CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

A/N: For those who guessed the identity of the woman who would help Clark, you guessed correctly! In this chapter, he has a talk about Selina and how best to proceed in their relationship. Clark's middle name (yes, he has one,) is from Lois and Clark.

Disclaimer: Wish I did own Martha and any other publicly recognizable characters, including any references to Lois and Clark, but alas, I don't. Warner Brothers and their partners enjoy that privilege.

Anyway, please read and review.

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Superman landed behind the farmhouse just like he always had so that no one would see him changing into Clark's clothes. After spinning into some blue jeans and a white t shirt, he creaked on the three wooden steps when he entered the house. Letting the screen door bang loudly, Clark walked into the dining room.

A moment later, Martha came from the kitchen with a cherry pie.

"Hey, Ma," Clark greeted, taking the hot pie from her hands and setting it on the table to cool. He bent down and kissed Martha on the cheek.

Martha smiled, greeting, "Clark! What a pleasant surprise! Did you float in?"

"No, I flew, but I used the steps 'cause I heard snoring coming from the back," he said. "Do you have a gentleman caller, or something?"

Martha laughed, saying, "Now, what would I be doing with a gentleman caller? I'm much too old for that!"

"Aww, Ma," Clark protested, "You could never be old!"

"Thanks for the thought! Our neighbor Mr. Turner from down the street paid me a visit," Martha said. "His wife would have my guts for garters if she even thought I looked at Bill Turner funny."

Clark waited for his Ma to continue. "He's fixing my pipes and he got tired doing all that bending and stooping under the kitchen sink, so he asked me if he could take a snooze in the living room," Martha told her son.

"Oh," Clark responded, not quite knowing where to begin. He breathed on the still hot pie with super breath and when it was sufficiently chilled enough to eat, helped himself to an enormous slice.

"Clark, you just inhaled that!" Martha pronounced as she watched him gobble it down. Her eyes laced with concern, she asked, "Is there something on your mind? Is that why you came to see me?"

In the living room, Bill Turner turned so that his back was to Clark and Martha. Despite that, however, the shy reporter motioned for his Ma to come outside for privacy. The old woman complied. While they walked on the freshly mowed grass, Clark looked pensive.

"Ma, have you ever been in love with someone everyone else says is wrong for you?" Clark queried.

Martha laughed, answering, "Oh, yes. His name was Chuckie Henderson, and he was the richest man in Hadleyville, the next town over from us."

They sat on a huge tree stump while Martha paused.

Clark said, "I never heard of the Hendersons."

"Well, you wouldn't," Martha said. "They moved out of the area in 1940."

"Oh," Clark said. After a beat, he asked, "Well, how did you know he wasn't right and Pa was?"

Martha looked ahead, casting her mind toward the memory of Charles H. Henderson. Clark glanced at her, waiting for her to speak.

"I was only a young girl at the time, but he would come by my parents' house, particularly when they were out checking the farm. Chuckers always seemed to know when they weren't home," Clark's Ma said.

"Chuckers?" Clark inquired. Martha nodded.

"We all called him that," she said. "Can't remember why, though."

"His knowing when your parents weren't home would have been a red flag for me," Clark said wryly. Martha sighed.

"Yes, you're right," Martha said, "but as I said, I was a teenager at that time. Teenagers, and even some adults, don't always know what's best for them, particularly when they fall in love."

Clark thought about that. His girlfriends over the years had been adequate, but none of them had been the one woman he knew he could settle down with. The Kryptonian had thought that Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris, and even Diana were the Ones, but after the relationships ended, Clark realized that he'd been mistaken.

Then came Lois Lane. He remembered how, when he'd first seen her in his nerdy attire at the Daily Planet, he'd been struck by lightning. She was intelligent, passionate, fiery. Her face had been a little too long to be classically beautiful, and her lips were too full, but to him she was the most perfect being he had ever seen. When he first held her in his arms as Superman during the time he had saved her from a helicopter that was about to crash, he could tell that she thought she'd died and gone to Heaven. But, for Clark, it was the other way around. He knew that he had fallen in love.

He had dated her as Clark just as he was doing with Selina, and when Lois had dubbed him Superman, he'd also made her his personal pet project. He trotted behind her like a super powered puppy, saving Lois whenever her penchant for chasing a story always got her into trouble (which was pretty often). Everything would have been wonderful, except for the time when she'd found out who he was during their trip to Niagara Falls.

When he'd had to erase the memories of their time together as a couple, the relationship had taken a terrible turn for the worst. What had hurt the most was that Clark had really thought he'd be able to make things work with Lois. After returning from his five year departure, he'd had the naïve notion that she would be available.

But, that ship had sailed with Richard's arrival and subsequent marriage proposal, and Clark had grown up concerning matters of love. He had realized that it would take a special woman, someone who was more than the average mortal; someone who could reconcile with his being away from her whenever his life as Superman demanded that.

He supposed that Ma had also needed a very special man to keep up with her passionate nature, but who also knew how to rein her in, if needed.

By the time he returned to the present, Clark's Ma had told him about how she'd first met Chuck Henderson...and the other man that was Jonathan Kent.

"What did Henderson look like?" Clark asked. Martha smiled.

"Chuckers had sable colored hair, thick and wavy. And his muscles were not too big, you understand, just the right size," his adoptive mother said. "Whenever he walked into a room and flashed his baby blues at the girls, they just melted, including me."

I felt that way when Lana did that with hers, too, Clark thought.

"When he stopped by my desk, I was thinking, 'wow!'" Martha related to her son. Clark smiled, but then he frowned as he wondered about his father.

"What about Pa?" Clark inquired.

