Five Years Later
By December21st
Rating: PG
Pairing: Sheppard/Weir
Warnings: None
Beta: Thanks to trinity1986 for the beta.
Summary: Sheppard and Weir's relationship is put on trial after a five-year separation from Earth.
A/N: Response to LiveJournal's (mysteriously missing) je_ficathon, for the assignment from miriel, who asked for:
your choice of...
1. A realities fic, dealing with the constraints upon their relationship and how their positions affect either their romantic relationship or negate it.
2. After losing contact with Earth (Either an AU from season 1 or a future loss and recovery), J & E have to deal with the ramifications of a relationship they began / made public when there was minimal hope of return to Earth. Children preventing the complete denial approach a plus but by no means required."
"Do you think they're still alive?" It had been five years since Stargate Command had sent eighty-seven people from Earth through the Stargate to Atlantis. In those five years, they hadn't heard a peep from the Pegasus Galaxy. No reports of great scientific discoveries, no team returning dejectedly with empty hands, no frantic calls for help. They had no way of knowing if the members of the Atlantis expedition were even still alive. Of course, Stargate Command hadn't been able to contact Atlantis themselves until SG-1 had unearthed a matched pair of ZPMs only a few weeks ago.
"McAfee, you now have clearance to know your sister's whereabouts," Gil's boss had told him a couple of years ago. At the time, it had been nearly four years since Gil McAfee had seen his kid sister, Ginny. She'd told her family that she would be out of the country indefinitely, working on top-secret research. Apparently she had some special gene that made her valuable to the Atlantis expedition. This meant that he and their sister, Mary Ann, probably had this gene too, but it seemed the Atlantis expedition hadn't needed experts in international law or small business accounting.
"Gil! Is it really you?" a familiar voice called from across the crowded cafeteria. Gil hadn't been summoned to Cheyenne Mountain in Wyoming to be reunited with his sister. Although he was a legal counsel for the International Oversight Committee, he didn't know that they'd re-established contact with the Pegasus galaxy; that they'd sent one of the ZPMs with a bevy of curious scientists and well-armed marines through the Stargate, allowing a desperately needed rotation of personnel. He'd been asked by his superiors to meet with members of an offworld expedition to debrief them regarding an inappropriate relationship between the two expedition leaders, and hadn't realized just which expedition it was until he was being tackled by his gangly kid sister and introduced to a brother-in-law and nephew he didn't even know he had.
"You won't believe what Uncle Hugo did this time." He spent a couple hours with Ginny just catching up. He informed her of their estranged father's sadly predictable death from lung cancer, their aunt Lucy's unexpected new penchant for sports cars, and their sister Mary Ann's three marriages and two divorces. She introduced him to Perran, her husband of nearly three years and honest-to-God native of the Pegasus galaxy - she called him an "Athosian", and their son.
"There were times when we almost gave up hope of ever seeing Earth again," Ginny told him. The first year hadn't been so bad, in spite of the unending McAfee VirusScan jokes from the scientists (Ginny was a specialist in viral immunology.) But then the Wraith had attacked the city, killing nearly a quarter of the city's population. She and Perran had met in the wake of the attack, working side-by-side trying to save as many lives as they could. Although Ginny was more researcher than doctor, and Perran was more familiar with herbal remedies than combat wounds, everyone with any medical knowledge had been called on to do what they could. It was a miracle that any of them had survived the attack at all.
"He's just started a phase where he likes to run around really fast," Dr. Elizabeth Weir explained about the rambunctious boy slightly older than Gil's nephew. Weir was in her early forties, tall, friendly and walked with a cane, making it difficult for her to keep up with her enthusiastic offspring. She joked that she was concerned since the child's father had shown no signs of ever growing out of that phase. In response to Gil's questions, she freely admitted to being in a relationship with her second-in-command and having two children with him, but resolutely refused to admit to any wrongdoing in having done so.
