Sword of Orion
by dossier

Jonathan Kent didn't like Lex Luthor, didn't respect him, his wealth and especially his family name. This nearly malevolent feeling had worsened since the storm, and its aftermath.

Hence the telescope on the back patio of the castle. Here Lex could indulge Clark in his hobby unconcerned with the chill glares of parental concern. Though the mid-November weather had turned pleasant this week, the evening was still cold. Lex took comfort in his long heavy coat and watchmans cap, but Clark hadn't even buttoned up his short cordouroy jacket. Lex had ceased to gnaw on small facts like this, he had too many other mysteries to solve.

Clark had the telescope trained on the western sky, rather than towards Leo in in the south.

"I thought we were here to watch the meteor shower."

"Hardly need a telescope of this power to see the shower. Besides, the comet came through three years ago."

Lex hadn't spent much time gazing into the sky in the past, how could you study an anomolous event that had changed his life too closely? His concerns had been earthbound; wrapped up in boarding school, sex, class A misdemeanors and level three felonies.

"So what are you looking at?"

"My telescope isn't strong enough to see the Barnard's Star in Orion this clearly. It's the closest star to Earth, but it's not visible to the naked eye."

Lex might not do astronomy, but he knew his mythology. "Orion? He's the Great Hunter, killed by Artemis, when her brother Apollo dared her to shoot a speck that was in the ocean." The thought that had Julian lived, he might have urged Lex into a similar scenario flitted through Lex's mind.

"Was that a triple dog dare, you suppose?" Clark grinned as he glanced up from the eye of the telescope.

Lex laughed at Clark's bland humor. "Probably. She grieved for her lost love so much that she begged Zeus to bring him back to life, but instead he placed him in the sky with his faithful companon Siruis."

"I guess forgiveness came easier from the old gods. He was supposed to have raped Merope, and the King of Chios blinded him and exiled him. Doesn't seem right to honor him as a hero." Clark wondered about forgiveness, and if his own subsequent atonement through his gifts would be enough to eventually wash away the guilt of bringing the meteors to Smallville. He had his doubts.

"The Greek gods were rarely fair or consistent. Besides. how could her father resist her begging, pleading and tears? He put Orion in the night sky as a compromise." Compromising was a new skill for Lex since his precipitous meeting with a river and a dark haired savior.

"Still doesn't seem right." Clark saw things in black and white, right or wrong. Midwestern values.

The full moon washed them in her own peculiar brand of black and white. Lex wondered if he would someday have the power to immortalize the man this boy would become. If he could perpetuate the legend of their friendship and the mysterious Clark Kent, or if the rain of blood predicted by dead Cassandra was the death knell.

"Look, the meteor shower is starting." Clark swung the telescop towards the south, where the first streaks of dust were sparking in the atmosphere.

Lex shuddered slightly in his heavy coat, the chills streaking through him in time with the increasing shower of light. It wasn't fear exactly, but remembered terror of that pivotal moment. Three times his life had turned topsy turvy, and only one had he been given a choice. How many more choices to make, and how would they affect him?

Clark didn't notice Lex's faint quaking, his attention was focused on the night sky. He didn't remember the moment, only waking up to a bright Kansas day washed with golden light. That he'd been granted a chance at life by his arrival here, he knew that from the awakened pod that still hummed with a muted life in the storm cellar. Out there, somewhere, were the answers to his many questions.

They shared the display without speaking, separated by the distance of hearts muffled by unspoken dreams and secrets.