AN: Sorry for the delay. I had a funeral to go to Monday, and then I had to work both that night and yesterday, so I was dead tired. LOL anyway, here's the next two chapters to make up for the wait...

Chapter 3:

Nancy

"John?" A woman's voice asked in the dark. "Are you okay?"

John Sheppard sat on the edge of the bed, his body trembling so hard it shook the mattress. He was covered in sweat, his face buried in his hands. Bits of the dream still swirled in his mind, a nightmare so real it had him screaming until he woke himself up, his limbs flailing as he struggled back to consciousness.

Behind him, Nancy reached out her hand, then stopped just short of touching him. He had been even more withdrawn lately than usual, and the dreams had gotten worse. He had woken up much the same way – crying out and then bolting awake – nearly every night that week. She ached to hold him, to pull him into her arms, but she knew he would never come willingly. It hurt her to know that she could not comfort him. His secrets were drowning him, pushing him deeper into himself, and soon the day would come when his former self no longer surfaced.

She was losing him.

"John?" She tried again, her voice soft.

"I'm okay," he assured her, though his frame continued to shake. "I just need a minute."

He knew what he was doing to her. He could see the disappointment in her eyes every time he shut down, but he was unable to stop it. The things he had seen, what he had done over there...some of them she would never understand, and the others, well, he was under orders not to speak about. True, she was his wife, but orders were orders. He had disobeyed enough of those recently, so many in fact that they were ready to ship him completely away from the States. He had to make an effort now, because if he screwed up again they would probably kick him out of the Air Force. That meant losing his income, his pension – everything. They would lose this house, which meant that he would have to go grovel for forgiveness at his father's feet.

No, he had decided long ago never to do that. His father had been wrong about him. He was not more concerned with himself than with the Sheppard family, with the business. It was just that he wanted to make his life on his own, not on his father's dime. His inheritance had never mattered to him. Money wasn't what he valued, it was just a means to an end. He had thought that Nancy had understood that, but just last month she had come to him asking what he thought about their going in with his father to buy a racehorse.

"What would we do with a racehorse?" he had asked her then.

"Well, if he wins, we could put the money into savings for the kids' college funds," she had replied, her eyes hopeful.

It had made him angry, that look. The look that said that once again, she was begging him to reconsider a family. He didn't have time for a family; hell, sometimes he didn't have time for a wife. He knew how often she got left behind while he took off on a sudden mission – one that he couldn't tell her about, of course – and how alone she felt when he was gone. How fair would it be to bring kids into that picture? For them to have a dad who was never around, who might come home one day in a pine box?

"I told you, Nancy..." he began, and then the hope turned to something darker.

Frowning, she shook her head. "I know what you told me. What I want to know is what you're running from, John?"

"I'm not running."

"Really?" she asked, crossing her arms. "It took me almost a year to get you to agree to this house, and that was only because it's so close to the base. All I'm asking for is a chance. A chance at a life with you."

"I can't," he had replied, his voice dropping suddenly to a whisper. "I'm sorry."

He had expected her to get angry, to shout at him, but she had simply stood there for a moment and then turned and walked away. It was in that moment, in her giving up, that he had realized he had lost her for good. She might still be beside him right now, kissing him goodnight and sleeping in the same bed, but she was so far away, she might as well have packed and left already.

"Tell me," she now pleaded quietly, but he shook his head.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because," he muttered.

"John, please."

At the sound of his name on her lips, he suddenly stood up and turned around. "I said, I can't. Jesus, Nancy! Why can't you ever just leave it alone? I don't want to talk about it."

"You never want to talk about anything!" she cried, standing up on her side of the bed. "You've been waking up like this every night, but you never let me help you!"

"How could you possibly help?"

"I could listen. I could..."

"Could what?" He crossed his arms, his finger brushing the scar on the right side of his chest as he moved. "Understand? You will never understand what I went through, the things I saw!"

"How do you know that?" She shouted back. "You never even gave me a chance to try!"

"Because it's terrible. Damaging. What happened over there was like living the worst nightmare ever dreamed, only you can't wake up because you're already awake. Why would I want anyone to experience something like that? Why should I put someone else through that kind of hell?"

"Because I'm your wife. Because..." she paused, conflicted as to whether she really should say what she was about to. "Because I love you."

He shook his head sadly. "Love isn't enough, Nancy. We can't keep pretending that as long as we love each other, everything will be okay."

Tears, hot and stinging, sprang to her eyes. Was he really saying what she thought he was? "Why not?" She asked.

