A/N: I'm finally ready(ish) to post this chapter! I rewrote it approximately a bajillion times, and this is the version I am most satisfied with. I hope you all enjoy it. This is the last main chapter of the story, though I do have a short epilogue that I will post shortly.
Thank you so much to everyone for reading and reviewing. I really appreciate it.
She gripped tightly to his jaw as she forced his bloodshot eyes to stare back at hers, waiting for him to explain himself, for him to somehow redeem his previous actions that had caused her so much pain.
Ronon finally licked his lips and opened them to speak. "I'm getting older, Emma," he started.
She scoffed and released his chin, frustrated that he was changing the subject to avoid telling her the truth. "You're older than me," she conceded, "But you're definitely not 'getting older,'" she countered. "You're barely over thirty."
"Look, you don't think I'm getting older, but I am. Where me and Teyla come from…we don't exactly live as long as people from Earth," he explained.
She had never realized it before, but he was right. On any planet in the Pegasus Galaxy, it was rare to encounter anyone over fifty. "The Wraith," she breathed as the comprehension dawned on her.
He nodded and returned his gaze to the ground for a moment before speaking again. "My people didn't live very long, and so we tended to do a lot of things earlier than your people," he began. "I was recruited into the military when I was fifteen, eighteen when I got promoted to Specialist, and started commanding my own unit by the time I was nineteen."
Emma crossed her arms across her chest, trying to maintain patience as he meandered around the point of his explanation, whatever it was.
"For us Satedans, those late teenage years were a really important time." He took a deep breath. "It was when we would start marrying, settling down, having families… Hell," he sighed, "by the time I was twenty, I was already married. Melena was pregnant; I was gonna be a father." He glanced over to her.
She nodded, her features bristling as she recalled their fight in the sparring room a few months earlier and the hurtful comparison he had made between his departed wife and her, between that unborn child and their own. Had that part of the fight been a lie, as well?
"And then I got turned into a Runner," he continued. "Instead of having a family with her, instead of raising our children together, I spent seven years of my twenties totally alone. 2,648 nights of complete solitude. No friends, no family, no wife." He took a sidelong glance over toward her and she felt her pulse quicken. "I gave up any hope of ever having a normal life, of ever having a family with someone. I accepted it." He paused and rubbed the top of his back with his right hand. "I think I woulda lost my mind if I hadn't," he said under his breath. "And once I got here where things were more normal, I still accepted it. I was too old; my chance at fatherhood had been with Melena and that was it."
"Ronon, I get it but I—"
"Let me finish," he interrupted.
She raised her eyebrows in surprise, reevaluating her usual opinion that getting the taciturn Satedan to open up was like pulling teeth. She wasn't sure if she had ever heard him talk for this long, and yet he insisted on continuing. She closed her mouth and waited, afraid that if she cut him off again he wouldn't keep talking.
He took in another great breath of air. "All of that changed once I met you."
Her heart skittered against her ribs. "Me?" she questioned, her voice hardly audible.
"Do you remember your first trip to the mainland?" he asked, shifting his body on the bed so that he faced her.
She nodded and knitted her brows, struggling to follow his train of thought.
"When we were in the jumper on the way back, you fell asleep on my shoulder." He titled his head. "Do you remember that?"
She nodded again, failing to stop the smile forming across her lips. "I was tired...and cold." She blinked slowly. "You were warm."
His eyes softened and his voice dropped as he took in her small smile. "For a long time, I didn't think I would ever hold a woman in my arms again. But with you so close…" He trailed off for a moment and shook his head. "I probably shouldn't have because you were asleep and we barely knew each other, but…I put my arm around you while you slept," he said, "and pulled you closer."
Emma closed her eyes tightly and bowed her head.
"And I knew."
"Knew what?" she asked, looking back up at him from beneath her eyelashes.
"That you could help me get back what I thought I would never be able to have." He reached across her lap, took her hand in his again and clutched it tightly, looking back into her eyes. "Emma, I died on that hive ship. And all I could think about while I was dying was that I wouldn't be able to spend my life with you or…" he swallowed, "or have a family with you. And it made me realize that I don't want to live with that kind of regret."
She stared back at him, completely dumbstruck. It was an odd role reversal for them. She, the one who talked for a living, was hardly ever the quiet one. Daunted by his intense gaze, she looked away and inhaled deeply, her breath rattling in her chest as she did. "This is a lot," she finally managed to say, bringing a hand to her forehead and shaking her head. "I was not expecting this."
