Fic: Each Grain from Hardship (by lilac_way)
Title: Each Grain from Hardship
Author: lilac_way
Recipient's name: perspi
Pairing/Genre: Ronon/Jennifer
Prompts used: memory like water, comfort food
Rating: R
Word count: 3025
Notes: beta by the lovely and talented smittywing Set after Quarantine but before to Kindred.
Summary: Ronon remembers love and home.
Ronon and Teyla sat in companionable silence by the window. She fidgeted in her chair and poked at the lunch on her tray. He raised an eyebrow at her then looked out the window at the rough sea. He watched the waves batter the far edges of the city. Their force might equal the frustration and discontent he felt coming across the table from Teyla. The clatter of silverware dropping drew his eyes to her.
"Not hungry?" Ronon asked.
"Nothing tastes right." She looked at the tray. "I want something that tastes like Athos, like home." She set her lips in a tight line and then pushed herself up out of the chair. "I am going to meditate."
"Don't forget to drink your water."
Teyla made a face at him. "Yes, mother." Ronon watched her walk across the mess, then returned to his contemplation of the sea. Teyla was unhappy. She was anxious to be out searching for her people and her lover, but the baby tethered her to Atlantis. As much as she wanted to find her people, Ronon knew her desire to protect her child was equally strong. She hadn't planned for this baby, but she was ready to be a good mother. These days she reminded him of his own mother: proud and fierce, tender and beautiful.
Ronon ate the mango pudding the mess served in little cups, and stared at the frothy whitecaps of the ocean surrounding the city. He thought of the riisipuuro his mother used to make for the Satedan Winter Festival. When he was a child, Ronon would sit at the table and watch his mother scald the milk and measure the dried grains. She mixed these together with honey and flavored the pudding with sweet herbs she grew on the kitchen windowsill. He was supposed to be doing his schoolwork, but often he lost track of the words on the page. He was content to rest his chin on his fist, watching his mother cook and listening to her sing along to the songs on the kitchen radio. He teased her about the "gross" love songs she preferred. Mama laughed and planted loud smacking kisses on his curly head. "Some day, Ronon, you'll appreciate a good love song." Then she let him taste the riisipurro from her wooden spoon. "What do you think? Too much honey?" She always asked this in a falsely serious voice, because Ronon always wanted more honey in the pudding. Mama placed a soft hand on his cheek and smiled. Then she twisted up her shiny black curls more securely and readjusted the wooden clip Papa had given her for her name day. With a twirl and a chorus of whatever song was playing she'd turn back to her stove.
Ronon had brought Melena home to meet his parents for Winter Festival the year before Sateda fell to the Wraith. He thought it was time; he was moving up the ranks in the Army and Melena was getting established at the hospital. Mama and Papa always hosted the gathering for the extended family - all the aunts and uncles and cousins crowded into the house. Mama had gone back to work after Ronon had entered the second form, but she still loved to cook. The front room table groaned under the amount of Mama's food. The deep red of her special Festival serving dishes glowed against the dark wood of the table, and the candle flames seemed to tremble in the reflections of the jellies and sauces. Ronon introduced Melena to about a hundred cousins until Papa snagged her to talk to Uncle Maur, who was a doctor in another city.
Ronon listened for a bit, but he got lost in all the medical terminology. He joined Mama at the table where she was placing sugared flowers on the great bowl of riisipuuro. She gave him an elbow in the side. "There is a corylus nut in the pudding. Maybe Melena will find it."
Ronon had rolled his eyes at her. It was tradition to put one corylus nut in the riisipurro. A young woman who found it in her dish was supposed to get married within the year. Those too young to marry or those already pledged would find it and gain good fortune for the coming year. Ronon remembered being excited to find the nut in his pudding as a child. If he was truthful with himself he had hoped to find it in his dish the Festival before he entered the Army. He knew he had the skills the army needed to become a leader, but he figured a bit of luck couldn't hurt.
Melena had found it - nearly swallowed it, actually - and blushed prettily at the shouts of Ronon's family. Ronon raised an eyebrow at Uncle Maur. He'd helped Mama dish the pudding and Ronon wouldn't have put it past him to plant the corylus nut in Melena's dish. He'd made no secret of his opinion that Ronon should hang on to the doctor with the pink cheeks.
