Starting the solstice project early!

[so_jang]

For alianne who keeps hope up with the best of them.

This fic is part one of four. (John Sheppard's holiday where absolutely nothing went right)
SVU/SGA crossover fic. Spoils nothing, contains 1.3 babies.

Summary: John has a rough plane ride, but two helpful NYPD detectives come to his rescue.


He must have fallen asleep during the movie, John realized with a start as the flight attendant tapped his shoulder.

"She's really rather social," she explained as she gently herded the toddler towards John's knees.

In her defense, the dark-haired cherub, Evelyn Sheppard, knocked her father's knee with a chubby fist and grinned at him with her four-toothed smile.

"I'm so sorry," John apologized, aghast as he patted the curly head of his daughter and tried not to yawn. "I thought I had her."

"She's been conversing with a lovely couple up in row twenty-two," the flight attendant explained as she bent to his level. "She's doing really well on the plane for being such a little one."

"She has her moments," John teased as he managed to scoop up his daughter without disturbing Elizabeth's head on his lap.

"How's your wife?" Connie, the flight attendant's name-tag read, asked with gentle concern in her blue eyes. "Any better?"

John balanced his daughter in his left arm as he tried to keep her feet away from her mothers head. "I've been hoping she'll sleep until landing," he answered sympathetically rubbing Elizabeth's shoulder. She'd started getting nauseated in customs and by the time they took off she was keeping her head between her knees and no longer answering questions.

"If you like, I can take her," a man across the aisle offered gently as he looked up from his book. Opening his wallet, he passed across his badge. NYPD special victims unit, read the neat gold lettering. "I promise I'm on the up and up."

Perhaps it was the already nomadic nature of Evie's upbringing, but she took a long look at the man and his smile before burbling happily.

John sighed, remembering how difficult it had been to balance his daughter and help Elizabeth not vomit all over the floor of the plane.

"Might be a good idea," Connie suggested as Elizabeth moaned softly in her sleep. "Just until she's doing better."

"Elliot," the detective offered as he accepted the chubby mass of arms and legs from John's hands. "This is my partner, Olivia. Hello sweetheart," he murmured as the girl grabbed a fistful of his sweater and kept her eyes on her father.

"Thanks," John offered sharply as he searched the seat pocket for a spare airsickness bag.

"She's adorable," Olivia chimed in from the seat next ot her partner. "Pleased to meet you," she tossed towards John.

"John," the colonel introduced himself softly as he felt Elizabeth's head shift in his lap. "She's Evelyn."

"Aren't you a curious one?" Olivia asked as the baby stole Elliottt's badge from his hand and promptly stuffed it in her mouth. Happy to be the center of attention, the munchkin grinned cheerfully.

"How old?" Elliottt guessed. "Ten months? Twelve?"

"Eleven," John answered, impressed that the other man had been so close. He sighed again as he realized how quickly she was growing. He shouldn't be too sentimental, Elizabeth was only six months away from giving them another baby. They'd both suspected she might be pregnant before they left Atlantis, but her schedule had been the mess it usually was, and they hadn't fit the test in until they were already in Thailand.

She wouldn't have passed up the chance to see her mother anyway. She'd been right, of course, Thailand was beautiful, and the embassy her mother was living in was one of the nicer ones John had visited. Drinking in a Thai bar with Elizabeth's mother and the US ambassador hadn't been the way he'd expected to spend his romantic vacation away from Atlantis, but any time with Elizabeth when she wasn't working was wonderful. Even if she was exhausted, headachy, and starting to really suffer from morning sickness, Elizabeth was amazing.

"Food poisoning?" Olivia ventured as she watched him stare at the head in his lap. John had been lucky, he and Elizabeth had managed to get the center row, and she could lie down across a few seats once she was done losing her dinner.

"It's possible, she just thinks it's because we're pregnant," John admitted with a tiny, proud smile. "But she's been a lot worse this time so it might be a mixture of both. I suppose it's a little close together, but we're not getting any younger, right?"

"Not too old, are you?" Olivia teased without expecting an answer.

"Thirty-eight," John surprised her as he smiled over at his daughter. To his delight, she beamed and shook her hands in his direction. She really was a lot more fun now that she was interactive.

"Putting them close together means you get your life back quicker," Elliottt added in sagely as he grabbed Evie off the floor and swung her into his lap. "I have four of my own, and it's kind of nice when they can look after themselves. Keep themselves busy."

