Unexpected by Oparu
Author's Chapter Notes: Betaed by Shannyfish and Trialia.
The city starts to fail. Jack comforts Elizabeth. John gives a flying lesson.
The city starts to fail. Jack comforts Elizabeth. John gives a flying lesson.
The alarm rang through their quarters, bitterly driving away sleep. John felt Elizabeth sit up next to him in bed as he crawled out of his side. Reaching for his commlink and his boots simultaneously, the first thing he heard was Chuck's voice.
"There's been an accident," Chuck reported with nervous excitement. "Support girders failed along the southeastern pier. Damage control teams are responding but it's a mess down there."
"We'll be up to control in a few minutes," Elizabeth's voice cut into his link and John let himself yawn. His watch blinked the hour at oh-four-twenty-one, and he groaned as he searched for his pants. They were crumpled on the floor and one leg was inside out. Cursing as he tried to pull them on, he fixed them in the dark and pulled them on over his naked skin.
Elizabeth yanked on his black t-shirt over her blue lace bra. Reaching for the light on the wall, she waved her hand over the switch and listened as John fussed with his belt.
"That was my shirt," he mumbled as he pulled a clean one out of the drawer.
"It was closer," she replied as she caught his arm, flattening his bed hair and watching him try to rub sleep from his eyes. "I like it," she admitted when he started to wake up.
"I only have three shirts," John protested as he finished tying his boots. "If you take one I'll only have two."
"I'll buy you one next time I'm off world," Elizabeth teased as they stumbled out of their quarters. "If you ever let me go off world," she finished under her breath.
"I let you go off world," he muttered back in a yawn as they headed for control. "On safe planets that I've checked out first," John added firmly as he joined Lorne and Zelenka on their way up the stairs.
"Support girders?" Elizabeth asked Zelenka.
Clutching his coffee cup as he nodded, Zelenka hurried up the steps ahead of them. "When we lost the end of the south pier it threw everything in that half of the city out of alignment," he called down over his shoulder. "We've been dragging the city through hyperspace, going in and out when something breaks...it was only a matter of time."
"We came out of hyperspace as soon as they failed," Rodney reported from behind his console. "The city's unbalanced, we have resonance damage all over the south side." He rubbed bloodshot eyes and accepted his cup of coffee from Walter. "It's going to take some time to fix," he sighed as Zelenka joined him at the science console. "Maybe a lot."
"Shields are up," Lorne reported from the tactical station. "But we're dead in the water; we're just drifting."
Elizabeth looked over the faces of her team. John took a cup of coffee from a tray and stayed at her side. "Anyone drifting with us?"
"Just us lost sheep," Lorne replied ironically. "I'll start contacting the ships, get them up in the air in a perimeter, ma'am."
"Good," John nodded for her. "I'll head down to the chair room, see how much control we have left."
Elizabeth followed him to the stairs, taking the extra second to kiss his cheek. "Be safe," she warned softly.
He winked and yawned again over his cup. "You know me," he replied casually over his shoulder.
"That's why I worry," she finished to herself as she watched him leave. "All right, let's get this city flying again." Elizabeth went back to her team and listened to the Rodney and Zelenka argue over how the girders had failed. The force fields were preventing air loss. The civilians were safe in the city center, but Atlantis herself was suffering. She could feel it when she touched the railing to her office. The tiny vibrations were still there and even the inertial dampeners couldn't hide them.
She tightened her grip on the cold rail. "Rodney, Radek, how do we fix this?"
"The internal dampeners are working at maximum now," Rodney explained dismally as he clung to the end of his control panel. Atlantis had developed a limp and the great city sailed through space as if it were a black ocean. The roll the floor had developed was wreaking havoc on her people. Rodney still looked queasy, Radek was pale, and even Teal'c had admitted he'd been on more pleasant vessels. "But it's only going to get worse. If we stop long enough to find the new balance point of the city and rewrite the standards for the stabilizers we might, I emphasize might, be able to get it o feel like a calmer sea."
"It's still going to feel like a sailing ship?" John wondered with a tiny smile of amusement.
"You make any more pirate jokes about Carson taking us all to the treasures of the Ancients..." Rodney warned.
"I'd never," John finished dryly.
"...I'll kill you," Rodney finished as he glared at his friend.
"Doctor," Radek interrupted. "I suggest we start evacuating the non-essential personnel to the first friendly planet we can find. The city's in rough shape and it's only going to get worse."
Elizabeth lifted her head from her hands and tried not to think too much about the irony of the situation. "I'll start compiling a list," she decided softly as she stood to go, Chuck and Walter ambushed her.
"Doctor Weir, since you're awake, you should see this," Walter offered politely.
"It started this morning at oh-two hundred," Chuck explained with mild confusion. "M3F-117 dialed in and transmitted some kind of identification code."
"That code nearly deactivated the shield," Walter added as he pointed at the gate records. "Chuck figured out how to keep it up while collecting their codes. M4T-223 dialed next, then M9G-327. That planet actually sent a message back to us."
"They sent something in Ancient," Chuck read off the screen in front of him. "We found out Doctor Jackson was still awake and he was able to translate it."
Daniel leaned over the desk smiling in benign amusement. "They send congratulations to our council and their thanks that the city of light is once again protecting this galaxy."
The city of light?" Elizabeth asked softly as she rubbed her head. The morning had
already gotten off to a rocky start and it seemed it would only go downhill from there.
"Atlantis was known in ancient times as 'the City of Light resting upon the eternal sea'," Daniel explained dryly as he settled back into his chair. "It's an invention of folklore that the Ancients let stick."
"Tell her the weird part," Walter prodded from behind Daniel.
"Right," Daniel remembered as he straightened his glasses. "They'd like to send their tithes. M9G-327 is even promising to send an extra share of their crops out of gratitude and extends an invitation to visit their planet."
"The southern pier's a smoking wreck and we're being congratulated?" Elizabeth murmured grimly to the men in her office as she tried to think. "What are they trying to tithe?"
"Well, that was the interesting part," Daniel began as he handed over his computer and pointed to part of the database he'd been researching. "This city used to be supported by the outlying colonies because it lacks any real food producing resources of its own. In exchange for food and supplies, the city protected most of the planets in this galaxy. Some were Ancient colonies and some were ordinary worlds with developing cultures."
"I think we should accept it," Jack finally spoke from his corner of the room. Sitting up and resting his hands on his knees, he looked directly to Elizabeth. "We need the food, if they have it to spare we should accept it and send them a lovely thank you note."
John leaned on the doorway behind Chuck and startled when he suddenly recognized the designation M3G-927. That was Ceol, the planet where everything had started between him and Elizabeth and the planet under Mab's protection. He looked over Walter's shoulder and deeply into her eyes. It took her a moment to look up, but he saw she remembered as well. They'd meant to go back; to find out what had really happened to them and now it seemed they'd have the chance.
"McKay and Carter think the Asgard are our best bet when it comes to fixing the city," Jack reminded everyone as he stood up. "We should get everyone into the conference room and work something out where we get some food and get that pier fixed. The city's not going to stand for long against the Ori or any of our other mighty enemies long with a bleeding hole in its side."
Chuck and Walter got out of the general's way as he left Elizabeth's office. She thanked them quietly and kept Daniel's database entry in her hands as he left the office as well.
When it was just John, he slunk over and perched on the edge of her desk. "We have to go," he told her when she refused to look up from her computer. "We can find out what happened to us...what's happening to you now."
"We can't both just go off on some personal mission," Elizabeth argued, and sighed as she dropped the computer to her desk. "You're my second, I agreed to be governor of this city and we both have responsibilities."
"Lorne can handle it for awhile," John replied with a confident air. "Rodney's just fixing things anyway and Carter can make sure the repairs get done right." He reached for her forehead, rescuing a stray piece of hair and tucking it back. "We need to do this."
"The refugees come first, John," Elizabeth decided as she pushed herself up from the table. "I think all of them could use some time on solid ground with a sky over their heads. Let me get them settled, then we can talk about us."
He reached for her cheek, stroking the skin down towards her chin. "We can always wait, can't we?" he asked rhetorically knowing Elizabeth always put herself last. "So...that meeting?" John offered as he waved towards the door. "Might as well share your ideas with our governing council..."
"It's getting that way, isn't it?" Elizabeth muttered to him as they crossed the catwalk. "We used to just make decisions, now it takes a committee to do anything."
"Welcome back to civilization," John replied sardonically as he slipped his hand behind her back. Keeping hold of her comforted him; instead of moving out of reach she smiled at him and warmth crept through him.
