Martha

Now:

Martha sat quietly at the family table, picking at her food. Ben Hubbard had joined her there. It had been his choice not to be a member of the wedding party. They both knew Clark would have accepted having Ben stand up as his step-father if Ben had asked to, even though Martha and Ben weren't married.

Clark had never asked Martha why she and Ben hadn't tied the knot, but he accepted Ben's part in his mother's life, mostly. She knew Clark had questions about their relationship, but her son was too much the gentleman to ask.

Martha was tired. It had been a long day with too many people. She wasn't used to dealing with so many people. She didn't want to even guess what this reception was costing the Strakers. At the moment, she wanted it over, to go up to her hotel room and sleep for a week, then fly back to Montana with Ben.

More dancing, more speeches, more toasts. The one from Perry surprised her a little. "Clark, just reminding you what Oscar Wilde said: No man should have a secret from his wife. She invariably finds it out."

Esther giggled and Clark's cheeks turned pink.

Finally, it was time to cut the cake. Martha had noticed a saber laying on the table behind the ornate cake. There were no decorations on the hilt, nothing to indicate it was being used at a wedding. The standard decorated knife lay beside the sword.

Clark and Esther stepped over to the cake, waiting a moment for the photographer to position himself on the far side of the table.

Clark lifted a champagne glass, facing Esther: "My wife: we will not be together forever for death will us part… But while this life lasts I will hold you in my arms, I will cherish you in my heart, I will protect you with my life, I will be true and faithful to you, I will care for and nurture you, I will be here for you in joy and sorrow, for that is all I have to give."

Esther repeated his gesture: "My husband: because of you, I laugh, I smile, I dare to dream again. I look forward with great joy to spending the rest of my life with you, caring for you, nurturing you, being there for you in all life has in store for us, and I vow to be true and faithful for as long as we both shall live."

They clicked their glasses together, entwined their arms in the traditional manner, and sipped the champagne.

Then, setting the glasses aside, Esther picked up the saber. Clark laid his large hand over hers and they cut the cake with the sword.

"Grandma?" a small voice asked. Martha looked down to see a small dark-haired boy with big blue eyes standing at her knee.

"Hello, Matthew," Martha said with a smile as he climbed onto her lap to watch the cake cutting. She kissed the top of his head. My son is married and I'm a grandma.

Author unknown

Then:

"Martha, Jonathan," Doctor Doyle began, "I'm sorry, but the tests came back negative."

"And what does that mean?" Jonathan demanded. Martha and Jonathan had been married nearly ten years and had been trying to conceive most of that time. Time was running out – Martha's biological clock was winding down. She'd had three miscarriages, for no reason the general physician in Smallville could come up with.

Doctor Doyle was their last hope to conceive a child of their own.

"It means that without extraordinary measures, you and Martha are unable to have children together," Doyle said. "I'm sorry."

"You said extraordinary measures," Martha reminded him. "What are they?"

"Drugs, in vitro fertilization," Doyle explained. "It'll be very hard on you physically. It's also very expensive. Frankly, I'd suggest you look into adoption. I know there are many children out there in need of a good home."

"We'll think about it," Jonathan said, ushering Martha out of the office. She had started crying. All their hopes for a child had been pinned on Doyle. "Thank you, Doctor," she heard her husband murmur.

The drive back to Smallville was spent in near silence. "What do we do now?" she asked finally.

"We keep going," her ever practical Jonathan said with a sad smile.

They applied for adoption. A farm was a good place to raise a child, but Jonathan had a family history of heart disease and had started having angina pains when he overdid things. Doctor Baker had warned him to hire help and start taking things a little easier.

When the state adoption agency people found out about Jonathan's medical issues, they turned down their application even for an older child.

"What do we do now?"

"We keep going."

Reverend Wallace's sermon hadn't been especially uplifting, but at least the conversation over coffee had been interesting. The Harrises were expecting another child any day now. Rachel was about two, all bright eyes and curiosity. Martha agreed to watch the little girl while her mother was in the hospital. It was the least she and Jonathan could do. The Harrises had been steadfast friends all through the Kent's ordeal to first conceive, then adopt, a child of their own.

Neither Martha nor Jonathan was paying much attention to the road in front of them as they drove home. The road was straight and familiar.

They were driving past Schuster field, only a mile from the farmhouse. They heard the 'meteorite' before they saw it: a roaring like a fire out of control, a jet engine at full throttle. The ball of fire passed in front of the old truck, plowing into the fallow field, leaving a deep burnt gouge in the earth before the fireball came to rest.

Startled, Jonathan drove the truck off the road, nearly landing them in the ditch. Jonathan pushed open the truck door and headed down the gouge to the object that had come to rest.

"Jonathan, be careful," Martha warned.

"There might be a pilot still inside," Jonathan called back to her as he moved closer to the end of the gouge. She climbed down into the field to follow him.

Whatever it was that had crashed certainly didn't look like an airplane or even a missile. In fact, it looked like a huge melted Christmas ornament. As Jonathan got closer, the charred top of the object seemed to split apart, revealing the inside. A small dark-haired boy stood up and smiled at them. He couldn't have been more than three years old, and he was naked as a jay bird. He held out his arms to them.

Jonathan picked up some blankets from inside the whatever and wrapped the boy up in them before picking him up. "Who the devil would put a baby inside a contraption like that?" he asked, shaking his head.

"Well, whoever they are, they don't deserve to have him back," Martha told him, taking to boy from his arms. His eyes were an almost unearthly shade of blue.

"And what if they come looking for him?"

She looked at the object in the field. "I don't think they will. I don't think they're from around here." She smiled at her husband. "We can name him Clark. Clark Joseph Kent."

He was their gift from heaven. Even when it became apparent exactly how different he was from the other kids, even when it became apparent that they'd misjudged exactly how far away his people had to have been, he was their child, their little angel.

Clark grew into a fine young man. Martha and Jonathan never spoke about the possibility of grandchildren. They both knew how unlikely it was they would ever see Clark's children. He was simply too different.

Jonathan died when Clark was a senior in high school only a few months from graduation. Almost as soon as the graduation ceremony was over, Clark went north and she didn't see or hear from him for nearly a year. Then he called from Japan to tell her he was working his way around the world.

Three years later he was in Metropolis, going to college. He never mentioned girls, aside from asking about Rachel, Lana, a few other girls he'd gone out with occasionally before he left. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in journalism and a minor in history. He got a job at the Daily Planet and fell in love.

Then he left for Krypton and she thought she'd never see him again. He came back and discovered he was a father. Of all the miracles in the universe, neither of them had expected that her son would be able to give her a grandchild.

"She hates me, and I don't know what I did," Clark told her.

"Do you really think she wants you out of her life completely?" Martha had asked.

"That's what she said. I have no reason to doubt her."

My grandson doesn't even know I exist.

"Mom," Clark said. "I'd like you to meet Major Esther Straker and her son Matthew."

Martha crouched down beside the small dark-haired toddler. His eyes were blue, not quite as bright a blue as Clark's were, but very blue nonetheless.

"Hello Matthew," Martha said with a smile.

The boy looked at her with a solemn expression. "Mommy says you're going to be my grandma. Are you really my grandma?"

"Would you like me to be?" Martha asked. He's so small. He nodded shyly, his thumb going into his mouth.

She looked up at her son and his fiancée. Clark was smiling at her, but she saw tears in his eyes as well.

"You know what this means, don't you?" Martha asked them. They both shook their heads. "I have a grandbaby to spoil. And I expect more of them in the future."

"We'll do our best," Clark promised. "But I think we should wait until after the wedding."