Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate Atlantis or it's characters. I borrow them just for fun.

Pairing: John and Elizabeth

Rating: T just to be sure

Genre: angst, drama and character study... actually a little bit of everything, including fluff too. oh did I mention a baby fic?

Summary: Two years ago he could have done this with his conscience clean, but he couldn’t do it any more.

Thank yous: To Anjirika, for beta reading!!!

A/N: This fic is connected to SCC but it's different from that story - the tone and atmosphere are different and you don't need to read SCC (a really long story of mine) to understand this one. The idea for this vame suddenly and I simply had to put it on paper. It's mostly focused on John and things that change his way of making certain decisions. One more thing - I love writing intimacy and I tried to do my best here. Please tell me what you think of this fic.

Three Days

“Atlantis, we’re coming in hot!”

His voice echoes strong through the comm. link and fills the control room. The gate technician, Dominic is his name; one of new staff members looks up at Elizabeth.

“We are receiving Colonel’s IDC, madam,” says the technician.

“Lower the shield,” she says and her voice is dry but calm.

Stephen Caldwell looks at her and nods only for her to notice. She nods back in gratitude. When dozen men emerges running through the gate, throwing themselves to the floor to avoid the following shots, the new technician engages the shield again.

She exhales slowly and holds the railing for a moment as if it was her lifeline, and then one of her hands reaches behind to rub her painful lower back. For a moment she closes her eyes and quietly exhales. It was so close. Too close.

oOo

He looks up, raising from the floor and sees her on her usual spot, near the railing, just above the gate. She looks all right, but her face is pale and one of her hands is hidden behind her back. He knows she has overdone herself today. The other hand lays on the swell of her stomach and his throat tightens. He ignores the pain in his leg as he watches her face just for a moment and then Carson and his team arrive and usher them to the infirmary.

oOo

‘A deep and unpleasant, but harmless cut’ is the summary of John’s health status. Carson gives him an ugly eye and John is about to start pouting when privacy curtain moves and Elizabeth enters the small area. Carson nods to her, its way beyond that time when Doctor considered this to be private situation. When John is concerned there are no more lines for Elizabeth to cross, not after all those checkups and several ultrasounds he performed, and John was there to listen to the fast heartbeat of his child.

As Carson continues bandaging John’s leg, Elizabeth comes closer to his bed, and John leans back to into the pillows. When her hand touches his face and three day beard he inhales the scent that became background of his thoughts. Last three days settle in and he finally feels fear as he looks at her. She faintly smiles at him.

“I want him three days off duty,” says the Doctor and gives Elizabeth a gentle smile before he leaves them.

“It can be arranged,” says Elizabeth just before he is away.

Then she turns to John and slowly sits on the edge of his bed. He moves to the side so she could take more space.

He watches her profile and her head sinks lower. Her shoulders are slumped and she hugs her stomach, as if she is trying to protect the child growing inside. Protect it from whom? Or what? He watches her hands, not able to pry his eyes off the sight. When he finally does, and looks at her face he knows what she’s been through. And he knows it’s his fault.

He tries to break the silence, but she knows him so well by now that she is able to anticipate not only his need to speak, but his words too.

“Why did you do it? Tell me just one good reason why,” she says.

“Because… I don’t leave my men behind,” he says and feels his voice failing him in wake of her desperate eyes. He is uneasy because there is something he’s missing, something he doesn’t understand. His motto feels so vain for the first time in his life.

She blinks away the tears.

“You were alone and you put your life into unnecessary risk when you couldn’t make a correct judgment of the situation and should have waited for the back up!” she spat in one breath.

“It could have been too late,” he counters and part of his brain gives him a mental kick, screaming at him that he is an idiot. He doesn’t know why exactly. He acted as he always would.

“Maybe but you were in no position to make a right call and you know it!”

“I saved them!”

“Unlike those two boys in Afghanistan?”

“I don’t leave my men behind, Elizabeth,” he hisses and she winces at his words. He wants to slap himself the moment the words are out.

“Do you know what you did, John? You almost left your own daughter behind!”

Her body is trembling. He reaches for her and takes her hand, and she tightens the grip holding his large hand with her delicate one. “John, you can’t be so reckless! You can’t risk your life this way any more! From tactical point of view what you’ve done is close to suicide! In situations like this you have to trust me! John, don’t you trust my decisions?”

He looks at her speechless and feels the blood drain from his face. She cups his face with her hand again.

“You can’t make decisions like this one any more. It won’t hurt only you, or me. This child deserves to have a father. She doesn’t deserve to grow without you just because you couldn’t save your men all those years ago, John. I trusted you not to leave us behind,” she says and touches her stomach.

