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Fic: International Relations, Part IV
Ladies and gentlemen, the final installment of International Relations. Once again, many thanks to aj, who not only beta-read this section, but also helped to shepherd this fic from its "hey, wouldn't it be cool if" stage to its finished form.

(As a note, in this section, a small amount of dialogue is borrowed from the episode Rising.)

Part I
Part II
Part III

Enjoy. :)

---

Two weeks later, Elizabeth and Lise were pool-side at a hotel in Crete, in bikinis and stretched out on lounge chairs while sipping drinks with little umbrellas sticking out of them.

It was officially a UN trip. Elizabeth was attending a conference, and since the doctors back in Ramstein were still wary of her being on airplanes for a little while more, she’d taken the train and subsequently a ferry out to the island. It hadn’t taken much to convince Lise to take a vacation with her, pulling Katie out of school for two weeks. Katie needed the break as much as her mother did.

Allison was curled up beside Lise, fast asleep, while Katie was running around the pool with some other kids staying at the hotel, none of whom spoke English. “Katie!” Lise yelled. “Walk!”

Katie slowed down, but Elizabeth could see from across the pool that she was bouncing with excess energy. “I remember being like that,” she remarked.

“Insubordinate?”

She laughed. “No, bouncy.”

“I’m having a hard time imagining that,” Lise said, looking up at the cloudless sky. “In my head, you were going on thirty when you were seven.”

“In my head, you’re going on seven when you’re thirty.”

Lise casually thwapped her with a wet towel. She didn’t respond. Instead, she lifted her left leg up to look at her knee. The scars would probably never go away, but at least it didn’t look puffy so often anymore. She lowered her leg and put an ice pack back on it. “Bothering you?” Lise asked.

“Not overly,” Elizabeth replied. “I just have to do this occasionally.”

Lise hummed contentedly and stretched, cat-like. “This vacation was a good idea.”

“You’re on vacation,” Elizabeth said. “I’m working.”

Lise snickered. “If this is your idea of working,” she replied, “I want your job.”

“Your job involves lounging around the house with a laptop while Allison is left to fend for herself and Katie’s at school,” Elizabeth teased.

Of course, since she’d been released from the hospital, she’d seen first-hand just how much Lise did in a single day. She had helped take care of Elizabeth for the first few weeks, all the while still volunteering frequently at Katie’s school and running the house, and she always managed to write for at least an hour a day. Elizabeth didn’t understand how someone could do so much and not get burned out within a week, but when she expressed this to Lise, the younger woman just shrugged. It was what she wanted, and she clearly enjoyed every day of this life.

“Have you heard from John lately?” she asked.

“I got a letter from him the day before we left,” Elizabeth replied. “I need to answer it. When’s the last time Drew wrote to you?”

“He calls more than he writes,” Lise said. “He sounds so tired when I talk to him. I think he may file for separation soon.”

Elizabeth pushed herself up and stared at Lise in alarm. “What?”

Lise gave her a confused look before bursting out in laughter. “Sorry,” she said, sounding utterly unrepentant. “I forget sometimes that you don’t know the Air Force lingo. Just means he’s not going to sign up again when his current commitment is up.”

Sitting back in her chair again, Elizabeth shook her head. “You had me scared there, Lise. I thought you’d tricked me into believing that you two had the happiest marriage in existence.”

“It’s not like we never fight,” said Lise. “There’s just really good incentive to make up.”

“Which is how you ended up with two kids.”

“Exactly.” Lise pulled sunscreen out of her bag and began coating her legs again. “I’ll give him that much,” she said, looking over at Allison. “He gives me pretty babies.” Once she’d finished putting another coat of sunscreen all over herself, she began rubbing it on Allison, who slept on through the process. “Have you given thought to having kids, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth was surprised by the question, though she supposed she shouldn’t have been. It was bound to come up eventually. But Lise took her failure to respond immediately as embarrassment and added, “Not that you have to have children or anything. But you’re good with my girls, and John’s said you have a lot of nieces and nephews, so I just wondered if you’d thought about it.”

