Chapter 5

A/N: Another chapter that didn't turn out as planned but the end result was good. Apologies for the delay in updating. Writing has taken a back seat recently. As always, please read and review!

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Ben Archer's first word was "two." It shouldn't have surprised Erika at all. It was his number. He had two dogs, two sisters, two parents, two arms, two legs, two hands and two feet. His whole little world revolved around that simple number. It had been his number since long before he was born. He was conceived two years after Frankie, Erika had been on bed-rest with him for two weeks early on in the pregnancy, and he had been born only two hours after her water broke aboard the Enterprise.

Two was also the number of times his father hit his head on the mobile hanging above his crib before he learned his lesson. Two was the number of times the dogs' barking had woken him up as an infant before Erika had nearly soundproofed his room in a desperate attempt to get him to take a nap. There were two starships in the family, two admirals, and two captains who spent more time in the Archer home than at their own houses. The number made sense in relation to Ben's life.

It was an odd first word, she thought, remembering the first words of her daughters. Adalie was a happy and sweet baby so it was no real shock that the first word she spoke "hi." She said it all the time. She would say it the moment either she or Jon came into her room to lift her out of the crib in the morning and she would say it in the evening when they laid her down to go to sleep. At first, Erika wasn't sure if Addie knew what it meant. But she seemed to understand quickly what it meant and her vocabulary quickly expanded to include other words besides greetings. For the first few months though, Jon would avoid saying "hi" in response to Adalie because he knew if he got her started, she would just keep saying it for the rest of the day. Erika remembered one day in particular when both she and Jon realized that they might have a problem.

"Hi Addie!" Jon had said that morning before realizing what he had done.

"Hi!" Adalie had chirped right back at him. "Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi."

He had picked her up from her highchair and taken her over to the sink to wash her off. "I don't know how you did it, Addie girl, but you managed to get your peas in your hair and on your toes."

"Hi!"

"Yes, hi," he had sighed as he contemplated dunking her in the sink or hosing her down. "Hey Rike!" he had called over his shoulder.

"Yeah?"

"Could you bring down a clean outfit for her?"

"Hi!" Adalie had tugged on his ear. "Hi. Hi. Hi."

"Hi Ads…."

"Hey Rike!"

"Hi!"

Erika had poked her head in the kitchen at that point and saw that her husband was holding their toddler over the sink, bouncing her up and down in the hopes of dislodging the bits of baby food stuck to her. Jon was muttering to himself but Adalie was still babbling calmly.

"Erika?" Jon had glanced up and given her an overwhelmed look. Before she could respond, Adalie had chimed in with her new favorite word.

"Hi!"

"Erika, how do you get her to stop?" She had just laughed, handed him the clean outfit and told him that he was on his own.

Frankie on the other hand had been quiet and reserved as a baby. In contrast to their outgoing firstborn, their middle child was didn't say a word until fourteen months. In fact, Erika had been so used to Frankie keeping her mouth shut that when Jon told her that Frankie had said her first word, she had told him to stop joking around. Jon had been home on leave and hadn't seen the girls in a few months. They had been at the park and Erika had been busy getting Adalie all buttoned up in her coat that she had managed to wriggle out of, when Jon started shouting.

"Erika! Erika! She said 'yellow!'" he had raced over to her holding Frankie up on his shoulders.

"Don't be ridiculous. Frankie isn't talking yet," she had said as she tugged Addie's hat into place.

"No, I'm serious!" Jon had insisted. "She pointed at the sun and said 'yellow.' Clear as day."

Finally, she had looked up at him and saw that he wasn't kidding. "What?" she asked in disbelief.

"Here, do it again, Frankie. What color is the sun?" he had asked, looking up at their little girl.

"Yellow," Frankie said, just as confident as before. "Yellow." Erika felt her jaw drop.

"And what is color is Addie's hat?" Jon continued, his grin getting bigger.

Frankie put her finger in her mouth and thought for a moment. "Yellow."

"Oh my god, she's right!" Erika gasped.

"I told you!" Jon smiled. "I'll bet she was just waiting for me to get home to start talking."

"Right…" Erika had rolled her eyes but then she thought of something. "Hey Frankie, what color is mama's hair?"

"Yellow."

"So she's not sure what it means exactly…" Jon had muttered, shooting Erika a glare.

"Still," Erika had acknowledged as she leaned over to give Frankie a kiss on the forehead. "Good job, sweetheart."

"Yellow."

"Oh no," Jon had muttered to himself.

Thinking back on it, Erika was fairly certain she knew where each of the girls had learned their words. And she supposed that Ben must have heard them saying the word "two" enough times to pick it up himself. She should probably be glad that he hadn't picked up any of the other phrases that certain captains had been known to drop around the kitchen table.

"Aren't you glad none of our kids' first words was something like 'plasma' or 'warp?'" Jon asked, sitting down on the floor next to where she was playing with Ben. Well, those weren't the words she had been thinking of exactly but sometimes they seemed just as bad.

"We would probably get the bad parenting of the year award for that one," she agreed. Ben toddled over to where his blocks had all been neatly stacked by his older sister and sent them crashing to the floor with one fell swoop. He laughed and then stooped down to pick up a handful of blocks, which he promptly dumped in front of his father.

"Are these for me?" Jon asked. Ben nodded.

"Either that, or he has realized that you do most of the cleaning up around here," she said, nudging him in the side.

"Hey."

"That was a compliment, Jon."

"I knew that." Jon began stacking the blocks but before he even got a foot off the ground, Ben was there ready to knock them down again.

"He's going to be two soon," she sighed as she ran a hand across her baby's hair.

"I know," Jon frowned. "Ever thought about giving him another 'two' by going for another little boy?"

Erika shook her head. "The dream of the entire water polo team is no more." She stopped and looked over at her husband, worried for a moment that she would find disappointment in his face. But all that was there was pure happiness. They had never really talked about a fourth. They were both getting older and the three they had seemed to take every bit of energy they had, not to mention patience, sanity and organizational ability. There had been an implicit understanding that Ben would be their last one, but that was something Erika had felt very comfortable with. Two might have been Ben's number but three was theirs.

Still, as she watched her little boy she couldn't help but think that this was somehow the end of an era. Ben would be the last one to learn how to talk, to start school, to do anything really. Every milestone he hit in life would have a finality that neither of his sisters shared. With Adalie, everything was new and exciting. With Frankie, they had learned how to handle almost every situation from their eldest and now had the opportunity to sit back and enjoy. And now with Ben, there was a mixture of things. There was wonder and amazement that all three of their children could experience the same moments differently and uniquely. There was excitement to see how Ben would differ from his sisters. And as Erika was just beginning to realize, there was sadness because this would be the last time for all of them. Erika shook her head, trying not to dwell on that thought too long.

"Jon?" she asked, realizing that he had never really answered. "Is that…?" She stopped as Ben jumped into his father's lap and began banging blocks together furiously.

"I've got half a team," Jon said with a smile as held Ben's little chubby hands in his much larger ones. "That is all I need."

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