"Don't get me wrong – I am completely glad that you love me. But if you knew what I did over there..." his hazel eyes slid closed, and he took a shaky breath. "You wouldn't anymore."

Nancy came around the bed then. Reaching up, she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face against his chest. "Nothing you did could make me stop loving you, John."

He allowed her to hold him for a minute before he pulled away. Stepping over to the dresser, he pulled it open and dug out a set of clothes as he said, "It should. It makes me hate myself."

Fear sparked in her chest, hot and bright. "Where are you going?"

"I can't do this any more, Nancy."

He pulled on a pair of jeans as she said, "Please, don't leave."

"I need to clear my head."

On went the black t-shirt, followed by a black sweatshirt.

"I need you."

At this, he shook his head. "You've never needed me, Nancy." She opened her mouth to dispute that, but he kept going. "As long as my money's been there, you were content. Even the fact that I wouldn't give you kids wasn't enough to make you leave. That's not love, Nancy, that's security."

"So, what then? We've just been pretending to love each other these past three years? That you never loved me?"

"I don't know any more," he admitted. "I'm not sure I've ever known what love is, or what it feels like."

Only now did anger rise within her, and came spilling out in a torrent. Stalking over to the closet, she yanked it open and started grabbing clothes out of it, hangers and all. Tossing them on the bed, she ducked back in the closet and pulled out a large suitcase.

"You know what?" she said as she began dumping the clothes into the case. "The doctors were right."

"About what?"

"They said when you came home, here..." she stopped long enough to sweep her hand in a gesture to indicate their room, "that I should expect you to be damaged, more in your mind than on your body. Well, they were right. Only, instead of getting better, you got worse."

"What are you doing?" He asked, though he was already pretty sure of the answer.

"I tried, John. God, I tried so hard. To give you space, to let you come to me in your own time. But you never did. You wouldn't let me in. I'm tired of trying."

He should have been trying to stop her, but he could only stand there and watch. Nancy finished packing her suitcase, then went into the bathroom and collected her things in a cardboard box, all while he mutely followed behind her. When she was finished, she took everything out to her car and loaded them into the trunk, then came back inside.

Her hands came up, rested against his chest as she stared into his hollow eyes.

"Goodbye, John. Take care of yourself."

Unable to speak past the lump of self-loathing in his throat, he only nodded. Nancy reached down and took one of his hands in hers while the other hand slowly placed something in his palm, then closed his fingers around it. It was round, made of metal.

Her wedding ring.

His eyes slammed shut as he realized what he had just done. He kept them closed as she leaned up and kissed his cheek, even as he heard her walk to the door and pause, probably waiting to see if he would beg her to stay. After a moment, the screen door squeaked open and then banged shut. A car engine revved, and then all was silent.

John finally got the courage up to open his eyes and look down at his hand. Nancy's ring nestled in the middle of his palm, the hallway light reflecting off its golden surface...

"And that was it. She left me."

Ronon nodded solemnly and took a swig from the beer bottle he held in his large right hand. "So, did you?"

"Did I what?" Sheppard asked.

"Love her."

"Yeah. Not as much as I should have, though. I loved freedom more. I loved my job more."

Ronon nodded again. "And now?"

Sheppard made a frustrated sound and set his bottle down on the edge of the pier. If Carter had seen him do it, she would have had a fit, going on about potential litter falling into the ocean and getting sucked into the filtration systems. In that respect, she was more like Rodney than she would care to admit.

"What is this," he asked his friend, "a psychology exercise?"

Ronon shrugged. "So what if it is?"

Sheppard was silent as he gazed out over the vast sea beyond the city. Then, softly, he replied, "No. Well, I still love my job. But I'm not against having a family any more."

"Why not?"

"Ronon..."

The Satedan merely grinned, showing his teeth, and the colonel sighed.

"Fine." He sighed again before answering. "Because back then, I was afraid of becoming my father, of never being there when my family needed me. Every time I thought of kids, all I could see was myself and my brother, being raised by nannies and stuff. It wasn't a childhood, the life we had – and I never wanted anyone else to have to suffer through the same situation."

It was quiet on the pier for a while after the last of his words drifted away on the breeze. Then, Ronon asked, "You ever tell Nancy this?"

Sheppard barked a laugh. "I tried, a thousand times. And every time, she swore that she would make sure it was different for them. What could she possibly have done? Tie me up and threaten the Air Force with violence if they tried to come in and get me?" He shook his head. "She was just so in love with the idea of kids, she didn't care what I thought. We were so different..."