Sighing, Elizabeth picked up the sunscreen that Lise had just set down and started on her arms. “Thought about it, yes, but never seriously,” she said. “It’s not easy to be a woman in my job anyway, to be dealing with cultures that still see women as subservient.”

“Like a structural engineering firm in one of the fastest-growing markets in the US?”

“Hmm. Forgot you were an engineer once upon a time.”

Lise sat up and sighed, seeing her daughter in the pool and dunking someone under the water. “Katie!” she called across the pool. “Out of the water now!”

Katie bolted up a ladder and flopped into a chair, and Lise laid back. “Anyway,” she said, “the atmosphere wasn’t fun. I have objections to being held to different standards, higher or lower, because I’m a woman. I was looking for a reason to leave the firm when I found out I was pregnant. It was a convenient excuse to quit.”

“But you had something to fall back on,” Elizabeth replied. “The rest of us in these positions aren’t always that lucky.”

“And I had a husband who was willing and able to let me quit my job.” Lise shook her head. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. And probably about John, unless his last letter included a proposal.”

Elizabeth made a face at her. “Why don’t we leave that subject alone?”

“Because I’m nosy and have no shame.”

“That’s the truth.”

“Hey.” The tone in Lise’s voice was enough to make her look. “I wouldn’t say anything about it if I didn’t consider you a friend, Elizabeth. You and John both.”

“I know,” Elizabeth said, “but it’s complicated.”

“It’s supposed to be.” Lise looked out around the pool, where it wasn’t at all unusual to see couples holding hands or embracing. “The stuff I write about is easy. Getting together is the easy part. It’s staying together that’s complicated and hard, but it’s also the part that means the most at the end of the equation.”

Elizabeth sat up and reached over to put her hand over Lise’s. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

Lise smiled, her brown eyes shining. “So am I. I make it a point never to turn down an invitation to the Mediterranean.” But they both knew that she was glad for other reasons too.

---

“You know, there’s something incredibly unfair about this,” John commented over breakfast.

Joey and Kyle just rolled their eyes, knowing from the sight of fine handwriting on stationery paper that John was about to start complaining about Elizabeth and Lise’s antics, but some of the other guys hadn’t heard it quite so much. This morning, it was Mitch who made the mistake of asking for an explanation. “What gives?” he said.

“My wife and Shep’s girlfriend-slash-not-quite-fiancée are on vacation in Crete,” Drew explained. “Technically Elizabeth’s at a conference, but she’s still on a Mediterranean island while we’re in Afghanistan.”

“I think the worst part of it is picturing the two of them lying around in bikinis, and needing sunscreen rubbed in, that kind of thing,” John said, folding the letter up and putting it in his pocket.

Joey dropped his fork. “Thanks, man,” he said. “I really needed that kind of distraction when we’re out flying this morning.”

John smirked. “Just be glad I didn’t mention tanning oils.”

“They’ve got Drew’s kids with them, right?” Dex asked. “That’s got to reduce the hot factor.”

“Are you kidding?” said Drew. “Lise is at her hottest when she’s pregnant.”

“It’s true,” Kyle said, absently eating his corn flakes.

At Drew’s sudden look of suspicion, he fumbled through some sort of apology or explanation, but John reached across the table and smacked his head. “Not the time for you to be making that kind of remark,” he said.

“I always make that kind of remark!”

“Yeah, but you obviously didn’t know that I know that you slept with my sister.”

An odd silence fell. “Wait a minute,” Kyle choked out, “you knew? And you haven’t killed me yet?”

John wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood, stepping over the bench and picking up his tray. “Oh, don’t worry. Retribution is coming,” he said. “And you know, white is a really good color for your face.”

He walked off then, and was unsurprised when Drew caught up with him by the time he reached the exit of the mess. “Think you’ll ever get tired of holding that over his head?” Drew asked.

“Not for at least six months.”

They stepped outside into two feet of snow, with more coming down. John and Drew pulled up the hoods of their parkas up. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Drew, “but right now I hate your girlfriend.”

