DC fanfic, Martha Kent and Kara Zor-El
This fic has been sitting on my hard drive for months. I've read it so many times I've almost stopped reading it, edited it many times as well, and finally feel it should be ushered out into the world. This fic is kind of my baby; I wrote it all in one go, and it's both a standalone and the origin story for my House of El 'verse.
Title: A Brave New World
Fandom: DC comics
Series: House of El
Pairing/Characters: gen; Martha, Jonathan and Clark Kent, Kara Zor-El
Rating: G
Continuity: Right after a certain ship crashed outside Smallville, Kansas
Summary: AU. Kara lands at the same time Kal does.
Disclaimer: DC owns them, I just write when plot bunnies gnaw on my leg and refuse to let go.
Author's Notes: Chronologically, this is the first in the series.
Word Count: 4,816
Clark smiled up at her and giggled baby giggles when she tickled him. He was a sweet child, even-tempered for an infant and constantly happy. Martha doted on him, carried him around and didn’t mind at all the money they’d spent on food and supplies, though the chances they’d get to keep him were low. She sat in the kitchen, cleaning and talking to him, while Jonathan tinkered with the television in the other room. Night-dark fields outside the kitchen window were smoothed with the warm glow from the yellow overhead light.
Martha knew naming the child was a silly thing to do, if they didn’t want to get attached-but oh, she did want to get attached. Besides, he was a living person, they couldn’t just call him ‘the baby’. Names were important. Little Clark laughed every time she picked him up. Jonathan, who was a harder soul to understand and called "cold" by many of those he’d gone to school with, did not frighten the child; rather, they’d seemed to develop something of a soothing rapport. Clark calmed easily in Jonathan’s arms, wriggled less and cuddled more.
In less than a week-in less than a minute, if Martha were honest with herself-she and Jonathan fell in love with Clark, and it seemed like he returned the sentiment, as much as any baby could.
The farm was far out from anywhere, and neither of them heard a car approach, so it was something of a shock when they heard a knock at the front door.
Picking up the baby, Martha moved to the kitchen door. "Jonathan?" she asked, as her husband looked out the peephole. "Who is it?"
Jonathan gave her a confused look. "I don’t rightly know."
Opening the door, Martha found herself looking at a teenage girl, skinny with wide, worried blue eyes. She saw those eyes lock on Clark and knew-knew-why the girl was here. Those same blue eyes, almost unearthly blue, stared up at Martha from Clark’s face.
"Can we help you, miss?" Jonathan asked the girl.
She looked startled, then her face crumpled as through she were in pain. She bit her lip, then grasped Jonathan’s arm-his eyebrows went right up into his hairline-and said something half-panicked in a liquid, foreign tongue.
Jonathan gently pried her hands off his arm, then held his hands up in a placating gesture. The girl went quiet, but Martha could see her eyes were still locked on the baby in her arms. Martha resisted the urge to pull Clark closer, to turn her back on this girl and hide the baby from her sight.
"Now, girl, I don’t understand one word you’re saying, but I do understand you need help." He looked at her for another moment, then stood back and gestured to invite her inside. She hesitantly walked forward, every step she took toward Clark.
Jonathan closed the door quietly. Martha saw him turn and take in the situation, but she watched the girl-who was watching Clark. Jonathan cleared his throat, and the girl turned to look at him.
"I got no idea what language you speak, but-" he pointed at his own chest. "Jon." Jonathan caught her eyes, nodded once, then repeated himself. "Jon."
The girl smiled like the sun coming up. She pointed at her own chest. "Kara Zor-El."
"Kara." Martha felt the name in her mouth. Simple, somewhat exotic. Kara turned back to face Martha and the baby. "It’s a lovely name." Placing one hand on her chest, she said, "Martha."
Kara smiled again, then before Martha could stop her, she stepped over and placed one hand on little Clark’s arm. "Kal-El," she said.
Martha looked over her shoulder to meet Jonathan’s eyes and saw her own pain reflected back. Kara kept stroking Clar-Kal-El’s arm.
*
Kara Zor-El-and where did a name like Zor-El come from, anyway?-spoke no English at all, though she did manage to communicate that she was not, in fact, Clark’s mother, but another relative whose charge he had been placed in. She also confirmed, without speaking one intelligible word, the suspicions Martha and Jonathan harbored from the beginning. Despite their appearance, neither she nor the infant were human. They came, to paraphrase the old radio shows Martha grew up on, from a distant star.
Alien or not, they couldn’t just let the girl go out on her own, and they especially couldn’t let her be the lone, young and inexperienced guardian of a baby.
When Jonathan finally communicated the question "How did you get here?" with ‘here’ specified as ‘the farm’ rather than ‘Earth’, Martha was upstairs putting Clark to bed. When she returned, there was no one on the first floor and the front door was open.
Pulling the screen open and stepping out onto the porch, Martha walked to her husband’s side and wrapped his hand in hers. Sitting in their driveway, in front of the battered green Ford truck Jonathan drove into town once a week, was a spaceship.
With sinuous curves, crystalline lines and landing gear rather than legs, all of a vaguely off-putting design, there was no doubt in Martha’s mind what it was. The wings on either side, the only really recognizable part of the ship, apparently let it travel through atmosphere as easily as space. Her other hand unconsciously went to her mouth. Kara stood petting the ship as though there were nothing special about it. Possibly, the calm part of Martha’s mind considered, this was true.
Jonathan squeezed Martha’s hand once, and then as she watched, his practical nature reasserted itself. His home was harboring two aliens-they hadn’t even discussed whether the two should stay the night, there was no question-better not let the neighbors find out. Jonathan let her go and joined Kara in front of the ship, gesturing first to it and then to their barn. It took several variations, but at last Kara seemed to understand what Jonathan was about. He nodded at her, and went over to the barn, opening the doors. Kara touched the side of the ship, and a door grew. When she entered, the walls of the ship regrew so that Martha would never guess there had been a door there if she had not seen it herself.
