Fic: Surfacing

[so_jang]

Title: Surfacing
Rating: PG
Pairing: John/Elizabeth
Recipient: dana_cz for her birthday. (she asked for babyfic, and wanted a little boy. This happened to be ready to leave my hard drive)
Note: Sebastian and Bella belong to my speckleberry I'm just borrowing them for awhile.
Summary: John muses on his new life as a stay-at-home father and Jack comes by to change it.


John Sheppard, former Air Force Colonel and savior of the galaxy, dried his hair with a brush of his towel and turned to grin at his son. "Okay Seb, where's your suit?" he asked as the little boy pointed towards the wet trunks in the corner of the shower. Scooping them up, he offered his hand to his naked son and walked him over to the bench. Bella, his ten-month old daughter smirked up at him from the floor, where she was deeply engrossed in his shoes.

Patting her head until she turned a chubby face towards him and squealed, John urged his son towards his clothes. "On the with these first big guy," he instructed as he traded his son's jeans for his underwear.

Sebastian's Superman underwear had been a gift from Rodney last time he was on Earth and were among the little boy's favorite part of his apparel. Holding them up to his head, Seb watched as his father managed to pull on his own clothes while keeping his eyes on his daughter. He was still staring and holding his underwear by the time John was dressed.

Reaching down to muss his son's dark curls, John grinned. "You're supposed to put them on, not hold them. Here you go." He guided his son's still chubby legs into his underwear and handed him his jeans. "You try these and I'll deal with your sister."

He tickled his daughter's chubby cheeks and made her squeal again as she thumped a fist against his shoe. Bella was definitely getting to be more fun as she got older, he mused as he dragged her over to the bench to change her diaper. Making a face at the smell made his son laugh, and John held up the wipe he was using and aimed at the trash can in the corner.

"What do you think?" he teased his son. "Two points?"

"Two points!" Seb echoed enthusiastically watching as the ball of wipe made a neat basket into the trash. "Two points!" he repeated as he jumped into the air. "Two points for daddy!"

"Daddy always gets two points, doesn't he, baby?" he asked his daughter as she stopped screaming as he pulled her up so he could pin a clean diaper onto her. When she burbled instead of screaming her displeasure at him he smiled. "All right munchkins, should we go see if mommy's back yet?"

"Mommy's back," Seb insisted as he waited for his father to gather the three bags it took them to go anywhere. John scooped up his daughter and the carseat she refused to go back into and let Seb open to door. He had to help the little guy push it, but his son thought he had done it and that's what counts.

"You think so?" John asked as he bounced his daughter. "Bella, what do you think? Mommy or no mommy?"

"She says yes, mommy's back," Seb interpreted his sister's sounds. "Mommy said she'd be back Teusday."

"What is it today?" John asked curiously, wondering if his son had been listening or just making things up that sounded good.

"Watch says," Seb insisted as he grabbed his father's wrist. John juggled but managed to keep his bags on his shoulders.

"Yeah, I guess it does," he chuckled as Bella started to eat her fingers. "And if it says Tuesday?"

"Mommy's back!" Seb yelled cheerfully as he hurried down the hallway at the exercise center.

"Hey, slow down!" John called as he hoped his son wouldn't get too far ahead. He couldn't run to catch him, not with Bella and all the stuff. "Well gorgeous, don't take this the wrong way, but it was easier before you were born." Bella stared at him with the huge dark eyes that were slowly turning green like her mother's and said nothing. Wet fingers poked at his face and he laughed.

"Suppose that's fair," he murmured to her. "Sebastian Jonathan Sheppard Weir! Get yourself back here and report!"

Using mom's name stopped the little boy in his tracks. He already knew 'Sheppard' was more playful than a threat. He turned obediently to his father. "Sorry," he muttered sheepishly. "I was doing-" he paused, trying to remember the word, "Recon and I got ahead of my team."

"Good report," John praised his son as he freed his hand and lowered it. "Stay with the team until we reach the car?"

"'kay," Seb agreed as he fell into step with his dad. "Can I drive?"

"Are you sixteen?" John asked as he dropped the bags to the parking lot and started to maneuver Bella's seat into the car.

"I'm three," Seb reminded his father as he crawled across to the far side of the car.