“Don’t worry,” John replied, thinking of Elizabeth in that pale pink bikini he’d seen her in all of once. “Right now I kind of hate her too.”

“Snow’s supposed to get heavier today. Think we’ll be flying?”

“Has Rice ever not sent us out?”

“Good point.”

---

Elizabeth and Lise returned to Germany with Katie and Allison, tanned and relaxed and ready for life again. There were letters from John waiting when they arrived, most of which were for Elizabeth, but not all. He’d written to Lise and Katie as well, and Katie was thrilled to have gotten mail.

John, Elizabeth wrote him in return,

I think I warned you that not all deserts are hot, didn’t I? Sorry to hear about all the snow. It’s a bit uncomfortable to come back to winter in Germany after two weeks of sunshine in Crete. And I’d be nicer about it, but I remember someone mocking me while he was living in Hawaii.

Lise is doing pretty well, all things considered. I won’t tell her you that wanted a report on her well-being. She’s keeping herself busy, which is the important part, I think. Our little trip did her a world of good. She’s not as tense anymore, and while she’s still worried about you and Drew, she’s just mellowed out a lot. She’s writing up a storm, too. I end up making sure Katie’s ready for school most mornings, because Lise gets up and starts writing before she’s even hit the shower. I think there are days when I’d have to remind her to eat if she weren’t starving all the time anyway.

In the background I’m hearing the news. Lise tends to turn it on and do other things, pretending that she’s not listening for reports from Afghanistan. I suppose I do the same thing. They’re talking about casualties in Kabul, and I’m reminded of a book I read when I was a little girl. It’s hard to listen to the news when you’re just praying that you don’t hear the name of someone you care about. Grateful when the names aren’t the ones you know, but guilty too, because those men who’ve died are someone else’s brother, son, father, or lover.

I don’t know if I ever told you this, but I don’t entirely support this military action – I can’t completely agree with what’s going on there. There are bad people in this world and many of them are in power in Afghanistan, but I can’t help the feeling that we’ve missed the bigger picture somehow. A selfish part of me wants you out of harm’s way. The rest of me knows that you’re doing your duty, but sometimes that doesn’t help. I was thinking of my old Latin professor yesterday, and all the little sayings he used to have us memorize. In times like this, he would say, “Ad nocendum potentes sumus.” We have the power to harm. We have great power to help too, but when misapplied, we have the power to harm.

But I’ll get off my soapbox now and save it for the next time I’m asked to contribute to some periodical. I just want you to know that I may not agree with why you’re there, but that I would never place that feeling or responsibility on you or any other member of the military.

On the train back to Ramstein, Allison saw me writing something for work, and she decided that she wanted to learn how to write too, so Lise and I are working on that with her. Don’t be surprised if you and Drew start getting letters in red crayon any day now. She and Katie are such bright little girls. Almost makes me want children of my own.

And that brings me to a subject we never really finished. I know you’re reluctant to talk about it over the phone or in letters – and I am too – but sometime we need to finish that conversation we started that day I woke up in the hospital. Maybe we need to make an agreement, that the next time we see each other, we’ll talk this through. We really need to.

Lise is calling me from the other room – I think we’re going out to dinner – so I’ll wrap this up. Write to me soon. I love you.

Yours,
Elizabeth

“What took so long?” Lise said, when Elizabeth arrived in the kitchen.

“I was finishing up a letter,” Elizabeth explained.

“Was it to Uncle John?” Katie asked, rocking back on her heels.

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” Elizabeth tugged lightly at one of Katie’s braids.

The girl grinned as though she knew a secret. “Are you going to marry Uncle John?”

“Maybe.”

“Katie,” Lise interceded, “time to leave her alone.”

“Can I be a flower girl in the wedding?” Katie continued, unabated.

“Katie.”

“Yes, Mom.”

---

You know what? Afghanistan sucks. I mean, really, really sucks.

I’ve been eating food on military bases since I was twenty-two, and you know as well as I do how bad the food was in Kosovo, but this really takes the cake. Really nasty cake. Worse than my mom’s fruitcake.

