#martha luthor

"It's not poisoned," Martha told him when she offered him some of her lunch. They had sat together on the university steps in between classes.

"I'm a picky eater," he complained.

"Would it help if I told you I made it?"

Lionel eyed the sandwich carefully, it was some kind of beef with typical garden condiments. "You made it?"

"I can cook, you know."

"Well, a woman that can cook is worth knowing then," he smiled and she laughed softly. He liked the sound.

"Mother did say you can win a man over with his stomach."

He was lost, adrift amongst a vast ocean of endless possibilities and with no way home. His fingers itched with the last feeling he had, Martha's fingers curling against his own just before the wave took her.

Lionel clenched his fist in anger before it relaxed as his temper cooled into something despairing.

He looked up at the world he found himself on. Another in a long line of worlds he has already visited. They all looked the same until he met the people and differences became apparent.

His shoulders dropped as he thought about what he had lost.

The Kryptonian device was simple to use. All he needed was Clark's DNA and a little ingenuity and he could use it. "Martha!" he called impatiently as he fiddled with the settings.

"We can't leave our children!" she pleaded with him. He looked back to her and past the large windows of his office. He could see the event horizon of the entropy wave making its way across the city.

"There isn't any more time!" he reasons. He twists it and reaches a hand out to her, their fingers touching just as the wave reaches them.

His world ends. 

Martha brought him a glass of wine before sitting beside him. "What's this?" he curiously asked of his wife, taking a sniff of the red liquid before sampling a taste. It was one of his favorite reds from across the pond. "What are we celebrating?"

She leaned forward with a coy smile, "My announcement to run in the special election for the State Senate seat. I've already submitted the paperwork."

Lionel raised an eyebrow, "You're going through with it then?"

"It's what we discussed, if you recall."

He was livid.

Lex had dug up his past after he told the boy to forget about his grandparents. Morgan wanted him dead. Tess and Clark were siding with their brother despite saying otherwise. His only solace in this rapidly growing nightmare had been his wife.

Martha pressed a hand to his cheek to draw his attention away from their son and the federal agents that had come for him.

"I didn't kill my parents," he insisted, searching her gaze to see if she actually believed him. 

He tells himself he wasn't a sentimental man, that he didn't keep mementos to remember things by. But the truth was, he was quite sentimental. He was simply better at masking it than most people.

He held the locket in his hand and ran his thumb across the gold-leafed surface before popping it open and revealing its contents. A picture of Lillian with a lock of auburn hair, the last remnant of a wife he never really got to be with.

"You miss her, don't you?" he heard Martha as she leaned over his shoulder. 

Prison life and Martha visits

Martha: Good lord you're bald.

Lionel: I'm sorry to look so hideous

Martha: Of course not sweetheart.

Martha: Lex is definitely grounded for 7 years.

Lionel: Thank you my love

Wretched - RQWK

Kansas State Penitentiary was the farthest from a luxury hotel that her husband's critics are saying he was staying in. The short trip from the entrance to the meeting room had shown her how wretched and inhumane the place was.

The guards did not care or looked the other way when a prisoner was being unruly with another prisoner. It left her worried for Lionel's well-being.

"Martha," he greeted her upon entering the room and sat down across from her. He looked awful with his short hair and… were those bruises?

"What happened to you?"

"Is this merger necessary?" questioned the intern and it took him a moment to process what had happened. Lionel looked up; a part of him wanted to make a scathing comment about her daring to doubt his decisions, but he kept his tongue and instead threw a question back at her.

"Alright, explain?"