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Out of Order (part one)
Title: John Sheppard's First Bad Day
Rating: R? (there's some blood)
Pairing: Sam/Jack, Elizabeth/John
Summary: Set six months after The Washington Detour. Time jumps and babies for all!
Notes: I'm slowing joining the Sam/Jack religion. But it goes well with Sparky. This is for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lanna_kitty who betaed this and made sure I did Sam/Jack right.
"You'll be back in two hours," John insisted as he stood next to the flickering blue light of the stargate. "If it's longer than two hours, you have to call. If you don't call, I'm sending Ronon to get you. He doesn't like IOA guys, he'll be happy to shoot them and break you out."
Elizabeth glanced over at the massive Satedan who just patted his gun and smiled. "I'll be back," she promised lightly. "You could come with me," she offered as he rubbed his left hand over her swollen belly. "Sit in meetings, listen to the IOA blather."
Scowling at her, John rubbed his thumb over the protrusion that was their child's foot and turned to his daughter in Teyla's arms. "What do you think, munchkin? Want to go to Earth?"
Evie shook her head slowly as she watched Ronon make the same motion. Clapping her chubby hands together she squirmed down from Teylaatlan's arms and took a direct route to the huge man. Ronon scooped her up with one hand and made her squeal with glee.
"Be safe," John warned protectively as he leaned down to kiss her belly through her black shirt. "Don't hurt anyone just because they're trying to limit the amount of donuts you get."
"I don't get all the donuts?" Elizabeth joked as Ronon brought Evie by for a goodbye kiss before the little girl flew off to explore something down by the east pier. "Wait, I'm not going then. Sam can deal with the IOA on her own or drag you along instead."
John rolled his eyes towards the ceiling in mocking dismay before he bent to kiss her cheek. "I'll call ahead to the SGC and tell them to get extra food. Lots of extra food."
"I think she's just making up for everything she threw up, way back when she was afraid of food," Jack quipped as he brushed his hands against his trousers and got ready to go through the 'gate. "There was a month or so where I didn't think she was eating anything."
"Not keeping anything down was more like it," John added with old concern that still darkened his eyes.
Elizabeth just smiled softly and pulled him down so she could kiss him. "It got better," she reminded him as she leaned into his chest. "It was really just that trip that was hard."
"Everything else has been so easy," he replied sardonically. "Your ankles, your breasts, your knees, your back, the way he or she kicks at night--"
Pulling herself back to kiss him goodbye, she stared into his eyes and softened her expression. "You were charming before you were such a worrywart," she teased. "Remember that?"
"Vaguely," he murmured back before he kissed her again. John lingered longer than he usually would have in public, and Elizabeth tried to decide why Jack wasn't breaking them up. The retired general just waited for them, patiently watched the ripples of the event horizon as if he hadn't seen them a few hundred times before. "I'll be right here when you get back."
"I'll be gone two whole hours!" she protested laughing faintly as his green eyes remained full of worry. "John--"
"I'll be here," he finished without explaining the regret in his expression. "'Lizabeth?"
Standing just in front of the event horizon, with her belly nearly touching the ripplng surface, Elizabeth paused. "Yes?"
"Leave Earth some donuts?" he pleaded with a ghost of a smile.
Shaking her head, Elizabeth disappeared through the event horizon. Jack took a step sideways towards John as the other man's eyes remained firmly on his wife. "This is it, isn't it?" the older man asked in a whisper.
"Yeah," John muttered towards is feet. "Take care of her."
"Right," Jack whispered back as he straightened himself. "There's that. I'll see you when it's over then--"
"Yeah," John repeated as he started to bite his lip. "Please go before I--"
Startling slightly, Jack nodded as he realized what John was thinking. "Good idea that."
Sam looked faintly pale. Elizabeth was certain she was the only one who noticed because everyone else at the SGC seemed distracted by the way her stomach was stretching the limits of her simple black shirt. It had been odd enough the first time around that the leader of the Atlantis expedition had fallen pregnant so quickly into the mission. She supposed then it was because Earth had expected it would take a little longer than a year for the expedition to start establishing relationships in the event of broken contact.
She'd been pregnant with Evelyn the first time she'd returned to Earth. General Landry had been shocked and tried immediately to replace John with Colonel Caldwell. The IOA had tried to get both of them fired. Jack had done something, she still wasn't sure what, and one short phone call from the president had left Elizabeth and John alone to pursue their relationship as they saw fit. She'd always meant to ask him exactly what he had said, but never really taken the iniative.
Sam's greeting for her husband was shorter than John's goodbye kiss, but Jack's hand lingered in hers as they headed for the briefing room and the IOA. Woolsey was in the center of the curved table, and the Chinese and Russian representatives flanked him. On the outside were the new additions, the French, British and German attaches to the SGC had been added at that year's meeting of the UN security council. France and Russia were both represented by women, and Elizabeth tried to tell if their reactions to her condition were any better than those of their male counterparts.
The Russia representative's exceedingly trim figure suggested she had never had children, but the French representative's face softened slightly as Elizabeth sighed her way gratefully into a chair. Her back was especially bad today, and she'd thought twice that calling off the meeting might be better for her body; ironically, it had been John who ended up telling her to go. There'd been something funny in his eyes when he'd suggested it, but she'd listened because he so rarely had an opinion about such things.
Sam's chair was a little closer to Jack's than it was to the French representative and that little fact made Elizabeth smile slightly. It was harder for Sam and Jack to insinuate their relationship into their working relationship; even with Jack retired and working purely from a political space, they werent yet comfortable beng husband and wife in front of the IOA and the military.
"I apologize for dragging you across two galaxies in your condition," Woolsey began with a hint of real regret in his voice.
"My condition is deeply my own fault," Elizabeth teased lightly to try and break the mood. "Traveling through the 'gate is actually a fairly pleasant period of time where I forget the extra fifteen kilos I have in front of me."
Jack smirked. Sam's sudden, impossibly brilliant, smile, Elizabeth caught only out of the corner of her eye, but it hint her like a flashing marquee. Sam was pale. She was nearly ten centimeters closer to Jack's chair than she usually let herself be and she was smiling. The IOA were getting ready to go over everything she and Elizabeth had done in charge of the city for the last six months and Sam was smiling. A glance out of the corner of her eye told Elizabeth that Jack didn't know. He didn't have the overprotective look John had, and she knew the general enough to expect it.
Woolsey started to speak again and Elizabeth let herself sink into a pleasant autopilot. Sam wasn't going to be paying much attention to any of the questions, and she did owe the other couple for a great deal of her happiness. The least she could do was be pleasant to the IOA.
"Two hours, forty-three minutes," Jack read off his watch as he stared towards the g'gate as it began to dial. "How many times has Atlantis checked in?" he yelled up to Walter as the 'gate creaked around to the next chevron. "Three? Eight? Twenty-two?"
"General Landry won the pool at sixteen, sir," Walter yelled down as the general nodded pompously behind him. "You were close."
Glaring at the general, Jack stuffed his free hand into his pocket and continued letting Sam cling to his other hand. She'd been like that for the last two hours and though it was odd, it was rather nice to feel needed and necessary. He couldn't remember anything special John had told him about Sam. Still, he hoped that she'd done her homework like he had asked her, and having read everything John could have snuck to him without Keller or Beckett noticing.
Still wishing he had more than his pocketknife on him, Jack made sure Elizabeth was directly at his side and stepped through the 'gate. As he'd suspected, they arrived in Atlantis after the bright green tunnel abated. H was till chilled from the void as he looked around and realized that John had been completely right. This was the wrong Atlantis.
The air was stale, the control panels were covered with white dust cloths and the windows were blue as the light filtered through the ocean. Elizabeth and Sam took a few moments longer than him to realize what was happening. Elizabeth took it rather well and simply sat down on the floor by the 'gate as it shut off. She crossed her legs slowly, cursed once under her breath and just stared.
"Fuck me," Sam whispered just softly enough that only he heard her. "We should--" she began as she released his hand and headed immediately to the controls. Jack watched her go and sat down next to Elizabeth.
"Feet?" he asked as he tried to get comfortable against the wall.
Elizabeth stopped looking around and turned her eyes to him. "Back," she corrected as she tried not to furrow her eyebrows. "Too many meetings."
"Right," Jack agreed lazily watching Sam attack the consoles. "It has nothing to do with the rearrangement of your internal organs."
"Nothing at all," Elizabeth joined him in joking. "It'll be nice to have Sam home," she ventured cheerfully trying to ignore the fact that they seemed to be in right place at most definitely the wrong time. "I'll bet you've missed her."
"I've had the covers to myself," Jack replied lightly returning her optimism. "However, I'm starting to think that's overrated."