But even that isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it is when Rice starts getting in my way.

“Major!” Rice was yelling across the hangar. His voice echoed through the cavernous space. “Major Sheppard, get down here now!”

John climbed down from the cockpit of his helicopter as quickly as he dared. The snow was melting all around and everything was slightly damp. “Major!” the colonel yelled again.

“Yes, sir,” John said, finding himself face-to-face with the slightly smaller man once he’d reached solid ground again. “Can I help you?”

“What the hell kind of maneuvering was that?” Rice demanded. “Are you trying to destroy anything and everything you fly?”

“No, sir,” John said, bowing his head as he took his helmet off, to cover the fact that he was rolling his eyes. “I probably would have broken it if I’d been trying.” And it was true. He’d taken a huge risk in flying so close to the opening of one of the cave networks in the mountains, but it had been worth it. He’d pulled off the rescue, hadn’t he?

“Sheppard!” Rice was almost screaming at him, and John leaned back slightly. “Sheppard, if you ever defy my orders again. . .”

“What, sir?” John said, and wished it unsaid a moment later.

“If it had been up to me, you never would have made captain,” he replied, getting up in John’s face. “You’re not fit to wear the uniform. You’re not disciplined enough to fly.”

John bit back a retort, but only barely. “If you ever pull a stunt like this again,” Rice continued, “if you ever defy my orders again, I will see to it that you never serve another day in the Air Force. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” he answered.

Rice narrowed his eyes and then stalked away. In his peripheral vision, John saw Drew approaching. “Man,” Drew said quietly, “you’re going to get yourself in a lot of trouble before this is through.”

“He wasn’t always like this,” said John.

“He’s up for a star soon,” Drew replied. “He can’t afford to have mavericks doing their own thing.”

“Even though everyone says he has the best helicopter pilots in the Air Force?”

“They say that without looking at records.” Drew grabbed John’s elbow to get him walking. “Seriously, Shep, you’ve got to tone it down.”

“I don’t have to tone anything down, Kendall,” John replied. “I need to do what I do.”

John shifted his helmet under his arm, and Drew sighed. “It’s your funeral.”

And that was about how it’s been for weeks now, Elizabeth. Rice is coming down hard on everyone, but he’s the worst with me. And I’m the best damn pilot he’s got, so I don’t know what his problem is.

It’s getting old, being here. And by here, I mean the Air Force. When I was a kid, all I ever wanted to be was a pilot. And I am a pilot, and now I just keep thinking that I need to be far, far away from here. I know war’s not supposed to be clean or even noble, but something about this war just doesn’t sit well with me. Like a feeling that something’s about to go down, and I don’t know what. I keep thinking about that film of the Mujahidin shooting down a Russian helicopter with RPGs supplied by the U. S. government. And sometimes it’s worse. Sometimes I think of the Bikini Atoll and wonder if that’s what it’s going to take to end this thing. I don’t blame you for having concerns or doubts or whatever you want to call them. I really don’t.

---

At some point, Elizabeth got in the habit of giving John a report on how Lise was doing, even though Lise wrote to John as well. Elizabeth knew that Lise wouldn’t tell John these things, so she took it upon herself, and John was grateful for it. Drew and Lise were both a little depressed as Katie’s eighth birthday came and went, and as the next few weeks passed, John found that Lise’s reported mood didn’t improve much. The letters he got from Lise were cheerful but superficial. From Elizabeth he got a much different picture.

There were good days, like the night when an Afghan warlord had kept John up all night because he wanted to practice his English, but the good days were few and far between. It had been a week since Mitch and Dex had been killed, and John was still feeling a little numb about it. He hadn’t been the best of friends with the two men, but they were good guys. They’d just set down on the desert floor to pick up three men, and a few minutes later, there was a high-pitched whistle, and the helicopter went up in flames right in front of John. Since then, John hadn’t been able to close his eyes without seeing the fire.

