Title: Healing
Author: Myriad
Classifications: Dexfic, Sateda tag, Angst, Romance, Ronon/Malena, Spanky
Spoilers: 3x04 Sateda
Disclaimer: I don't own it.
Author's Note: Wow. I'm not really sure what to say. But after watching Sateda, and talking about it with my best friend (far too many of our "deep" discussions revolve around sci-fi), I couldn't really not write this. It wouldn't let me ignore it. I'm not entirely sure I made the point I was supposed to make at the end, but hopefully you'll like it all the same. On a purely asthetic note, ff dot net is being stubborn, so sorry if the formatting is wonky.

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Malena.

It had been months, years perhaps, since he'd let himself remember. But on Sateda, in their home, the memories had returned. Somehow he hadn't been able to push them back.

Just as he couldn't ignore them now, lying in the infirmary with nothing but the beeping of the heart monitor to keep him company.

He hadn't had the energy to argue with Beckett when the doctor had insisted he spend the night in the infirmary. He'd been too disoriented, too confused by the mess of hormones and painkillers and adrenaline to recall why he avoided hospitals.

He'd first met her at a hospital, or rather the clinic, for the neighborhood they'd grown up in didn't have the money for cutting-edge medical facilities. Salen's district, two steps up from the slums and three away from decent urban living.

He'd been there to have a bone set—his left arm, broken in a fight in the schoolyard when the teacher wasn't watching. As he'd sat there, cradling his arm and telling himself fiercely that at twelve, he was a man, and men did not cry, she'd come and sat beside him.

He'd done his best to ignore her; guys like him didn't have time for shrimpy little kids. She would have been seven then, though she'd looked younger. But as hard as he'd tried, he couldn't escape from that bouncy, cheerful little girl with her mess of red-gold curls. She'd jabbered on about herself and her family, undeterred by the irritated grunts that were the only response he would give her. Her father had Hashka—what Beckett called lung cancer—and she often came with him when he visited the doctor.

It had surprised and pleased him—secretly, of course; he wasn't about to admit he liked the little shrimp—to learn that her family lived in the same building as his. Malena and her parents lived on the fourth floor, while he and his mother had a tiny place on floor thirteen.

Her father had died only a few months after he met her, and it had bothered him more than he'd liked to see the change it made in her. She was still friendly, still cheerful, but there was a flatness in her eyes that hadn't been there before. He'd barely bothered to pretend to complain when she'd started following him to school, so relieved was he that she was returning to her old self. By the time she started studying with him after school, he'd practically forgotten he'd ever been bothered by her.

He lost count of the number of times her mother appeared at their apartment, hysterical because it was suppertime and she couldn't find Malena, only to see her daughter seated beside him at the kitchen table. Eventually their mothers came to take it as a given that wherever one of them was, the other was nearby.

He'd enjoyed teaching her. She was smart, much smarter than he was, though he did all right when he bothered to do his homework. He liked the way her eyes lit up whenever he explained his schoolwork to her. It barely occurred to them that the work was five years ahead of her—she'd already skipped one grade, so what were a few more? She liked Biology especially, and more than once he'd had to sneak into her room to steal back his textbook.

Years passed. The slid comfortably into being friends, and eventually the neighbors, the school, even his classmates accepted their strange partnership.

Then, when he was eighteen and she thirteen, he'd given her her first kiss and nearly ruined it all.

He still couldn't say what had possessed him to do it. It was spring, almost the end of the term, and they'd moved their studying from his kitchen table to a small park a few blocks away. Neither one of them was having much luck concentrating, though Malena was determined to make him pass his math class. He'd given her one of his million reasons why math was not important, and she'd laughed, and before he quite knew what was happening, his lips were on hers.

They barely spoke for a month after that, and when they did, it was different. They started to argue, nasty little sniping matches neither of them meant.

He graduated from school and left Salen's district to join the army. It was the only way he knew to get out. They only saw each other on his few weeks' leave twice a year, and though he missed her so much sometimes it hurt, he thought it was better for both of them. They didn't argue so much when they were together, though there was still an underlying tension he couldn't explain.

She'd grown up quickly in the next few years, or so it had seemed to him. One month she was the innocent little girl he'd always known, and the next time he saw her she'd turned into a woman. He'd started to feel guilty that he couldn't take her with him when he went back to the city. It was criminal to leave someone so beautiful, so joyful in a place like Salen's district.

And when she'd turned up on his doorstep a few days after she'd graduated high school with the news that both of their mothers were dead, how could he have turned her away?

It had been strange, living with her again now that they were both grown up, or as grown up as anybody was at eighteen and twenty-three. The strange mood that had prompted him to kiss her years before seemed to be with him permanently now, and he didn't dare touch her for fear something as simple as a joking elbow in the ribs would turn into something they would both regret.

They'd started arguing again, frustrated with themselves and with each other. There was a sort of bleakness in her eyes when she looked at him, an emotion he couldn't name whenever he reached for her and forced himself to pull back.

She'd threatened to move out, never mind that a significant portion of his salary and the small wages she earned waiting tables went to putting her through medical school and she couldn't possibly afford a place of her own. They'd both snapped then, and before either of them could stop themselves he had her pressed against the wall with his hand on her hips and his lips on hers.