Jack settled into his chair, reached for his computer and sighed heavily. "Why do I have to do these?" he groaned towards the bedroom and his wife.
"Because you're the only living Earth general, and effectively military commander of the free world," as she spoke a sock flew from the main room of their quarters and narrowly missed her head. Picking it up, Sam tossed it back at him as she finished; "You're like a god among mortals," she teased effortlessly. "I'd better get the highest rating."
"Are you kidding?" Jack called as he watched his balled-up sock roll along the floor of his now unstable living quarters. "'Carter' is the highest rating that exists in my book. Everyone works their asses off just to be considered as good as you."
"And that's how it should be," she decided for him as she moved his computer from his hands and dropped into his lap. Kissing him slowly, Sam started to chuckle as his hand slipped towards the top button of her blue jacket. "I have a meeting with McKay," she whispered in his ear as she moved the hand away.
"That can't possibly be more important than sex," Jack whined as he stared her down.
"If we skip it to have sex I'll be thinking about how to repair the south pier the whole time..." Sam trailed off as she nibbled her way up his neck, "...and 'Oh my God, the support girders,' just isn't the same."
"Get out of my sight woman," he pretended to snap irritably. "I'm changing my standards, Jackson's my favorite now."
Sam kissed his protesting mouth again and felt his lips quiet beneath hers. "I love you, Jack," she finished seriously.
"Carter, get your gorgeous, genius ass to your meeting so you can get it back to me," he lifted his tablet computer and eyed her over the screen. "Preferably naked," he amended as he returned to his reports.
"I'll see what I can do, sir," she said slipping from his grasp to the door. "Enjoy your evaluations."
"Oh I will," Jack muttered as the door shut. "That's why I wanted to be a general, mission reports just weren't enough paperwork for me," he finished his complaint to the empty room and reminded himself how earnestly Elizabeth had asked for his evaluations. It was all part of her grand struggle to keep their little world running in some kind of normalcy.
When the door opened a few moments later, Jack was momentarily convinced he'd lost all track of time and Sam was already back. Startled by who he saw when he finally looked up, his sarcastic comment died on his tongue. "You're not Carter," he said instead, feeling foolish as he gaped at his visitor.
"I saw her in the corridor," Elizabeth offered quietly, keeping her rushing emotions in check. "She was heading for McKay's lab."
There was something uncomfortably tight in the way she stood, and Jack set aside his computer when he realized she wasn't there for a quick question she could have asked him over the radio. He tapped the screen and sent his computer to sleep as he waited for her. When no explanation seemed to be forthcoming, Jack slid over to one side of the couch. "Would you like to sit?"
"I need you to tell me I'm not crazy," Elizabeth demanded suddenly, surprising both of them by the edge in her voice.
"I currently believe you aren't," Jack responded slowly as he leaned forward. "You can try to change my mind..."
"I hate this," she whispered to the floor by his feet.
"Hey, I hate the damn evaluations too but it wasn't my idea to bring them back..." Jack reached for her knee as he tried to reassure her. The muscle jumped under his hand as she startled back.
"I hate being pregnant," Elizabeth corrected him. Her hand went to her forehead and she rubbed angrily at one of her eyes before she looked at him. Jack had never seen her chin tremble before. "I hate being able to count the days I haven't thrown up in the last month on one hand. I hate feeling like I'm constantly doing something wrong and then hating myself for knowing that I most likely am."
The general rested his hands in his lap and waited for the break in the storm.
"I hate John when he says he loves me," she choked on the words, taking a shuddering breath to continue, "I hate the look on his face when he realized I loved him." Her right hand fluttered to her chest and became a fist over her heart. "I love him," she repeated through the hot tears she hadn't energy enough to stop in her eyes.
He just sat there for a moment, indecision gnawing nervously at his gut. "Come here," Jack reached for her shoulders and had her crushed to his chest before she had time to fight him. "Sara used to wake up in the middle of the night," he began to tell the back of her head softly as his hands rubbed across her back. "She'd wake up covered in sweat, terrified that we were going to be the worst parents in all recorded history of the world. For a long time she just lay there until she forced herself back to sleep," he admitted in a tone he rarely used. His voice ran into her ears and warmed her heart, like hot tea in her stomach on a cold day.
"I finally caught her in the second trimester," he smiled and kept talking as her head lifted slightly. "We stayed up all that night just talking about the stupid stuff," Jack shook his head at the memory; his hands coming to rest on her slight shoulders. "How Charlie was a lousy name if he was a boy, how I'd probably spoil her rotten if she was a girl, how I'd never be able to let any young man look at her if she grew up pretty, and eventually it hit us. Lying there in the dark, with our arms tight around each other, panicking..." he smiled when her eyebrow lifted in amusement, "...we remembered that we loved each other, and beneath all our worries we were so excited to be having that baby..."
In his chest, old wounds stung his heart and made the air in his lungs feel like lead. "Look," Jack started again when the silence had grown heavy and thick between them. "No one can tell you how to feel. Maybe being pregnant is the most horrible thing to ever happen to you," his hands whispered as he shuffled them nervously and continued, "No one would blame you. This isn't what you wanted, it lousy timing..."
"...Why is John so dammed calm?" she demanded when Jack ran out of excuses.
Jack laughed, bit it back because he knew it wasn't appropriate, but kept his smile. "It's a lot easier when you're the guy," he admitted apologetically. Something strange and wonderful is happening around you, not inside of you. I've had a few weird things inside of me, some of them even wanted to kill me, and I wouldn't trade a one of them to go through what you're going through."
Reaching hesitantly for her chin, Jack pulled back once before he decided she'd let him touch her face. "We're cowards," he began seriously, "give us guns and bombs and we're fine, give us a baby and we panic...that's why women have them."
"Women are braver?" she ventured with a hint of a smile.
"That and you look better with breasts," Jack cupped his hands over his chest and shook his head. "Much better," he tapped her nose and made her smile in surprise. "Did you talk to John?"
"He deserves the hysterics more than you do?" Elizabeth replied sardonically finding the strength to maintain her smile.
"Well...that and you need to be in this together," Jack reminded her as he pulled himself to his feet. "Do you want some water? I was going to hit the coffee, but that's kinda out of the question for you..."
"Thank you," Elizabeth murmured as she watched him pour coffee out of a thermos.
"Got this from the Genii, cost me a ball-point pen," he stopped with cup in his hand and looked down at it thoughtfully. "The guy I was trading claimed to have never seen one before. Funny how that works isn't it?" Jack asked rhetorically as he got her glass of water in his other hand and made his way back. "The Genii invent nuclear weapons but skip right over the ball-point."
"I don't think writing was as important to them," Elizabeth reminded him gently remembering how driven Genii society was. "It's different here in this galaxy. We've been protected on Earth, we've never been enslaved and even now we're still free."
"Maybe we should spend more time thinking about that instead of worrying how we're going to feed and clothe everyone next year," Jack's irony went straight to her heart, cutting through the resolve he hadn't meant to shatter.
"Are you and Sam sure you want to go back?" she changed the subject.
"We still have allies there, planets we promised to protect from the Ori," Jack reminded himself as he sipped lukewarm black coffee. "Sam and Rodney have a cloaking device that works pretty damn well. We'll be back before the city is," he promised as he raised his cup.
Water tasted sweet after the bitterness crying had left in her mouth. "I wish we weren't splitting our people," she admitted as she watched her fingers leave marks on the smooth metal in her hands. "Feels like everyone was just starting to get used to Atlantis..."
The lights dimmed momentarily and Jack caught himself reaching for her. "She needs some time in dry-dock before we blow out something important and can't get it fixed. Flying with a broken pier's playing havoc with the systems, at least that's what my wife tells me."
"Rodney and Radek agree with her," Elizabeth conceded with a sigh. "I suppose some of our refugees will find life easier on Ceol, where they have a sky over their heads and something solid under their feet."
"And there's an Ancient on this planet?" he asked uneasily. None of the Ancients he had met had ever been particularly helpful.
"Of a kind," was her guarded reply. John had been worried about choosing Ceol at the most recent meeting of the senior staff, so worried that he'd gotten quiet after the vote. "Rodney and the Daedalus did extensive tests of the planetary shielding system. We'll be safe from the Wraith and the Asurans."
"And you're going to be okay?" Jack asked finally as he set his empty coffee cup aside. "You know I'm more than willing to be the brunt of hysterical tears anytime you have them..."
Her lips pursed and for a moment they shared a smile.
"Sometimes you just need to say crazy things," Jack replied for her. "You never know, I might turn up on your doorstep someday."