"I didn't…I didn't mean to overwhelm you," he apologized, rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb. "I just…"
She braved a glance back at him and felt her defenses slowly start to fall as she realized that his eyes, normally hooded with mischief, were instead wide with hope.
"You said you wanted the truth," he finished.
She sighed. He had given her the truth, and now she owed him hers. "Ronon…it's not easy for me to talk about motherhood," she confessed.
"'Cause of your daughter," he supplied.
She nodded. "The Wraith robbed you of your opportunity to become a parent. But me…I rejected mine." She looked down into her lap, then licked her lips. "I didn't want her. It's not like I couldn't have taken care of her; it's not like I was a kid. I was twenty – the same age you were. And I'm sure my family would have supported me but…" she blinked to keep tears from clouding her vision, "I hated her father and I just…didn't want her."
He put his hand on her cheek.
"And now, I can't help but think that my miscarriage was somehow the universe's way of punishing me for that," she whispered, her eyes still fixed on her lap.
"Emma…" he breathed.
"That's why I left," she said, her voice cracking as she continued to try to hold back tears. "After losing the baby and…losing you, I had to be near her. I had to hold her; I had to feel her heart beat," she cried. "I couldn't bear to lose two children, Ronon."
Ronon slid his arm behind her neck and pulled her close.
For a moment, she released her pride and her anger toward him and leaned her weight against his, yearning to once again feel the safety and comfort of his embrace.
"Look," he started, his voice low and quiet in her ear, "I know we haven't been together for very long and all of this sounds insane, but all I want is to be with you, Emma. I want things to be the way they were before I pushed you away." He ran his hand up and down the length of her back and she found herself surrendering to the warmth of his touch. "I'm not saying that I want to have a family right now," he continued, "I first gotta kill every Wraith in the galaxy..."
A small laugh escaped from Emma's lips as she pulled away and looked back at him. His tone was joking, but she knew him well enough to recognize the veiled conviction behind his statement.
"Just…one day," he finished, looking down into her eyes.
"One day…" she whispered, mulling his words over, her pulse racing as she searched his eyes with her own. "If this is what you want, then why did you lie to me? Why did you say you didn't want it? Why didn't you just tell me the truth?"
"Because if I had told you the truth, you would have argued with me. You would have talked me out of doing it and I just couldn't take that risk."
"And that would have been for the best!" she interrupted, the anger she had temporarily pushed aside surfacing once again.
"I was convinced that it was my fault, that all of your pain and suffering was because of me," he said over her protests. "And I'm done making other people suffer because of my carelessness."
"But by breaking us up, you did make me suffer! Even more than I already was!" she shouted. "You made everything worse! I needed you, Ronon. When we were in the infirmary and you told me you loved me, you promised you wouldn't leave me but then you did!" The tears she had been holding back finally began to leak out of her eyes and she quickly brushed them away with her sleeve. "If you had just told me the truth, we could have avoided all of this."
Ronon cradled his head in his hands. "You're right. But it's too late now to–"
"I don't like being lied to," she interrupted. "You had no right to take that kind of unilateral action knowing that it would impact both of us. You took away my voice; you gave me no decision in the matter," she snapped. "I don't like being manipulated like that."
He looked back over to her and a wounded expression fell across his face. Apparently, he had never thought of it that way before. "I'm so sorry," he breathed, shaking his head. "I was angry with myself and I was just trying to protect you."
"I don't care why you did it," she barked.
He closed his mouth and nodded. "I should never have done it," he conceded.
"Don't you ever lie to me again," she ordered. "Even if you're doing it because you think you're trying to protect me."
He nodded his head once more.
She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest, avoiding eye contact with him.
"Listen," he finally said after a few moments of tense silence. "I won't blame you if you don't forgive me for the way I treated you," he told her, moving a few strands of hair out of her face and behind her shoulder so that he could see her profile. "And I know that I have a lot more to apologize for than just lying to you." He brought his hand down to rest on her thigh. "Just…know that I love you."
Staring down at his hand on her leg, she didn't say anything for a while. She eventually shifted her gaze from his hand, followed the length of his arm up to his shoulder, then to his neck, to his face, and finally let her eyes meet his. His regard, both pleading and sincere, was more convincing to her than anything he had said. She leaned closer to him and wrapped one of her hands behind his neck. He furrowed his brow with confusion as he looked down at her until she closed her eyes and softly brought her lips to his. Their kiss was short and chaste, neither one asking more of the other once it was over, but the barrier between them had been crossed. "I'll forgive you, Ronon," she started, her lips still grazing his as she spoke. "One day."