"Only slightly," Elizabeth grinned at him before her eyebrows tightened in sudden frustration. "Ever have one of those paches you just can't place? You know something's out of whack but you just can't--"
"Like a tangle on a fishing line?" he asked as he buried his instinctual blast of fear. John had said he wouldn't have a lot of time. The younger man had impressed on him how quickly the whole situation had changed in his account-- Jack paused when his mind complained that he was relying on a story he hadn't told John yet. Let alone the fact that John didn't know the story to tell him. "You okay?" he asked Elizabeth when she started to stare past him at the soft blue water outside the stained glass-like window.
Her eyes didn't look at him and her hands twitched on her thighs. "Just a little foggy," she offered vaguely. "Maybe it's deja vu."
Sam hurried down the stairs towards them and reported quickly. "We're in Atlantis, but as far as I can tell, somehow, we're nearly three years in the past."
"Three years?" Jack repeated as if he didn't know what was going on. "Shouldn't a svelter Elizabeth be leading her team through that 'gate rather soonish?"
His wife looked nearly as distracted as Elizabeth and Jack wondered if he was going to have to be the one to figure out how to get them out of here. John hadn't told him that part, and he assumed it was because he- the future him- hadn't told John. Perhaps Sam's miracle plan, he knew that had to be the answer, didn't work until the city was above the ocean, or didn't work until after the expedition arrived. Maybe they needed to get through something else first.
Elizabeth had missed his joke and mentally Jack made a note of that. Sam was staring at him, but there was something other than blazing intellect working behind her eyes. No matter how long he was there, his little adventure was going to be interesting. Patting the floor next to him, Jack suggested Sam sit.
"I don't know how it happened," she thought aloud as she slipped to the floor next to him. "There were no solar flares, strange interstellar phenonmenon. Nothing that would make us end up here."
Jack shrugged and reached for her hands. Holding both of them inside of his, he stared at them thoughtfully. "At least none that we could detect," he reminded her.
"Yeah--" Sam trailed off and she stared up at the surface of the water through the windows. "You're right about the expedition. The power levels of the ZPM are nearly exactly what McKay noted in his first report. In fact, we should consider moving to an unexplored room, something Elizabeth's people didn't look in immediately so we don't accidently change the timeline."
Groaning as he shook his head, Jack hoped this wasn't going to be one of those moments. John's suggestions had been vague, and he guessed his own suggestions had been equally vague. Why had he been so mysterious? He could have just written himself a damn note.
Turning thoughtfully to Elizabeth, Sam ignored his melancholy mood. "Where didn't you go right away?"
It took Elizabeth a moment to speak. Jack bit his lip and wondered how long it would be before she said something and her excessive quiet turned into a problem. He remembered how she'd gone into labor with Evelyn, and how unlike Sara, she'd gone quiet and introspective first. She hadn't known why John had been so calm. Jenn and Carson were both surprised. John had managed to lie fairly well, Jack had to give him credit for that.
Elizabeth sighed and shifted slightly against the wall. "After we found the life signs detectors we searched most of the city that was above water. Sumner-" she paused and Jack could hear her reset her voice mentally. "Was rather thorough."
Jack clapped his hands together once and started dragging himself to his feet. "Puddle jumper," he explained as both women looked at him. "Cloaked, no life signs, no power signature, as long as no one walks into us, we're fine. Elizabeth, you at least need to hide. Sam and I won't screw up the timeline that much, but you'd need some explaining."
That earned him half a smile from Elizabeth as he helped her to her feet. Her hands clung to him a little longer than she would have usually allowed herself, and he missed the way Sam clung to the wall momentarily before she got her balance. Jack kept a hand on Elizabeth's back instead of waiting for her to stumble. "Bay two is on the upper level, less foot traffic up there and we can take the transporter."
Elizabeth's tiny smile of gratitude made him grin.
"Hey, you're only a few weeks away from freedom, right?" he teased as he led her towards the transporter. Sam had buried herself in the control panels and was trying to figure out how they could get back. He admired that about her.
"Days," Elizabeth corrected softly. "I'm still-" she paused and it was more than finding her footing on the stairs that made her lose her place in thought. "-Surprised John let me go at all," she finished with mild amusement.
"Wishing he'd decided to come with?" Jack asked thoughtfully. He'd wondered that as well, but John hadn't come up with anything in his briefing. He made a mental note to smack himself again for being so vague.
"A little," she admitted faintly holding his hand a little tighter. "Sam will figure it out."
"That's why I keep her around," Jack agreed lazily. "She's nearly as smart as she is pretty."
Sam hit the console for a third time and glared at it. Between the strange way her eyes seemed to get tired faster now and the way her headaches had moved from the place behind her eyes to the middle of her head was deeply annoying. Was it going to be like this the whole time? Her work habits were going to have to change. Her rucksack lay at her feet. Jack was certainly concerned about Elizabeth and she couldn't blame him.
She felt her own stomach twist as she imagined facing Elizabeth's situation. Elizabeth had been the only one unconcerned. The only one who didn't think visiting the SGC so close to her due date was a mistake. When she'd seen the news that Elizabeth would come, she'd been surprised John had let her. More surprised John wasn't demanding to come along.
She'd have to be more careful. This was their first child, likely their only chance to have one given their advancing ages. This was an unrepeatable experiment and one she had to put out of her mind long enough to find a way home. Digging through the layers of Ancient computer programs, she searched until she found the ZPM readouts. There was enough power, they could muster dialing Earth if she could figure out how to trigger the fail safe while they still had enough power to return. She'd have to rig something else when they got back to Earth, figure out how to save the timeline.
The idea of going all the way back to Earth troubled her, perhaps there was an easier way. A simpler way to get them ahead the three years of time they needed without bouncing through Earth. If she could figure out how they'd gotten there, solar flare, dark matter or some kind of heavy interstellar object. Her head floated between pain and an odd sense of disconnection. She couldn't think the way she usually could. She couldn't wrap her head around the problem and take it apart the way she usually did.
As she kicked her bag she remembered there were two radios in the bottom. Something Jack had taught her to pack, and she'd never stopped listening. There was food in the bottom as well. MREs were awful, but they were food. There was water in the city, so they'd be all right for sometime if necessary. Hitting herself for not remember the radios sooner, Sam grabbed her bag, tucked one of her radios into her pocket and headed for the jumper bay.
"What made you come?" Elizabeth asked as she tried to get comfortable in the front of the jumper. His hand stayed on her face a moment, though he wasn't John it comforted her slightly. There was sweat along her hairline and it was from more than just the stairs up to the jumper. "You didn't have to."
"There's this husband," Jack began to explain as he tucked her hair behind her ear. "He, uh, well, he's a little overprotective, and we overprotective husbands have to stick together. Makes us look less foolish when we're in groups."
Her eyes closed for a moment and Jack ran the fingers of his free hand over his pocketknife. He had string with it. John reminded him that he didn't have anything else. He couldn't. "John asked me to go," he continued when Elizabeth opened her eyes again. "I have always liked him. Now, you rest, and I'll go see what my genius wife is up to."
Her small hand covered his on her face for a moment, and Jack saw her acceptance in her eyes. She'd make do because she had to, because she trusted him and Sam to take care of her. Her breath caught once in her throat and neither of them commented on it.
Her fingers tightened on his. "Maybe she's figured it out," she hoped softly. "She is supposed to be very smart after all."
"You're still worried," he repeated calmly. "And though you have all rights to be, John tells me you're very good at what you do. Pretty much everything you do."
Clinging to his hand as she brought it to her stomach, Elizabeth met his eyes calmly. "You won't hold it against me if I wish he was here?"
"Nah," Jack promised with a wink. "I wish he was here too," he agreed with a quick nod of his head. "I'll give him a hard time when we get home. Go extra on the guilt, don't you think?"
"Okay," she whispered softly back and that agreement made him wince all the more inside. Usually she fought with him longer before he made fun of her husband.
"Be back."
Jack nearly ran into Sam on the jumper bay floor. "What did I say about running in the halls Carter?" he chided and leaned in to kiss her cheek. "Save us yet?"
"No, sorry," she replied quickly looking faintly flushed. "Working on it though, from what I remember from McKay's initial reports, we should have company in the next few hours."
"We're hidden," Jack added with a nod. Content that his plans would work, he took the radio from her hand, grinned and started to return to Elizabeth. "I need to keep an eye on her. Smart move with the radios."
"Jack-"
He answered as he turned to back to her. "Yeah?"
"Kiss me again?" she begged as she held part of his jacket. The request for affection was mildly out of place, just enough that he took his time kissing her and found her searching for more than his touch.
"Carter?"
"I was waiting until we got back to Atlantis," Sam started to explain as if she was searching for the right thesis statement in her mind. "Thought it might be better if we were home."
"And?" he waited impatiently with her hands on his shoulders.
"I know we talked about it," she kept verbally looking for what she wanted. "I know you wanted to talk about it more before we--"
"I hate talking."
