Fic: Revelation, Chapter 11
There was no way Elizabeth and John were going to be able to stay on Earth long enough to get the full report of the investigating committee. But when the hearings drew to a close, most people were agreed that overall, the SGC and its personnel had fared well enough. There was a good possibility that they were about to get serious Senate oversight, but operations were starting back up again, and no one was going to have to spend time in prison.
In the midst of all this, December had rolled around, and the White House was filled with garland and trees and light. It was one of the most magical things Elizabeth had seen in a long time. She was going to miss the snow once she was back in Atlantis, but it was one of the few things she would miss about Washington.
A few days before they were scheduled to leave, the President called them into the White House, ostensibly as a final thank-you and farewell. However, Ron Butterfield was in the room when they arrived, along with the head of military security that was provided for the rest of the Stargate personnel.
“Elizabeth, John, come on in,” the President said when Debbie opened the door for them. “Ron tells me he has news.”
They came in and sat down on one of the sofas. Travis and another agent followed them in as well. “Ron, why don’t you fill them in on all this?”
Ron nodded. “Doctor Weir, Colonel Sheppard, we’ve apprehended two suspects in the shooting incident two weeks ago,” he said. “Both of them have been charged for their involvement. They, along with the shooter, were members of a radically right-leaning organization which had published some rather violent threats following the disclosure of the Stargate. These people were sending death threats to UN ambassadors for several months. You can only imagine how people with such isolationist tendencies would react to the idea of the Stargate.”
Elizabeth let out a long breath, nodding slowly. “So it wasn’t targeting any one of us?”
“No, ma’am,” Travis answered. “They were targeting you. Seems their leader is something of a misogynist. He called it a blight on mankind that you were in charge of the Atlantis expedition. He was encouraging members to take you down. I guess you were a two-for-one deal.”
“It’s fairly obvious from the statement we got from one of the suspects that the leader of this group is unstable to some degree,” Ron put in. “We’re hoping to have him in custody by the end of the day, as we have reason to believe that he supplied the shooter with the weapon as well.”
Her skin started to crawl as she thought about it. “Well, I suppose this rules out disgruntled former students,” she remarked.
Bartlet got up abruptly, and Elizabeth quickly followed. “Elizabeth, John, come here a minute,” he said. “Could you give us the room, guys? Thanks.”
The security personnel filed out, and the three who remained walked up to the desk. “I told you before we disclosed all this that your lives would never be the same again,” the President said. “I’m sorry that it all got turned upside down so soon.”
“Sir, please don’t apologize,” Elizabeth replied. “It’s not like our work in Atlantis is any safer than this.”
He nodded. “When you’re back on Earth from now on, you’re going to be protected by the Diplomatic Service, at least until they and the Secret Service have determined that there’s no longer a credible threat. But I wouldn’t bet on that. I suggest that you make the most of it.”
“Yes, sir,” John said. “Is there anything else?”
“Yeah, I’ve got something for you.”
He reached over the desk to pick up a box while Elizabeth said, “Sir, you really don’t have to.”
“You may change your mind when you know what this is, Elizabeth,” he replied. Then he popped open the box, and inside lay two pens. “The last two pens from my final bill signing. It was actually the budget for Atlantis. You’re both getting a raise, by the way. One of them dotted the I in Josiah, the other one crossed the Ts in Bartlet. You two can fight over them outside.”
John took the box from the President and snapped it shut. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
They started to go, but then Bartlet stopped Elizabeth before she could leave. John headed to the outer office, and Elizabeth lingered. “Mr. President?”
“Elizabeth, there’s something I need to tell you about your father,” he said.
“Sir,” she interrupted, “I think I know what you did. I can’t say that you should have, but. . . thank you for doing it.”
“I may be in his position someday,” the President replied. “I don’t know what this disease will do to my mind before I die. But when the time comes, I want to be able to say goodbye to my daughters. I wanted your father to be able to do the same.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Thank you.”
