Clouds Up - Three (3/15)
Poor Lucky. . . I'm just so damn mean to him. *insert evol cackle here*
Disclaimer: ‘Smallville’ and certain characters belong to Miller-Gough et. al. No profit is gained from this writing. Only, hopefully, enjoyment.
It wasn't until Julian actually said it out loud that Lucas realized he wasn't normal. But then, of course normal people didn't walk around when they were asleep, and certainly a normal person's dreams didn't come true.
Normal people had nightmares, though. That was a fact. Lucas had looked it up in encyclopedias, and he'd asked Julian's head doctor just to be sure, but he'd already remembered that from when he'd been young. The old couple with the cats, well, the old lady actually had told him not to worry about bad dreams. He remembered that even now, how she'd touched his back and smoothed his hair down and how she had always put a glass of water on the little table next to his bed.
Having nightmares was okay. It wasn't normal, but normal people had them. There was a distinction there, and Lucas knew it, even if he couldn't understand it. Animals had nightmares too, and even aliens. Lucas was positive of that.
But normal people did not wake up in places different from where they went to sleep, and normal people did not float when they slept, and normal people most certainly did not dream things that came true after they dreamed them. Julian was adamant about the 'sleepwalking,' but Lucas knew enough to infer about the rest of it.
When Julian was 13 years old, he told Bruce and Alfred that he didn't need to go to therapy any longer. That always puzzled Lucas because Julian chose to make his announcement in the middle of Christmas dinner, and it seemed a very inappropriate time to discuss such a topic. It seemed especially inappropriate for Julian, considering he was always so sensitive about manners and protocol.
But apparently, for normal people, there was always a hidden meaning to everything as well. Normal people never just explicitly said whatever it was they wanted to say. They played games, word games, and layered words upon words like cake frosting on top of cake.
So when Julian was 13, and he looked at Bruce and Alfred and told them he didn't need to go to any more sessions with Dr. Daniel Tucker, it took awhile for Lucas to understand what was going on. Eventually he made sense of it, with a little help from Lin.
When he'd first come Outside, and lived in Bruce's house with all those Luthors and those Waynes, Lucas had been afraid. He hadn't liked Nature, or the Dark, or even television much. He could remember always having to reach for Lin when they stepped across the threshold of Bruce's house. And he remembered being asked, by all of them, how he was sleeping. And that, there, was another example of the conversation layering normal people just effortlessly did. They never just asked, 'Are you sleeping the whole night through?' or, 'Do you have nightmares?'
And no one ever, ever asked Lucas, ever, what it was he dreamed of at night, not even Lin.
People always stacked their conversations on top of each other. They were always really saying twice as much as it seemed they were saying.
And Lucas just could not understand how normal people did that.
He was intelligent, and he had a wide vocabulary, and he was usually confident that he had all the facts, but when he talked to people he knew he came across as weird and simple. He blamed it on the hidden conversation layer he was missing.
His cake had no frosting. Lucas didn't even like frosting, but normal people did apparently. Apparently, normal people were only normal if they could have more than one conversation at a time.
Lex was normal. He and Bruce were so normal, the two of them could hold several conversations at once. Their cake was one of those tiered ones people ate at wedding receptions.
Julian was normal, and so was Lin. Lin, who wasn't even Homo sapiens, was more normal than Lucas.
It made Lucas feel bad. He felt jealous, and insecure, and wrong.
But even if he couldn't talk like a normal person, he knew he looked like one, and he knew how to act like one. He didn't sleep right, but his smile worked on everybody just fine. His smile sometimes worked better than Lex's, sometimes, and he could be proud of that at least. He could use that, work with it, distract people when he needed to. That's all talking was really, distraction. Since normal people never really said what they thought, what they did say served as a disguise. They hid the truth in their layers of words and hoped no one would be able to find it.
Lucas certainly couldn't. He just showed his hand to everyone, and when they gave him weird looks he smiled at them. Most times, they forgot easily enough and gave him one of their own little smiles in return.
Lucas never slept with anyone besides Lin. He started locking his bedroom door at night once he figured out unlocking it was too complex a task for his sleepwalking self to muddle through. So far, it had worked. He had a fear that one night he'd jump out the window or something, but he'd deal with that when, and if, it came up. For now, he was relatively certain that none of the house staff knew anything about him not being normal, and that was the way he was going to keep it.
