Hmn, interesting... I didn't even consider Zelenka when I was
writing it. I was just kind of... rambling... which is probably why the
identity of the person was so confusing... anyway. Thanks for the
reviews!
I've had this one written since about chapter 3, and now I finally get to post it. Just for you, Thedummie2. Enjoy!
He prowled.
He didn't know exactly where to go in this strange city he now inhabited; he hadn't found any parks, any place where he could conceivably escape from the sheer technological standard. It was so far beyond him and he knew it; and these people, just barely living on the threshold of understanding, were beyond him too.
They still looked at him differently, he knew. He could see it when they passed, when he spoke – or didn't – when he fought… he had been away from civilisation for so long. He had never seen the civilisation they were used to. They saw him for his skill, his soldiery, and that was all.
'They wouldn't understand,' she had said, and he knew that she was right. These people, these people of technology and science, diplomacy, of morals, would not understand his need to kill the man who had betrayed his nation with his own cowardice. It would just prove to them, without a doubt, that he was what they believed him to be: a beast, barely tameable, but an asset as long as he was controlled. Even Sheppard, sometimes, with his desire for restraint, looked at him that way, with that wary expression. It was like they were waiting for him to learn, conform, the way that Teyla had.
Now he found himself wondering why he remained.
He was no longer alone; he knew that. He had found others of his race, others who were as good as his kin, and still he stayed. It was not the technology, the superiority, the desire to learn what his own culture had missed; then what was it?
A door to the side slid open with a hiss, surprising him, and a figure emerged from the darkened room before stopping short on the step.
"Ronan," McKay said, startled, rumpled and tired, looking guilty. "I was just, uhm…" He gestured behind him, tumbling over his words, twitchy, uncomfortable, as though he'd been caught somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. "I was just – getting something." He returned Ronan's calm stare with a strangely uncertain one of his own. "Yeah. G'night." And he slipped past, hurrying down the corridor as if afraid of an inquisition.
Ronan turned to the room, studied the still-open door, stalking inside to find the quarters bare and vacant aside from the most basic furniture. All of it was resting awkwardly in place, but it was the bed that caught his eye the most, the covers strewn in an echo of anger, the pillow slumped on the floor. And he understood. This was one of the empty rooms, one of the ones the Atlanteans had so carefully avoided giving him. McKay had not come here to retrieve any material possession; he had come to remember, to think, to be alone after the disaster that Ronan had heard of.
He considered the rumpled covers and frowned, moving to smooth them carefully back into place.
Here, McKay had not been the genius he proclaimed, not a victim of his own confidence, not a man of technology and science. He had simply been a man. A man who fought, who grieved, who erred. Who strove to remember, to redeem himself, to do his people justice through his work.
Ronan was a soldier. So was McKay. Different forces, different skills, but soldiers nonetheless, fighting for the same thing regardless of their knowledge, their technology, their understanding; fighting for the freedom of all peoples. And making mistakes along the way.
Perhaps he was a beast of war. If so, so were they.
They just hid it better.