As promised (or threatened, depending on whom one asked), John and Elizabeth had been invited to the Bartlet administration’s final Christmas party. Being the last, it was a bigger event than most people seemed to have anticipated, judging from the comments that John heard throughout the evening from people who had been to the annual function before. Elizabeth had not, but John never would have guessed it from how she behaved.
Her red silk dress covered her from her shoulders to the floor, but the entire back and a very high slit up the side were beaded chiffon instead. She sparkled as she moved, and even the cast on her right arm didn’t make her look any less amazing. Not that John was completely unbiased in that department.
At some point in the evening, Lord John Marbury had collected around himself a group of women, including Donna and Abbey and Elizabeth, and their boyfriends and husbands all stood off at a distance watching them. “You know, he still makes me nervous,” the President commented.
John set his champagne aside and adjusted his gloves. This was, after all, a white-tie affair, and his would-be competition was the Earl of Sherbourne. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’m going to remind my date of who she came in with.”
He grabbed her hand as he walked by, pulling her off to the dance floor. He suspected that she might have smacked him if she hadn’t been giggling so much. Once she had stopped laughing sporadically, they were too busy and too comfortable dancing for her to smack him as he deserved. John did notice, however, that some of the men he’d been standing with eventually followed his lead.
They left before the party was really over, heading back to Elizabeth’s house and eating junk food on the couch in their formal clothes. “You know,” John said, digging into Elizabeth’s bowl of goldfish crackers, “Carson told both of us to try to get some rest on this trip.”
“And once again you defy doctor’s orders,” Elizabeth replied, a little too gleefully.
“This was all your fault,” he said, leaning in to kiss her neck.
She elbowed him. “I’m not giving you the last of my chocolate milk, John.”
“I don’t want it,” he replied. He draped one arm over her stomach and started surreptitiously tugging open the zipper that ran up the side of her dress. “I swear, sometimes you eat like a pregnant woman.” Then his eyes widened and he said, “You’re not, are you?”
“Hey, even Asgard babies need nutrients.”
John grabbed the bowl from her and almost tossed it to the coffee table, pouncing and pinning her to the sofa. He started tickling and she shrieked; he started kissing and she moaned.
He was hovering over her, and she touched his face. “We leave for Atlantis the day after tomorrow,” she said. “Then it’s eighteen days aboard the Daedalus. Think we can take our doctor-ordered vacation there?”
John nuzzled her neck. “The last time we were on the Daedalus together,” he said, “we ended up almost dying.”
“Yes, but,” Elizabeth said, “I’m sure we can manage not to almost fly into a star this time.” He kissed the hollow of her throat, and she hummed contentedly. “John,” she said, “I have a very comfortable bed upstairs. Why don’t we take advantage of that?”
He looked at her, and she smiled for him. When she gave him that look, there was only one response he could give.
“Whatever you want, Elizabeth.”
The Daedalus arrived back at Atlantis without incident, and John and Elizabeth were beamed into the gate room, their luggage sent to Elizabeth’s quarters. Rodney, Teyla, and Ronon were there to greet them. “So,” Elizabeth said, once the pleasantries were dispensed with, “get me up to speed.”
They started up the stairs to the control room and her office, and Teyla said, “I understand that you were given the weekly reports while you were on Earth, but I did take the liberty of summarizing the events of the last few weeks into a single file.”
The Athosian woman held out a tablet computer, and Elizabeth said, “Let John take it, if you could.” Teyla handed it to John obediently, and then glanced down at Elizabeth’s arm. She said nothing about the cast, though she looked curious.
“Ronon,” Elizabeth said, “anything of interest to report?”
He shrugged, his arms crossed. “It’s been pretty quiet here,” he replied. “Hoping we can get off-world again soon.”
