Fic: Maternity Leave
Title: Maternity Leave
Author: Melyanna
Rating: Older kid-friendly
Summary: After leaving Atlantis for good, Elizabeth Weir finds herself passing new milestones on Earth.
Notes: This one refers to the events of Ordinary Nations several times, so I'd recommend reading that one first. Also, this is babyfic. Run while you still can. (And I can't apologize enough to Jon Stewart, by the way.)
The day that Elizabeth found out she was pregnant again, she treated herself to a long, hot bubble bath.
Neither of the boys fought her on bedtime and with her news, John had insisted on her quitting work at a reasonable time, so she lit a few candles and soaked in the tub until she almost fell asleep. Fortunately, before that could happen, John entered the bathroom. Elizabeth smiled at him sleepily. "Hello there."
"Hi, sweetheart," he replied, coming into the room and kneeling beside the tub. "How are you feeling?"
"Very, very relaxed." She leaned over and kissed him lightly.
In return, John scooped up some of the remaining bubbles with a finger and smeared them on her nose. "And here I was going to offer you a back rub," he said.
"Like I'd say no?"
He grinned, and she moved to the middle of the tub, pulling her knees up to her chest as she leaned forward. John kicked his shoes off and sat on the ledge behind her, left foot on the floor and right foot perched on the narrow ledge on the other side. He dunked his hands in the water for a moment to warm them up, and then he went to work on her muscles.
His hands were warm, comforting, his amazing fingers knowing just where to touch her to release the last vestiges of tension in her body, even as her face grew a little flushed and another kind of tension began to develop. At another time in her life she might have been embarrassed to admit that a back rub of any kind - let alone when she was naked - was somewhat arousing, but at least now she could blame things on pregnancy hormones.
Slowly, he worked his way down her back, below the water line. Then his fingers slowed, tracing small, seemingly random circles on her lower back. Elizabeth knew they were scars, though she'd never twisted around in front of a mirror to see them for herself. They were the last reminders of a month in captivity, and she could imagine the look on John's face as he touched them.
She knew he blamed himself for not finding her faster than he had. She also hoped that eventually that guilt would fade. It hadn't been his fault any more than it had been hers.
His hands stroked up her back again, and Elizabeth reached to squeeze his fingers as they rested on her shoulder. "John," she said quietly, "make love to me tonight? Please."
She turned halfway in the water. He was half-smiling. "Anything you want," he replied, leaning down to kiss her.
The day that John, Elizabeth, Peter, and Siah moved into their new house, it snowed.
That was completely predictable. It was the middle of February, they'd closed on the house miraculously quickly, and they had realized within days of coming back to Earth that Elizabeth's townhouse was just not enough room for two boys who'd had a city the size of Manhattan to run around in. Their Federal-style house wasn't massive, but it was big enough for the four of them - five, come September - and their Diplomatic Service agents. Plus, the front and back yards were huge. When they'd first seen the lot, Elizabeth could tell that John was imagining Saturday afternoons playing football with the boys. Elizabeth couldn't blame him. In her own mind, she'd been imagining their little one, not yet born, out on the grass and taking her first halting steps into Daddy's arms.
For some reason she was sure the baby was a girl. She was also somewhat disturbed by how much she wanted to jump her husband in a closet just at the thought of him with a baby. She was so easy.
John wouldn't let her lift anything, and had corralled help with the moving instead. Josh Lyman was there out of either fear or guilt; Charlie Young was there because he was a good guy; Jack O'Neill was there because he'd always had a soft spot for Elizabeth. Josh and Charlie both had young children and had recently dealt with pregnant women, but it was Jack who came up to her while she was not lifting things and quietly asked if there was another Baby Sheppard on the way. Elizabeth hadn't been able to keep a grin off her face.
That evening, while Josh and Charlie were off picking up a few pizzas and Jack was icing his knee, Elizabeth sat on the step of the back porch, watching the boys. They were bundled up in coats and snow pants, and they were attempting to have a snowball fight. Unfortunately for them, neither of them had very good aim yet. John stepped out of the back door and chuckled. "How to throw may have to be the first lesson in any sport," he commented.
