((If I owned SGA, there would be more red heads and Ronon would follow a religion that required it's worshipers to be shirtless. Always shirtless.))
Ronon sat alone in the cafeteria, a bowl of uneaten jello in front of him. He hadn't even picked up his spoon. That was where John found him the next morning. It had been two weeks since their encounter with the girl on P7X-575, and ever since something had been different with his best friend. Ronon had been even more quiet than usual and this wasn't the first time he had left him somewhere at night only to found he hadn't moved in the morning.
"Hey, buddy, you feelin' all right?"
"Of course." John's voice had snapped him out of whatever trance he had been in. He lifted his spoon and took a bite out of the jello, ignoring the face John was making.
"I don't know, Ronon, you've been weird ever since that girl on-"
"No I haven't." His words weren't meant to be a defense of his actions, they were meant to be the end of the conversation. John knew Ronon well enough to know that he would never open up about it on his own, but he also knew what it looked like when Ronon was bothered, and he had been very bothered ever since P7X-575.
"C'mon Ronon, I know you don't want to talk about it-"
"You're right, I don't." Ronon stood and turned from the table.
"Ronon! Sit down."
Slowly he turned back to Sheppard. "Is that an order?"
John weighed his options. If he made it an order, Ronon would be angry with him and they were supposed to spar later that day. He didn't even want to think about how sore he would be tomorrow if he made it an order. But he also knew that Ronon would leave if he could, and that he needed to find out what was bothering him.
"Yes. It is."
Ronon didn't even sigh as he sat back down. "What?"
"You've been weird ever since we met that girl on P7X. Why? What did she do or say that's bothered you this much?"
Ronon's shoulders slumped forward and John had to look away. He had never seen so much emotion on his friend's face, even after everything they had seen.
"Did I ever tell you..." Ronon stopped, then started again, "Can we go somewhere else?" More and more members of the expedition were filtering into the room, including a surprisingly wide awake Rodney McKay who had tried to catch Sheppard's eye when he came in.
"Of course, let's go." Sheppard and Ronon both pretended not to hear McKay when he called after them as they left.
Ten or fifteen minutes later they sat on the edge of the East Pier, both looking at the sunset, the smell of salt thick in the air. John waited, not wanting to push Ronon any further than he had. The water was very cold, and it wouldn't be the first time one of them had pushed the other in. They must have sat there for almost forty minutes before Ronon finally spoke
"I told you about Melena." His voice hadn't made the statement a question, but John still felt compelled to answer it.
"Yeah."
Ronon paused again, seeming to take a whole new direction with the conversation. "On your planet, when two people... enter into a serious relationship, they always get married, right?"
"Well, more or less," John didn't think that now was a good time for an in depth lesson on Earth culture.
"On Seteda two people rarely got married. It just... never became the normal thing to do. But they still had families."
John had a terrifying idea of where Ronon was headed with this.
"Comparing Seteda standards to Earth, Melena and I were as good as married. We had been for thirteen years." Another lengthy pause, and then the words came tumbling out quickly, one right after another. "We had a daughter. She was twelve when the wraith attacked and was taken early on, along with several other children. She had Melena's eyes. We tried to save her but there was nothing we could do, the wraith were coming too fast and there weren't even enough supplies to defend the planet and-" He broke off, but didn't wait for the obligatory 'it wasn't your fault' speech. "She would have been twenty two this year."
John took a deep breath, wanting to cry for his friend but knowing Ronon would see it as an insult. "And you think that was her."
For the first time Ronon looked at John. "She had Melena's eyes."
"All right then. We tell Keller to put a rush on trying to find a way to get that tracker out of her, and then we bring her to the city."
"You would do that?" It still surprised John how shocked Ronon always was when someone from Atlantis offered to do something for him.
"Of course. I'll do it right now." John stood, readjusted the bottom of his shirt, and turned toward the door. When he reached it he stopped, looking over his shoulder at Ronon. "What was her name?"
There was a slight pause before Ronon answered. "Kielle."
John nodded, then swiped his hand in front of the control panel to open the door. Ronon continued to sit on the East Pier until well after the sun had disappeared into the ocean.
((Honestly, I haven't decided if her name is pronounced KI-elle, Key-Elle, or Key-a-lay. What do you guys think? I'm leaning towards KI-elle... Also, I realized that because this is AU I could have brough Carsen in, and I love him, but Scottish accents are hard to write.))