“Well, we shut down all nonessential operations as a gesture to the people who might want to shut us down to show that we’re not unreasonable people,” John said. At Elizabeth’s amused look and Ronon’s slightly puzzled expression, he added, “Elizabeth probably could have explained that better.”
“Possibly,” she said. “Rodney?”
“Thought you’d never get to me,” Rodney said. “We found something quite fascinating in one of the underwater levels. Zelenka and I haven’t quite figured out what it is yet, but did you break your arm?”
Elizabeth laughed lightly. “Yes,” she said. “The cast should be coming off very soon.”
“How’d you break it?” Ronon asked.
“I didn’t, actually,” Elizabeth replied. “John did.”
Teyla couldn’t quite conceal her amusement at this. “Is this a. . . sign of affection among your people?”
“No,” John said before Elizabeth could respond. “We were being shot at, and I was covering her.”
“No, we were being shot at, and you knocked me over to cover me.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, you were being shot at?” Rodney demanded.
“Yeah, I thought you said your country wasn’t at war with anyone on your planet,” Ronon said.
“The country isn’t,” Elizabeth replied. “Some of its citizens are always at war with someone, though.”
Rodney opened his mouth again, but Elizabeth held up her hand. “We’ve got a lot of stories to tell, but they don’t all have to be told right now,” she said. “Right now, John and I both need to catch up on the last few weeks, all right?”
They’d reached Elizabeth’s office by then, and the group began to disperse. John headed off to see Major Lorne, Rodney went to his lab, and Ronon went wherever he pleased. Teyla lingered, though, and once she and Elizabeth were alone, she said, “Doctor Weir, your father-”
“He’s dead,” Elizabeth replied. “He died the day after we got to Earth.”
“But you were able to speak with him before he died?”
“Yes.”
Teyla nodded slowly. “I will light a candle for him tonight, as a guide for his spirit.”
Elizabeth smiled briefly. “Thank you, Teyla.”
She sank into her desk chair as the other woman left. Little by little, it was getting easier to talk about her father’s death, and she suspected that eventually she’d be able to talk about his life more easily too.
John came back a few minutes later with Lorne, and the major offered to fill them in on the details of the last few weeks. Elizabeth knew she had an enormous amount to catch up with, but she asked them to step outside for a few minutes while she reabsorbed her surroundings alone. She adjusted a few things here and there, and she smiled.
It was good to be home again.
Washington, D. C.
Eight years later
“Mommy, I’m freezing!”
Five-year-old Josiah Sheppard was hopping back and forth from one foot to the other, and Elizabeth rolled her eyes. He had his father’s irrepressible energy. “Come here, Siah,” she said, and he walked up to her as she squatted down. “If you’d leave your scarf on and keep your coat buttoned,” she continued, fixing both scarf and coat, “you wouldn’t be having this problem.”
“Daddy’s not wearing a coat.” Siah was almost pouting.
“Daddy’s insane,” Elizabeth replied.
“I heard that, your Worshipfulness,” John said, coming up behind her.
Elizabeth stood and let him kiss her cheek. “This isn’t my beatification, John,” she said. Then the baby in John’s arms leaned away from her father to kiss her mother’s cheek too. “You being good for Daddy?” Jill just babbled happily.
“Where’d Peter get off to?” John asked, looking around.
“I thought he was with you,” Elizabeth replied. “Oh, this is not a good way to start.”
There was a small number of people mulling around, but it should have been easy to spot a child anyway, unless he were hiding. She turned toward one end of the long corridor and heard someone running. A few seconds later, their six-year-old came flying around a corner. “Peter!” John called. “Walk.”
Peter slowed to a more dignified pace, but just barely. “Mom, can Siah and I play here every day?” he asked.
“This is the Capitol building,” she replied. “Congress meets here.”
“So. . .”
“Maybe when Congress isn’t mad at me.”
Peter looked up at her with wide blue eyes. Being adopted, he obviously looked nothing like either her or John, but he’d picked up almost all of John’s repertoire of facial expressions. “Why would they be mad at you?” he asked.
