Disclaimer & A/N: Still own no rights to Stargate Atlantis.
Restless
The numbers on the small clock beside their bed were blinking at her annoyingly in their desire to share the news that it was 3:38 AM. She groaned into her pillow. Too late to be awake. Too early to get up. And it wasn't as though she didn't need the sleep, wasn't as though she wasn't exhausted.
Elizabeth thumped her pillow a little and then rolled from her side onto her back. Pale light poured in through the cracks of the blind; outside it was a full moon. The light streamed down the colour of buttermilk onto her and she held up her hands and looked at her wedding ring glinting. She remembered, as a small girl, how she would sometimes wake in the dark and see one of her own hands and, for a second of terror, imagine it belonged to someone else. If only her nightmares were still so simple. She had seen too many - things - and the things she had seen worked well as nightmares. Though her own, she knew, were mild compared to John's.
Oh, how he would react in his sleep! The violence of his body worried her when she would wake to the sound of his voice shouting; sometimes incoherently, sometimes speaking words she could remember the context of, from situations they had been in. Almost always, they were nightmare memories about the people he'd failed to save. And the rest? The rest were nightmares created by his own fears, nightmares where he was failing to save her. Not that that protected her from his angry, sleeping hands. More than once the shouting had only just woken in time for her to avoid a black eye. Sometimes, she hadn't been quick enough.
Now he lay quietly, so much so that she suspected he was as much awake as she was, though with him laying on his side and his face turned in the other direction she couldn't be sure. She reached out a hand and fumbled in the half-light for the cord of the blind, and it rose upward with a hiss. From where she lay she could look out at the sky, and she did, and felt a lump rise up in her throat.
It wasn't right, to feel how she felt. It wasn't right at all.
To be on Earth, but to be homesick.
She missed the clear night sky of Atlantis, missed the gentle lapping of the ocean against the city firmaments, missed the pressures and highs of leadership, missed the people, missed her team. Dammit, she missed the acute feeling of living, rather than simply being alive.
'Liz'beth.'
The noise of the blind, or perhaps the increased moonlight, must have woken him. If, indeed, he had been asleep in the first place. She switched her face into neutral before turning towards him. He was yawning slightly, having rolled to face her, as he propped himself on an elbow. His eyes, as always, even groggy with sleep, traced her face lovingly. Only for him, could she be doing this. Only for him, could she keep herself together.
He reached out, and brushed her dark hair from her face, pale in the opalescent moonlight. She always felt like his eyes were capable of seeing right through her, so she glanced a little to his shoulder, looked at the bare line of his strong arms, rather than meet his gaze. 'Liz'beth,' he said again, 'This is the fourth night in a row. Can't you sleep at all?'
She forced a smile, said in a warm voice, 'You try sleeping when I get you pregnant sometime.'
He grinned sleepily, and when she pushed her pillow up against the headboard of their bed, and sat up, he leant over and rested his face against her belly. She ruffled her hand through his dark hair, and felt his lips grin against her through the cotton of her singlet when the baby kicked heftily against him by way of reward for the attention.
'Gunna be one helluva footballer, this little man.'
Her smile became more heartfelt, relaxing into the familiar debate, 'Hmm, and if it's a girl? Do you really want a footballer daughter?'
He glanced up at her, all wide-eyed innocence, 'Well, firstly, it's going to be a boy. And secondly, it there is such a thing as women's football. Although, I admit, there are other sports I'd prefer in that case...'
She scruffled his hair a bit more and pulled him up beside her, 'I think you're a funny man, John Sheppard.'
He looked at her sideways, 'And I think you're an unhappy woman, Elizabeth Sheppard.'
She raised her eyebrows, as though his words didn't cut into her hidden pain. 'I'm happy.'
'No. You're not.'
She shut her eyes. No. She wasn't.
She wasn't, and she hated herself for it. He was happy. He'd been happy when she'd fallen pregnant, fallen pregnant despite all the precautions she'd taken. He'd been so happy that she hadn't even been able to even contemplate any options other than bearing the child, even though she knew what it would mean, even though she knew what it would do to her life as she knew it, the life that she loved so much. He'd been so happy that when the IOC had given her job to someone else and sent her packing back to Earth, he'd resigned and come with her, despite the fact that at the time she was still refusing to marry him - refusing, because she didn't want to be the reason he gave up the job he had. But she'd given in at that point. Let him make an honest woman of her, even taken his name, because she loved him so much - and because he was so happy. He'd been so happy that he hadn't even cared when, having applied for a job on an SG-team, he'd been put on a team with someone else as his CO, even though they ranked the same. He was simply happy, and nothing could faze him.
For a while, she'd been able to ride on his happiness.
But now...
John put his hands on her face, turned her head to make her look at him. 'Elizabeth. I love you. I know you. You can't fool me.'
She raised her hands and wrapped them around his, as though her palms could breathe in the love she could feel radiating from him. 'I want to be happy,' she said softly, 'I really do. I've tried so hard. I'm just - I don't know. Maybe Simon was right all those years ago and I've become adventurous. An adventurer and now - a housewife - I -'
'You'll have a job again, after the baby's born.'
She half-smiled, rubbed her thumbs against his rough skin. 'It's easier for you. You're at the SGC. At least it's similar. But me? With all the years taken out from diplomacy here on Earth, and now so indelibly connected to the military... What sort of negotiator can I be? And with a child? I can't go gallivanting off, putting myself, it, us, in danger...'
'Well, then,' he said, with gentle eyes, 'You wouldn't have been happy in Atlantis either then, with the constant threats.'
She paused, breathed in, and actually managed a wry chuckle. 'I know. I'm just so -'
'Restless.'
She thought for a heartbeat or two, then, 'Yes. Restless. I don't want to be living an ordinary life any more. I want - I want all of the things that at the time gave me so much stress. I want - more colour in my life. How do I live what I lived, and then come back to dinner and television and walking the dog? How do I do that?'
She loved John, and he loved her. But the night swallowed them up in silence because they both knew that there was no answer to her question.