SGA Ronon ficlets
For record-keeping purposes, two SGA stories I wrote in 2007.
Ronon and Teyla, or Ronon/Teyla. Posted to distract idyll on a lost zebra kind of day
When Ronon ends his morning run, John panting helplessly beside him, he catches a flash of color out of the corner of his eye and bids John goodbye sooner than usual. John looks surprised Ronon won’t be joining him for breakfast, but he shrugs agreeably enough and heads off to the dining hall. Ronon follows the flash of color out to a nearby balcony.
Teyla is standing there, looking out at the endless ocean, wind in her hair. It whips at her skirt, making the rich blue material flutter out behind her. Ronon smiles.
“Hey,” he says.
She turns to face him. “Hello.”
“Been out here long?”
“Just since the sunrise,” she says. “I could not sleep. Sometimes I greet the sun out here.”
Ronon nods. He’s seen her do the almost dancelike series of movements when they’ve stayed out overnight on missions. She never seems to mind him watching, not since that first time he wandered into her room to find her stretching her legs out on her bed. Her body is compact but supple, and the routine must help keep it that way, stretching the muscles, keeping them long and limber. He’s sorry he missed it, this time. Now that he knows, he might make more of a habit of coming to this balcony in the mornings. Maybe she’ll teach him.
“Nightmares?” he asks, venturing fully out onto the balcony. She moves aside, lets him stand next to her, both of them facing back out onto the water.
“No,” she says. “Just a dream.” She looks up at him. “I dreamed of Athos. How it was when I was a girl.”
Ronon nods.
“There was a meadow I used to play in. In the springtime it would fill with flowers. My father always told me not to pick them, but to go out as often and I liked and look and smell my fill. ‘If you pick them,’ he said, ‘and bring them home and put them in a vase, they will pine for the meadow and the sunshine and the breeze. They will no longer be what they really are. Go visit them where they are happy.’” She looked down at her hands, her strong, small hands, clasped neatly on the banister. “Such flowers do not grow on Atlantis.”
“There are other flowers here,” Ronon ventures. “I could take you to see them.”
She looks up at him, startled, and studies his face. The wind tosses her hair about, but it hardly moves his heavy dreads, though Ronon feels it on his face, scents the sharp salt tang of it.
“Tell me,” she says, “about the flowers on Sateda.”
Ronon smiles.
And a silly Ronon/John adventure.
Never Leave a Man Behind
“He is a very experienced Runner,” says the village elder. His smile is wide and kind, and, to John’s eyes, a little demented. “And one without a tracking device! He is a veritable fount of knowledge! We will learn much from him about dealing with the Wraith. I am certain he will be quite happy with us.”
“Yeah, that’s funny,” John says, “because I don’t think so.”
“Colonel,” Teyla says gently, a warning hand on his arm that telegraphs we’re unarmed and outgunned and they’ve already kidnapped one of us. Don’t do anything stupid(er).”
John shrugs off the hand. “And the reason I don’t think so is because you’ve restrained him. Call me crazy, but I get the feeling Ronon doesn’t really care for being restrained. Also, he told you he didn’t want to stay.”
“Oh, he’ll get used to it,” the elder waved his hand dismissively, making the ceremonial knot of ribbons around his wrist wave about. These people really seem to like ribbons. “I’m sure he’ll be quite happy, in time. Summer is coming, and the village is quite lovely in the summer. We have a plentiful harvest, we’ve given him our most comfortable accomodations, and a number of comely young women have already expressed an interest in him.”
“I do not believe,” Teyla says, “that will be sufficient to change Ronon’s mind.”
“No?” The elder frowns briefly, then brightens back into his customary good humor. “Well, a number of comely young men have also expressed an interest in him. I am certain he’ll have his pick before the season’s out!”
“That’s not what she-”
“Colonel,” Teyla says, again with the gently restraining hand on John’s arm. What is up with that?
::
When Ronon awakens, he is tied to a very, very comfortable chair.
His head hurts, a vicious pounding inside his skull, and there is a foul taste in his mouth. He feels out the rest of his body, carefully assessing. There seems to be no damage. He tugs carefully at his bonds, and discovers that the knots holding him are soft, silky, deceptively yielding and completely secure. Ronon hates being tied up against his will. And, apparently, he was drugged at the harvest ceremony. Ronon really, really hates being drugged.
He listens intently. He is not alone. There is brightness against his eyelids, and the sound of whispering and muffled giggles. He opens his eyes to better assess his circumstances.
“Oh, good, you’re awake!” pipes a bright little voice.
“What do you want?” he rumbles.