Once the barn doors were open, the ship lit up, revealing something like the structure of a crystal in the outer shell, and noiselessly it moved the twenty feet or so into the barn. Inside the barn, the ship powered down, though it was still glowing faintly. Its glow lit up another object, one Martha and Jonathan put in the barn a week ago. Clark’s much smaller ship glowed in reaction to being near Kara’s. When the light of Kara’s ship went out, so did the fainter light from Clark’s.
Kara emerged the same way she entered, and Jonathan closed the barn doors behind her.Never know what’s behind closed doors, Martha thought, and nearly giggled with nerves. Somehow, she and her husband ended up playing host to the first travelers from outer space.
Martha opened the door for Kara and Jonathan when they returned to the house.
*
Kara could not seem to get enough of lying out in the sun. She followed Martha’s direction, helping her collect eggs and milk in the morning. She loved cooking, though she made more mess than any man Martha had ever seen in a kitchen. It didn’t matter, with Kara, because she helped clean everything up with the same air of cheerfulness that had made the mess.
The sun, though-despite her fair hair, Kara did not seem to burn, or even tan overly, and neither Martha nor Jonathan could convince her to come inside during the hottest part of the day. Martha put her foot down when the girl tried to bring Clark-Kal-El was too awkward in Martha’s mouth, though Kara never called him anything else-outside. It was the only argument they’d had. Kara had stomped her foot and put her hands on her hips (Jonathan smiled; all women everywhere, no matter the species, had that look and attitude), and Martha met her eyes and shook her head. Finally, Kara threw up her hands and went outside alone.
The other thing Kara took great joy in was learning English, and she did so at a prodigious rate. They spent that first night in silence, gestures the quickest way to communicate, but the next morning, Kara was up bright and early and wanted to know the names of everything.
"Nouns first, I suppose," Martha commented to Jon over breakfast. He nodded over his eggs before heading out to work. Kara followed them both around, pointing at things and repeated the English words-which looked as hard for her to say as that liquid language might be for Martha-until Jonathan or Martha nodded that she’d gotten them right. And she never seemed to forget.
"Crystal," she told them, two weeks after arriving. She held up a small, white crystal that hung on a thong around her neck. "Container. Helps . . . remember? Learn?"
Martha shook her head. Some things about Kara and her culture, Kryptonian culture, were still beyond their side of the language barrier.
It took most of the first week before Kara would let Clark out of her sight for very long. Martha understood; the infant had been entrusted to her care. They still hadn’t discovered why, yet. Why would a species as advanced as the Kryptonians send a teenage girl-and she obviously was a teenage girl, though Martha had considered that humans and Kryptonians might look different at different ages-to look after a baby? It made no sense. Where were their parents, the rest of their family?
Sometimes, Martha wished she knew. Others, she hoped against hope she would never find out, because then . . . more likely than not, someone would come to take Clark away. Not yet a month, but she already couldn’t stand to lose him. Neither could Jonathan, she knew.
As for the State and the two children from nowhere who had somehow ended up in their charge-
Martha heard a car pull into the driveway and clipped the last piece of wash to the clothesline before scooping Clark up and heading around to the front of the house. She smiled at Kara and said, "Keep going." She made a circling motion with one hand and Kara smiled and continued to hang up the wash.
"Keep going," the girl whispered under her breath. "Continue." Garbled sound, probably muttered Kryptonian. "Continue to hang up clothes."
Martha turned the corner of the house and smiled at the Sheriff. "Sheriff Davis, so nice to see you!"
The sun-browned man smiled back and tipped his hat. "A pleasure to see you too, ma’am."
Martha headed up onto the porch and Sheriff Davis followed her. "Please, come inside. Would you like some lemonade?"
They went into the kitchen and the Sheriff sat down at the table. "Thank you, ma’am. It sure is hot out there this July; August is going to melt the roads and wilt the corn."
"I keep telling Jonathan to wear sunscreen, but you know old farmers." Martha winked at the Sheriff, handing him his glass and setting Clark down on the floor. "Now, what brings you all the way out here on such a hot day?"
Sheriff Davis leaned back and sipped his lemonade, taking in the house-a little worn but in good repair-the smiling, crawling baby, and the girl hanging the wash out back and singing something he couldn’t understand. Martha waited. She knew why the Sheriff was here, but just because someone might be here to give her bad news was no excuse for bad manners.
"Well, I am in something of a pickle, Martha." He leaned forward, setting his glass down on the table. "You called in, right and proper, when you found the baby, so I have no quarrel with that. People do crazy things, and I would believe some mother leaving her kid in a field out here. If that were the end of it, nobody would have any problem letting you keep him, if you were willing."
Martha nodded, one eye on Clark. It was amazing how fast he was.
"The problem, ma’am, is the girl. You say she speaks no English at all?"
"Not when she showed up here, no. We’ve been teaching her," Martha confirmed.
The Sheriff nodded. "And you say also that she is somehow related to the baby?"
"Kara told us she isn’t his mother, but some other relative." Martha laughed a little. "She doesn’t have enough English just yet to tell us which."
"She is, what, fifteen, sixteen? She can’t be older; doesn’t look it." He nodded again. "Girls her age with no home usually end up in foster care somewhere, usually a city or suburb. Smallville doesn’t have the support structure to take care of a case like hers. She needs a social worker who can find someone who speaks her language, and then they’ll shuffle her off. Maybe her little cousin too, since they’re family and the State don’t hold with separating families anymore."
Martha felt a chill go down her spine despite the summer heat. Lose Clark because he still had family? Lose them both because of a policy? She held back tears, and also a bit of a laugh. They wouldn’t find anyone who spoke Kara’s language.
"I . . . think my husband needs to hear this, too."
Sheriff Davis nodded, and Martha stuck her head out the kitchen window, waving to catch Kara’s eye. The girl looked up attentively. "Jonathan!" Martha called, pointing out into the field where she knew he’d gone. "Go get Jon, please!"
