A/N: I wrote this for the oncomingstorms prompt "Holding Out For A Hero" you know, the Bonnie Tyler song? Anyway, I'd like to point out that the Doctor, Martha, Superman, Aquaman, Batman, The Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Spiderman, and their accompanying secret identities are not, unfortunately, mine, and belong to the BBC, Marvel, and DC comics. Sorry about that, I hope you enjoy the story anyway:D
Superhero
By Romana Dante
"You and Clark Kent have a lot in common,"
He looked up from his copy of The Adventures of Aquaman, pushing his glasses firmly up the top of his nose. "Me and who?"
"Clark Kent," Martha repeated, "Superman?"
"Oh right," he said, slightly confused. They were sitting in the library, looking through a box of old comic books that had suddenly decided to appear between two rows of encyclopedias. Martha had been thumbing through an issue of The Amazing Spiderman, but had apparently abandoned it in favor of a tattered copy of The Adventures of Superman. The staples keeping the book together had long since vanished and he noticed she had to work very hard to keep the pages from spilling out into her lap.
"In what way am I like Clark Kent," he asked her skeptically, "wasn't he the boy-scout in the blue tights and red boots?"
"How does that sound familiar?" she replied, her eyes darting up and down, looking him over. He looked down himself and realized he was wearing his blue suit with the red trainers. He knew he should have picked a different colour scheme.
"I'm not wearing tights," he said, somewhat defensively, "and last time I checked I wasn't a boy scout,"
"You've never been a boy scout?" She grinned, he raised an eyebrow.
"I have a feeling you have to be human to be a boy scout," he said.
"Then there's another thing, Superman's not human either!" He had to give her that one.
"Ok, ok, so neither of us are human and we both have a fondness for blue and red, that doesn't prove anything." He looked at her own clothing, the red jacket she seemed to like so much with a tight, dark blue t-shirt and a yellow star on it. "Look," he said, picking up an issue of Wonder Woman, "blue and red with yellow stars, you could be Wonder Woman."
"Except I'm not an Amazonian princess with a magical lasso and indestructible bracelets," she pointed out blandly, "If I was, I wouldn't have broken the bracelet Tish gave me for my birthday last year on an alien mango,"
"Well I'm not a boy scout who runs around in tights," he said firmly.
"No, but you are an alien that likes to go around saving the world every few minutes," He sighed. He wasn't exactly opposed to her calling him an alien; to her it was what he was. The only time you're not an alien, is when you're on your own planet, and he couldn't exactly do that anymore so, logically, he was an alien. It wasn't a title that usually bothered him, it was, after all, what he was, but for some reason — perhaps it was the way she had said it- it seemed to be today.
"I suppose I am," he said, simply, "I do have a habit of saving the Earth a bit,"
"And that's just it," she said excitedly, "You save the Earth all the time, even though you're technically not from Earth. You're like Superman, he's from another planet, but he looks like a human, so he lives on Earth and goes and saves it, like you,"
"I don't live on Earth," he replied, looking down at his copy of Aquaman, "I just go there a lot,"
"And why do you that?" Martha demanded, "All of time and space and you choose to go to Earth, why?"
"I like Earth,"
"So does Superman," He glared at her, she started laugh. "Ok, ok, I'll stop now,"
"Thank you," he traded the Aquaman comic for a Green Lantern one, and proceeded to read about mild-mannered test pilot Hal Jordan being given a green power ring by a dying alien and becoming a superhero. A man going about his life, then he suddenly finds himself a hero. "See, this is something I can relate to," said the Doctor, pointing to a panel of the comic book.
"What, not being able to defeat anything that's yellow?"
"No," he sighed, "his origin, how he just happened to find this dying alien who just happened to give him a magical power ring to save the world with. He wasn't born a hero, he had heroics thrust upon him,"
"And that's what happened with you? You had heroics 'thrust upon' you?"
"I suppose," he replied, "I only ever go places to see them, to travel, saving the world's just something that happens,"
There was a pause; she raised her eyebrows at him in that slightly patronizing look only Martha can pull off properly. "Right," she said, "it just happens,"
"Yep, just happens,"
"And it just happens to be you that saves it,"
"Yep,"
She grinned, "You really are like Superman,"
"I am not!"
"You are too! Look, you're both heroes, you're both saving the Earth, you're both aliens, you're both from other planets, and you're both…" she stopped, looking up at him, suddenly serious, like she wasn't quite sure whether or not to continue.
"We're both what?"
"You're both…alone," she sighed, "You've both lost your planet, you're both…you're both the last of your kind," Cautiously, she handed him the page of the battered comic book to show him. Superman was standing, alone, on the destroyed remains of his home planet. The caption below the panel read: "Kal-El, the last son of Krypton," He stared at it for a long time, not entirely sure what to do with it, or what to say. He was hardly Superman, the flawless, strong hero of Metropolis, but he supposed, perhaps, if he really wanted to compare himself to anyone, he could be Kal-El, the lonely survivor of a doomed planet.
"In many ways," said Martha, reading aloud from a different book, "Clark is the most human of us all. Then he shoots fire from the skies, and it is difficult not to think of him as a God,"
"I'm not a God," he replied instantly.
"And how fortunate," she continued reading, "we all are that it does not occur to him," she looked up at him, "Batman said that, apparently, Superman/Batman #3,"
"I'd make a very bad God," he said quietly.
"You might," she agreed, "But you make a brilliant superhero,"