"I know," she added as she sorted thoughts. "I wanted to talk to you more, before I got to this point. I'm not really ready to tell you."
Jack moved his hands slowly up her back until they rested on her shoulders. He opened his mouth and then thought the better of it. He followed her eyes until she smiled sheepishly.
"I'm pregnant."
His hands tightened suddenly on her shoulders as if he was afraid she was going to fade from his grip. His lips twitched, then smiled, then smirked in exasperation. His eyes searched her face as if he needed to reassure himself that it was her in his arms. His second wife, his second chance at living what he'd lost the first time.
"John's a dead man," Jack muttered darkly as his right hand ran through her hair to cup the back of her neck. Before she asked or elaborated his lips were covering hers and keeping her from speaking. He had a way of saying everything he couldn't in a brush of his hand. His thumb ran over her ear and he crushed her to his chest.
"John?" she demanded confused as he took her face and shook his head.
"Complicated," he explained as he put the thought out of his mind. Holding her face so he could stare at her uninterrupted, Jack found what he wanted and crushed her back into his chest. "You okay, Carter?"
"Yeah," she murmured into his shoulder. "Kinda foggy, but I'll figure it out."
"Sam-" he replied as if it were a password to some puzzle. "Take it slow."
Licking her lips helped her focus on something that wasn't the way he was looking at her. "I'm fine," she assured him as she stared back towards the jumper. "Elizabeth?"
"Quicker is better," Jack answered as he forced himelf to let her go with a sigh. "But it's not an emergency, I know it's going to be awhile."
Shaking herself out of the moment, Sam finally gave into her curiosity. "You know?" she began grilling him as she started to feel it out in her head. "What does it have to do with John?"
"He'll be here in just over an hour," Jack admitted as he stared at his boots. "I'm going to kill him for not telling me about--" Sam's eyes made him stop his rant halfway through. He's been through this before. The expedition arrives, McKay helps you get us back where we belong, John helps me deliver the baby."
"You?" Sam's eyebrow went up in surprise. "Practicing already?"
"Remind me again that I like you," he quipped back as he took her hand and held it. "While you get the fairly easy job of figuring out how to send us back, I have to explain to one rather confused Major John Sheppard that in the rather near future he's in love with his boss, and she's having his child. As a bonus, he gets to skip ahead to that part, about a week after he met her."
"Not a good day for him," Sam agreed as she ran the scenario through his head. "So that's why they--"
"Yeah," Jack interrupted as he stared towards the jumper. "John told me about it a few days ago. As long as he and Colonel Sumner are the only ones to see or know Elizabeth is here, it'll result in the same timeline we know. At least, that's what he thinks anyway."
She played with his fingers as she strung her thoughts into a neater line. "Did I tell him anything to tell me?"
"'Bounce'," he answered with a shrug. "Seemed like a stupid message to me, but it's your message to you, mean something?"
"Possibly-" she faded as she started thinking instead of speaking. "I'll go watch for the others."
Jack's hand pulled her closer again, instead of watching her leave. Hugging her for the third time, he kissed her forehead before he let her out of his site. "Radio?"
Sam nodded quickly and tapped her pocket. "Sumner and Sheppard?"
"McKay can know you're here, just try not to mention Elizabeth," he suggested as he watched her disappear down the stairs. "Don't let McKay get on your nerves too much, remember he'll be gone for a year."
"I'll try," she yelled up back to him as she headed down the stairs to the transporter. If McKay knew she'd be here, that would explain why he'd been so strange before she left. Her mind reminded her how many times John had put himself in harm's way. He'd known he'd survive, not that he was that reckless, he'd just had the luxury of knowing he'd make his decisions and that they'd work out.
It explained some of his smugness, Sam realized as the transporter deposited her back in command. Jack said she'd needed McKay to figure it out and her head hurt. Her head actually physically hurt and that type of headache was new to her without it being the result of a huge expenditure of energy. Sitting on the floor by the console made the dizzy feeling of her head fade slightly, her heart was still beating too fast, but that was just nerves.
Jack had taken it pretty well. She'd meant to do something better, more meaningful, but it hadn't worked out that way. She should have expected that more than a moment between them where anything worked out the normal way. Setting her alarm for an hour, Sam did the entirely selfish thing and put her head on her bag as she lay on the floor. This once, she could trust that the timeline knew what it was doing.
The alarm of the 'gate opening when off before her watch did and Sam lifted her head to see the 'gate room fill with blue light. Waiting out of sight before the consoles, she listened as people started to arrive. Hearing the wonder in their voices was distinctly odd, as was hearing Sumner's voice again. He was ordering a sweep.
Sam tapped the radio in her head and tried not to sound like she'd been asleep. "Jack, they're here," she whispered into the radio.
Hers clicked twice in response, but he didn't speak. Worry for Elizabeth shot through her as she pushed her bag towards an out of the way corner and smoothed her hair. It wouldn't look right if she was asleep when McKay found her.
It was McKay and Doctor Weir, both from three years previous, who lead the group up the stairs into the control room. Weir was carrying her backpack with the straps undone, she went past Sam without seeing her in the darkness and put her pack down in her office.
It was almost like watching history happen around her, McKay ran over the consoles and touched the one she'd already activated in surprise. "Someone's here!" he called as he nervously clutched his gun. Weir was immediately back over the bridge to meet him.
Sam sighed and put her hands up. "It's a long story McKay," she began as she watched McKay's pistol shake slightly in his hand. "Why don't we go into your office, Doctor."
Weir, the thin, shocked version of Elizabeth with much shorter hair dumbly pointed Sam into the office she'd just claimed with her bag. "Colonel Sumner?" she asked as she stared at the different design of Sam's black BDUs and seemed to be trying to figure it out.
"Major-" Sam nearly had to bite her lip to keep herself from saying colonel, "Sheppard as well, please. It would be nice if I only had to go over the story once."
"So," McKay began as he rolled his eyes. "You want me to help you find a program an Ancient hid in the computer ten thousand years ago and activate it with enough power left in the ZPM that we can find a way to send you and General O'Neill back to the right time?"
"That's about right," Sam sighed and stared at Weir for help.
Weir looked at McKay and nodded simply. "She says we'll be safe when this program activates, and we'll have enough time to do what we're here to do and get them back at the same time."
"We'll be draining the ZPM completely!" McKay protested as he stared from Weir to Sumner. "We'll be trapped."
"The timeline remains, right?" Sumner asked as he watched his marines move their cargo through the glass.
"Yes," Sam promised him as she watched Weir's eyes end up on Sheppard. "This is the way it has to be."
"Do you believe her?" Sumner asked politely turning back to Weir. The doctor did her best not to look startled. Weir's eyes searched Sam's face and fixed on the wedding band she was wearing. Something in that seemed to convince her.
"Please help her all that you can," Weir ordered all three men. "I'll keep control limited to the two of you for the time being. Unless you need help?"
"Radek," Sam asked immediately before she corrected herself. "Doctor Zelenka would be useful."
Weir nodded slowly as Sheppard and Sumner stood and headed for the bridge across to control. "Please send him up," she asked Sumner as she watched McKay complain under his breath to a console.
"Yes ma'am," Sumner replied easily. He didn't know what to make of the situation, and like most marines Sam had met, he wasn't letting that bother him. "Sheppard--"
"Actually," Sam interrupted him as she tried to shake the headache that wouldn't die out of her head. "General O'Neill might need him. Could I?"
Sumner seemed almost pleased to let Sheppard out of his sight. "By all means," he replied easily. "Sir," he added as he remembered that she was a rank above him.
"Sir?" Sheppard wondered in surprise. "What can I do for the general?"
Elizabeth clung to him as if sinking into her chair would put her head below water, she gasped and that sound cut through him almost as badly as her hands were digging into his arm. The sob came as soon as she had breath again and Jack was at a loss so he held her. He rocked slowly in the doorway into the cockpit of the puddle jumper.
By the time he'd finished with Sam, Elizabeth was standing up, clinging to the control panel and having a hard time pretending she was just tired. Half-an-hour after that he was desperately wishing John had let him stuff an entire bottle of morphine into his pocket. She hadn't hit him, Sara had hit him and he supposed he almost deserved this more. He'd let Elizabeth go. He hadn't argued with John and let her go through this whole mess because he believed in timelines.
More hoped than believed they'd remain lines and not tangle the way they had here, but Jack was doing his best to hold it together. Her water hadn't broken, but she was still already covered in sweat. What started on her hairline was covering her face now, and Elizabeth had removed her jacket, and if he hadn't been there he thought she might have taken her t-shirt off as well. His jacket was stuffed towards the back of the jumper, just to keep it out of the way. He remembered vividly the amount of goo having a baby generated, and he wanted to have something reasonably clean to throw on when this was over.
