Homesick by Mad Maudlin
Title: Homesick
Author: Mad Maudlin
Rating: PG at the worst
Characters: Ronon
Warnings: Spoilers through 3x04 "Sateda"
Length: 700
Summary: Some thing you can't outrun.
Notes: My first SGA fic for mass consumption. Um. ::hides::
Ronon didn't really think while he was running, but on Atlantis things change. He realizes it when Sheppard takes great pains to demonstrate the Ancestors' washing machine; Ronon takes the hint, that maybe it's time to start owning more clothes than he can carry. Teyla introduces him to Halling, and Halling offers a trade, and that's when Ronon starts remembering, while he's on his knees in the black earth.
He's planting abram and tuttle, not charesi or kopai, but the boys across the row could be Mon and Senel, and all at once he is back on his uncle's farm on the coast, the site of so many holidays during the wet season. Ronon smells soil and herbs and knows, just knows, that if he stands up he will see nothing but steep valley walls and the low pearly sky, but if he borrows a 'tundi and rides down river, the land will fall away around him, and he'll be able to see the salt-blown pastures on the edge of the Middle Sea, and the rocky jetty where the fishers and the cattlemen wage an endless friendly war.
It's just a moment. Ronon blinks and yes, there are the trees, and wide-eyed Jinto, and the salt breeze that never got as far as his uncle's valley. But the sense-memory lingers long after he is back in the city, with a bundle of clean new clothes and dirt under his fingernails.
He ran for seven years and when he thought of Sateda at all, it was blood and smoke and anger that burned slower and hotter than any outside fire. It still does, when he remembers the end, but as he moves through Atlantis he also remembers festival nights and kopai tea and squatting in the dust behind the schoolhouse, trading cool fruit and filthy jokes with his yearmates as they huddled together away from the relentless sun. He thinks of the dry season, too, while he's training Sheppard's men, and hears in his own voice a startling echo of Kell's. Block, block, strike, reverse-do you want to be Specialists or do you want to patrol the latrines? There's no haze of dust in the gym, but Ronon can taste it anyway, and he lingers in the unfamiliar showers as if he can wash it off his skin.
He learns the Athosian sticks, because he understands the value of a weapon, but it makes him think of late-evening broomstick dueling with Senel in the alley, until Mother cuffed both their ears and sent them to bed. He listens to McKay mouth off to the scientists, but in the back of his head it's Kell hissing to him over his dress sword: you are a Specialist, you are the hope of Sateda, and you will look damn stupid if you drop that thing and cut off your own foot, so pay attenion-. Beckett asks him to come to the infirmary for one last check of his back, but Melena is waiting for him there, just behind the instruments that would've made her face light up with awe if only she were here with him, if only. Atlantis is as alien as any other world Ronon has run to, but it's the first place in seven years where he's stopped. Atlantis is full of the ghosts he had sworn he'd left behind.
He exercises with the soldiers of Atlantis. (Sheppard tried to explain the difference between Air Force and Marine, but the nearest Ronon can come to understanding is the catcalls between upper-division cadets in academy, good-natured obscenities between the ones who'd already been assigned to a command.) They go through the rituals that they call pee-tee, and afterwards Sheppard does sprints through the main tower's vast and echoing belly. Ronon runs with him, past him, earning red-faced smiles that are more than half annoyed, but he doesn't pay attention. He concentrates on the race, on staying in motion, half a step in front of Sheppard and everything else; but their footfalls echo on the Ancestral steel, and even if Ronon closes his eyes he is surrounded by his soldiers, his friends, his family, his world, and all the other things that he'd forgotten how to miss.
Author: Mad Maudlin
Rating: PG at the worst
Characters: Ronon
Warnings: Spoilers through 3x04 "Sateda"
Length: 700
Summary: Some thing you can't outrun.
Notes: My first SGA fic for mass consumption. Um. ::hides::
Ronon didn't really think while he was running, but on Atlantis things change. He realizes it when Sheppard takes great pains to demonstrate the Ancestors' washing machine; Ronon takes the hint, that maybe it's time to start owning more clothes than he can carry. Teyla introduces him to Halling, and Halling offers a trade, and that's when Ronon starts remembering, while he's on his knees in the black earth.
He's planting abram and tuttle, not charesi or kopai, but the boys across the row could be Mon and Senel, and all at once he is back on his uncle's farm on the coast, the site of so many holidays during the wet season. Ronon smells soil and herbs and knows, just knows, that if he stands up he will see nothing but steep valley walls and the low pearly sky, but if he borrows a 'tundi and rides down river, the land will fall away around him, and he'll be able to see the salt-blown pastures on the edge of the Middle Sea, and the rocky jetty where the fishers and the cattlemen wage an endless friendly war.
It's just a moment. Ronon blinks and yes, there are the trees, and wide-eyed Jinto, and the salt breeze that never got as far as his uncle's valley. But the sense-memory lingers long after he is back in the city, with a bundle of clean new clothes and dirt under his fingernails.
He ran for seven years and when he thought of Sateda at all, it was blood and smoke and anger that burned slower and hotter than any outside fire. It still does, when he remembers the end, but as he moves through Atlantis he also remembers festival nights and kopai tea and squatting in the dust behind the schoolhouse, trading cool fruit and filthy jokes with his yearmates as they huddled together away from the relentless sun. He thinks of the dry season, too, while he's training Sheppard's men, and hears in his own voice a startling echo of Kell's. Block, block, strike, reverse-do you want to be Specialists or do you want to patrol the latrines? There's no haze of dust in the gym, but Ronon can taste it anyway, and he lingers in the unfamiliar showers as if he can wash it off his skin.
He learns the Athosian sticks, because he understands the value of a weapon, but it makes him think of late-evening broomstick dueling with Senel in the alley, until Mother cuffed both their ears and sent them to bed. He listens to McKay mouth off to the scientists, but in the back of his head it's Kell hissing to him over his dress sword: you are a Specialist, you are the hope of Sateda, and you will look damn stupid if you drop that thing and cut off your own foot, so pay attenion-. Beckett asks him to come to the infirmary for one last check of his back, but Melena is waiting for him there, just behind the instruments that would've made her face light up with awe if only she were here with him, if only. Atlantis is as alien as any other world Ronon has run to, but it's the first place in seven years where he's stopped. Atlantis is full of the ghosts he had sworn he'd left behind.
He exercises with the soldiers of Atlantis. (Sheppard tried to explain the difference between Air Force and Marine, but the nearest Ronon can come to understanding is the catcalls between upper-division cadets in academy, good-natured obscenities between the ones who'd already been assigned to a command.) They go through the rituals that they call pee-tee, and afterwards Sheppard does sprints through the main tower's vast and echoing belly. Ronon runs with him, past him, earning red-faced smiles that are more than half annoyed, but he doesn't pay attention. He concentrates on the race, on staying in motion, half a step in front of Sheppard and everything else; but their footfalls echo on the Ancestral steel, and even if Ronon closes his eyes he is surrounded by his soldiers, his friends, his family, his world, and all the other things that he'd forgotten how to miss.