"I'll keep a light on for you," Elizabeth promised softly as she stood. It took more time to balance her weight over her feet than it had weeks ago and she caught Jack's slow smile as he studied her slightly swollen waistline.
"You really are beautiful like that," he let the comment hang in the air as she started to blush. "It's a good look."
Her eyebrows met in the center of her forehead for a moment before she managed the slightest smile. "John would agree with you," she murmured as she went to the door. "I think you're crazy, but I've always thought you two were in the same place."
"We've successfully adapted Ancient cloaking technology to function on the Artemis," Sam began cheerfully. "It was actually easier than we thought it would be, being that Asuran technology is so close to what the Ancients were actually using."
Jack reached over and patted her hand. "Even if it wasn't hard, we're still impressed, Sam," he added with amusement. "So, the Artemis crew and I will run the recon mission to the Milky Way as quietly as we can. Major Lorne will take the skeleton crew on the city to meet with the Asgard."
"Hopefully they'll be able to do a bit more for us than just fix the city," Daniel injected optimistically. "After all, we've done a lot to help them."
"If by help you mean saving their little gray asses," Jack quipped as Elizabeth rapped the table lightly.
"How are the refugees adapting to the planet?" She steered them back on track.
"Two hundred of them have already left through the gate for Ceol," Catherine Lorne began as she stood neatly behind her son's chair. Crossing her arms over her chest, she swallowed before she finished. "As well as can be expected, most of them are simply relieved to be on land that isn't moving."
"We're getting the rest of them ready," the younger Lorne added.
"But," Sam interrupted weakly, gripping the table as she tried to get her eyes to focus on the wall behind Elizabeth, "we decided it was better to keep moving, instead of trying to send them all now."
"How long until we reach orbit?" Elizabeth turned that question to John, who sat easily in his chair. He was a little paler than usual, but he managed to smile at her.
"Autopilot's not working with the city in the shape it's in," he reported for the benefit of everyone around the table who didn't know. "We're working on a two hours on, eight off rotation. Carson's up now, and I'm next. General, you pulled the morning shift didn't you?"
Jack rescued a computer that was starting to slide off the table towards Sam's lap as the floor tilted. "Lucky me," he murmured with as much cheer as he could sarcastically summon.
"My team and Major Lorne's will continue to run search and reconnaissance operations with the Genii in search of Teyla," Cameron reported to change the subject from the swaying of the deck. He wasn't much for fishing and after the last week of rolling deck plates he wasn't sure if he'd ever want to set foot on a boat again.
Rodney reentered the room from the back door, sliding into his chair apologetically with his hand over his mouth. Space-sickness breaks were becoming a necessity. John, Jack and Evan were doing better than most after their years as pilots. Elizabeth couldn't tell if Teal'c was just better at controlling himself, or if he was just more stoic than she'd realized.
Ronon just wasn't bothered. She wasn't sure if she'd seen any kind of reaction from him since Carson's return without Teyla. Nothing he'd remembered had been able to help them locate Teyla. There were vague stories in Athosian legend about people taken by the Wraith but even the elders didn't remember them well enough to help. The Genii spy network was watching for her, but Ladon hadn't had much good news for her about anything lately.
"We're planning to launch the Dreadnought when we reach orbit," Rodney reported with a nervous sigh as he wondered if he'd be able to outlast his nausea.
"Any thoughts on a name?" Elizabeth glanced over the table towards the Dreadnought's new commander. He stared impassively back at her with a slight smile, which was more than welcome among the grim faces around her.
"It's positively bad luck to launch a vessel without one," Vala reminded all of them from the wall she leaned against behind Daniel. Elizabeth wasn't entirely sure how she managed to remain standing when everyone else was dealing with the their rolling stomachs, but the other woman had a point.
Most of the eyes around the table went to Jack, who shrugged and sat back defensively. "I'd just want to call her 'Marge'..." he trailed off sheepishly.
"Hera," Teal'c decided for them. "In keeping with the rest of the vessels. The largest one should be their queen."
"You're just saying that because we gave you the big ship," Jack muttered towards Teal'c as Daniel started to smirk.
"He has had the most space combat experience," Daniel pointed out innocently. "Years longer than the rest of us have been alive."
"Just rub it in," Jack continued to complain as he drummed his fingers on the laptop.
"Hera it is. All right, what else?" Elizabeth steered the meeting back on course, mentally adding more things to her never-ending list.
"I was a pirate for Halloween once," John started thoughtfully as he flopped onto the floor by the control chair. "Had the eye patch and everything."
"How old were you?" Carson asked with a half-smile. When he was in he chair he didn't feel the twisting of the deck beneath his feet, or notice that everything was dark on the left side of his vision. When he was Atlantis he felt almost whole, but even that escape was failing him. The city suffered, writhing beneath him as it limped towards Ceol. He'd never felt much of a connection to ships or mechanical things.
"Seven," John grinned sheepishly. "Got extra candy for being cute," he finished as he toyed with a loose thread on his sleeve. "Is it pulling to the left for you too?"
Carson shrugged slowly and opened an eye towards John. "A little, it's just reluctant, like a shy dog."
"Like 'em?" John wondered as he finally bit the string off with his teeth, sucking on it for a moment before he pulled it out of his mouth. "Dogs, I mean."
"Used to bring them home," Carson admitted nostalgically. "My mum used to threaten to stop feeding me if I gave all her good dinners to my mongrels." He smiled up towards the ceiling, thanking the unseen forces that had saved his mother yet again. "She never meant it though. You next?"
"Twenty hundred to midnight," he replied as he stood. John ran his hand through his hair and watched the chair go dark as Carson leaned forward.
"Who drew the late shift?" Carson wondered as he tried to catch his bearings. John's hand steadied him as his balance started to fail him. The chair was wearing them all down; constant shifts, every day for more than a week of travel. They pressed on, but John had already seen the wear start to take hold in the eyes of his friends. Major Lorne had taken extra rotations whenever Rodney or himself was too busy to take his turn at the helm, and his soft brown eyes were tired. Dark circles had formed beneath them and taken up residence.
"Lorne," he filled in as he forced himself to meet Carson's single good eye without blinking. "He's had it the last couple days, I'm going to have to come up with..."
"I'll take it tomorrow," Carson promised lightly with a smile that almost convinced John he was all right. "I've just been trying to help treat everyone's motion sickness; I'm sure Keller can handle it if I need to sleep in."
"How is that going?" John asked. Stretching his arms and legs before he sat down, he cleared his mind and started letting himself go.
"As well as you'd expect," the doctor muttered with mild frustration. "I remember stories from school, pilgrims crossing great oceans in search of a new home. Do you think this is something like that?"
"I can picture Rodney in a funny hat, can't you?" John asked in response as he settled into the chair.
"Don't you wonder what history's going to say about us?" Carson pressed on, hoping to get something serious out of his friend.
The colonel smirked in the chair. "I don't wonder," he admitted rakishly. "I intend to write it."
*~
The lights of the city dimmed after dark. It seemed almost foolish to keep doing it, honoring a cycle of day and night that meant nothing in the eternal darkness of space, but it was a comfort to watch the lights in the corridors grow brighter in the coming dawn. Even the darkness was comforting because it demanded nothing from her.
Elizabeth walked unseen through the corridor with one hand on the wall to steady herself. Her pregnancy induced nausea had been starting to fade when the city had inflicted her with the same space sickness that tortured everyone else. Doctor Keller was concerned for the welfare of all of her people, and she knew she'd have to make up her mind on when to evacuate. She was resisting until she talked to Carson. Simon and Keller were probably right, but she wanted to hear it from Carson. He was her chief surgeon and his disappearance had made his opinions all the more dear to her heart.
Everything was precious now; even Rodney's complaining in front of her in the line endless line for dinner had touched her because anyone could be taken from her at any moment. Teyla was gone, and Elizabeth couldn't shake the cold knot in the pit of her stomach that said she wasn't coming back. She'd felt it when they'd lost Ford; it was the same frigid despair that insisted she'd failed one of her own.
The chair room was awash with blue light that nearly blinded her after the darkness of the corridor. Elizabeth squinted at the dark form in the chair and waited as he slowly came into focus. John's eyes were closed; he nearly looked asleep. She walked softly, careful to keep him from sensing her presence. He was peaceful and she needed that from him. When her ability to keep smiling and leading the way towards the uncertain future waned, she had him.
Climbing carefully up onto the platform, her boot scuffed on the metal and his lips smiled. "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"
"It's cold in our bed," she complained childishly twirling a piece of her hair. "I don't know what it is, something's just not right..."