John had initially taken his years of unspent wages and splurged on a gorgeous BMW convertible, which had been lovely while he and Elizabeth were alone. He'd had it for all of six months when Elizabeth had sheepishly realized her strange dizzy spells and sudden hatred of all colognes and perfumes meant she was pregnant. He'd driven the convertible back to the dealership and arrived home with the slightly boring, very safe, silver Passat that thankfully had a V6 or he would have died of boredom.

Elizabeth had taken the keys from his hand, sat on the steps of her mother's house and immediately burst into tears. He'd barely seen her cry before that moment, maybe a tear she tried to hide when he wasn't looking, and her rescue from the replicators had been rather emotional for good reason. But this was just a car, at least, he'd thought so until he sat down next to her and she threw her arms around him.

They told her mother together. John had actually ended up doing most of the talking. Elizabeth's mother had crushed her daughter in a hug that almost looked panful before doing the same to him. Sometime after that, as they both watched Elizabeth lose her grace and her figure to the invader in her body, he'd stopped thinking of her as Elizabeth's mother and started calling her mom.

Getting married was the next step; it was much quieter than Nancy. When he'd married Nancy they'd had their families, his friends, her friends, their acquaintances, people their families wanted to invite, people her mother thought would be impressed. John remembered standing next to his new wife in an endless line and wondering how many people he was actually going to know.

Marrying Elizabeth was quiet, Jack O'Neill had volunteered to officiate, and John had to admit the general's quick and clean method of getting through a ceremony was something he definitely approved of. The general was slightly evasive as to how he'd become an officiant, but he had the president's approval and it was hard to argue with that.

Nearly all of the expedition had made it to Earth for the wedding. Rodney had joked about leaving a night light in Atlantis for the night and coming back. Elizabeth's eyes had gotten misty when he didn't say home. Teyla had immediately realized Elizabeth was pregnant. Ronon was more elusive about it, but John suspected he'd known the moment Elizabeth had hugged him. He wasn't always one for hugs.

After that, John's life was a blur, though a pleasant one. Elizabeth took a teaching position at Georgetown. He'd started looking for a job he didn't feel was a colossal waste of time. He did some free-lance work with film studios and documentaries. Chopper pilots who could actually get close to a snow leopard in the crooked mountains were in short supply and he felt like he was doing something when the film-makers were so excited about what he'd allowed them to see. After all, he'd seen little of his own planet.

Elizabeth was finishing up her semester and trying to figure out how she'd balance the incoming baby and her lectures when General Jack O'Neill had appeared back on her doorstep. He remembered the dinner. The conflict in Elizabeth's face and the way what she wanted more than, well, anything conflicted with her second life. Nothing she was going to do at Georgetown was going to change the world but she could change the fate of galaxies if she agree to help Jack.

Jack left late after dinner. For a long while he'd just stayed and talked about nothing. He hungered for conversations that had little to do with the end of the world, and had even ended up agreeing to help John finish his tiling project in the bathroom. It was there, sitting on the freshly grouted tile, drinking a beer with the man who had become one of his idols as soon as he'd gotten his hands on SG-1 mission reports, that John realized his new place in the world.

"She won't say yes," Jack had mused as he opened another beer and gave up on the drive back to his hotel. "She'll think her place is here, with you and the kid." He took a swig and sighed. "God, not that I blame her. Sometimes I think I've got it all wrong, sitting in my comfy chair in Washington and trying to save the world when I could be golfing. Do you golf?"

John smirked and finished the last of his beer. Setting the bottle down as he accepted a second, he nodded. "I golf a lot," he admitted sheepishly. "My 'work'," he mimed quotation marks to show how serious it was. "It's pretty easy, few weeks at a time stuff. Maybe just a flight here, jaunt there. I ski too."

"How is it?" Jack asked with the curiosity of a lonely man.

"It's good," John replied almost regretfully. "I fix up the house. Go to the store with mom- Elizabeth's mom--"

"I have a secretary that buys me groceries," Jack remarked as he took a long drink of his beer. "Can't really find time to do it."

"How'd you get up here for the weekend?" John wondered as he rubbed a smudge on the floor with his hand. It wasn't bad, not perfect, but definitely good enough that Elizabeth would be happy.

"Called in a lot of favors, went AWOL-" Jack teased and opened another beer. "You have a good thing here."

