Fic: Mend (PG)
Title: Mend
Author: minnow1212
Written for: nytel
Prompt: Ronon sets up John and Teyla
Characters/Pairing: Ronon, John/Teyla
Rating: PG-13.
Spoilers: Generally through 3.16, The Ark; specifically for The Long Goodbye and Phantoms.
Summary: Three years, several shootings, multiple conversations.
After Phoebus shot him, before the medical team came, Ronon tried to get past the pain. He couldn't. It took up all the space in his body, all the air in the room. It pinned him down. Earth bullets, he thought, this is what they're like. He was the first Satedan to be on the other end of one.
When he woke later, his mouth felt funny. When the person who hovered over him asked him how he felt, he told her in detail before he woke up some more and realized where he was and who she was: a nurse from Earth.
After that, when they asked him how he was--Beckett and the nurses, Teyla and McKay--he told them he was fine. Dr. Beckett sighed at him in exasperation, saying, "There's no need to pretend, lad. You were honest with Nurse Evans earlier, I don't know why you feel the need to clam up now."
But Ronon had only been honest because he thought Evans was someone else.
McKay stuck around until Ronon was past the worst of the fog, telling him that everything was going to be fine, everyone was safe, the problem had been resolved: weird how reassuring that was. Teyla was there, too, and she stayed with him for large swaths of the rest of the day and the night that followed. They spoke only at intervals, disjointed conversations while time stretched on forever. "'S weird," he told her one time. "They research everything here, every little thing, but not pain. They just try to make that go away."
On Sateda, they shot you as part of training. They did stun setting for real, so you’d know what your body could do when you were still reeling and nauseous and recovering from a hit. Shots that would have left permanent injuries, from Satedan weapons or weapons they knew about, they did by simulation. Ronon came to hate the sim scientists. Every soldier did. When you got hurt in some way, they came in to the hospital to monitor your pain so that their next sim would be more accurate, and their eyes were always greedy. Everyone hated them, but you never complained and you always answered honestly, because as Ronon had once said to Melina with a shrug when she was railing against their interference with her patients’ care, "hate the scientists, love the sims." He’d come out of them stronger, and he'd known the knowledge he fed to them helped his people.
"Your people do differently?" Teyla asked, but Ronon tried to move then, and a burst of pain kept him from answering. He didn't want to answer anyway. He couldn't talk about the sim scientists without talking about Melina, and he felt too frayed for that.
Sheppard came by at one point the next morning, after Ronon and Teyla had been silent for a while. Teyla looked like she might be meditating, her eyes closed and her breathing slow, although she didn’t look at peace. The little frown on her face got deeper when Sheppard came in, and Sheppard only sent her a quick, tight smile before he turned his attention to Ronon. "How you feeling, buddy?"
"Fine," Ronon said. If he’d been on Sateda, he would’ve been expected to acknowledge his failure to his task master: he hadn’t been sharp enough to spot the imposter, and a threat to the people had gone unchecked. But Sheppard didn’t look like he was waiting for that acknowledgment. He looked, beneath the careful smile, like part of him might still be raging against Thalan.
"I’m just--" Sheppard said, bumping a fist against the railing of the bed, "sorry as hell this happened to you."
"I’ll be okay," Ronon said. "Beckett said."
"Yeah, I heard, that’s good," Sheppard said. "Listen, uh, Elizabeth’s sorry too. I mean, it was Phoebus, not her, but she’s still--she'd like to stop by at some point, but only if you’re okay with it."
"Whatever," Ronon said. "If she wants."
"Right," Sheppard said. "I’ll let her know. I--kinda need to go now, I’ve got this meeting with Caldwell. I’ll stop by later." Ronon noted that his eyes and Teyla’s skated past each other as he waved goodbye.
"Why’s he being strange?" Ronon asked Teyla. The drugs he was on made everything faraway and close to the surface at the same time. Ronon told himself that there were reasons why Sheppard had only stopped by briefly--avoidance of injured people, or guilt over getting taken in by Thalan--but he still felt a vast and distant distress at the thought that Sheppard might not have stayed long because he was disappointed in Ronon's conduct.
"It was a strange situation," Teyla said mildly, a non-answer.
The stay in the infirmary was too long. Any stay was too long, but this one stretched out, days and nights when he was too tired to do anything but too restless to sleep. It gave Ronon too much time to think about the sim scientists he hadn’t thought of in years, about pain, about what he owed men and women he’d hated.
Teyla came and sat with him a lot, and McKay and Sheppard visited as well. It took Ronon some time to get the pattern, but it wasn’t him Sheppard was weird around, but Teyla. He was normal when Teyla wasn’t there, reassuringly sarcastic, but around her he clammed up. The little furrow of worry between Teyla’s eyebrows didn’t go away either. There wasn’t animosity between them, but they weren’t at ease: it set Ronon’s teeth on edge to be around them. Bound to his bed, he couldn’t shake off his disquiet. He had too much time to think about how hard it was to build a team, how easy it was for one to go sour.
"Why’re Teyla and Sheppard being weird around each other?" Ronon finally asked McKay.
A quick spark of recognition flashed across McKay’s face, before he said, "Please, do I look like a psychologist or a counselor or...someone who cares about people’s emotional states? How should I know what’s going on in either of their heads?"
"Best guess, then," Ronon snapped back. "Spill it, McKay."
McKay pushed the idea of responsibility away with his hands even as he caved. "Did anyone bother to explain what went on while you were being operated on? No? Phoebus gained control of the city and threatened to vent halon gas into everyone's quarters if she didn't get what she wanted. And that was Teyla killing Sheppard--Thalan. Oh, because Teyla had Sheppard captured at that point."
"Good for her," Ronon said, turning things over in his head. Sheppard wasn’t dead, which meant..."What, Sheppard’s pissed that Teyla risked everyone else by not killing him?"
McKay regarded him with some asperity. "Again, not like I have a clue what’s going on in his head. But I think…" he frowned more deeply and went on more slowly. "I was only listening by radio and frantically trying to regain control of the city at the time," he disclaimed. "But I think Teyla, um...I think she nearly did. Shoot him. Thalen was trying to guilt her, telling her how important she was to Sheppard, how big a betrayal it would be. But Teyla...I heard her apologize. So I think she was about to. If I hadn’t regained control and locked Phoebus out. Well." He shook himself a bit, and his voice returned to normal speed. "Which I think is more than enough to make up for shooting Sheppard myself, am I right? Especially since it was only a graze."
"He’s giving you hassle over that?" Ronon said, anxious all over again. He hadn't seen Sheppard and McKay in the same room, he realized, didn't know how they were getting along.
"Not hassle per se," McKay admitted. "Of course he’s being an asshole about it, but just in his usual way."
"You’re not really angry at McKay, are you?" Ronon asked Sheppard later, when Sheppard was easing him back down on the bed after a trip to the bathroom. Even that small exertion set Ronon sweating. Every part of his body ached from trying to hold himself so that he wouldn’t make the wound hurt. It was wearing him down, making him ask stupid things for reassurance.
"What? Should I be? Did he do something?" Sheppard asked suspiciously. Ronon reached out and tapped his bicep, above the graze. "Oh, that. No, we’re fine on that--though you bet your ass he’s going to be spending more time at the shooting range."
