A/N: Welcome back, everyone! Sorry to leave you so long on that last cliff hanger. Hope you enjoy this next one. :)

As always, thank you so much for reading and reviewing.

"I didn't even think about it! I just did it! I snuck up behind one of the drones, attached some C4 to the back of its armor and once I was far enough away…boom! Fire in the hole." She could hear the breathless excitement of McKay's voice through the ringing in her ears. "I can't believe it worked. I mean, I could have seriously incinerated the crap out of all of us…but it worked!"

Emma blinked hard and, propping herself up on her forearms, tried to push her body off the soggy ground but a sprawling weight across her back crushed her into the damp grass. Falling flat again, she turned her head to investigate the heavy burden, but stopped short as the severed skin of her neck stretched and rubbed raw against itself, stinging anew as though the Wraith's knife were once again slicing through her skin. She must have made some sound of pain, for the weight against her back instantly lifted and before she realized what was happening, someone much stronger than her was rolling her onto her back, raising her torso off the rain-soaked earth, helping her to sit upright.

Blinking again, she forced her eyes to focus themselves onto the person in front of her. His eyes, neither green, nor brown, nor yellow, but a perfect coalescence of all three and sharp as a wolf's, did not meet her own; they darted back and forth, searching her body with a thoroughness that from any other man would have made her skin crawl. She was used to men gorging themselves upon the sight of her – they always did – sometimes up close, sometimes from across the room. Sometimes, if she looked close enough, she could even see their pupils dilate as they roamed farther south. And yet, though Ronon was inspecting every inch of her, face and neck, breast and waist, hips and legs, there was no hunger behind his gaze, no desire, only concern…and something else. Was it fear? All at once, hot tears, the emotion behind which she couldn't quite pinpoint, burned at the back of her eyes. She swallowed hard to keep them at bay, but the rise and fall of her larynx only made the pain from the cut in her neck worse. This time she heard herself, like some small and pathetic animal, whimper softly.

"Ronon!" Sheppard's voice called in rebuke.

The wolf eyes stopped their wandering and rested on her own. The places where his hands had been, warm on her back and arm, were left vulnerable to the cold and humid air as he released her and raised himself onto his knees. He shoved back the leather of his coat and began to tear a long strip of cloth from his shirt, the sounds of ripping fabric and popping seams getting lost amongst the soft pitter pat of the rain.

Curiosity got the better of her and she dared a glimpse at the wound. She couldn't see the cut itself, but watched with a sort of transfixed morbidity as her blood ran in rivulets down her chest, mingling with fallen raindrops, rolling downward until it was absorbed by the collar of her black cotton shirt.

"You're all right." Ronon sounded like he was speaking through a tin can as he pressed the folded fabric to her throat. "Looks worse than it is, I promise." He cradled the back of her head in his other hand to stabilize her against the force he was exerting against her neck.

Nodding, albeit a bit feebly in reply, she closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. With a shaking hand, she held to his wrist, his skin warm and his bones solid in her grasp. How long had she been trembling?

"Is she gonna be okay?" Without looking, she recognized the voice as Eva's, though its usual edge was replaced with something that might have been worried innocence.

She didn't hear his reply.

Sheppard called to Ronon again, this time the frustration and urgency more apparent in his tone. "Chewie, she'll be fine if she keeps putting pressure on that wound. We gotta get outta here and I need your help carrying Janus through the gate." The breeze then carried his voice in the opposite direction. "Rodney, dial the Alpha Site."

There was a mechanic buzz and a series of clunks as McKay entered the address and the chevrons engaged along the rim of the Stargate, but Ronon didn't move. Emma opened her eyes and looked at him in query. From the short time they had spent together on this mission, she had gathered that he was definitely one to question orders, but never one to outright disobey them. Her heart jolted uncomfortably in her chest.

"Go," she whispered as she released his wrist and brought her own hand to her throat.

He might have nodded in reply before he stood and turned to leave, but after taking one small step in the other direction, he faced her again, shrugged the coat off his shoulders and wrapped it around her. He left to join Sheppard, but not before touching Teyla on the arm and trusting Emma's medical care to the Athosian.

Teyla offered her a hand. "Come. We need to leave this place."