Getting her to drink from Sam's emergency water bottle was nearly all he could do for Elizabeth other than keep her on her feet, braced between himself and the wall. "It was slower-" she panted as he held the water near her mouth. "Evie took her time."
"John was a good solider," he remembered softly. "Poor guy didn't sleep for three days."
Her eyes teared more than just out of frustration and pain as she let him pour the water into her mouth. "You're okay," John reminded her as he watched tears brim in her exhausted green eyes.
"It's only been two hours," she chided herself for her exhaustion and lowered her head to his shoulder. "I can't--"
"You're fine," Jack soothed her the best he could. "I've got an insider on this one. You're fine. Kid's gonna be fine too."
Shuddering as she breathed in, Elizabeth tried to agree with him. Jack put his hands on both sides of her stomach, feeling for the hard parts that were the important bits of the baby before she became unreasonable again. He usually got about three minutes before she couldn't handle him touching her. This time he found the hard round spot that he was convinced was the head. It was back, the way it was supposed to be, a hard, round ball beneath his hand just above her public bone.
"Sorry," he murmured apologetically. "I know I'm getting a little touchy-feely on you."
"It's okay," she promised as she nodded and made an attempt to look at him. Elizabeth managed a ghostly smile. "I won't tell."
"So, you know I get to try this on my own," he began in an attempt to distract her. "Sam just told me."
Her ghostly smile burst into something real. "Really?" she asked breathily focusing on his eyes. "That's--" her words were lost as she stiffened. The pain overwhelmed the breath in her throat and she had to use her strength to keep her feet. Beneath the hands h hadn't moved yet, Jack felt her muscles tighten in bands, as if her flesh were stone beneath his skin.
"Thanks," he mumbled towards her hair. The sweat was running down her neck, soaking her shirt. Elizabeth kept her eyes shut, as if opening them only reminded her John wasn't here. Her desperate cry of pain turned into a moan and Elizabeth let him hold her up. The fact that she let him, made his heart skip a beat.
"You're going to be good at this," she stuttered as she fought to catch her breath. "Done it already."
"Yeah," he replied gently feeling the muscles relax in her stomach. "It's good of you to make me practice."
Elizabeth sank lower and he helped her get down to the floor. "Try to be helpful," she said weakly. Panting for a moment, she took the time to think. "Sam?"
"Happy," Jack promised with a quick nod of his head. "Really happy."
"John was happy," she told her as he tried to get comfortable next to her. "Once I stopped throwing up, and we got home safely, he was so happy."
"Guys like babies," Jack quipped with mild amusement. "We can't admit it much, so you don't hear it, but we love the little guys."
She spared the energy to chuckle. Slumping against the wall and him as she relaxed, before the next contraction hit her. "Don't-" she began weakly, "-don't take this--"
"I'm not John," he finished for her as he offered himself as a brace. "I wish I were."
Elizabeth slipped forward, falling against him as the wall became too uncomfortable. Jack moved quickly to keep her elbows from hitting soft parts of his anatomy. He caught her up and held on as her breathing turned into painful sobbing.. He wasn't sure if it was grief or labor, but he knew he had to hold on because that was what he could do.
Major Sheppard was having a fairly odd day. First, he'd been prepared to leave Earth forever, and that seemed all right in and of itself. He was part of a good team, Sumner was supposed to be one of the best commanders out there, and though he couldn't stnad him, the civilians were pretty interesting. Especially Weir, there was really something about her trying to be so idealistic in the angry universe he'd just found out about.
He'd been trying to wrap his mind around the city and the steps that lit up as he walked on them when Colonel Carter had shown up. She didn't belong there. She was literally out of time and their mission had changed from discovering the city and setting up a base to getting Carter and O'Neill home.
He wasn't much use at that. He didn't know much about time loops or black holes or all the other science people like McKay were here for. He followed Carter because she outranked him and because Weir had told him to go. He was okay with that, they were heading into the part of the city that had interested him the most since he'd heard the comm traffic.
There were space ships on Atlantis. Actual, real life, ancient space ships and he was going to get to fly them. He was trying to decide why the Ancients had made space ships look so much like space-going RVs when Sam spoke into her radio. In the empty space in front of him, something shimmered into life. It appeared out of midair in a shifting haze that coalesced into a space-going RV. John was wondering if the door would open in the same, crazy shimmering way that the RV had appeared when it opened with a simple, mechanical whine.
It opened up, like a hatch, and someone inside was in pain. Either General O'Neill was torturing the woman with her arms around his neck on the floor of the craft, or something was terribly wrong.
Sam left him and went to the woman, and Sheppard couldn't help wincing as she screamed. Something was vaguely familiar in her voice. She was incoherent, babbling to Jack as she tried to free herself from his grip. Through Sam and Jack trying to make sense of something, he heard the woman say something he recognized.
"John-" she pleaded as Sam traded places with Jack temporarily. "I want John." Her voice was harsh, hoarse and exhausted. Was it her screaming? Was she screaming for him?
"This isn't going to make a lot of a sense," Jack promised as he pulled Sheppard back towards the hatch. "I'm from the future, Sam's from the future, she's--"
Elizabeth cried out in pain and Sheppard realized it was Weir. Instead of the pale, slender, serious Doctor Weir, this future woman was reddened with her struggle. Her stomach was swollen outward, and Sheppard startled backward. He'd never seen a woman that pregnant. One of her hands was twisted in Sam's shirt and the other splayed out in a desperate struggle against her pain. Her breasts were rounded and swollen and there was a softness in her face Weir didn't have.
The anguished cry tore out of her throat, as if she were trying to strangle herself with it. Sam stroked her hair, wiped her face with a spare shirt from her bag, and tried to keep her calm. There was a grief in Elizabeth's eyes that was absent in the present Doctor Weir. Something vital was missing from her as she tried to release her child from her body. Something was sapping her strength and she had nothing to spare.
When her eyes hit him, his world changed. Sheppard had heard of those moments, had read them in books but it hadn't been enough to make him believe. Elizabeth's eyes reached in and reformed his heart as if he were glass and he could be returned to the molten state in which he'd been formed. Her hand released Sam and pushed her away. When Sam didn't move, Elizabeth struck out.
Sheppard caught her hand. Instead of hitting him, or fighting him as she had Sam, Elizabeth melted towards him. Her grief rushed through her flesh towards him in a flood of longing. Her hand went to his face and he caught the other as she fell into his arms. "John," she repeated desperately. "John, it's coming."
"It's okay," Jack said patiently and nodded for Sheppard to repeat him.
"It's okay," Sheppard repeated as Elizabeth slipped further into his arms. "It's okay," he repeated again. She quieted and her breathing began to return to normal. "Is it mine?" he asked feebly staring at Jack.
Jack nodded once calmly. "Yeah, someday. Your second."
"Second?" Sheppard mouthed as he started taking off his tactical vest. He set his gun aside as well and let Elizabeth fall into his lap.
Jack lowered himself just over his head. "I need to talk to Sam, Elizabeth's fine. She just needs you to be here. I'll be right back and we'll do this thing."
"Yes sir," Sheppard agreed as he tried to wriggle out of his belt. "I'm sorry," he apologized to Elizabeth as he helped her settle between his legs.
"Sorry?" she asked weakly turning her head towards him.
"I'm not yours," Sheppard offered as honestly as he could. "I wish I were--" he started as he felt the sweat of her sink into his clothes.
"How's she?" Sam demanded as they snuck around to the side of the jumper.
"How are you?" Jack asked in return. There was sweat on his face and the entire front of his shirt was plastered to his chest. His boots were damp too, and something clear had soaked through his trousers. on the left side. "Sam--"
"I love you," she blurted suddenly pushing him back towards the side of the jumper. "I have a new headache," she explained with a shrug. "Haven't had this kind before."
"How-?"
"Seven weeks," she answered before he finished.
"Nausea?"
Chuckling, Sam shook her head. "Not like Elizabeth."
"Dizzy?"
"Not like they say," she answered thoughtfully lowering her head to his cheek. "I thought it might be like Daniel after a few too many beers, but it's more like nitrous oxide, or a really nasty case of jet-lag."
"I thought you didn't get-"
Sam kissed him lightly before answering, "I do now."
"Last question," Jack began kissing her more heartily.
"I have to get back to work--" she pleaded through his lips.
"Happy?"
Looking down at herself before she looked up, Sam nodded as if she were shell shocked. "New kind," she explained slightly. "Kind of fuzzy-"
"-love you," he finished when Elizabeth began to scream. Jack's kiss was goodbye and good luck and his hand lingered in hers just long enough for her to squeeze it. "You probably don't want to watch. You'll get scarred and want a c-section or something."
"Are you-?" she asked as she held him back.