"Lucky for you he’s a bad shot, though," Ronon said, and Sheppard laughed, which meant things were fine on that front. Ronon went on, "Teyla wouldn’t have missed."
Sheppard’s face closed off, though his voice was casual as he replied, "Lucky for me Rodney came through, then. You all set there? I’ll refill the water glass."
"I don’t need water," Ronon said. "Sheppard--"
"Yeah, but you’ll want it later," Sheppard said, walking away with the glass.
"Are you angry with Teyla because she didn’t shoot you or because she almost did?" Ronon said when Sheppard came back and set down the glass. He knew it was stupid to blurt that out even as he was saying it, and Sheppard’s eyes went cool and unfriendly.
"I’m not angry with Teyla," Sheppard said, false patience in his voice. "It was just a weird situation."
"I’ve seen teams go bad over smaller things," Ronon said in frustration. "Whatever's wrong, neither of you are fixing it."
"Ronon, lay off, all right?" Sheppard said. He’d gone from coolness to outright anger, and Ronon shut up and looked away. "Wait, you’re really worried about this, aren’t you?" Sheppard said after a moment. When Ronon looked back, Sheppard was looking at him curiously.
"I’ve seen teams go bad over smaller things," he repeated.
"That’s not going to happen," Sheppard said, intent and sure. He leaned over and shook Ronon's shoulder a little. "I’m not going to let that happen, all right?"
"All right," Ronon said. These weren't even his people. It shouldn't matter so much if team--his place here--was secure.
"Good," Sheppard said, sitting back down in the bedside chair and kicking his feet up on the bed. "You want to play cards again?"
"No," Ronon said.
"You got a better way to pass the time?" Sheppard said. "Some secret Satedan method for dealing with injury?"
"No," Ronon said. Talking to the sim scientists had at least passed the time, but there were none of them here, no way to gather knowledge about pain and recovery. Ronon shrugged in acceptance as Sheppard dealt the cards.
Teyla came in during the third hand, and Sheppard shot Ronon a brief glare, packed with annoyance. But he didn't get up and make excuses to leave. Instead, he said carelessly, "Deal you in?" to Teyla.
"I would like that," Teyla said with a smile, and Ronon thought he saw relief in her eyes.
They played a few more hands, and everything was a little falsely jovial at first, both Teyla and Sheppard trying too hard, but things smoothed out. By the time Teyla went to the bathroom and Sheppard leaned close and hissed, "See? Things are fine," Ronon was able to reply, "They are now," through a yawn, feeling something like contentment. He shut his eyes on Sheppard's disgruntled expression, resting them until Teyla came back.
He was more tired than he'd realized, because by the time Teyla did return he was already halfway to sleep, only partly conscious of Sheppard saying softly, "Looks like all that wild and crazy card playing knocked him out."
Ronon weighed the effort of wading up through layers of sleep to protest that, but his eyelids felt heavy.
He thought he might have heard fragments of a further conversation ("Are we okay? About the whole--thing. We're cool?" and "If you can forgive me--I believe it would have been the right decision, but I do not know if I would have forgiven myself," and "Nah--I would have forgiven you. Except for the part where I would have been dead, so not doing much of anything, but if I'd come back as a ghost or a zombie my zombie self would've forgiven you. But, uh, about what Thalan said--") but those might have already been dreams.
***
The next time the team was grounded because of bullets, it was Teyla and McKay who were hurt. Ronon spent some time running and some time training and some time running errands for them, since they were supposed to stay off their feet as much as possible. He'd expected that McKay would be the difficult one, acting like a pampered souskah, demanding that everything be brought to him. Ronon had been prepared to lace his lips together out of a vague gratitude that McKay was alive at all: if he hadn't been on the ground already when Ronon had come to the cave, Ronon would've taken him for a Wraith, and his shot wouldn't have injured but killed.
McKay did make some demands, although they seemed perfunctory and they were mostly directed at Sheppard: "You can just go and get me another pudding cup, Lieutenant Colonel Shoots At People." Mostly McKay seemed to forget he was injured, though, and tried to do things for himself. In his labs, he'd maneuver by rolling his chair around, only remembering his injury when he tried to stand at a whiteboard and almost toppled over. Then he whined a lot, but Ronon was used to tuning that out. He'd been shockingly happy when the machine had shut off and he'd been thrown out of the memories that had swallowed him, happy to realize again that he wasn't alone anymore, running and hunted. He'd put up with a lot for that feeling, and retrieving McKay's crutches from wherever he'd dropped them was easy.
Teyla turned out to be the difficult one. She didn't demand things, but she was tired and frustrated, and she seemed sad about something. "The pain won't let you meditate?" Ronon guessed once, but Teyla shook her head.
Sheppard's e-mail, a week after they'd gotten home, was terse, as his e-mails usually were. "Crappy week. Weather's nice. Team lunch? Noon, terrace with the psycho statue." Ronon sent back, "Yes," and Teyla replied, "That sounds lovely." McKay wrote back a missive ordering Sheppard to show up at his labs to help McKay carry all the things he deemed necessary for a picnic in the sun.
Ronon got there a little early to find Sheppard setting up, unfolding chaise lounges that had been stacked in the corner and unpacking a box of food and drinks. "I got it," Ronon said, "if you want to go get McKay." Sheppard rolled his eyes and departed. When Teyla arrived, Ronon set her up in a chaise lounge, setting bottled water and a sandwich at the table by her side before sitting down himself. They both tilted their heads back and sighed in relaxation. Ronon pulled open a bag of chips. Teyla had her eyes closed, but she smiled when she heard the rustle of the bag. "I do not know if you will be forgiven for getting a head start on lunch," she said.
"If McKay's not going to get here early, he's gotta expect it," Ronon said, and crunched purposefully loudly; Teyla smiled.
"Stealing food from an injured man," she teased.
"Sheppard brought plenty," Ronon said, eating another handful of chips.
It was a good day, sunny and warm. Teyla looked like she might be falling asleep, and Ronon began to entertain thoughts of a post-lunch nap. "I may spend the afternoon here," Teyla murmured.
"It's nice," Ronon agreed. He squinted at her. "You look better."
"I had an appointment this morning," she said. "Dr. Beckett assures me the injury is healing well." She opened her eyes and smiled ruefully at him. "I will be glad when I am recovered--it turns out I do not have the patience for this."
Ronon snorted a laugh. "No one does." After a moment he added, "Is that why you've been sad?"
Teyla sighed. "I suppose," she said. "And Leonard's death--you know how some deaths linger." Ronon nodded. "Especially when one has little else to dwell upon--Leonard's death, and what John told me of his friend's death, a memory which still troubles him--I suppose I have been feeling melancholy." She shook her head a little, shaking it off, before tilting her head at him. "Have you been well? I would have expected that reliving the memory of the Wraith would have troubled you."
Ronon shook his head. "Other way around. It made me happy not to be there anymore." He turned over what she'd said, the tenor of her voice as she'd spoken of Sheppard's friend, of Sheppard, until something clicked. "Huh," he said. "You and Sheppard--you spark with him?"
She turned her face out to the ocean and didn't answer. "Is that what your people call it?" she said finally. It could have been a deflection, but it felt more like a tacit acknowledgement that he was right. "Sparking?"
