When the door to her quarters opened, Ronon was momentarily taken aback. It wasn't that he wasn't expecting to see her on the other side. He was. It was her room. He just wasn't expecting… well, he didn't really know what he wasn't expecting.
Sweetness. Flowers. Soap. She smelled so… distracting.
She'd recently bathed, the tips of her hair still damp and hanging loosely across her bare shoulders. Shoulders which were holding up a pair of ridiculously thin strings that were attached to a tight fitting top. Her pants, slung low across her narrow hips dropped down into loose fitting puddles that covered her feet and why were they decorated with little yellow smiles?
When her feet moved he realized he'd been staring down at where her bare toes were peeking out from under the edge of the material. He snapped his eyes up.
"Thanks for coming." She stepped aside, allowing him to enter. "I just…" She sighed. "Wanted to explain… things."
He nodded, his eyes dropping to her left shoulder when she turned and limped towards a desk in the corner. From a spot a finger's width below the curve of her shoulder, her normally cream toned skin was a dark yellow, disappearing down below the material of her shirt in a blotched mix of green and a deep purple. Where she'd been hit with the beam protecting her patient. He felt a flury of anger welling up as he stared at the strip bandage showing just above her left shoulder-blade. It marked the spot where her stitches would be. Twelve. An even dozen, Sheppard had called it. Twelve too many.
She turned, hesitating. "Ronon?"
He met her eyes.
"Is… was this a bad time? I mean… it's not urgent." She turned and walked slowly back towards him, her gait staggered and uneven with her tightly bandaged foot. "We can… I… It's not that important if you have to… be somewhere?" She stopped in front of him, and his position just inside her closed door.
He shook his head. "No. I'm good."
She nodded. "Are you sure? Because if you-"
"I'm good." He repeated.
She chewed her lower lip.
"It's okay." He wanted to reassure her. To see the hesitation gone. So he stepped further into the room and changed the topic. "Should you be standing?" He glanced down at her wrapped foot.
She shrugged, turning towards him. "I'm not going far."
They stayed that way, chest to chest, inches apart, staring into each others faces until she finally broke away. He wondered at her strange expression, the distance, as though her thoughts were far away. Another time. Another place.
Then she nodded, answering an internal question, and released her lower lip from between her teeth. "Okay. I won't keep you long."
She moved back to the desk, reaching for something sitting on the surface. Reaching for a small book. Reaching for his knife.
She turned, and crossed the room towards him. Realizing she wasn't going to stay off her feet so long as he was standing, he moved past her and lowered himself onto the end of her bed. She immediately followed and sat beside him, her fingers tracing the edges of the small black book. Flipping it open, she quickly moved past pictures. Photographs. Smiling people. Old and young. Groups and singles. She moved the pages quickly, seeking a specific image, and when she reached it, removed the photo and set the book aside. With a deep breath she held out the picture, the angle of the light releasing the glare across the surface and giving him a more completed view.
His heart staggered to a stop and he held his breath. The girl, the child from the planet, the blood, the arrow, the death. It all came flashing back as he stared at the image in his hands. Smiling, laughing, face turned into the sun. Blond hair divided in two windblown braids that were held floating around her face, frozen in time. Bright eyes. Hazel eyes. Her eyes. Filled with life and laughter. Lifted in the arms of an older man, a man who held her tightly, protectively, as they smiled together.
"That's me." She said softly, but he needed no explanation. It could be no other. "And that's Papa. My Grandfather."
He nodded, handing back the photo, wanting to push away the image of the child from the planet. The image of her from the planet.
She set the photo back into the book, returning it to its home, and closing the cover. Ronon didn't miss the fact that she'd done it without letting go of his knife.
She sighed softly, staring at the handle of the dagger, running her fingers lightly over the worn and faded carvings.
"Papa was a soldier in the second World War." She began, her fingers tracing a nervous stripe down the length of the blade and back again. He was hypnotized by the movement, and by the soft sound of her voice. "He had this huge collection of knifes and weapons, bullets, weird souvenirs he'd gathered while he was in Europe. All this… stuff…"
Ronon didn't understand the details, but he understood the concept of collecting battle trophies. She absently reached across his chest and lifted the thick cord around his neck, slowly letting the leather strap slide through her fingers down to the Wraith teeth dangling from the end. He held his breath, her cool touch burning his skin as her knuckles lightly scraped over the bare skin of his open shirt. "He had the strangest things. Well, to a kid they were strange. Fascinating. He kept so much."
He was finally able to breath again when she dropped her hand, returning it to her lap, and his knife.
"One summer, I think I was… seven or eight… I was playing GI Joe's with the kids from down the street."
"GI Joe? Like Sheppard's comic book?"
She laughed. "Why doesn't that surprise me? I'm sure they did… do have comics about it. I know there's cartoons on TV. And toys, and all kinds of stuff. We used to play it all the time. I mean, I grew up on a street of boys, of course that's what they played."
A smile tugged the corner of his mouth as he tried to picture those little braids running around with a crowd full of boys… then he had to frown at the thought of the little braids and a crowd of boys.
She giggled at the memory, shaking her head, then her smile faltered.
"What?" He leaned closer.