Just then, Siah had patiently put together a rather large ball of snow and tried to kick it at Peter. It mostly disintegrated on impact with his foot. "Soccer doesn't require it," Elizabeth commented.
John settled down on the porch behind her, slipping his arms around her and letting one hand come to rest against her abdomen. "Think I'll have a fighting chance with this one?" he asked.
Elizabeth grinned. "Probably not."
"Yeah, I guess you're right."
In March, they visited the Bartlets up in New Hampshire, where Abbey talked endlessly about Ellie's upcoming wedding to Marcus Lorne. For a variety of reasons, they'd decided to wait until Christmas to have the ceremony. This was apparently giving Abbey more and more time to discover things, like just what was done in a military wedding. The subject of dress uniforms came up and John blanched. He hated wearing that thing.
As the first evening wore on, Abbey cooed over ultrasound pictures and Jed sat with Siah on his lap listening intently to Mozart. Eventually, though, Jed brought Elizabeth a glass of milk and sat down next to her. "You know," he said, "when it was announced you were leaving Atlantis, I had a feeling this might have been the reason." He gestured vaguely at her stomach.
"Well, it wasn't the only reason," she replied. "It was time."
There was a long pause. "Elizabeth, did something happen?" Jed asked quietly.
She couldn't tell him everything, but she did manage to answer him. "I've been talking to Kate Harper a lot," she explained. "She's been helping me deal with this."
That Jed understood.
By the time April rolled around, Elizabeth was showing. Her obstetrician assured her that this was normal for a second pregnancy, but she felt very weird about it. She showed up for an appearance on Meet the Press, and Tim Russert said quite bluntly, "Doctor Weir, are you pregnant?"
The amusing part, though, was the tabloids. She remembered when the Stargate was first disclosed and the supermarket checkouts had been plastered with nonsense about her being pregnant with an Asgard baby and John leaving her because of it. Remarkably, the rumors when she was actually pregnant were even more ridiculous.
In May, they got better ultrasound pictures of the baby. When they were told it was a girl, she and John were both grinning from ear to ear. Her odd suspicion about it had been right after all.
The next day, John left the house early and came back with two gallons of paint. By supper, the room they'd set aside for a nursery was painted pink and lavender. There were already a few things in the room, left from when the boys were babies - a rocking horse given to them by Marcus Lorne, and a cradle that had been a gift from the Athosians, among other things. Elizabeth surveyed the room - and the paint on her husband's shirt and face - and said, "Well, I think we'll need to get some things to go with the paint color."
John smiled, almost bashfully. "My sister Regina would kill me if my daughter didn't start life with a girly room."
Elizabeth had started her memoirs years ago, but didn't really get to work on them until they returned to Earth. This time, however, she started in the middle and worked her way backward and forward, finding her themes along the way. When she finally got to the beginning, she knew how it was supposed to start.
The things we experienced were terrifying and wonderful all at once, she wrote in her introduction. We made friends and enemies, in the galaxy outside us and in the city around us. But the thing which made the most difference was the power of the human voice - the ability to reason and express and debate. In the end, war can only go so far. At some point, peace has to prevail, or mankind as we know it will dwindle into nothingness.
Yet it is wars that define mankind's history - we mark our past by blood shed on this day and in this place. In much the same way, I find my time in Atlantis defines itself through periods of conflict. At each juncture, however, words stand out in my mind, whether they were spoken by me to rally the troops or spoken by others to frighten and persuade. When the time comes to go once more into the breach, we turn to words.
And it is remarkable how often a life can be taken or saved with a single word.
Elizabeth had to pause then, as the baby was kicking rather enthusiastically and she had to shift a little to get comfortable again. While she was stopped, she wondered a little at where this idea had come from.