Her blush fascinated Ronon. Melena was practical and brisk, capable and confident. She treated serious injuries at the hospital without flinching. She ordered emergency workers around with ease. That Mama's riisipurro could make her color like a flower entranced him. That night in their bed he'd endeavored to make her glow. "I'll never want anyone else," he'd whispered into the damp curls at the back of her neck. He wondered now how he had ever been that young and sure.
Jennifer placed her tray on the table across from Ronon, pulling him out of his memories. He looked away from the waves and returned her smile.
"Hi. Am I interrupting? You looked pretty intent." She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and picked up her fork.
"Nah. Just thinking." He slouched in his chair and scraped a spoon around the empty mango pudding cup, gathering the last sweet bits.
"What about?" Jennifer started eating her salad.
"My mom's cooking."
"Did she make Tuttle Root soup?" Teyla's unsuccessful attempts to recreate Charin's recipe were kind of legendary.
Ronon laughed. "We didn't eat like they did on Athos. Tuttle Root wasn't really something you found at the market." He looked over her shoulder and saw his mother's gleaming kitchen in his memory. "We had a brick house and my mother danced in her kitchen."
"Oh." Jennifer said softly.
"I would have liked to bring you home for dinner. My mother was a great cook." He smiled at her.
"That's sweet." Jennifer reached across the table and linked their fingers. Her hands were cool and a little rough from all the hand-washing she did during the day. Ronon thought about how soft she was in other places. He flipped her hand over and stroked her palm.
Ronon looked up at Jennifer. She flushed under his scrutiny. She blushed much more easily than Melena ever did, and on her it was more endearing than anything else. He reached out and drew a slow finger down the inside of her arm tracing a blue vein, ending with a circle of his fingernail in her palm. Her breath caught and her tongue slipped out to wet her lower lip. "Do you want to go back to your room?" He pitched his voice low, a secret between the two of them.
Her eyes widened. "I have some time," she said in a breathy kind of voice.
They cleared their trays and made their way out of the mess. Ronon didn't take her hand, though he wanted to. Instead he walked close to her, enough so their arms and legs brushed at intervals. They passed Sheppard in the hall -- he must have seen enough in their faces to do nothing more than give them a perfunctory wave. In the transporter, Ronon picked the destination closest to Jennifer's room and then pushed her up against the wall. She lifted her face to his and they kissed, short of breath and hungry. She linked her hands behind his neck and pressed her whole body to his. He slid his knee between her legs just as the transporter opened.
Ronon's memories of bedding Melena were jumbled images of heat and fierce desire. They had been young and in love, with the war adding an edge of desperation to each moment they had together. For a long time he laid the memories away like the sugared flowers from the riisipuuro. If he examined them too much they would crumble to dust.
Jennifer was different. Making love to her reminded him of the climbing into bed on wash day, of the fresh bedsheets from the clothesline. He'd slide in between the cool, soft cloth and bury his face in the pillow, smelling the sunlit afternoon and feeling luxurious joy in living. Jennifer was like that, fresh and light. Her skin was sweet and her laughter was sweeter.
Afterward, Ronon rested his head on Jennifer's breast. She wound her hands in through his dreadlocks and cupped the back of his skull. Her fingertips scratched soothing circles on his scalp.
"Teyla's unhappy," he said. He'd been thinking about Teyla's sadness for a while, wishing there was something he could do to help her. Short of miraculously finding her people, he wasn't quite sure what that something was.
"I think she's tired. Pregnancy gets harder in the later months." Jennifer ran a hand down the straight line of his back, light fingers tracing the bumps of his spine.
Ronon was quiet a minute before he spoke. "It's more than just that. She's sad. Her people are missing. Her man is missing. She's going to have a baby that might be the last of her people." Jennifer's hand stuttered on his skull and stopped. "It's lonely. Thinking you're the last."
Jennifer pressed her lips to his hair. "I'm sorry." She wrapped her arms and legs more securely around him. "It's hard for me to even imagine being that alone. I end up saying stupid things."
