Another short chapter, but the chapter after this is (personally) one of my favorites. I'm posting more quickly now because I won't be able to in about two and half weeks for two months. Hope you enjoy!

They finished their lesson and Ronon stood up to leave. She followed. "Is this you?" he asked, picking up a framed photo. She was riding a burly, dark, almost black horse that was galloping so fast, it looked like it was in danger of collapsing on its side. Its long tail blew in the wake of the wind it created. She wore a checkered pink blouse, a thick brown belt, jeans, and a pair of cowboy boots. Her long red hair blew freely behind her underneath a cream-colored cowboy hat. The absolute control over her horse was evident by the look of sheer focus on her face.

"Yeah," she smiled, looking down at it in his hands, "I was…sixteen, I think."

"What are you doing?" he asked curiously.

"Barrel racing," she answered, putting her hands in her back pockets, "You run a horse around a bunch of barrels," she explained, drawing the trajectory in the air with her finger. "That's my mustang, Porthos. I was okay that year. I made top ten...didn't make the podium though," she lamented.

Ronon sat on her bed and she sat next to him, taking the photograph from his grip. "Do you still do it?" he asked.

She shrugged. "For fun, yeah. But I haven't competed in nearly ten years. I kind of quit after that year," she revealed.

"Why?" he asked.

She sighed. "Not medalling was a bit of a blow to my ego," she confessed. "I don't like to not be good at things." She paused for a second. "Besides, trying to stay fluent in as many languages as I am requires a lot of time and upkeep. I don't have a whole lot of time for hobbies," she laughed quietly.

"That's why you run," he commented.

"What do you mean?" she asked, her brow furrowed.

"You run because of your asthma...because you don't like to be bad at things," he astutely observed.

Emma smiled. "Yeah," she nodded, looking at him in a different light. Not only had he remembered that she liked to run and had asthma, but he understood her motivations for doing so, too. Was he this perceptive of everyone? Or just her? "I could never run as a kid because of it, so as I got older I kept at it until I could."

He smiled. "And who's that from?" he asked, pointing to the drawing above her desk.

"That," she said with affection, "is from my beautiful niece Allie," she beamed, standing up again to find a picture of her. "She's my older sister's daughter. She's almost four years old." She handed him the frame.

"She looks a lot like you," he observed, cocking his head to the side.

"Yeah, well, strong genes in the Rogers family," she muttered as an explanation, "She says it's us together when I come back," she sniffed softly, describing the hand drawn picture. She felt hot tears behind her eyes and her heart was aching. She hadn't acknowledged until just then how much she missed her family.

Ronon understood her silence and didn't say anything, but stood up next to her.

"I'm swinging on the playground with her in the picture," she laughed feebly.

"You miss them," he said, placing a comforting hand on her back.

She nodded, still holding back her tears. "I do. I really do. It's not like it was when I was away at school or in Chile," she said, "I could talk to them every day. Here, I can't communicate with them at all." She stopped talking for a minute. "It's just…so weird because being here in Atlantis feels just like being in some foreign country." She paused, trying not to lose her composure. "I don't want to leave here," she assured him. "It's just…in those other places, I could still talk to my mom and dad and see Allie's little face," she smiled sadly.

"Why did you leave your home?" he questioned. His hand felt heavy on her back.

"For my career," she answered quickly. He stared into her eyes. She blinked. "And to escape," she finally admitted.

"From what?" he prodded.

"Nothing," she breathed, shaking her head and wiping a tear away before it even fell, "It's a long story."

"Is that why you came here?" he persisted, "To escape?"

She studied his face. "Yes," she finally answered.

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