John nodded slowly and couldn't help grinning a little foolishly. "I can't believe it. All I had to do was get fired--"

"Tried to talk them out of it," Jack interrupted. A beer back he might not have said anything, but now he was comfortable. "When I was still taking risks and getting my ass chewed, I would have gotten out of it. Why shouldn't you?"

"New management I guess," John mused as he dragged himself to his feet. "Wanna move to the porch? It's a little more comfortable than the floor."

"You're okay here, right?" Jack asked as he groaned his way to his feet. Lifting up the beer as he walked down the hallway towards John's porch, he stopped and turned to the younger man. "Both of you?"

"Elizabeth may have written the hardest, most creative political science exam on the face of the planet," John began with a shake of his head as he dropped into a swing on his porch. "But, she's all right. Once she gets over the fact she has to grade it."

"And she's okay?" Jack asked resting his elbows on his knees and starting up at the stars with a sigh. "No leftover replicator parts or dreams about being a replicator?"

"Her biggest complaint now is that I pick out socks that don't match," John replied lightly smirking around his beer bottle. "She can't see her feet to know until someone points it out to her."

"Are you going to be able to let that go?" Jack asked as he rocked back in the swing. "If she takes this position she'll be traveling a lot, in the city a lot, tired, worn out, mentally exhausted--"

John set down his beer on the railing and relaxed back into the swing. Crickets murmured in the distance and the late summer air was starting to smell like fall. Elizabeth was asleep upstairs and all was right with the world. "I love her," he replied simply drawn to the ring on his hand. "I can work anywhere. I can not work anywhere. I can brush teeth and change diapers and read stories as well as she can. If you need her--"

"I'm in a nasty spot." Jack interceded. "A pretty tight, uncomfortable, nasty spot." He drank again and sighed heavily. "Things can get ugly pretty quickly, one person makes a wrong move..."

"And we're picking ourselves up off the rubble wondering what the hell happened?" John asked rhetorically as he reclaimed his beer. It was dark and heavy as it ran down his throat. "I'm not doing anything important, I don't really know what I can do. Elizabeth and I already agreed that I'd be with the baby, babies..." he trailed off as he tried to imagine himself with more than one. "She knows I'll support her."

"You sound pretty confident there," Elizabeth teased from the doorway. John left the bench and wrapped his arms around her. She moved to kiss him, wrinkling her nose at the smell of beer but smiling at his surprise. "You're sure you want to be the soccer dad who constantly has to explain why his wife can't tell anyone anything about her job?"

"I thought the kids would start out with the skateboard," John offered lightly as he pulled her into his lap on one of their chair. "Move on to base jumping?"

Elizabeth laughed and silently moved his hand to the place beneath her skin where some part of their baby pushed outward. "Can you really ask me to leave him with a baby?"

"I'm afraid it's an ugly situation," Jack explained as he finished the last of his beer. "I can't--"

"I'll do it," she agreed with a sigh. Taking a moment to kiss John's forehead, Elizabeth snuggled closer to her husband. "You know I'm due in a month?"

"We'll work around it," Jack insisted with a relieved smile. A weight was gone from his shoulders, one that had made him almost visibly older. He cracked open another beer and grinned. "The ambassadors will hate having to change their schedules."

"Good," John replied as he remembered the stuffy bureaucrats who had help send him packing. Elizabeth kissed his forehead again, and he felt her lips move in his hair. It didn't matter what she was saying, she was having in his arms and together they'd make it work. They could always make it work.



Jack's truck, a slightly muddy, fairly beat up, but still new Dodge sat in his driveway as he pulled up. If the kids, Bella was out cold in her seat and Seb was fast asleep beside her, woke up, they'd be so excited Jack was visiting they'd be easy to put to bed. The general, for all his distinctions, was one hell of a babysitter. Who always seemed to have just as much energy as a toddler. When he was in town, he drove Elizabeth home and the kids loved him for it.

John shut off the engine and gingerly opened the door. Sebastian stayed sleeping, so he grinned at his good luck and started unloading the car. His son had been rambunctious, curious and quick to get into anything remotely dangerous since the moment he'd been born. That birth had been long, difficult and sandwiched between the assassination of the Russian ambassador and a particularly nasty negotiation with a Wraith Queen.

John had been allowed to the SGC just so he could be there to take over for Ronon when Elizabeth had arrived back from Pegasus through the 'gate, already well into labor. According to Teyla, and she was the only account John trusted, Elizabeth had gone head to head with the fiendishly self-involved rogue Queen for six hours while sweat ran down her face from the early stages of labor. No one was really sure of the details of Wraith culture, but something in Elizabeth's stubbornness had cut through.