"Don't get me wrong, Clark," Martha told her son. "I loved your father, ever since I'd met him the year before at a social gathering. Jonathan was tall, kinda thin, but Chuckers, he was special!"

"Like chocolate ice cream?" Clark asked.

"Yes," Martha responded. "You know vanilla will always be there, but you crave chocolate once in a while because it's out of the ordinary."

He switched his position so that he could hear more of his mother's account.

"Anyway, our families thought we were the perfect couple," she said. "Everyone knew it! As I said before, the Hendersons came from money, but my family and the Kents didn't. My mother liked Jonathan, but my father liked Chuckers. Dad said that he seemed like the perfect man, and he started out to be, but...".

They got up and walked back t o the house. Clark went into the kitchen and grabbed two pieces of the pie for himself and Martha. He also gave her a glass of ice cold milk in addition to the pie plate. While they ate, Martha went on.

"But?" Clark prompted.

"But after we'd been together for about a year, I had noticed…things. Little things, like the fact that we didn't see eye to eye on some important issues," Martha told her son.

"Like what?" Clark wanted to know. He drank some milk.

"For starters, Chuckers always thought it necessary to flaunt his money, particularly when he bought me gifts," Martha answered. "Jonathan didn't."

Before Clark said a word, she continued. "Chuckers also regarded the people of Smallville and Hadleyville with criticism and disdain, even though they went out of their way to be nice," she said. "He thought we were above everyone, you see, even above his own parents in class and stature. Your Pa didn't feel that way. He treated everyone the same, and Jonathan felt that no one was any better than anyone else."

Clark nodded, saying, "Ohh…".

Martha said, "The big kicker was that Chuck hated children. Jonathan loved kids." They ate some more pie and drank some milk before Martha spoke again.

So, it was no surprise that when he kissed me, there was something missing," she said. "By the time my eighteenth birthday rolled around, I just knew he wasn't the right man."

Martha sighed, saying, "Chuck never realized all that. When he sensed I was drifting apart from him, he thought he needed more money to impress me. He threw in with some men passing through town who weren't exactly Kosher." Martha's son frowned at that.

Clark queried, "Did you get out of your relationship with him when you found out?"

"I got out of it before I found out," Martha said. Clark breathed a sigh of relief and finished his milk.

"We never found out the particulars," Ma told him. "But next thing we knew, the Hendersons were gone from Smallville, never to return again. It was years later that I'd found out that Chuckers had lost everything. He had moved to a home in Illinois and he'd supposedly lost millions because of a scandal with the IRS, I think."

When she finished her tale, Clark got up and took his and her plates into the kitchen. He put them in the dishwasher with the other dirty dishes and started the rinse cycle. While it was running, Clark contemplated the pie tin sitting on the dining nook table.

"Ma," he said, "I'm with someone who...". He paused, not able to find the right words.

Martha's arm shot out and she stroked Clark's shoulder with motherly concern. "It's okay, Clark," she tried to reassure him. "You can tell me." She dropped her arm and waited.

Taking a deep breath, Martha's adopted son told her about Selina and her reputation as the Catwoman. He also related his fellow heroes' negative or dubious opinions. Clark's mother listened intently, only pausing to nod.

When he had finished speaking, Martha said, "I see."

Clark was surprised. He had expected his mother to be upset or even mildly annoyed, but she seemed to be calm and collected.

His brows drawing together with confusion, Clark asked, "You aren't angry with me?"

"Why should I be, son?" Martha asked. He looked at the ground sheepishly, just like he always had whenever Ma had caught him doing something wrong.

"Because she's a cat burglar," Clark said, "or at least, she was."

Martha shrugged. They went into the living room and, when they saw that the couch had been vacated, sat on it.

"Are you in love with her?" Ma wanted to know.

"I'm crazy about her," Clark replied honestly.

Martha said, "If you're sweet on her, who am I to judge? You've always made the right decisions, Clark, and as long as your heart and head are together on this, that's what matters."

He hugged her, saying, "Thanks, Ma." When they pulled apart, he said, "But, what about her past?"

"Look, son," Martha told him, "I can't render an opinion when I haven't even met her yet. Besides, it seems to me that those yahoos you work with want to reject her because it's easier to do that rather than accept the fact that people really can change if they want to."

He grinned, his love for his adopted mother growing even greater than it already was. After a moment, however, Clark told Martha, "Ma, there's something else I haven't said. I...haven't revealed my identity to her." Before she could react, Clark related the reason he hadn't told Selina about his two identities.

"Clark Jerome Kent!" Martha exclaimed. "You mean to tell me that you're two timing her and yourself?" She slapped him on his shoulder, wincing at the pain.

"I raised you better than that!" Ma shouted.

"I know, Ma, but..." Clark protested. Martha grabbed his ear and tweaked it hard.

"Ma!" He wailed.

"No 'buts' Clark," she said. "You can't have any healthy, loving relationship living a lie! You march straight over to her home and you tell her the truth, or so help me God, I will cane your behind with a Kryptonite switch!"

Clark shuddered at that. He knew his mother was really mad. "I guess I should clue her in..." he said reluctantly.

"If you really love her, you should tell her!" Martha advised. "Tell her just like your Pa told me that he loved me after that stuff with Chuckers happened."

Clark nodded, saying, "You're right, Ma. I owe her that." Martha hugged him, pleased that he would do the right thing. He spun back into his Superman costume.

"And son," she said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

"Yes?" Clark asked.

"I would love to meet her after you tell her," Martha said. "Bring her by for dinner sometime!"

"Sure, Ma," Clark said. He took off for Selina's apartment, glad that he'd talked with his mother and ready to confess everything.