"Suppose you just ruined that," Olivia teased cheerfully. "How far along is Kathy now?" Olivia asked her partner as Evie decided her short hair looked like fun and made a grab for it.

"Eight months," Elliottt answered as he met John's eyes. "She got sicker than a dog for awhile when she was pregnant too, with all of them." He smiled sympathetically, remembering the sleeping woman in John's lap as incredibly polite, despite her condition. "How long have you been married?"

"Just over a year," John explained as he thought of the wedding picture in his pocket. He'd been stupid enough to let Rodney take it where the city was visible in the background, and he wasn't going to be able to show it to anyone. Nonetheless, he liked to know where it was; that he could see her whenever he wanted.

"And what do you two do for a living?" Olivia asked holding up a cracker and checking for his permission before offering it to the baby. When John nodded, his daughter attacked it gleefully, demolishing it more than eating it but enjoying it nonetheless.

"I'm an lieutenant colonel in the Air Force ," John replied easily taking a moment to stretch. "When she's feeling better, she manages the international researchers at the deep space telemetry program. Babysits the scientists and keeps them from starting World War Three over neutron particle rights."

"Is that how you met?" Olivia asked curiously brushing crumbs from her lap. "Where are you stationed then?"

"That's Colorado isn't it?" Elliottt explained with a shake of his head. "I was a marine, go plenty of babysit gigs, but I never got sent up there."

"Not much to shoot," John lied and slipped into his cover story. "I ended up having to fly her around a lot."

"Workplace romance can be a difficult thing to manage," Elliottt observed as he avoided Olivia's eyes and concentrated on the baby. Evie had realized she liked crackers after all and was pestering Olivia for more.

"So far we do all right," John explained as he thought about how true that was. It certainly wasn't easy to know that if he made a mistake in the field, he'd be coming home to his girls in a body bag. If anyone understood that feeling, he bet a pair of detectives would. "Sometimes it gets a little hairy out there."

"Test pilot?" Olivia asked reading the chagrin in John's eyes. "Flying the UFOs I keep seeing on late night television?"

John laughed and smirked when he realized that was fairly accurate actually. "That's me, I'll admit it."

Elizabeth moaned and stirred again and he realized she might be waking up. Keeping his cool hand on her forehead, he wished he could do more to calm her stomach. The eighteen-hour flight from Thailand back to the US really wasn't helping matters. He wondered if he should have pushed harder for an Air Force plane, instead of the commercial jet. His rank and her position both commanded a certain amount of respect, as did hers, but as usual, she didn't want to make a fuss.

"What's special victims stand for?" John asked congenially. Deeply grateful to be sitting next to people Evie seemed to like. At least this way, if he fell asleep again, she'd stay out of harm's way.

"Sex crimes," Elliottt answered easily. He could read the symbols on John's luggage, and he figured a colonel could handle it. "We've just closed down a fairly vicious prostitution ring."

"Good for you," John answered as he tried to wondered what civilian life was like. Sometimes he forgot humans could be just as evil as any of the monsters he had to face everyday. "I suppose most of the time your work keeps you a little closer to home."

"This was as much of a vacation as we get," Olivia jumped in with a resigned look. John knew that combat hardened look in her eyes and suddenly he didn't envy her job.

"Elizabeth's," John nodded towards his wife as he used her name, "Her mother is stationed at the US Embassy there. We don't get a lot of leave, and she wanted to make sure the little one knows her grandmother as much as possible."

"She's a sweet one," Elliottt observed as he watched the slow, proud smile llight John's face.

"Don't know where that came from," he murmured sarcastically as he buried a yawn behind his hand. "Must be her mother."

"Have you slept at all since you left Thailand?" Olivia wondered as she offered the baby one of her pretzels from the little foil bag.

John shook his head and nudged the bag at his feet with one of his shoes. "She has juice in here," he explained wishing he could reach it. His right leg was asleep with the weight of Elizabeth's head.

"Are there diapers?" Elliott asked as he stole the bag and passed off the little girl to Olivia. He dug around for a moment and found what he was looking for. "Mind if I?" Tilting his head towards the bathroom, he accepted Evie back from Olivia's outstretched arms.

"I can do that," John protested as he yawned again, feeling a little chagrinned that complete strangers had his daughter.

"It's all right," Olivia explained as she watched Elliot disappear towards the bathroom. "He and his wife are having another one, kind of a late baby, the other four are all in high school, and Maureen's even in college now."