***
He'd woken himself up at six o'clock that morning, and had completed the normal ablutions before dressing. His eyes hurt somewhat, a stinging ache, but there was no redness or swelling so Lucas determined it couldn't be anything very serious. He'd decided since today was a Friday, he would wear the dark purple shirt with the dark grey suit. People most often looked twice when he wore the purple, and Fridays meant friends with no school for two days and dinner somewhere else every night.
He descended the stairs, and received the double takes like he'd expected. They weren't the right kind, though, and as he proceeded towards the kitchen and the Lady's waiting coffee, Lucas realized his hands were-sweating.
The faces weren't happy, or envious, or lustful. No one greeted him, and they all rushed past, no lingering to try and gain his favor. Not even the Palmers gave more than a few awkward nods before quickly moving away down the hall. The Palmers always said hello, and the girl always, every single time, tried to somehow touch Lucas on his arm or his shoulder or once on his hand.
Lucas eventually reached the kitchen, and he straightened his back and took a deep breath in before going inside. The Lady was there, Martha, and she did have coffee sitting hot on the counter for him. He put on a smile for her, not one of his best but. . .
And then she smiled back, and he released the air he'd been holding in his lungs.
"Good morning, Lucas," the Lady greeted him.
He sat down on one of the stools surrounding the center counter, taking his suit jacket off and laying it carefully on the stool next to him.
The Lady looked at him again, before chuckling a little and shaking her head.
"What?" Lucas asked, gulping at the coffee and trying to ignore the fact that not only were his hands sweating, but now they were also shaking ever so slightly.
The Lady just kept on smiling, but he noticed it starting to wilt around the edges. She was trying to be cheerful just like he was, but wasn't doing any better job of it.
"Just, not often do you see a man wearing a three-piece suit these days," the Lady observed. She took a sip of her own coffee before lowering it again. "It's wonderful. You look very-dashing, Lucas."
This time, her smile was more genuine and he thanked her by imitating it back to her.
"Well, thank you," he replied. "I've never been called 'dashing' before." He tilted his head like Lex often did when thinking, saying, "I rather like it, I think."
The Lady laughed briefly, but soon it too faded.
"Martha," Lucas said, "what's going on? Everyone is acting so strange this morning. Did something happen?"
The Lady took a deep breath, Lucas could actually hear her lungs expanding without even trying, then looked him square in the eye and said, "Someone, or someones, unknown graffitied the castle last night." She stopped then, still looking at him very closely, and he realized she was waiting for some sort of response from him.
"Where?" he asked, molding his face into the mask of confusion normal people wore at times like this, times when they weren't sure what was happening around them. "And what is it? What was-graffitied onto the castle?"
The Lady sighed, looking very sad. Then she stood up from where she'd been leaning on the counter. She set down her coffee mug and so he did too.
"Come," she said bluntly. "I'll show you."
Lucas followed her outside, once again marveling at the overwhelming color of the world during this time of the year. It had officially been autumn for three days now, and walking on the ground was now like walking on a sea of dry, crackling fire. The great trees scattered everywhere unfortunately resembled skeletons, but the colorful leaves made up for it. Come winter, there would be glittering snow and clouds so low and thick even normal people would feel like they could touch them.
The Lady led them around to the east side of the castle, not very far in fact from Lucas' bedroom three storeys above. There, apparently burned into the old brick was. . .
Lucas swallowed, and the Lady must have sensed something, for she came closer to him. She set her hand on his arm gently, comfortingly.
"I've already contacted your lawyers," the Lady told him quietly. "They're sending some expert to come and document it, and then a-consultant of some kind will speak to you about replacing the brick." She turned to face him fully, both hands coming up to his shoulders, and it took Lucas aback for a brief second to realize she was actually shorter than him. She didn't seem small, but she was.
"Now, you listen to me, Lucas," the Lady said sternly. "I know what's burned into that wall, but I also know it's absolute garbage. Don't you dare believe it." She shook him a little. "It's not true. You hear me?"
Lucas dropped his eyes down from the wall to meet hers. He went about reassuring her by setting one of his hands atop one of hers. He put on a weak little smile and nodded none too confidently. He let her see doubt and hurt in his expression, and could tell the exact second she believed it.