With a small sigh, she pressed her hand gently against her belly. A few moments later, the baby pushed back against her hand. She remembered doing that with Siah for the first time, remembered getting John to do the same. The wonder of this first, primitive communication with her child had not lessened.
But there are some things that words will never be sufficient for. There are some things I experienced in Atlantis which won't be appearing in this memoir, not because they're still classified but because I simply don't know how to tell those stories. Atlantis tested my convictions and beliefs in many respects, and confirmed them in others. Along with professional fulfillment came great personal fulfillment: I married, adopted, and gave birth, three experiences which I would not trade for anything.
As I write this, my daughter is kicking in the womb. My hope for her and for my sons is that I will leave something for them that is better than what my parents left for me, but as Newton said, I will only do so by standing on my parents' shoulders, and on the shoulders of all those giants who have come before me. This is my responsibility, and that was my foremost goal in the lost city of Atlantis.
The Fourth of July was miserably hot.
Josh and Donna were hosting a barbecue at their house, and Elizabeth spent most of it sitting under a patio umbrella with her feet up on an ice chest. John spent a lot of the time playing with the kids while Donna sat with Elizabeth and commiserated. Josh, apparently, had never really understood why the heat could become so unbearable to a pregnant woman who was usually cold when not pregnant. John was much the same way.
But the funniest thing of all was when Siah came up to her, out of breath from running around for so long. John had been trying to get the kids to learn how to play football, and it hadn't been entirely successful by the look of it. Siah placed his little hands on Elizabeth's stomach and said, "Hi, baby sister. I need to tell you something. Soccer is cooler than football. Daddy lies about that."
"Siah!" Elizabeth said, laughing. "You're going to get yourself in trouble with Daddy."
The boy climbed up on her lap - or what room there was left on her lap these days - and rested against her stomach. "Can I name the baby, Mommy?" he asked.
"I'm afraid not," she replied. "Remember Uncle Marcus? I promised him that he could name the baby."
"Oh. Why?"
"Because, Siah."
Across the table, Donna was almost doubled over laughing. Siah seemed not to notice, and Elizabeth reflexively but futilely tried to smooth his hair down. He looked back down. "I hope you're not boring," he said, addressing the baby again. "And I hope you don't take too long to get here."
"She can take as much time as she needs, Siah," Elizabeth said. "You took all the time you needed, so she can too."
Siah patted her stomach. "Soccer," he said. "Soccer is cool."
Finding Atlantis was published in August, meaning that at eight months pregnant she was doing a circuit of interviews promoting it. Her doctor said no to a cross-country book signing tour, and Elizabeth had never been more grateful to the woman than she was for that.
When the time came, however, she was feeling good enough for a trip up to New York, so she did The Daily Show after all. Jon Stewart announced her as the guest, and when she stepped out of the wings, Jon hopped off the back of the stage to help her up the steps. When she got settled down into her chair and the audience quieted down, Jon looked pointedly at her stomach and said, "Wow. You're really pregnant."
Elizabeth laughed along with the audience, and then narrowed her eyes at the little smile on his face. "Did you think I was faking?"
"Nah, I thought you'd made that up to get people to stop calling you," he teased. "So this is number three?"
She rested her hands on her stomach and leaned back in her chair. "Child number three, pregnancy number two."
"Has this one been easier or harder than the last one?" Jon asked. "My wife says the second one was way easier than the first."
"Hard to say, really," Elizabeth replied. "With the first one I was fighting space vampires. This time I'm... somewhat older."
Jon started giggling at that while Elizabeth sipped at the water that had been brought out for her. "Any chance of you going into labor during this interview?" he asked.
"I hope not," she said, feigning a look of alarm. "I've gone into labor inconveniently once already."
"Oh, with Josiah?"
"I went into labor with him on my fortieth birthday," Elizabeth explained. "He wasn't born until the next morning, but John was off-world at some ritual to seal a trade deal. Something in the city's computer system went haywire and locked everyone down where they were, and Ellie Bartlet had to deliver the baby because she was the only doctor near me."