Shaking his head slowly, John tried to imagine Evie in university. It was a stretch of his imagination to picture his daughter reading, much less reading Chaucer and complaining about calculus. McKay could help her with calculus. Hell, he could help her with calculus, it was the Chaucer that they'd need mom for. "Are you sure it's okay?" he ventured again, craning his neck slightly to make sure his daughter wasn't screaming her head off.

"It's fine, it's really fine," she promised smiling warmly and making him feel a little more guilty. John didn't usually bother with guilt, but he could usually handle his family. It had been hard enough getting Elizabeth and Evie through customs. Her original US passport had her marked as a foreign birth, but that only brought up too many questions. There was no Antarctic government to ask for documentation and it was a strange story that way.

The SGC was working on a military passport but it had only been eleven months, so John didn't expect it would get through the bureaucracy any time before Evie was two. Elizabeth's passport was fine, but she'd been so dizzy by then Thailand security forces had almost barred them from getting on the plane. Elizabeth's mom had saved them when she pulled away the leader and explained to him gently that her daughter had just found out she was pregnant, and if he wanted to avoid a diplomatic incident he'd just let them through.

Elizabeth being pregnant carried a lot more weight with security than anything John could have come up with and the rest of that experience wasn't nearly as awful as the beginning. Elizabeth even made it until they were airborne before she threw up. "My wife is pregnant, no she doesn't have the plague", went a long way to soothe the stewardesses, but it wasn't quite the vacation they'd planned.

John closed his eyes for a moment and tried to remind himself to remember how much easier it was to deal with with just one baby before they had two. His mind wandered until it settled on his full bladder and the idea that he really needed to pee. He started to try and decide how to move Elizabeth without waking her up when he caught Olivia staring at him.

"I, uh-" he started pathetically and then had to smile as she stood up.

"Okay," Olivia offered as she circled to the other side and knelt down in front of Elizabeth. "I'll hold her head, you sneak out to the bathroom."

For a moment, John wondered if Elizabeth would be angry if she woke up, but he decided she was responsible enough to handle it. Olivia was fairly graceful and the swap went smoothly.

Sighing gratefully as he stretched his legs, John rocked the stiffness out of his back. "I'll be right back," he whispered to Olivia as she reached for a magazine.

"It's fine," Olivia insisted as she started paging through his copy of "Popular Science". "You're definitely allowed to go to the bathroom."

---

Elizabeth was pulled out of her fairly pleasant dream involving the south pier and Evie being with Teyla for the night, by the sudden and unsurprising sensation that she was going to throw up. She'd spent most of her post-university life free from the sensation, and barring a few incidents with questionable food, she considered herself to have a strong stomach. That was, of course, until she'd found herself pregnant.

That initial shock of discovering her body was fully out of her control had been followed by several others. Finding out that by 'movement' Keller meant twisting, turning, nearly constant nudging that seemed to only cease when she could have used the distraction, had been a difficult one. It was seeing John cry that had been the most surprising of all. Perhaps if it had been later, when he was holding the baby instead of still holding her sweat-drenched, naked, blood and mucus smeared body, it would have made more sense.

It was then she'd realized he was more in love with her than it seemed possible for anyone to be, and that she was half of an epic love story more consuming than anything she'd read. Maybe that was why finding out she was pregnant again was less of a shock and more simply just a moment of change.

Elizabeth's mind's endless ability to categorize things was defeated by the fact that in this moment she was going to be sick. John's hands caught her hair and held her calmly over one of the tiny little airsickness bags that she'd never thought anyone really had to use on planes. The juice and pretzels John had coaxed her into eating came back as a mess of half-digested mush.

When her stomach stopped lurching, she lay back and looked up for him as she wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. John had been replaced by a woman, one with a kind, serious face and a very apologetic smile.

"Hi," Elizabeth murmured sheepishly as she tried to remember if she'd met this woman before in her life.

"I'm Olivia," the stranger offered easily as Elizabeth felt her put the airsickness bag away. "You okay?"

Closing her eyes helped her concentrate, and though her stomach was more upset with her than it had been since she was pregnant with Evelyn, it was more passive at the moment. "For awhile," she replied slowly opening her eyes again. "You're a friend of John's?"

"Just met him actually," Olivia offered as she handed over one of the wet wipes leftover from dinner so Elizabeth could clean her mouth. "Do you want water?"