He chuckled and opened his eyes. Drinking in the outlines of her face and watching the blue light from the floor halo her curls, John remembered why he conjured her up when he was bored. "You're beautiful, Elizabeth," he announced matter-of-factly before he closed his eyes again.
Smirking and creeping up on him, she put her hands over his for a moment before she crept into his lap. John startled, nearly losing his connection to the chair as he struggled to adjust. Pulling her down against his chest, he removed his hands from the controls long enough to hold her. When her hands found his arm and his shoulder he moved his back and retook control of the ship. Somehow it was easier to hold the ship steady when he could feel the beat of her heart against his chest.
"This is better than bed?" he asked when he felt her sigh and give up the last of the tension in her body.
"No," she teased back lightly, taking comfort in feel of the stubble on his check against her forehead. "Bed would be more comfortable, but I've always been something of a masochist."
"You have," John agreed with half a sigh. "I should know that by now," he chided himself as he snuck a glance at her hand on his arm.
"Your ability to ignore what you should have learned by now is one of your more charming," Elizabeth explained, running her hand down to his wrist, "and more difficult character traits."
"I do pick up my socks," John reminded her as he flipped his hand over to squeeze hers. "I've kept our room as neat as I can. I don't think I need to remind you that it wasn't me who couldn't find my shirt this morning when the alarm went off..."
Groaning and hiding her annoyance in a yawn, Elizabeth tried to remember back to that morning. Her memories only blended with the day before in a haze of half-solved crises and lists of things still left to do. "Maybe if you hadn't thrown it away so vigorously...."
"...Maybe if you didn't tease me, I wouldn't have to remove your clothing so vigorously..." John interjected.
"I'm not sure how you qualify, 'John, I'm home' as an innuendo," Elizabeth interrupted back.
"When you make me do personnel evaluations, everything you say that isn't about them or aliens trying to kill us is going to be an innuendo," he explained patiently. "If you weren't so damned sexy..."
Laughing into his neck, Elizabeth started to kiss his cheek and stopped just above the skin. "Is that your answer to everything?"
"I'm debating it," John quipped and opened an eye to see her beaming down at him. "What do you think?"
"I think this is much better than bed," Elizabeth answered mysteriously rewarding him with the kiss on his cheek he'd been waiting for.
Leaning up to kiss her back severed his connection with the city when his mind temporarily forgot about anything larger than the desires of his exhausted body. Chuckling sheepishly as he interfaced with the chair again, John closed his eyes. "This is harder with you here," he pretended to complain.
"We all need challenges," she whispered as she nibbled his upper lip. "Especially colonels, I've heard it keeps you sharp."
"We're not going to get any sleep if you keep that up," he reminded her when she settled back into his arms. "And even Lorne will be fairly traumatized if he walks in on..."
"Me sitting on your lap?" she teased innocently. "I think the major's a little less of a prude."
"That's all this is," John wondered sardonically,"You sitting on my lap?"
"Until your shift ends," Elizabeth promised with a hint of a growl, "that's all it's going to be. Anyone could walk in here, John..."
"It's not really a secret," John replied with a chuckle. His hand found her hip and ran slowly up the side of her body as he slipped his hand over to the swell of the baby within her. "I think everyone knows you're pregnant now, even if Rodney hasn't told them, you are really starting to look..." he paused, picturing how far the curves of her body were still going to round outward, "...different."
"I just feel sick," Elizabeth complained realistically. Smoothing her hair back so it stayed out of his face, she buried her head closer. "I don't know if that counts as any different, it's been that way for weeks."
"Feeling sick isn't exactly different lately," he tried to concentrate on flying the city, but the warmth of Elizabeth against his chest was more important than the twisting feeling of the internal stabilizers. The city was sick and her ability to protect the fragile lives inside of her was failing. John wasn't sure it would even limp into orbit. Nausea brought his stomach to his throat and he wondered if that was what she had dealt with since she became pregnant. "I caught Rodney throwing up."
"He just doesn't have his sea legs..." Elizabeth murmured as she tightened her eyebrows in thought, "...space legs, yet."
"I think you had an advantage," he teased and wound his fingers into the fabric of the black t-shirt she'd stolen from him that morning. "More practice with nausea."
Her teeth grazed his ear and Elizabeth felt him shiver beneath her. "Whose fault would that be?" she purred to him.
"You seduced me," John replied indignantly snapping an eye open. "I've always been attracted to beautiful women, especially brunettes, and I was drunk. It's obvious you took advantage of me."
With her eyes twinkling as she stared down, Elizabeth run through the myriad ways she could punish him and finally decided to kiss his teasing mouth. The city shuddered around them as it nearly fell from hyperspace. John's lips went still against hers for a moment as he struggled to keep the city out of normal space. When he came back to himself he could hear her laughing.
"I bet I did seduce you," she decided imperiously. "You fell victim to my wicked ways and subsequently into my bed."
"That's right," he ran his hands up over her shoulders to cup her neck. "I'm the victim in all of this, your poor innocent plaything."
Still laughing as she twisted to straddle his lap, Elizabeth caught his hand and kissed it. "Is that an offer?" Dragging it down over her chest she let him rest his hand on bulge of her stomach. "You'll be my slave?"
"We've been together more than two months and I only now find out about your kinky side?" he pouted and tried to reconcile his mind between flying the city and the warmth of her belly beneath his hand.
Shrugging and watching his face break into a smile, she relaxed back down against him. "Maybe you never asked," she murmured as she wondered what he saw behind his closed eyes. "What are you looking at?" she asked finally.
"You," he admitted, half-teasing as he tried not to yawn. "I can 'see' you with the internal sensors, feel the movement of all the people through the city. Rodney and Radek are tweaking the stabilizers. Colonel Carter's getting ready to launch her vessel when we stop."
"You feel that now?" she pressed, intrigued by his explanation. "All of that?"
John's hand coaxed her head down against his chest, so all she heard was the beating of his heart and the slow rhythm of his breathing. In that quiet, she let him take her hands, bringing them with his to interface with the controls of the chair. The clear plastic-like material that gave way so easily when he touched it, resisted her touch for a moment, then she felt it - the tingling sensation of her mind expanding beyond her body.
"I don't know if you have enough of the gene," John was saying somewhere far away. "You might not be able...the city's a lot bigger than a jumper..."
Far away beneath her the ZPMs pulsed in sequence like three hearts beating power through the city. She felt it as if they were part of her, both drowning out and strengthening her own heart beat as her blood and the power flowed in unison. Her skin itched as if it was stretched to cover the whole city. It ached as if she'd been beaten; the kind of sore, slowly healing ache that itched and tingled. Through all of that there was still John, his warm, solid body pressed against her face, the smell of musk and sweat from too many days without a shower.
Atlantis could only smell the chill of space, the cool eternity that stretched on forever past the limits of even the advanced sensors of the city. It reminded her of snow; the new snow falling on the trees around the creek by her house. When she'd been a child and the world was safe and small, the snow had been beautiful, flying through the air like falling stars in the night.
Space was cold against her back, as if it were made of metal. Her hands flexed against his and with the controls. The city was all around her; warm, alive and seemingly unaware of her existence. John was there with her, both beside and within her as if he, like her, was just a tiny part of the greater whole. He was moving things, changing the movement of other parts, guiding the city as it sheltered them. She didn't have the strength; Elizabeth was an observer, not yet able to interact.
John released her, guiding her out of the inner workings of the city. Trembling as she slipped back into her own small body, Elizabeth wondered if she would have been able to make it back on her own. Pulling her hands up, she tucked them around his chest. "We're so small," she whispered to his body.
"Sometimes I wonder if it's like that fo
r..." he paused and searched for the words he wanted to use, "...the...our baby. Being part of something so much bigger than yourself and unable to communicate with it, wondering if it even knows you're there."
"We know," she insisted softly. "It's the first thing on my mind when I get up and the last when I..."
His lips touched her forehead, making her correct herself.
"...Okay, not always the last," Elizabeth barely managed not to blush, "but it is there all of the time," she finished nervously, still struggling with the idea that she had anything more than an illness within her.
"We'll have to try you in the chair on your own," John said practically trying concentrate on flying. "See how far your Ancient gene has progressed, maybe get you in on the rotation so the rest of us can have a little more time off."
Smiling sleepily Elizabeth yawned twice before she managed to speak. "Maybe we should concentrate on passing the gene to more people, build the ranks a little more past me so you and I can spend some time in bed for once."
"Bed..." he teased lightly, "...that's how we got into this mess, isn't it?"