Something cold hits him square in the chest, leaving the numb and empty feeling behind and cold sweat runs down his back. She tells him to rest and kisses his cheek, and leaves him.

He knows he won’t sleep tonight.

Instead he thinks of his own father, a soldier who was a picture on the wall and a name on his birth certificate most of the time, but somehow ended up being the reason for all his ill advised decisions, including this newest one.

oOo

Two weeks later they are on the Mainland, on the beach. John’s reckless rescue mission still hangs in the air above them. It’s still in the words they don’t say to each other and in the silence that slips between them when they lay in bed. They don’t argue, but she is silent and it seems she isn’t comfortable with his hands when he rubs her back at the evening. She is restless and he sees that.

But right now she seems relaxed. The bathing suit reveals her pregnancy and catches his eyes every time he looks at her. Her belly is stunningly prominent, it’s impossible to overlook. She is talking to Teyla, and both are sitting on the rock that perches out from the water, and she seems happy and proud. She is glowing and for a moment he is overwhelmed with the notion.

Teyla says something and Elizabeth starts to laugh. A real, loud laugh that emerges from bottom of her heart and reaches him in waves. He realizes she didn’t laugh like that for last two weeks, and he starts realizing why.

She is six months pregnant now and they know they’ll be having a girl. They have picked a name too. He remembers the night when their child was conceived and he remembers the day she told him she’s pregnant.

Despite the off world missions he never missed her appointments with Carson. He remembers every single ultrasound. The moment when he heard his child’s heartbeat for the first time is burned into his memory. He witnessed his child growing inside of her, day by day, only to risk his life and almost lose his chance to see this child born and get to know her.

All this time he was there for Elizabeth. Thanks to one reckless decision, a moment of impulsiveness, he had almost left her behind.

He retreated to the shadows of the trees growing near the beach, so she can’t see him in case she looks his way. In three months his child will be born. He looks at his wife, the smart and strong woman who chose to trust him.

She trusted him enough to let him into her life, her bed and her body. She trusted him enough to let him make her pregnant.

Two weeks ago he threw that trust into air giving in to irrational impulse to save something almost impossible of saving, to prove he is worthy enough; something he couldn’t do when he was a child. As a result his child almost lost him; and his wife’s trust to care for her and their small family would’ve proved to be a mistake.

Two years ago he could have done this with his conscience clean, but he couldn’t do it any more.

oOo

Teyla is gone for a swim. She turns around in one moment, a small spot in the sea water, and waves to Elizabeth. Elizabeth waves back. She can’t swim a lot now, so she settles for dipping her feet in the water and enjoying the sun.

The sound of feet approaching makes her turn around. It’s John. Something on his face makes her inner alarms go off. She pats the spot on the rock next to her and watches him taking a seat and leaning forward, to stare at the water. He doesn’t talk and she watches him, not asking anything. Suddenly she realizes what is going through his mind. It took two weeks but finally he understands.

Her hand touches the skin between his shoulder blades. She feels him shift and his tense muscles relax as he arches back into her touch, an unspoken agreement reached. In that moment her doubts are gone and she knows he finally understands what she fears of – that his reckless nature will claim his life and everything she learned to rely on, everything that makes him so amazing, everything she loves. That he will let his own faults defeat the best in him.

“You have sunburn,” she says softly. His skin is fair and sensitive, something she finds hard to put together with his physical resilience, but somehow it reflects his inner nature so well.

“’S nothing,” he murmurs.

She gets up and walks towards the sand to collect the forgotten sunscreen. When she starts massaging the cream into his skin she feels him sigh.

“I will never do something like that again,” he says. “I want… I need you to trust me.”

“I trust you,” she answers softly smiling. She knows he can hear the smile in the tone of her voice. He reaches with his hand over his shoulder and she takes it, squeezing lightly. He is her ally, her partner, her best friend.

“I don’t want you to regret the fact you chose me, Elizabeth. I know you chose me and sometimes I still wonder why.”

“John…”

“I want to be a good father despite the… role model I had,” he mutters and she knows how hard it is for him to even mention that.

She knows he was left behind. That is the reason for almost everything he does.

And now he realized he almost had done the same thing. Only his method was a little bit more dramatic.

“You will be,” she says and leans forward to wrap him into an embrace.

She knows he will be.

oOo

He scans the jumper and stops by McKay. The scientist looks miserable. John knows what comes next, and he gives him a power bar, one of those spare ones he knows they will need sooner or later. Rodney gives him a child like, surprised look.

“You are hungry,” explains John.

“Yes, but how did you…?”