“You’re really big,” says the little voice. The speaker is a small child in a brilliantly colored dress, whose long hair is woven through with half a dozen colorful ribbons. She grins up at him impudently.
“Yes,” Ronon replies.
“How’d you get so big?”
“Aw, grownups always tell you it’s because they ate all their vegetables,” remarks another child, this one wearing brightly colored trousers, a wildly patterned shirt and a short vest.
“You gonna tell us it’s because you ate all your vegetables?” the first child frowns, suspicious.
Ronon thinks about it. “Yes,” he says, perversely. “I ate all the vegetables my mother gave me at every meal, and often asked for seconds.”
The child scowls. “Well,” she finally decides. “I wouldn’t want to get that big anyway. It looks stupid.”
Ronon tugs at his bindings some more, discreetly.
A young woman strides into the room, skirts frothing around her as she moves. Her hair is in a riot of glossy curls down her back, and she wears what looks to be several yards of colorful ribbons. Her bodice is so tight Ronon wonders if she has difficulty breathing. The overall effect is to thrust up her chest as if it is on offer. Upon reflection, Ronon decides perhaps it is, although he is not sure if the offer might apply to the world at large or to anyone specific.
“Children!” she exclaims. “What are you doing here? You should be off at your lessons! Go!”
The children scatter and run off, tiny little voices piping protests.
The woman turns to Ronon. “I’m so sorry if they were bothering you,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Ronon says. “Now let me go.”
“Oh,” she says, eyes widening as if in surprise. “You don’t want to go back to those people you came with, do you? But they all look so… drab. Wouldn’t you rather stay here with us? I brought you fresh berry cakes.” She brandishes a tray, whipping off a cloth napkin to reveal a small heap of jewel-like pastries. “My father is an excellent baker.”
“They will come looking for me,” Ronon says, letting his voice dip threateningly low as he keeps tugging at his bindings.
The woman shrugs and picks up a pastry in her lithe golden fingers, then bites into it with a happy sigh. “Mmmm,” she says, and smiles prettily. “Are you certain you won’t try one?”
The door opens then, and a group of young women and men come in riding a cloud of giggles and ribbons. “Berry cakes!” cries a young man, clapping his hands. He wears a sky-blue vest, and his long braids are woven through with more of the ever-present ribbons. “And a new Guest! Share with us, Nala!”
“Be polite,” Nala admonishes with a toss of her head that sends equal parts ribbons and curls flying.
The others burst into agreeable bouts of laughter and chatter, and one of the girls, wearing a bodice as tight as Nala’s in the vibrant green of fresh leaves, brandishes a jug of the local sweet wine.
Ronon tugs harder at his bonds.
::
It takes about a week of stony-faced village guards and intractable village elders who won’t give an inch before John can finally talke Elizabeth into okaying the mission. Non-aggressive people, his ass. They tied up Ronon!
All avenues in or out of the village are guarded at all times, but John’s figured out a way around that.
He flies the jumper in stealth mode right up to the back of the cottage Ronon is being held prisoner in. Setting it to hover on automatic pilot, he surrenders the controls to Lorne, opens the door and drops to the ground, his boots making no noise in the grass. He nods, and two Marines drop out of the jumper, dressed all in black like John is, armed to the teeth.
Stealthily, they make their way to the rear window of the cottage, the only part of it not flanked by guards. John signals the Marines to stay back, and carefully peers into the room.
A peal of laughter and a burst of music greet him.
John’s eyes widen. Ronon is ensconced in what looks like a very comfortable chair, two giggling children on his lap, tugging at his beard and feeding him cookies. Two young men and a comely young woman are clustered around him, braiding ribbons into his hair.
A girl with long, be-ribboned braids is playing an oddly-shaped stringed instrument, and villagers of all ages laugh and dance about the room, skirts and vests whirling madly.
One of the dancers whirls close to Ronon’s chair, reaching out a slender arm to tug at his wrist, and he stands up, trailing ribbons, a gleefully squealing child in each arm, and lets her tug him forward to join the dance.
John frowns. He’s quite certain Ronon used to be tied to that chair. He gestures the Marines to stay back out of sight and knocks on the open shutter. The music stops as everyone inside turns to look at him. Ronon stands there blankly for a second, then sets the children down and walks forward, bracing large hands on the windowsill to look down at John.
“Hey,” John says, awkwardly.
“Hey,” Ronon answers.
“We came to rescue you.”
Ronon tilts his head, considering. He looks back at the villagers, the whole colorfully-attired group of them looking at him wide-eyed and hopeful. He turns back and favors John with a long look. “Okay,” he finally says, and clambers out the window.