Shaking her head slightly, Elizabeth tried to place Olivia's accent and clothing. "New York?" she asked as she decided it was the best guess.

"NYPD," Olivia answered with a raise of her eyebrows that made belied how impressed she was. "My partner and eye are sitting over there, and your daughter decided she's pretty fond of Elliot."

"Your partner?" Elizabeth guessed as she read a story much longer than coworkers in Olivia's face.

"He has kids of his own," Olivia explained to alleviate the fears she obviously expected Elizabeth be having. "I think kids know that."

Elizabeth smiled slightly and wondered how she could explain that her daughter belong to an entire city as much as she belonged to her parents. If John trusted them, that was enough for her. Evelyn would probably just want to kick her stomach and it might be easier for everyone if she stayed with Elliot. "She's a little social butterfly," she teased as she rested her hand on her stomach. "I hope we're not ruining your flight. I'm sure John appreciates the break and I'm afraid I haven't been any help to him since we took off."

"He's just stretching his legs," Olivia reported as she peered over the seats around her and looked for John.

"I'm not going anywhere," Elizabeth sighed and closed her eyes again. In addition to the twisting sensation in her stomach, her head felt like someone had packed her brain in cotton and stuffed it back into her skull. "So he suckered you in with his sad puppy, my girls are more than I can handle routine?"

"He did look really pathetic," Olivia replied as she tried not to laugh. "Said some nice things about you to prove he was a sensitive guy and dumped the kid on my partner."

"That's my husband," Elizabeth groaned and opened one eye to look at the magazine she could hear rustling in front of her face. "Is that what he left you?" Laughing only made her stomach spin, but she couldn't help herself.

"The article about super conductors is kind of interesting," Olivia offered helpfully as she felt Elizabeth start to squirm from barely contained laughter. "I think he was more worried about getting a chance to go to the bathroom than making sure I had something interesting to read."

"Did he tell you I almost got him arrested in the airport?" she chuckled without moving her head. "My mom had to tell the security guards he was being overprotective because I'm pregnant, not because I had a bomb strapped to my stomach."

Rustling and clanging in the aisles signaled the arrival of another meal as Olivia looked up. "You're probably not interested in dinner, right?" she asked gently resting a hand on Elizabeth's shoulder.

Elizabeth had a moment to contemplate it before the stewardesses passed them with the carts of food on their way towards the front of the cabin. Olivia watched the wince darken her face as the smell of food passed them by. Elizabeth held on for a moment, but then her hand flew up to cover her mouth and she curled a little tighter around her stomach. "I'm sorry," she moaned apologetically. "I might--"

"Okay," Olivia interrupted as she searched for a second airsick bag, just in case. "We're good."

Elizabeth's hand stayed on her mouth and her eyes closed.

"Can you think your way out of it?" Olivia suggested helpfully. "Think about dogs, or math problems or your taxes until it goes away."

Elizabeth knew she shouldn't laugh. It wasn't funny. Laughing made her stomach move and compounded the twisting in her throat. It had been years since she'd even thought about taxes. The military had special accountants just for strange situations like hers and John's, and they ignored their finances unless they were on Earth.

The food cart passed Elizabeth without her throwing up again and she counted that as a small victory. John returned from the bathroom and his walk and waited behind it for his chance to sneak back in. He dropped to his knees in the aisle and reached for her cheek.

"Hey," he murmured gently. "How're you doing?"

Elizabeth knew he'd sense her lying, so she sighed and let him bury his fingers in her hair. "I've been better," she replied honestly as he tucked her hair behind her ear. "You left me with a strange woman," she pretended to complain as Olivia chuckled above her.

"She seemed nice enough," John replied with a grin. He slid in between the seats enough to kiss her forehead. "Suppose you'd get mad at me if I said you were cute when you're pregnant?"

"That might be logical," Elizabeth answered with a soft smile. "I think it's just because I don't have the energy to argue with you. Go eat your dinner, I can see the pictures and the bottoms of the articles in Olivia's magazine. I'm fine."

"Hey, only six hours left," John tried to sound cheerful about it, but he looked almost as bad she felt. Her hand brushed through his hair and he shared her smile. "Are you sure you don't want to eat?"

"I think you, Olivia, and everyone else in the back of the plane agrees with my decision to skip the airplane food," Elizabeth muttered as she waved him off.

