Kate lies on the terrace looking up at the night sky. The stars twinkle in a now familiar pattern, and her mind starts to wonder. She often wonders what an 'ordinary life' would be like.
What must it be like to live in an ordinary house and not a flying city that currently resides on or beneath the water of a distant planet?
What would it be like to have an ordinary, nine-to-five job where she listened to other ordinary people talk about their boring ordinary days and how much their ordinary lives had them down?
She wonders what it would be like to come home to her ordinary home and an ordinary family.
She wonders if it would have made her parents any more proud if she'd settled down with a husband and had a few children before opening a clinic in her home town.
"Not doing your Yoga meditations this morning?"
Kate smiles as Elizabeth's figure moves into her line of sight. "Junior decided that if I wanted to stretch, she wanted to kick box with my bladder."
Elizabeth's laughter floats over the balcony as she takes a seat next to Kate. "Perhaps keeping you up for the last several nights finally exhausted her, and you disturbed her sleep when you decided to get up and get moving."
Kate shifts so that she can rest her head gently on Elizabeth's lap. "Well, I'll tell you one thing – the next time Rodney McKay is late for an appointment because he's toying with some new Ancient device, I'm sending you to find him; you're the expedition leader. That way you can be the one to get zapped by the 'fertility ray' that combines your DNA with the DNA of the next person you get intimate with."
Elizabeth's hand lazily strokes through Kate's hair. "Oh, I think you look far better pregnant than I ever would. Besides, I do believe that what Colonel Sheppard so tactfully refers to as your 'glow' would be distracting to most of the expedition members if I were to have it."
Kate rolls her eyes, her hand moving slowly down to run over the swell of her stomach.
"Please, you're just glad you're not the one whose own body is acting against her." She responds to the swift kick their daughter delivers to her solar plexus with a groan that also serves to answer the look Elizabeth throws her way.
Elizabeth eases Kate into a sitting position before helping her to her feet. "Come. I'll feed both of you, and all will be forgiven."
Kate smirks as she moves. "You have a lot of confidence in your ability to woo me through food."
Elizabeth smiles, bowing her head gently. "If the food is not satisfactory to you, it should appease the baby, and either will make you happy."
Kate huffs as she passes over the threshold and enters the interior of the city. "Both will be even better." The sound of Elizabeth's laughter is like music to her ears, especially after everything their group has been through over the course of the last year.
After all, who needed an ordinary life? What she had here on Atlantis might be top secret work that she could never share with her folks, but they'd already accepted her anything-but-typical-and-conservative-decisions. Her life was extraordinary just the way it was, and she wouldn't have it any different.