"I don't know if any of you can understand what it is to live your whole life with the threat of the Wraith. Knowing that in a moment everything could just be gone."
Jennifer hugged him again. "I'm sorry."
Ronon tipped his head to look at her. She was pursing her lips in that way she had when she didn't know what to say. He decided to let her off the hook. "Did you mother make any special foods for you when you were a kid?"
"Like comfort food?" Ronon nodded. "My mom wasn't much of a cook - she didn't like it. But my dad used to cook. He grew up in a mining town and used to make pasties like my grandmother did."
"Pasties?"
"They're pastry pockets filled with meat and potato and vegetable." She sketched a shape roughly with her hands. "The workers used to take them in the mines for lunch. Portable food, no utensils needed." She smiled at him slyly. He still tended to eat with his fingers. Sometimes it was just easier.
"Sounds good. Want to make them for me?"
"I inherited my mother's unfortunate knack for bad cooking. I might poison you."
"My mother used to make this dish called riisipuuro for the Satedan Winter Festival. It was custard with broken riis grains."
"Oh, like rice pudding!" She bounced a bit under him. "I love rice pudding! No raisins, though."
"Huh." Ronon bumped her hand with his head, in an effort to get her to scratch his head some more. "I'm surprised. I wouldn't have thought a planet that could make those MREs could come up with something good."
"Oh, fine. Mock my planet, why don't you."
"Your plant is weird." He said that so often to Sheppard it was his stock response where Earth was concerned. "I suppose any planet with milk, sugar and grains would put them together." Ronon closed his eyes for a moment. "My mother served it in a red glass bowl topped with sugared flowers."
"It sounds delicious," Jennifer said softly.
It was the middle of the day, so they didn't linger much longer in the bed. Jennifer put back on her uniform and clipped her hair back, valiantly trying to look confident and sure, practical and brisk. Ronon thought she was getting to the point where she didn't have to put on the act.
Ronon left her in the hallway and ambled the other direction. Sheppard had him running drills with the newer Marines. It took them some time to realize that the fighting methods they used on Earth needed adjustment to fight the Wraith. He liked working with the soldiers. McKay once asked him what he would have done had Sateda not fallen. "Stayed in the Army" he'd replied without hesitation. He'd been one of the youngest Specialists in recent memory and he was good at it. Ronon wasn't insanely book smart like McKay, but he was people-smart, and life-smart. He knew how to be a soldier, a good one. He imagined he would have stayed with the Satedan Army until retirement, then collected his pension and done consulting or security work. It was what his father had done. Mama had been the one with the book-smarts. She had taught chemistry at the university when he was in secondary school. She was busy with school during the week, but on the weekends she still turned on her radio and cooked and sang. Papa would solemnly ask if she had been paying attention when she cooked. He didn't want to eat a chemistry experiment in place of dinner.
Teyla didn't appear at dinner. Sheppard stopped to see her and reported "she just wasn't hungry." He had that blank expression on his face that Ronon had seen at his father's wake. He knew there was something wrong but was at a complete loss at how to deal with it. Ronon sometimes though it was more lonely to be Sheppard than it was to be one of the last remaining Satedans.
Ronon rummaged through the kitchens after dinner. One of the cooks asked if he could help Ronon, but Ronon just grunted and made a face. The cook retreated. Ronon still got a kick out of intimidating people every once in a while. He pulled milk and eggs out of the refrigerator and looked at the various dried grains on the pantry shelf. The brown rice looked the most like Satedan riis. He sniffed the bottles of dried herbs and flavorings until he found something familiar and he plundered a bag of trail mix.
Ronon didn’t consider himself much of a cook - not like Mama was - but he had watched her make this dish often enough. He almost, almost turned on the CD player in the kitchen to have some music while he stirred and scalded and seasoned, but he didn't feel like messing with his fearsome reputation. It was all the armor he had, having abandoned the physical pieces on Sateda.
Teyla had armor, too, he thought. She clothed herself in dignity and strength, but the baby had stripped it away, bit by bit, leaving her a little bare. Ronon knew she missed the punishing workouts she used to employ as her own form of mediation - the fragility of the life inside her stopped her from pushing her limits like she was used to doing. He wondered if she felt a bit betrayed by her body, hindering her search for her people; just as he had felt betrayed by his old squadron.