"I'm ecstatic Sam," he promised her with more honesty than he usually allowed himself. "Get us out of here, okay?"
and onto part two
Rating: R? (there's some blood)
Pairing: Sam/Jack, Elizabeth/John
Summary: Set six months after The Washington Detour. Time jumps and babies for all!
Notes: I'm slowing joining the Sam/Jack religion. But it goes well with Sparky. This is for
lanna_kitty who betaed this and made sure I did Sam/Jack right."You'll be back in two hours," John insisted as he stood next to the flickering blue light of the stargate. "If it's longer than two hours, you have to call. If you don't call, I'm sending Ronon to get you. He doesn't like IOA guys, he'll be happy to shoot them and break you out."
Elizabeth glanced over at the massive Satedan who just patted his gun and smiled. "I'll be back," she promised lightly. "You could come with me," she offered as he rubbed his left hand over her swollen belly. "Sit in meetings, listen to the IOA blather."
Scowling at her, John rubbed his thumb over the protrusion that was their child's foot and turned to his daughter in Teyla's arms. "What do you think, munchkin? Want to go to Earth?"
Evie shook her head slowly as she watched Ronon make the same motion. Clapping her chubby hands together she squirmed down from Teylaatlan's arms and took a direct route to the huge man. Ronon scooped her up with one hand and made her squeal with glee.
"Be safe," John warned protectively as he leaned down to kiss her belly through her black shirt. "Don't hurt anyone just because they're trying to limit the amount of donuts you get."
"I don't get all the donuts?" Elizabeth joked as Ronon brought Evie by for a goodbye kiss before the little girl flew off to explore something down by the east pier. "Wait, I'm not going then. Sam can deal with the IOA on her own or drag you along instead."
John rolled his eyes towards the ceiling in mocking dismay before he bent to kiss her cheek. "I'll call ahead to the SGC and tell them to get extra food. Lots of extra food."
"I think she's just making up for everything she threw up, way back when she was afraid of food," Jack quipped as he brushed his hands against his trousers and got ready to go through the 'gate. "There was a month or so where I didn't think she was eating anything."
"Not keeping anything down was more like it," John added with old concern that still darkened his eyes.
Elizabeth just smiled softly and pulled him down so she could kiss him. "It got better," she reminded him as she leaned into his chest. "It was really just that trip that was hard."
"Everything else has been so easy," he replied sardonically. "Your ankles, your breasts, your knees, your back, the way he or she kicks at night--"
Pulling herself back to kiss him goodbye, she stared into his eyes and softened her expression. "You were charming before you were such a worrywart," she teased. "Remember that?"
"Vaguely," he murmured back before he kissed her again. John lingered longer than he usually would have in public, and Elizabeth tried to decide why Jack wasn't breaking them up. The retired general just waited for them, patiently watched the ripples of the event horizon as if he hadn't seen them a few hundred times before. "I'll be right here when you get back."
"I'll be gone two whole hours!" she protested laughing faintly as his green eyes remained full of worry. "John--"
"I'll be here," he finished without explaining the regret in his expression. "'Lizabeth?"
Standing just in front of the event horizon, with her belly nearly touching the ripplng surface, Elizabeth paused. "Yes?"
"Leave Earth some donuts?" he pleaded with a ghost of a smile.
Shaking her head, Elizabeth disappeared through the event horizon. Jack took a step sideways towards John as the other man's eyes remained firmly on his wife. "This is it, isn't it?" the older man asked in a whisper.
"Yeah," John muttered towards is feet. "Take care of her."
"Right," Jack whispered back as he straightened himself. "There's that. I'll see you when it's over then--"
"Yeah," John repeated as he started to bite his lip. "Please go before I--"
Startling slightly, Jack nodded as he realized what John was thinking. "Good idea that."
Sam looked faintly pale. Elizabeth was certain she was the only one who noticed because everyone else at the SGC seemed distracted by the way her stomach was stretching the limits of her simple black shirt. It had been odd enough the first time around that the leader of the Atlantis expedition had fallen pregnant so quickly into the mission. She supposed then it was because Earth had expected it would take a little longer than a year for the expedition to start establishing relationships in the event of broken contact.
She'd been pregnant with Evelyn the first time she'd returned to Earth. General Landry had been shocked and tried immediately to replace John with Colonel Caldwell. The IOA had tried to get both of them fired. Jack had done something, she still wasn't sure what, and one short phone call from the president had left Elizabeth and John alone to pursue their relationship as they saw fit. She'd always meant to ask him exactly what he had said, but never really taken the iniative.
Sam's greeting for her husband was shorter than John's goodbye kiss, but Jack's hand lingered in hers as they headed for the briefing room and the IOA. Woolsey was in the center of the curved table, and the Chinese and Russian representatives flanked him. On the outside were the new additions, the French, British and German attaches to the SGC had been added at that year's meeting of the UN security council. France and Russia were both represented by women, and Elizabeth tried to tell if their reactions to her condition were any better than those of their male counterparts.
The Russia representative's exceedingly trim figure suggested she had never had children, but the French representative's face softened slightly as Elizabeth sighed her way gratefully into a chair. Her back was especially bad today, and she'd thought twice that calling off the meeting might be better for her body; ironically, it had been John who ended up telling her to go. There'd been something funny in his eyes when he'd suggested it, but she'd listened because he so rarely had an opinion about such things.
Sam's chair was a little closer to Jack's than it was to the French representative and that little fact made Elizabeth smile slightly. It was harder for Sam and Jack to insinuate their relationship into their working relationship; even with Jack retired and working purely from a political space, they werent yet comfortable beng husband and wife in front of the IOA and the military.
"I apologize for dragging you across two galaxies in your condition," Woolsey began with a hint of real regret in his voice.
"My condition is deeply my own fault," Elizabeth teased lightly to try and break the mood. "Traveling through the 'gate is actually a fairly pleasant period of time where I forget the extra fifteen kilos I have in front of me."
Jack smirked. Sam's sudden, impossibly brilliant, smile, Elizabeth caught only out of the corner of her eye, but it hint her like a flashing marquee. Sam was pale. She was nearly ten centimeters closer to Jack's chair than she usually let herself be and she was smiling. The IOA were getting ready to go over everything she and Elizabeth had done in charge of the city for the last six months and Sam was smiling. A glance out of the corner of her eye told Elizabeth that Jack didn't know. He didn't have the overprotective look John had, and she knew the general enough to expect it.
Woolsey started to speak again and Elizabeth let herself sink into a pleasant autopilot. Sam wasn't going to be paying much attention to any of the questions, and she did owe the other couple for a great deal of her happiness. The least she could do was be pleasant to the IOA.
"Two hours, forty-three minutes," Jack read off his watch as he stared towards the g'gate as it began to dial. "How many times has Atlantis checked in?" he yelled up to Walter as the 'gate creaked around to the next chevron. "Three? Eight? Twenty-two?"
"General Landry won the pool at sixteen, sir," Walter yelled down as the general nodded pompously behind him. "You were close."
Glaring at the general, Jack stuffed his free hand into his pocket and continued letting Sam cling to his other hand. She'd been like that for the last two hours and though it was odd, it was rather nice to feel needed and necessary. He couldn't remember anything special John had told him about Sam. Still, he hoped that she'd done her homework like he had asked her, and having read everything John could have snuck to him without Keller or Beckett noticing.
Still wishing he had more than his pocketknife on him, Jack made sure Elizabeth was directly at his side and stepped through the 'gate. As he'd suspected, they arrived in Atlantis after the bright green tunnel abated. H was till chilled from the void as he looked around and realized that John had been completely right. This was the wrong Atlantis.
The air was stale, the control panels were covered with white dust cloths and the windows were blue as the light filtered through the ocean. Elizabeth and Sam took a few moments longer than him to realize what was happening. Elizabeth took it rather well and simply sat down on the floor by the 'gate as it shut off. She crossed her legs slowly, cursed once under her breath and just stared.
"Fuck me," Sam whispered just softly enough that only he heard her. "We should--" she began as she released his hand and headed immediately to the controls. Jack watched her go and sat down next to Elizabeth.
"Feet?" he asked as he tried to get comfortable against the wall.
Elizabeth stopped looking around and turned her eyes to him. "Back," she corrected as she tried not to furrow her eyebrows. "Too many meetings."
"Right," Jack agreed lazily watching Sam attack the consoles. "It has nothing to do with the rearrangement of your internal organs."
"Nothing at all," Elizabeth joined him in joking. "It'll be nice to have Sam home," she ventured cheerfully trying to ignore the fact that they seemed to be in right place at most definitely the wrong time. "I'll bet you've missed her."
"I've had the covers to myself," Jack replied lightly returning her optimism. "However, I'm starting to think that's overrated."