Kara stared at her a moment, then pointed the same direction. "I get Jon?"
"Yes!"
She nodded, hung up the last shirt, and then trotted out into the field.
Martha brought her head back inside and smiled at the Sheriff. He sipped his lemonade, then jumped. Clark had grabbed onto his leg. Martha and the Sheriff shared a laugh, and he reached down and picked the baby up. "Well, you are a handsome fella, aren’t you? Big." He looked up at Martha, bouncing Clark gently on his knee. "Do you know how old he is?"
She shook her head. "No, though we guessed. Less than a year, more than two months."
He nodded as the screen door screamed open, and Jonathan and Kara joined them in the kitchen. Martha rose and got them lemonade, topping off the Sheriff’s glass while she was up. She was too nervous herself.
"Afternoon, Sheriff Davis."
"Hello, Jonathan. Your wife and I were just discussing what’s to become of these two lovely kids." The Sheriff inclined his head toward Kara, who was staring at him. "I have to ask, though it’s pretty obvious. Do you want to have guardianship of these two? And-pardon my bluntness, but it’s relevant-can you afford to?"
Martha met Jonathan’s eyes across the table. She loved Clark, wanted Clark, and they couldn’t very well let Kara go off into the human world by herself, all unknowing. Jonathan closed his eyes for a minute, then opened them and leaned forward.
"I think we can manage, Todd." Jonathan looked from Kara to the Sheriff and back. Martha felt the dynamics of the table shift when Jonathan used the Sheriff’s first name. "How old do you think she is?"
"Well, I was saying to Martha earlier that she looked about sixteen," he replied.
Jonathan nodded. "Sixteen-that’s old enough to quit high school. To leave home and get your own job."
"That’s very true, Jon. You think that’s what she did?"
"I do."
Sheriff Todd Davis leaned back in his chair a moment, surveying the scene. Kara looked at home, worried about the stranger. Martha was about ready to tear the tyke from his hands, already his mamma. And Jonathan was a good, honest man, who would make a good father. These were good people.
"I reckon that clears everything up, then. Kara Sorrel is a legal adult, and no concern of the State, and since she is unfit to care for the baby Clark, he ought to stay here with you folks. Now, seeing as Kara’s blood family, she can see Clark Kent as often as she likes."
Martha felt a weight lift off her chest. She could breathe again, and she smiled in relief and thanks at the Sheriff when he handed Clark back to her.
He tipped his hat. "Thank you folks very much for your time. I’ll send the paperwork over in a couple of days. The lemonade was wonderful."
The three sat at the kitchen table, Clark in Martha’s arms, until they heard the noisy old police car start up and head down the driveway. Martha found she couldn’t stop smiling. Reaching out, she took Kara’s hand in hers and laughed, looking at Jonathan, who wore a small smile. They were safe. For now-for as long as they could-they were all safe.
*
Martha and Jonathan needed the barn back. Hiding the spaceships was all well and good, but the barn had a purpose, and now that they’d straightened everything out with the Sheriff, no one was likely to come wandering by. Martha thought nothing of it when Kara volunteered to move both spaceships.
With Clark in a playpen nearby, Jonathan and Martha moved feedbags and other odds and ends into the barn while Kara again powered up her spaceship. This time when she came out, she was carrying a glowing white crystal the size of her palm. The ship doors closed, and then the ship itself backed out of the barn and vanished from sight. Astonished, Martha watched the corn stalks wave in a line from the wind of the invisible ship, then go still again.
"Kara, honey?" Martha asked, still staring. "What did you do with the ship?"
She grinned. "Sent south. Far South. Where I land."
"Where I landed," Martha corrected absently. "Will it be safe there?"
"Yes."
Martha longed to ask more, but Kara’s English still wasn’t up to complex questions. Shaking her head, she went back to helping her husband.
A moment later, though, the usually unperturbable Jonathan started and dropped the bag he was carrying. Martha turned to see what he was looking at and her eyes widened.
"Merciful Lord, Kara! That must weigh a ton!"
Kara jumped; Martha and Jonathan were unused to raising their voices, and knew they might frighten her if they did, so the sudden exclamation must have scared her. She sped back a few steps, feet moving too fast to see, and nearly dropped Clark’s ship. Unthinkingly, she caught it with just one hand.
"I-I-" she stuttered, then let the ship fall and raced out of sight.
Martha shared a startled look with Jonathan. "Was she-was she blurry, when she ran?"
He nodded. "I don’t think she’s told us everything."
Martha sighed. "No, I don’t think she has. Poor girl, all alone here, her only kin a tiny baby. And we scared her."
"No use chasing her."
Martha hefted her load again and agreed. "Not since she can run so fast. Oh, I know she’ll come back, but I hope she doesn’t stay away too long. She could get into such trouble."
They moved things into the barn, not disturbing Clark’s spaceship (which had taken every bit of strength Jonathan and Martha could muster to shove up an incline into the bed of the truck) and fretting about their other charge. Martha left the other chores to Jonathan and took care of Clark, bringing everything inside and putting him down for a nap.
She had just set out dinner-three plates, just in case-when a warm wind blew open the front door, and Kara was suddenly standing in the kitchen doorway, looking skittish.
Martha felt her heart contract. How badly had they scared her without meaning to? "Come eat," she said gently. Slowly, looking from one to the other, to Clark in his high chair, Kara joined them.
They ate dinner in near-silence, not unusual from Jonathan but very unusual from Kara. Martha concentrated on Clark and eating her own food so as to let Kara relax back into their home.
Finally, as Martha was clearing the plates away, Jonathan leaned back in his chair. "You ran pretty fast out there today, Kara."
She looked down at her feet. "I-yes."
"All Kryptonians that fast?"
Martha turned away from the dishwashing when she heard a soft sob. Tears ran down Kara’s face, and Martha immediately dried her hands and knelt next to the girl, one arm wrapped around her shoulders. "Oh, honey, what’s wrong? Talk to us, please, if you can. We didn’t mean to frighten you, you just startled us, that’s all. Kara, honey, please."