"And that story is one of the ones you tell in the book," he said, segueing into the topic of the interview easily and patting the hardcover book in front of him. "Interesting bit of trivia I learned about you, by the way. You were born just a matter of hours before Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot?"
Elizabeth nodded once. "Two hours and thirty-six minutes, to be exact," she replied. "One of those weird coincidences."
"Well, the world lost a great man that day, obviously," Jon said, "but gained a truly remarkable woman."
She smiled at him and hoped she wasn't blushing too much. "That's very sweet of you, Jon, but I don't think I actually compare to King."
"Well, we'll see," he said. "And you realize that that offer to dump your disturbingly hot husband and run off with me still stands, right?"
Elizabeth shook her head while the audience laughed. "I should smack you, Jon."
"I bet you say that a lot." He turned back to the audience and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, the book is Finding Atlantis by Elizabeth Weir, our next President of the United States!"
At that proclamation, the crowd went insane.
In September, Elizabeth felt like giving birth was easier the second time around, but that might have been the epidural talking.
Still, the moment when she had her little girl in her arms and John brought the boys in to see their baby sister was quite simply incredible. She wasn't sure she knew how to describe it.
Late that night, John got to sit next to her bed and hold the baby, cradling her against his chest. Watching them, Elizabeth quietly asked, "Do you remember what you said when I told you we were having another baby?"
"I think I asked how that happened," he replied.
Elizabeth laughed softly. "After that," she clarified. "You said this was probably the best end to everything that had happened to me on Mabirra."
He nodded somberly. "I remember." Gently he stroked the baby's cheek. "She's so beautiful, Elizabeth."
She smiled as the baby wrapped her hand around one of her father's fingers. "I think Marcus picked out a good name," she said. "'Jillian' suits her."
"We can call her Jill," John replied. Then quietly, almost to himself, he added, "I have a daughter."
Elizabeth shook her head fondly. "She's got you wrapped around her finger already," she said.
John looked up at Elizabeth then and shot her a cocky smile. "Hey, there are worse things in the world."
Author: Melyanna
Rating: Older kid-friendly
Summary: After leaving Atlantis for good, Elizabeth Weir finds herself passing new milestones on Earth.
Notes: This one refers to the events of Ordinary Nations several times, so I'd recommend reading that one first. Also, this is babyfic. Run while you still can. (And I can't apologize enough to Jon Stewart, by the way.)
The day that Elizabeth found out she was pregnant again, she treated herself to a long, hot bubble bath.
Neither of the boys fought her on bedtime and with her news, John had insisted on her quitting work at a reasonable time, so she lit a few candles and soaked in the tub until she almost fell asleep. Fortunately, before that could happen, John entered the bathroom. Elizabeth smiled at him sleepily. "Hello there."
"Hi, sweetheart," he replied, coming into the room and kneeling beside the tub. "How are you feeling?"
"Very, very relaxed." She leaned over and kissed him lightly.
In return, John scooped up some of the remaining bubbles with a finger and smeared them on her nose. "And here I was going to offer you a back rub," he said.
"Like I'd say no?"
He grinned, and she moved to the middle of the tub, pulling her knees up to her chest as she leaned forward. John kicked his shoes off and sat on the ledge behind her, left foot on the floor and right foot perched on the narrow ledge on the other side. He dunked his hands in the water for a moment to warm them up, and then he went to work on her muscles.
His hands were warm, comforting, his amazing fingers knowing just where to touch her to release the last vestiges of tension in her body, even as her face grew a little flushed and another kind of tension began to develop. At another time in her life she might have been embarrassed to admit that a back rub of any kind - let alone when she was naked - was somewhat arousing, but at least now she could blame things on pregnancy hormones.
Slowly, he worked his way down her back, below the water line. Then his fingers slowed, tracing small, seemingly random circles on her lower back. Elizabeth knew they were scars, though she'd never twisted around in front of a mirror to see them for herself. They were the last reminders of a month in captivity, and she could imagine the look on John's face as he touched them.