"Believe it or not John, some people actually sleep in their beds," Kissing his neck as she chastised him, Elizabeth's presence let him forget about the staggering mental toll just keeping the city going was taking on him and finally relax into piloting the stumbling city.
"There's been an accident," Chuck reported with nervous excitement. "Support girders failed along the southeastern pier. Damage control teams are responding but it's a mess down there."
"We'll be up to control in a few minutes," Elizabeth's voice cut into his link and John let himself yawn. His watch blinked the hour at oh-four-twenty-one, and he groaned as he searched for his pants. They were crumpled on the floor and one leg was inside out. Cursing as he tried to pull them on, he fixed them in the dark and pulled them on over his naked skin.
Elizabeth yanked on his black t-shirt over her blue lace bra. Reaching for the light on the wall, she waved her hand over the switch and listened as John fussed with his belt.
"That was my shirt," he mumbled as he pulled a clean one out of the drawer.
"It was closer," she replied as she caught his arm, flattening his bed hair and watching him try to rub sleep from his eyes. "I like it," she admitted when he started to wake up.
"I only have three shirts," John protested as he finished tying his boots. "If you take one I'll only have two."
"I'll buy you one next time I'm off world," Elizabeth teased as they stumbled out of their quarters. "If you ever let me go off world," she finished under her breath.
"I let you go off world," he muttered back in a yawn as they headed for control. "On safe planets that I've checked out first," John added firmly as he joined Lorne and Zelenka on their way up the stairs.
"Support girders?" Elizabeth asked Zelenka.
Clutching his coffee cup as he nodded, Zelenka hurried up the steps ahead of them. "When we lost the end of the south pier it threw everything in that half of the city out of alignment," he called down over his shoulder. "We've been dragging the city through hyperspace, going in and out when something breaks...it was only a matter of time."
"We came out of hyperspace as soon as they failed," Rodney reported from behind his console. "The city's unbalanced, we have resonance damage all over the south side." He rubbed bloodshot eyes and accepted his cup of coffee from Walter. "It's going to take some time to fix," he sighed as Zelenka joined him at the science console. "Maybe a lot."
"Shields are up," Lorne reported from the tactical station. "But we're dead in the water; we're just drifting."
Elizabeth looked over the faces of her team. John took a cup of coffee from a tray and stayed at her side. "Anyone drifting with us?"
"Just us lost sheep," Lorne replied ironically. "I'll start contacting the ships, get them up in the air in a perimeter, ma'am."
"Good," John nodded for her. "I'll head down to the chair room, see how much control we have left."
Elizabeth followed him to the stairs, taking the extra second to kiss his cheek. "Be safe," she warned softly.
He winked and yawned again over his cup. "You know me," he replied casually over his shoulder.
"That's why I worry," she finished to herself as she watched him leave. "All right, let's get this city flying again." Elizabeth went back to her team and listened to the Rodney and Zelenka argue over how the girders had failed. The force fields were preventing air loss. The civilians were safe in the city center, but Atlantis herself was suffering. She could feel it when she touched the railing to her office. The tiny vibrations were still there and even the inertial dampeners couldn't hide them.
She tightened her grip on the cold rail. "Rodney, Radek, how do we fix this?"
"The internal dampeners are working at maximum now," Rodney explained dismally as he clung to the end of his control panel. Atlantis had developed a limp and the great city sailed through space as if it were a black ocean. The roll the floor had developed was wreaking havoc on her people. Rodney still looked queasy, Radek was pale, and even Teal'c had admitted he'd been on more pleasant vessels. "But it's only going to get worse. If we stop long enough to find the new balance point of the city and rewrite the standards for the stabilizers we might, I emphasize might, be able to get it o feel like a calmer sea."
"It's still going to feel like a sailing ship?" John wondered with a tiny smile of amusement.
"You make any more pirate jokes about Carson taking us all to the treasures of the Ancients..." Rodney warned.
"I'd never," John finished dryly.
"...I'll kill you," Rodney finished as he glared at his friend.
"Doctor," Radek interrupted. "I suggest we start evacuating the non-essential personnel to the first friendly planet we can find. The city's in rough shape and it's only going to get worse."
Elizabeth lifted her head from her hands and tried not to think too much about the irony of the situation. "I'll start compiling a list," she decided softly as she stood to go, Chuck and Walter ambushed her.
"Doctor Weir, since you're awake, you should see this," Walter offered politely.
"It started this morning at oh-two hundred," Chuck explained with mild confusion. "M3F-117 dialed in and transmitted some kind of identification code."
"That code nearly deactivated the shield," Walter added as he pointed at the gate records. "Chuck figured out how to keep it up while collecting their codes. M4T-223 dialed next, then M9G-327. That planet actually sent a message back to us."
"They sent something in Ancient," Chuck read off the screen in front of him. "We found out Doctor Jackson was still awake and he was able to translate it."
Daniel leaned over the desk smiling in benign amusement. "They send congratulations to our council and their thanks that the city of light is once again protecting this galaxy."
The city of light?" Elizabeth asked softly as she rubbed her head. The morning had
already gotten off to a rocky start and it seemed it would only go downhill from there.
"Atlantis was known in ancient times as 'the City of Light resting upon the eternal sea'," Daniel explained dryly as he settled back into his chair. "It's an invention of folklore that the Ancients let stick."
"Tell her the weird part," Walter prodded from behind Daniel.
"Right," Daniel remembered as he straightened his glasses. "They'd like to send their tithes. M9G-327 is even promising to send an extra share of their crops out of gratitude and extends an invitation to visit their planet."
"The southern pier's a smoking wreck and we're being congratulated?" Elizabeth murmured grimly to the men in her office as she tried to think. "What are they trying to tithe?"
"Well, that was the interesting part," Daniel began as he handed over his computer and pointed to part of the database he'd been researching. "This city used to be supported by the outlying colonies because it lacks any real food producing resources of its own. In exchange for food and supplies, the city protected most of the planets in this galaxy. Some were Ancient colonies and some were ordinary worlds with developing cultures."
"I think we should accept it," Jack finally spoke from his corner of the room. Sitting up and resting his hands on his knees, he looked directly to Elizabeth. "We need the food, if they have it to spare we should accept it and send them a lovely thank you note."
John leaned on the doorway behind Chuck and startled when he suddenly recognized the designation M3G-927. That was Ceol, the planet where everything had started between him and Elizabeth and the planet under Mab's protection. He looked over Walter's shoulder and deeply into her eyes. It took her a moment to look up, but he saw she remembered as well. They'd meant to go back; to find out what had really happened to them and now it seemed they'd have the chance.
"McKay and Carter think the Asgard are our best bet when it comes to fixing the city," Jack reminded everyone as he stood up. "We should get everyone into the conference room and work something out where we get some food and get that pier fixed. The city's not going to stand for long against the Ori or any of our other mighty enemies long with a bleeding hole in its side."
Chuck and Walter got out of the general's way as he left Elizabeth's office. She thanked them quietly and kept Daniel's database entry in her hands as he left the office as well.
When it was just John, he slunk over and perched on the edge of her desk. "We have to go," he told her when she refused to look up from her computer. "We can find out what happened to us...what's happening to you now."
"We can't both just go off on some personal mission," Elizabeth argued, and sighed as she dropped the computer to her desk. "You're my second, I agreed to be governor of this city and we both have responsibilities."
"Lorne can handle it for awhile," John replied with a confident air. "Rodney's just fixing things anyway and Carter can make sure the repairs get done right." He reached for her forehead, rescuing a stray piece of hair and tucking it back. "We need to do this."
"The refugees come first, John," Elizabeth decided as she pushed herself up from the table. "I think all of them could use some time on solid ground with a sky over their heads. Let me get them settled, then we can talk about us."
He reached for her cheek, stroking the skin down towards her chin. "We can always wait, can't we?" he asked rhetorically knowing Elizabeth always put herself last. "So...that meeting?" John offered as he waved towards the door. "Might as well share your ideas with our governing council..."
"It's getting that way, isn't it?" Elizabeth muttered to him as they crossed the catwalk. "We used to just make decisions, now it takes a committee to do anything."
"Welcome back to civilization," John replied sardonically as he slipped his hand behind her back. Keeping hold of her comforted him; instead of moving out of reach she smiled at him and warmth crept through him.
Jack settled into his chair, reached for his computer and sighed heavily. "Why do I have to do these?" he groaned towards the bedroom and his wife.
