Chapter 10

A/N: This is a birthday present to the person who got me to ship Jon and Erika in the first place. Happy Birthday Bones! Enjoy! Love, AE

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"Hey," he smiled as she walked up to the door just as he was opening it. He wrapped her in a tight embrace and buried his face in her hair.

"Hi there," she sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. "How is everyone?"

"Fine, I think," he said as they stepped inside. "Ron called a little while back and they are all playing cards right now."

Erika smiled. "Real chips or potato chips?"

"Potato," Jon shook his head and laughed. "Ben ate about a grand's worth and Adalie nearly killed him."

"They were her chips?"

"Apparently," Jon rolled his eyes as they made their way into their home. It was a rare thing that they both got there at the same time.

"So how'd it go today?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It's fine," but she knew that answer wouldn't satisfy him for long. She could see it in his eyes, there was something bothering him. They hadn't had a chance to talk all day.

She decided to distract him. "I saw your competition on the ride down from the docks," Erika said and she was rewarded with a groan from her husband. The Warp 7 complex, the newest developmental project of Starfleet, was apparently going to have a facility up at the spacedocks in addition to their buildings on the main campus. Jon had tried to convince himself that he wasn't jealous of the resources that were being thrown at the ships, that his office was throwing at those ships, that had been specifically designed to replace the NX class but that was like saying he didn't care if Texas beat Stanford. With the success of Enterprise and her sister ships, Starfleet had been able to put forward an ambitious new program designed to revolutionize space exploration. Jon, as the successor to the man who had founded the program, felt obligated to continue his legacy. Inside though, her husband was worried it would put him out of a job.

"Do you ever worry about what to do next?" he asked as Erika slipped her arm through his and they began to walk down the hallway. "After the warp five ships are scrapped and the technology is as antiquated as sleeper ships."

"You mean what do you do now that you are the highest ranking officer in Starfleet?" she said giving him a half smile.

"Sort of. But think about it, Rike. The equipment I've trained on, that we've both trained on, and devoted our entire lives to is going to be obsolete before we're ready. Sure, things can be retrofitted," he muttered, and Erika knew he was thinking of the Intrepid class, which had been outfitted several years back with warp five engines. That project had been an undertaking in itself and she had spent hours helping the project directors understand the new engines they were dealing with and what that would mean for their crews. So far, the six ships that had been upgraded her doing well but Erika had sworn that she would never deal with another engine swap again as long as she lived.

"But really," he continued, "they will be stripping them down to the bone and practically starting again. Things are moving too fast for us to keep up." And there it was, the struggle that all Starfleet officers faced. The technology they worked with was advancing faster than anyone had ever anticipated. Older, more experienced officers were now the ones who had no idea how the new systems worked and unless they wanted to go back to school full time, they were unlikely ever to. She and Jon had been lucky; their work in the NX program had given them a wide base of knowledge that helped them to stay above the curve for decades. But now, their world was changing. And they were changing.

"We are expected to keep up with these changes and advancements if we want to be at the forefront of our work," she said simply as they walked. The sound of their children playing was starting to drift down the hall, bringing a smile to her face.

"What happens when we don't? This world, the warp five world, is the one I understand. I know how to build ships to work with these engines. I know how to train crews to handle these missions. I know what our parameters are, where the limits of our technology lie and what we can do to work around them. Yet everyday I am in meetings with people who are constantly working to break those limitations and I can barely understand any of that. Jump drives, nav computer interfaces, long-range real time communications strategy," she laughed at that. Her husband had never understood her work. "This is beyond me."

"So you hire people who know about this, who can help you. That is part of your job."

"It isn't the job I thought it would be," he admitted and stopped. "We spent our whole careers focused on breaking the limits of technology. We devoted our energy to transforming this space program from a passively observant model to an active exploratory force that can represent our society out there. We won a war because of that technology. We wouldn't be where we are today if we hadn't done that. I know that. But right now, I'm just content to let things stay the way they are. I don't want to spend six months training and retraining just be allowed to fly one of these magnificent ships again."

"What makes you think they would ever let you near the controls of one of those magnificent ships again?" Erika said with a bit of a smile.

"I mean, Rike, we've made it. We've accomplished our goals. You'd think they would let us rest on our laurels before they start tearing down everything we know to make way for some new generation." He sighed as she leaned her head against his shoulder.

"You mean, you've accomplished your goals," she corrected. "I still have things I'd like to get done."

"Want to share?" he said with a grin.

"Want to get Veronica to stop teaching our children to gamble?" she countered.

"It isn't gambling. It's negotiation strategy," Adalie said as she walked in on her parents' conversation.

"Hey Addie," Erika said with a smile as she pulled her eldest child into a hug. It felt like she hadn't seen her daughter in days, when it had really only been a matter of hours. Adalie was growing up, faster than Jon or Erika was willing to admit or even acknowledge. She looked more like her mother every day. "Is that really what she calls it?" Erika shook her head and glanced up at her husband who only shrugged.

Adalie nodded. "She says it'll be good practice for us in the future." Erika saw her husband wince at that. He probably knew what was going to come next. "She says Starfleet Captains need to learn things like that."