Ronon and Teyla had made love just once, when they were high on the Wraith enzyme. They had fought, all their nerves alive and screaming with energy, and the fighting had turned to foreplay. Ronon had never felt so free with a woman before. She met him thrust for thrust, bite for scratch. It was exhilarating. When they had come off the enzyme and returned to Atlantis, it seemed like something that happened out of time. Eventually Teyla had invited him to her room. She took his hands and pressed her forehead to his in the Athosian manner. "You are my dear friend and brother," she'd said. He'd kissed her cheek. "You are my sister," he'd replied. "I honor you and fight by your side." And that was that. They were family. Eventually he widened that definition to include others: Sheppard, Weir, McKay (surprisingly!). But Teyla was first. She had watched his back since he killed Kell. He'd do what he could for her.
The rhythm of cooking came back to him with memories of his mother's voice and his father's laughter. He found a bright red plastic bowl in the supply closet and put the riisipuuro in the walk-in cooler to set. He sat back down at the table he'd been at earlier and looked out at the sea. It was night now, and the water was calm and dark, the earlier whitecaps smoothed to gentle swells. The sea fascinated him. He'd grown up far from water, and watching the movement of the ocean stirred something inside him. He'd been buffeted by time and circumstance for so long that it seemed funny to find a measure of peace in a city at war.
Ronon looked at the clock. He thought the riisipuuro should be firm enough. He walked back to the kitchen and retrieved it from the cooler, snagging two spoons from the rack. He walked through the quiet hallways to Teyla's door. She answered the door chime and looked curiously at his bowl. She had dark circles under her eyes.
"I thought you could eat," he said. He picked a bit of the pudding up on the spoon and slipped it between her lips.
Teyla smiled around the sweetness in her mouth and swallowed. "I suppose I could. Come, join me."
She turned to draw cushions up to a low table. As Ronon entered the room he poked a tear-shaped nut into the riisipuuro. He'd make sure Teyla found it. She could use the good fortune.
Author: lilac_way
Recipient's name: perspi
Pairing/Genre: Ronon/Jennifer
Prompts used: memory like water, comfort food
Rating: R
Word count: 3025
Notes: beta by the lovely and talented smittywing Set after Quarantine but before to Kindred.
Summary: Ronon remembers love and home.
Ronon and Teyla sat in companionable silence by the window. She fidgeted in her chair and poked at the lunch on her tray. He raised an eyebrow at her then looked out the window at the rough sea. He watched the waves batter the far edges of the city. Their force might equal the frustration and discontent he felt coming across the table from Teyla. The clatter of silverware dropping drew his eyes to her.
"Not hungry?" Ronon asked.
"Nothing tastes right." She looked at the tray. "I want something that tastes like Athos, like home." She set her lips in a tight line and then pushed herself up out of the chair. "I am going to meditate."
"Don't forget to drink your water."
Teyla made a face at him. "Yes, mother." Ronon watched her walk across the mess, then returned to his contemplation of the sea. Teyla was unhappy. She was anxious to be out searching for her people and her lover, but the baby tethered her to Atlantis. As much as she wanted to find her people, Ronon knew her desire to protect her child was equally strong. She hadn't planned for this baby, but she was ready to be a good mother. These days she reminded him of his own mother: proud and fierce, tender and beautiful.
Ronon ate the mango pudding the mess served in little cups, and stared at the frothy whitecaps of the ocean surrounding the city. He thought of the riisipuuro his mother used to make for the Satedan Winter Festival. When he was a child, Ronon would sit at the table and watch his mother scald the milk and measure the dried grains. She mixed these together with honey and flavored the pudding with sweet herbs she grew on the kitchen windowsill. He was supposed to be doing his schoolwork, but often he lost track of the words on the page. He was content to rest his chin on his fist, watching his mother cook and listening to her sing along to the songs on the kitchen radio. He teased her about the "gross" love songs she preferred. Mama laughed and planted loud smacking kisses on his curly head. "Some day, Ronon, you'll appreciate a good love song." Then she let him taste the riisipurro from her wooden spoon. "What do you think? Too much honey?" She always asked this in a falsely serious voice, because Ronon always wanted more honey in the pudding. Mama placed a soft hand on his cheek and smiled. Then she twisted up her shiny black curls more securely and readjusted the wooden clip Papa had given her for her name day. With a twirl and a chorus of whatever song was playing she'd turn back to her stove.