Seb had been born eleven hours later in the depths of Cheyenne mountain. His thick dark hair was already established on his head. Elizabeth, who had survived the grueling experience on adrenaline and the high of her victory over the Wraith, handed her son over to his father and smiled. Touching his newborn head, she winked. Seb managed to have some kind of strange combination of Elizabeth's curls and the unruly gene that managed John's hair.

He lifted the little boy into his arms and cut through the garage towards his room. Seb slept easily in his father's arms and rolled to cling to the blanket Teyla had sent him as soon as John set him down. He ruffled his son's hair and left him to sleep.

Bella was awake and contently sucking an edge of her teething ring. Instead of screaming to be released from her seat, as her brother had at that age, she just lifted chubby arms in his direction and waited. Holding her against his shoulder, John kissed her arm and nibbled on her hand until she giggled. She was quiet, patient and seemed to spend more time thinking than a baby had any right to do.

She'd been born slowly over a lazy few days off at home. Elizabeth's mother had been able to be there and she'd spent a long moment crying into John's shoulder as she watched her granddaughter nurse. None of it was supposed to be possible, she'd whispered. Elizabeth was supposed to be dead. Instead, Elizabeth was radiant and surprisingly cheerful. He'd joked that he was worried this time she'd have the baby IN the meeting with the Wraith. Elizabeth had clung a little tighter and explained through the occasional curse that she wanted to try it small this time.

He set his keys down on the counter and headed to the living room in search of his wife. Jack's shoes were in the front hall but there wasn't the usual sound of laughter that accompanied them. Bella sensed her father's apprehension and wrapped a set of small fingers around a chunk of his hair.

Elizabeth was on the couch, a glass of water on the coffee table in front of her and her hands running over her temples. Jack heard him first, and Bella contemplated the general for a moment before he made a face and reminded her how much she licked him. Burbling and cheerfully departing into Jack's arms, the baby gave Jack a chance to whisper.

"We lost Colonel Caldwell, Ronon, fifteen scientists and twenty-two marines today," the general murmured as John watched his wife wipe tears from her eyes before they impacted onto the black pants of her suit. "It's the most we've ever lost in Pegasus."

"Seb's sleeping in his room," John explained with a calm that surprised him. "He'll be up in an hour or so, probably want dinner."

"I do mac and cheese pretty well," Jack ventured as he touched John's shoulder. "John, I'm sorry." It was all he needed to say. They knew in the look they shared through Bella's reaching fingers that one of the risks they took being soldiers wasn't just their lives, it was the lives of their friends.

Bella mashed Jack's lip with her fist and grinned with her four teeth. Jack nibbled her fingers and made his way up her arm towards her face. She squealed happily and reached clumsily for his hair with her other hand.

John kissed his daughter and moved towards his wife. She sat still and silently watched her tears fall to the carpet. "Wraith," she murmured dumbly as she noticed his presence. "The ones we lost got Rodney, Teyla and nearly three hundred refugees to safety," she finished lifting her head slightly so he got a glimpse of her already reddened eyes.

"I know Caldwell and Ronon," he murmured as he reached for her hand. "If the Wraith are dead, they're happy, especially Ronon. His regret is probably just that more Wraith aren't dead."

Squeezing his hand wasn't enough. Elizabeth glanced over at her daughter babbling at Jack and playing with her blocks. She watched for a moment before her hand went to her mouth. "Carter looked like she'd been fed on by a Wraith when she reported in. Her face was so tight."

"Don't suppose you can tell me what happened?" John wondered as he reached for her shoulder. His fingers were light, tentatively offering his support. Elizabeth started to shake her head, not because she couldn't tell him, but because she couldn't find the words. As John watched her, she just kept shaking her head. Her fingers fluttered as her hand danced helplessly at her side.

She held on to her composure only until he wrapped her to his chest. Elizabeth collapsed into him, first just trying to control her breathing. She'd lost people too, but this was different. This wasn't losing Carson or Ford, this was losing the man who'd taken John's place.

The man who could have been John.