"Any chance you can get me recordings of the last five Superbowls?" Major John Sheppard asked with a grin. He was also in his early forties, with scruffy hair and handsome in spite of (or perhaps because of) a ragged scar running across the left side of his face. The way he periodically glanced over at the baby sleeping in a makeshift crib suggested that his peripheral vision was probably shot on that side, but he didn't complain about it. In response to Gil's questions, he freely admitted to being involved with his boss and having two children with her, but stubbornly refused to admit that there was a problem in having done so.
"I've never seen such a callous disregard for rules and regulations," Dr. Scarletti complained. Scarletti was one of a handful of survivors, most notably a trio consisting of Drs. Scarletti and Kavanagh and Sergeant Kramer, who seemed intent on discrediting the couple, providing Gil with thorough reports detailing their transgressions. Over the next few days, Gil interviewed all the surviving members of the Atlantis expedition that had arrived through the Stargate - about half were currently on Earth, while the other half had remained behind. While there were others that agreed with Dr. Scarletti, most of them saw nothing wrong with the relationship between the two expedition leaders, and several were even offended by the implication that their leaders had done anything wrong. The level of loyalty the pair fostered impressed Gil.
"None of us would be alive if it weren't for them," Ginny told her brother passionately. Things had gotten pretty rough in Atlantis after their continued separation from Earth, and Sheppard and Weir had gotten them through it. She understood that he wasn't trying to prosecute them (something not all of her colleagues grasped), but that he was merely gathering data at the request of the International Oversight Committee. She gave him her observations as the last to add to the stack of reports he sent off to the Committee, where he fully expected that would be the end of it. He was wrong.
"We have a job for you, McAfee," his boss told him on the phone. Gil received word, two weeks after his initial inquiry, that Sheppard and Weir would be subjected to a formal hearing of the International Oversight Committee. They were being charged with breaking regulations regarding the conduct of senior staff members of the Committee. While he could not be directly prosecuted by the Air Force for fraternizing with a civilian superior, Sheppard still faced a dishonorable discharge for conduct unbecoming an officer if the hearing went against them. Gil, much to his own surprise, had been asked to represent Sheppard and Weir in their defense.
"I need you to tell me everything," Gil told the couple politely. He was meeting with them again, in a meeting room buried within Stargate Command, this time as an ally. He noticed that Weir sat on Sheppard's left side, as though she was used to protecting his blind side. He noticed that Sheppard immediately negated the advantage by shifting in his chair so he could look at her more clearly. Both actions seemed automatic, and Gil was fairly certain neither of them was aware of what they were doing. Sheppard took her hand in his briefly but let go of it as they started talking. No public displays of affection while on the job, Gil guessed.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Sheppard responded unhelpfully when asked about their relationship. Gil's questioning revealed that Sheppard and Weir had not become involved until nearly two years after first arriving in Atlantis. Ten months later, their son had been born. When Gil asked if there was anything he should know about the short time between first date and firstborn, Weir exchanged an embarrassed look with Sheppard and informed Gil that they'd wanted to start a family right away, and had... done what was necessary to make sure that happened.
"Everyone found out at the summer festival," Ginny told her brother that evening, giving him a much more romantic version of their story. Sheppard had nearly died, again, this time from a particularly nasty infection. The gate room had been decked out with flowers and paper streamers and other makeshift decorations. The Athosians had been brought in from the mainland, and that evening there was a grand ball, with a respectable feast (considering that food was hard to come by), an amazing hodgepodge of music - culled from the eclectic musical tastes of an international expedition - and dancing that spilled out into the corridors. They hadn't made a formal announcement, but the way they spent the evening at each other's side and laughed and kissed and danced late into the night left little doubt in anyone's mind that they were together. It was the first time in a long time that the city had been a place of joy.
