No one loves me. I get pitiful one or two reviews per chapter. I feel so UNLOVED. Unloved people do not update very quickly.

Yes, that is a threat.


Chapter Fifteen: All the Pretty Faces

The forest was a blur on the edges of her eyes but she didn't care. She was focusing on what was before her, not behind. The journey was what was important, not the origin or the end. She wanted to feel her breathe strain in her lungs, because she was so tired of thinking.

She was even tired of not-being who everyone wanted. Tired of not being who she wanted. Tired of being asked questions, tired of having no answers. Tired of constantly having someone at her side. Tired of so many things at once that it made her head ache to think of it.

Beth ran because she wanted to forget even the little that she knew. She'd been born running and had run straight to Shalimar's protective arms, a place she hadn't left for weeks.

As much as she loved the safety he provided, she missed being alone. It was one of the few things she might remember. She didn't remember the people of her past, the things she'd done. She remembered feeling alone, though, and knew that it was the way she'd always been. On the outside looking in, maybe even slightly superior to it all.

She ran because it was the first thing she could remember doing.

Her lungs burned as she sucked in air, her legs pumping up and down, moving through the trees with oddly gazelle-like leaps. Her hair curled with sweat around her forehead and her ferine eyes darted to and fro. She wasn't thinking in these moments.

She was feeling. The dirt beneath her feet, the wind on her sensitive skin, even the rough feel of bark on her passing fingertips. She was moving in a large arc, eventually intending to rejoin Gordy back at 'camp', but for now she was free.

No expectations, no observers. Just nothing.

A twig snapped nearby and she jerked to a stop, slamming her small body into the trunk of a large tree. Her breath rushed in and out loudly, but she'd been moving for so long and so fast that she could no longer control it. Her hands burned where she'd scraped them and she fisted them to try and alleviate the stretching pain of movement in them.

Another sound, the rustle of grass underfoot, closer; she flattened herself to the tree, trying to hide in the shadows but knowing instinctively that it's futile. The damn red shirt that Elizabeth had so many copies of made her very easily seen.

The movement was coming closer, clearly a person now. She could hear the two steps, circling around cautiously, their owner very much aware that she knew she was being hunted. She tensed, going piano-wire taunt in preparation to run. When she heard it, a small sliding sound to her right, she thrust off from the tree, striking South back towards camp, unprepared for just how close her guest had come.

A strong hand wrapped around her wrist, jerking her back against a large and hard chest before twisting that same arm around until she'd turned into the man's arms, for it surely was a man. As Beth was pressed into the tree, she inhaled sharply and struggled to break free.

Why was she always being captured? Could she never escape the countless people who wanted to use and manipulate her?

She hit the immovable force before her and realized belatedly that he'd moved his hand over her mouth so she couldn't scream. Biting hit palm, she wrestled her head back so that she could see his face.

Ronon Dex looking scrumptious and flushed as he fought to contain her spitfire ferocity was swearing down at her and looking gorgeous as he did so.

Content that he wasn't some abductor, she let him.

He pressed a button on the side of his earpiece and began to speak. "I've looked but I'm not seeing her. It's getting dark, we should call everyone back in until morning."

She couldn't hear Sheppard's response but Ronon grinned down at her.

"I'll head over to the Athosian village. No point in coming back in when I'll just be coming back out in the morning."

Another whisper of words through the comm. and Ronon waited until Sheppard was finished cursing at him to slip it off and into his pocket. "You okay?"

"I'm being pressed against a tree by a seven foot tall demi-god," Beth replied with a sultry smile. "I'm fine."

He grinned back and released her, keeping a grasp on her wrist. "Where's your camp?"

"About two miles South," they started walking in the direction, he never released her arm. "Why did you turn me in?"

He didn't answer, ignoring the question. He looked wicked in the waning light, shadows forming over his eyes, his hair coiling in the wing almost like snakes. She pulled on one long strand and jerked to a stop.

He turned to her with a sardonic twist of the eyebrows almost a perfect mimicry of the one Teyla did. "What?"

"Why didn't you turn me in?"

He looked to the ground, then looked her straight in the eye. "Because I know what it's like to want to run."


It was the middle of the night, and the trio should've been asleep. They'd dined on rations from the Puddlejumper, before sitting around the fire Gordy had built and told stories. Gordy told action stories, filled with his heroic doings during battles with the Wraith, and humorous stories of his time in advanced education, learning geology; all those stories were tinged with sadness and Beth knew she wasn't the only one to notice.

Ronon also told stories of war and of his time spent running. Of the various worlds he'd come across, the various peoples. He compared scars with Gordy, told amusing anecdotes about the Atlantians, and never once did he try and force a story of Elizabeth down her throat. In fact, he only spoke of her in passing, and he ever acted like she was sitting beside him around a campfire.

He was the first one here to speak to her as if she were really Beth, and not Elizabeth.

When Gordy cuddled into one of the blankets from storage, and the fire died down so that only the moon really illuminated the camp, Beth made her move.

He was lying on his back staring into the stars. His eyes were dreamy, thoughts miles away. She wanted to run her fingers down his face, feel every groove and stubble that was there. She wanted to dig her fingers into his shoulder and watch pain cross his face.

She wanted him to show some sort of emotion, because back in the forest, when he'd spoken of running was the first time she'd ever seen it. She'd watched his face for the past two days, he'd been her liaison in this world, and she'd only just realized that he was so cold. So alone amongst all these people, his emotions hidden beneath a rugged exterior.

She wanted inside.

So she waited until they were as alone as they could possibly be, and she crawled to his side. Lying down so that their sides touched, she knew she had his attention.

Not saying anything, she slid her hand into his and was content to simply be. For once, she was content to simply be.

Ronon turned on his side, not releasing her hand but drawing it up so that he could study it, seeking out the small scars felt there. She turns her head to watch him look, and doesn't resist when he draws her hand closer to his face. She can feel him breathe, and there's a look in his eyes that makes it all but impossible for her.

She slides a little closer, fitting into the nook of his shoulder now. He releases her hand and let's his arm fall, so that's where she lays her head. He passes his free hand through the soft mahogany curls that lay against her pale skin and finds himself fascinated by the way they contrast so.

And when she brushes her lips against his, he responds as gently as she started it. He doesn't cradle her face as he wants to, or crush her soft and frail body to his. He doesn't fist his hands in her hair and make her moan from pleasure.

He brushes his knuckles down her cheeks and pulls away.

Because this isn't Elizabeth. This is Beth, and he's finally realizing that they are two separate people.

Across the camp, Gordy, never asleep and always watching, grinned. "You two wanna borrow the Puddlejumper or are you good right there?"

Beth smiled softly even as she flipped Gordy off, though he didn't know what the gesture meant. He got the gist, however. She didn't stop staring at Ronon even as she moved to slide away. "I've never done that before."

He shook his head. "No, you haven't."

"It feels good to not repeat myself."

He smiled and turned back to the sky, content to let sleep claim him. He could hear her moving to her own palette, a small giggle escaping as she glanced over at him and slid inside. It wasn't an overly sexual tension between them.

They didn't want to fuck, have sex, or make love. Not yet.

For now, they were content to feel out this new thing. It wasn't something Elizabeth would ever have done, especially not with Ronon.

As she kept saying, Beth was not Elizabeth.

It'd felt good to kiss her, Ronon mused to himself, his fingers tingling where he'd touched her.

It had felt very good.