"Well," she said, pushing the air forcibly from her body, and returning to his side. She left one hand on his shoulder, reassuringly, but said, "Don't you worry about this. We'll take care of it, and soon it will look good as new. Or, old, considering it's a castle." She shot another smile at him and he caught it out of the corner of his eye, nodding his head as he continued staring at the graffiti.
"I have to go to work," Lucas said into the silence a few minutes later. He felt the Lady's nod, and took it upon himself to start back towards the kitchen first.
When they reached the side entrance from which they'd left, Lucas stopped and turned around, waiting for the Lady to catch up. She walked up to him slowly, that effortless look of confusion on her face, in her posture, radiating from her whole being.
Because she was normal, and normal people didn't have to think about feeling. They just did it automatically.
Lucas was careful not to let his face become too blank because that tended to unsettle people. He scrunched his eyebrows and let his eyes tear up a little, let his mouth turn down at the corners. He looked worried, concerned, like anyone would be.
"I don't- Martha," he said in a low voice, full of shock. "Please don't, if anyone calls-Lex or Lin-please don't mention this at all. I don't want them to know. It'd just make them worry."
The Lady nodded understandingly, reaching up to pat his arm again. "I won't say a word," she promised. Then she smiled a little before going around him and back into the kitchen.
Of all the things that could have possibly been burned into the side of the castle, the word 'FREAK' in 36' block letters wasn't nearly the worst or most degrading. At least there were no pictures.
On his drive to the Plant, Lucas at one point found himself rubbing his eyes again. He quickly pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned the engine off. Then he just sat looking at his right hand, the one he'd been using to maul his eyes.
Well, that would explain how someone had managed to get past and elude security for the time it would have taken to literally burn that word into brick. The culprit had already been on the property, and in fact lived on the property. It also explained the lack of chemical residue and fire spreading that would have been a result of anyone else perpetrating this particular act.
Normal people didn't have to think about how they should be acting nearly every second of every day, and they didn't have to be careful with how they touched someone else for fear they might rip off a limb or cause internal bleeding.
And Lucas was positive that normal people didn't burn 'FREAK' into the side of their own home using only their eyes. Normal people would remember doing something like that.
But Lucas of course wasn't normal.
Next
Disclaimer: ‘Smallville’ and certain characters belong to Miller-Gough et. al. No profit is gained from this writing. Only, hopefully, enjoyment.
It wasn't until Julian actually said it out loud that Lucas realized he wasn't normal. But then, of course normal people didn't walk around when they were asleep, and certainly a normal person's dreams didn't come true.
Normal people had nightmares, though. That was a fact. Lucas had looked it up in encyclopedias, and he'd asked Julian's head doctor just to be sure, but he'd already remembered that from when he'd been young. The old couple with the cats, well, the old lady actually had told him not to worry about bad dreams. He remembered that even now, how she'd touched his back and smoothed his hair down and how she had always put a glass of water on the little table next to his bed.
Having nightmares was okay. It wasn't normal, but normal people had them. There was a distinction there, and Lucas knew it, even if he couldn't understand it. Animals had nightmares too, and even aliens. Lucas was positive of that.
But normal people did not wake up in places different from where they went to sleep, and normal people did not float when they slept, and normal people most certainly did not dream things that came true after they dreamed them. Julian was adamant about the 'sleepwalking,' but Lucas knew enough to infer about the rest of it.
When Julian was 13 years old, he told Bruce and Alfred that he didn't need to go to therapy any longer. That always puzzled Lucas because Julian chose to make his announcement in the middle of Christmas dinner, and it seemed a very inappropriate time to discuss such a topic. It seemed especially inappropriate for Julian, considering he was always so sensitive about manners and protocol.
But apparently, for normal people, there was always a hidden meaning to everything as well. Normal people never just explicitly said whatever it was they wanted to say. They played games, word games, and layered words upon words like cake frosting on top of cake.
So when Julian was 13, and he looked at Bruce and Alfred and told them he didn't need to go to any more sessions with Dr. Daniel Tucker, it took awhile for Lucas to understand what was going on. Eventually he made sense of it, with a little help from Lin.