"This hearing will come to order," the bailiff announced. The prosecution brought in Dr. Kavanagh, who spent hours questioning every difficult decision (and a few easy decisions) Weir had ever made. Sergeant Kramer took the stand and did the same for Sheppard's choices and commands as military leader. Dr. Scarletti rounded out the trio, presenting a shopping list of every rules infraction, no matter how trivial, made by either Sheppard or Weir over the course of their entire five-year tenure as leaders. It was a long day that made the outcome of the hearing look bleak.
"I know why they did it," Ginny confessed to her brother, late that evening. She didn't know if it would help their case or hurt it. It was two weeks before the summer festival. Sheppard was recovering in the infirmary, after nearly dying from a particularly nasty infection. The infection wouldn't normally have been a problem, Ginny explained, except by that point they'd started running out of medications from home. Ginny had been sleeping in one of the infirmary beds after spending days working round the clock helping Dr. Beckett save Sheppard. She had awoken to hear Sheppard and Weir talking a few beds away.
"What if we're all that's left? What if something happened to Earth and we're all that's left? You have to be more careful, John." Weir was upset that he'd nearly died. Again. Sheppard was gently placating her. His brush with death had unnerved her worse than it usually did, and she was pouring all her fears out to him in the privacy of the infirmary. She was afraid that they would never return to Earth again. Sheppard admitted that he sometimes had the same fears, but that they couldn't let their people know. Weir told him that, as the one with by far the strongest ATA gene, he was needed to keep their people alive, so he needed to try harder not to get killed. Sheppard suggested, quietly, that his genes could be passed along to another generation... with her co-operation. After a minute of stunned silence, Weir asked why he didn't get someone else to help him. Sheppard informed her, simply, that he wasn't in love with someone else.
"When the Genii kidnapped Dr. Weir, Sheppard could have sent every soldier we had after her," Sergeant Bates testified. Bates was Sheppard's second-in-command, tending to side with the prosecution. Which was why Gil had chosen Bates as his chief witness. He'd been badly injured during the first Wraith attack, and would never be physically fit for military duty again, but his mind was still sharp. Bates testified that Sheppard, in the face of Weir's kidnapping, turned command of the military over to Bates himself, declaring himself unfit to make sound military decisions in the circumstances. When Gil asked Bates what he had done, Bates responded, somewhat sheepishly, that he'd sent every soldier they had after her.
"Major Sheppard, you're needed," the Committee Chairman told him, after reading a message brought to him by a guard. The hearing was nearly finished; all of Gil's witnesses had testified, and he simply needed to make his closing remarks. The message had sent the hearing chamber into turmoil. It informed them that Atlantis was under attack, and the Athosian leader they'd left in charge of Atlantis, Teyla, had sent a message requesting (demanding, actually) Sheppard's immediate presence to man the Ancient weapons chair. He rose quickly, pausing a moment as Weir put her hand on his arm.
"Don't die." It was one of those rare moments of silence, when the courtroom was quiet and everyone could hear Weir's words to Sheppard. He kissed her fiercely for a few brief seconds, then ran out of the room towards the Stargate. Weir immediately turned to General Landry, requesting as many men and as much firepower as he could spare, ignoring the members of the Committee as she started organizing military assistance for Atlantis. She didn't leave the room, but defending herself was obviously not her top priority anymore.
"The defense rests," Gil told the courtroom simply. Once the Committee had acknowledged his statement, it gave everyone present freedom to leave the room and get on with helping Atlantis. It turned out, he told Ginny later, that all the Committee had really needed was a first-hand demonstration of Sheppard's and Weir's devotion to duty. They'd brought back a verdict of "not guilty" even before the attack on Atlantis had failed.
"It's time to go home," Ginny told Gil a few days later. It was amazing how much closer they'd gotten during the last few weeks; much more so than they'd ever been when they were growing up. They exchanged goodbyes, and Gil watched Ginny and her family disappear through the glimmering Stargate, back to the city they called home in spite of all the hardships they'd been through. He smiled as he watched, knowing they were in good hands as long as Weir and Sheppard were looking over them.