With Teyla's assistance, she got carefully to her feet and took a brief moment to look at their surroundings. Small and sporadic drops of rain fell from the sky where dark and gravid clouds threatened an imminent and much heavier downpour. The tall magnolia trees around them bore young pink buds just shy of bloom and tiny droplets of rain clung to each verdant blade of grass at her feet. This wasn't the autumnal forest from which they had been sequestered only hours before. Spurred by a suspicion that the Wraith might be able to track and find them, Sheppard must have taken them to another planet where they could stash the dart.

The green meadow flashed blue as the event horizon was established and Sheppard, a bit preoccupied with the task of carrying Janus, motioned everyone through. In one step, the peaceful, rainy meadow morphed into a windowless, concrete room illuminated by the artificial glare of fluorescent lights.

"We need a medical team!" Sheppard shouted as he and Ronon, as gently as possible, laid Janus' unconscious form on the ramp leading to the gate.

Within seconds, a skeleton crew of medical personnel arrived with a gurney. They hauled Janus onto it and began taking his vitals as Sheppard explained his symptoms, their situation, and the fact that they now had a thousands-year-old Ancient patient in their care. As Emma watched them start to roll him down a dim hallway, the overwhelming need to sit down overcame her. Clutching to the ramp railing with one hand, the other still pressed firmly against her bleeding neck, she felt herself sinking closer and closer to the floor.

"Nurse!"

Ronon's hand came under her arm, lifting her back up, and one of the nurses, beckoned by his call, appeared at her side. The woman wrapped a comforting arm around her back and ushered her down the same hallway they had taken Janus through. She took one last look over her shoulder at the rest of the team in the gate room, watching as Ronon's eyes followed her until they turned a corner, out of sight.

Although he was no longer at her side, she could still smell him…leather, and woodsmoke, and musk. It was something she hadn't noticed amidst the springtime fragrances of wet grass and magnolia blossom in the meadow. But now, released by rain and magnified by the concrete sterility of the Alpha Site, the leather coat resting on her shoulders exuded the trapped scents that were unmistakably Ronon. She drew it more tightly around herself and, though her skin was damp and clammy, both from the rainfall and from shock, a small ball of warmth took up residence in the space between her chest and her stomach.

A cut across the neck didn't seem so bad when compared to what Janus, in the bed next to hers, was experiencing. She couldn't see him – a curtain had been drawn around her bed, more for her privacy than for his – but based on what she could hear from the doctors and nurses tending to him, he had taken a turn for the worse. Apparently, his muscles had begun to spasm uncontrollably once they had transported him into the infirmary wing, and so his limbs had been strapped to the gurney. This made her acutely aware every time he had such a seizure, for the gurney would shake and creak with his convulsions, the machines attached to him would set off their alarms, and he would cry out in Ancient, begging those around him to put him out of his misery. She would take a cut on the neck any day over what the doctors had determined was essentially drug withdrawal from millennia of dependence on the Wraith feeding enzyme.

"Okay." The nurse leaned back, set her tools on a tray, and removed her gloves. "Looks like we're done. I only had to put in one suture. Closed the rest with some tissue adhesive. Hopefully it'll heal up pretty quick and won't scar too much."

Emma sat up slowly and thanked the nurse, who promptly left her in peace. After changing into the clean new shirt they had provided – the one she had been wearing before had been cut off in order to prevent infection and to give the nurse better access to the wound – she stood and crossed the tiny makeshift space they had created for her. She slid back into her Atlantis-issue jacket, then picked up Ronon's coat. Holding it again, staring at it, she felt an inexplicable desire to put it back on, to shelter herself from the earlier events of the day, but she resisted, instead folding it into a neat bundle and setting it on the hospital bed.

As she took a moment to herself to splash some warm tap water on her face and comb her fingers through her tangled hair, the sound of shouting voices caught her attention. Coming from the corridor just outside the infirmary, they didn't sound like the terse yet urgent, business-like shouts of the medical professionals attending to Janus as his vitals inevitably dropped for the umpteenth time. These shouts were marked by thinly-veiled anger and frustration, their volume slowly increasing in steady crescendo.

"I'm not in charge, Eva. That's not my call and you know it."

"But you can talk to Sheppard – try to convince him that we need to go back. That planet was culled because of me. Those people were taken by the Wraith and it was my fault."