"Only slightly," Elizabeth grinned at him before her eyebrows tightened in sudden frustration. "Ever have one of those paches you just can't place? You know something's out of whack but you just can't--"
"Like a tangle on a fishing line?" he asked as he buried his instinctual blast of fear. John had said he wouldn't have a lot of time. The younger man had impressed on him how quickly the whole situation had changed in his account-- Jack paused when his mind complained that he was relying on a story he hadn't told John yet. Let alone the fact that John didn't know the story to tell him. "You okay?" he asked Elizabeth when she started to stare past him at the soft blue water outside the stained glass-like window.
Her eyes didn't look at him and her hands twitched on her thighs. "Just a little foggy," she offered vaguely. "Maybe it's deja vu."
Sam hurried down the stairs towards them and reported quickly. "We're in Atlantis, but as far as I can tell, somehow, we're nearly three years in the past."
"Three years?" Jack repeated as if he didn't know what was going on. "Shouldn't a svelter Elizabeth be leading her team through that 'gate rather soonish?"
His wife looked nearly as distracted as Elizabeth and Jack wondered if he was going to have to be the one to figure out how to get them out of here. John hadn't told him that part, and he assumed it was because he- the future him- hadn't told John. Perhaps Sam's miracle plan, he knew that had to be the answer, didn't work until the city was above the ocean, or didn't work until after the expedition arrived. Maybe they needed to get through something else first.
Elizabeth had missed his joke and mentally Jack made a note of that. Sam was staring at him, but there was something other than blazing intellect working behind her eyes. No matter how long he was there, his little adventure was going to be interesting. Patting the floor next to him, Jack suggested Sam sit.
"I don't know how it happened," she thought aloud as she slipped to the floor next to him. "There were no solar flares, strange interstellar phenonmenon. Nothing that would make us end up here."
Jack shrugged and reached for her hands. Holding both of them inside of his, he stared at them thoughtfully. "At least none that we could detect," he reminded her.
"Yeah--" Sam trailed off and she stared up at the surface of the water through the windows. "You're right about the expedition. The power levels of the ZPM are nearly exactly what McKay noted in his first report. In fact, we should consider moving to an unexplored room, something Elizabeth's people didn't look in immediately so we don't accidently change the timeline."
Groaning as he shook his head, Jack hoped this wasn't going to be one of those moments. John's suggestions had been vague, and he guessed his own suggestions had been equally vague. Why had he been so mysterious? He could have just written himself a damn note.
Turning thoughtfully to Elizabeth, Sam ignored his melancholy mood. "Where didn't you go right away?"
It took Elizabeth a moment to speak. Jack bit his lip and wondered how long it would be before she said something and her excessive quiet turned into a problem. He remembered how she'd gone into labor with Evelyn, and how unlike Sara, she'd gone quiet and introspective first. She hadn't known why John had been so calm. Jenn and Carson were both surprised. John had managed to lie fairly well, Jack had to give him credit for that.
Elizabeth sighed and shifted slightly against the wall. "After we found the life signs detectors we searched most of the city that was above water. Sumner-" she paused and Jack could hear her reset her voice mentally. "Was rather thorough."
Jack clapped his hands together once and started dragging himself to his feet. "Puddle jumper," he explained as both women looked at him. "Cloaked, no life signs, no power signature, as long as no one walks into us, we're fine. Elizabeth, you at least need to hide. Sam and I won't screw up the timeline that much, but you'd need some explaining."
That earned him half a smile from Elizabeth as he helped her to her feet. Her hands clung to him a little longer than she would have usually allowed herself, and he missed the way Sam clung to the wall momentarily before she got her balance. Jack kept a hand on Elizabeth's back instead of waiting for her to stumble. "Bay two is on the upper level, less foot traffic up there and we can take the transporter."
Elizabeth's tiny smile of gratitude made him grin.
"Hey, you're only a few weeks away from freedom, right?" he teased as he led her towards the transporter. Sam had buried herself in the control panels and was trying to figure out how they could get back. He admired that about her.
"Days," Elizabeth corrected softly. "I'm still-" she paused and it was more than finding her footing on the stairs that made her lose her place in thought. "-Surprised John let me go at all," she finished with mild amusement.
"Wishing he'd decided to come with?" Jack asked thoughtfully. He'd wondered that as well, but John hadn't come up with anything in his briefing. He made a mental note to smack himself again for being so vague.
"A little," she admitted faintly holding his hand a little tighter. "Sam will figure it out."
"That's why I keep her around," Jack agreed lazily. "She's nearly as smart as she is pretty."
Sam hit the console for a third time and glared at it. Between the strange way her eyes seemed to get tired faster now and the way her headaches had moved from the place behind her eyes to the middle of her head was deeply annoying. Was it going to be like this the whole time? Her work habits were going to have to change. Her rucksack lay at her feet. Jack was certainly concerned about Elizabeth and she couldn't blame him.
She felt her own stomach twist as she imagined facing Elizabeth's situation. Elizabeth had been the only one unconcerned. The only one who didn't think visiting the SGC so close to her due date was a mistake. When she'd seen the news that Elizabeth would come, she'd been surprised John had let her. More surprised John wasn't demanding to come along.
She'd have to be more careful. This was their first child, likely their only chance to have one given their advancing ages. This was an unrepeatable experiment and one she had to put out of her mind long enough to find a way home. Digging through the layers of Ancient computer programs, she searched until she found the ZPM readouts. There was enough power, they could muster dialing Earth if she could figure out how to trigger the fail safe while they still had enough power to return. She'd have to rig something else when they got back to Earth, figure out how to save the timeline.
The idea of going all the way back to Earth troubled her, perhaps there was an easier way. A simpler way to get them ahead the three years of time they needed without bouncing through Earth. If she could figure out how they'd gotten there, solar flare, dark matter or some kind of heavy interstellar object. Her head floated between pain and an odd sense of disconnection. She couldn't think the way she usually could. She couldn't wrap her head around the problem and take it apart the way she usually did.
As she kicked her bag she remembered there were two radios in the bottom. Something Jack had taught her to pack, and she'd never stopped listening. There was food in the bottom as well. MREs were awful, but they were food. There was water in the city, so they'd be all right for sometime if necessary. Hitting herself for not remember the radios sooner, Sam grabbed her bag, tucked one of her radios into her pocket and headed for the jumper bay.
"What made you come?" Elizabeth asked as she tried to get comfortable in the front of the jumper. His hand stayed on her face a moment, though he wasn't John it comforted her slightly. There was sweat along her hairline and it was from more than just the stairs up to the jumper. "You didn't have to."
"There's this husband," Jack began to explain as he tucked her hair behind her ear. "He, uh, well, he's a little overprotective, and we overprotective husbands have to stick together. Makes us look less foolish when we're in groups."
Her eyes closed for a moment and Jack ran the fingers of his free hand over his pocketknife. He had string with it. John reminded him that he didn't have anything else. He couldn't. "John asked me to go," he continued when Elizabeth opened her eyes again. "I have always liked him. Now, you rest, and I'll go see what my genius wife is up to."
Her small hand covered his on her face for a moment, and Jack saw her acceptance in her eyes. She'd make do because she had to, because she trusted him and Sam to take care of her. Her breath caught once in her throat and neither of them commented on it.
Her fingers tightened on his. "Maybe she's figured it out," she hoped softly. "She is supposed to be very smart after all."
"You're still worried," he repeated calmly. "And though you have all rights to be, John tells me you're very good at what you do. Pretty much everything you do."
Clinging to his hand as she brought it to her stomach, Elizabeth met his eyes calmly. "You won't hold it against me if I wish he was here?"
"Nah," Jack promised with a wink. "I wish he was here too," he agreed with a quick nod of his head. "I'll give him a hard time when we get home. Go extra on the guilt, don't you think?"
"Okay," she whispered softly back and that agreement made him wince all the more inside. Usually she fought with him longer before he made fun of her husband.
"Be back."
Jack nearly ran into Sam on the jumper bay floor. "What did I say about running in the halls Carter?" he chided and leaned in to kiss her cheek. "Save us yet?"
"No, sorry," she replied quickly looking faintly flushed. "Working on it though, from what I remember from McKay's initial reports, we should have company in the next few hours."
"We're hidden," Jack added with a nod. Content that his plans would work, he took the radio from her hand, grinned and started to return to Elizabeth. "I need to keep an eye on her. Smart move with the radios."
"Jack-"
He answered as he turned to back to her. "Yeah?"
"Kiss me again?" she begged as she held part of his jacket. The request for affection was mildly out of place, just enough that he took his time kissing her and found her searching for more than his touch.
"Carter?"
"I was waiting until we got back to Atlantis," Sam started to explain as if she was searching for the right thesis statement in her mind. "Thought it might be better if we were home."
"And?" he waited impatiently with her hands on his shoulders.
"I know we talked about it," she kept verbally looking for what she wanted. "I know you wanted to talk about it more before we--"
"I hate talking."