“Oh, for a multitude of reasons, sweetheart,” Elizabeth replied.
Her aide came up then with a leather-bound folder. “Ma’am, I have your speech for you,” she said.
“Thank you, Callie,” Elizabeth answered. “Everything’s in order?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Outside, the Marine Corps band started playing “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean”. Elizabeth took a deep breath, starting to feel a little nervous. John touched her back. “Do you need to walk a bit?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine.” She buttoned up her coat. “It’s cold in here.”
“That’s what we get for having Inauguration Day in January instead of a warm month,” John replied.
“It used to be in March,” she said. “I’m not sure when or why they changed it, but I think it had something to do with Teddy Roosevelt.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said another voice. Elizabeth turned around and smiled at the sound of Jed Bartlet starting another foray into useless trivia. “Franklin Delano, not Teddy, and it was because it didn’t take as long to count votes anymore, and didn’t take as long for delegates of the electoral college to convene.”
Josiah and Peter started running toward the man as soon as they saw him, but Elizabeth called, “Boys!” They stopped obediently and let Jed come up to them. He was looking remarkably well, though his hair was fully silver now and he used a cane almost all the time. Elizabeth wasn’t overly concerned about the boys doing any damage, though, as they visited the Bartlets frequently and they were used to Jed’s health these days.
“Did you bring us anything, Grandpa Jed?” Siah asked.
“Abbey might have something for you later,” he replied. “I only brought something for your mother now.”
The boys walked back to their parents with Jed, who held something out to Elizabeth as he approached. “I believe you requested this,” he said.
She took the Bible from him and opened it, finding his name written in the inside cover. “Thank you, sir.”
“It’s an honor that you’d use it to be sworn in on,” he said. “Now to get you to call me by my first name like the rest of your family.”
“You’ve been ‘sir’ to me for twenty-four years,” she said. “Don’t expect that to change overnight.”
“Do I have to call you Madam President, though?”
She smiled. “I’ve still got a few more minutes before that’s official.”
“How about you, John?” Jed asked, smiling. “How’s it feel to be the first First Husband?”
John narrowed his eyes. “I think I’m going to have people call me Colonel, Jed,” he said. “Otherwise, it feels like a pretty normal day. Jill’s already tried to choke me with my tie.”
“Speaking of your tie, John,” Elizabeth said, “where is it?”
“In my pocket,” he replied. “Jill tried to eat it, and I think she managed to stain it.”
“Baby, how did you do that?” Elizabeth said to Jill, who grinned, dimples and all. “Well, Josh isn’t around to steal a tie from. He’s already down in the audience. Put your scarf and overcoat back on. Maybe people won’t notice.”
“And if they do?”
“Then you and Jill will be responsible for the international downfall of tie manufacturing.”
“That seems a little extreme.”
“Hey,” Elizabeth said, “John Kennedy didn’t wear a hat at his inauguration, and the popularity of men’s hats plummeted.”
“You’re a wealth of useless knowledge,” John replied, handing the baby over to her while Callie approached with his coat and scarf. He looked at Jed. “And I’m pretty sure I can blame you for that.”
“Probably,” Jed replied, chuckling a bit.
Once he got his coat on, he took Jill back and said, “I’m going to take the kids down to our seats now. Might be best for you to do your first processional without the starting lineup of Manchester United tagging along.” He kissed her cheek. “See you in a bit.”
Elizabeth’s staff started to gather as John left with the children, and Jed touched her arm. “I should get going too,” he said. “But I wanted to say that I’m proud of you, Elizabeth. I’ve always known you’d do great things. Atlantis won’t be the end of that for you.”
She smiled and opened her mouth to respond, but another group was approaching her, led by a tall woman in billowing black robes. Evelyn Baker Lang shook Elizabeth’s hand and said, “Well, it seems we’re making history today. Are you ready, Madam President-Elect?”