"It's one of the things we say," Ronon said. "I think the Earth people say something like it too." He confessed, "For a while I thought spark plugs--from their cars?--I heard someone say something about them and thought they were courting gifts. A kind of flower you could make a bouquet of. Until we saw that movie with the nuns."
Teyla laughed. "But given how some of them talk about their cars, spark plugs might make a good courting gift."
"What do your people say?" Ronon asked.
"Also similar to an Earth expression--we would say that you're sweet for someone." She grimaced. "It has never been my favorite expression, and--my feelings for John are not noticeably sweet."
Ronon thought of Melina, what he'd felt for her, and made a noise of agreement. Sweetness had been part of it, but a small part. "You gonna do anything about it?" he asked. "You two'd be good together." They liked each other, and they could both argue and be still and laugh with one another. He thought they could be good for each other.
Teyla shook her head. "Maybe. There have been times when I have thought something might happen, but the timing has always been wrong. I believe John also sees the possibilities, but whenever they come clearer, he...backs away." She smiled sadly. "Given John's habit of reticence, I am never sure whether it's the possibility that he's wary of, or simply speaking of it. And my feelings are not--I have not let them become more than a possibility. But the events of this last week..." she sighed. "He is a friend, a good one. His unhappiness weighs heavily on me."
"He'll be okay," Ronon said. "He's tough." He could hear voices in the distance now, not words but tones, familiar bickering. "They're coming."
Teyla took a deep breath. "All right." He hadn't realized that her guard had slipped until he saw her put her composure back in place. "And you?" she said. "Do you...spark with anyone?"
She meant it teasingly, lightly, but his throat clogged up, surprising him. "I had someone," he said, and it came out raw. "Back on Sateda." She reached out a hand and covered his, quick sympathy and regret in her eyes.
"I am sorry," Teyla said sincerely. "If you ever wish to share her memory..."
Ronon shook his head quickly, an instinctive reaction, but squeezed Teyla's hand so she'd know the offer wasn't an offense. "No. But Teyla. The timing for us, it was bad, with the Wraith coming. But we still. We were together. Sometimes you have to fuck the timing, because there's never enough of it anyway."
She started to say something, but Sheppard and McKay were close now, spilling through the door. "Sunny day, good food, a chance to relax, so relax already," Sheppard was saying.
"Did you guys already start eating?" McKay snapped, zeroing in on the opened chip bag as soon as he stepped through the door.
"Yup," Ronon said, trying to snap back into glibness.
"Figures," McKay said.
Sheppard tumbled a mess of McKay's things on the table before pulling out his sunglasses and sliding them on, grinning at them both. Ronon felt his spirits lift. "He ate one bag of chips, Rodney, knock it off. There's a ton more food," Sheppard said. He pointed at Teyla. "Plus, did you see? I scored some of those peanut butter cookies you like for dessert." When he turned to grab some food for himself and McKay, Ronon raised his eyebrows at Teyla and mouthed, "Courtship gift?" She smacked him.
Later, after they'd stuffed themselves and were leaning back on their chaise lounges, McKay already conked out and Teyla heading there, Ronon muttered to Sheppard, "This was good."
"Yeah," Sheppard said. His eyes were hidden by the sunglasses, but his mouth was relaxed. "After last week, we deserved it."
"Yeah," Ronon said. He thought of saying something more, to nudge Sheppard towards Teyla, but neither he nor Sheppard did subtle real well, and he couldn't think of anything straightforward that Teyla wouldn't beat him up for.
He thought about saying something later to Teyla, but didn't. If she didn't want to take a chance with Sheppard, say something outright herself, her reasons were her own. Later, when the Ancestors returned and Sheppard returned to Earth with his people, Ronon was glad he hadn't. It hurt bad enough, leaving Atlantis, losing his team, and he knew Teyla felt the same way. At least she hadn't lost a lover too.
***
"She is an abomination who has called the Wraith upon us," Ronon heard his own voice say. "Step aside so I may remove her."
"No," Sheppard said, keeping his gun steadily aimed at Ronon's chest. "You've got it wrong. It was you waking up and setting off the alarm that's bringing the Wraith here, and we need Teyla to send them away. So you lower that weapon, okay?"
"She is a traitor to humanity!" Wendall cried.
"Ronon, if you can hear me, I want you to fight this. You're strong. You can beat this asshole." Inside his body, Ronon raged at him--did Sheppard think he wasn't trying? He wanted to glare at Sheppard, but Wendall was already staring past him hungrily, at Teyla crumpled on the floor behind him.
"He cannot break free. Step aside. I have no wish to hurt you," Wendall said through Ronon.
"Yeah, I've seen how much you don't want to hurt people," Sheppard sneered.
"The incident with Dr. McKay was unfortunate, but he will recover," Wendall said. McKay had managed to get Ronon's gun away from the imposter in his body after Wendall had stunned Teyla, only to get coldcocked by the handgun Wendall found instead. "I have no particular issue with him, or with you. Only with the Wraith abomination. Step aside."
"Not happening," Sheppard snarled. "Also, her name's Teyla, she's human, and what the Wraith did to an ancestor of hers thousands of years ago isn't her fault. She's used it to fight the Wraith, and I don't give a fuck what a bigshot scientist you were, she's worth a hundred of you."
"Stop defending her!" Wendall roared. Ronon tried, while he was raging and distracted, to take over, to shift the gun he was holding at Sheppard away or to drop it altogether. He cursed the fact that he was holding an Earth gun, with Earth bullets--he'd injure Sheppard if he shot him, not just stun him. He wished Sheppard wouldn't be so damned protective of his team, that he'd just shoot Ronon already instead of trying to get them all out of this uninjured. Sheppard was good enough to shoot without killing, and Ronon wouldn't mind being hurt for Teyla. Teyla'd never forgive herself if Sheppard was killed trying to defend her, and Sheppard would never forgive himself if he got taken out and left Teyla defenseless.
The physical revulsion Wendall felt in response to Ronon's thoughts nearly gave Ronon his chance, but Wendall recovered to grit out, "It's disgusting, the way that all of you have been fooled, and--" he picked up something else from Ronon's thoughts then, and said incredulously, "You love her?" His voice rose in a scream. "She cannot be allowed to reproduce--" He was raising the gun, pressing the trigger.
Ronon threw all of himself into one action and closed his eyes, hearing the gun go off. Then he felt a blow himself, and fell to the floor.
When he woke, he was in the infirmary. He wasn't in any pain, only felt the aftermath of a stunning. A little bit achy, mostly really hungry. Sheppard was sitting by his bed, slouched in a chair and staring up at the ceiling. "What happened?" Ronon croaked. "Teyla?"
"Hey, you're up," Sheppard said, and then he called a doctor over instead of answering.
"What happened?" Ronon said frantically.
"Everyone's fine," Sheppard said. "You're the last to wake up. I don't know how much you were aware of after Wendall took over your body--"
"I was in there," Ronon said. He'd even been sort of pleased, at first, to let Wendall, or the memory of him, speak through him, to be a voice for this legendary scientist whose advances had done so much against the Wraith. Until Wendall had learned of Teyla's heritage and gone crazy over it.
"Yeah, we gotta stop letting that sort of thing happen," Sheppard said lightly. Then the doctor was coming over. "Everyone's fine, though, so let's let the doc check you out and then I'll fill you in."
