In Family we Trust - SuperCorp

The Past

(Get it? The ghosts of Lena's past?)

July 10th 2015

It was almost midnight and Lena panted heavily as she ran through the halls of the Luthor mansion. The corridors were poorly lit by the few lamps that were actually turned on, but Lena didn't need the light to find her way. The young woman ran up the main staircase, breathing erratically as she sped towards the third floor. It couldn't be true. It couldn't possibly be true. There must have been a misunderstanding, probably some dangerous experiment gone wrong, but it couldn't be true. There was no way that what they were all saying... that it was actually...

"LEX!!"

Lena ran past the corner of the hallway, almost tripping on the expensive carpet, and ran towards the door of her brother's room, pushing it open with force. "LEX, WHERE AR-"

Lena froze up, seeing her mother straightening and turning around to give her a stern frown and a cold glare.

"I thought it to be obvious," the older woman sneered, "but clearly I need to remind you that the rule about not running through the halls still applies when you're all grown up." Lillian Luthor turned back to the bed, apparently folding Lex's shirts that were scattered all around his room, the majority sticking out of a half packed suitcase.

"Wh- what happened?!" Lena stammered. "Wh- where is Lex?!"

Lillian sighed, placing one of the shirts on a neat pile on the bed. "I'm afraid they took him away" she stated calmly, although bitterness slipped into her voice. "The police got here shortly after I did."

"N- no... no, they can't..." Lena kept opening and closing her mouth, looking around the room, as if she would find an alternate version of reality lying around somewhere. "It can't be true..." Lena said weakly, "he... he would never kill innocent people, that's- that's not who he is... whatever he thinks about Superman, he-"

"It doesn't matter" Lillian stated coolly, still folding Lex's shirts. "Whatever your brother did or did not do, the police obviously think he's guilty of something. Otherwise they wouldn't have dragged him away just now." Lillian paused her movements, letting out a measured breath, before resuming her unusual tidying. "I suppose I'll have to step in at LuthorCorp. Don't be surprised if they reach out to you as well... Apparently Lex spoke very highly of you at work."

Lena was standing, petrified, her head spinning at the notion that her brother might be a mass murderer. She shook her head, looking incredulously at the figure of her mother as she kept doing chores she usually had the maids do, while still not facing her daughter.

"How can you just stand there?!" Lena exclaimed, her voice unsteady. "How can you be so calm?!"

Lillian Luthor suddenly stopped her movements. She straightened up and turned back around, fixing Lena with an unusually cold look, even by her standards. She stepped up to her and spoke in a stern, almost menacing voice; "We are Luthor women, Lena..." she looked at her daughter intently, almost as if she was trying to pierce through her daughter's pupils with her cold stare and Lena could feel the scars on her back start to tingle. "...and whether you like it or not... we will keep our poise and our dignity until the very end."

With that, she turned back around, going back to folding Lex's shirts as if nothing had just happened, and ignoring Lena again, who was looking on in shock at her mother's lack of emotion. Even at a time like this.

Lena didn't know what to say. She wasn't sure how to deal with what was happening or with what her brother could possibly have done. She turned to the side, half thinking that she should perhaps just leave and find out what precinct Lex was being held at, but she stopped when she noticed something.