Kara took a deep breath and visibly tried to calm herself down. Martha squeezed her shoulders in encouragement.
"I-Krypton. No-more." Martha waited, trying to puzzle that out. Kara stared at her, blue eyes begging that the woman understand. Then she pounded her hands on the table, and with a loud CRRK, the surface of the table cracked. Kara snatched her hands away from the table to her mouth.
"It’s okay, Kara, don’t worry about it. It’ll be okay. Talk to us, please, honey." Martha ran one arm up and down the girl’s back, trying to be soothing.
Kara collected herself as much as she could and tried again. "Krypton-gone. No more Kryptonians. I and Kal-El sent here."
There was a moment after Kara finished speaking when Martha didn’t understand. Kara hung her head and cried, silently.
The realization hit her like a freight train. They were all dead, Kara and Clark’s family, their entire race. Some disaster forced their family to send them into space, into the arms of strangers, so they could live. Kara to take care of Clark because there was no one else.
"Oh, you poor thing!" Martha reached around and hugged Kara, let her cry herself out on her shoulder. Martha heard Jonathan rise from his seat and put a hand on Kara’s shaking back. They remained that way until Kara pulled back, her eyes wet and her blond hair plastered to her face with sweat. Martha couldn’t bring herself to smile, but she pushed Kara’s hair back anyway.
Kara took a deep breath. "Is more. I and Kal-El sent here for-because?-for sun."
"You were sent to Earth because our sun is the right kind?" Martha clarified.
Kara nodded. "Krypton sun red. Yellow sun means . . ." she trailed off, her frustration with her lack of faculty with English evident.
It was Jonathan who made the connection. "The yellow sun gives you powers. Makes you strong, fast."
"Red sun, Kryptonian like human. Yellow sun . . . more." She swallowed, and Martha watched her meet Jonathan’s eyes. "Not know how much more."
Martha hugged the girl to her again, then reached out and grasped her husband’s hand in her own. Aliens with unknown, formidable superpowers.
Jonathan squeezed her hand, and Martha remembered. Children, alone and probably frightened. Their son. She could never forget again.
Martha pulled back from Kara and kissed her on the forehead. "All right. Show us what you can do. We’ll help you. And-Kara." Martha shook her, just a little. "You have family here, now, too."
Watery blue eyes closed, and the tension drifted out of Kara’s body. God, she was so young. Martha stroked her hair.
"Yes," Kara agreed. Opening her eyes, she stood. "Thank you."
*
"Are you sure I should be going to school already, Martha?" Kara called down the hall. Martha sighed. That girl-once she’d grasped English, many other concepts translated quickly. Up to and including how much she had learned before she’d been put into that spaceship and shot away from dying Krypton.
Putting Clark back into his crib, Martha cooed at him one more time, then slipped out of the room and went for the bathroom. They had remade the guest bedroom into Clark’s nursery, so Martha spent most of the two weeks after affirming that Kara was going to stay with them cleaning her sewing room out so they could make it into her bedroom. Fortunately, odds and ends collect on a farm, and they’d had spare lumber enough to put together beds for both of their new residents. The rest of the furniture they’d mostly scrounged up from places, and some of it had been gifts from neighbors when they’d heard how much the Kent household had expanded.
"I swear, we might as well have not put a mirror in your room," Martha teased, standing in the bathroom doorway. Kara was fussing with her hair and the cotton clothing she found so soft and unfamiliar. Kryptonian fabrics were much slicker, and synthetic as a rule.
Kara shook her head at her. "This one is better for seeing my hair. And the lighting in here is also brighter."
Laughing softly, Martha joined her and pulled her shoulder-length hair out of the messy ponytail she’d put it in. "You have lovely hair. Wear it down." Putting her hands on the girl’s shoulders, she turned her gently to look at her. "We had this conversation, Kara. If you want to learn how to fit in with humans, you need to go out and be with people. And human people your age go to school." Kara nodded, still looking glum. Martha hugged her. "Besides," she said into Kara’s ear. "You need a friend."
Kara bit her lip as they leaned back out of the hug. "All right."
"Good!" Martha smiled, and led the way down to breakfast. "Jon will drive you since it’s the first day, but after today you’ll have to catch the bus." She set two hot plates down on the table, filled with eggs, bacon, toast and two pancakes each. Beneath the plates, the table had a new glossy shine, though she could still see the crack running through it. Kara and her husband dug in. "Do you remember what we told you about how you talk to people?"
"Yes," she answered around a mouthful of food. "I also remember how not to talk to people, after what happened with Mr. Barret."
Martha stifled a laugh. They’d taken Kara into town with them last weekend to help her acclimate to areas with more people, and while she’d mostly done well (Krypton not being completely alien, it seemed), she’d called Mr. Barret, one of the grumpiest, most proper men in town by his first name, and then she’d caught a 50-lb bag of seed he dropped, and he’d yelled at her till he turned red. Since he did this to any teenager who happened to talk to him, the Kents took it in stride, though it devastated Kara. Krypton was apparently stricter when it came to class and rank regulation.
"Keep your powers under control," Jonathan reminded her without looking up from his toast. Martha nodded in solemn agreement.
Kara looked a little shaky about that, but nodded anyway. "I’ll try."
Martha saw them to the door, watched as they climbed into the battered Ford and backed down to the road. For better or worse, this was her home now. Two children, the sweetest baby Martha had ever seen and a confused teenage girl, both under their care. Clark she loved with all her heart. He was their son. Kara was growing on her, and after she showed them such trust with her powers, they could not abandon her. She might yet be a daughter, though Martha was unsure they could forge that bond before Kara grew up and became too restless to stay.
Two children, entrusted by God to their care. Two aliens, who must learn what it was to be human, to make Earth their home, because their own world and people were gone. Martha sucked in a breath, terrified for a moment by the task ahead of her.