The doctor pronounced him to be fine, and Sheppard came back in as he was pulling his own clothes back on. "The Wraith went away?" Ronon asked.
"Teyla woke up in time to send them away," Sheppard confirmed. "You were knocked out longer, because we kept you sedated until the imprint wore off. But she's fine, McKay's--well, complaining about a headache, but fine." Sheppard grinned. "That was what took Wendall down; McKay woke up and reached your gun. Fair warning, he's sort of smug that he managed to shoot you with your own weapon."
"Like I'd mind?" Ronon said incredulously, pulling on his boots and lacing them up. "You should have shot me."
Sheppard rolled his eyes. "Sure, sorry for not risking causing you permanent damage."
"Sheppard," Ronon said, and looked up at Sheppard with all the fury he felt. "You think I'd want to be the cause of a teammate falling?"
Sheppard lost some of the glibness. "McKay was waking up," he said quietly. "I could see him even if you couldn't, and he was right near the gun. If he could stun you, it would end things without anyone else getting hurt." He smiled a nasty smile, all teeth. "If it makes you feel better, I would have shot you sooner or later."
It did.
"Come on, let's get out of here," Sheppard said, and Ronon fell in step beside him as they left the infirmary. "Did Wendall get a shot off?" Ronon asked. "I thought he did. I managed to get his eyes closed, though."
"Huh, good work," Sheppard said. "I just thought he had lousy aim."
"I made him miss. Good," Ronon said.
Sheppard coughed into his hand and said, "Mostly." When Ronon stopped and stared at him incredulously, Sheppard gestured vaguely at his hip and said, "Just a little graze."
"Sorry?"
Sheppard shrugged. "No big deal. Kind of a team tradition at this point, in fact." They were approaching a branch in the hallway, and Sheppard jerked his thumb towards one branch. "I gotta go talk to Elizabeth.
"I gotta get something to eat," Ronon said, starting to head down the other branch towards the mess hall.
"Right, hey, wait up a minute," Sheppard said, jogging to catch up. "One thing. If you, uh, see Teyla or McKay or you're talking to anyone about Wendall, Wendall said this thing. I think probably he just misinterpreted something he got from your head, but he seemed to think that Teyla and I are--which we're not. At all. Together. Like that. Of course she's important to me, like all of you on the team are, but--" Ronon stared at him while Sheppard shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "I just don't want Wendall's misunderstanding getting back to Teyla," Sheppard explained lamely, "and, uh, making her uncomfortable."
"Sheppard?" Ronon said.
"Yeah?" Sheppard said.
"Don't be stupid," Ronon said.
McKay said it all the time, and they all had a tendency to insult each other, so Ronon was surprised to see a flicker of hurt in Sheppard's eyes. "I don't want our team dynamic to get weird," Sheppard said stiffly. "Which--I'm not saying I have feelings for Teyla, feelings like that, but if I did, or if she thought I did, things could get strange, and you said yourself once, it's really easy to lose a team, and--"
Ronon stopped him by clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Things aren't gonna get weird. Even if they do," he said, trying to put the same surety in his voice that Sheppard always gave him. "This team, we've shot each other and we've fought Wraith together, we're strong enough. We're solid. You made us that way."
Sheppard looked down, sideways, up at him again. "So, um, you're saying--that hypothetically, if I did--you think I should?"
Ronon shook his head. "I'm saying. I don't know your feelings. I don't know your reasons. Maybe you've got good ones. But the team thing--that's a stupid one."
"Right," Sheppard said. He looked vaguely confused. When Ronon let go of him and started towards the mess, Sheppard fell in step with him instead of heading off towards Weir's office. Weir ended up being in the mess hall anyway, eating with Teyla. It was a quiet dinner--Ronon was refueling, Sheppard was preoccupied and pushing his food around on his plate, and Weir kept darting concerned glances at Teyla, who seemed subdued. "Are you all right?" Ronon asked when he'd finished his first tray.
"Of course," Teyla said. "It was simply a very stressful day."
"Uh huh," Ronon said. "Sorry I couldn't stop Wendall."
"It was hardly your fault," Teyla said. Sheppard and Weir were both looking at her with frowns on their faces, concerned.
"Kind of a shame he turned out to be such an asshole, though," Sheppard put in. "I guess it was sort of like if Descartes or Mendel came back and turned out to be a raving lunatic."
"He was not a lunatic, though," Teyla said, sounding tired and sad. "The same dedication, the same drive, that made him a legend...I cannot honor him for it one moment and then complain because it is directed against--"
"His dedication didn't always make him right," Elizabeth said fiercely. "He was wrong to think of you as he did."
"He was crazy," Sheppard said earnestly. "You're worth a hundred of him."
"Sheppard's right," Ronon said. "I hate the Wraith as much as Wendall, and you're not tainted by them."
Teyla smiled at all of them. "You are all very kind to say so. Please do not worry. I am fine, simply a bit disheartened." She rose with her tray. "I am sure I will feel better when I am rested."
They all exchanged glances after she'd gone, and then Sheppard pushed back his chair with a scrape. "I'm gonna go make sure she's all right," he said, and Ronon watched him leave after her, although he made a stop to pick up two brownies and wrap them carefully in napkins along the way.
"I hope he can get through to her," Weir said in worried tones.
Apparently he did; when Ronon sparred with her the next day, she looked at peace again. Actually, she looked--really happy, and Ronon narrowed his eyes at her, and wondered, and kept silence. He grew more sure over the following week, because Sheppard and Teyla both went around looking happy and smiling for no particular reason. When their team ended up being the only people in the mess hall one day a week or so later, and Sheppard said, "Hey, we wanted to tell you--we didn't want to keep secrets, so. Teyla and I. We're, you know, together," it wasn't a surprise at all.
"'Kay," Ronon said, "Thanks for letting us know," and kept eating. Scrambled eggs were awesome, but they got cold way too quickly.
Rodney was eating a muffin; he waved one hand and spoke through a mouthful of blueberry, "Congratulations and good luck and all that."
"We don't want it to be awkward or--if you have any concerns about the team dynamic..." Sheppard said, and Rodney waved his hand dismissively.
Ronon shrugged. "I said already--we'll be fine."
"I...guess we're okay then," Sheppard said, and Teyla laughed, bright and free.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that only took a couple of years." Then he frowned at them. "Unless, wait, you're not gonna be the kind of couple that wants to fix everyone up, are you? Because that would cause problems. Setups have never worked well for me."
Sheppard made a horrified face. "I promise formalized matchmaking is not part of my culture," Teyla said serenely.
"Ronon's the one you have to watch out for," Sheppard warned darkly, and McKay made little "back away" gestures and rumbled warnings at him through a mouthful of food.
"Did your culture have a tradition of intermediaries or matchmakers?" Teyla asked curiously.
Ronon shook his head. "It was just whoever you clicked with." He thought of Melina, of waking up from an injury to hear her telling a sim scientist to back off, of the way she'd given him a scathing glance when he'd interrupted and said it was fine. He realized he was grinning at the memory.
"A happy memory?" Teyla said softly, gently nudging.
"Yeah," Ronon said. They were watching him with varying degrees of curiosity. It turned out to be easy. "The first time I met Melina," Ronon said, "she called me an idiot."
"Obviously a smart woman," Rodney said.
"She was," Ronon said, and told them of her.