"Those people were taken because they brought the Wraith upon their own planet by selling us out to them! Or have you forgotten how they tried to poison us?"

"Only because the Wraith were looking for me!"

"The villagers probably made some deal with them and – surprise – the Wraith didn't hold up their end of the bargain and decided to kill them all, anyway."

"But not all of the locals were guilty. We have to go back! We have to go back to the settlement and look for survivors. We have to help them!"

"Our orders are to wait until we debrief with Woolsey back on Atlantis."

Eva let out a very teenage expression of frustration which Emma took as a less-than-eloquent denunciation of bureaucracy.

"And even if Woolsey does clear a mission back there – and that's a big fucking 'if' – you are not coming along. You are going to stay back in the city, where you'll be safe."

"I will not!"

"Yes, you will. You will, for once, do as you're told and stay put."

"You always tell me to stay put!"

"And you never listen! Multiple times, I told you to stay where you were because where you were was safe. But you ignored me every single time, and put not only your safety, but Rogers's safety at risk."

"Yeah, and every time I ended up saving your life!" she scoffed. "And Sheppard's, and Teyla's, and Emma's –"

"I told you to stay put," Ronon snarled.

"But you needed help!" she shouted. "Both times the Wraith had you at a disadvantage and –"

"And you were safe where you were!" he shouted back. "We had it under control!"

"No, you didn't!" she argued. "Besides, Emma didn't stay put either."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Back on the planet…when the Wraith were attacking and you told us not to move. She left our hiding spot. Is that why you're headed to the infirmary? To find her and yell at her, too, for not listening to you?" she taunted. "Fair's fair."

There was silence for a moment.

"Tell me her name." Ronon's voice had dropped to a below-normal volume and Emma raised her eyebrows at this odd change in the conversation.

Eva paused before she answered. "Emma."

"No," Ronon replied. "What do people on Atlantis call her?"

She hesitated again. "Dr. Rogers?"

"Right. Doctor Rogers."

Emma took this as her cue to start making her way into the corridor to make her presence known. She didn't need to be the source of their fighting. Picking up Ronon's coat and hugging it tightly to her chest, she headed cautiously toward the entrance of the infirmary.

"Doctor Rogers is a competent adult who can make her own decisions and decide if an order can be ignored."

"Oh, and I can't?"

"No," he growled "Because you're a child. And the only reason Rogers even got involved and needed to disobey my order is because you didn't listen to me!"

"I don't need to listen to you –"

"Yeah, you do."

"No, I don't, because you're not my father!"

"Why should that even matter? I bet you didn't listen to him either!" he spat. "'Cause if you had, you never would've been turned into a runner!"

"Ronon," Emma said in a gentle, but chiding whisper.

His head whipped around at the sound of his name, but Eva continued to stare up at him, silent, her eyes starting to fill with tears. Without another word, she turned on her heel and fled into the dark base.

Ronon released a growl of frustration and slammed the side of his fist into the concrete wall. Emma jumped and involuntarily shut her eyes as he made contact.

A quote from one of the many pamphlets the college-appointed psychologist had given her nearly five years ago appeared in her mind's eye. Signs of physical abuse can include beating on tables, punching holes in walls, destroying furniture, or throwing objects at you to threaten you. The message is, "You're next. You're just an object I can control and I can break you like our china." She remembered rolling her eyes, wondering what college students even owned china… but past experience had told her the outdated brochure wasn't totally mistaken.

She opened her eyes. "Please don't do that." She said it in such a small voice, she wasn't sure it was hers.

"Look Rogers, you were the one who wanted her to come along on this mission and if you don't like how I just yelled at her, then you can –"

"No," she interrupted. "She needed to hear it. She—" Emma glanced down at the floor, "she could have gotten seriously hurt or…or killed. I think a little tough love was the right call."

"Tough love?" he repeated with a raise of his eyebrows.

"Or whatever that was," she shrugged. "I mean, the last part was maybe a little harsh, but…" She trailed off, realizing that saying more would mean straying into the realm of co-parenting, which she, for one, was not quite ready for.

Ronon pressed his lips together and crossed his arms across his chest.

"What I meant was, please…" She took a deep breath. "Please don't hit the wall like that. At least, not around me…and—and not around Eva, either," she added with a bit of hesitation.