The village guards spring into action, and the entire troop of people inside the cottage rush out to pursue them, but Ronon grabs John’s wrist and tugs. They run like hell towards the treeline, the Marines covering them, and leap into the puddlejumper as soon as Lorne decloaks it.
::
“So,” John says, following Ronon out of the debriefing with Elizabeth. “That was close, huh?”
Ronon just looks at him. He’s still wearing the villagers’ traditional garb of shirtless, brightly colored vest and trousers along with his usual necklaces. The are ribbons knotted around his biceps to trail down along his muscled arms, and he still hasn’t taken the half-woven-in ribbons out of his hair. John wouldn’t have thought so, but the getup suits him.
“It looked like you were having a pretty good time there.”
“It was okay,” Ronon shrugs.
“I mean, if you wanna go back there,” John opens his hands expansively.
“You want me to go back.” Ronon crosses his arms.
“Of course not! I rescued you, didn’t I?”
“Took you a week.”
“Elizabeth wouldn’t let me take the jumper!” John realizes that sounded perilously close to a whine, but he didn’t mean it to. “But I was trying. Teyla and Rodney and I were talking with the village elders, like, every day.”
“You were?” Ronon’s face softens a little.
“Of course we were! You didn’t think we were just gonna leave you there, did you?”
Ronon shrugs again. “Seemed like they liked me.”
“We like you!” John scrubs a hand through his hair, even though he knows that will flatten the parts that are supposed to stick up and stick up the parts that are supposed to lie flat. It’s not like anyone can tell which is which, anyway. “I like you,” he admits.
Ronon smiles.
“But, you know, if you wanna go back, I’d totally understand. It’s not like you have to stick around here.”
The smile disappears.
“I mean, I know we don’t have a whole lot of ribbons on Atlantis. And then there’s the whole Wraith thing. And yeah, Earth people are a little weird, and we’ve got-”
“Sheppard,” Ronon says. “I like you, too.”
“Really?” John blinks.
“Yeah.” Ronon turns in the direction of his quarters. “Want to finish braiding the ribbons into my hair?”
“That isn’t some sort of Satedan euphemism, is it?”
“No.”
“Oh.” John shrugs. “Yeah, okay.” He falls into step with Ronon. “I’m really glad you decided to come back with us, you know.”
“Don’t ruin the moment, Sheppard,” Ronon says.
Ronon and Teyla, or Ronon/Teyla. Posted to distract idyll on a lost zebra kind of day
When Ronon ends his morning run, John panting helplessly beside him, he catches a flash of color out of the corner of his eye and bids John goodbye sooner than usual. John looks surprised Ronon won’t be joining him for breakfast, but he shrugs agreeably enough and heads off to the dining hall. Ronon follows the flash of color out to a nearby balcony.
Teyla is standing there, looking out at the endless ocean, wind in her hair. It whips at her skirt, making the rich blue material flutter out behind her. Ronon smiles.
“Hey,” he says.
She turns to face him. “Hello.”
“Been out here long?”
“Just since the sunrise,” she says. “I could not sleep. Sometimes I greet the sun out here.”
Ronon nods. He’s seen her do the almost dancelike series of movements when they’ve stayed out overnight on missions. She never seems to mind him watching, not since that first time he wandered into her room to find her stretching her legs out on her bed. Her body is compact but supple, and the routine must help keep it that way, stretching the muscles, keeping them long and limber. He’s sorry he missed it, this time. Now that he knows, he might make more of a habit of coming to this balcony in the mornings. Maybe she’ll teach him.
“Nightmares?” he asks, venturing fully out onto the balcony. She moves aside, lets him stand next to her, both of them facing back out onto the water.
“No,” she says. “Just a dream.” She looks up at him. “I dreamed of Athos. How it was when I was a girl.”
Ronon nods.
“There was a meadow I used to play in. In the springtime it would fill with flowers. My father always told me not to pick them, but to go out as often and I liked and look and smell my fill. ‘If you pick them,’ he said, ‘and bring them home and put them in a vase, they will pine for the meadow and the sunshine and the breeze. They will no longer be what they really are. Go visit them where they are happy.’” She looked down at her hands, her strong, small hands, clasped neatly on the banister. “Such flowers do not grow on Atlantis.”
“There are other flowers here,” Ronon ventures. “I could take you to see them.”
She looks up at him, startled, and studies his face. The wind tosses her hair about, but it hardly moves his heavy dreads, though Ronon feels it on his face, scents the sharp salt tang of it.
“Tell me,” she says, “about the flowers on Sateda.”
Ronon smiles.