"Because you're the only living Earth general, and effectively military commander of the free world," as she spoke a sock flew from the main room of their quarters and narrowly missed her head. Picking it up, Sam tossed it back at him as she finished; "You're like a god among mortals," she teased effortlessly. "I'd better get the highest rating."
"Are you kidding?" Jack called as he watched his balled-up sock roll along the floor of his now unstable living quarters. "'Carter' is the highest rating that exists in my book. Everyone works their asses off just to be considered as good as you."
"And that's how it should be," she decided for him as she moved his computer from his hands and dropped into his lap. Kissing him slowly, Sam started to chuckle as his hand slipped towards the top button of her blue jacket. "I have a meeting with McKay," she whispered in his ear as she moved the hand away.
"That can't possibly be more important than sex," Jack whined as he stared her down.
"If we skip it to have sex I'll be thinking about how to repair the south pier the whole time..." Sam trailed off as she nibbled her way up his neck, "...and 'Oh my God, the support girders,' just isn't the same."
"Get out of my sight woman," he pretended to snap irritably. "I'm changing my standards, Jackson's my favorite now."
Sam kissed his protesting mouth again and felt his lips quiet beneath hers. "I love you, Jack," she finished seriously.
"Carter, get your gorgeous, genius ass to your meeting so you can get it back to me," he lifted his tablet computer and eyed her over the screen. "Preferably naked," he amended as he returned to his reports.
"I'll see what I can do, sir," she said slipping from his grasp to the door. "Enjoy your evaluations."
"Oh I will," Jack muttered as the door shut. "That's why I wanted to be a general, mission reports just weren't enough paperwork for me," he finished his complaint to the empty room and reminded himself how earnestly Elizabeth had asked for his evaluations. It was all part of her grand struggle to keep their little world running in some kind of normalcy.
When the door opened a few moments later, Jack was momentarily convinced he'd lost all track of time and Sam was already back. Startled by who he saw when he finally looked up, his sarcastic comment died on his tongue. "You're not Carter," he said instead, feeling foolish as he gaped at his visitor.
"I saw her in the corridor," Elizabeth offered quietly, keeping her rushing emotions in check. "She was heading for McKay's lab."
There was something uncomfortably tight in the way she stood, and Jack set aside his computer when he realized she wasn't there for a quick question she could have asked him over the radio. He tapped the screen and sent his computer to sleep as he waited for her. When no explanation seemed to be forthcoming, Jack slid over to one side of the couch. "Would you like to sit?"
"I need you to tell me I'm not crazy," Elizabeth demanded suddenly, surprising both of them by the edge in her voice.
"I currently believe you aren't," Jack responded slowly as he leaned forward. "You can try to change my mind..."
"I hate this," she whispered to the floor by his feet.
"Hey, I hate the damn evaluations too but it wasn't my idea to bring them back..." Jack reached for her knee as he tried to reassure her. The muscle jumped under his hand as she startled back.
"I hate being pregnant," Elizabeth corrected him. Her hand went to her forehead and she rubbed angrily at one of her eyes before she looked at him. Jack had never seen her chin tremble before. "I hate being able to count the days I haven't thrown up in the last month on one hand. I hate feeling like I'm constantly doing something wrong and then hating myself for knowing that I most likely am."
The general rested his hands in his lap and waited for the break in the storm.
"I hate John when he says he loves me," she choked on the words, taking a shuddering breath to continue, "I hate the look on his face when he realized I loved him." Her right hand fluttered to her chest and became a fist over her heart. "I love him," she repeated through the hot tears she hadn't energy enough to stop in her eyes.
He just sat there for a moment, indecision gnawing nervously at his gut. "Come here," Jack reached for her shoulders and had her crushed to his chest before she had time to fight him. "Sara used to wake up in the middle of the night," he began to tell the back of her head softly as his hands rubbed across her back. "She'd wake up covered in sweat, terrified that we were going to be the worst parents in all recorded history of the world. For a long time she just lay there until she forced herself back to sleep," he admitted in a tone he rarely used. His voice ran into her ears and warmed her heart, like hot tea in her stomach on a cold day.
"I finally caught her in the second trimester," he smiled and kept talking as her head lifted slightly. "We stayed up all that night just talking about the stupid stuff," Jack shook his head at the memory; his hands coming to rest on her slight shoulders. "How Charlie was a lousy name if he was a boy, how I'd probably spoil her rotten if she was a girl, how I'd never be able to let any young man look at her if she grew up pretty, and eventually it hit us. Lying there in the dark, with our arms tight around each other, panicking..." he smiled when her eyebrow lifted in amusement, "...we remembered that we loved each other, and beneath all our worries we were so excited to be having that baby..."
In his chest, old wounds stung his heart and made the air in his lungs feel like lead. "Look," Jack started again when the silence had grown heavy and thick between them. "No one can tell you how to feel. Maybe being pregnant is the most horrible thing to ever happen to you," his hands whispered as he shuffled them nervously and continued, "No one would blame you. This isn't what you wanted, it lousy timing..."
"...Why is John so dammed calm?" she demanded when Jack ran out of excuses.
Jack laughed, bit it back because he knew it wasn't appropriate, but kept his smile. "It's a lot easier when you're the guy," he admitted apologetically. Something strange and wonderful is happening around you, not inside of you. I've had a few weird things inside of me, some of them even wanted to kill me, and I wouldn't trade a one of them to go through what you're going through."
Reaching hesitantly for her chin, Jack pulled back once before he decided she'd let him touch her face. "We're cowards," he began seriously, "give us guns and bombs and we're fine, give us a baby and we panic...that's why women have them."
"Women are braver?" she ventured with a hint of a smile.
"That and you look better with breasts," Jack cupped his hands over his chest and shook his head. "Much better," he tapped her nose and made her smile in surprise. "Did you talk to John?"
"He deserves the hysterics more than you do?" Elizabeth replied sardonically finding the strength to maintain her smile.
"Well...that and you need to be in this together," Jack reminded her as he pulled himself to his feet. "Do you want some water? I was going to hit the coffee, but that's kinda out of the question for you..."
"Thank you," Elizabeth murmured as she watched him pour coffee out of a thermos.
"Got this from the Genii, cost me a ball-point pen," he stopped with cup in his hand and looked down at it thoughtfully. "The guy I was trading claimed to have never seen one before. Funny how that works isn't it?" Jack asked rhetorically as he got her glass of water in his other hand and made his way back. "The Genii invent nuclear weapons but skip right over the ball-point."
"I don't think writing was as important to them," Elizabeth reminded him gently remembering how driven Genii society was. "It's different here in this galaxy. We've been protected on Earth, we've never been enslaved and even now we're still free."
"Maybe we should spend more time thinking about that instead of worrying how we're going to feed and clothe everyone next year," Jack's irony went straight to her heart, cutting through the resolve he hadn't meant to shatter.
"Are you and Sam sure you want to go back?" she changed the subject.
"We still have allies there, planets we promised to protect from the Ori," Jack reminded himself as he sipped lukewarm black coffee. "Sam and Rodney have a cloaking device that works pretty damn well. We'll be back before the city is," he promised as he raised his cup.
Water tasted sweet after the bitterness crying had left in her mouth. "I wish we weren't splitting our people," she admitted as she watched her fingers leave marks on the smooth metal in her hands. "Feels like everyone was just starting to get used to Atlantis..."
The lights dimmed momentarily and Jack caught himself reaching for her. "She needs some time in dry-dock before we blow out something important and can't get it fixed. Flying with a broken pier's playing havoc with the systems, at least that's what my wife tells me."
"Rodney and Radek agree with her," Elizabeth conceded with a sigh. "I suppose some of our refugees will find life easier on Ceol, where they have a sky over their heads and something solid under their feet."
"And there's an Ancient on this planet?" he asked uneasily. None of the Ancients he had met had ever been particularly helpful.
"Of a kind," was her guarded reply. John had been worried about choosing Ceol at the most recent meeting of the senior staff, so worried that he'd gotten quiet after the vote. "Rodney and the Daedalus did extensive tests of the planetary shielding system. We'll be safe from the Wraith and the Asurans."
"And you're going to be okay?" Jack asked finally as he set his empty coffee cup aside. "You know I'm more than willing to be the brunt of hysterical tears anytime you have them..."
Her lips pursed and for a moment they shared a smile.
"Sometimes you just need to say crazy things," Jack replied for her. "You never know, I might turn up on your doorstep someday."
"I'll keep a light on for you," Elizabeth promised softly as she stood. It took more time to balance her weight over her feet than it had weeks ago and she caught Jack's slow smile as he studied her slightly swollen waistline.