He looked self-consciously down at his fist, rubbed the edge of it with his other hand, then looked back at her as though he were seeing her for the first time. He nodded ever so slightly, eyeing her up and down, and took a step back. "Sorry."

That was all she needed to say. Maybe he didn't understand it all, but he understood enough.

He cleared his throat. "I, uh…I came to find you."

She looked up at him and stepped tentatively toward him, closing the distance he had just created.

"We're heading home in about ten minutes."

"Home?"

The corner of his mouth twitched and she wondered if he, too, was thinking about the starlit conversation they had had the night before. "Yeah."

"I like the sound of that."

"Thought you might." He looked down at her and she watched as thoughts of what to say or do next flashed across his eyes. "How you feeling?" he finally asked.

She laughed quietly to herself, directing her gaze to the floor. "Better. No longer bleeding, so that's a definite improvement." The muscles in her throat quickly constricted and the lump suddenly formed there made speaking difficult. "But um…" she chanced a glance back up at him, "I'm real shaken up," she admitted.

He didn't say anything, but pried his coat from her hands and set it on the floor, then took her into his arms and brought her close to him.

Her first thought was that he was impossibly warm. His heart beat steadily against her ear, chest rising and falling with each slow breath he took, and as he adjusted his arms around her, she could feel the hard strength of the muscles in his back tensing and shifting under her hands as he moved. Knowing about his past and his odds-defying fight for survival were one thing, but there was a shocking vitality about him that only in this moment, swathed in it, had she begun to comprehend. Clammy skin, ragged breath, and jittery heartbeat, she felt like an absolute corpse in comparison. She had come so close so many times within the past day to becoming just that, a realization which sent a new wave of tears to her eyes. She clung to him, pressing herself a bit more closely against his body than a mere friend or colleague in need of comfort should, finding refuge in his embrace.

He would let her. If she needed to weep in his arms, let it all out, allow herself to be a mess for a few minutes, he would let her. She knew he would. And maybe if they were somewhere that wasn't a public hallway in the middle of the Alpha Site, she would let herself. But it had already been too long and it would only be a matter of time before someone, someone like Sheppard or McKay, discovered them and started making assumptions.

With great reluctance, she pulled slightly away from him and looked up into his face. Hooded hazel eyes, hidden beneath the shadow of his scarred brow, stared back at her. Small wrinkles creased at their edges and puffy bags had started to form beneath his lower lashes. He needed sleep. They all did. His gaze dipped and for just an instant, as he swept a lock of hair over her shoulder and away from her face, she was sure he was going to kiss her. But the moment passed as soon as she sensed it, and she figured she had either been mistaken...or he had changed his mind.

"Looks like they did a good job," he commented.

His hand still lingered on the side of her neck, causing her breath to come in short and shallow bursts. "What?" she breathed.

"On your neck." He tilted her chin back so he could get a better look, the callouses on his thumb and index finger lightly scratching the delicate skin there. "Bet it won't even scar."

The anticipation got the better of her; she swallowed nervously in spite of herself, and knew that he must have seen it happen, for his hand dropped decorously to his side. She opened her eyes (when had she closed them?) to see Ronon looking sheepishly back at her. The wolf, sheepish. Had she not been so intoxicated by him, she might have laughed at the irony.

"Ronon…" Public place be damned; she wanted his hands on her again.

"Dr. Rogers?"

Both their heads snapped toward the source of the voice - one of the nurses poking his head out of the infirmary. She was relieved to see he was an Alpha Site employee and not one from Atlantis; he seemed complete unfazed by the fact that her arms were still clasped around Ronon's middle, his hands splayed across her back.

"Good. You're still here," he said. "The patient is speaking again, but this time in full sentences. Can you come in here and translate?"

"Yeah," she said, still somewhat breathless. She cleared her throat and released herself from Ronon's grasp. "Yes. I'll be there in a second."

Clearly too busy with his own duties to be even remotely interested in their embrace, the nurse nodded and disappeared into the infirmary.

Alone once more, Emma knelt to pick up Ronon's coat and carefully brushed the dirt from the worn leather before giving it back. "Thank you," she whispered.

He stared at the coat for a moment, then at her, and as he took it back, one of his rough hands brushed her own. "Any time."