John obeyed and sat down next to Elliot and Evie. It only took him a moment to attack his dinner. The curry and his rice Elliot had grabbed for him disappeared, along with his salad and his strange piece of cake, as if they'd all been inhaled.

"He's eating everything," Olivia whispered down when Elizabeth tilted her head up for a report. "Like he hasn't eaten in days."

"Probably hasn't," Elizabeth said with a sigh. "I'm hard on him, like this," she mused as she reached for the blanket covering her legs and tried to pull it up higher.

"I don't think it's you," Olivia argued gently reaching down and fixing the blanket for her. "Elliot worries about Kathy, I think it just gives men something to do while women are pregnant."

"No children?" Elizabeth half-asked even though she knew the answer. Olivia was less comfortable with Evie than Elliot was, and Elizabeth was getting to the point where she could the people who had children in the way they looked at her.

"Oh no," Olivia answered shaking her head. "Not with my schedule."

"You'd have to meet someone to have the relationship necessary to have the children," Elizabeth teased knowingly. She thought she'd liked this detective.

"Even to have the intimate relations part," Olivia joked lightly setting her magazine away and staring down at the stranger in her lap. "It's all right. I see kids every day who need me to save them more than I need to have any of my own."

Elizabeth toyed with her watch thoughtfully. She'd seen refugee camps and children starving and dying from a lack of food and water. She'd been too stunned to cry and had to face the fact that she couldn't save them. She couldn't save one, but if she kept fighting, she might make a world where none of them needed to be saved.

"I thought I'd never have children," Elizabeth admitted ruefully. "I thought I was too busy, too driven, too focused--"

"But?" Olivia asked as her lips twitched in amusement.

"I fell in love," Elizabeth continued as she watched emotion surface in the other woman's soft brown eyes. "And I let myself get to the point where that love was more important than any foolish ideas I had about my life being orderly. I didn't need to get my paperwork done on time, or sleep through the night, or make it through an international flight without wanting to vomit my guts out."

Olivia read through the humor, as Elizabeth thought she might. "Was it worth it?"

John got Olivia's attention with a hand on her shoulder and passed over his plain, white roll.

"John would like you to try and eat this," Olivia explained as Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

"Ask him to trade places with you first," Elizabeth suggested with a vicious twinkle in her eyes. "Just so I don't end up ruining any of your clothing."

Olivia's laughter ran through their part of the cabin.

"I wasn't that funny," Elizabeth teased as she tried to guess what was going on out of her vision.

"Your daughter has both men making the most ridiculous faces as they try and get her to eat something she would much rather smear all over Elliot," Olivia explained as she tried to contain her laughter. "Elliot's going to have peas in his hair."

"Is it short?" Elizabeth asked warily wishing her daughter was more refined.

"He'll be fine," Olivia assured her as she pantomimed Elliot taking a fist of peas in the chin. "Just a little messy for the moment."

"The worst days of having a family make the best days of my single life seem hollow," Elizabeth answered the old question. "I don't think I really knew how to live before I had Evie. Maybe I was faking it fairly well, but she's really taught me how important it is to smile and how unimportant it is to keep peas out of my hair."

"Spoken like a mom," Olivia agreed as she watched John rescue the baby spoon from Elliot's lap and help her partner with his airplane sounds as they fed the baby.

"It's worth trying," Elizabeth murmured as she yawned settled into her blanket. "The being in love thing is all right too."

Olivia couldn't take her eyes off Elliot and the green smeared across his chin. He was smiling as if the expression had snuck up from his heart and completely taken over his face.

"Maybe I'll try it," Olivia replied enigmatically without realizing that Elizabeth had read something in her face she'd spent years trying to bury.

"Maybe," Elizabeth repeated as she wondered what the history was between her new friends. Would John have swept her off her feet if he'd still been married to Casey? Would she have allowed it? "Are they getting any food in the baby?" she asked more lightly.

"Some," Olivia giggled and turned down to explain. "Now she's moving towards John's hair."

Elizabeth thought about lifting her head and decided it was better to kept it where it was. "Still peas?"

"No, I think they're trying something purplish now--" Olivia trailed off as her eyes widened. "They're pretty brave to give her something that dark colored."

"Foolhardy is more like it," Elizabeth muttered to herself. "I told him to only try the things that don't stain on the plane."

"It's a good thing he's wearing black," Olivia added to her commentary. "Your laundry must be--"

"Oh, you have no idea."