trajectory CHAPTER SEVEN: INNER PIECE

Martha Kent looked at her arms. They hung limply from her drooping shoulders, resting on either side of her lap where they'd fallen after the shock of Callen's flight propelled her to the living room couch. She collapsed there, a heap of abandoned maternal instinct, and began to wonder if she could draw the strength to move again while contemplating the renewed emptiness of her arms. She'd reached for Callen. He needed her - she knew he did - just as he did the day he'd been snatched from view beside the overturned truck, but this time he'd snatched himself from her grasp.

The Unsinkable Martha Kent, some had begun to call her. Still warm and perseverant after all the trials that life had handed her, still keeping her chin up and hoping for the best. Even when she could do nothing more than tread water, she managed.

Her arms were tired now. Tired of treading water. Tired of reaching. Tired of fighting to hold on to things that couldn't be held even though she knew that she was meant to.

What am I missing now? Why am I always missing something?

Jonathan looked down at his wife. So long denied, she was. So patient. So hopeful. So ready. She'd been rehearsing for the role of motherhood for a long as she could remember, and it seemed as if she'd never get to take the stage.

Martha's hands were resting beside her knees, upturned and empty. Jonathan sank beside her and took them both, trying to fill them with reassurance, though he knew it was something else she longed to feel. It isn't fair, he thought.

"It isn't fair at all," Martha choked, her voice an echo of Jonathan's own silence. So many years together had given them deep understanding of one another. Martha turned to her husband with tears streaming over her ashen expression. "This is all we've been waiting for, every day, every minute. Why? Why do other people have child after child and take them for granted, and we have to chase this same dream over and over again? Why do we keep praying and waiting, only to lose again? Why did Callen come here, why now?"

Jonathan swallowed and tried to assemble an answer to even one of the questions that bled through Martha's tears, unaware that Callen had slipped back into the room just in time to hear Martha ask why he'd come back to them.

Why did Callen come here, why now?

The sound of tears didn't soften the edge of the words. Not to Callen's ears. He thought he'd explained why he was there. They don't want me here, not now. Confusion overtook his sense of logic, and his fear of being unwelcome outweighed the acceptance he'd been shown. He stepped back to the door. He'd become so adept at moving stealthily in and out of rooms, he was seldom noticed.

However, he'd never tried to move stealthily away from his mother's intuition.

"Callen?" Martha suddenly found the strength to stand and turn to see Callen with one foot out the door. "No! Callen, don't leave again, don't go. Stay, come back, please." She took a step toward him and - for the last time, she prayed - reached out an empty arm. "Please?"

The last word stood alone, imploring, lonely, desperate - things that Callen understood. "You… you do want me here?"

Martha burst into tears and crossed the room to him, embracing him forcefully in refusal to allow him the chance to leave again. She could find no words to better express how deeply she and Jonathan wanted him to be there. It wasn't his first embrace from Martha, but it was more in earnest and it almost frightened him. He tried to loosen her grip at least enough to step back and see her face. Her eyes.

"No Callen please, please don't try to go," Martha begged as Callen twisted. "I don't understand what's going on here or why you seem to be different, but you need to stay. You belong here, you belong with us, you just can't go again. You can't." Now it was Martha who needed to meet his eyes. "I…" she turned to Jonathan and back to Callen. "We love you."

Callen went rigid. He no longer fought Martha's encircling arms. She didn't yet know that if he'd truly wanted to escape from her, he could have without feeling her resistance. She didn't know that he longed to feel the warmth of family, to have Christmas dinners and birthdays and laughter. She didn't know that during the moments while she was on the couch wondering if her arms would always be empty, Callen had run halfway back to Nebraska wondering how he could live for fourteen years not knowing that his own arms and legs and back were nothing like anyone else's. She didn't know that he didn't expect to be wanted anywhere. She didn't know that he'd never heard "love" out loud.

She didn't know that her love would make him cry.

The boy had uncommon physical strength, that much had become clear, but no person's strength is a match for his own heart when the weight of his emotions gathers within it. Callen, still in Martha's arms, suddenly clutched her by the shoulders and buried his face against her. They sank together to the floor, mother and son, and Jonathan knelt and clasped his own arms around them both. The joy and relief that filled all three hearts was palpable, but immeasurable. There were questions - so many, many questions - but none that compared to this true reunion.

"So," Callen sputtered after what seemed like an hour's tearful celebration, "I really can live here?"

Martha's tears flowed directly into her smile. "Oh, oh yes, you will absolutely live here!" she cried. She took Jonathan's hand. "This is your home now, Callen. This is your family." Her grin could not be suppressed, not even when Jonathan kissed her, and she could only laugh when Callen used his sleeve to wipe his nose. They were a jumbled teary mess on the floor, the three of them, but they were a family.

They always had been.