“No time like the present, Madam Chief Justice.”
Elizabeth looked at Jed, who put one hand in his pocket and said with a smile, “Hail to the Chief.”
Chapter Ten
In the midst of all this, December had rolled around, and the White House was filled with garland and trees and light. It was one of the most magical things Elizabeth had seen in a long time. She was going to miss the snow once she was back in Atlantis, but it was one of the few things she would miss about Washington.
A few days before they were scheduled to leave, the President called them into the White House, ostensibly as a final thank-you and farewell. However, Ron Butterfield was in the room when they arrived, along with the head of military security that was provided for the rest of the Stargate personnel.
“Elizabeth, John, come on in,” the President said when Debbie opened the door for them. “Ron tells me he has news.”
They came in and sat down on one of the sofas. Travis and another agent followed them in as well. “Ron, why don’t you fill them in on all this?”
Ron nodded. “Doctor Weir, Colonel Sheppard, we’ve apprehended two suspects in the shooting incident two weeks ago,” he said. “Both of them have been charged for their involvement. They, along with the shooter, were members of a radically right-leaning organization which had published some rather violent threats following the disclosure of the Stargate. These people were sending death threats to UN ambassadors for several months. You can only imagine how people with such isolationist tendencies would react to the idea of the Stargate.”
Elizabeth let out a long breath, nodding slowly. “So it wasn’t targeting any one of us?”
“No, ma’am,” Travis answered. “They were targeting you. Seems their leader is something of a misogynist. He called it a blight on mankind that you were in charge of the Atlantis expedition. He was encouraging members to take you down. I guess you were a two-for-one deal.”
“It’s fairly obvious from the statement we got from one of the suspects that the leader of this group is unstable to some degree,” Ron put in. “We’re hoping to have him in custody by the end of the day, as we have reason to believe that he supplied the shooter with the weapon as well.”
Her skin started to crawl as she thought about it. “Well, I suppose this rules out disgruntled former students,” she remarked.
Bartlet got up abruptly, and Elizabeth quickly followed. “Elizabeth, John, come here a minute,” he said. “Could you give us the room, guys? Thanks.”
The security personnel filed out, and the three who remained walked up to the desk. “I told you before we disclosed all this that your lives would never be the same again,” the President said. “I’m sorry that it all got turned upside down so soon.”
“Sir, please don’t apologize,” Elizabeth replied. “It’s not like our work in Atlantis is any safer than this.”
He nodded. “When you’re back on Earth from now on, you’re going to be protected by the Diplomatic Service, at least until they and the Secret Service have determined that there’s no longer a credible threat. But I wouldn’t bet on that. I suggest that you make the most of it.”
“Yes, sir,” John said. “Is there anything else?”
“Yeah, I’ve got something for you.”
He reached over the desk to pick up a box while Elizabeth said, “Sir, you really don’t have to.”
“You may change your mind when you know what this is, Elizabeth,” he replied. Then he popped open the box, and inside lay two pens. “The last two pens from my final bill signing. It was actually the budget for Atlantis. You’re both getting a raise, by the way. One of them dotted the I in Josiah, the other one crossed the Ts in Bartlet. You two can fight over them outside.”
John took the box from the President and snapped it shut. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
They started to go, but then Bartlet stopped Elizabeth before she could leave. John headed to the outer office, and Elizabeth lingered. “Mr. President?”
“Elizabeth, there’s something I need to tell you about your father,” he said.
“Sir,” she interrupted, “I think I know what you did. I can’t say that you should have, but. . . thank you for doing it.”
“I may be in his position someday,” the President replied. “I don’t know what this disease will do to my mind before I die. But when the time comes, I want to be able to say goodbye to my daughters. I wanted your father to be able to do the same.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Thank you.”