"You really are beautiful like that," he let the comment hang in the air as she started to blush. "It's a good look."
Her eyebrows met in the center of her forehead for a moment before she managed the slightest smile. "John would agree with you," she murmured as she went to the door. "I think you're crazy, but I've always thought you two were in the same place."
"We've successfully adapted Ancient cloaking technology to function on the Artemis," Sam began cheerfully. "It was actually easier than we thought it would be, being that Asuran technology is so close to what the Ancients were actually using."
Jack reached over and patted her hand. "Even if it wasn't hard, we're still impressed, Sam," he added with amusement. "So, the Artemis crew and I will run the recon mission to the Milky Way as quietly as we can. Major Lorne will take the skeleton crew on the city to meet with the Asgard."
"Hopefully they'll be able to do a bit more for us than just fix the city," Daniel injected optimistically. "After all, we've done a lot to help them."
"If by help you mean saving their little gray asses," Jack quipped as Elizabeth rapped the table lightly.
"How are the refugees adapting to the planet?" She steered them back on track.
"Two hundred of them have already left through the gate for Ceol," Catherine Lorne began as she stood neatly behind her son's chair. Crossing her arms over her chest, she swallowed before she finished. "As well as can be expected, most of them are simply relieved to be on land that isn't moving."
"We're getting the rest of them ready," the younger Lorne added.
"But," Sam interrupted weakly, gripping the table as she tried to get her eyes to focus on the wall behind Elizabeth, "we decided it was better to keep moving, instead of trying to send them all now."
"How long until we reach orbit?" Elizabeth turned that question to John, who sat easily in his chair. He was a little paler than usual, but he managed to smile at her.
"Autopilot's not working with the city in the shape it's in," he reported for the benefit of everyone around the table who didn't know. "We're working on a two hours on, eight off rotation. Carson's up now, and I'm next. General, you pulled the morning shift didn't you?"
Jack rescued a computer that was starting to slide off the table towards Sam's lap as the floor tilted. "Lucky me," he murmured with as much cheer as he could sarcastically summon.
"My team and Major Lorne's will continue to run search and reconnaissance operations with the Genii in search of Teyla," Cameron reported to change the subject from the swaying of the deck. He wasn't much for fishing and after the last week of rolling deck plates he wasn't sure if he'd ever want to set foot on a boat again.
Rodney reentered the room from the back door, sliding into his chair apologetically with his hand over his mouth. Space-sickness breaks were becoming a necessity. John, Jack and Evan were doing better than most after their years as pilots. Elizabeth couldn't tell if Teal'c was just better at controlling himself, or if he was just more stoic than she'd realized.
Ronon just wasn't bothered. She wasn't sure if she'd seen any kind of reaction from him since Carson's return without Teyla. Nothing he'd remembered had been able to help them locate Teyla. There were vague stories in Athosian legend about people taken by the Wraith but even the elders didn't remember them well enough to help. The Genii spy network was watching for her, but Ladon hadn't had much good news for her about anything lately.
"We're planning to launch the Dreadnought when we reach orbit," Rodney reported with a nervous sigh as he wondered if he'd be able to outlast his nausea.
"Any thoughts on a name?" Elizabeth glanced over the table towards the Dreadnought's new commander. He stared impassively back at her with a slight smile, which was more than welcome among the grim faces around her.
"It's positively bad luck to launch a vessel without one," Vala reminded all of them from the wall she leaned against behind Daniel. Elizabeth wasn't entirely sure how she managed to remain standing when everyone else was dealing with the their rolling stomachs, but the other woman had a point.
Most of the eyes around the table went to Jack, who shrugged and sat back defensively. "I'd just want to call her 'Marge'..." he trailed off sheepishly.
"Hera," Teal'c decided for them. "In keeping with the rest of the vessels. The largest one should be their queen."
"You're just saying that because we gave you the big ship," Jack muttered towards Teal'c as Daniel started to smirk.
"He has had the most space combat experience," Daniel pointed out innocently. "Years longer than the rest of us have been alive."
"Just rub it in," Jack continued to complain as he drummed his fingers on the laptop.
"Hera it is. All right, what else?" Elizabeth steered the meeting back on course, mentally adding more things to her never-ending list.
"I was a pirate for Halloween once," John started thoughtfully as he flopped onto the floor by the control chair. "Had the eye patch and everything."
"How old were you?" Carson asked with a half-smile. When he was in he chair he didn't feel the twisting of the deck beneath his feet, or notice that everything was dark on the left side of his vision. When he was Atlantis he felt almost whole, but even that escape was failing him. The city suffered, writhing beneath him as it limped towards Ceol. He'd never felt much of a connection to ships or mechanical things.
"Seven," John grinned sheepishly. "Got extra candy for being cute," he finished as he toyed with a loose thread on his sleeve. "Is it pulling to the left for you too?"
Carson shrugged slowly and opened an eye towards John. "A little, it's just reluctant, like a shy dog."
"Like 'em?" John wondered as he finally bit the string off with his teeth, sucking on it for a moment before he pulled it out of his mouth. "Dogs, I mean."
"Used to bring them home," Carson admitted nostalgically. "My mum used to threaten to stop feeding me if I gave all her good dinners to my mongrels." He smiled up towards the ceiling, thanking the unseen forces that had saved his mother yet again. "She never meant it though. You next?"
"Twenty hundred to midnight," he replied as he stood. John ran his hand through his hair and watched the chair go dark as Carson leaned forward.
"Who drew the late shift?" Carson wondered as he tried to catch his bearings. John's hand steadied him as his balance started to fail him. The chair was wearing them all down; constant shifts, every day for more than a week of travel. They pressed on, but John had already seen the wear start to take hold in the eyes of his friends. Major Lorne had taken extra rotations whenever Rodney or himself was too busy to take his turn at the helm, and his soft brown eyes were tired. Dark circles had formed beneath them and taken up residence.
"Lorne," he filled in as he forced himself to meet Carson's single good eye without blinking. "He's had it the last couple days, I'm going to have to come up with..."
"I'll take it tomorrow," Carson promised lightly with a smile that almost convinced John he was all right. "I've just been trying to help treat everyone's motion sickness; I'm sure Keller can handle it if I need to sleep in."
"How is that going?" John asked. Stretching his arms and legs before he sat down, he cleared his mind and started letting himself go.
"As well as you'd expect," the doctor muttered with mild frustration. "I remember stories from school, pilgrims crossing great oceans in search of a new home. Do you think this is something like that?"
"I can picture Rodney in a funny hat, can't you?" John asked in response as he settled into the chair.
"Don't you wonder what history's going to say about us?" Carson pressed on, hoping to get something serious out of his friend.
The colonel smirked in the chair. "I don't wonder," he admitted rakishly. "I intend to write it."
*~
The lights of the city dimmed after dark. It seemed almost foolish to keep doing it, honoring a cycle of day and night that meant nothing in the eternal darkness of space, but it was a comfort to watch the lights in the corridors grow brighter in the coming dawn. Even the darkness was comforting because it demanded nothing from her.
Elizabeth walked unseen through the corridor with one hand on the wall to steady herself. Her pregnancy induced nausea had been starting to fade when the city had inflicted her with the same space sickness that tortured everyone else. Doctor Keller was concerned for the welfare of all of her people, and she knew she'd have to make up her mind on when to evacuate. She was resisting until she talked to Carson. Simon and Keller were probably right, but she wanted to hear it from Carson. He was her chief surgeon and his disappearance had made his opinions all the more dear to her heart.
Everything was precious now; even Rodney's complaining in front of her in the line endless line for dinner had touched her because anyone could be taken from her at any moment. Teyla was gone, and Elizabeth couldn't shake the cold knot in the pit of her stomach that said she wasn't coming back. She'd felt it when they'd lost Ford; it was the same frigid despair that insisted she'd failed one of her own.
The chair room was awash with blue light that nearly blinded her after the darkness of the corridor. Elizabeth squinted at the dark form in the chair and waited as he slowly came into focus. John's eyes were closed; he nearly looked asleep. She walked softly, careful to keep him from sensing her presence. He was peaceful and she needed that from him. When her ability to keep smiling and leading the way towards the uncertain future waned, she had him.
Climbing carefully up onto the platform, her boot scuffed on the metal and his lips smiled. "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"
"It's cold in our bed," she complained childishly twirling a piece of her hair. "I don't know what it is, something's just not right..."
He chuckled and opened his eyes. Drinking in the outlines of her face and watching the blue light from the floor halo her curls, John remembered why he conjured her up when he was bored. "You're beautiful, Elizabeth," he announced matter-of-factly before he closed his eyes again.