END
Author: minnow1212
Written for: nytel
Prompt: Ronon sets up John and Teyla
Characters/Pairing: Ronon, John/Teyla
Rating: PG-13.
Spoilers: Generally through 3.16, The Ark; specifically for The Long Goodbye and Phantoms.
Summary: Three years, several shootings, multiple conversations.
After Phoebus shot him, before the medical team came, Ronon tried to get past the pain. He couldn't. It took up all the space in his body, all the air in the room. It pinned him down. Earth bullets, he thought, this is what they're like. He was the first Satedan to be on the other end of one.
When he woke later, his mouth felt funny. When the person who hovered over him asked him how he felt, he told her in detail before he woke up some more and realized where he was and who she was: a nurse from Earth.
After that, when they asked him how he was--Beckett and the nurses, Teyla and McKay--he told them he was fine. Dr. Beckett sighed at him in exasperation, saying, "There's no need to pretend, lad. You were honest with Nurse Evans earlier, I don't know why you feel the need to clam up now."
But Ronon had only been honest because he thought Evans was someone else.
McKay stuck around until Ronon was past the worst of the fog, telling him that everything was going to be fine, everyone was safe, the problem had been resolved: weird how reassuring that was. Teyla was there, too, and she stayed with him for large swaths of the rest of the day and the night that followed. They spoke only at intervals, disjointed conversations while time stretched on forever. "'S weird," he told her one time. "They research everything here, every little thing, but not pain. They just try to make that go away."
On Sateda, they shot you as part of training. They did stun setting for real, so you’d know what your body could do when you were still reeling and nauseous and recovering from a hit. Shots that would have left permanent injuries, from Satedan weapons or weapons they knew about, they did by simulation. Ronon came to hate the sim scientists. Every soldier did. When you got hurt in some way, they came in to the hospital to monitor your pain so that their next sim would be more accurate, and their eyes were always greedy. Everyone hated them, but you never complained and you always answered honestly, because as Ronon had once said to Melina with a shrug when she was railing against their interference with her patients’ care, "hate the scientists, love the sims." He’d come out of them stronger, and he'd known the knowledge he fed to them helped his people.
"Your people do differently?" Teyla asked, but Ronon tried to move then, and a burst of pain kept him from answering. He didn't want to answer anyway. He couldn't talk about the sim scientists without talking about Melina, and he felt too frayed for that.
Sheppard came by at one point the next morning, after Ronon and Teyla had been silent for a while. Teyla looked like she might be meditating, her eyes closed and her breathing slow, although she didn’t look at peace. The little frown on her face got deeper when Sheppard came in, and Sheppard only sent her a quick, tight smile before he turned his attention to Ronon. "How you feeling, buddy?"
"Fine," Ronon said. If he’d been on Sateda, he would’ve been expected to acknowledge his failure to his task master: he hadn’t been sharp enough to spot the imposter, and a threat to the people had gone unchecked. But Sheppard didn’t look like he was waiting for that acknowledgment. He looked, beneath the careful smile, like part of him might still be raging against Thalan.
"I’m just--" Sheppard said, bumping a fist against the railing of the bed, "sorry as hell this happened to you."
"I’ll be okay," Ronon said. "Beckett said."
"Yeah, I heard, that’s good," Sheppard said. "Listen, uh, Elizabeth’s sorry too. I mean, it was Phoebus, not her, but she’s still--she'd like to stop by at some point, but only if you’re okay with it."
"Whatever," Ronon said. "If she wants."
"Right," Sheppard said. "I’ll let her know. I--kinda need to go now, I’ve got this meeting with Caldwell. I’ll stop by later." Ronon noted that his eyes and Teyla’s skated past each other as he waved goodbye.
"Why’s he being strange?" Ronon asked Teyla. The drugs he was on made everything faraway and close to the surface at the same time. Ronon told himself that there were reasons why Sheppard had only stopped by briefly--avoidance of injured people, or guilt over getting taken in by Thalan--but he still felt a vast and distant distress at the thought that Sheppard might not have stayed long because he was disappointed in Ronon's conduct.
"It was a strange situation," Teyla said mildly, a non-answer.
The stay in the infirmary was too long. Any stay was too long, but this one stretched out, days and nights when he was too tired to do anything but too restless to sleep. It gave Ronon too much time to think about the sim scientists he hadn’t thought of in years, about pain, about what he owed men and women he’d hated.
Teyla came and sat with him a lot, and McKay and Sheppard visited as well. It took Ronon some time to get the pattern, but it wasn’t him Sheppard was weird around, but Teyla. He was normal when Teyla wasn’t there, reassuringly sarcastic, but around her he clammed up. The little furrow of worry between Teyla’s eyebrows didn’t go away either. There wasn’t animosity between them, but they weren’t at ease: it set Ronon’s teeth on edge to be around them. Bound to his bed, he couldn’t shake off his disquiet. He had too much time to think about how hard it was to build a team, how easy it was for one to go sour.
"Why’re Teyla and Sheppard being weird around each other?" Ronon finally asked McKay.
A quick spark of recognition flashed across McKay’s face, before he said, "Please, do I look like a psychologist or a counselor or...someone who cares about people’s emotional states? How should I know what’s going on in either of their heads?"
"Best guess, then," Ronon snapped back. "Spill it, McKay."
McKay pushed the idea of responsibility away with his hands even as he caved. "Did anyone bother to explain what went on while you were being operated on? No? Phoebus gained control of the city and threatened to vent halon gas into everyone's quarters if she didn't get what she wanted. And that was Teyla killing Sheppard--Thalan. Oh, because Teyla had Sheppard captured at that point."
"Good for her," Ronon said, turning things over in his head. Sheppard wasn’t dead, which meant..."What, Sheppard’s pissed that Teyla risked everyone else by not killing him?"
McKay regarded him with some asperity. "Again, not like I have a clue what’s going on in his head. But I think…" he frowned more deeply and went on more slowly. "I was only listening by radio and frantically trying to regain control of the city at the time," he disclaimed. "But I think Teyla, um...I think she nearly did. Shoot him. Thalen was trying to guilt her, telling her how important she was to Sheppard, how big a betrayal it would be. But Teyla...I heard her apologize. So I think she was about to. If I hadn’t regained control and locked Phoebus out. Well." He shook himself a bit, and his voice returned to normal speed. "Which I think is more than enough to make up for shooting Sheppard myself, am I right? Especially since it was only a graze."
"He’s giving you hassle over that?" Ronon said, anxious all over again. He hadn't seen Sheppard and McKay in the same room, he realized, didn't know how they were getting along.
"Not hassle per se," McKay admitted. "Of course he’s being an asshole about it, but just in his usual way."
"You’re not really angry at McKay, are you?" Ronon asked Sheppard later, when Sheppard was easing him back down on the bed after a trip to the bathroom. Even that small exertion set Ronon sweating. Every part of his body ached from trying to hold himself so that he wouldn’t make the wound hurt. It was wearing him down, making him ask stupid things for reassurance.
"What? Should I be? Did he do something?" Sheppard asked suspiciously. Ronon reached out and tapped his bicep, above the graze. "Oh, that. No, we’re fine on that--though you bet your ass he’s going to be spending more time at the shooting range."