As promised (or threatened, depending on whom one asked), John and Elizabeth had been invited to the Bartlet administration’s final Christmas party. Being the last, it was a bigger event than most people seemed to have anticipated, judging from the comments that John heard throughout the evening from people who had been to the annual function before. Elizabeth had not, but John never would have guessed it from how she behaved.
Her red silk dress covered her from her shoulders to the floor, but the entire back and a very high slit up the side were beaded chiffon instead. She sparkled as she moved, and even the cast on her right arm didn’t make her look any less amazing. Not that John was completely unbiased in that department.
At some point in the evening, Lord John Marbury had collected around himself a group of women, including Donna and Abbey and Elizabeth, and their boyfriends and husbands all stood off at a distance watching them. “You know, he still makes me nervous,” the President commented.
John set his champagne aside and adjusted his gloves. This was, after all, a white-tie affair, and his would-be competition was the Earl of Sherbourne. “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’m going to remind my date of who she came in with.”
He grabbed her hand as he walked by, pulling her off to the dance floor. He suspected that she might have smacked him if she hadn’t been giggling so much. Once she had stopped laughing sporadically, they were too busy and too comfortable dancing for her to smack him as he deserved. John did notice, however, that some of the men he’d been standing with eventually followed his lead.
They left before the party was really over, heading back to Elizabeth’s house and eating junk food on the couch in their formal clothes. “You know,” John said, digging into Elizabeth’s bowl of goldfish crackers, “Carson told both of us to try to get some rest on this trip.”
“And once again you defy doctor’s orders,” Elizabeth replied, a little too gleefully.
“This was all your fault,” he said, leaning in to kiss her neck.
She elbowed him. “I’m not giving you the last of my chocolate milk, John.”
“I don’t want it,” he replied. He draped one arm over her stomach and started surreptitiously tugging open the zipper that ran up the side of her dress. “I swear, sometimes you eat like a pregnant woman.” Then his eyes widened and he said, “You’re not, are you?”
“Hey, even Asgard babies need nutrients.”
John grabbed the bowl from her and almost tossed it to the coffee table, pouncing and pinning her to the sofa. He started tickling and she shrieked; he started kissing and she moaned.
He was hovering over her, and she touched his face. “We leave for Atlantis the day after tomorrow,” she said. “Then it’s eighteen days aboard the Daedalus. Think we can take our doctor-ordered vacation there?”
John nuzzled her neck. “The last time we were on the Daedalus together,” he said, “we ended up almost dying.”
“Yes, but,” Elizabeth said, “I’m sure we can manage not to almost fly into a star this time.” He kissed the hollow of her throat, and she hummed contentedly. “John,” she said, “I have a very comfortable bed upstairs. Why don’t we take advantage of that?”
He looked at her, and she smiled for him. When she gave him that look, there was only one response he could give.
“Whatever you want, Elizabeth.”
The Daedalus arrived back at Atlantis without incident, and John and Elizabeth were beamed into the gate room, their luggage sent to Elizabeth’s quarters. Rodney, Teyla, and Ronon were there to greet them. “So,” Elizabeth said, once the pleasantries were dispensed with, “get me up to speed.”
They started up the stairs to the control room and her office, and Teyla said, “I understand that you were given the weekly reports while you were on Earth, but I did take the liberty of summarizing the events of the last few weeks into a single file.”
The Athosian woman held out a tablet computer, and Elizabeth said, “Let John take it, if you could.” Teyla handed it to John obediently, and then glanced down at Elizabeth’s arm. She said nothing about the cast, though she looked curious.
“Ronon,” Elizabeth said, “anything of interest to report?”
He shrugged, his arms crossed. “It’s been pretty quiet here,” he replied. “Hoping we can get off-world again soon.”
“Well, we shut down all nonessential operations as a gesture to the people who might want to shut us down to show that we’re not unreasonable people,” John said. At Elizabeth’s amused look and Ronon’s slightly puzzled expression, he added, “Elizabeth probably could have explained that better.”
“Possibly,” she said. “Rodney?”
