There's this whole thing with Clark and Lex that Lana has, and it does nothing to change the fact that she's a Princess and a Whore and can't be both at the same time.

See, most people would be sort of happy if they were in her situation. A boy to treat her like royalty and a man to treat her like a seductress, yet her life is one big fuckin' canvas and her creator hasn't quite managed to make black and white mesh nicely together. Good, bad, but never a little of each.

It's hard to respect someone who is nothing but naive and blind, or flat out dirty and immoral. Instead of being a little of both she's one or the other, depending on her mood.

Clark doesn't get that. He's her White Knight, after all. Protector and Hero and he would never understand her occasional need to go slumming in her glass slippers.

Lex, on the other hand, doesn't realise that she likes her glass slippers and she deserves them, thank you very fuckin' much, and instead uses the one she left behind as an ashtray.

He makes her dirty and Clark makes her sparkle, but really she needs someone who will do both.

Hard to explain that to anyone, though. Most of the town think like Clark thinks -- perfect, pretty Pink Princess. Fragile, dainty Lana. Yes, she is fuckin' dainty and she likes fuckin' pink, but that doesn't mean she has the personality and the sex drive of a fuckin' Barbie doll.

It doesn't mean she's clean and polite and compassionate. It just means she cusses in her head instead of in your face. It doesn't mean she doesn't feel sorry for people, either, or feel bad for them. She's not the Ice Queen. But she bets even Snow White got a little pissy that she had to clean and cook everyday for seven dainty, dirty shits.

Fact is, she probably had to do the same for Prince Charming, too. Not cleaning or cooking, but serve and obey and that sort of thing.

She gets it with Clark. Stay here, Lana, it's dangerous. Be careful, Lana, it's not safe. I'll take care of it, Lana, don't worry.

She gets it with Lex. Keep this to yourself, Lana. Do it like this, Lana. You shouldn't really be doing that, Lana.

No one gets that maybe she'd like to be served and obeyed occasionally. There's a big difference in how Clark treats her -- I'lldoanythingforyouLanajustnotthatbecausethat'snotright -- and how she wants to be treated.

Lex just doesn't care. The fairytale works a little backwards with him. Cinderella back in her rags. Another servant in the great Luthor household.

He doesn't pay her like his other servants, though. No, that would make her a Whore. It's not a fair leap from Princess to Prostitute, and she figures even Cinderella would have eventually turned to the streets if her stepmother kept demanding, and who could blame her, but Lana doesn't have that excuse. There's no evil mother figure in town for her to worry about, even though occasionally she catches Chloe looking at her like she knows or something. Pretty Pink Princess with her glass slipper missing.

But Lana ignores her (she sometimes likes the idea that someone knows, even if they don't understand) and pretends not to care that Lex Luthor, personal demon, is starting to tear down her virtue. Not when he fucks her, no, because there's nothing wrong with that, but when he fucks her over. Gives her what he wants to give her, not what she wants to be given, and even then it's not enough.

And then sweet, sweet Clark, who can give her what Lex can't refuses to because she's not the person she is with Lex. Clark doesn't know that person exists.

Lex knows the Princess exists, but he doesn't care. He may not be Prince Charming (Lana re-writes this bit and likes to think of him as Charming's dark and sinister twin. Then she laughs) but he's lived in a land full of princesses and knows their worth only in dollar signs.

When you have a man measuring your worth through wealth, and a boy measuring your worth through virtue, you end up where Lana is now. A Princess and a Whore, but never both. It's degrading to be either, she thinks, in this day and age. Ridiculed for being even the slightest bit dependent and defenseless; no one likes a girl that needs saving all the time, just like no one likes a girl who pays her own way and enjoys sex a lot.

Double fuckin' standards. Double-edged sword, and Lana is tired of balancing on the edge. Either way she falls, she bleeds.

In the end she chooses a side and leaves Prince Charming behind. She's not "clean" enough for Clark anymore (she laughs at that, because really, it's quite amusing), even though he doesn't know it, so she figures she'll stick with the man who knows the truth about who she is, even if he doesn't care.

Then she learns that what she originally thought to be true, isn't. Lex doesn't think she's a Princess. He just knows that everyone, including herself, thinks she's a Princess. He's never seen her as such. He doesn't understand that she's a Princess and a Woman, and she is, because Lex Luthor isn't always right, but it's pointless trying to get him to see that.

Lex sees what he wants to see. The townsfolk see what they want to see. She's not a Princess or a Woman anymore, she's a Trophy. Wrapped in fuckin' glass like Snow White, lifeless and silent, admired from afar but never really regarded as real.

Dead and empty and voiceless.

She screams in her tower at night but no one hears. This is not her prison, but it's the only place she gets to call her own. So many rooms, out of bounds. So many parts of Lex, dark and sinister, forbidden to her.

She chose her side and she bleeds for it. Her glass slippers are broken against the cold, stone floor of his castle and she can't piece them back together anymore.

He buys her new ones, but they are black with painfully high heels, and she hates them. She is a Woman now, not a Princess, and she hates it.

It takes her a long time to realise that if she isn't a Princess anymore, she doesn't need to be rescued. As a Woman, she can save herself.

The gold she's been spinning in her tower proves useful -- there's no Rumpelstiltskin to consider, after all. She has long since paid Lex his worth and there's no risk of him demanding her first-born -- and she disappears into the dark canopy of the night.

She travels to far and distant lands and becomes something else in the time that passes. No longer a Princess or a Whore and not just a Woman, she is a Heroine.

And Lana can live with that.

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