She knew he blamed himself for not finding her faster than he had. She also hoped that eventually that guilt would fade. It hadn't been his fault any more than it had been hers.
His hands stroked up her back again, and Elizabeth reached to squeeze his fingers as they rested on her shoulder. "John," she said quietly, "make love to me tonight? Please."
She turned halfway in the water. He was half-smiling. "Anything you want," he replied, leaning down to kiss her.
The day that John, Elizabeth, Peter, and Siah moved into their new house, it snowed.
That was completely predictable. It was the middle of February, they'd closed on the house miraculously quickly, and they had realized within days of coming back to Earth that Elizabeth's townhouse was just not enough room for two boys who'd had a city the size of Manhattan to run around in. Their Federal-style house wasn't massive, but it was big enough for the four of them - five, come September - and their Diplomatic Service agents. Plus, the front and back yards were huge. When they'd first seen the lot, Elizabeth could tell that John was imagining Saturday afternoons playing football with the boys. Elizabeth couldn't blame him. In her own mind, she'd been imagining their little one, not yet born, out on the grass and taking her first halting steps into Daddy's arms.
For some reason she was sure the baby was a girl. She was also somewhat disturbed by how much she wanted to jump her husband in a closet just at the thought of him with a baby. She was so easy.
John wouldn't let her lift anything, and had corralled help with the moving instead. Josh Lyman was there out of either fear or guilt; Charlie Young was there because he was a good guy; Jack O'Neill was there because he'd always had a soft spot for Elizabeth. Josh and Charlie both had young children and had recently dealt with pregnant women, but it was Jack who came up to her while she was not lifting things and quietly asked if there was another Baby Sheppard on the way. Elizabeth hadn't been able to keep a grin off her face.
That evening, while Josh and Charlie were off picking up a few pizzas and Jack was icing his knee, Elizabeth sat on the step of the back porch, watching the boys. They were bundled up in coats and snow pants, and they were attempting to have a snowball fight. Unfortunately for them, neither of them had very good aim yet. John stepped out of the back door and chuckled. "How to throw may have to be the first lesson in any sport," he commented.
Just then, Siah had patiently put together a rather large ball of snow and tried to kick it at Peter. It mostly disintegrated on impact with his foot. "Soccer doesn't require it," Elizabeth commented.
John settled down on the porch behind her, slipping his arms around her and letting one hand come to rest against her abdomen. "Think I'll have a fighting chance with this one?" he asked.
Elizabeth grinned. "Probably not."
"Yeah, I guess you're right."
In March, they visited the Bartlets up in New Hampshire, where Abbey talked endlessly about Ellie's upcoming wedding to Marcus Lorne. For a variety of reasons, they'd decided to wait until Christmas to have the ceremony. This was apparently giving Abbey more and more time to discover things, like just what was done in a military wedding. The subject of dress uniforms came up and John blanched. He hated wearing that thing.
As the first evening wore on, Abbey cooed over ultrasound pictures and Jed sat with Siah on his lap listening intently to Mozart. Eventually, though, Jed brought Elizabeth a glass of milk and sat down next to her. "You know," he said, "when it was announced you were leaving Atlantis, I had a feeling this might have been the reason." He gestured vaguely at her stomach.
"Well, it wasn't the only reason," she replied. "It was time."
There was a long pause. "Elizabeth, did something happen?" Jed asked quietly.
She couldn't tell him everything, but she did manage to answer him. "I've been talking to Kate Harper a lot," she explained. "She's been helping me deal with this."
That Jed understood.
By the time April rolled around, Elizabeth was showing. Her obstetrician assured her that this was normal for a second pregnancy, but she felt very weird about it. She showed up for an appearance on Meet the Press, and Tim Russert said quite bluntly, "Doctor Weir, are you pregnant?"
The amusing part, though, was the tabloids. She remembered when the Stargate was first disclosed and the supermarket checkouts had been plastered with nonsense about her being pregnant with an Asgard baby and John leaving her because of it. Remarkably, the rumors when she was actually pregnant were even more ridiculous.
