DISCLAIMER: Unfortunately, the characters aren't mine. But the story is.
The weather was playing nice tonight. The wind stroked him gently across his cheeks and ruffled his hair harmlessly as he wandered in his aimless journey, and he wasn't bothered by sudden strong gusts of wind or random rumblings of a thunderstorm. The weather was at peace with him tonight, and he traveled slow with it, reveling in the feel of the wind's caresses at a height that no other human could appreciate.
As Clark soared over the most familiar building he knew of in Metropolis, the Daily Planet, he realized that if anyone ever asked, the best part about being a superhero was the flying.
If anyone ever asked. If anyone could ask. Clark was sure that there were many a reporter out there craving for an exclusive one-on-one with Superman, he even knew most of those journalists personally. It would never happen- Clark had gone through too much in his teen years and knew the repercussions of having the word 'Superhero' labeled on one's forehead. The novelty wears off quickly; you turn 'Superfreak' at some point or other.
This was common sense at its most basic, and Clark found himself struggling these days to keep it in check. Common sense. Fame and popularity is overrated. Happiness is overrated. The former was a reality that Clark grew up with. The latter, unfortunately, was a reality that Clark only recently learned. But he remembered how nice it was to dream, like the endless fantasies he had once over an eternally unattainable Lana Lang, and he remembered how to keep Dream and Reality separated.
He dreamed of fame. Being 25 was no different than 16, although he shouldered more regrets now. Sometimes, on nights like these, he would just fly and dream. Dream of being interviewed. Of being loved and known by nations of people, not fight to protect his image from turning from one of myth to that of a real person. People didn't want superheroes to be real people. They wanted them to be something otherworldly, not human, because people cannot feel truly safe in their beds with the thought of a mere weaponless flying human protecting them.
But it didn't hurt to dream. Of letting people know that Clark Kent was more to this world than just a good friend and a reporter. That he was something else amazing. That he did some things amazing every single night. That he was a selfless person who sacrificed his life in the task of saving others. That he wasn't just a man on the sidelines, watching his friends grow, and watching himself wither.
Sometimes, Clark needed people to know that he was something much more than what they saw.
But even when dreaming, Clark knew to keep reality close at hand, and in this subconscious he found himself at several stops.
He always started with Pete.
Pete, forever loyal and forever supportive, forever his best friend. Clark watched him first, suspended in the air outside of a window, looking inside at a cozy apartment, where Pete sat watching television with his arm around his wife and his daughter asleep on his lap. He had Clark's secret in his mind, and the moment that he could, he moved away from Smallville and shed that burden away by not being near Clark. Clark wished that that was something he could do; just run away from what he was. Maybe he would be happy too, like Pete.
He watched until he wasn't able to determine whether he felt more pleasure than envy at what he was seeing, and left before the pain of both could set in.
His next stop was only three blocks away, through the window of another apartment. Chloe's apartment.
The sight of Chloe brought Clark an unhappiness of a wholly different sort. There was a pang in his heart that would forever be reserved for her. For her, for a love that blossomed between them three years ago, and a love that died because of all the lives he had to save, he forgot how to save Chloe from herself.
She sat on a faded couch, staring into space and not noticing a thing. Clark knew that he could just fly into her room and she would pass it off as nothing but her imagination. She sat alone, a mirror with a surface of white powder in front of her and a trickle of blood from one nostril. Chloe left with her thoughts alone.
And again, before pain and regret could set in, he flew away.
It was a little distance to Smallville.
Clark rarely caught Lana awake, even at an early hour of the night. She was a full time mother, wife and manager of the Talon, and it wiped her out each day. She slept with a smile on her face each time, and it made Clark remember those days when that smile directed itself at him, and that funny feeling in his stomach would start all over again.
He could never watch Lana for long. Lana was the epitome of all he wanted in the world, all his hopes and dreams, and it hurt to see how content this epitome slept smiling in someone else's arms.
He flew away from Lana's world and the happiness that revolved around it, and moved to his last.
His last was always Lex.
He felt more of a connection with Lex, despite the fact that their lives couldn't be more different. Lex Luthor now was a man without a dominating father breathing heavily over his shoulder, although he did have his ghosts. Lex Luthor at this present time was the man he knew he was going to be, no matter how much he used to hate it. He was ruler, king, CEO, leader, all of the above, at everything that he did.
He worked hard for it. Clark never sought Lex at home; years of flying had taught him that if he were to peek into the Luthor mansion of Metropolis, he would have several security guards vainly trying to gun him down and security cameras swinging his way, all for a fruitless mission. The mansion was always empty of its master, who spent his nights in his head office at LutherCorp, staring hard at a painting in front of him, not flinching and hardly even breathing.
Clark made a visit to LutherCorp a few months back to write one of those fluffy no-brainer articles about the many delightful things of the company. The kind of articles that Chloe hated, and subsequently got fired over. Fired. By Lex Luthor himself. And Chloe learned that friendship was an overrated thing.
By chance Clark had met Lex Luthor that day, strolling down the lobby with the confidence of a man who owned the world. He saw Clark and invited him up to his office, Clark always wondered why. They weren't friends anymore. Sometimes he wondered if they ever were.
The picture that Lex was so fixated with every night was that of the Talon. The very one that Clark had once given Lana as a gift for opening up the coffee shop. The one that Lana gave Lex the day he announced that he was giving up his side of the Talon, to give Lana sole proprietorship of the place. The day he tried to win Lana's heart, and in this knowledge, broke Clark's.
Lex stared at the picture with something that looked like regret, but unlike Clark, Lex was inhuman, and Clark wondered if Lex was ever capable of feeling something like regret. He doubted it.
But as he flew away, he supposed that although he doubted it, seeing his old friend every night meant that maybe he was hoping that Lex was feeling some form of regret. Some form of anything. For what he did to Smallville. For what he did to them.
Clark flew away from his images of shattered friendship and the mixed results that came with it. He flew away and wondered to himself.
Pete settled down and happy. Chloe drugged up. Lana smiling in her dreams. Lex regretful. He wondered how they would see him.
Happy perhaps. Content. Alone, but essentially functioning. Nothing to be proud of.
He yearned for them. He yearned for them to appreciate what he was and what he did every night. He yearned to not feel any envious resentment for Pete. He yearned for the demons in Chloe's mind to finally leave her alone. He yearned to forgive Lana for breaking his heart. He yearned for Lex to regret and repent and learn that he didn't need to prove to anyone that he was better than Lionel Luthor. But mostly, he only just yearned for them, and the years they used to share.
He would quite easily choose that over fame, any day.
On that calm and breezy night, Clark flew home as he did almost every night, alone.