And a silly Ronon/John adventure.
Never Leave a Man Behind
“He is a very experienced Runner,” says the village elder. His smile is wide and kind, and, to John’s eyes, a little demented. “And one without a tracking device! He is a veritable fount of knowledge! We will learn much from him about dealing with the Wraith. I am certain he will be quite happy with us.”
“Yeah, that’s funny,” John says, “because I don’t think so.”
“Colonel,” Teyla says gently, a warning hand on his arm that telegraphs we’re unarmed and outgunned and they’ve already kidnapped one of us. Don’t do anything stupid(er).”
John shrugs off the hand. “And the reason I don’t think so is because you’ve restrained him. Call me crazy, but I get the feeling Ronon doesn’t really care for being restrained. Also, he told you he didn’t want to stay.”
“Oh, he’ll get used to it,” the elder waved his hand dismissively, making the ceremonial knot of ribbons around his wrist wave about. These people really seem to like ribbons. “I’m sure he’ll be quite happy, in time. Summer is coming, and the village is quite lovely in the summer. We have a plentiful harvest, we’ve given him our most comfortable accomodations, and a number of comely young women have already expressed an interest in him.”
“I do not believe,” Teyla says, “that will be sufficient to change Ronon’s mind.”
“No?” The elder frowns briefly, then brightens back into his customary good humor. “Well, a number of comely young men have also expressed an interest in him. I am certain he’ll have his pick before the season’s out!”
“That’s not what she-”
“Colonel,” Teyla says, again with the gently restraining hand on John’s arm. What is up with that?
::
When Ronon awakens, he is tied to a very, very comfortable chair.
His head hurts, a vicious pounding inside his skull, and there is a foul taste in his mouth. He feels out the rest of his body, carefully assessing. There seems to be no damage. He tugs carefully at his bonds, and discovers that the knots holding him are soft, silky, deceptively yielding and completely secure. Ronon hates being tied up against his will. And, apparently, he was drugged at the harvest ceremony. Ronon really, really hates being drugged.
He listens intently. He is not alone. There is brightness against his eyelids, and the sound of whispering and muffled giggles. He opens his eyes to better assess his circumstances.
“Oh, good, you’re awake!” pipes a bright little voice.
“What do you want?” he rumbles.
“You’re really big,” says the little voice. The speaker is a small child in a brilliantly colored dress, whose long hair is woven through with half a dozen colorful ribbons. She grins up at him impudently.
“Yes,” Ronon replies.
“How’d you get so big?”
“Aw, grownups always tell you it’s because they ate all their vegetables,” remarks another child, this one wearing brightly colored trousers, a wildly patterned shirt and a short vest.
“You gonna tell us it’s because you ate all your vegetables?” the first child frowns, suspicious.
Ronon thinks about it. “Yes,” he says, perversely. “I ate all the vegetables my mother gave me at every meal, and often asked for seconds.”
The child scowls. “Well,” she finally decides. “I wouldn’t want to get that big anyway. It looks stupid.”
Ronon tugs at his bindings some more, discreetly.
A young woman strides into the room, skirts frothing around her as she moves. Her hair is in a riot of glossy curls down her back, and she wears what looks to be several yards of colorful ribbons. Her bodice is so tight Ronon wonders if she has difficulty breathing. The overall effect is to thrust up her chest as if it is on offer. Upon reflection, Ronon decides perhaps it is, although he is not sure if the offer might apply to the world at large or to anyone specific.
“Children!” she exclaims. “What are you doing here? You should be off at your lessons! Go!”
The children scatter and run off, tiny little voices piping protests.
The woman turns to Ronon. “I’m so sorry if they were bothering you,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Ronon says. “Now let me go.”
“Oh,” she says, eyes widening as if in surprise. “You don’t want to go back to those people you came with, do you? But they all look so… drab. Wouldn’t you rather stay here with us? I brought you fresh berry cakes.” She brandishes a tray, whipping off a cloth napkin to reveal a small heap of jewel-like pastries. “My father is an excellent baker.”
“They will come looking for me,” Ronon says, letting his voice dip threateningly low as he keeps tugging at his bindings.
The woman shrugs and picks up a pastry in her lithe golden fingers, then bites into it with a happy sigh. “Mmmm,” she says, and smiles prettily. “Are you certain you won’t try one?”
The door opens then, and a group of young women and men come in riding a cloud of giggles and ribbons. “Berry cakes!” cries a young man, clapping his hands. He wears a sky-blue vest, and his long braids are woven through with more of the ever-present ribbons. “And a new Guest! Share with us, Nala!”