In May, they got better ultrasound pictures of the baby. When they were told it was a girl, she and John were both grinning from ear to ear. Her odd suspicion about it had been right after all.
The next day, John left the house early and came back with two gallons of paint. By supper, the room they'd set aside for a nursery was painted pink and lavender. There were already a few things in the room, left from when the boys were babies - a rocking horse given to them by Marcus Lorne, and a cradle that had been a gift from the Athosians, among other things. Elizabeth surveyed the room - and the paint on her husband's shirt and face - and said, "Well, I think we'll need to get some things to go with the paint color."
John smiled, almost bashfully. "My sister Regina would kill me if my daughter didn't start life with a girly room."
Elizabeth had started her memoirs years ago, but didn't really get to work on them until they returned to Earth. This time, however, she started in the middle and worked her way backward and forward, finding her themes along the way. When she finally got to the beginning, she knew how it was supposed to start.
The things we experienced were terrifying and wonderful all at once, she wrote in her introduction. We made friends and enemies, in the galaxy outside us and in the city around us. But the thing which made the most difference was the power of the human voice - the ability to reason and express and debate. In the end, war can only go so far. At some point, peace has to prevail, or mankind as we know it will dwindle into nothingness.
Yet it is wars that define mankind's history - we mark our past by blood shed on this day and in this place. In much the same way, I find my time in Atlantis defines itself through periods of conflict. At each juncture, however, words stand out in my mind, whether they were spoken by me to rally the troops or spoken by others to frighten and persuade. When the time comes to go once more into the breach, we turn to words.
And it is remarkable how often a life can be taken or saved with a single word.
Elizabeth had to pause then, as the baby was kicking rather enthusiastically and she had to shift a little to get comfortable again. While she was stopped, she wondered a little at where this idea had come from.
With a small sigh, she pressed her hand gently against her belly. A few moments later, the baby pushed back against her hand. She remembered doing that with Siah for the first time, remembered getting John to do the same. The wonder of this first, primitive communication with her child had not lessened.
But there are some things that words will never be sufficient for. There are some things I experienced in Atlantis which won't be appearing in this memoir, not because they're still classified but because I simply don't know how to tell those stories. Atlantis tested my convictions and beliefs in many respects, and confirmed them in others. Along with professional fulfillment came great personal fulfillment: I married, adopted, and gave birth, three experiences which I would not trade for anything.
As I write this, my daughter is kicking in the womb. My hope for her and for my sons is that I will leave something for them that is better than what my parents left for me, but as Newton said, I will only do so by standing on my parents' shoulders, and on the shoulders of all those giants who have come before me. This is my responsibility, and that was my foremost goal in the lost city of Atlantis.
The Fourth of July was miserably hot.
Josh and Donna were hosting a barbecue at their house, and Elizabeth spent most of it sitting under a patio umbrella with her feet up on an ice chest. John spent a lot of the time playing with the kids while Donna sat with Elizabeth and commiserated. Josh, apparently, had never really understood why the heat could become so unbearable to a pregnant woman who was usually cold when not pregnant. John was much the same way.
But the funniest thing of all was when Siah came up to her, out of breath from running around for so long. John had been trying to get the kids to learn how to play football, and it hadn't been entirely successful by the look of it. Siah placed his little hands on Elizabeth's stomach and said, "Hi, baby sister. I need to tell you something. Soccer is cooler than football. Daddy lies about that."
"Siah!" Elizabeth said, laughing. "You're going to get yourself in trouble with Daddy."
The boy climbed up on her lap - or what room there was left on her lap these days - and rested against her stomach. "Can I name the baby, Mommy?" he asked.
"I'm afraid not," she replied. "Remember Uncle Marcus? I promised him that he could name the baby."
"Oh. Why?"
"Because, Siah."
