Shades of Darkness

Shades of Darkness

Chapter 1

Shades of Darkness

By Serena Kenobi

Summary: Lana muses on her marriage and her undoubtedly dark future.

Disclaimer: Don't own Smallville. This is just for fun.

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The words seemed to triumphantly jeer at her face as she stared down at them on the blank page. They mocked her naïve thinking, smirked contemptuously at her current situation, and ridiculed her indignation.

It wasn't what she wanted. She knew now that she had never wanted this. But she couldn't do anything about it.

That realization nearly killed her inside.

She had married her friend's worst enemy. Her only love's greatest rival.

Her own private nightmare.

She had married Lex Luthor.

And for what? Originally, it had been for the baby - the baby that, apparently, didn't even exist in the first place. It had all been one big lie. Everything seemed to be a lie now. The baby, Lex's supposed trust in her, and even her own love for him. She didn't love Lex, but she was lying when she told him she did. She lied when she told him that she married him because he loved her.

Lionel Luthor was right: she had fully embraced her new role as a Luthor, which meant everything around her would be secrets, deceit, lies, and distrust. She didn't think the word 'trust' even existed in the Luthor family. But she had become a part of it.

She was right in the very middle of it all.

It wasn't what she wanted. She shouldn't have married Lex; she should have married Clark. Clark Kent. The Farmboy with whom she had always been in love. It wasn't right.

Maybe she deserved it. She probably did. After all, she had turned Clark away when he hadn't told her his secret. She hadn't understood it then, but she did now. She understood why he had chosen to protect her, to guard her from his greatest, deepest secret. He had done it because he loved her. He didn't want her to get hurt through him.

Ironic. It had ended up happening anyways. She was glad that he didn't know what had happened, but sometimes it nearly tore her apart when she saw the look on his face - the dejected, heartbroken, and pleading look. The look that said he would always love her. Always. No matter what happened. He truly did love her. And she truly loved him. And she would never betray his secret. Not even to her own husband. Especially not to her husband.

As the minutes ticked by clock, she distantly wondered if every night would be like this. Lex going out on business - most likely something that he wasn't telling her about - her sitting there by the large fire, quietly writing letters to Chloe.

She couldn't trust Lex, her own husband. But she could trust Chloe, her best friend. She could trust Clark.

What on earth had ever made her think that she was in love with Lex? Why had she blindly put her innocent trust in him when she, in the bottom of her heart, had known what kind of man he truly was?

She honestly had no answer.

And now she was stuck here. Stuck with a man who had made her think she was pregnant, stuck with his father who had forced her to marry him, and stuck with the horrible understanding that there was no way out. No way out of this hellish nightmare.

She would be doomed to spend the rest of her life living a lie.

How much longer could she stand it? How much longer could she watch her husband come home, knowing that she couldn't trust him? Knowing that she couldn't do anything about it?

Knowing that she could not escape?

Her letter would be finished later. She couldn't stand to read her own name when she knew once she looked back down at it, the words would only continue to jeer and laugh at her.

They would be laughing for a long time.

As she stared into the large fire, its ruby, golden, and tangerine flames playing around in the hearth, she noticed the shadows that the fire was unknowingly creating. They seemed to rise above the fire itself against the brick hearth, rising upward until they nearly reached the top of the chimney. Then they would stretch out from the fire towards her - continue to stretch into the room, into the house, until the entire mansion was covered in a dark shade.

They were the shades that would hang over and cover everything she would become close to or touch. The grim shades that she had been cursed to watch for the rest of her life.

The shades of darkness.

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