Disclaimer: DC Comics owns all rights to the characters within. They are used without permission and not meant to infringe on copyrights or meant to generate income.
Some background before the story begins. This is a one-shot that's completely separate from the rest of my Superboy and Match stories. It's set roughly one hundred years in the future, and in a timeline where Superboy never regained the ability to age.
A Visitor from the Past
Kon-El was feeling a little irate. It was his hundredth birthday, and no one had remembered. It wasn't too surprising, most of his friends from his youth had passed away or weren't in any state to remember him; it was especially painful to have seen Tim go senile.
He sighed. He had more experience than the rest of the Justice League put together, but he didn't have any deep friendships with them. His chronological age was at odds with his appearance; he still looked like he wasn't a day over sixteen.
He was surprised to receive a message with an invitation to a restaurant in Paris for that evening. It wasn't from any of his teammates or friends, so he hesitated. It looked to be a formal, stuffy affair from the information about the restaurant attached.
I've got nothing else to do, he thought as he accepted the invitation. Some recognition would be better than nothing.
He arrived at the restaurant wearing black tie as the invitation specified. He was escorted to a private room where he was surprised to see a table for two. He had been expecting some sort of group. His companion hadn't arrived yet, so he scanned over the menu, glad he had taken the time to learn French several decades ago.
He heard footsteps and turned to see who had invited him. He was shocked to see a white haired version of himself.
"Match!" he growled as he stood up, his eyes narrowed.
Match held his hands up. "I'm not here to fight you."
"Is this some sort of trap?" Kon asked as his eyes flickered around the room, looking for hidden lasers or the like.
Match sighed and sat down. "I'm just here to celebrate with you. Happy birthday."
"Give me one reason why I should stay here."
"You wouldn't have come if you had something better to do."
Kon tried to come up with a response to that and failed.
"Consider this a peace offering," Match said. "We haven't seen each other in over sixty years. I'm not the same person I used to be."
"Why shouldn't I drag you off to prison?"
"For what? The statute of limitations has expired on all of my youthful misdeeds. I haven't done anything illegal since we last met."
Kon looked at him skeptically. "I have trouble believing you."
"I remembered your birthday, didn't I? If it helps, I haven't used my powers for anything other than moving some books for nearly twenty years. If we fought, you'd beat me quite easily."
"What did you do?"
"I pulled a kid out of the way of an oncoming truck."
"You actually saved someone?"
"I'm not as bad as you think. Not any more."
Kon sat down. "I might as well let you buy me dinner. I am here after all."
"We should catch up. I've seen the news reports of what you've done, but I know that there's a lot more that you must have done. A lot doesn't get reported, at least, not back in the old days. Has it changed at all?"
"Not really. Even with improved communications, there's not a lot reported on Earth about what happens on Rann, much less other dimensions."
There was a pause.
"Why did you want to meet after all this time?" Kon asked. "If it's not for revenge, then it must be for something that I'm missing. What's the reason?"
"You understand," was Match's succinct answer.
"I understand what?"
"You understand what it's like to be sixteen forever. The Agenda messed you up when they created me, and to save you, your body's structure was altered. This froze you at sixteen. It wasn't evident until later, but the Agenda's cloning technique was more flawed than that. It was the equivalent of taking a snapshot, and I remained the same age as well."
Kon was taken aback. "I never really thought about it that way. I always thought you'd have other ageless people to talk to. They were much more common in the villain community than the hero one."
"I did go to a dinner with other ageless ones, once. It was pretty much a disaster. Ra's Al-Ghul doesn't use pronouns. Savage is an apt descriptor of Vandal Savage's table manners. Dr. Ivo is far more insane than the rest of them and would launch into a paranoid rant at the drop of a hat. It was a traumatic experience and scared me enough to find a legitimate line of work."
"What is it you're doing now? If you're not being a villainous mastermind, then what are you doing?"
Match looked proud. "I'm one of the world's leading experts in English literature. I got my Ph.D. in that field a while ago and have added more in other fields of literature and culture. I'm a lecturer and faculty member at the University of Warwick."
"Wait, you're a college professor?"
"I don't teach as much as I used to, but I'm the most senior faculty member in the English department. Actually, I'm the most senior faculty member at the university."
"I've having a little bit of difficulty believing that my evil clone is now teaching literature. It just seems so odd. Are you sure you aren't really trying to take over the world?"
Match looked offended. "The only people who call me evil these days are my students when I hand back papers with scathing remarks. I've written what's considered the most comprehensive text of nineteenth century British literature. It's in its thirteenth edition."