Then Clark’s throaty wail came down the stairs. Alien or not, he was their son. This was his home, his and his cousin’s.
Letting the door close behind her, Martha made her way up the stairs, smiling.
Title: A Brave New World
Fandom: DC comics
Series: House of El
Pairing/Characters: gen; Martha, Jonathan and Clark Kent, Kara Zor-El
Rating: G
Continuity: Right after a certain ship crashed outside Smallville, Kansas
Summary: AU. Kara lands at the same time Kal does.
Disclaimer: DC owns them, I just write when plot bunnies gnaw on my leg and refuse to let go.
Author's Notes: Chronologically, this is the first in the series.
Word Count: 4,816
Clark smiled up at her and giggled baby giggles when she tickled him. He was a sweet child, even-tempered for an infant and constantly happy. Martha doted on him, carried him around and didn’t mind at all the money they’d spent on food and supplies, though the chances they’d get to keep him were low. She sat in the kitchen, cleaning and talking to him, while Jonathan tinkered with the television in the other room. Night-dark fields outside the kitchen window were smoothed with the warm glow from the yellow overhead light.
Martha knew naming the child was a silly thing to do, if they didn’t want to get attached-but oh, she did want to get attached. Besides, he was a living person, they couldn’t just call him ‘the baby’. Names were important. Little Clark laughed every time she picked him up. Jonathan, who was a harder soul to understand and called "cold" by many of those he’d gone to school with, did not frighten the child; rather, they’d seemed to develop something of a soothing rapport. Clark calmed easily in Jonathan’s arms, wriggled less and cuddled more.
In less than a week-in less than a minute, if Martha were honest with herself-she and Jonathan fell in love with Clark, and it seemed like he returned the sentiment, as much as any baby could.
The farm was far out from anywhere, and neither of them heard a car approach, so it was something of a shock when they heard a knock at the front door.
Picking up the baby, Martha moved to the kitchen door. "Jonathan?" she asked, as her husband looked out the peephole. "Who is it?"
Jonathan gave her a confused look. "I don’t rightly know."
Opening the door, Martha found herself looking at a teenage girl, skinny with wide, worried blue eyes. She saw those eyes lock on Clark and knew-knew-why the girl was here. Those same blue eyes, almost unearthly blue, stared up at Martha from Clark’s face.
"Can we help you, miss?" Jonathan asked the girl.
She looked startled, then her face crumpled as through she were in pain. She bit her lip, then grasped Jonathan’s arm-his eyebrows went right up into his hairline-and said something half-panicked in a liquid, foreign tongue.
Jonathan gently pried her hands off his arm, then held his hands up in a placating gesture. The girl went quiet, but Martha could see her eyes were still locked on the baby in her arms. Martha resisted the urge to pull Clark closer, to turn her back on this girl and hide the baby from her sight.
"Now, girl, I don’t understand one word you’re saying, but I do understand you need help." He looked at her for another moment, then stood back and gestured to invite her inside. She hesitantly walked forward, every step she took toward Clark.
Jonathan closed the door quietly. Martha saw him turn and take in the situation, but she watched the girl-who was watching Clark. Jonathan cleared his throat, and the girl turned to look at him.
"I got no idea what language you speak, but-" he pointed at his own chest. "Jon." Jonathan caught her eyes, nodded once, then repeated himself. "Jon."
The girl smiled like the sun coming up. She pointed at her own chest. "Kara Zor-El."
"Kara." Martha felt the name in her mouth. Simple, somewhat exotic. Kara turned back to face Martha and the baby. "It’s a lovely name." Placing one hand on her chest, she said, "Martha."
Kara smiled again, then before Martha could stop her, she stepped over and placed one hand on little Clark’s arm. "Kal-El," she said.
Martha looked over her shoulder to meet Jonathan’s eyes and saw her own pain reflected back. Kara kept stroking Clar-Kal-El’s arm.
*
Kara Zor-El-and where did a name like Zor-El come from, anyway?-spoke no English at all, though she did manage to communicate that she was not, in fact, Clark’s mother, but another relative whose charge he had been placed in. She also confirmed, without speaking one intelligible word, the suspicions Martha and Jonathan harbored from the beginning. Despite their appearance, neither she nor the infant were human. They came, to paraphrase the old radio shows Martha grew up on, from a distant star.
Alien or not, they couldn’t just let the girl go out on her own, and they especially couldn’t let her be the lone, young and inexperienced guardian of a baby.
When Jonathan finally communicated the question "How did you get here?" with ‘here’ specified as ‘the farm’ rather than ‘Earth’, Martha was upstairs putting Clark to bed. When she returned, there was no one on the first floor and the front door was open.
Pulling the screen open and stepping out onto the porch, Martha walked to her husband’s side and wrapped his hand in hers. Sitting in their driveway, in front of the battered green Ford truck Jonathan drove into town once a week, was a spaceship.
With sinuous curves, crystalline lines and landing gear rather than legs, all of a vaguely off-putting design, there was no doubt in Martha’s mind what it was. The wings on either side, the only really recognizable part of the ship, apparently let it travel through atmosphere as easily as space. Her other hand unconsciously went to her mouth. Kara stood petting the ship as though there were nothing special about it. Possibly, the calm part of Martha’s mind considered, this was true.
Jonathan squeezed Martha’s hand once, and then as she watched, his practical nature reasserted itself. His home was harboring two aliens-they hadn’t even discussed whether the two should stay the night, there was no question-better not let the neighbors find out. Jonathan let her go and joined Kara in front of the ship, gesturing first to it and then to their barn. It took several variations, but at last Kara seemed to understand what Jonathan was about. He nodded at her, and went over to the barn, opening the doors. Kara touched the side of the ship, and a door grew. When she entered, the walls of the ship regrew so that Martha would never guess there had been a door there if she had not seen it herself.
