A/N: This is set some time after the original Superman movie, and came from goodness-only-knows-where. It's a fairly introspective piece on what Superman – or Clark Kent, or Kal-El, might think about the greatest mystery of all. One-shot. I hope you enjoy and please leave a review at the bottom to tell me what you think.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and since this doesn't really have a plot there is very little way I can claim to own one.

Musings on Mortality

He wondered if he would ever age. It hadn't happened yet; his sharp good looks had yet to be softened as those of ordinary men were by lines or wrinkles, and he felt no different from one day to the next, physically. Four years after coming to Metropolis, he could still do all the things and more that he had been able to do when he first arrived. Thirty-two years into his often strange but always extraordinary life, his star had yet to even begin to fade.

He wondered if he would ever die. He understood death, came into contact with it all the time in his work, both as Clark and Superman, and yet he felt a perverse longing to truly understand it in the way that only a mortal can. There was no precedent set for him – no predicted lifespan for a Kryptonian baptised in the glory of an Earthly sun. He did not fear death, but he feared for the world once he was gone. Mortality for him would be both a blessing and a curse.

He wondered if, when he maybe did die, if it would be from kryptonite. The power which the glowing rock had over him felt like something unholy – like something from the depths of his nightmares – but even Superman was unsure if it would actually kill him or render him eventually, after painful hours of near-death, powerless.

He wondered if he would ever be powerless. He wondered if he would ever be free from his burden, if only for a day. He wondered if, maybe, many decades in the future, he would lose his powers as elderly humans lost their faculties of sight, hearing and movement. Bitter as the thought was to him, he could not help but think wistfully of a day when he could act as other people acted, to be able to devote his time completely to one life... one person.

He wondered if he could ever love and be loved back, to live in a normal relationship just like a normal person. He wondered if the silly, irreverent joys of home life, those of making early-morning cups of coffee for the one he loved and tidying up the mess made by his children, would ever be open to him. He didn't even know if he could have children, let alone fantasise that the only woman he deemed worthy to bear them would ever look at him and see all that he was, and not just one gilded part.

He wondered if his two lives could ever be one, if he could ever give up the lies, the deception and the mask and be simply himself, Clark Kent, Kal El, Superman, many names but united under one face and one life. He let himself think that perhaps, once his parents were dead – but he stopped short, his breath catching at the mere thought of the loss of the two people who had taught him lessons more important than those given him on science and physics by Jor-El as a baby on his way to Earth, the simple human beings who had taught him humility and the peaceful warmth of love. Even if they were gone, he mused sadly, there were still other targets for his enemies – the Planet, Lois Lane, Smallville itself. All beings on Earth made sacrifices for those they loved; but because the risks involved with him were greater, so must his sacrifices be those of a superhero rather than those of an ordinary man.

He wondered how long he would live, whether he would survive those he loved in a grey dwindling twilight in which he would be forced to exist until the yellow Sun of Earth turned red and allowed him peace. The thought had crossed his mind that maybe, just maybe, because his flame burnt so much brighter and with so much more silent glory than those of others, that it might too fade more quickly. He was unsure which option he preferred, and was ashamed of the sinking relief which the idea of the latter brought. Why should he be so selfishly enamoured with the idea of abandoning those that it was his duty to protect? It never crossed his mind for a moment that he might be simply normal, and live the normal lifespan of a normal human being.

Clark Kent, Kal-El, Superman, the Son of Krypton and the adopted Light of Earth wondered many things, but most of all he wondered if could die. He did not seek it and he did not wish for it, but he had spent his entire life being separate, an outcast despite the love poured onto him by his parents as Clark and by the adoring rescued as Superman. He wondered, futilely, whether he would be so different in death, or whether in that one inevitable moment he could be simply human – Clark Kent, Kal-El, and Superman, all in one moment. For all three were different. Superman was recognised, a hero to humans, whilst Clark Kent did the work that Superman could not, working for people's hearts and minds whilst Superman worked to prevent their physical deaths. Kal-El was, he supposed, Superman without the suit and Clark Kent without the glasses. There would be one crystalline moment when those three would become one, but it was a moment he would not receive until an un-measurable lifetime of service had gone by.

Clark Kent also wondered, from atop the roof at the Planet New Year party, if Lois would ever notice him and if perhaps Jimmy's "fruit punch" had affecting him more than he had first judged to have him thinking such dim and morose thoughts."Clark?" It was Lois, sounding surprised. Evidently, she thought of the roof as her territory – hers and Superman's.

"Yes." Clark said softly, and when he turned he was surprised by the look of concern on her face, and he felt bitterly sorry for having misjudged her. She wasn't surprised or annoyed to see him there – she was surprised by his demeanour which, in light of the strange thoughts brought on by an overly tearful rendition of "Auld Lang Syne", was far from the usual cheerful-Clark Kent look she was used to. He smiled, trying to keep the depth from his eyes and from his voice when he next spoke.

"You coming down?" She asked wryly, never one to follow the prescribed methods of comforting someone who was in need of it. She would probably, Clark thought with a sudden lightening of his spirit, attempt to get him into some deep debate over a perfectly trivial matter simply to draw him out of his Pimm's-induced shell. "Jimmy's got some punch left over and wants us to help him finish it. We better had else he'll get even drunker and start declaring his undying love to everyone in the room." She raised an eyebrow, her eyes sparkling with a rare amusement which only Clark could read with ease. There was a mischief beneath her innocent smile. "I wonder who spiked the soft drinks with gin, huh?"

Clark laughed. Gods, who had placed this incredible woman, who could turn his mood in one blink of a brown eye, so near to him and yet so far from his alien reach? For he would always be that – alien – until she knew the whole truth, and the whole of him, which in itself was the only way he could ever achieve what others called "ordinary". He nodded, playing along, betraying his deadpan with an irrepressible quirk of his lips.

"Gee, Lois, I just can't think." He smiled. "I'll be down in a minute. Just... give me a moment."

Lois nodded, and Clark knew that she somehow understood, without even knowing what it was she understood. After she had gone, leaving behind the shadow of her scent, he stood for a moment in wonder, then shook himself as he glanced back over the city, glittering, eternal like hope, in the glimmers of a new dawn of a new year. His city.

"Christ, she's beautiful." He murmured, and didn't even know is he meant Lois or Metropolis. Both represented hope. Lois was a fool's hope for him, perhaps, but even a fool's hope was better than no hope at all. Metropolis was a hope for Superman, a hope for the world, because of the innate goodness of those who inhabited her. There were people like that all over the world, and as they awoke to the next year they would be making pledges, some which they would break, but the more important ones he knew they would keep, simply because they were like that. He knew his father had been right – both fathers. Jor-El had once told him of the goodness of humans, and Jonathon Kent had once told him of the goodness in himself which he, with all his powers and opportunities and responsibilities, could channel into leading others to find their own hope.

Standing in the light of that new dawn, Kal-El realised that it didn't matter if he lived forever or if he died tomorrow, because hope sprung eternal, and the hope which Superman brought to the city of Metropolis and the Earth around it would not die when the caped superhero did but would rather live on, a torch to his memory. And the little people – like Clark Kent and Lois Lane – would continue their daily triumphs, like winning a byline and showing the world with the words and actions of the ordinary man what goodness and being good meant. It meant having hope, and hope was the strength to carry on in the right direction.

When he died, it wouldn't matter to the people he called his own. For the hope he had brought was entirely immortal, and not even kryptonite could touch that.

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A/N: Please tell me what you think! I love reviewers almost as much as I love writing!