it simply because, in the space of a twelve-hour period, I inexplicably fell so completely out of love with this man that I couldn't bear to lay eyes on him again.

I still don't know what happened. We had a perfectly pleasant date one Saturday evening, with some enjoyable fooling around.

Sunday morning, when I got up, I realized that I didn't want to talk to him. That rapidly progressed (by Sunday afternoon) to not wanting to see him. Ever. Again. I repeat . . . I still don't know why.

Yes, I went to the club we frequented and danced with other men in front of him. Yes, I refused to take his calls. Yes, our mutual friends called me constantly to find out why I did this. Yes, I broke his heart and stomped on the pieces and I STILL DON'T KNOW WHY!

I suppose that we all have our evil streaks. I feel horribly guilty about it now, whenever I think about it.

But I heard that he's happily married since then . . . ironically enough, to a woman who looks a lot like me. Hmm. Issues, much?

I need lots of fluffersmutter fic now, please. I dearly hope and even pray that the current vogue for darkfic will go on hiatus and the fandom will swim happily in the river of denial.

Please, guys. Write happyfic.

No matter how stupid and foolish and just downright goofy.

Please. I need it. All my plot bunnies are gasping and bleeding their little hearts out, sunk in the tarpit of despair that is Grail's Clark.

C'mon. I'll beg if I have to . . . not that I'm very good at it, but I'll try.

::: goes off whimpering :::

Lex / Whitney rebellion fic

HAH!!!!

You know the llama in the Emperor's New Groove?

That's the noise I'm making right now.

And why, may you ask? Well you might.

Because . . . I've broken my writer's block.

Yes! Two straight weeks of numbness, now exploded like into nothingness!

Hmm. I become overly dramatic in my glee. Anyway . . . on with the story.

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Lex had never intended to become a terrorist.

It wasn't like "guerrilla warfare" had been a career option.

"Freedom fighter" had never been listed on any aptitude test that he recalled taking, back in the day when aptitude tests and urine tests and IQ tests were all that he remembered.

And yet, as he wandered through the caves that had become his domain, he sometimes wondered if it all had been inevitable from the beginning.

If this had been the only way it could end.

Footsteps behind him, and he tensed for a moment, but it was only Whitney, returning from recon. "Give me ten minutes, and call the Circle," Lex said simply, reading the tension and urgency in Whitney pinched features.

The former Smallville High School star quarterback nodded, and melted into the darkness.

Two other shapes followed him closely, features unrecognizable beneath the dust that camoflauged their features.

Lex nodded and the bigger shape saluted loosely. "Sir."

"It can wait," Lex said softly. "You two go wash up. Join us in ten minutes."

The man's head dipped briefly as he nodded. "Yes, sir."

Lex smiled as the two moved wearily away. He liked those men. They'd come from out of nowhere one night, using false names as so many did in these uncertain times.

They had the look of men who had seen too much and were nearly broken for it.

Lex had needed their military experience too desperately to question them closely.

He set them to fortifying the defenses, and if they tended to decorate the walls with crucifixes and strings of garlic . . . well, Lex wasn't in a position to be overly picky.

The big one was Finn. Some joker had tagged him with "MacCool", which fit with the man's rugged Irish appearance. Lex always smiled at that.

His shadow was known only as "Gray", and Lex never asked if he was mute by choice or by force.

The two communicated through a network of silent gestures and eye contact that reminded Lex of the secret language that all twins seemed to create between themselves.

No one in the camp was rude enough to comment upon the other sounds that sometimes issued from their sleeping place.

Frankly, Lex didn't care how anyone spent their evenings. He'd taken many of the rebels to his bed when it had become necessary.

Whitney had been one of the early ones.

Fresh from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, it had been he who'd struck upon the idea of basing their operations from the abandoned lead mines of Montana.

Lex chuckled. He'd often thought that he owed some thanks to bin Laden. But where would he start?

Card? Fruit basket?

Evisceration?

Whitney would do it in a second, if Lex asked it of him.

He'd do anything that Lex asked, after that first night in his bed.

Lex sighed and rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully.

It had been Lana, of course, who had provoked things.

Jealousy could spur a man to do impossible things, insane things.

Lex would know.

He shook his head, pushing aside the random thoughts of Clark. He'd done what he had had to do, and it meant nothing.

Clark was dead to him, Whitney was sealed to him, and Lex had a rebellion to run.


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