"Lucky for you he’s a bad shot, though," Ronon said, and Sheppard laughed, which meant things were fine on that front. Ronon went on, "Teyla wouldn’t have missed."
Sheppard’s face closed off, though his voice was casual as he replied, "Lucky for me Rodney came through, then. You all set there? I’ll refill the water glass."
"I don’t need water," Ronon said. "Sheppard--"
"Yeah, but you’ll want it later," Sheppard said, walking away with the glass.
"Are you angry with Teyla because she didn’t shoot you or because she almost did?" Ronon said when Sheppard came back and set down the glass. He knew it was stupid to blurt that out even as he was saying it, and Sheppard’s eyes went cool and unfriendly.
"I’m not angry with Teyla," Sheppard said, false patience in his voice. "It was just a weird situation."
"I’ve seen teams go bad over smaller things," Ronon said in frustration. "Whatever's wrong, neither of you are fixing it."
"Ronon, lay off, all right?" Sheppard said. He’d gone from coolness to outright anger, and Ronon shut up and looked away. "Wait, you’re really worried about this, aren’t you?" Sheppard said after a moment. When Ronon looked back, Sheppard was looking at him curiously.
"I’ve seen teams go bad over smaller things," he repeated.
"That’s not going to happen," Sheppard said, intent and sure. He leaned over and shook Ronon's shoulder a little. "I’m not going to let that happen, all right?"
"All right," Ronon said. These weren't even his people. It shouldn't matter so much if team--his place here--was secure.
"Good," Sheppard said, sitting back down in the bedside chair and kicking his feet up on the bed. "You want to play cards again?"
"No," Ronon said.
"You got a better way to pass the time?" Sheppard said. "Some secret Satedan method for dealing with injury?"
"No," Ronon said. Talking to the sim scientists had at least passed the time, but there were none of them here, no way to gather knowledge about pain and recovery. Ronon shrugged in acceptance as Sheppard dealt the cards.
Teyla came in during the third hand, and Sheppard shot Ronon a brief glare, packed with annoyance. But he didn't get up and make excuses to leave. Instead, he said carelessly, "Deal you in?" to Teyla.
"I would like that," Teyla said with a smile, and Ronon thought he saw relief in her eyes.
They played a few more hands, and everything was a little falsely jovial at first, both Teyla and Sheppard trying too hard, but things smoothed out. By the time Teyla went to the bathroom and Sheppard leaned close and hissed, "See? Things are fine," Ronon was able to reply, "They are now," through a yawn, feeling something like contentment. He shut his eyes on Sheppard's disgruntled expression, resting them until Teyla came back.
He was more tired than he'd realized, because by the time Teyla did return he was already halfway to sleep, only partly conscious of Sheppard saying softly, "Looks like all that wild and crazy card playing knocked him out."
Ronon weighed the effort of wading up through layers of sleep to protest that, but his eyelids felt heavy.
He thought he might have heard fragments of a further conversation ("Are we okay? About the whole--thing. We're cool?" and "If you can forgive me--I believe it would have been the right decision, but I do not know if I would have forgiven myself," and "Nah--I would have forgiven you. Except for the part where I would have been dead, so not doing much of anything, but if I'd come back as a ghost or a zombie my zombie self would've forgiven you. But, uh, about what Thalan said--") but those might have already been dreams.
***
The next time the team was grounded because of bullets, it was Teyla and McKay who were hurt. Ronon spent some time running and some time training and some time running errands for them, since they were supposed to stay off their feet as much as possible. He'd expected that McKay would be the difficult one, acting like a pampered souskah, demanding that everything be brought to him. Ronon had been prepared to lace his lips together out of a vague gratitude that McKay was alive at all: if he hadn't been on the ground already when Ronon had come to the cave, Ronon would've taken him for a Wraith, and his shot wouldn't have injured but killed.
McKay did make some demands, although they seemed perfunctory and they were mostly directed at Sheppard: "You can just go and get me another pudding cup, Lieutenant Colonel Shoots At People." Mostly McKay seemed to forget he was injured, though, and tried to do things for himself. In his labs, he'd maneuver by rolling his chair around, only remembering his injury when he tried to stand at a whiteboard and almost toppled over. Then he whined a lot, but Ronon was used to tuning that out. He'd been shockingly happy when the machine had shut off and he'd been thrown out of the memories that had swallowed him, happy to realize again that he wasn't alone anymore, running and hunted. He'd put up with a lot for that feeling, and retrieving McKay's crutches from wherever he'd dropped them was easy.
Teyla turned out to be the difficult one. She didn't demand things, but she was tired and frustrated, and she seemed sad about something. "The pain won't let you meditate?" Ronon guessed once, but Teyla shook her head.
Sheppard's e-mail, a week after they'd gotten home, was terse, as his e-mails usually were. "Crappy week. Weather's nice. Team lunch? Noon, terrace with the psycho statue." Ronon sent back, "Yes," and Teyla replied, "That sounds lovely." McKay wrote back a missive ordering Sheppard to show up at his labs to help McKay carry all the things he deemed necessary for a picnic in the sun.
Ronon got there a little early to find Sheppard setting up, unfolding chaise lounges that had been stacked in the corner and unpacking a box of food and drinks. "I got it," Ronon said, "if you want to go get McKay." Sheppard rolled his eyes and departed. When Teyla arrived, Ronon set her up in a chaise lounge, setting bottled water and a sandwich at the table by her side before sitting down himself. They both tilted their heads back and sighed in relaxation. Ronon pulled open a bag of chips. Teyla had her eyes closed, but she smiled when she heard the rustle of the bag. "I do not know if you will be forgiven for getting a head start on lunch," she said.
"If McKay's not going to get here early, he's gotta expect it," Ronon said, and crunched purposefully loudly; Teyla smiled.
"Stealing food from an injured man," she teased.
"Sheppard brought plenty," Ronon said, eating another handful of chips.
It was a good day, sunny and warm. Teyla looked like she might be falling asleep, and Ronon began to entertain thoughts of a post-lunch nap. "I may spend the afternoon here," Teyla murmured.
"It's nice," Ronon agreed. He squinted at her. "You look better."
"I had an appointment this morning," she said. "Dr. Beckett assures me the injury is healing well." She opened her eyes and smiled ruefully at him. "I will be glad when I am recovered--it turns out I do not have the patience for this."
Ronon snorted a laugh. "No one does." After a moment he added, "Is that why you've been sad?"
Teyla sighed. "I suppose," she said. "And Leonard's death--you know how some deaths linger." Ronon nodded. "Especially when one has little else to dwell upon--Leonard's death, and what John told me of his friend's death, a memory which still troubles him--I suppose I have been feeling melancholy." She shook her head a little, shaking it off, before tilting her head at him. "Have you been well? I would have expected that reliving the memory of the Wraith would have troubled you."
Ronon shook his head. "Other way around. It made me happy not to be there anymore." He turned over what she'd said, the tenor of her voice as she'd spoken of Sheppard's friend, of Sheppard, until something clicked. "Huh," he said. "You and Sheppard--you spark with him?"
She turned her face out to the ocean and didn't answer. "Is that what your people call it?" she said finally. It could have been a deflection, but it felt more like a tacit acknowledgement that he was right. "Sparking?"