Erika felt her eyes widen as she gave Jon a stern look. They had always tried very hard to stress to the kids that they didn't need to follow their parents' career track, or even join Starfleet but their godmother had other plans. Veronica Fletcher thought it was absolutely insane that anyone with "as many brains as your three offspring" would even consider not going into the fleet and wasn't shy about making her opinion known. She almost blew a gasket when Frankie mentioned one day that she wanted to be a ballerina. Their godfather, on the other hand, had been much more supportive. Trip went out a bought their middle daughter a tutu and a leotard, which, if Erika was not mistaken, she was wearing right now.

"Addie…" Erika began, unsure how she wanted to undo the damage.

"Wanna come play with us?" Adalie asked, pulling her mom toward the living room table, completely unaware of the problem.

Erika shrugged as she tossed her jacket on the couch. "Sure," she gave Jon another look. "We aren't done with this conversation, by the way."

"Oh, I know," he said, picking up her jacket and carefully hanging it up. As her daughter led her through the house, Erika thought about what her husband had just said. Yes, their world was changing. Yes, there would always be something new for them to struggle to understand. Ironically, it was a world she was completely comfortable in. She had always been on the periphery of technological advancement, even in the NX program. She learned along with the pilots but it wasn't the same. Jon's whole world had been to see his father's engine fly and now that he had, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do next. Erika, on the other hand, was perfectly content to stay where she was. Only she wasn't ready to tell him that just yet. He was having enough problems as it was.

"Okay, Frankie, you're up," Veronica called as she waved Erika over to the table. "I thought I heard you two muttering out there."

"Give me a minute!" Frankie called as she looked over her hand and the cards on the table. "Hi Mom!"

"Hi Franks," Erika said as she looked over at her middle daughter. Yes, she was wearing the tutu and leotard with a backwards NX cap on her head. She had a pretzel in her mouth that she was pretending was a cigar, gods only knew why. Adalie was next to her, carefully organizing her cards and watching all the other players. Adalie was a shark and they all knew it. She could read you like a book and always knew if you were bluffing. Which was why her father had been having such a hard time getting her to bed at a decent hour lately. Erika hadn't noticed before but now she saw that she was wearing a pair of wings strapped to her back and a ribbon tied around her hair. There was something about poker that made their children feel like dressing up. She didn't quite understand it but Jon figured it would save him time with the laundry.

Which was what their youngest was apparently considering. Ben had entered a stage where he could strip out of his clothes in 30 seconds flat. Jon would look away for one moment only to find a naked two-year-old running around the house laughing hysterically. It then became a game for Jon to catch him, put his clothes back on and keep him from doing it all over again. When he complained to her about it she had just laughed and said that Ben probably just had a little AG in him.

Now their son was sitting on his father's lap, fully clothed and thoroughly entranced in the card game but still taking time to eat his potato chips. When Veronica had first proposed teaching his children to play cards when they were toddlers, she thought she must have finally gone insane. But some how their kids managed catch on to the game relatively quickly. If they could all speak as many languages as they did, she figured they could learn poker too.

That was something, she thought. For all their constant battles with their challenging careers, they had managed, so far, to raise three pretty amazing children. It was something she often forgot in the midst of the craziness that surrounded their work. They had done one thing at least that was going to last.

"Frankie, it's up to you. Call or fold?" Veronica said, looking over at her middle goddaughter.

"Or raise," Adalie added.

"I don't know…" Frankie sighed, twirling around in her chair.

"It's simple, Franks, call or fold. Do you have a good hand?" Jon looked over at his daughter.

"Yes and no."

"Oh boy," Veronica muttered.

"You can't be both," her older sister rolled her eyes.

"Yes I can." She stuck her tongue out, but one look from her father and she stopped.

"Look, Frankie," Ron sighed as she adjusted her own hand, "just call the bet. It's only three more chips."

"No you see if I call your bet then I have to wash Ben's dishes for a month and a half, and then Addie'll pull out that ace I just know she has, and the octopus is going to ruin my entire hand. I have to fold!" Frankie said dramatically as she laid her cards and her head on the table with a sigh.

Veronica looked at Jon and Erika who just shrugged. "Is it bad that what she just said made perfect sense to me?" Ron groaned.

Erika watched as her husband laughed and ruffled the hair of their middle child. She had known that Jon had been thinking about his job and his work very seriously for the past few months. She had known that he was enjoying his diplomatic work a lot more than he cared to admit. She had figured it was only a matter of time.

"It isn't enough to just keep exploring," he had said to her once. "We have to protect what we've built and sustain our way of life. We need to pull together others like us. We need to build, Rike."

"And what are we going to build?" she had asked then, not really taking him seriously.

"A new form of government, a grand alliance, an intergalactic group, whatever. Just something to perpetuate whatever it is that we did out there. Something beyond Starfleet. Something for us to do next."

And now here he was, on the verge of building what came next. There was no way he would be content to oversee the development of the warp seven engine after that.

"Jonathan," she said, leaning over to whisper in his ear. "I think you should go into politics."

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