“Thought you’d never get to me,” Rodney said. “We found something quite fascinating in one of the underwater levels. Zelenka and I haven’t quite figured out what it is yet, but did you break your arm?”
Elizabeth laughed lightly. “Yes,” she said. “The cast should be coming off very soon.”
“How’d you break it?” Ronon asked.
“I didn’t, actually,” Elizabeth replied. “John did.”
Teyla couldn’t quite conceal her amusement at this. “Is this a. . . sign of affection among your people?”
“No,” John said before Elizabeth could respond. “We were being shot at, and I was covering her.”
“No, we were being shot at, and you knocked me over to cover me.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, you were being shot at?” Rodney demanded.
“Yeah, I thought you said your country wasn’t at war with anyone on your planet,” Ronon said.
“The country isn’t,” Elizabeth replied. “Some of its citizens are always at war with someone, though.”
Rodney opened his mouth again, but Elizabeth held up her hand. “We’ve got a lot of stories to tell, but they don’t all have to be told right now,” she said. “Right now, John and I both need to catch up on the last few weeks, all right?”
They’d reached Elizabeth’s office by then, and the group began to disperse. John headed off to see Major Lorne, Rodney went to his lab, and Ronon went wherever he pleased. Teyla lingered, though, and once she and Elizabeth were alone, she said, “Doctor Weir, your father-”
“He’s dead,” Elizabeth replied. “He died the day after we got to Earth.”
“But you were able to speak with him before he died?”
“Yes.”
Teyla nodded slowly. “I will light a candle for him tonight, as a guide for his spirit.”
Elizabeth smiled briefly. “Thank you, Teyla.”
She sank into her desk chair as the other woman left. Little by little, it was getting easier to talk about her father’s death, and she suspected that eventually she’d be able to talk about his life more easily too.
John came back a few minutes later with Lorne, and the major offered to fill them in on the details of the last few weeks. Elizabeth knew she had an enormous amount to catch up with, but she asked them to step outside for a few minutes while she reabsorbed her surroundings alone. She adjusted a few things here and there, and she smiled.
It was good to be home again.
Washington, D. C.
Eight years later
“Mommy, I’m freezing!”
Five-year-old Josiah Sheppard was hopping back and forth from one foot to the other, and Elizabeth rolled her eyes. He had his father’s irrepressible energy. “Come here, Siah,” she said, and he walked up to her as she squatted down. “If you’d leave your scarf on and keep your coat buttoned,” she continued, fixing both scarf and coat, “you wouldn’t be having this problem.”
“Daddy’s not wearing a coat.” Siah was almost pouting.
“Daddy’s insane,” Elizabeth replied.
“I heard that, your Worshipfulness,” John said, coming up behind her.
Elizabeth stood and let him kiss her cheek. “This isn’t my beatification, John,” she said. Then the baby in John’s arms leaned away from her father to kiss her mother’s cheek too. “You being good for Daddy?” Jill just babbled happily.
“Where’d Peter get off to?” John asked, looking around.
“I thought he was with you,” Elizabeth replied. “Oh, this is not a good way to start.”
There was a small number of people mulling around, but it should have been easy to spot a child anyway, unless he were hiding. She turned toward one end of the long corridor and heard someone running. A few seconds later, their six-year-old came flying around a corner. “Peter!” John called. “Walk.”
Peter slowed to a more dignified pace, but just barely. “Mom, can Siah and I play here every day?” he asked.
“This is the Capitol building,” she replied. “Congress meets here.”
“So. . .”
“Maybe when Congress isn’t mad at me.”
Peter looked up at her with wide blue eyes. Being adopted, he obviously looked nothing like either her or John, but he’d picked up almost all of John’s repertoire of facial expressions. “Why would they be mad at you?” he asked.
“Oh, for a multitude of reasons, sweetheart,” Elizabeth replied.
Her aide came up then with a leather-bound folder. “Ma’am, I have your speech for you,” she said.