"It's one of the things we say," Ronon said. "I think the Earth people say something like it too." He confessed, "For a while I thought spark plugs--from their cars?--I heard someone say something about them and thought they were courting gifts. A kind of flower you could make a bouquet of. Until we saw that movie with the nuns."
Teyla laughed. "But given how some of them talk about their cars, spark plugs might make a good courting gift."
"What do your people say?" Ronon asked.
"Also similar to an Earth expression--we would say that you're sweet for someone." She grimaced. "It has never been my favorite expression, and--my feelings for John are not noticeably sweet."
Ronon thought of Melina, what he'd felt for her, and made a noise of agreement. Sweetness had been part of it, but a small part. "You gonna do anything about it?" he asked. "You two'd be good together." They liked each other, and they could both argue and be still and laugh with one another. He thought they could be good for each other.
Teyla shook her head. "Maybe. There have been times when I have thought something might happen, but the timing has always been wrong. I believe John also sees the possibilities, but whenever they come clearer, he...backs away." She smiled sadly. "Given John's habit of reticence, I am never sure whether it's the possibility that he's wary of, or simply speaking of it. And my feelings are not--I have not let them become more than a possibility. But the events of this last week..." she sighed. "He is a friend, a good one. His unhappiness weighs heavily on me."
"He'll be okay," Ronon said. "He's tough." He could hear voices in the distance now, not words but tones, familiar bickering. "They're coming."
Teyla took a deep breath. "All right." He hadn't realized that her guard had slipped until he saw her put her composure back in place. "And you?" she said. "Do you...spark with anyone?"
She meant it teasingly, lightly, but his throat clogged up, surprising him. "I had someone," he said, and it came out raw. "Back on Sateda." She reached out a hand and covered his, quick sympathy and regret in her eyes.
"I am sorry," Teyla said sincerely. "If you ever wish to share her memory..."
Ronon shook his head quickly, an instinctive reaction, but squeezed Teyla's hand so she'd know the offer wasn't an offense. "No. But Teyla. The timing for us, it was bad, with the Wraith coming. But we still. We were together. Sometimes you have to fuck the timing, because there's never enough of it anyway."
She started to say something, but Sheppard and McKay were close now, spilling through the door. "Sunny day, good food, a chance to relax, so relax already," Sheppard was saying.
"Did you guys already start eating?" McKay snapped, zeroing in on the opened chip bag as soon as he stepped through the door.
"Yup," Ronon said, trying to snap back into glibness.
"Figures," McKay said.
Sheppard tumbled a mess of McKay's things on the table before pulling out his sunglasses and sliding them on, grinning at them both. Ronon felt his spirits lift. "He ate one bag of chips, Rodney, knock it off. There's a ton more food," Sheppard said. He pointed at Teyla. "Plus, did you see? I scored some of those peanut butter cookies you like for dessert." When he turned to grab some food for himself and McKay, Ronon raised his eyebrows at Teyla and mouthed, "Courtship gift?" She smacked him.
Later, after they'd stuffed themselves and were leaning back on their chaise lounges, McKay already conked out and Teyla heading there, Ronon muttered to Sheppard, "This was good."
"Yeah," Sheppard said. His eyes were hidden by the sunglasses, but his mouth was relaxed. "After last week, we deserved it."
"Yeah," Ronon said. He thought of saying something more, to nudge Sheppard towards Teyla, but neither he nor Sheppard did subtle real well, and he couldn't think of anything straightforward that Teyla wouldn't beat him up for.
He thought about saying something later to Teyla, but didn't. If she didn't want to take a chance with Sheppard, say something outright herself, her reasons were her own. Later, when the Ancestors returned and Sheppard returned to Earth with his people, Ronon was glad he hadn't. It hurt bad enough, leaving Atlantis, losing his team, and he knew Teyla felt the same way. At least she hadn't lost a lover too.
***
"She is an abomination who has called the Wraith upon us," Ronon heard his own voice say. "Step aside so I may remove her."
"No," Sheppard said, keeping his gun steadily aimed at Ronon's chest. "You've got it wrong. It was you waking up and setting off the alarm that's bringing the Wraith here, and we need Teyla to send them away. So you lower that weapon, okay?"
"She is a traitor to humanity!" Wendall cried.
"Ronon, if you can hear me, I want you to fight this. You're strong. You can beat this asshole." Inside his body, Ronon raged at him--did Sheppard think he wasn't trying? He wanted to glare at Sheppard, but Wendall was already staring past him hungrily, at Teyla crumpled on the floor behind him.
"He cannot break free. Step aside. I have no wish to hurt you," Wendall said through Ronon.
"Yeah, I've seen how much you don't want to hurt people," Sheppard sneered.
"The incident with Dr. McKay was unfortunate, but he will recover," Wendall said. McKay had managed to get Ronon's gun away from the imposter in his body after Wendall had stunned Teyla, only to get coldcocked by the handgun Wendall found instead. "I have no particular issue with him, or with you. Only with the Wraith abomination. Step aside."
"Not happening," Sheppard snarled. "Also, her name's Teyla, she's human, and what the Wraith did to an ancestor of hers thousands of years ago isn't her fault. She's used it to fight the Wraith, and I don't give a fuck what a bigshot scientist you were, she's worth a hundred of you."
"Stop defending her!" Wendall roared. Ronon tried, while he was raging and distracted, to take over, to shift the gun he was holding at Sheppard away or to drop it altogether. He cursed the fact that he was holding an Earth gun, with Earth bullets--he'd injure Sheppard if he shot him, not just stun him. He wished Sheppard wouldn't be so damned protective of his team, that he'd just shoot Ronon already instead of trying to get them all out of this uninjured. Sheppard was good enough to shoot without killing, and Ronon wouldn't mind being hurt for Teyla. Teyla'd never forgive herself if Sheppard was killed trying to defend her, and Sheppard would never forgive himself if he got taken out and left Teyla defenseless.
The physical revulsion Wendall felt in response to Ronon's thoughts nearly gave Ronon his chance, but Wendall recovered to grit out, "It's disgusting, the way that all of you have been fooled, and--" he picked up something else from Ronon's thoughts then, and said incredulously, "You love her?" His voice rose in a scream. "She cannot be allowed to reproduce--" He was raising the gun, pressing the trigger.
Ronon threw all of himself into one action and closed his eyes, hearing the gun go off. Then he felt a blow himself, and fell to the floor.
When he woke, he was in the infirmary. He wasn't in any pain, only felt the aftermath of a stunning. A little bit achy, mostly really hungry. Sheppard was sitting by his bed, slouched in a chair and staring up at the ceiling. "What happened?" Ronon croaked. "Teyla?"
"Hey, you're up," Sheppard said, and then he called a doctor over instead of answering.
"What happened?" Ronon said frantically.
"Everyone's fine," Sheppard said. "You're the last to wake up. I don't know how much you were aware of after Wendall took over your body--"
"I was in there," Ronon said. He'd even been sort of pleased, at first, to let Wendall, or the memory of him, speak through him, to be a voice for this legendary scientist whose advances had done so much against the Wraith. Until Wendall had learned of Teyla's heritage and gone crazy over it.
"Yeah, we gotta stop letting that sort of thing happen," Sheppard said lightly. Then the doctor was coming over. "Everyone's fine, though, so let's let the doc check you out and then I'll fill you in."
