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Rated K.

Spoilers for SGA 5x01 "Search and Rescue."

Strong

by Helen W.

Years ago, when he'd first started Running, Ronon would sometimes be almost overcome with rage toward Sateda, toward his people. They'd let the apocalypse happen in their generation, through their weakness and their pride.

Everyone. Every single one of them. They should have been stronger.

As months and years passed, however, so did his rage, finally shrinking to where the Wraith could wholly bear it.

And he began to wonder why he, alone, had lived. Was there some reason beyond a Wraith's desire for sport? It came to him that it was not that his people had been too weak to live, but that he had been too strong to die.

At first, this thought caused him as much guilt as his earlier rage had. He'd been taught, after all, that while pride was essential for a warrior, too much led to the vulnerability of arrogance.

But gradually he accepted this to be true. He, Ronon of Sateda, was too strong to die.

Then he met Teyla. And John and Rodney and Elizabeth and Dr. Beckett and other people whose wellbeing he came to care about, but it was when he was with Teyla that he could almost feel his mind untwist. She was clearly not only strong in the ways he was, but also in many ways he wasn't, and not because of some gift of the Ancestors but because she chose to be.

But still, he never doubted that being strong was important; maybe even moreso now, because he had more to protect.

And John valued and respected his strength, and Ronon felt almost as strongly for him as he did for Teyla.

So he ran, he used the Earthers' strange equipment to build up the muscles in his arms and his back, and he tried to absorb everything Teyla could teach him about grace and speed.

Though he now knew that to view himself as Special in the eyes of the Ancestors was a heresy, his pride in his body and what it could do, if anything, increased. When they encountered Tyre, Rakai, and Ara, it was almost as much his desire to share these skills - even show off a bit - as his desire to take the feeling of belonging he'd found on Atlantis and extend it to the last remnants of his people, that led to him almost joining forces with them.

More and more, though, there were challenges that they faced that muscle could do nothing about, deaths that he couldn't prevent. The first big loss was Dr. Beckett. Others had saved his life, but the doctor had saved his soul, twice: freed him from the Wraith despite his obvious terror, and kept him from a useless death on Sateda when even John had been willing to let him bash his fool head open if that's what he wanted.

And then they'd lost Dr. Weir, who'd never shown him anything but kindness. He didn't know what his planet's leaders had been like, but they couldn't have been anything like her.

And then Teyla was taken, and Ronon didn't think that he could bear it if she died; didn't think any of them could.

A building falling on your head gets your attention.

The destruction of Sateda ten years before had presented, starkly, a choice between giving into grief or accepting his body's strength and the life it afforded him.

Half-buried in the rubble of Michael's lab, Ronon realized he had another choice of the same magnitude. He could attempt to free himself and live to save Teyla, or stay and - what? Save Sheppard? With every heave against the beam John lay beneath, it became more obvious that that wasn't going to happen. Once again, Ronon had had enough strength to keep himself alive, to dodge debris as it fell, but that was its limit - he couldn't lift a building.

But to leave John was unfathomable. Because - yes, that was it! He was lending John another sort of strength. And that was how they were going to die --

Except, they didn't. And it was beyond his understanding why they hadn't, because staying and waiting and preparing to die together, taking as many of Michael's abominations with them as they could - that shouldn't have worked.

Maybe he'd been the wrong kind of strong all along.

Now what would Teyla say to that?

It looked like he might just be able to ask her.

But first, they had to get off Michael's ship - back to the jumper, out the way they'd come in or whatever other way John and Rodney came up with.

And Teyla was utterly, utterly spent, cradling her son.

"Ronon, you may need to help me."

And so he picked her up, her and her baby. She wasn't light, but, by the Ancestors, he could carry her forever if that's what it took.

Yeah, it was good to be strong.

THE END

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