“Be polite,” Nala admonishes with a toss of her head that sends equal parts ribbons and curls flying.
The others burst into agreeable bouts of laughter and chatter, and one of the girls, wearing a bodice as tight as Nala’s in the vibrant green of fresh leaves, brandishes a jug of the local sweet wine.
Ronon tugs harder at his bonds.
::
It takes about a week of stony-faced village guards and intractable village elders who won’t give an inch before John can finally talke Elizabeth into okaying the mission. Non-aggressive people, his ass. They tied up Ronon!
All avenues in or out of the village are guarded at all times, but John’s figured out a way around that.
He flies the jumper in stealth mode right up to the back of the cottage Ronon is being held prisoner in. Setting it to hover on automatic pilot, he surrenders the controls to Lorne, opens the door and drops to the ground, his boots making no noise in the grass. He nods, and two Marines drop out of the jumper, dressed all in black like John is, armed to the teeth.
Stealthily, they make their way to the rear window of the cottage, the only part of it not flanked by guards. John signals the Marines to stay back, and carefully peers into the room.
A peal of laughter and a burst of music greet him.
John’s eyes widen. Ronon is ensconced in what looks like a very comfortable chair, two giggling children on his lap, tugging at his beard and feeding him cookies. Two young men and a comely young woman are clustered around him, braiding ribbons into his hair.
A girl with long, be-ribboned braids is playing an oddly-shaped stringed instrument, and villagers of all ages laugh and dance about the room, skirts and vests whirling madly.
One of the dancers whirls close to Ronon’s chair, reaching out a slender arm to tug at his wrist, and he stands up, trailing ribbons, a gleefully squealing child in each arm, and lets her tug him forward to join the dance.
John frowns. He’s quite certain Ronon used to be tied to that chair. He gestures the Marines to stay back out of sight and knocks on the open shutter. The music stops as everyone inside turns to look at him. Ronon stands there blankly for a second, then sets the children down and walks forward, bracing large hands on the windowsill to look down at John.
“Hey,” John says, awkwardly.
“Hey,” Ronon answers.
“We came to rescue you.”
Ronon tilts his head, considering. He looks back at the villagers, the whole colorfully-attired group of them looking at him wide-eyed and hopeful. He turns back and favors John with a long look. “Okay,” he finally says, and clambers out the window.
The village guards spring into action, and the entire troop of people inside the cottage rush out to pursue them, but Ronon grabs John’s wrist and tugs. They run like hell towards the treeline, the Marines covering them, and leap into the puddlejumper as soon as Lorne decloaks it.
::
“So,” John says, following Ronon out of the debriefing with Elizabeth. “That was close, huh?”
Ronon just looks at him. He’s still wearing the villagers’ traditional garb of shirtless, brightly colored vest and trousers along with his usual necklaces. The are ribbons knotted around his biceps to trail down along his muscled arms, and he still hasn’t taken the half-woven-in ribbons out of his hair. John wouldn’t have thought so, but the getup suits him.
“It looked like you were having a pretty good time there.”
“It was okay,” Ronon shrugs.
“I mean, if you wanna go back there,” John opens his hands expansively.
“You want me to go back.” Ronon crosses his arms.
“Of course not! I rescued you, didn’t I?”
“Took you a week.”
“Elizabeth wouldn’t let me take the jumper!” John realizes that sounded perilously close to a whine, but he didn’t mean it to. “But I was trying. Teyla and Rodney and I were talking with the village elders, like, every day.”
“You were?” Ronon’s face softens a little.
“Of course we were! You didn’t think we were just gonna leave you there, did you?”
Ronon shrugs again. “Seemed like they liked me.”
“We like you!” John scrubs a hand through his hair, even though he knows that will flatten the parts that are supposed to stick up and stick up the parts that are supposed to lie flat. It’s not like anyone can tell which is which, anyway. “I like you,” he admits.
Ronon smiles.
“But, you know, if you wanna go back, I’d totally understand. It’s not like you have to stick around here.”
The smile disappears.
“I mean, I know we don’t have a whole lot of ribbons on Atlantis. And then there’s the whole Wraith thing. And yeah, Earth people are a little weird, and we’ve got-”
“Sheppard,” Ronon says. “I like you, too.”
“Really?” John blinks.
“Yeah.” Ronon turns in the direction of his quarters. “Want to finish braiding the ribbons into my hair?”
“That isn’t some sort of Satedan euphemism, is it?”
“No.”
“Oh.” John shrugs. “Yeah, okay.” He falls into step with Ronon. “I’m really glad you decided to come back with us, you know.”
“Don’t ruin the moment, Sheppard,” Ronon says.