Ronon had brought Melena home to meet his parents for Winter Festival the year before Sateda fell to the Wraith. He thought it was time; he was moving up the ranks in the Army and Melena was getting established at the hospital. Mama and Papa always hosted the gathering for the extended family - all the aunts and uncles and cousins crowded into the house. Mama had gone back to work after Ronon had entered the second form, but she still loved to cook. The front room table groaned under the amount of Mama's food. The deep red of her special Festival serving dishes glowed against the dark wood of the table, and the candle flames seemed to tremble in the reflections of the jellies and sauces. Ronon introduced Melena to about a hundred cousins until Papa snagged her to talk to Uncle Maur, who was a doctor in another city.
Ronon listened for a bit, but he got lost in all the medical terminology. He joined Mama at the table where she was placing sugared flowers on the great bowl of riisipuuro. She gave him an elbow in the side. "There is a corylus nut in the pudding. Maybe Melena will find it."
Ronon had rolled his eyes at her. It was tradition to put one corylus nut in the riisipurro. A young woman who found it in her dish was supposed to get married within the year. Those too young to marry or those already pledged would find it and gain good fortune for the coming year. Ronon remembered being excited to find the nut in his pudding as a child. If he was truthful with himself he had hoped to find it in his dish the Festival before he entered the Army. He knew he had the skills the army needed to become a leader, but he figured a bit of luck couldn't hurt.
Melena had found it - nearly swallowed it, actually - and blushed prettily at the shouts of Ronon's family. Ronon raised an eyebrow at Uncle Maur. He'd helped Mama dish the pudding and Ronon wouldn't have put it past him to plant the corylus nut in Melena's dish. He'd made no secret of his opinion that Ronon should hang on to the doctor with the pink cheeks.
Her blush fascinated Ronon. Melena was practical and brisk, capable and confident. She treated serious injuries at the hospital without flinching. She ordered emergency workers around with ease. That Mama's riisipurro could make her color like a flower entranced him. That night in their bed he'd endeavored to make her glow. "I'll never want anyone else," he'd whispered into the damp curls at the back of her neck. He wondered now how he had ever been that young and sure.
Jennifer placed her tray on the table across from Ronon, pulling him out of his memories. He looked away from the waves and returned her smile.
"Hi. Am I interrupting? You looked pretty intent." She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and picked up her fork.
"Nah. Just thinking." He slouched in his chair and scraped a spoon around the empty mango pudding cup, gathering the last sweet bits.
"What about?" Jennifer started eating her salad.
"My mom's cooking."
"Did she make Tuttle Root soup?" Teyla's unsuccessful attempts to recreate Charin's recipe were kind of legendary.
Ronon laughed. "We didn't eat like they did on Athos. Tuttle Root wasn't really something you found at the market." He looked over her shoulder and saw his mother's gleaming kitchen in his memory. "We had a brick house and my mother danced in her kitchen."
"Oh." Jennifer said softly.
"I would have liked to bring you home for dinner. My mother was a great cook." He smiled at her.
"That's sweet." Jennifer reached across the table and linked their fingers. Her hands were cool and a little rough from all the hand-washing she did during the day. Ronon thought about how soft she was in other places. He flipped her hand over and stroked her palm.
Ronon looked up at Jennifer. She flushed under his scrutiny. She blushed much more easily than Melena ever did, and on her it was more endearing than anything else. He reached out and drew a slow finger down the inside of her arm tracing a blue vein, ending with a circle of his fingernail in her palm. Her breath caught and her tongue slipped out to wet her lower lip. "Do you want to go back to your room?" He pitched his voice low, a secret between the two of them.
Her eyes widened. "I have some time," she said in a breathy kind of voice.
