"Mai?"
Ronon quietly entered the dimly lit bedroom. It had a single window that faced the building next door and was lit only by the lantern on the small side table. His mother laid on top of the covers on her side. She opened her eyes immediately, though he knew she would have done that whether or not she was sleeping when he spoke.
He felt a little guilty disturbing her, but also couldn't seem to bring himself to stay in the other room when he knew his mother, his lifegiver, back to life after almost a decade being dead inside his mind, was in just the next room.
He gingerly sat on the bed beside her.
"How are you feeling?"
"I'll be alright, little one." She said, her eyes drifting closed again.
There was a sinking in his stomach that disagreed with her but he didn't say so.
"I've asked Sheppard and Teyla to bring a doctor back from the city."
Her eyes popped open and she turned to pin him with a more straight on glare. "No. No more doctors."
He frowned at her stubbornness.
"You don't understand. These are the best doctors in the galaxy."
"I don't care. I won't be poked and prodded anymore."
Ronon sighed, reigning in his temper, remembering with some rue that his mother was where he got that temper. He sighed, deciding to try a different tactic.
"You would refuse help from the people who removed a tracker from your only son's back?"
Camaiya's eyebrows drew together.
"What are you…" She trailed off, suddenly putting together the small bits and pieces Ronon had let slip over lunch. Her hand moved to cup his cheek. "A Runner?"
Ronon grit his teeth.
"They saved me." He rasped, emotions he hadn't expected choking up his throat. He reached up to hold her palm against his cheek. "Please let them help you too."
Camaiya sighed.
"Fine. I will allow it."
"Thank you." He wrapped her fingers in his and kissed the back of her hand.
She smiled, observing him quietly for a few moments.
"Are you ready to tell me what's bothering you?"
Ronon raised an eyebrow.
"All of this isn't enough?" Finding his mother alive on a random planet after all these years of thinking she was dead? Living forever with the knowledge that if he'd been looking at the merchant instead of idly scanning the crowd - if he'd been distracted by the flight of a blackbird from a tree - he could have missed her. Missed this.
It certainly felt like enough. More than.
"No," his mother responded and Ronon resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The woman could be impossible. She shifted, getting a better look at him.
"Is it a woman?" She guessed. With Ronon, it often had been. She knew her son was handsome, would have known it even if half the girls in their village hadn't had a seat at her dinner table one time or another when he was in his mid-years. He was taller than other boys, playful and serious in turn and girls seemed to find that compelling. She understood perfectly. His father had been just like that.
She'd honestly been so relieved when Melena came around. She'd settled him, grounded him. Protected the boy while nurturing the man.
"You should get some rest." Ronon laid her hand down on the mattress and move to stand. The abrupt change in topic confirmed to Camaiya that her first guess had been the right one.
"You think I am fooled so easily, Ronon?" She paused, and he stopped, but didn't turn around. "I will not force you to share what you are not ready to. But you have never hesitated to speak your mind to me before."
Ronon inhaled, hunching his shoulders and rolling his neck before he turned around to face her.
"I know."
"So what's changed?"
Nothing. Everything.
Instead of responding, Ronon reached for a chair by the door and drew it over to her beside. Straddling it backwards he folded his arms on the back and rested his chin on them.
"What's her name?" Camaiya asked. She thought it was best to start simple.
Ronon paused, knowing there was a possibility Keller would be the one John brought back to tend to his mother. If she agreed to come. If she didn't...well he couldn't really blame her for that.
"She's a doctor." He said instead.
The woman nodded, accepting his unspecific answer.
"Men who know pain are often drawn to those that heal it." She sighed, remembering Ronon's father and the many times he'd returned from battle, bloody and bruised and curled tightly against her chest the whole night through. "Does she know of your feelings?"
Ronon sighed, blinking away the memory of their conversation after returning from the Deadalus.
"She does."
Camaiya waited, watching a war rage on her son's face.
"She said...she wasn't interested in me. There was-" He swallowed, his face burned anew at the remembered humiliation. "That there was someone else."
She sighed. So that was it. That was why her son was so tied up in knots.
Spurned by a potential lover.
"I'm sorry, little one."
Ronon still didn't look at her, choosing instead to stare across the room at a bit of blue sky he could see out the window.
