Title: Expectations.
Summary: It was never meant to turn out this way. JohnxElizabeth.
A/N: So after a "OMG!WE!MUST!RENAME!EVERYTHING!ON!THE!COMPUTER!AFTER!STARGATE!ATLANTIS!" Binge with a friend of mine, I arrive here with a fic.
It was never meant to turn out this way. I mean it. Totally. I was meant to go on this amazing mission to another galaxy with hundreds of other people in our last hurrah, never to be heard from again in the universal scheme of things. I was going to be on my last tour. My last mission in the Earth United States military. I was going to imagine the look on my families faces when they get the letter in twenty years saying "John Sheppard was killed in Action" before they burst into tears, wondering why on Earth they ever let me go.
In reality they would have likely thrown it out, and it was going to make me stronger on Atlantis. To be a better person. To prove them wrong. The Prove I do deserve to be a Sheppard. I'm not someone breaking a families heart by joining the very thing that killed my father. I was going to get old and cynical – strong like a warrior and just as cold.
I never expected to find the love of my life, return to Earth and be standing outside a large wooden door, connected to a large house that was my life before the military. I never expected to be seeing my family again, someone I've never loved more holding onto my hand, her smile edging me on, the ring on her finger giving me confidence.
I never expected the door to open. To see the smile of my mother and the joy filled yell of my sister as the leap onto me, wrapping their arms around my shoulders, crying and saying what a miracle it is I came to see them at Christmas. I never expected to feel tears running from my own eyes, and as I hug them both, to see Elizabeth, her own eyes full of unshed tears, but a breathtaking smile on her face as she watches everything play out. She always told me they would want to see me again. I never expected her to be right.
They pulled away and swooned over my fiancée', Elizabeth's blush and shy smile making me grin. I never expected her, the woman who faces Wraith Hive ships and uptight scientists to be shy around her in-laws.
I never expected my mother to tell me that she loved me. She liked Elizabeth, she said she could sense she was a good person. If only she knew.
She said she was glad I came back.
I never expected me to actually be glad too.
I never expected a lot of things. I never expected to ever get married. I never expected to be promoted to a colonel. I never expected to have a life on Earth I could return to. I never expected to go back to Atlantis, a part of me wishing I could remain behind, but the bigger part wanting to stay.
I never expected a lot of things.
But I'm starting to wish I had.