She sighed, her eyes returning to the knife sitting on her lap. "We were going to play out on McDermot's woodlot one day and for some reason I decided that I needed to have a sword like the other boys. I couldn't find anything in the garage or the shed, and then I remembered that Papa'd left one of his cases behind the last time he'd visited. So I um… went into it and took out one of his knives."
She made a face and stood up, moving a few feet away, her fingers picking at the handle of the knife while she spoke. "We played all afternoon and somehow, at some point…" She turned back towards him, her eyes sad. "I lost it."
"You lost it?"
"I… put it down, or it fell out of my sock, or I got distracted." She sighed, resuming her awkward pacing. "I spent the entire afternoon looking for it. The boys eventually gave up and went home for supper but I just couldn't leave it there. It was Papa's knife. I had to bring it back."
Ronon stood up and grabbed her shoulders, angling her back towards the bed and forcing her to sit down. He returned to the spot beside her.
"I was out there all day looking for the damn thing. The boys went home. I cried. I looked. I cried some more. Then it got dark and I didn't want to go home unless I had it with me."
She stood up to resume her awkward pacing, taking two steps before he pulled her back down.
"By then Dad had the whole town out looking for me. I was in such trouble when they finally figured out where I was. They were so angry! The Sheriff was yelling. Papa was yelling. Dad was yelling. I was bawling."
Ronon could only imagine the anxiety involved in finding your child missing. Lost. Hell he'd damn near gone insane when she'd been on the planet. He couldn't imagine the fear of losing your child. Any child. His child.
She stood up again, his distraction letting her get several wobbly steps away before his arms grabbed her waist and he pulled her gently backwards, forcing her to sit back down onto the bed.
"I spent two weeks in that woodlot looking for it. Every day. I just had to find it. I had to give it back. He was just so angry with me for taking it. I was so convinced that Papa would hate me forever for losing it."
"Jennifer, I don't…" He frowned. "I'm not angry with you for borrowing a knife."
She glanced sideways at him, searching his face, before angling her body towards him.
"Ronon, I broke into your room and stole your knife. You have every right to be angry."
"Did you need it?"
"What?"
"Did you need it?"
"I… well… no, not originally…"
"Did you need it?"
She sighed. "Yes."
"Then why would you think I'd fault you for taking it?"
"But it's not even why I was even there."
"Why were you there?"
Her teeth returned to chewing her bottom lip, and her face turned several shades of scarlet. She leaned foward and moved to stand up but he hooked his arm around her waist, snugging her right hip firmly against his left. This time he didn't release her.
"Stop walking on it." He growled.
"Sorry." She mumbled. "I pace when I'm nervous."
"I make you nervous?" He didn't want to hear her answer, but waited, the question hanging in the air like a red flag.
"No." She immediately responded. "Well, not really. I mean, yes, sometimes, but not… not in a bad way. It's just that… you… I can't… you know?"
He raised an eyebrow, not understanding a word of her admission other than no.
Her shoulders tensed then released, and she sighed. "I was there because wanted to ask you something." Her voice was a quiet whisper.
"What did you want to ask me?"
Her shoulders dropped and she lowered her head, her hair falling to completely cover her face. He reached out, unable to stop himself from tucking the golden locks in behind her ear. It was an intimate gesture. He knew this. But he needed to see her face. Even if it was fully flushed with embarassment.
She tilted her head, watching him out of the corner of her eye. She released her bottom lip from its trapped location between her teeth. Then, with a deep breath, the words tumbled out and he let them flow, catching pieces, what he hoped were the right pieces, and tried to place them together in some semblance of importance.
"I didn't know who else to ask. I didn't know where to wait. I knew you'd be back soon and I didn't have much time and I couldn't keep pacing the hallway because everyone was looking at me funny and I thought maybe if I just waited inside because I wasn't going to be long. I mean… you told me once I could… if I needed to… So, so I did… but I guess I shouldn't have… I mean that was completely wrong… now, looking back, but I didn't at the time… so I sat down, and I waited. I saw your collection. On the table. By the chair. And the one… this one… it looked so much like Papa's knife. I just picked it up. I started thinking about Papa. About his knife. About you and yours and wondering how you managed to hide the damn things all over the place without cutting yourself and for some god-awful reason I stuck it in my sock, just like I had with Papa's knife when I was little. It's where I carried it. In my sock. I just slipped it in there. And I got to thinking about Papa and everything else and I guess I must have fallen asleep. I mean, I did fall asleep. I didn't mean to. And then well, you came back and I sort of forgot I had it. And I didn't mean to take it. I wasn't planning on keeping it-"
"Jennifer." He gave her hip a shake, bringing her out of her babbling.
She stilled, her voice trailing off as she stared down into her hands.
She slowly released her grip on the hilt and held the knife out to him. "I'm sorry."
"I don't care about the knife." He growled, wincing when it came off much lounder than he intended.
She hesitated, her fingers wavering slightly. She lowered the dagger, her hand resting on her thigh.
"The knife is just an object." He ammended. "It's just a thing. It's replaceable. You're not." He willed her to understand. Knowing he was going to be making his own confession soon enough. But first he needed her to realize he was not angry with her. If anything she should be angry with him.
He watched her digsting his words, her bottom lip making the trip back up under her teeth.
"Now. What was it you wanted to ask me?"