Across the table, Donna was almost doubled over laughing. Siah seemed not to notice, and Elizabeth reflexively but futilely tried to smooth his hair down. He looked back down. "I hope you're not boring," he said, addressing the baby again. "And I hope you don't take too long to get here."
"She can take as much time as she needs, Siah," Elizabeth said. "You took all the time you needed, so she can too."
Siah patted her stomach. "Soccer," he said. "Soccer is cool."
Finding Atlantis was published in August, meaning that at eight months pregnant she was doing a circuit of interviews promoting it. Her doctor said no to a cross-country book signing tour, and Elizabeth had never been more grateful to the woman than she was for that.
When the time came, however, she was feeling good enough for a trip up to New York, so she did The Daily Show after all. Jon Stewart announced her as the guest, and when she stepped out of the wings, Jon hopped off the back of the stage to help her up the steps. When she got settled down into her chair and the audience quieted down, Jon looked pointedly at her stomach and said, "Wow. You're really pregnant."
Elizabeth laughed along with the audience, and then narrowed her eyes at the little smile on his face. "Did you think I was faking?"
"Nah, I thought you'd made that up to get people to stop calling you," he teased. "So this is number three?"
She rested her hands on her stomach and leaned back in her chair. "Child number three, pregnancy number two."
"Has this one been easier or harder than the last one?" Jon asked. "My wife says the second one was way easier than the first."
"Hard to say, really," Elizabeth replied. "With the first one I was fighting space vampires. This time I'm... somewhat older."
Jon started giggling at that while Elizabeth sipped at the water that had been brought out for her. "Any chance of you going into labor during this interview?" he asked.
"I hope not," she said, feigning a look of alarm. "I've gone into labor inconveniently once already."
"Oh, with Josiah?"
"I went into labor with him on my fortieth birthday," Elizabeth explained. "He wasn't born until the next morning, but John was off-world at some ritual to seal a trade deal. Something in the city's computer system went haywire and locked everyone down where they were, and Ellie Bartlet had to deliver the baby because she was the only doctor near me."
"And that story is one of the ones you tell in the book," he said, segueing into the topic of the interview easily and patting the hardcover book in front of him. "Interesting bit of trivia I learned about you, by the way. You were born just a matter of hours before Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot?"
Elizabeth nodded once. "Two hours and thirty-six minutes, to be exact," she replied. "One of those weird coincidences."
"Well, the world lost a great man that day, obviously," Jon said, "but gained a truly remarkable woman."
She smiled at him and hoped she wasn't blushing too much. "That's very sweet of you, Jon, but I don't think I actually compare to King."
"Well, we'll see," he said. "And you realize that that offer to dump your disturbingly hot husband and run off with me still stands, right?"
Elizabeth shook her head while the audience laughed. "I should smack you, Jon."
"I bet you say that a lot." He turned back to the audience and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, the book is Finding Atlantis by Elizabeth Weir, our next President of the United States!"
At that proclamation, the crowd went insane.
In September, Elizabeth felt like giving birth was easier the second time around, but that might have been the epidural talking.
Still, the moment when she had her little girl in her arms and John brought the boys in to see their baby sister was quite simply incredible. She wasn't sure she knew how to describe it.
Late that night, John got to sit next to her bed and hold the baby, cradling her against his chest. Watching them, Elizabeth quietly asked, "Do you remember what you said when I told you we were having another baby?"
"I think I asked how that happened," he replied.
Elizabeth laughed softly. "After that," she clarified. "You said this was probably the best end to everything that had happened to me on Mabirra."
He nodded somberly. "I remember." Gently he stroked the baby's cheek. "She's so beautiful, Elizabeth."
She smiled as the baby wrapped her hand around one of her father's fingers. "I think Marcus picked out a good name," she said. "'Jillian' suits her."
"We can call her Jill," John replied. Then quietly, almost to himself, he added, "I have a daughter."
Elizabeth shook her head fondly. "She's got you wrapped around her finger already," she said.
John looked up at Elizabeth then and shot her a cocky smile. "Hey, there are worse things in the world."