"I know," she added as she sorted thoughts. "I wanted to talk to you more, before I got to this point. I'm not really ready to tell you."
Jack moved his hands slowly up her back until they rested on her shoulders. He opened his mouth and then thought the better of it. He followed her eyes until she smiled sheepishly.
"I'm pregnant."
His hands tightened suddenly on her shoulders as if he was afraid she was going to fade from his grip. His lips twitched, then smiled, then smirked in exasperation. His eyes searched her face as if he needed to reassure himself that it was her in his arms. His second wife, his second chance at living what he'd lost the first time.
"John's a dead man," Jack muttered darkly as his right hand ran through her hair to cup the back of her neck. Before she asked or elaborated his lips were covering hers and keeping her from speaking. He had a way of saying everything he couldn't in a brush of his hand. His thumb ran over her ear and he crushed her to his chest.
"John?" she demanded confused as he took her face and shook his head.
"Complicated," he explained as he put the thought out of his mind. Holding her face so he could stare at her uninterrupted, Jack found what he wanted and crushed her back into his chest. "You okay, Carter?"
"Yeah," she murmured into his shoulder. "Kinda foggy, but I'll figure it out."
"Sam-" he replied as if it were a password to some puzzle. "Take it slow."
Licking her lips helped her focus on something that wasn't the way he was looking at her. "I'm fine," she assured him as she stared back towards the jumper. "Elizabeth?"
"Quicker is better," Jack answered as he forced himelf to let her go with a sigh. "But it's not an emergency, I know it's going to be awhile."
Shaking herself out of the moment, Sam finally gave into her curiosity. "You know?" she began grilling him as she started to feel it out in her head. "What does it have to do with John?"
"He'll be here in just over an hour," Jack admitted as he stared at his boots. "I'm going to kill him for not telling me about--" Sam's eyes made him stop his rant halfway through. He's been through this before. The expedition arrives, McKay helps you get us back where we belong, John helps me deliver the baby."
"You?" Sam's eyebrow went up in surprise. "Practicing already?"
"Remind me again that I like you," he quipped back as he took her hand and held it. "While you get the fairly easy job of figuring out how to send us back, I have to explain to one rather confused Major John Sheppard that in the rather near future he's in love with his boss, and she's having his child. As a bonus, he gets to skip ahead to that part, about a week after he met her."
"Not a good day for him," Sam agreed as she ran the scenario through his head. "So that's why they--"
"Yeah," Jack interrupted as he stared towards the jumper. "John told me about it a few days ago. As long as he and Colonel Sumner are the only ones to see or know Elizabeth is here, it'll result in the same timeline we know. At least, that's what he thinks anyway."
She played with his fingers as she strung her thoughts into a neater line. "Did I tell him anything to tell me?"
"'Bounce'," he answered with a shrug. "Seemed like a stupid message to me, but it's your message to you, mean something?"
"Possibly-" she faded as she started thinking instead of speaking. "I'll go watch for the others."
Jack's hand pulled her closer again, instead of watching her leave. Hugging her for the third time, he kissed her forehead before he let her out of his site. "Radio?"
Sam nodded quickly and tapped her pocket. "Sumner and Sheppard?"
"McKay can know you're here, just try not to mention Elizabeth," he suggested as he watched her disappear down the stairs. "Don't let McKay get on your nerves too much, remember he'll be gone for a year."
"I'll try," she yelled up back to him as she headed down the stairs to the transporter. If McKay knew she'd be here, that would explain why he'd been so strange before she left. Her mind reminded her how many times John had put himself in harm's way. He'd known he'd survive, not that he was that reckless, he'd just had the luxury of knowing he'd make his decisions and that they'd work out.
It explained some of his smugness, Sam realized as the transporter deposited her back in command. Jack said she'd needed McKay to figure it out and her head hurt. Her head actually physically hurt and that type of headache was new to her without it being the result of a huge expenditure of energy. Sitting on the floor by the console made the dizzy feeling of her head fade slightly, her heart was still beating too fast, but that was just nerves.
Jack had taken it pretty well. She'd meant to do something better, more meaningful, but it hadn't worked out that way. She should have expected that more than a moment between them where anything worked out the normal way. Setting her alarm for an hour, Sam did the entirely selfish thing and put her head on her bag as she lay on the floor. This once, she could trust that the timeline knew what it was doing.
The alarm of the 'gate opening when off before her watch did and Sam lifted her head to see the 'gate room fill with blue light. Waiting out of sight before the consoles, she listened as people started to arrive. Hearing the wonder in their voices was distinctly odd, as was hearing Sumner's voice again. He was ordering a sweep.
Sam tapped the radio in her head and tried not to sound like she'd been asleep. "Jack, they're here," she whispered into the radio.
Hers clicked twice in response, but he didn't speak. Worry for Elizabeth shot through her as she pushed her bag towards an out of the way corner and smoothed her hair. It wouldn't look right if she was asleep when McKay found her.
It was McKay and Doctor Weir, both from three years previous, who lead the group up the stairs into the control room. Weir was carrying her backpack with the straps undone, she went past Sam without seeing her in the darkness and put her pack down in her office.
It was almost like watching history happen around her, McKay ran over the consoles and touched the one she'd already activated in surprise. "Someone's here!" he called as he nervously clutched his gun. Weir was immediately back over the bridge to meet him.
Sam sighed and put her hands up. "It's a long story McKay," she began as she watched McKay's pistol shake slightly in his hand. "Why don't we go into your office, Doctor."
Weir, the thin, shocked version of Elizabeth with much shorter hair dumbly pointed Sam into the office she'd just claimed with her bag. "Colonel Sumner?" she asked as she stared at the different design of Sam's black BDUs and seemed to be trying to figure it out.
"Major-" Sam nearly had to bite her lip to keep herself from saying colonel, "Sheppard as well, please. It would be nice if I only had to go over the story once."
"So," McKay began as he rolled his eyes. "You want me to help you find a program an Ancient hid in the computer ten thousand years ago and activate it with enough power left in the ZPM that we can find a way to send you and General O'Neill back to the right time?"
"That's about right," Sam sighed and stared at Weir for help.
Weir looked at McKay and nodded simply. "She says we'll be safe when this program activates, and we'll have enough time to do what we're here to do and get them back at the same time."
"We'll be draining the ZPM completely!" McKay protested as he stared from Weir to Sumner. "We'll be trapped."
"The timeline remains, right?" Sumner asked as he watched his marines move their cargo through the glass.
"Yes," Sam promised him as she watched Weir's eyes end up on Sheppard. "This is the way it has to be."
"Do you believe her?" Sumner asked politely turning back to Weir. The doctor did her best not to look startled. Weir's eyes searched Sam's face and fixed on the wedding band she was wearing. Something in that seemed to convince her.
"Please help her all that you can," Weir ordered all three men. "I'll keep control limited to the two of you for the time being. Unless you need help?"
"Radek," Sam asked immediately before she corrected herself. "Doctor Zelenka would be useful."
Weir nodded slowly as Sheppard and Sumner stood and headed for the bridge across to control. "Please send him up," she asked Sumner as she watched McKay complain under his breath to a console.
"Yes ma'am," Sumner replied easily. He didn't know what to make of the situation, and like most marines Sam had met, he wasn't letting that bother him. "Sheppard--"
"Actually," Sam interrupted him as she tried to shake the headache that wouldn't die out of her head. "General O'Neill might need him. Could I?"
Sumner seemed almost pleased to let Sheppard out of his sight. "By all means," he replied easily. "Sir," he added as he remembered that she was a rank above him.
"Sir?" Sheppard wondered in surprise. "What can I do for the general?"
Elizabeth clung to him as if sinking into her chair would put her head below water, she gasped and that sound cut through him almost as badly as her hands were digging into his arm. The sob came as soon as she had breath again and Jack was at a loss so he held her. He rocked slowly in the doorway into the cockpit of the puddle jumper.
By the time he'd finished with Sam, Elizabeth was standing up, clinging to the control panel and having a hard time pretending she was just tired. Half-an-hour after that he was desperately wishing John had let him stuff an entire bottle of morphine into his pocket. She hadn't hit him, Sara had hit him and he supposed he almost deserved this more. He'd let Elizabeth go. He hadn't argued with John and let her go through this whole mess because he believed in timelines.
More hoped than believed they'd remain lines and not tangle the way they had here, but Jack was doing his best to hold it together. Her water hadn't broken, but she was still already covered in sweat. What started on her hairline was covering her face now, and Elizabeth had removed her jacket, and if he hadn't been there he thought she might have taken her t-shirt off as well. His jacket was stuffed towards the back of the jumper, just to keep it out of the way. He remembered vividly the amount of goo having a baby generated, and he wanted to have something reasonably clean to throw on when this was over.
