Missing the Stars
By sablecain
the characters, Atlantis, etc. all belong to MGM, Gecko, Showtime and the Scifi channel. No copyright infringement is intended with their use.
Spoilers: up through The Long Goodbye (season2)
Warnings: It is short.
Feedback: I live for it!
Thank you To NT for betaing and always encouraging me and threatening me to write more:)
I watched "The Long Good bye" again yesterday and then today-in the middle of the packing and the screaming children-just sat down and wrote this. Sort of just spilled out the way things sometimes do. Hopefully You'll enjoy it
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It was John's lips moving, John's voice mocking him and John's foot stepping hard on his arm, grinding bone against bone. It was John's smile, laughing at him and his helplessness and yet he knew, what he saw and heard now—none of it was really John Sheppard.
Ronon watched as this not-Sheppard keyed his radio and requested a medical team and then was gone. Flopping onto his back, Dex gasped at the pain in his gut. This was nothing like a stunner blast. Nothing like a blade slicing through his skin or stabbing deep into his muscle. This was different from the nicks and burns, scrapesand scars he carried from his past. This was new.
This was fire. This was molten steel boring into his center, draining his strength and crushing his ability to breathe. He covered his wound with his hand. His blood was warm and sticky on his fingers and he felt it spread and ooze, soaking his shirt as it pumped out of him despite his weak efforts to stop it.
Ronon blinked at the dark, shadowed ceiling. Boxes towered around him. The room was quiet save for his own raspy, struggling breaths. His radio was silent. Awkwardly he reached for it, knowing he needed help. The plastic and wire crumbled into pieces as his fingers grasped it, useless. He was alone.
He tried to push himself up, to fight the pain, but it bent him in two, pinning him to the floor like a rod through his middle. His vision blurred suddenly, flashes of light burst behind closed lids like shooting stars and Ronon blinked, resisting the urge to let his eyes stay closed. He knew he needed to stay awake. He needed to try to hang on. Someone would come for him.
How long had it been since he'd thought that way?
He'd spent years alone, careful never to get too close or stay too long. He'd learned from his mistakes. The deaths on his hands were a lesson carved deep. He'd been a danger to others for so long, he'd learned to deal with the isolation, the loneliness…the solitude.
Why now, after such a short time with these people in this place, why did it matter so much to him now that he lay here alone?
He should be stronger than this, he told himself. He should have been smarter too, he thought. Somehow, he should have known Sheppard was not…John. He'd told Teyla he knew how Sheppard thought and that was true, but he'd forgotten he hadn't been chasing John. He'd been chasing a stranger within John.
Exhaustion pulled at Ronon. He felt weak. It hurt to breathe and for some reason, no matter how hard he tried…he couldn't keep his eyes open.
He blinked once more at the dark looming ceiling and felt a deep sadness within. If he had to die alone, he wished, at least, to be outside. He'd miss the stars.