Then one morning, while they were prepping for a rescue south of the base, Kyle broke his foot. John figured he could probably handle the mission without a second chopper with him, but Rice ordered Drew to take Kyle’s spot in the rotation. It was a bad way to start the day, but John didn’t say anything about it. In some respects, Drew had been right. He had to stop ramming headlong into Rice, no matter how bad the man’s decisions usually were.

The mission went as it was supposed to on the way in. Captain Molly Christenson and Captain Michael Santos had gone down in a bomber run in the night, and as sunlight spilled over the mountain peaks, John and Drew took off. At this time of day, visibility was bad anywhere in the world, and if it hadn’t been a likely matter of life and death, John would rather have started this half an hour later, when the sun was playing fewer tricks with his vision.

“Beautiful weather for a Sunday stroll,” Drew commented over the radio.

“Yeah, but not much else,” John replied. He glanced at Joey. “What’s our bearing?”

Joey read off the numbers, and John adjusted their course more toward the east. Down below them, the sunrise was casting deep, deep shadows in the valleys as they crossed into the province of Nangarhar. Their target was near Tora Bora, close to the Pakistan border and not far enough away from the Khyber Pass. The region was like Swiss cheese, peppered with caves that extended deep into the heart of the mountains. It was far too easy for guerillas to hide up there, making it dangerous for anyone to go near Tora Bora. But the only way to pull off a rescue mission was via helicopter, and besides, that was what the Air Force kept them around for.

The charred remains of a B-2 stealth bomber lay scattered across a long, steep valley, and John wondered why no one was talking about the fact that a stealth bomber had been shot down. The wreakage was still smoldering, and he pulled his helicopter up to fly above the smoke plumes. “Damn,” Joey said, “that looks. . .”

“Yeah,” said John. “Never gets any easier to see that.”

They followed the scar cut along the valley floor by the plane crash and then veered slightly north, as the winds the previous night had been from the south. If Santos and Christenson had managed to eject, they would have ended up in that direction. On the other side of a mountain, a flare suddenly went up.

“Damn it,” said Drew, “we have to work fast.”

“I don’t understand,” Lenny said, behind John and Joey. “What’s the problem?”

“They shouldn’t have sent up that flare,” Joey explained. “Tells whoever else that’s hiding in the mountains that we’re here.”

“Uh, and the helicopters don’t make enough noise to do that?”

“The flare says we’re landing,” John clarified. “You ready to do your thing?”

“Give me a minute.”

“That’s about all you have.”

There was only room for one chopper to land at a time, and John set his down while Drew circled above them. Lenny got out and Joey hopped out after him. John fidgeted in his seat, trying not to fiddle with any crucial switches. He just kept hearing Mitch and Dex chattering away on the radio, right up to the point where they were blown up.

Lenny and Joey got back a few minutes later, supporting a woman between them. “Where’s the other one?” John said, while Lenny got Christenson strapped in.

She shook her head. “He didn’t eject.”

John swore under his breath. “Let’s get out of here,” he said into the radio.

“Bagram, this is Hondo,” Drew said almost immediately. “We’ve retrieved Captain Christenson, and we’re returning to base.”

They were back in the air within seconds and heading northwest again, toward Bagram Airfield. Drew took point, and in the background John could hear Lenny talking to Captain Christenson, trying to ascertain her condition. She was shaken up after getting shot down and spending several dark hours alone in the mountains, but physically she seemed to be okay.

The flight back to base was tense, peppered with sporadic conversation that John wished his buddies would just stop. Every time he heard the crackle of the radio he almost jumped. This was dangerous terrain, and the day had started off badly when Kyle had broken his foot.

They were passing their nearest to Kabul when John heard the whistling that had haunted his sleep for days.

He banked hard, eliciting yelps from the passengers in the rear. Then there was the sound of an explosion, and when John pulled his helicopter around, he saw that the tail of the other helicopter had been blown off, and the craft was careening toward the ground.

“Cash to Bagram control,” he said frantically. “Pave Hawk Two is down. I repeat, Pave Hawk Two has been shot down.”

It wasn’t the radio operator who answered him. “Cash, this is Rice,” said his commander. “What’s the chance of survivors?”

