Author's Note: Hi everyone! This is my first 7th Heaven story, and I'm very excited about posting it. I have fics in other categories, but I've watched 7th Heaven from the very first episode. Martin's recent storyline for the 10th season inspired me to write this. This is a one-shot and It takes place after the episodes It's Late and Home Run, but before Momma's Gonna Buy You a Diamond Ring.

Opening the car door, he stepped out onto a carpet of freshly turned fall leaves. It'd been much warmer the last time he'd visited, he thought, as he walked the twenty feet from the car to the gate. The rickety iron frame opened easily, the sign above which, read:

Park Rose Cemetery

Est. 1972

Martin knew his way around expertly, having navigated through the hardened grounds many times before. Crossing endless rows of headstones, countless sections, and generations of people, all laid to rest here, he arrived at the one he knew so well; The gentle carvings of the marble stone were alone enough to slightly sadden him as his green eyes swept the engraving.

Elizabeth Layton Brewer

April 12th 1967 - November 7th 1998

Beloved Wife and Mother

Sitting down about two feet from the headstone itself, he was reminded that it was approaching the seventh anniversary of his Mother's death.

For the next twenty minutes he stared silently at the square marble, in front of which were the remains of the last few times the grave had been visited; The flowers his father had planted last spring, now dried and withered with the fall, the cross he himself had put there when he'd visited on his mother's birthday, and finally, a miniature flag that his Aunt Betsy had sewn by hand last Christmas. It was made of white silk, and embroidered in pale blue stitching were three letters: Liz, which, instead of the more formal version of her name, his mother had always preferred to be called.

"Hi, Mom, It's me, It's Martin. I'm sorry, I know it's been a few months since I've visited. I guess there's just been a lot going on lately. Senior year's just not as easy as I thought it would be... Anyway, Dad's home; I don't know If he's been by yet or not."

The cemetery was about an hour and a half from Glenoak, and originally, It was part of the town where his mother had grown up. But years had passed, and now only the cemetery remained. Before her death, Liz Brewer had told her husband that she wanted to be buried in Park Rose, since the family had only ever lived on military bases before. Park Rose had been her home, and now she'd get to stay there forever.

"It was kind of sad to move out of the Camden's. Not that I'm not happy to have Dad home, It was just,... I don't know, It was nice to be part of a big family for once. I think you would've really liked them, especially Mrs. Camden, she reminds me a lot of you."

What he had to say next was hard, but he had to tell someone. He couldn't handle it alone, and, as when she was alive, he could always depend on his mother.

"Last summer, Simon took me to visit his campus. It looked really fun, being in college. Simon and his girlfriend wanted to go out, so they set me up with one of their friends, Sandy, and we went to a restaurant in town for pizza. I don't know exactly why, but, being there ...I felt Important, I felt grown up. Not just emotionally, I felt like I was different internally."

The wind blew slightly, rustling the leaving, and blowing his hair down over his forehead as he spoke.

"We went back to her dorm room afterwards; One minute we were talking about the weather, and the next..."

His eyes stung badly with forthcoming tears, clouding his vision.

"And the next I was having sex with her."

Somehow, this was all the harder to say due to the fact that his mother was dead, and he couldn't help thinking that it would all be okay if she could just hold him again.

"I don't know what I was thinking, Mom. I know you always told me to respect the girls I dated. God, I didn't even know her, I can't even make an excuse and tell you that I did it because I love her... because I don't."

He absentmindedly tore patches of grass out of the earth around him, the dirt and the small brown blades running through his fingers.

"She came to church last week with Simon and his girlfriend, and she kept asking to talk to me, but I kept telling her that I didn't want to see her again. Later on, she finally cornered me into talking to her,... and she told me she was pregnant."

"I can't do this, I'm too afraid to! I want to play baseball, I want to date, I want to go to college, I just want to be a normal eighteen-year-old guy! I don't want any of this, I don't want to be a father at eighteen!"

The tears flowed uncontrollably, as he shouted at the unresponsive marble stone.

"I can't tell anyone, not the Camdens, not Dad. He'd never live down the disappointment, and you know it; He'd never be able to forgive me for being a failure!"

"I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry that this whole thing ever happened!"

And then, with his head tilted toward the grey skies, he continued to cry tears of the utmost sorrow and regret that his soul could give.

"I'm sorry, God!"

Yup, that was it. Like it? Hate it? Find it the stupidest damn thing ever? Tell me in a review! Thanks-Tessie:)