"Stubborn, you mean."

Sheppard's head whipped around to glare at the other man. Then, his gaze dropped and he said, "Yeah, I guess you could say that. And by the time I was ready to stop being stubborn, she was done trying to reach me."

They fell quiet again, comfortable enough in their friendship to not feel the need to fill the silence. Ronon finished his beer and went for another, while Sheppard still sipped from his first. The wind continued to blow around them, whispering through Sheppard's often comically unruly hair, bringing with it the scent of flowers. Startled, he looked around, but saw nothing.

"What?" Ronon asked then, and Sheppard jumped as if he'd been shocked.

"God," he breathed. "Don't do that!"

"You okay? You're a little pale."

"I'm fine," Sheppard assured his friend. Then, cocking his head to the side, he asked, "Did you smell anything just now?"

Ronon shrugged. "Yeah. Flowers." His eyebrows knitted together in concern. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," the colonel replied, though Ronon could tell that was not completely true. He thought about saying so, but then decided against it. Even if there was no good reason for Sheppard to lie, Ronon would never try to force him to spill the truth. Sheppard often did that on his own, eventually.

"A lot of times when I come out here I smell 'em," Ronon told him. "Figure we must be directly across from the mainland. Wind blows, and the scent carries over with it."

"That's an awful long way, Ronon. We shouldn't be able to smell stuff from the mainland from here."

"Why not? Rodney can smell chocolate cake all the way from his lab, and he doesn't have half the training either of us have."

They both laughed at that, and when their laughter had died down, Sheppard finished off his beer and set the empty bottle down beside him. "Anyway," he said, brushing his hands off on his dress pants, "I figure that now, it's too late for me to think about a family."

"Never too late," Ronon rumbled.

"I'm stuck out here, on a floating military base in the middle of nowhere, on a planet in the middle of nowhere..."

"A military base the size of one of your cities on Earth," Ronon corrected, mimicking something he had heard Rodney mutter once. "There's hundreds of people here."

"Yeah, and the majority of them are military, which we have rules about."

"We also have a Stargate."

Sheppard sighed. "Yeah, and out of the hundreds of times we've gone to make friends with a race out there, how many have we come back with actual allies? Three, maybe four?"

Now, Ronon huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. "You know what I think?" Sheppard shook his head. "I think that you still don't want a family. You've come up with an excuse against each suggestion. So, either you don't want a family at all, or you have your eye on someone but are too afraid to admit it, even to me."

"First of all, I'm not afraid. I'm just..." At the piercing look his friend gave him, Sheppard folded like a house of cards. Closing his eyes, he let out his breath and let his shoulders slump. "Okay, fine. Maybe you're right. But even if you are, so what? I'm still in the same position I was back when Nancy was around. My job is too dangerous to have a family, Ronon. I don't want to start something, only to die and leave them alone. It's not fair."

"Who said anything about fair?" Ronon asked. "Nothing in any part of the universe is fair. That's just life."

"But see, that's my point."

"No. Your point is that you don't want to share your life." Ronon's eyes turned dark, angry. "Because if you do, then your heart becomes open to someone else. And you can't do that, because you've been closed off for so long. Maybe you've just forgotten how to love someone – but that's not fair, either. There's people who want to love you, but they can't because you won't let them."

"Yeah?" Sheppard asked, his voice thick with sarcasm. "Like who?"

"Elizabeth, for one."

The name jolted him, and he stared at Ronon's brown eyes. Was he telling the truth, or just trying to get a reaction?

"She loved you like a sister, or maybe closer than that. I dunno. But she could only get so close to you before that famous wall came up and pushed her away."

"I...we were leaders together. Coworkers."

"So? It's not against your rules to care about your coworkers."

"I know that."

"Then what's your excuse for Teyla?"

Sheppard frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"You completely overreacted when she told you she was pregnant."

"I was pissed that she let me send her on missions when she's got a kid growing inside her. That's not overreacting. That's being careful."

"You still didn't have to treat her the way you did. You don't see me beating you to a pulp every time you piss me off. And I get mad at you a lot."

"I didn't beat her up, Ronon."

"Not with your hands," Ronon agreed.

"I already apologized for shouting at her."

"It's not your apology that she wants." Now, Ronon stood and clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Thanks for the drinks."

With that, he walked away, leaving Sheppard to think, staring unseeingly out at the horizon.

TBC...