“Never mind, Rodney. Just eat it. I need you to repair our engines.”

“But its not…,” Rodney starts and then realizes what John is trying to do. “Of course. I’ll get to it.”

Then John turns to the injured scientist half lying, half sitting next to Rodney. The young man clenches his teeth as John examines his wound, and he is not happy with what he sees. The man knows that himself too, but John gives him an encouraging look.

“Hang in there, Perrault,” he says.

“Yes sir,” answers the botanist, as if he were a soldier.

He nears the jumper door. The cloak is the only thing keeping them safe. He can’t see the enemy soldiers among the trees that surround the plain they landed on, but he knows they are there and waiting.

Teyla looks up from wounded marine lying in front of her on the jumper floor. The young man’s fever is down and that is good news. She catches Ronon’s eye. His cut has stopped bleeding. The tall man smiles and jerks his head slightly in Sheppard’s direction. Teyla gives him a questioning look; she is too tired to read the meaning behind the gesture. Ronon grins harder.

“He has changed, don’t you think?” whispers Ronon and Teyla can feel her tired muscles spread into a smile. She nods.

In a situation like this he wouldn’t have waited before. He would be the one to risk and try to get through to the gate, no matter how far away it was. But now he decides in favor of preserving lives entrusted to him – and preserving his own life - and waiting for Atlantis and Elizabeth to send the help. He trusts her in a military issue and that is something that speaks volumes.

oOo

She leans at the railing as she watches a jumper cloak before it disappears through the gate. That new Major approaches her, and she sees that Stephen Caldwell is ready to sort the situation out, but she turns to face the soldier.

“Don’t you think your plan is too risky?”

“I am not leaving my men behind, Major,” she states, her voice calm and carefully controlled. She can see Caldwell ready to jump in if needed.

“And the fact that one of them is your husband has nothing to do with that?” he asks in cold tone of voice. She narrows her eyes. By now she is used to this accusation and she has an answer ready every single time.

“It has everything to do with that,” her voice is dangerously quiet and the Major takes a step back. “It’s something he taught me. If you question my reasoning, then you will find relieving that Colonel Caldwell supports my decision.”

“And you are out of the line here, Major,” adds Caldwell. The tense atmosphere is broken by a crying sound coming from Elizabeth’s office.

“You will excuse me now. My child needs me,” she says and enters her office, leaving the trouble making Major out of her private area.

oOo

Her office has been redecorated slightly and there is small space shielded from prying eyes outside the room. She concentrates on her little girl, eight month old that needs her mother’s reassuring presence after she has woken up. Elizabeth holds her close and whispers to her softly, asking herself one more time can this child sense something is wrong with her father.

Few minutes later Stephen Caldwell knocks on the door and she invites him in. He smiles at the sight, and Sarah Jane reacts to him as he comes closer.

“May I hold her?” he asks and Elizabeth nods.

She observes how the Colonel reaches with his hands towards her daughter and smiles, waiting to see if Sarah Jane would like to be held. When she smiles at him and reaches out with her tiny hands, he takes her and lifts her high above his head earning himself a laugh. Sarah Jane adores him, and Elizabeth finally asks a question that is going around her head for quite some time now.

“Do you have children, Stephen?”

He holds Sarah Jane like an experienced parent and nods.

“I miss my son. His mother and I… well, it didn’t work. I got to be a Sunday father.”

Elizabeth feels her chest tighten as she watches this man with her daughter. Somehow she knows he is not the same kind of military father that John’s father was.

“Stephen… do you seriously think my judgment is not biased?”

“If it was, then I would tell you so. I would be the first one to tell you that. That…,” he turns around, indicating the direction where new Major left, “hot headed young soldier tries to find somebody to accuse. He’s terrified with the mess at the moment. It’s not your fault, it’s not Sheppard’s fault either. And it certainly isn’t this little lady’s fault,” he adds in softer tone smiling at Sarah Jane who is busy studying his green uniform. “-that you care for John. It isn’t a weak spot. The fact that you question your decisions is not a weakness, it’s wise. It’s only human; it’s something that helped you to turn this place into a city. It’s a place full of people and those people now call it home. I hear it more and more every day that passes. It’s becoming a place where people will be able to live in one day in the future,” he says and smiles at Sarah Jane. “I would be afraid if that was gone, Elizabeth.”

She lowers her head and sighs.

In the next moment the gate is activated. The gate technician calls for her.

oOo

He begs Carson to let him sleep in his own bed, with his wife, and the Doctor has mercy on him, so he drags himself from the infirmary to the room that once was Elizabeth’s and now it’s theirs. He opens the door and her smile welcomes him as she is preparing to give a bath to Sarah Jane. The baby girl is delighted to see him, and he sits near the little bath tub allowing his daughter to splash water and bubbles at him. He watches Elizabeth put the girl to sleep leaned on the doorframe of the separate room they arranged for the baby.