The helicopter hit the ground with a sickening boom, and John stopped caring that he was practically a sitting duck for whoever had fired the first shot. The chance that anyone in that chopper had survived was slim, and he knew it. “There’s still a chance,” he said, looking at Joey for a moment. “There’s no fire yet. We can pull them out.”

“Negative,” Colonel Rice replied. “Return to base. We’ll send out someone if it’s deemed viable.”

“Sir,” John protested, “I’m here now, and I’m telling you it’s–”

“You don’t have the fuel,” Rice interrupted. “Get back here before you crash.”

“Sir!”

“That’s an order, Major.”

Very, very reluctantly, John turned the helicopter away, back toward Bagram. Drew’s face kept coming up in his mind, and he couldn’t figure out how he could ever face Lise or the girls ever again, even if Drew survived. Which wasn’t going to happen if Rice waited. Then he thought of Elizabeth, and the days he’d spent in Ramstein not knowing whether she was dead or alive.

And he just couldn’t put Lise through that too. “Joey,” he said, “when Rice asks you, you protested strenuously, but were unable to convince me.”

“What the hell?”

In response, John flew back in the other direction, toward the crash.

---

“Katie!” Lise was calling from the kitchen, putting breakfast in front of Allison and handing her a spoon. “Time to get out of the bathroom!”

Elizabeth sat at the other end of the kitchen table, eating toast while looking over documents on North Korea. Katie came bounding down the stairs still dripping water. “Katie,” her mother said, “there are towels in the bathroom for a reason.”

“I dried off,” Katie replied. Elizabeth and Lise looked at each other and shook their heads.

“So what are you learning in school today, Katie?” Elizabeth asked.

“We’re learning how to add two numbers together when one of them’s bigger than ten,” she replied, getting her bowl of cereal from the counter and bringing it to the table. “It’s called carrying. But Uncle John already taught me how to do that.”

“He’s helpful that way,” Elizabeth said.

Lise sat down at the table, and almost immediately there was a knock on the front door. “What in the world?” Lise said, an exasperated look on her face.

“I’ll get it,” Elizabeth said, getting up.

She walked to the front of the house a little slowly. It was raining outside, and her knee was bothering her some. But when she got to the door, she forgot all about the twinge in her knee as her chest clenched. An officer and a chaplain were standing on the steps in the rain.

“Can I help you?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Elise Kendall?” the chaplain asked.

Elizabeth’s mouth was dry as she answered, “Just a moment. I’ll get her.”

As she came back to the kitchen, she realized that she probably should have asked them to step in out of the rain, but by the time she realized it, Lise had looked up at her. “Elizabeth?”

She had to swallow hard. “It’s for you, Lise.”

A concerned look on her face, Lise walked out of the room. Elizabeth stood behind Allison and stroked the girl’s hair, while she continued eating breakfast. “Elizabeth,” said Katie, “what’s–”

“Shh,” Elizabeth interrupted. A moment later, the door opened again, and they heard a muffled exclamation.

The voices in the next room were too low for Elizabeth to hear, and she wasn’t going to intrude. The initial shock had worn off, as had a stab of momentary relief that it wasn’t John. Katie continued eating slowly, a worried expression on her face. “Elizabeth,” she whispered a few minutes later, “what’s going on?”

Elizabeth didn’t answer, as she heard people standing up in the next room. The door opened and closed, and Lise came back into the kitchen. Her eyes were puffy and red, and she looked like she was going to start crying at the drop of a pin. “Mom?” Katie said, sounding alarmed. “Are you okay?”

Lise looked at Elizabeth for a long time before sitting down next to her older daughter and holding her hands. “Katie, sweetheart,” she said, taking a deep breath, “Daddy was in an accident. But they got him back, and the doctors are taking care of him.”

Elizabeth’s shoulders sagged as she exhaled. She hadn’t wanted to assume the worst, but it had been hard not to think of that immediately. “Will he be okay?” Katie asked.