They cleared their trays and made their way out of the mess. Ronon didn't take her hand, though he wanted to. Instead he walked close to her, enough so their arms and legs brushed at intervals. They passed Sheppard in the hall -- he must have seen enough in their faces to do nothing more than give them a perfunctory wave. In the transporter, Ronon picked the destination closest to Jennifer's room and then pushed her up against the wall. She lifted her face to his and they kissed, short of breath and hungry. She linked her hands behind his neck and pressed her whole body to his. He slid his knee between her legs just as the transporter opened.
Ronon's memories of bedding Melena were jumbled images of heat and fierce desire. They had been young and in love, with the war adding an edge of desperation to each moment they had together. For a long time he laid the memories away like the sugared flowers from the riisipuuro. If he examined them too much they would crumble to dust.
Jennifer was different. Making love to her reminded him of the climbing into bed on wash day, of the fresh bedsheets from the clothesline. He'd slide in between the cool, soft cloth and bury his face in the pillow, smelling the sunlit afternoon and feeling luxurious joy in living. Jennifer was like that, fresh and light. Her skin was sweet and her laughter was sweeter.
Afterward, Ronon rested his head on Jennifer's breast. She wound her hands in through his dreadlocks and cupped the back of his skull. Her fingertips scratched soothing circles on his scalp.
"Teyla's unhappy," he said. He'd been thinking about Teyla's sadness for a while, wishing there was something he could do to help her. Short of miraculously finding her people, he wasn't quite sure what that something was.
"I think she's tired. Pregnancy gets harder in the later months." Jennifer ran a hand down the straight line of his back, light fingers tracing the bumps of his spine.
Ronon was quiet a minute before he spoke. "It's more than just that. She's sad. Her people are missing. Her man is missing. She's going to have a baby that might be the last of her people." Jennifer's hand stuttered on his skull and stopped. "It's lonely. Thinking you're the last."
Jennifer pressed her lips to his hair. "I'm sorry." She wrapped her arms and legs more securely around him. "It's hard for me to even imagine being that alone. I end up saying stupid things."
"I don't know if any of you can understand what it is to live your whole life with the threat of the Wraith. Knowing that in a moment everything could just be gone."
Jennifer hugged him again. "I'm sorry."
Ronon tipped his head to look at her. She was pursing her lips in that way she had when she didn't know what to say. He decided to let her off the hook. "Did you mother make any special foods for you when you were a kid?"
"Like comfort food?" Ronon nodded. "My mom wasn't much of a cook - she didn't like it. But my dad used to cook. He grew up in a mining town and used to make pasties like my grandmother did."
"Pasties?"
"They're pastry pockets filled with meat and potato and vegetable." She sketched a shape roughly with her hands. "The workers used to take them in the mines for lunch. Portable food, no utensils needed." She smiled at him slyly. He still tended to eat with his fingers. Sometimes it was just easier.
"Sounds good. Want to make them for me?"
"I inherited my mother's unfortunate knack for bad cooking. I might poison you."
"My mother used to make this dish called riisipuuro for the Satedan Winter Festival. It was custard with broken riis grains."
"Oh, like rice pudding!" She bounced a bit under him. "I love rice pudding! No raisins, though."
"Huh." Ronon bumped her hand with his head, in an effort to get her to scratch his head some more. "I'm surprised. I wouldn't have thought a planet that could make those MREs could come up with something good."
"Oh, fine. Mock my planet, why don't you."
"Your plant is weird." He said that so often to Sheppard it was his stock response where Earth was concerned. "I suppose any planet with milk, sugar and grains would put them together." Ronon closed his eyes for a moment. "My mother served it in a red glass bowl topped with sugared flowers."
"It sounds delicious," Jennifer said softly.
It was the middle of the day, so they didn't linger much longer in the bed. Jennifer put back on her uniform and clipped her hair back, valiantly trying to look confident and sure, practical and brisk. Ronon thought she was getting to the point where she didn't have to put on the act.