When he'd first come Outside, and lived in Bruce's house with all those Luthors and those Waynes, Lucas had been afraid. He hadn't liked Nature, or the Dark, or even television much. He could remember always having to reach for Lin when they stepped across the threshold of Bruce's house. And he remembered being asked, by all of them, how he was sleeping. And that, there, was another example of the conversation layering normal people just effortlessly did. They never just asked, 'Are you sleeping the whole night through?' or, 'Do you have nightmares?'
And no one ever, ever asked Lucas, ever, what it was he dreamed of at night, not even Lin.
People always stacked their conversations on top of each other. They were always really saying twice as much as it seemed they were saying.
And Lucas just could not understand how normal people did that.
He was intelligent, and he had a wide vocabulary, and he was usually confident that he had all the facts, but when he talked to people he knew he came across as weird and simple. He blamed it on the hidden conversation layer he was missing.
His cake had no frosting. Lucas didn't even like frosting, but normal people did apparently. Apparently, normal people were only normal if they could have more than one conversation at a time.
Lex was normal. He and Bruce were so normal, the two of them could hold several conversations at once. Their cake was one of those tiered ones people ate at wedding receptions.
Julian was normal, and so was Lin. Lin, who wasn't even Homo sapiens, was more normal than Lucas.
It made Lucas feel bad. He felt jealous, and insecure, and wrong.
But even if he couldn't talk like a normal person, he knew he looked like one, and he knew how to act like one. He didn't sleep right, but his smile worked on everybody just fine. His smile sometimes worked better than Lex's, sometimes, and he could be proud of that at least. He could use that, work with it, distract people when he needed to. That's all talking was really, distraction. Since normal people never really said what they thought, what they did say served as a disguise. They hid the truth in their layers of words and hoped no one would be able to find it.
Lucas certainly couldn't. He just showed his hand to everyone, and when they gave him weird looks he smiled at them. Most times, they forgot easily enough and gave him one of their own little smiles in return.
Lucas never slept with anyone besides Lin. He started locking his bedroom door at night once he figured out unlocking it was too complex a task for his sleepwalking self to muddle through. So far, it had worked. He had a fear that one night he'd jump out the window or something, but he'd deal with that when, and if, it came up. For now, he was relatively certain that none of the house staff knew anything about him not being normal, and that was the way he was going to keep it.
***
He'd woken himself up at six o'clock that morning, and had completed the normal ablutions before dressing. His eyes hurt somewhat, a stinging ache, but there was no redness or swelling so Lucas determined it couldn't be anything very serious. He'd decided since today was a Friday, he would wear the dark purple shirt with the dark grey suit. People most often looked twice when he wore the purple, and Fridays meant friends with no school for two days and dinner somewhere else every night.
He descended the stairs, and received the double takes like he'd expected. They weren't the right kind, though, and as he proceeded towards the kitchen and the Lady's waiting coffee, Lucas realized his hands were-sweating.
The faces weren't happy, or envious, or lustful. No one greeted him, and they all rushed past, no lingering to try and gain his favor. Not even the Palmers gave more than a few awkward nods before quickly moving away down the hall. The Palmers always said hello, and the girl always, every single time, tried to somehow touch Lucas on his arm or his shoulder or once on his hand.
Lucas eventually reached the kitchen, and he straightened his back and took a deep breath in before going inside. The Lady was there, Martha, and she did have coffee sitting hot on the counter for him. He put on a smile for her, not one of his best but. . .
And then she smiled back, and he released the air he'd been holding in his lungs.
"Good morning, Lucas," the Lady greeted him.
He sat down on one of the stools surrounding the center counter, taking his suit jacket off and laying it carefully on the stool next to him.
The Lady looked at him again, before chuckling a little and shaking her head.
"What?" Lucas asked, gulping at the coffee and trying to ignore the fact that not only were his hands sweating, but now they were also shaking ever so slightly.
The Lady just kept on smiling, but he noticed it starting to wilt around the edges. She was trying to be cheerful just like he was, but wasn't doing any better job of it.
"Just, not often do you see a man wearing a three-piece suit these days," the Lady observed. She took a sip of her own coffee before lowering it again. "It's wonderful. You look very-dashing, Lucas."
This time, her smile was more genuine and he thanked her by imitating it back to her.
"Well, thank you," he replied. "I've never been called 'dashing' before." He tilted his head like Lex often did when thinking, saying, "I rather like it, I think."
The Lady laughed briefly, but soon it too faded.