The doctor pronounced him to be fine, and Sheppard came back in as he was pulling his own clothes back on. "The Wraith went away?" Ronon asked.
"Teyla woke up in time to send them away," Sheppard confirmed. "You were knocked out longer, because we kept you sedated until the imprint wore off. But she's fine, McKay's--well, complaining about a headache, but fine." Sheppard grinned. "That was what took Wendall down; McKay woke up and reached your gun. Fair warning, he's sort of smug that he managed to shoot you with your own weapon."
"Like I'd mind?" Ronon said incredulously, pulling on his boots and lacing them up. "You should have shot me."
Sheppard rolled his eyes. "Sure, sorry for not risking causing you permanent damage."
"Sheppard," Ronon said, and looked up at Sheppard with all the fury he felt. "You think I'd want to be the cause of a teammate falling?"
Sheppard lost some of the glibness. "McKay was waking up," he said quietly. "I could see him even if you couldn't, and he was right near the gun. If he could stun you, it would end things without anyone else getting hurt." He smiled a nasty smile, all teeth. "If it makes you feel better, I would have shot you sooner or later."
It did.
"Come on, let's get out of here," Sheppard said, and Ronon fell in step beside him as they left the infirmary. "Did Wendall get a shot off?" Ronon asked. "I thought he did. I managed to get his eyes closed, though."
"Huh, good work," Sheppard said. "I just thought he had lousy aim."
"I made him miss. Good," Ronon said.
Sheppard coughed into his hand and said, "Mostly." When Ronon stopped and stared at him incredulously, Sheppard gestured vaguely at his hip and said, "Just a little graze."
"Sorry?"
Sheppard shrugged. "No big deal. Kind of a team tradition at this point, in fact." They were approaching a branch in the hallway, and Sheppard jerked his thumb towards one branch. "I gotta go talk to Elizabeth.
"I gotta get something to eat," Ronon said, starting to head down the other branch towards the mess hall.
"Right, hey, wait up a minute," Sheppard said, jogging to catch up. "One thing. If you, uh, see Teyla or McKay or you're talking to anyone about Wendall, Wendall said this thing. I think probably he just misinterpreted something he got from your head, but he seemed to think that Teyla and I are--which we're not. At all. Together. Like that. Of course she's important to me, like all of you on the team are, but--" Ronon stared at him while Sheppard shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "I just don't want Wendall's misunderstanding getting back to Teyla," Sheppard explained lamely, "and, uh, making her uncomfortable."
"Sheppard?" Ronon said.
"Yeah?" Sheppard said.
"Don't be stupid," Ronon said.
McKay said it all the time, and they all had a tendency to insult each other, so Ronon was surprised to see a flicker of hurt in Sheppard's eyes. "I don't want our team dynamic to get weird," Sheppard said stiffly. "Which--I'm not saying I have feelings for Teyla, feelings like that, but if I did, or if she thought I did, things could get strange, and you said yourself once, it's really easy to lose a team, and--"
Ronon stopped him by clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Things aren't gonna get weird. Even if they do," he said, trying to put the same surety in his voice that Sheppard always gave him. "This team, we've shot each other and we've fought Wraith together, we're strong enough. We're solid. You made us that way."
Sheppard looked down, sideways, up at him again. "So, um, you're saying--that hypothetically, if I did--you think I should?"
Ronon shook his head. "I'm saying. I don't know your feelings. I don't know your reasons. Maybe you've got good ones. But the team thing--that's a stupid one."
"Right," Sheppard said. He looked vaguely confused. When Ronon let go of him and started towards the mess, Sheppard fell in step with him instead of heading off towards Weir's office. Weir ended up being in the mess hall anyway, eating with Teyla. It was a quiet dinner--Ronon was refueling, Sheppard was preoccupied and pushing his food around on his plate, and Weir kept darting concerned glances at Teyla, who seemed subdued. "Are you all right?" Ronon asked when he'd finished his first tray.
"Of course," Teyla said. "It was simply a very stressful day."
"Uh huh," Ronon said. "Sorry I couldn't stop Wendall."
"It was hardly your fault," Teyla said. Sheppard and Weir were both looking at her with frowns on their faces, concerned.
"Kind of a shame he turned out to be such an asshole, though," Sheppard put in. "I guess it was sort of like if Descartes or Mendel came back and turned out to be a raving lunatic."
"He was not a lunatic, though," Teyla said, sounding tired and sad. "The same dedication, the same drive, that made him a legend...I cannot honor him for it one moment and then complain because it is directed against--"
"His dedication didn't always make him right," Elizabeth said fiercely. "He was wrong to think of you as he did."
"He was crazy," Sheppard said earnestly. "You're worth a hundred of him."
"Sheppard's right," Ronon said. "I hate the Wraith as much as Wendall, and you're not tainted by them."
Teyla smiled at all of them. "You are all very kind to say so. Please do not worry. I am fine, simply a bit disheartened." She rose with her tray. "I am sure I will feel better when I am rested."
They all exchanged glances after she'd gone, and then Sheppard pushed back his chair with a scrape. "I'm gonna go make sure she's all right," he said, and Ronon watched him leave after her, although he made a stop to pick up two brownies and wrap them carefully in napkins along the way.
"I hope he can get through to her," Weir said in worried tones.
Apparently he did; when Ronon sparred with her the next day, she looked at peace again. Actually, she looked--really happy, and Ronon narrowed his eyes at her, and wondered, and kept silence. He grew more sure over the following week, because Sheppard and Teyla both went around looking happy and smiling for no particular reason. When their team ended up being the only people in the mess hall one day a week or so later, and Sheppard said, "Hey, we wanted to tell you--we didn't want to keep secrets, so. Teyla and I. We're, you know, together," it wasn't a surprise at all.
"'Kay," Ronon said, "Thanks for letting us know," and kept eating. Scrambled eggs were awesome, but they got cold way too quickly.
Rodney was eating a muffin; he waved one hand and spoke through a mouthful of blueberry, "Congratulations and good luck and all that."
"We don't want it to be awkward or--if you have any concerns about the team dynamic..." Sheppard said, and Rodney waved his hand dismissively.
Ronon shrugged. "I said already--we'll be fine."
"I...guess we're okay then," Sheppard said, and Teyla laughed, bright and free.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that only took a couple of years." Then he frowned at them. "Unless, wait, you're not gonna be the kind of couple that wants to fix everyone up, are you? Because that would cause problems. Setups have never worked well for me."
Sheppard made a horrified face. "I promise formalized matchmaking is not part of my culture," Teyla said serenely.
"Ronon's the one you have to watch out for," Sheppard warned darkly, and McKay made little "back away" gestures and rumbled warnings at him through a mouthful of food.
"Did your culture have a tradition of intermediaries or matchmakers?" Teyla asked curiously.
Ronon shook his head. "It was just whoever you clicked with." He thought of Melina, of waking up from an injury to hear her telling a sim scientist to back off, of the way she'd given him a scathing glance when he'd interrupted and said it was fine. He realized he was grinning at the memory.
"A happy memory?" Teyla said softly, gently nudging.
"Yeah," Ronon said. They were watching him with varying degrees of curiosity. It turned out to be easy. "The first time I met Melina," Ronon said, "she called me an idiot."
"Obviously a smart woman," Rodney said.
"She was," Ronon said, and told them of her.
END