“We just have to wait and see,” Lise replied. “Remember before Elizabeth came here, how Uncle John was worried about her and we didn’t know if she’d be okay?” Katie nodded, and Lise continued, “We just have to be patient like we were then. Do you think you can do that?”

“Will we get to go see him?”

Lise smiled a little. “They’re bringing him here in a few days,” she said. “Do you think you can go to school today?”

Katie nodded. “I can go.”

“Good.” Lise kissed her forehead and stood up. “Run upstairs and brush your teeth. I’ll take care of your dishes.”

Katie did as she was told, and Lise carried both girls’ bowls and glasses over to the sink. “They were on their way back from a rescue near Tora Bora,” she explained, without prelude. “His helicopter was shot down not far from Kabul. He was the only survivor.” Elizabeth walked forward while Lise rinsed out the bowl and glass, not knowing what to say. “He’s in a coma, Elizabeth,” Lise said softly.

“Oh, Lise.”

Lise turned around and the two women embraced, the water still running in the sink. Elizabeth didn’t pull away until she heard Katie coming down the stairs again. “Mom?” Katie said, while Lise was facing away and wiping her eyes. “I’m ready to go.”

“All right,” said Lise, walking back to the table to get Allison out of her chair. She didn’t say anything to Elizabeth, but Elizabeth knew to come along. She’d stayed in Germany because John wanted her to help, and there hadn’t been a time yet when Lise had needed a helping hand more than she did now.

---

Two days later, they were summoned to the hospital, where Elizabeth sat in a waiting room with Katie and Allison while Lise first talked to a doctor and then went in to see Drew. “Elizabeth,” Katie said, “why can’t we go in with Mom?”

Elizabeth smoothed down Katie’s hair. “Your mom wants to see your dad first,” she said. “That way, if there’s something she needs to tell you before you see him, she can.”

“Like what?”

This was so hard to explain to an eight-year-old. “Remember when you first saw me?” she asked.

Katie nodded. “Your leg was up in a sling, and there were bruises on your face.”

“I don’t think your mom wants you to see your dad like that without knowing first,” Elizabeth explained.

Unexpectedly, Allison climbed up on Elizabeth’s lap, wrapping her arms around Elizabeth’s neck and sighing. “Can we see Daddy soon?” she said.

“I hope so, Allison,” Elizabeth replied. “I hope so.”

About fifteen minutes later, Lise came into the waiting room, looking relieved. “He’s awake. He’s been awake for about a day,” she said when Elizabeth looked up. “He’s talking, he recognizes me. . . It doesn’t look like there’s been any brain damage.”

Elizabeth let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “How bad are his injuries?”

“Broken ribs, punctured lung, some burns away from the face,” Lise replied. “The concussion may have been enough to screw with his optic nerve, but he’s in stable condition now. It’s a lot like a severe car crash. He got lucky that the fire had only just started when John got to him.”

“John?” Elizabeth repeated.

Lise’s eyes were getting wet. “John was with him on the mission. He took a huge risk to save him.” She hesitated. “And he’s here.”

Elizabeth set Allison on her feet and stood up. “What do you mean?” she asked. “If he’s here, why hasn’t he–”

“That’s just the thing,” Lise interrupted. “He’s under arrest, Elizabeth.”

---

As soon as she could, Elizabeth left the girls with Lise and headed back to the house, to change into something slightly less casual than the jeans and sweatshirt she’d been wearing when they got to the hospital. Then she was off to the base, where she presented identification and asked to be taken to John. The MP looked reluctant, but he did recognize a diplomatic passport, and seemed to know that not just anyone got one of those.

She was led into a nondescript building with very few windows and only one door that she could see. The place was almost empty. She’d visited detention facilities years ago in law school, but somehow this seemed worse. Perhaps it was the difference between civilian and military justice, but she felt very uncomfortable being there, and worse about John being there behind bars.

She spotted his hair first, a spiky mess of black on a wiry figure of a man. He was seated on a cot and hunched forward, facing away from the entrance. As the clicking of her low heels neared, he looked over his shoulder and saw her. “Elizabeth,” he said, getting up, “what are you doing here?”