Once the barn doors were open, the ship lit up, revealing something like the structure of a crystal in the outer shell, and noiselessly it moved the twenty feet or so into the barn. Inside the barn, the ship powered down, though it was still glowing faintly. Its glow lit up another object, one Martha and Jonathan put in the barn a week ago. Clark’s much smaller ship glowed in reaction to being near Kara’s. When the light of Kara’s ship went out, so did the fainter light from Clark’s.
Kara emerged the same way she entered, and Jonathan closed the barn doors behind her.Never know what’s behind closed doors, Martha thought, and nearly giggled with nerves. Somehow, she and her husband ended up playing host to the first travelers from outer space.
Martha opened the door for Kara and Jonathan when they returned to the house.
*
Kara could not seem to get enough of lying out in the sun. She followed Martha’s direction, helping her collect eggs and milk in the morning. She loved cooking, though she made more mess than any man Martha had ever seen in a kitchen. It didn’t matter, with Kara, because she helped clean everything up with the same air of cheerfulness that had made the mess.
The sun, though-despite her fair hair, Kara did not seem to burn, or even tan overly, and neither Martha nor Jonathan could convince her to come inside during the hottest part of the day. Martha put her foot down when the girl tried to bring Clark-Kal-El was too awkward in Martha’s mouth, though Kara never called him anything else-outside. It was the only argument they’d had. Kara had stomped her foot and put her hands on her hips (Jonathan smiled; all women everywhere, no matter the species, had that look and attitude), and Martha met her eyes and shook her head. Finally, Kara threw up her hands and went outside alone.
The other thing Kara took great joy in was learning English, and she did so at a prodigious rate. They spent that first night in silence, gestures the quickest way to communicate, but the next morning, Kara was up bright and early and wanted to know the names of everything.
"Nouns first, I suppose," Martha commented to Jon over breakfast. He nodded over his eggs before heading out to work. Kara followed them both around, pointing at things and repeated the English words-which looked as hard for her to say as that liquid language might be for Martha-until Jonathan or Martha nodded that she’d gotten them right. And she never seemed to forget.
"Crystal," she told them, two weeks after arriving. She held up a small, white crystal that hung on a thong around her neck. "Container. Helps . . . remember? Learn?"
Martha shook her head. Some things about Kara and her culture, Kryptonian culture, were still beyond their side of the language barrier.
It took most of the first week before Kara would let Clark out of her sight for very long. Martha understood; the infant had been entrusted to her care. They still hadn’t discovered why, yet. Why would a species as advanced as the Kryptonians send a teenage girl-and she obviously was a teenage girl, though Martha had considered that humans and Kryptonians might look different at different ages-to look after a baby? It made no sense. Where were their parents, the rest of their family?
Sometimes, Martha wished she knew. Others, she hoped against hope she would never find out, because then . . . more likely than not, someone would come to take Clark away. Not yet a month, but she already couldn’t stand to lose him. Neither could Jonathan, she knew.
As for the State and the two children from nowhere who had somehow ended up in their charge-
Martha heard a car pull into the driveway and clipped the last piece of wash to the clothesline before scooping Clark up and heading around to the front of the house. She smiled at Kara and said, "Keep going." She made a circling motion with one hand and Kara smiled and continued to hang up the wash.
"Keep going," the girl whispered under her breath. "Continue." Garbled sound, probably muttered Kryptonian. "Continue to hang up clothes."
Martha turned the corner of the house and smiled at the Sheriff. "Sheriff Davis, so nice to see you!"
The sun-browned man smiled back and tipped his hat. "A pleasure to see you too, ma’am."
Martha headed up onto the porch and Sheriff Davis followed her. "Please, come inside. Would you like some lemonade?"
They went into the kitchen and the Sheriff sat down at the table. "Thank you, ma’am. It sure is hot out there this July; August is going to melt the roads and wilt the corn."
"I keep telling Jonathan to wear sunscreen, but you know old farmers." Martha winked at the Sheriff, handing him his glass and setting Clark down on the floor. "Now, what brings you all the way out here on such a hot day?"
Sheriff Davis leaned back and sipped his lemonade, taking in the house-a little worn but in good repair-the smiling, crawling baby, and the girl hanging the wash out back and singing something he couldn’t understand. Martha waited. She knew why the Sheriff was here, but just because someone might be here to give her bad news was no excuse for bad manners.
"Well, I am in something of a pickle, Martha." He leaned forward, setting his glass down on the table. "You called in, right and proper, when you found the baby, so I have no quarrel with that. People do crazy things, and I would believe some mother leaving her kid in a field out here. If that were the end of it, nobody would have any problem letting you keep him, if you were willing."
Martha nodded, one eye on Clark. It was amazing how fast he was.
"The problem, ma’am, is the girl. You say she speaks no English at all?"
"Not when she showed up here, no. We’ve been teaching her," Martha confirmed.
The Sheriff nodded. "And you say also that she is somehow related to the baby?"
"Kara told us she isn’t his mother, but some other relative." Martha laughed a little. "She doesn’t have enough English just yet to tell us which."
"She is, what, fifteen, sixteen? She can’t be older; doesn’t look it." He nodded again. "Girls her age with no home usually end up in foster care somewhere, usually a city or suburb. Smallville doesn’t have the support structure to take care of a case like hers. She needs a social worker who can find someone who speaks her language, and then they’ll shuffle her off. Maybe her little cousin too, since they’re family and the State don’t hold with separating families anymore."
Martha felt a chill go down her spine despite the summer heat. Lose Clark because he still had family? Lose them both because of a policy? She held back tears, and also a bit of a laugh. They wouldn’t find anyone who spoke Kara’s language.
"I . . . think my husband needs to hear this, too."
Sheriff Davis nodded, and Martha stuck her head out the kitchen window, waving to catch Kara’s eye. The girl looked up attentively. "Jonathan!" Martha called, pointing out into the field where she knew he’d gone. "Go get Jon, please!"
Kara stared at her a moment, then pointed the same direction. "I get Jon?"
"Yes!"
She nodded, hung up the last shirt, and then trotted out into the field.
