lay me beside you down on the floor
The first thing Elizabeth does when she's off the damn ha'tak (panic button is still set to the nexus and she'll have to fix that, she thinks ever so vaguely) is...let's be honest, it's a stiff drink and the careful application of breathing techniques to avoid flipping out and/or hyperventilating. That was not the kind of thing she does.
The next is to take to Hephaistos' forge what she was there for in the first place -- and the helmet, of course, it isn't hers and she hands it over with the staff and the zat. The pauses of all the things she has to do before she can go home help steady herself, but all the same she begs off as quickly as she can, back to her children the girls.
That was a lot longer than she planned on being gone. It's midnight or so when she gets into the apartment -- Heidi's let them stay in their own bedroom (leaving a baby monitor there, of all things, and Elizabeth idly wonders if someone had to mess with it for the range). So there they are, her girls, sleeping as peacefully as she's come to expect, and she should go and get changed, she should go to bed, but she doesn't. She sits down on the floor, against the wall, between their beds, and she breathes until she sleeps and while she sleeps, she waits.
The next is to take to Hephaistos' forge what she was there for in the first place -- and the helmet, of course, it isn't hers and she hands it over with the staff and the zat. The pauses of all the things she has to do before she can go home help steady herself, but all the same she begs off as quickly as she can, back to her children the girls.
That was a lot longer than she planned on being gone. It's midnight or so when she gets into the apartment -- Heidi's let them stay in their own bedroom (leaving a baby monitor there, of all things, and Elizabeth idly wonders if someone had to mess with it for the range). So there they are, her girls, sleeping as peacefully as she's come to expect, and she should go and get changed, she should go to bed, but she doesn't. She sits down on the floor, against the wall, between their beds, and she breathes until she sleeps and while she sleeps, she waits.