He'd pulled back guiltily when he felt her hands tugging his shirt out of his waistband. This was Malena. He couldn't—

But she'd just laughed at his apologies and grabbed him again. Dimly he'd realized this was what they had both wanted since he'd first kissed her.

He'd been mildly terrified the first time they made love—not for himself, but for her. He knew it was her first time, and she was just so small. She'd grinned at him afterwards when he told her and told him it would take more than Lieutenant Ronon Dex to break her. Which had prompted him to grab her again…

It had been only natural that they would marry two years later, when she passed the first level of her medical training and got an internship at one of the city's hospitals. With his promotion to Captain, they'd been able to move into a bigger home. Not big enough for children—neither of them was ready for that step—but big enough that they weren't constantly tripping over each other, however interesting the results of such encounters might have been.

They'd only been married a year when Sateda learned that the hive was on the way. He'd seen enough in his years in the military to know there was no way they could win the fight. And he couldn't let her die. He had to protect her, to keep her safe. He'd sold everything they owned to get her a place onboard the only ship leaving the planet.

And she refused to go. They'd argued fiercely, but in the end she'd stayed. Short of tying her to the ship, there was nothing he could do about it.

The betrayal had hurt more because she wasn't on board. That the man could sacrifice the entire planet's army so he alone would survive—but if she'd been with him, it wouldn't have mattered. If she'd survived…

It would have been something to cling to when he woke up on the Wraith ship after the explosion that killed her and knocked him unconscious. There'd been no sign of the girl she'd wanted him to save, no sign of anyone but the Wraith.

And then no sign of anyone at all for three long years, unless he was stupid enough to stop on an inhabited world. Which he didn't, after Ketula's world.

He still couldn't say what had carried him through it. Why he didn't just give in, let them take him, or end it himself. He thought about it. But something always stayed his hand, kept him running, fighting, living—if you could call it that.

Perhaps it had been sheer stubbornness. He was always stubborn, always rough, just a little wild, even as a child. Like an animal. And as he ran, as his world narrowed until survival was the only goal, the part of him that was animal grew. The part of him that was human, that liked to hear Malena laugh and liked to make her laugh, curled up inside and shrank until sometimes he thought it wasn't there at all. He didn't have many memories of his years on the run; the part of him that cared enough to remember had been hiding then. In many ways, it was still hidden now.

He wasn't the same person anymore. The rough boy who'd become a slightly more polished man and fallen in love with Malena had twisted, changed, until he was only a distorted reflection of himself, like the face he used to see in the warped mirror that had hung in his mother's room.

He wasn't sure he was capable of love now. He remembered being in love, remembered that it had been there, but the feeling didn't swell inside him the way it once did. Malena's innocence now seemed only weakness to him. If he met her now, he doubted he would see her the way the old him had.

It was not a pleasant thought. Marriage, he had been taught, was the most binding promise you could make. It was the reason neither his mother nor Malena's had remarried after the death of their husbands. When two people made that promise, it was forever.

But when one of them was dead and the other as good as gone, did it still hold? He was in many ways still an animal—

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Teyla appear in the doorway to the infirmary. Seeing that he was awake, she quietly crossed the room and sat beside his bed.

She was usually the first on the rare occasions when he found himself in the infirmary. Beckett was always around, of course, and Weir and Sheppard would stop by as soon as they thought he'd gotten enough rest. McKay would poke his head in eventually and mumble something. But Teyla always came within an hour of his waking up.

"How are you feeling?" she asked as she settled into the chair Beckett had left beside the bed.

"I'll live." He was living again, he reminded himself. Atlantis was sedating the animal, bringing the human back into fresh air. His reverie was proof of that, proof of the emotions he still had.

"Doctor Beckett says the surgery went well."

He shrugged. Beckett had done it before, hadn't he?

She said nothing, and he returned to his thoughts.

The part of him that was human was reemerging, slow as it might be. Over the past year he had spoken to, laughed with, even begun to care for Atlantis and the people within it. But he wondered if he could ever be the same man he had once been, wondered if he even wanted to be. Three years of his life, however animalistic they had been, could not be forgotten.

It had surprised him how easily he'd fallen back into the animalism, into the instincts. Run, fight, kill—self preservation came before all else, and what else there could have been he'd barely remembered. He'd thought he was dreaming when he saw Sheppard and Teyla standing in the hospital ruins with him. And then to see McKay and Beckett on the ship… In some strange way, Ronon the runner had begun to build a family again.

Something of what he thought must have passed across his face, for Teyla reached over and covered his hand with hers. He turned it over, surprising them both as he studied it.

Her hand was small in his, as Malena's had been, yet very different. The skin was darker, the palms rougher. Though Malena had worked hard, she was no warrioress, and in the hospital gloves usually protected her delicate fingers. Teyla's calluses told of her strength. He still felt the same protective urges towards he as he had with Malena—as he did with anyone smaller than he—but it was not tempered with the fear that she could not protect herself.

He closed Teyla's hand in his again, surprised by the pool of warmth in his belly. If it had been years since he'd let himself think of love, it had been equally long since he'd let himself think of lust. Yet there it was, mild, but present.

He glanced up and thought he saw the same heat mirrored in her eyes before she tucked it away behind the calm, enigmatic expression she usually wore.

"I am glad you are healing," she said, and he felt her hand tighten on his briefly.

He returned her grip, even managed a small smile. "Me too."