Martha brought her head back inside and smiled at the Sheriff. He sipped his lemonade, then jumped. Clark had grabbed onto his leg. Martha and the Sheriff shared a laugh, and he reached down and picked the baby up. "Well, you are a handsome fella, aren’t you? Big." He looked up at Martha, bouncing Clark gently on his knee. "Do you know how old he is?"
She shook her head. "No, though we guessed. Less than a year, more than two months."
He nodded as the screen door screamed open, and Jonathan and Kara joined them in the kitchen. Martha rose and got them lemonade, topping off the Sheriff’s glass while she was up. She was too nervous herself.
"Afternoon, Sheriff Davis."
"Hello, Jonathan. Your wife and I were just discussing what’s to become of these two lovely kids." The Sheriff inclined his head toward Kara, who was staring at him. "I have to ask, though it’s pretty obvious. Do you want to have guardianship of these two? And-pardon my bluntness, but it’s relevant-can you afford to?"
Martha met Jonathan’s eyes across the table. She loved Clark, wanted Clark, and they couldn’t very well let Kara go off into the human world by herself, all unknowing. Jonathan closed his eyes for a minute, then opened them and leaned forward.
"I think we can manage, Todd." Jonathan looked from Kara to the Sheriff and back. Martha felt the dynamics of the table shift when Jonathan used the Sheriff’s first name. "How old do you think she is?"
"Well, I was saying to Martha earlier that she looked about sixteen," he replied.
Jonathan nodded. "Sixteen-that’s old enough to quit high school. To leave home and get your own job."
"That’s very true, Jon. You think that’s what she did?"
"I do."
Sheriff Todd Davis leaned back in his chair a moment, surveying the scene. Kara looked at home, worried about the stranger. Martha was about ready to tear the tyke from his hands, already his mamma. And Jonathan was a good, honest man, who would make a good father. These were good people.
"I reckon that clears everything up, then. Kara Sorrel is a legal adult, and no concern of the State, and since she is unfit to care for the baby Clark, he ought to stay here with you folks. Now, seeing as Kara’s blood family, she can see Clark Kent as often as she likes."
Martha felt a weight lift off her chest. She could breathe again, and she smiled in relief and thanks at the Sheriff when he handed Clark back to her.
He tipped his hat. "Thank you folks very much for your time. I’ll send the paperwork over in a couple of days. The lemonade was wonderful."
The three sat at the kitchen table, Clark in Martha’s arms, until they heard the noisy old police car start up and head down the driveway. Martha found she couldn’t stop smiling. Reaching out, she took Kara’s hand in hers and laughed, looking at Jonathan, who wore a small smile. They were safe. For now-for as long as they could-they were all safe.
*
Martha and Jonathan needed the barn back. Hiding the spaceships was all well and good, but the barn had a purpose, and now that they’d straightened everything out with the Sheriff, no one was likely to come wandering by. Martha thought nothing of it when Kara volunteered to move both spaceships.
With Clark in a playpen nearby, Jonathan and Martha moved feedbags and other odds and ends into the barn while Kara again powered up her spaceship. This time when she came out, she was carrying a glowing white crystal the size of her palm. The ship doors closed, and then the ship itself backed out of the barn and vanished from sight. Astonished, Martha watched the corn stalks wave in a line from the wind of the invisible ship, then go still again.
"Kara, honey?" Martha asked, still staring. "What did you do with the ship?"
She grinned. "Sent south. Far South. Where I land."
"Where I landed," Martha corrected absently. "Will it be safe there?"
"Yes."
Martha longed to ask more, but Kara’s English still wasn’t up to complex questions. Shaking her head, she went back to helping her husband.
A moment later, though, the usually unperturbable Jonathan started and dropped the bag he was carrying. Martha turned to see what he was looking at and her eyes widened.
"Merciful Lord, Kara! That must weigh a ton!"
Kara jumped; Martha and Jonathan were unused to raising their voices, and knew they might frighten her if they did, so the sudden exclamation must have scared her. She sped back a few steps, feet moving too fast to see, and nearly dropped Clark’s ship. Unthinkingly, she caught it with just one hand.
"I-I-" she stuttered, then let the ship fall and raced out of sight.
Martha shared a startled look with Jonathan. "Was she-was she blurry, when she ran?"
He nodded. "I don’t think she’s told us everything."
Martha sighed. "No, I don’t think she has. Poor girl, all alone here, her only kin a tiny baby. And we scared her."
"No use chasing her."
Martha hefted her load again and agreed. "Not since she can run so fast. Oh, I know she’ll come back, but I hope she doesn’t stay away too long. She could get into such trouble."
They moved things into the barn, not disturbing Clark’s spaceship (which had taken every bit of strength Jonathan and Martha could muster to shove up an incline into the bed of the truck) and fretting about their other charge. Martha left the other chores to Jonathan and took care of Clark, bringing everything inside and putting him down for a nap.
She had just set out dinner-three plates, just in case-when a warm wind blew open the front door, and Kara was suddenly standing in the kitchen doorway, looking skittish.
Martha felt her heart contract. How badly had they scared her without meaning to? "Come eat," she said gently. Slowly, looking from one to the other, to Clark in his high chair, Kara joined them.
They ate dinner in near-silence, not unusual from Jonathan but very unusual from Kara. Martha concentrated on Clark and eating her own food so as to let Kara relax back into their home.
Finally, as Martha was clearing the plates away, Jonathan leaned back in his chair. "You ran pretty fast out there today, Kara."
She looked down at her feet. "I-yes."
"All Kryptonians that fast?"
Martha turned away from the dishwashing when she heard a soft sob. Tears ran down Kara’s face, and Martha immediately dried her hands and knelt next to the girl, one arm wrapped around her shoulders. "Oh, honey, what’s wrong? Talk to us, please, if you can. We didn’t mean to frighten you, you just startled us, that’s all. Kara, honey, please."
Kara took a deep breath and visibly tried to calm herself down. Martha squeezed her shoulders in encouragement.