The last three days start to settle in, and images spring back before his eyes. Elizabeth’s attention is on the baby, but she looks at him from time to time and she knows.

When Sarah Jane is asleep he lets Elizabeth peel his clothes off and drag him under scorching hot shower. He is half asleep as her hands rub his back. Those small hands have the same effect every time – they soothe him, they bring him back home and his reeling thoughts calm down, but the emotions he pushed back in last 72 hours seek a release.

So he starts to talk, and he tells her about three days they spent waiting in the jumper, he tells her how brave Rodney was and played along to save the morale of two wounded men, he tells her about Teyla’s efforts to take care of their injuries. Everything that Carson had taught them probably saved those men’s lives. He tells her about the moment Major Lorne contacted them, telling them about the plan. Elizabeth’s plan.

Finally he tells her he knew she would not leave them, she will do anything and everything to save them.

“All I thought about was their mothers. My duty was to bring them back safe…” he says and Elizabeth dries his skin with a big soft towel. He knows he is rambling, but she listens to him nevertheless. He starts feeling human again.

“I know Perrault’s mother,” adds John, as she guides him to bed and he lies down next to her.

She wraps her naked skin around him and he feels the arousal forming, but he is too tired to do anything about it.

“That marine, Bowers, he has little son back home, did you know?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t know that Caldwell has a son either,” she adds and John nods.

“David’s boy’s name. He’s twelve,” says John and for some reason he starts counting all the military staff members who have children and Elizabeth watches him in wonder. He sighs when he is finished, a strange relief finally reaching his bones as she caresses his face.

“They are careful. They always leave with that shadow in their eyes when they go off world… and finally I understand why,” he says.

She gathers him in her arms and puts her palm on the base of his neck. Somehow that touch always calms him and he feels his body relax.

“I… I tried to be as fast as possible. We had trouble locating you. Your navigation must have been off, and you were quite far from the gate.”

“It’s good I decided to wait.”

“It’s good that I sent a jumper.”

“Caldwell told me about Major Dockings and your argument with him. That man needs to learn few things about this place… and life in general. For his own good.”

He smiles tiredly. She smiles back.

“What do you have in mind?”

“He needs to have children. Seriously. That would teach him,” he says and lets the sleep claim him.

oOo

She watches him lying in the sand, trying to build a castle, while Sarah Jane eagerly tries to ruin his good work. The baby girl laughs and he laughs too. Ronon comes and crouches down for a moment, telling him something, probably making a suggestion of something fun to do. John waves his head and Ronon smiles, patting his shoulder, and then leaves.

She sits next to them and observes the game. John makes another improvised castle and Sarah Jane is delighted to smash it, and then bursts into laughter. She watches John smile. He rarely smiles like that, and she knows he is perfectly peaceful; and that he doesn’t want anything else but this – sharing the simple things of this world with his little daughter.

She leans in and gives him a kiss. For a second she has his attention, and then their daughter nudges her, like she is trying to tell her mother not to spoil the fun. Elizabeth laughs and kisses Sarah Jane few times, until the girl starts to giggle.

“I’m gonna go for a swim with the girls,” says Elizabeth, and John nods with happy shine in his eyes. He watches after her as she walks towards Teyla and Laura Cadman, and she can feel his gaze upon her.

Later, when she returns she finds both of them sleeping – John lying on his back and Sarah Jane on his chest, her head near his heart. He always knew how to calm their baby. He used to put her right there on his chest so she could hear his heartbeat and he held her as long as it took for her to calm. Elizabeth remembered how much time he spent carrying her either on his hands, or in a baby carrier, always close to him. They both did it and the baby grew feeling safe and loved by both of her parents.

She lies next to them on the blanket and for a moment she watches the waves, the sand and the treetop above her head. The sky is perfectly clear and her muscles are pleasantly aching after the swim. She snuggles closer to John, lying on her side and in the next minute she falls asleep.

Two days later Laura Cadman comes into her office and gives her a picture of her sleeping family. Elizabeth feels her face spread into a smile as she observes John’s face on the picture. Laura waves and leaves her, and Elizabeth starts picking the spot for the picture, looking around her office, but suddenly she has a better plan.

Taking a soft pen, she writes on the back of the picture.

“We don’t leave our loved ones behind.”

She slips it into John’s safety vest pocket some time later, so he could find it when he needs to survive.

- FIN -