The MP unlocked the cell and let Elizabeth step inside. This was just surreal. “Drew woke up,” she said, starting at the beginning. “He told Lise what you did, and Lise told me. John, why didn’t you call me?”

He looked away. “I didn’t want you to see this.”

Elizabeth looked at the MP and said, “Could you give us a few minutes?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As the man walked away, Elizabeth reached out to touch John, but he shied away. She stared at him in confusion. “John, what happened?”

He ran his hands over his face and through his hair. “We were on our way back from Nangarhar,” he said. “Drew’s chopper got hit by an RPG. Blew the back right off. When I radioed back to the base, Rice told me to leave them and come back to the base.”

John sat down. “I couldn’t do it, Elizabeth,” he said. “I couldn’t do that to Lise.”

“So you disobeyed an order?”

“Flagrantly.”

She folded her arms across herself, looking down at the floor. “How long until the court-martial?”

“There isn’t going to be a court-martial.”

That got her attention. “What do you mean?”

“There isn’t going to be a court-martial,” John repeated. “He pinned me with Article 15 before I could demand a court-martial.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Article 15. . .”

“There’s a note in my file now,” he said blandly. “Insubordination.”

“Can’t you appeal it somehow?”

“I had to request court-martial proceedings before the punishment was put in place,” John replied. “And I was too busy worrying about whether or not Drew was going to survive to deal with technicalities.”

“John,” Elizabeth said, her voice a little higher than usual, “how can you just sit back and take this? I don’t understand–”

“Because it’s true, Elizabeth,” he said. “Because it’s true. I did the right thing, but I also defied an order to do it.”

“It’s not my place to say this, but that was an order that never should have been given.”

“Which means I have the satisfaction of knowing that I ruined his career as well as mine.”

She froze. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.” He looked up. “You think they’ll make a general out of a man who ordered that a father of two small children be left to die?”

“I meant–”

“I know.” He cracked his knuckles, and Elizabeth winced. “They’ve offered me two choices. I can go back to the States and never fly again, or I can spend some time getting to know the penguins at McMurdo before they quietly get rid of me.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “I really don’t understand how the military works,” she said quietly.

“I’ll be passed over for promotion enough times that I’ll be obligated to leave the service,” John explained. “So I can either be bored at a desk somewhere in the States, or fly support helicopters in Antarctica.”

Elizabeth closed the distance between them and laid her hand on his arm. “Which do you want to do, John?”

“I’m a pilot,” he said automatically. “I’ve been a pilot almost half my life. Spent the rest of it wanting to be one. I don’t know what I’d do if they didn’t let me fly.”

Her knee protested, but Elizabeth knelt down in front of him and touched his face. “Then fly,” she said.

“Lizabeth. . .”

“You need to figure this out.” She shook her head. “You need to straighten all this out in your head, and I don’t know if you can do that if you’re stuck behind a desk. That’s not who you are.”

For the first time since she’d entered the cell, he looked her in the eye. “And what about you?” he asked gently.

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “We need to talk about that too.”

He tucked her hair behind her ear, and then his fingers trailed down her cheek. “I think I’m supposed to be the one on my knees,” he remarked.

“I’ll let Lise chew you out for that later,” Elizabeth replied, with a small, wry smile. “Though she might just be happy that she doesn’t have to pester anyone anymore.”

“This is true.”

Elizabeth took his hand in hers. “I will marry you, John. I’ve known my answer for a long time now.”

John nodded. “I need to work this out first,” he said, awkwardly.

“I know,” she replied. “I can wait as long as you need me to.”

Determination in his eyes, John stood, pulling her to her feet as well and wrapping his arms around her. “I love you,” he said, and then he kissed her, long and slow, holding back nothing. This had been a brief separation for them, but every day had been punctuated by the very real possibility that they would never see each other again. Because of that, Elizabeth didn’t care who could see them.

“Mine,” he whispered.

“Did you ever doubt it?” she asked.

The look in his eyes was quite serious. “You deserve more than what I can give you.”

“But I want you.”

---

Continued here.