Getting her to drink from Sam's emergency water bottle was nearly all he could do for Elizabeth other than keep her on her feet, braced between himself and the wall. "It was slower-" she panted as he held the water near her mouth. "Evie took her time."
"John was a good solider," he remembered softly. "Poor guy didn't sleep for three days."
Her eyes teared more than just out of frustration and pain as she let him pour the water into her mouth. "You're okay," John reminded her as he watched tears brim in her exhausted green eyes.
"It's only been two hours," she chided herself for her exhaustion and lowered her head to his shoulder. "I can't--"
"You're fine," Jack soothed her the best he could. "I've got an insider on this one. You're fine. Kid's gonna be fine too."
Shuddering as she breathed in, Elizabeth tried to agree with him. Jack put his hands on both sides of her stomach, feeling for the hard parts that were the important bits of the baby before she became unreasonable again. He usually got about three minutes before she couldn't handle him touching her. This time he found the hard round spot that he was convinced was the head. It was back, the way it was supposed to be, a hard, round ball beneath his hand just above her public bone.
"Sorry," he murmured apologetically. "I know I'm getting a little touchy-feely on you."
"It's okay," she promised as she nodded and made an attempt to look at him. Elizabeth managed a ghostly smile. "I won't tell."
"So, you know I get to try this on my own," he began in an attempt to distract her. "Sam just told me."
Her ghostly smile burst into something real. "Really?" she asked breathily focusing on his eyes. "That's--" her words were lost as she stiffened. The pain overwhelmed the breath in her throat and she had to use her strength to keep her feet. Beneath the hands h hadn't moved yet, Jack felt her muscles tighten in bands, as if her flesh were stone beneath his skin.
"Thanks," he mumbled towards her hair. The sweat was running down her neck, soaking her shirt. Elizabeth kept her eyes shut, as if opening them only reminded her John wasn't here. Her desperate cry of pain turned into a moan and Elizabeth let him hold her up. The fact that she let him, made his heart skip a beat.
"You're going to be good at this," she stuttered as she fought to catch her breath. "Done it already."
"Yeah," he replied gently feeling the muscles relax in her stomach. "It's good of you to make me practice."
Elizabeth sank lower and he helped her get down to the floor. "Try to be helpful," she said weakly. Panting for a moment, she took the time to think. "Sam?"
"Happy," Jack promised with a quick nod of his head. "Really happy."
"John was happy," she told her as he tried to get comfortable next to her. "Once I stopped throwing up, and we got home safely, he was so happy."
"Guys like babies," Jack quipped with mild amusement. "We can't admit it much, so you don't hear it, but we love the little guys."
She spared the energy to chuckle. Slumping against the wall and him as she relaxed, before the next contraction hit her. "Don't-" she began weakly, "-don't take this--"
"I'm not John," he finished for her as he offered himself as a brace. "I wish I were."
Elizabeth slipped forward, falling against him as the wall became too uncomfortable. Jack moved quickly to keep her elbows from hitting soft parts of his anatomy. He caught her up and held on as her breathing turned into painful sobbing.. He wasn't sure if it was grief or labor, but he knew he had to hold on because that was what he could do.
Major Sheppard was having a fairly odd day. First, he'd been prepared to leave Earth forever, and that seemed all right in and of itself. He was part of a good team, Sumner was supposed to be one of the best commanders out there, and though he couldn't stnad him, the civilians were pretty interesting. Especially Weir, there was really something about her trying to be so idealistic in the angry universe he'd just found out about.
He'd been trying to wrap his mind around the city and the steps that lit up as he walked on them when Colonel Carter had shown up. She didn't belong there. She was literally out of time and their mission had changed from discovering the city and setting up a base to getting Carter and O'Neill home.
He wasn't much use at that. He didn't know much about time loops or black holes or all the other science people like McKay were here for. He followed Carter because she outranked him and because Weir had told him to go. He was okay with that, they were heading into the part of the city that had interested him the most since he'd heard the comm traffic.
There were space ships on Atlantis. Actual, real life, ancient space ships and he was going to get to fly them. He was trying to decide why the Ancients had made space ships look so much like space-going RVs when Sam spoke into her radio. In the empty space in front of him, something shimmered into life. It appeared out of midair in a shifting haze that coalesced into a space-going RV. John was wondering if the door would open in the same, crazy shimmering way that the RV had appeared when it opened with a simple, mechanical whine.
It opened up, like a hatch, and someone inside was in pain. Either General O'Neill was torturing the woman with her arms around his neck on the floor of the craft, or something was terribly wrong.
Sam left him and went to the woman, and Sheppard couldn't help wincing as she screamed. Something was vaguely familiar in her voice. She was incoherent, babbling to Jack as she tried to free herself from his grip. Through Sam and Jack trying to make sense of something, he heard the woman say something he recognized.
"John-" she pleaded as Sam traded places with Jack temporarily. "I want John." Her voice was harsh, hoarse and exhausted. Was it her screaming? Was she screaming for him?
"This isn't going to make a lot of a sense," Jack promised as he pulled Sheppard back towards the hatch. "I'm from the future, Sam's from the future, she's--"
Elizabeth cried out in pain and Sheppard realized it was Weir. Instead of the pale, slender, serious Doctor Weir, this future woman was reddened with her struggle. Her stomach was swollen outward, and Sheppard startled backward. He'd never seen a woman that pregnant. One of her hands was twisted in Sam's shirt and the other splayed out in a desperate struggle against her pain. Her breasts were rounded and swollen and there was a softness in her face Weir didn't have.
The anguished cry tore out of her throat, as if she were trying to strangle herself with it. Sam stroked her hair, wiped her face with a spare shirt from her bag, and tried to keep her calm. There was a grief in Elizabeth's eyes that was absent in the present Doctor Weir. Something vital was missing from her as she tried to release her child from her body. Something was sapping her strength and she had nothing to spare.
When her eyes hit him, his world changed. Sheppard had heard of those moments, had read them in books but it hadn't been enough to make him believe. Elizabeth's eyes reached in and reformed his heart as if he were glass and he could be returned to the molten state in which he'd been formed. Her hand released Sam and pushed her away. When Sam didn't move, Elizabeth struck out.
Sheppard caught her hand. Instead of hitting him, or fighting him as she had Sam, Elizabeth melted towards him. Her grief rushed through her flesh towards him in a flood of longing. Her hand went to his face and he caught the other as she fell into his arms. "John," she repeated desperately. "John, it's coming."
"It's okay," Jack said patiently and nodded for Sheppard to repeat him.
"It's okay," Sheppard repeated as Elizabeth slipped further into his arms. "It's okay," he repeated again. She quieted and her breathing began to return to normal. "Is it mine?" he asked feebly staring at Jack.
Jack nodded once calmly. "Yeah, someday. Your second."
"Second?" Sheppard mouthed as he started taking off his tactical vest. He set his gun aside as well and let Elizabeth fall into his lap.
Jack lowered himself just over his head. "I need to talk to Sam, Elizabeth's fine. She just needs you to be here. I'll be right back and we'll do this thing."
"Yes sir," Sheppard agreed as he tried to wriggle out of his belt. "I'm sorry," he apologized to Elizabeth as he helped her settle between his legs.
"Sorry?" she asked weakly turning her head towards him.
"I'm not yours," Sheppard offered as honestly as he could. "I wish I were--" he started as he felt the sweat of her sink into his clothes.
"How's she?" Sam demanded as they snuck around to the side of the jumper.
"How are you?" Jack asked in return. There was sweat on his face and the entire front of his shirt was plastered to his chest. His boots were damp too, and something clear had soaked through his trousers. on the left side. "Sam--"
"I love you," she blurted suddenly pushing him back towards the side of the jumper. "I have a new headache," she explained with a shrug. "Haven't had this kind before."
"How-?"
"Seven weeks," she answered before he finished.
"Nausea?"
Chuckling, Sam shook her head. "Not like Elizabeth."
"Dizzy?"
"Not like they say," she answered thoughtfully lowering her head to his cheek. "I thought it might be like Daniel after a few too many beers, but it's more like nitrous oxide, or a really nasty case of jet-lag."
"I thought you didn't get-"
Sam kissed him lightly before answering, "I do now."
"Last question," Jack began kissing her more heartily.
"I have to get back to work--" she pleaded through his lips.
"Happy?"
Looking down at herself before she looked up, Sam nodded as if she were shell shocked. "New kind," she explained slightly. "Kind of fuzzy-"
"-love you," he finished when Elizabeth began to scream. Jack's kiss was goodbye and good luck and his hand lingered in hers just long enough for her to squeeze it. "You probably don't want to watch. You'll get scarred and want a c-section or something."
"Are you-?" she asked as she held him back.
"I'm ecstatic Sam," he promised her with more honesty than he usually allowed himself. "Get us out of here, okay?"
and onto part two