"He's asking us to go back," she murmured slowly as if saying it left the words to hang in the air. "The Air Force isn't sure who to replace Caldwell with, Carter's shaken--" Pushing him away slightly, she just started shaking her head as tears ran down her face. "It should have been me. I should have been there. They were our people, good people and they're coming home in coffins. So many coffins- John- they had to take turns--"

His hand remained firmly on her shoulder and reaching for it brought her back. His skin was warm, so much warmer than her own as she clung to it. "The IOA wants me to go back and I'm not going without you, I'm not. You- you are--"

Quickly nodding his head, John saved her from having the finish her thought lightly. "I'm sure I can help the science section," he offered with a ghostly smile. "And I don't think Teyla will care if a court martialed ex-colonel with some old gene serves as her back-up gun."

"I can remove the 'ex-colonel' part," Jack called from the kitchen. "Not that I'm listening, but I know you'll get to that part of conversation eventually. There yet?"

"The IOA and the Air Force have agreed to return your commission," Elizabeth explained more tactfully as she tightened her grip on his hand. "They're really in a corner, nearly forty dead and some of the scientific community is starting to ask questions."

"The kids and I can take swim lessons in Pegasus," he pointed out softly stroking the back of her hand. "I don't think Sebby and the pumpkin really care where they grow up as long as we're there and uncle Jack stops by once in awhile."

"John--" Something in her tone stopped him dead.

"They aren't going to let us bring the kids?" he asked incredulously biting his lip in disgust. "What do they expect us to do? Leave them with your mother and visit them weekends? 'Lizabeth--"

"No--" Her protests bounced off his anger. No one had asked him to be separate from his family. It was bad enough that Ronon had died without him watching his back, but the high and mighty IOA was talking about his children.

Kissing the back of her hand before he stood up, John's tears dried before they passed his eyelashes. "They can't ask that," he sputtered firmly. "These- they are ours, Elizabeth. The best part of us and they need parents. I don't care if the world- galaxy- universe is coming to a nasty, brutal end-" he forced himself back down to the sofa next to her, but he couldn't stop running his hands angrily through his hair, as if that had offended him. When he finally looked up at her, Elizabeth's eyes were shining with something brighter than he expected.

"They're coming," Jack explained as he brought Bella with him from the kitchen. "Good speech, but they're coming. The IOA would like to prove Atlantis is safe for human habitation, and there isn't a better one for some people than having the kids of the people in charge just down the corridor."

"We get the kids," John repeated just to make sure he'd heard the general correctly.

"Yeah, you get 'em," Jack answered patiently trying to detangle Bella's hands from his dog tags.

"John gets his commission back?" Elizabeth asked as John's hands found their way back into her lap.

"Some people wanted him to come back as a major, said something about the promotion being a mistake--" Jack stared at Bella and seemed to imagine her accusing look had something to do with her father. "I of course, fought them down and called in a few favors. You'll be a colonel, lieutenant though, still have to answer to Carter."

Nodding and watching Elizabeth's pale fingers wind tighter into his own, John met Jack's eyes in thanks.

"You know what you're doing to these two, right?" Jack asked darkly as Bella decided to suck on a corner of his shirt collar. "You're bringing them to Atlantis. To Wraith, Wraith ships, replicators--"

"They'll be with us," Elizabeth said simply. John's lips had moved but he hadn't made a sound. "This is what we want." Unmentioned fears and regrets they hadn't felt hung in the air like a presence around them. John felt part of his heart harden in a way that terrified him as he looked at his daughter in someone else's arms. Other people had kids and dangerous jobs. Pioneer children lived and died in the beginning of every nation's history.

Elizabeth's green eyes were finally steady. Her grip was strong on his hands and John felt her resolve. Atlantis was her home, more even than it was his. Atlantis had a hold over her he and the kids shared in some strange manage a trois.

"So, put the car seats in the jumper then?" Jack quipped. Only Elizabeth's expression made John believe he was serious. Elizabeth looked through him and John let her see his fear. The kiss on his cheek was for his heart. The hand on his shoulder was a promise. The hand in his hand asked him to have faith.

John Sheppard was a man of little faith. Gravity was down and he could defy it occasionally was usually as spiritual as he got. His love, his children; the cold blackness of space and the monsters of the void hunting them down. Elizabeth thought it was worth it. That was a kind of faith that burned like an unearthly flame. The kind of flame that burned through water, without air, and lit up the darkness.

John only had to nod once. Elizabeth knew what he meant.