"Martha," Lucas said, "what's going on? Everyone is acting so strange this morning. Did something happen?"
The Lady took a deep breath, Lucas could actually hear her lungs expanding without even trying, then looked him square in the eye and said, "Someone, or someones, unknown graffitied the castle last night." She stopped then, still looking at him very closely, and he realized she was waiting for some sort of response from him.
"Where?" he asked, molding his face into the mask of confusion normal people wore at times like this, times when they weren't sure what was happening around them. "And what is it? What was-graffitied onto the castle?"
The Lady sighed, looking very sad. Then she stood up from where she'd been leaning on the counter. She set down her coffee mug and so he did too.
"Come," she said bluntly. "I'll show you."
Lucas followed her outside, once again marveling at the overwhelming color of the world during this time of the year. It had officially been autumn for three days now, and walking on the ground was now like walking on a sea of dry, crackling fire. The great trees scattered everywhere unfortunately resembled skeletons, but the colorful leaves made up for it. Come winter, there would be glittering snow and clouds so low and thick even normal people would feel like they could touch them.
The Lady led them around to the east side of the castle, not very far in fact from Lucas' bedroom three storeys above. There, apparently burned into the old brick was. . .
Lucas swallowed, and the Lady must have sensed something, for she came closer to him. She set her hand on his arm gently, comfortingly.
"I've already contacted your lawyers," the Lady told him quietly. "They're sending some expert to come and document it, and then a-consultant of some kind will speak to you about replacing the brick." She turned to face him fully, both hands coming up to his shoulders, and it took Lucas aback for a brief second to realize she was actually shorter than him. She didn't seem small, but she was.
"Now, you listen to me, Lucas," the Lady said sternly. "I know what's burned into that wall, but I also know it's absolute garbage. Don't you dare believe it." She shook him a little. "It's not true. You hear me?"
Lucas dropped his eyes down from the wall to meet hers. He went about reassuring her by setting one of his hands atop one of hers. He put on a weak little smile and nodded none too confidently. He let her see doubt and hurt in his expression, and could tell the exact second she believed it.
"Well," she said, pushing the air forcibly from her body, and returning to his side. She left one hand on his shoulder, reassuringly, but said, "Don't you worry about this. We'll take care of it, and soon it will look good as new. Or, old, considering it's a castle." She shot another smile at him and he caught it out of the corner of his eye, nodding his head as he continued staring at the graffiti.
"I have to go to work," Lucas said into the silence a few minutes later. He felt the Lady's nod, and took it upon himself to start back towards the kitchen first.
When they reached the side entrance from which they'd left, Lucas stopped and turned around, waiting for the Lady to catch up. She walked up to him slowly, that effortless look of confusion on her face, in her posture, radiating from her whole being.
Because she was normal, and normal people didn't have to think about feeling. They just did it automatically.
Lucas was careful not to let his face become too blank because that tended to unsettle people. He scrunched his eyebrows and let his eyes tear up a little, let his mouth turn down at the corners. He looked worried, concerned, like anyone would be.
"I don't- Martha," he said in a low voice, full of shock. "Please don't, if anyone calls-Lex or Lin-please don't mention this at all. I don't want them to know. It'd just make them worry."
The Lady nodded understandingly, reaching up to pat his arm again. "I won't say a word," she promised. Then she smiled a little before going around him and back into the kitchen.
Of all the things that could have possibly been burned into the side of the castle, the word 'FREAK' in 36' block letters wasn't nearly the worst or most degrading. At least there were no pictures.
On his drive to the Plant, Lucas at one point found himself rubbing his eyes again. He quickly pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned the engine off. Then he just sat looking at his right hand, the one he'd been using to maul his eyes.
Well, that would explain how someone had managed to get past and elude security for the time it would have taken to literally burn that word into brick. The culprit had already been on the property, and in fact lived on the property. It also explained the lack of chemical residue and fire spreading that would have been a result of anyone else perpetrating this particular act.
Normal people didn't have to think about how they should be acting nearly every second of every day, and they didn't have to be careful with how they touched someone else for fear they might rip off a limb or cause internal bleeding.
And Lucas was positive that normal people didn't burn 'FREAK' into the side of their own home using only their eyes. Normal people would remember doing something like that.
But Lucas of course wasn't normal.
Next