Defying Delphi (Smallville, AU, Chloe/Lex, Chloe/Clark) 1/?

Oh hey.  I wrote a fic again.  And never finished any old ones.  bad me.  No cookie.

This is unbeta'd.  I really need a beta.  Anyone?
 

Defying Delphi
 

Moment 1

As flies to wanton schoolboys are we to the gods.  They kill us for their sport.

-Shakespeare, King Lear, Act IV Scene I

            Chloe never much cared for Greek Mythology.  Her attitude was a mystery to her father, who loved his little girl dearly, but never picked up on the nuances of great literature.  As far as Gabe Sullivan was concerned, there was no great distinction between the mythologies of Greece, Egypt, or the Norse people.  All were strange, a little otherworldly, but somewhat compelling in their own twisted way.  But even as a child, Chloe saw the subtle difference in worldview that the mythologies of various peoples revealed.  The Egyptians, for all their unhealthy fascination with death, were far from Morbid.  They knew that evil was out there, but they saw a world where there was much that was good, and where good ultimately won out over evil.  They served and worshiped Ra and Osiris; life-givers and light-bringers.  And if some worship the darker powers like Set, well, Set was still the bad guy.  Their neighbors, the Sumerians saw things much darkly.  Their gods were an improvement over the more primordial powers before them, but they were callous and even perhaps evil.  If Osiris spared some care for humans, and even went out of his way for Humanity’s sake, Marduk cared nothing for man.  Indeed he created man as his slaves, so that he might have his leisure while the lowly humans toiled.  The gods must be worshiped of course, even if they were cruel, for they could be crueler if ignored, and the alternatives out there were worse.  Judeo-Christianity, Chloe came to conclude as she grew older, grew out of the sunnier Egyptian mindset, while the pagan religions of most of pre-medieval Europe religions followed the Sumerian model.  They had gods who were nothing more than humans, writ larger and more powerful; callous beings that were not exemplars but had all the worst traits of humanity, who committed adultery and theft and were frequently just big bullies. 

            She made the mistake of talking about her thoughts on Greek mythology with Clark once, when they had an assignment to do on Oedipus Rex.  Clark saw too much personal application in it.  Sure, he was in a sense as powerful as a Greek god- if not more so.  But he was hardly a Zeus.  Zeus was very much the Greek noble, given to pillaging and plunder and not having to worry about dying young and pretty because he was eternally young and pretty and didn’t die.  Clark was raised in the heartland of America, learning truth, justice and the American way with his applesauce, or whatever nauseatingly healthy natural food he ate as a baby.  The idea of Clark becoming a petty god was ridiculous.  No, the ancient ideas of what divinity was were not what Chloe hated most about Greek mythology.  They were merely something she found disgusting.

            The ancient break in the Mythology and Theology of Occidental Eurasia also had another fault line, that of agency and fate.  The Sumerian -> Greek/Norse line of though was fatalistic.  Even the gods feared the powers that wove the loom of fate, and snipped each one’s thread at the end of their existence.  The Egyptians had an idea of free will.  Each person’s heart was measured against the feather of truth in death, and that wouldn’t mean anything without choice.  Christianity was the modern expression of that mode of thought.  Personal choice held pride of place at the center of Christian theology.  Chloe wasn’t very religious.  She’d picked up a dose of Roman Catholicism along with the Irish surname, but never taken it very seriously.  But theology was a matter of more than just religion.  Chloe believed fervently in free will.  She hated fatalism.  She hated that people left things to some notion of fate instead of truly trying for something themselves.  She hated the idea that some things were meant to be, were inevitable.  If it was corny to crib from a movie she didn’t even like, then Chloe was content to be corny.  “No fate but what we make” was her motto, and she stood by it.

            Therefore, it was no surprise that Chloe hated Oedipus Rex.  She hated it even worse when they had to read Tess of the D’Urbervilles a year later, to much the same effect.  But she had a special dislike of Oedipus.  Oedipus’s entire life was no more than an object lesson in the impossibility of escaping fate.  If the Greeks thought that the example settled the question they were wrong.  Chloe had many more questions –of course she did, she was a journalist, wasn’t she?  Heading the list was “What sadistic bastard decided that this guy got to be screwed over?  And why?  For the sake of Drama?”  Oedipus never had a chance.  His fate was sealed before he was born, and he was born to suffer.  Chloe refused to believe in any worldview that accepted that kind of cosmic “screw you, humanity.”  Now if only Clark would get with the program.