“Thank you, Callie,” Elizabeth answered. “Everything’s in order?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Outside, the Marine Corps band started playing “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean”. Elizabeth took a deep breath, starting to feel a little nervous. John touched her back. “Do you need to walk a bit?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine.” She buttoned up her coat. “It’s cold in here.”
“That’s what we get for having Inauguration Day in January instead of a warm month,” John replied.
“It used to be in March,” she said. “I’m not sure when or why they changed it, but I think it had something to do with Teddy Roosevelt.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said another voice. Elizabeth turned around and smiled at the sound of Jed Bartlet starting another foray into useless trivia. “Franklin Delano, not Teddy, and it was because it didn’t take as long to count votes anymore, and didn’t take as long for delegates of the electoral college to convene.”
Josiah and Peter started running toward the man as soon as they saw him, but Elizabeth called, “Boys!” They stopped obediently and let Jed come up to them. He was looking remarkably well, though his hair was fully silver now and he used a cane almost all the time. Elizabeth wasn’t overly concerned about the boys doing any damage, though, as they visited the Bartlets frequently and they were used to Jed’s health these days.
“Did you bring us anything, Grandpa Jed?” Siah asked.
“Abbey might have something for you later,” he replied. “I only brought something for your mother now.”
The boys walked back to their parents with Jed, who held something out to Elizabeth as he approached. “I believe you requested this,” he said.
She took the Bible from him and opened it, finding his name written in the inside cover. “Thank you, sir.”
“It’s an honor that you’d use it to be sworn in on,” he said. “Now to get you to call me by my first name like the rest of your family.”
“You’ve been ‘sir’ to me for twenty-four years,” she said. “Don’t expect that to change overnight.”
“Do I have to call you Madam President, though?”
She smiled. “I’ve still got a few more minutes before that’s official.”
“How about you, John?” Jed asked, smiling. “How’s it feel to be the first First Husband?”
John narrowed his eyes. “I think I’m going to have people call me Colonel, Jed,” he said. “Otherwise, it feels like a pretty normal day. Jill’s already tried to choke me with my tie.”
“Speaking of your tie, John,” Elizabeth said, “where is it?”
“In my pocket,” he replied. “Jill tried to eat it, and I think she managed to stain it.”
“Baby, how did you do that?” Elizabeth said to Jill, who grinned, dimples and all. “Well, Josh isn’t around to steal a tie from. He’s already down in the audience. Put your scarf and overcoat back on. Maybe people won’t notice.”
“And if they do?”
“Then you and Jill will be responsible for the international downfall of tie manufacturing.”
“That seems a little extreme.”
“Hey,” Elizabeth said, “John Kennedy didn’t wear a hat at his inauguration, and the popularity of men’s hats plummeted.”
“You’re a wealth of useless knowledge,” John replied, handing the baby over to her while Callie approached with his coat and scarf. He looked at Jed. “And I’m pretty sure I can blame you for that.”
“Probably,” Jed replied, chuckling a bit.
Once he got his coat on, he took Jill back and said, “I’m going to take the kids down to our seats now. Might be best for you to do your first processional without the starting lineup of Manchester United tagging along.” He kissed her cheek. “See you in a bit.”
Elizabeth’s staff started to gather as John left with the children, and Jed touched her arm. “I should get going too,” he said. “But I wanted to say that I’m proud of you, Elizabeth. I’ve always known you’d do great things. Atlantis won’t be the end of that for you.”
She smiled and opened her mouth to respond, but another group was approaching her, led by a tall woman in billowing black robes. Evelyn Baker Lang shook Elizabeth’s hand and said, “Well, it seems we’re making history today. Are you ready, Madam President-Elect?”
“No time like the present, Madam Chief Justice.”
Elizabeth looked at Jed, who put one hand in his pocket and said with a smile, “Hail to the Chief.”
Chapter Ten