Ronon left her in the hallway and ambled the other direction. Sheppard had him running drills with the newer Marines. It took them some time to realize that the fighting methods they used on Earth needed adjustment to fight the Wraith. He liked working with the soldiers. McKay once asked him what he would have done had Sateda not fallen. "Stayed in the Army" he'd replied without hesitation. He'd been one of the youngest Specialists in recent memory and he was good at it. Ronon wasn't insanely book smart like McKay, but he was people-smart, and life-smart. He knew how to be a soldier, a good one. He imagined he would have stayed with the Satedan Army until retirement, then collected his pension and done consulting or security work. It was what his father had done. Mama had been the one with the book-smarts. She had taught chemistry at the university when he was in secondary school. She was busy with school during the week, but on the weekends she still turned on her radio and cooked and sang. Papa would solemnly ask if she had been paying attention when she cooked. He didn't want to eat a chemistry experiment in place of dinner.
Teyla didn't appear at dinner. Sheppard stopped to see her and reported "she just wasn't hungry." He had that blank expression on his face that Ronon had seen at his father's wake. He knew there was something wrong but was at a complete loss at how to deal with it. Ronon sometimes though it was more lonely to be Sheppard than it was to be one of the last remaining Satedans.
Ronon rummaged through the kitchens after dinner. One of the cooks asked if he could help Ronon, but Ronon just grunted and made a face. The cook retreated. Ronon still got a kick out of intimidating people every once in a while. He pulled milk and eggs out of the refrigerator and looked at the various dried grains on the pantry shelf. The brown rice looked the most like Satedan riis. He sniffed the bottles of dried herbs and flavorings until he found something familiar and he plundered a bag of trail mix.
Ronon didn’t consider himself much of a cook - not like Mama was - but he had watched her make this dish often enough. He almost, almost turned on the CD player in the kitchen to have some music while he stirred and scalded and seasoned, but he didn't feel like messing with his fearsome reputation. It was all the armor he had, having abandoned the physical pieces on Sateda.
Teyla had armor, too, he thought. She clothed herself in dignity and strength, but the baby had stripped it away, bit by bit, leaving her a little bare. Ronon knew she missed the punishing workouts she used to employ as her own form of mediation - the fragility of the life inside her stopped her from pushing her limits like she was used to doing. He wondered if she felt a bit betrayed by her body, hindering her search for her people; just as he had felt betrayed by his old squadron.
Ronon and Teyla had made love just once, when they were high on the Wraith enzyme. They had fought, all their nerves alive and screaming with energy, and the fighting had turned to foreplay. Ronon had never felt so free with a woman before. She met him thrust for thrust, bite for scratch. It was exhilarating. When they had come off the enzyme and returned to Atlantis, it seemed like something that happened out of time. Eventually Teyla had invited him to her room. She took his hands and pressed her forehead to his in the Athosian manner. "You are my dear friend and brother," she'd said. He'd kissed her cheek. "You are my sister," he'd replied. "I honor you and fight by your side." And that was that. They were family. Eventually he widened that definition to include others: Sheppard, Weir, McKay (surprisingly!). But Teyla was first. She had watched his back since he killed Kell. He'd do what he could for her.
The rhythm of cooking came back to him with memories of his mother's voice and his father's laughter. He found a bright red plastic bowl in the supply closet and put the riisipuuro in the walk-in cooler to set. He sat back down at the table he'd been at earlier and looked out at the sea. It was night now, and the water was calm and dark, the earlier whitecaps smoothed to gentle swells. The sea fascinated him. He'd grown up far from water, and watching the movement of the ocean stirred something inside him. He'd been buffeted by time and circumstance for so long that it seemed funny to find a measure of peace in a city at war.
Ronon looked at the clock. He thought the riisipuuro should be firm enough. He walked back to the kitchen and retrieved it from the cooler, snagging two spoons from the rack. He walked through the quiet hallways to Teyla's door. She answered the door chime and looked curiously at his bowl. She had dark circles under her eyes.
"I thought you could eat," he said. He picked a bit of the pudding up on the spoon and slipped it between her lips.
Teyla smiled around the sweetness in her mouth and swallowed. "I suppose I could. Come, join me."
She turned to draw cushions up to a low table. As Ronon entered the room he poked a tear-shaped nut into the riisipuuro. He'd make sure Teyla found it. She could use the good fortune.