"I hadn't...after Melena." He shook his head. "I didn't think there would ever be anyone else."
"And now you worry that there will never be another chance?"
He frowned at the wall.
Camaiya sighed. "You needn't fear, Ronon. There will always be another opportunity to find love."
Ronon looked at her then, raising an eyebrow. "Like you did?" After his father died Ronon never saw his mother even look in another's direction, despite the difficulty of raising three children on a single woman's salary. He had even occasionally come home from Lessons to find flowers of proposition hanging from the doorknob. Only to find them in the garbage when he went to throw something away later in the evening.
"It was different for myself and your father. We took the old vows, I was not free to receive new interest."
Ronon grunted, knowing it was an excuse, and an old argument he did not care to revive.
Camaiya continued as if she hadn't heard him.
"You were willing to open your heart to this girl?"
"Yes."
"Then you will again. It is only your pride that has been hurt." She continued, "Would you not rather know she is not a match for you before your heart is entwined?"
Ronon swallowed. "Yes but..." He sat up and looked at his hands, he exhaled sharply, frustrated.
"But what, little one?"
Ronon clenched his teeth. "I don't...understand."
"Understand what?" Camaiya's eyebrows drew together watching as Ronon's body language became more tense and frustrated. "How she could spurn you?"
"No!" Ronon barked, shoving up from the chair and began pacing back and forth in the small room. "It's not about my pride, mother. I don't understand what I did wrong. What could I have done better?" He said in a rush, flexing his hands at his sides.
"What you did wrong?" His mother repeated, confusion and then hurt in her tone. "Oh, Ronon you didn't do anything wrong."
He shook his head briskly. He began pacing, the small room only allowed for a few strides in either direction. "She is different. Her people are...I must've done something. I was too harsh, or didn't get enough of their jokes. Sometimes the things they say just don't make any sense. They worry about the silliest things. Maybe she didn't think I took her seriouesly. Or I couldn't keep up with her science stuff. Or...Or maybe," he sighed, coming to a stop at the end of the bed, staring at the wall. "Maybe I was alone so long I don't remember how to be with someone like that anymore." He finished quietly, vulnerability in his voice even Camaiya had rarely heard.
She sighed, unhappy to see her son so unhappy, knowing there was very little she could do to fix it. Broken hearts usually needed to mend themselves.
"You cared for her a great deal." She said finally.
Ronon turned around to face her. He shrugged.
"Doesn't matter now."
"Oh, little one." She sighed, her eyes following him as he moved back to the chair beside the bed. "If she allowed the armor you wear to glint too brightly in the sunlight and blind her to the man you are inside then that is only her loss."
He covered the hand she laid on his forearm with his own.
"Maybe."
"You cannot hold on to that which has taken flight." She recited by rote the ancient Satedan proverb and knew he understood her meaning. "Thank her for the lesson learned and allow her to walk a separate path. The small pieces of your heart that have been broken will be soothed by time and someday another, better woman." Her eyes sparkled at that and Ronon smiled. He understood she meant it more as a compliment to him than a disparagement to Jennifer, and he appreciated it all the more.
He leaned over and placed a kiss on her cheek.
"Thank you Mai."
Camaiya cupped his cheek again as he leaned back. Her eyes roamed over his face for several moments, comparing the man before her to the boy she'd known more than a decade before.
"It is so good to see you, Ronon."
He smiled, nodding. "You too. But I should let you rest."
A throat cleared behind him and Ronon turned to see Jennifer leaning through the door.
"I'm sorry to interrupt." She glanced over her shoulder, "John said it was urgent?"
She watched Ronon stand, her cheeks already coloring at having interrupted an intimate family moment, and she noted with interest that even after he stood he kept his mother's hand in his.
"Thanks for coming," he said quietly. He turned to look at the woman in the bed, "Mother, this is Jennifer Keller. She's the best. I don't want you to give her a hard time, okay?"
Jennifer smiled at the woman's raised eyebrow.
"I'll behave, Ronon." She said with a tolerant smile.
"Somehow I doubt that." Ronon bent over to quickly kiss her cheek again before leaving the room. Without a word or another glance in her direction Jennifer watched Ronon slip out the door and it clicked softly when he closed it.
TBC