"I'm sorry; this is just very difficult for me to come to terms with. The person with which I used to trade blows, who threw trucks at me, and who way my nemesis now grades papers, wears tweed, and smokes a pipe. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it."
"I don't smoke a pipe!"
"What about the tweed?"
Match's shoulders slumped. "It's very comfortable."
"Do I need to fill you in on my doings? They've been pretty public."
"If there's been anything big that's happened, please enlighten me. I'd normally pay attention if you exhibited some new use of your powers and try to figure out how to duplicate it. That nifty little trick you did in Bangalore took me a week to figure out."
"The trick in Bangalore? Oh, that one! It took me a while to get all the theoretical work behind that one done. Bangalore was the first time I actually used it."
"You've kept your private life, well, private for a long time. There's tabloid garbage, of course, but that would mean you've sired enough children to populate Australia by now."
"I don't have any kids. Really, I haven't been in a serious relationship since Cassandra."
"It's a pity about that. I always harbored the hope that the two of you would end up back together. I'm sorry it didn't work out."
Kon made a dismissive gesture. "It was ages ago. I've been over her for a long, long time. I understand why she broke it off. It's not easy to be in a relationship with someone who's eternally sixteen. What about you? Any long-lasting relationships?"
"Sadly, no. I've tried dating a few other faculty members or their friends, but the sixteen thing has prevented anything serious from happening. I really don't like it when my date treats me like I've sixteen."
"Yeah, that happens to me too. It's an early sign that the relationship isn't going to work. There have been women who wanted a relationship since I'm a public figure, too. That's another sign that it isn't going anywhere."
The waiter entered the room. "'Ave the messieurs decided?"
Kon and Match both ordered in French.
"That's quite a lot you ordered," Kon said. "Are you sure you're going to be able to eat that much? Isn't the sedentary life of a college professor going to mean that you'll be putting on the weight?"
Match smiled. "There are some benefits of being sixteen forever. I can eat whatever I want and my metabolism will burn it off. The other faculty members get jealous."
"Yeah, over the years, I've had teammates remark on the same thing. I think it's great, but they think it's unfair."
Match noticed a dark look pass over Kon's face. "What's wrong?"
"Sometimes, I wonder if it really matters that I'm here," Kon said. "I wonder if it would have been better if I never existed."
"Of course the world is a better place with you here," Match snapped. "Don't be absurd. You saved Metropolis from becoming a smoking crater early in your career. You've saved the world and the universes several times."
"Other heroes would have stepped up to do that," Kon argued.
"You don't know that. You have to look at what you've done; what others might have done without you is irrelevant. It didn't happen that way."
"But, it could have happened," Kon insisted. "Given the track record of everyone involved, it's even likely that it would have happened."
Match gave him a penetrating look. "Such pessimism isn't like the Kon-El that I know. What's happened to you?"
"I've been alone for the last ninety years. Nobody has gotten close to me as a person since then. I've just been a teammate to others, not somebody that you'd do something with outside of fighting crime. My teammates have had fifty-seven children over the years. I've never once been asked to be a godfather or referred to as 'Uncle Kon.' I stopped hoping that they'd remember my birthday or want to do something for it. There hasn't been anyone there for me for the last ninety years, not outside of being a superhero."
"I'm here for you now," Match said. "We haven't always gotten along, and you may hate me, but I'll be here for you. I know how you're feeling, I get that way too. I locked myself in the ivory tower of academia to try to stop feeling that way. It doesn't always work, but I have literature to focus on and take me away from these thoughts."
Match looked rueful. "It took me dozens of years to work up to this. I've been afraid of seeing you."
"I'm sorry," Kon apologized. "I don't normally act like this. It's just that every so often it gets to be too much. I normally deal with it by breaking things in the practice room."
"If it's any consolation, most of my colleagues wish that I wasn't here," Match confided. "They'd rather be the ones to get the accolades. They say nice things to my face, but then they trash my work when my back is turned."
Their dinners came, and the evening passed in lighter conversation.
"I'm glad we did this," Kon said. "Thank you."
"Happy birthday," Match said. "Any time you want to visit, feel free. We shouldn't wait another sixty years before seeing each other."
Match handed him a card. Kon looked at it and laughed.
"Matthew Connell? I take it that your last name was inspired by a certain someone?"
"Yes," Match admitted. "I'm not very good with making up names. I tried to write a piece of fiction, and they were all Smiths and Bloggs. I gave up on it."
"I'll see you again," Kon promised. "This was fun. I'm glad you got in contact with me."
The two parted, feeling better than they had in years.
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