"I-Krypton. No-more." Martha waited, trying to puzzle that out. Kara stared at her, blue eyes begging that the woman understand. Then she pounded her hands on the table, and with a loud CRRK, the surface of the table cracked. Kara snatched her hands away from the table to her mouth.
"It’s okay, Kara, don’t worry about it. It’ll be okay. Talk to us, please, honey." Martha ran one arm up and down the girl’s back, trying to be soothing.
Kara collected herself as much as she could and tried again. "Krypton-gone. No more Kryptonians. I and Kal-El sent here."
There was a moment after Kara finished speaking when Martha didn’t understand. Kara hung her head and cried, silently.
The realization hit her like a freight train. They were all dead, Kara and Clark’s family, their entire race. Some disaster forced their family to send them into space, into the arms of strangers, so they could live. Kara to take care of Clark because there was no one else.
"Oh, you poor thing!" Martha reached around and hugged Kara, let her cry herself out on her shoulder. Martha heard Jonathan rise from his seat and put a hand on Kara’s shaking back. They remained that way until Kara pulled back, her eyes wet and her blond hair plastered to her face with sweat. Martha couldn’t bring herself to smile, but she pushed Kara’s hair back anyway.
Kara took a deep breath. "Is more. I and Kal-El sent here for-because?-for sun."
"You were sent to Earth because our sun is the right kind?" Martha clarified.
Kara nodded. "Krypton sun red. Yellow sun means . . ." she trailed off, her frustration with her lack of faculty with English evident.
It was Jonathan who made the connection. "The yellow sun gives you powers. Makes you strong, fast."
"Red sun, Kryptonian like human. Yellow sun . . . more." She swallowed, and Martha watched her meet Jonathan’s eyes. "Not know how much more."
Martha hugged the girl to her again, then reached out and grasped her husband’s hand in her own. Aliens with unknown, formidable superpowers.
Jonathan squeezed her hand, and Martha remembered. Children, alone and probably frightened. Their son. She could never forget again.
Martha pulled back from Kara and kissed her on the forehead. "All right. Show us what you can do. We’ll help you. And-Kara." Martha shook her, just a little. "You have family here, now, too."
Watery blue eyes closed, and the tension drifted out of Kara’s body. God, she was so young. Martha stroked her hair.
"Yes," Kara agreed. Opening her eyes, she stood. "Thank you."
*
"Are you sure I should be going to school already, Martha?" Kara called down the hall. Martha sighed. That girl-once she’d grasped English, many other concepts translated quickly. Up to and including how much she had learned before she’d been put into that spaceship and shot away from dying Krypton.
Putting Clark back into his crib, Martha cooed at him one more time, then slipped out of the room and went for the bathroom. They had remade the guest bedroom into Clark’s nursery, so Martha spent most of the two weeks after affirming that Kara was going to stay with them cleaning her sewing room out so they could make it into her bedroom. Fortunately, odds and ends collect on a farm, and they’d had spare lumber enough to put together beds for both of their new residents. The rest of the furniture they’d mostly scrounged up from places, and some of it had been gifts from neighbors when they’d heard how much the Kent household had expanded.
"I swear, we might as well have not put a mirror in your room," Martha teased, standing in the bathroom doorway. Kara was fussing with her hair and the cotton clothing she found so soft and unfamiliar. Kryptonian fabrics were much slicker, and synthetic as a rule.
Kara shook her head at her. "This one is better for seeing my hair. And the lighting in here is also brighter."
Laughing softly, Martha joined her and pulled her shoulder-length hair out of the messy ponytail she’d put it in. "You have lovely hair. Wear it down." Putting her hands on the girl’s shoulders, she turned her gently to look at her. "We had this conversation, Kara. If you want to learn how to fit in with humans, you need to go out and be with people. And human people your age go to school." Kara nodded, still looking glum. Martha hugged her. "Besides," she said into Kara’s ear. "You need a friend."
Kara bit her lip as they leaned back out of the hug. "All right."
"Good!" Martha smiled, and led the way down to breakfast. "Jon will drive you since it’s the first day, but after today you’ll have to catch the bus." She set two hot plates down on the table, filled with eggs, bacon, toast and two pancakes each. Beneath the plates, the table had a new glossy shine, though she could still see the crack running through it. Kara and her husband dug in. "Do you remember what we told you about how you talk to people?"
"Yes," she answered around a mouthful of food. "I also remember how not to talk to people, after what happened with Mr. Barret."
Martha stifled a laugh. They’d taken Kara into town with them last weekend to help her acclimate to areas with more people, and while she’d mostly done well (Krypton not being completely alien, it seemed), she’d called Mr. Barret, one of the grumpiest, most proper men in town by his first name, and then she’d caught a 50-lb bag of seed he dropped, and he’d yelled at her till he turned red. Since he did this to any teenager who happened to talk to him, the Kents took it in stride, though it devastated Kara. Krypton was apparently stricter when it came to class and rank regulation.
"Keep your powers under control," Jonathan reminded her without looking up from his toast. Martha nodded in solemn agreement.
Kara looked a little shaky about that, but nodded anyway. "I’ll try."
Martha saw them to the door, watched as they climbed into the battered Ford and backed down to the road. For better or worse, this was her home now. Two children, the sweetest baby Martha had ever seen and a confused teenage girl, both under their care. Clark she loved with all her heart. He was their son. Kara was growing on her, and after she showed them such trust with her powers, they could not abandon her. She might yet be a daughter, though Martha was unsure they could forge that bond before Kara grew up and became too restless to stay.
Two children, entrusted by God to their care. Two aliens, who must learn what it was to be human, to make Earth their home, because their own world and people were gone. Martha sucked in a breath, terrified for a moment by the task ahead of her.
Then Clark’s throaty wail came down the stairs. Alien or not, he was their son. This was his home, his and his cousin’s.
Letting the door close behind her, Martha made her way up the stairs, smiling.