Category: Slash, Angst, Story
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: If they belonged to me, handcuffs would rattle. Archive: Anywhere is fine.

Summary: Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. (Warning: This fic might not be what you think it is. Read at your own risk.)

Dedication: This drabble is for Te, whose totally awesome series inspired it.

Title: "Redux" by mako
Email: makolane@aol.com

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It started with that damned truck.

A big, shiny thank-you for a job well done and I remember gaping at it dumbly, as if Christmas had come early that year. Not that I'd ever had a Christmas like that and I remember giddily bounding past my mother only to run straight into my father, his stern face saying it all, long before he opened his mouth.

We didn't take gifts from rich strangers. We didn't take payoffs from the big city carpetbagger. We didn't take charity.

We were Kents, after all.

I rode the truck back to the Luthor mansion that very afternoon, cursing with every turn of the wheel.

He wasn't surprised to see me. As always, he seemed to have this sixth sense regarding everything and we ended up bonding over what amounted to an insult, one he refused to acknowledge.

It was the beginning of many such meetings.

Our meetings, together. Friendly at first, flirtatious later on, and I loved every second of his relentless attention. He was older, so much more sophisticated, and farmhick teenager I was back then, I fell for him like a ton of bricks. Such knowing blue eyes, sarcastic little smile, and for the first time in my short small-town life, I was in on the joke.

Too bad I didn't know the punchline in advance.

I'm sorry now for my superhuman memory. It would have been nice to be able to forget all those stolen afternoons, entwined and fired with passion. Cool nights spent whispering under the cover of darkness, his deep voice begging for release and me so happy to comply with all his desires.

I loved him for who he was, he wanted me for what I wasn't.

It was a perfect arrangement.

The days stretched into months and I was happier than any gawky Smallville teen had a right to be. He consumed my thoughts, turned my body into an instrument he played flawlessly to any tune he desired. The dance was all that mattered back then and dance we did ...

All night long.

It ended quietly on a bright spring day, long before I was ready for it to be over. I was very young then, too young to truly comprehend that I'd been used in such a manner. Too young to understand that love might not be enough.

I listened numbly to the excuses, the weak apologies ... all designed to break a heart that simply didn't know any better. There was no sadness that day in those knowing eyes, but I pretended not to notice.

"I'm sorry, Jonathan."

"That's all right, Lionel."

And that was it. No anger, no yelling -- my father trained me to be polite, you see, even in defeat.

I was a Kent, after all.

I never saw him again, at least not socially, and the years slipped by, burning with sadness for longer than I'd imagined they could. My wife saved me without knowing it and between her and my son, life settled into the ordinary with extraordinary ease.

The pain was gone, as was the fire.

So goes life.

But today, the fire has returned. The fire of anger, of barely muted rage and I feel the burning again as my son stands in our front yard, gaping at a garishly wrapped truck -- a thank-you gift for my boy, my Clark, from yet another damned Luthor.

Just one more in a long line of liars.

The truck's keys bite hard into my hand, my palm bleeds and I make a solemn vow on the crimson that drips past my wrist, a vow on blood that's known its share of pain.

History isn't going to repeat itself -- not this time.

Never, ever again.

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end