A/N: I kept rewriting this, but I can't help but feel that this came out horribly and is not well written. I really don't like how it flows, but I need to get this chapter up so I can continue. Sorry for the delay, and please excuse the ickiness.
Teyla had been pregnant once. The father was a young man she had fallen in love with. She had met him during the summer harvest, when they were both young, about 17 earth years. They had fallen in love, and on the eve before he was to go back to his own village they had made love and vowed to find each other during the Planting, a month or two away. They did, and that was when Teyla had told him that she pregnant. Pregnancies and births were the most celebrated events amongst her people because they meant that someone had defied the Wraith, survived long enough to reproduce and give birth. Teyla's father had been proud, and as a gift gave her the necklace his wife, Teyla's mother, had left behind before being culled by the Wraith. It was only a few days later that the Wraith came and although she managed to escape, the stunner blast she took combined with the stress of watching her father being taken and her lover being fed upon caused her to miscarry and lose her child. Her first instinct was to seek revenge on the Wraith, to hunt them down and kill them but the Ancestors had shown her another path. It was on her 18th birthday that the village elders had asked her to be their new seer, the one with the responsibility to foretell the Wraith's coming. It was a huge honor and came with much pressure, as the village's seer had always been their unofficial leader, a person to look up to in times of need. They had recognized the ability within her and helped her to focus it and use it, instead of letting it use her. She realized that she could avenge her child by trying to prevent as much death as possible, and in time had come to a peace of sorts within herself.
She wanted all to know that peace, yet she knew that the Earthlings were far from it. They were too new, too angry, their experiences and feelings too recent and raw to understand that you could be at peace even while hating. Being angry all the time was exhausting, it was why she had seen John collapse on the couch in rec. room from time to time, pretending to read yet not turning the page for hours. It was why Rodney worked too hard, too much, and with little rest. It was why Ronon always looked like he was either about to fight or flee, why he spent half his day running around Atlantis and the other half fighting in the training room. Elizabeth was the only one that she understand, the only one that realized it would take more then hate and righteous anger to beat the Wraith.
Out of all of the Earthlings, Elizabeth was closest to finding that peace within her. John, she knew, would one day find some contentment in his life, as would Rodney. But Ronon...Ronon's entire adulthood had been based on the premise that he would be lucky to survive another day. His only reason for living had been to kill the Wraith once he found out that Sateda had been destroyed. Teyla had never told anyone this, not even Ronon, but the night after Ronon had seen the decimation of his home world on the small screen in the control room, Teyla had gone to see him. She had peeked in the door to make sure she was not waking him and had seen him sitting on the bed, staring intently at a knife held to his wrist. The knife was pressed down hard enough to make a small scratch, and as Teyla watched breathless, Ronon's face had twisted into a fierce look of hatred and he had stabbed the knife down into the bedding beneath him. Teyla had let out a long breath, before silently turning and walking the other way down the hall.
It was with these thoughts swimming through her head that she regarded Ronon's slightly thrashing form carefully.
"Why aren't you packing?" Ronon demanded, dropping her suitcase on their bed. "I traded every last thing we had to get you on Kell's personal staff."
"He's a criminal. He's using people's fear for his own gain." Melena responded, her voice filled with disgust.
"He's a commander, and his staff gets to go through the Gate."
"The hospital's going to need me."
"There's not going to be any need for hospitals, Melena! That's just a bunch of words meant to make the people who don't get to leave think there's a chance for them. We shot down two ships that came through the Gate. Two small ships. Do you really think that's all they're going to send?" He barely heard her mumbled reply before continuing his tirade. "Ships as big as our city have attacked other planets. No one that stays here is going to survive."
Ronon was frustrated. Melena was being stubborn, and although it was one of things he admired about her, one of the reasons he married her, right now it was also going to kill her. How could he convince her that it was foolish for her to remain behind? He had tried to convince his sister, and had failed. She had gone to the front lines as a doctor, to take care of the wounded and had been killed. He had tried to protect her, but had failed her too. He had not yet told Melena, and she would be devastated.
"They killed Rayella; an innocent woman who was only there trying to save other people. And they didn't even kill her; they left her there to die a slow painful death. I watched her die. If they could do that, do you really think that you are safe just because you're a good person, or because you're a woman, or because you're pregnant? They don't care Melena! You have to go. Go through the ring, and have our daughter. Name her Rayella; tell her stories of her brave and beautiful aunt. Melena...go and give our child a chance to be born, a chance to live in a world that is not constantly plagued by the Wraith."
"I...I...can't Ronon. How could I tell our child how I abandoned our people and followed the command of a traitor just to save myself? I'm sorry Ronon...but I can't." With that, Melena kissed Ronon softly on the cheek before walking out the door towards the hospital.
Ronon stood there, and watched her go. He whirled around and grabbed the suitcase, hurling it across the room. He smashed the mirror hanging on the wall, picked up the glass pitcher from the kitchen counter and slammed it on the ground, taking out his anger towards Melena for refusing to leave, his anger towards Rayella for dying not being here to make Melena leave, his anger towards Kell for betraying them, and most of all his anger towards the Wraith for torturing him like this, letting him live and see everyone around him die. Having run out of things in his immediate sight to break, he sprinted out of their house towards the barracks, where his troop was waiting.