Smirking and creeping up on him, she put her hands over his for a moment before she crept into his lap. John startled, nearly losing his connection to the chair as he struggled to adjust. Pulling her down against his chest, he removed his hands from the controls long enough to hold her. When her hands found his arm and his shoulder he moved his back and retook control of the ship. Somehow it was easier to hold the ship steady when he could feel the beat of her heart against his chest.
"This is better than bed?" he asked when he felt her sigh and give up the last of the tension in her body.
"No," she teased back lightly, taking comfort in feel of the stubble on his check against her forehead. "Bed would be more comfortable, but I've always been something of a masochist."
"You have," John agreed with half a sigh. "I should know that by now," he chided himself as he snuck a glance at her hand on his arm.
"Your ability to ignore what you should have learned by now is one of your more charming," Elizabeth explained, running her hand down to his wrist, "and more difficult character traits."
"I do pick up my socks," John reminded her as he flipped his hand over to squeeze hers. "I've kept our room as neat as I can. I don't think I need to remind you that it wasn't me who couldn't find my shirt this morning when the alarm went off..."
Groaning and hiding her annoyance in a yawn, Elizabeth tried to remember back to that morning. Her memories only blended with the day before in a haze of half-solved crises and lists of things still left to do. "Maybe if you hadn't thrown it away so vigorously...."
"...Maybe if you didn't tease me, I wouldn't have to remove your clothing so vigorously..." John interjected.
"I'm not sure how you qualify, 'John, I'm home' as an innuendo," Elizabeth interrupted back.
"When you make me do personnel evaluations, everything you say that isn't about them or aliens trying to kill us is going to be an innuendo," he explained patiently. "If you weren't so damned sexy..."
Laughing into his neck, Elizabeth started to kiss his cheek and stopped just above the skin. "Is that your answer to everything?"
"I'm debating it," John quipped and opened an eye to see her beaming down at him. "What do you think?"
"I think this is much better than bed," Elizabeth answered mysteriously rewarding him with the kiss on his cheek he'd been waiting for.
Leaning up to kiss her back severed his connection with the city when his mind temporarily forgot about anything larger than the desires of his exhausted body. Chuckling sheepishly as he interfaced with the chair again, John closed his eyes. "This is harder with you here," he pretended to complain.
"We all need challenges," she whispered as she nibbled his upper lip. "Especially colonels, I've heard it keeps you sharp."
"We're not going to get any sleep if you keep that up," he reminded her when she settled back into his arms. "And even Lorne will be fairly traumatized if he walks in on..."
"Me sitting on your lap?" she teased innocently. "I think the major's a little less of a prude."
"That's all this is," John wondered sardonically,"You sitting on my lap?"
"Until your shift ends," Elizabeth promised with a hint of a growl, "that's all it's going to be. Anyone could walk in here, John..."
"It's not really a secret," John replied with a chuckle. His hand found her hip and ran slowly up the side of her body as he slipped his hand over to the swell of the baby within her. "I think everyone knows you're pregnant now, even if Rodney hasn't told them, you are really starting to look..." he paused, picturing how far the curves of her body were still going to round outward, "...different."
"I just feel sick," Elizabeth complained realistically. Smoothing her hair back so it stayed out of his face, she buried her head closer. "I don't know if that counts as any different, it's been that way for weeks."
"Feeling sick isn't exactly different lately," he tried to concentrate on flying the city, but the warmth of Elizabeth against his chest was more important than the twisting feeling of the internal stabilizers. The city was sick and her ability to protect the fragile lives inside of her was failing. John wasn't sure it would even limp into orbit. Nausea brought his stomach to his throat and he wondered if that was what she had dealt with since she became pregnant. "I caught Rodney throwing up."
"He just doesn't have his sea legs..." Elizabeth murmured as she tightened her eyebrows in thought, "...space legs, yet."
"I think you had an advantage," he teased and wound his fingers into the fabric of the black t-shirt she'd stolen from him that morning. "More practice with nausea."
Her teeth grazed his ear and Elizabeth felt him shiver beneath her. "Whose fault would that be?" she purred to him.
"You seduced me," John replied indignantly snapping an eye open. "I've always been attracted to beautiful women, especially brunettes, and I was drunk. It's obvious you took advantage of me."
With her eyes twinkling as she stared down, Elizabeth run through the myriad ways she could punish him and finally decided to kiss his teasing mouth. The city shuddered around them as it nearly fell from hyperspace. John's lips went still against hers for a moment as he struggled to keep the city out of normal space. When he came back to himself he could hear her laughing.
"I bet I did seduce you," she decided imperiously. "You fell victim to my wicked ways and subsequently into my bed."
"That's right," he ran his hands up over her shoulders to cup her neck. "I'm the victim in all of this, your poor innocent plaything."
Still laughing as she twisted to straddle his lap, Elizabeth caught his hand and kissed it. "Is that an offer?" Dragging it down over her chest she let him rest his hand on bulge of her stomach. "You'll be my slave?"
"We've been together more than two months and I only now find out about your kinky side?" he pouted and tried to reconcile his mind between flying the city and the warmth of her belly beneath his hand.
Shrugging and watching his face break into a smile, she relaxed back down against him. "Maybe you never asked," she murmured as she wondered what he saw behind his closed eyes. "What are you looking at?" she asked finally.
"You," he admitted, half-teasing as he tried not to yawn. "I can 'see' you with the internal sensors, feel the movement of all the people through the city. Rodney and Radek are tweaking the stabilizers. Colonel Carter's getting ready to launch her vessel when we stop."
"You feel that now?" she pressed, intrigued by his explanation. "All of that?"
John's hand coaxed her head down against his chest, so all she heard was the beating of his heart and the slow rhythm of his breathing. In that quiet, she let him take her hands, bringing them with his to interface with the controls of the chair. The clear plastic-like material that gave way so easily when he touched it, resisted her touch for a moment, then she felt it - the tingling sensation of her mind expanding beyond her body.
"I don't know if you have enough of the gene," John was saying somewhere far away. "You might not be able...the city's a lot bigger than a jumper..."
Far away beneath her the ZPMs pulsed in sequence like three hearts beating power through the city. She felt it as if they were part of her, both drowning out and strengthening her own heart beat as her blood and the power flowed in unison. Her skin itched as if it was stretched to cover the whole city. It ached as if she'd been beaten; the kind of sore, slowly healing ache that itched and tingled. Through all of that there was still John, his warm, solid body pressed against her face, the smell of musk and sweat from too many days without a shower.
Atlantis could only smell the chill of space, the cool eternity that stretched on forever past the limits of even the advanced sensors of the city. It reminded her of snow; the new snow falling on the trees around the creek by her house. When she'd been a child and the world was safe and small, the snow had been beautiful, flying through the air like falling stars in the night.
Space was cold against her back, as if it were made of metal. Her hands flexed against his and with the controls. The city was all around her; warm, alive and seemingly unaware of her existence. John was there with her, both beside and within her as if he, like her, was just a tiny part of the greater whole. He was moving things, changing the movement of other parts, guiding the city as it sheltered them. She didn't have the strength; Elizabeth was an observer, not yet able to interact.
John released her, guiding her out of the inner workings of the city. Trembling as she slipped back into her own small body, Elizabeth wondered if she would have been able to make it back on her own. Pulling her hands up, she tucked them around his chest. "We're so small," she whispered to his body.
"Sometimes I wonder if it's like that fo
r..." he paused and searched for the words he wanted to use, "...the...our baby. Being part of something so much bigger than yourself and unable to communicate with it, wondering if it even knows you're there."
"We know," she insisted softly. "It's the first thing on my mind when I get up and the last when I..."
His lips touched her forehead, making her correct herself.
"...Okay, not always the last," Elizabeth barely managed not to blush, "but it is there all of the time," she finished nervously, still struggling with the idea that she had anything more than an illness within her.
"We'll have to try you in the chair on your own," John said practically trying concentrate on flying. "See how far your Ancient gene has progressed, maybe get you in on the rotation so the rest of us can have a little more time off."
Smiling sleepily Elizabeth yawned twice before she managed to speak. "Maybe we should concentrate on passing the gene to more people, build the ranks a little more past me so you and I can spend some time in bed for once."
"Bed..." he teased lightly, "...that's how we got into this mess, isn't it?"
"Believe it or not John, some people actually sleep in their beds," Kissing his neck as she chastised him, Elizabeth's presence let him forget about the staggering mental toll just keeping the city going was taking on him and finally relax into piloting the stumbling city.