Hey guys! Sorry for the Delay... Life sometimes get's in the way of writing.

Disclaimer: I own Nothing

Ronon could remember so much from his childhood. He could recall the sun rising over Sateda, and how the Capital city seemed to glow like the City of the Ancients itself. He remembered the feel of his mother's hands in his hair, carefully twisting and pulling as she told him what each dreaded lock meant. He recalled his father training him from day break to the setting of the sun. He recalled sitting with his family for the evening meal and feeling like all the world was contained and made right in the small room on that small low table.

He had always wanted to join the military. It was in his blood. His father was a general and his mother was a healer in the Satedan Regulars. His grandfather had once lead a strike team against a crashed wraith Hive ship, while on another world. He had worn his scars and wraith bones proudly until the Second Childhood had taken him. He believed mightily in the strength of his people. He believed that they had a right to live free of the Wraith. So when the day came… his fifteen birth celebration, there was no hesitation in him… He joined the Special Companies.

From there his world expanded drastically. He learned to fight and kill in new and exciting ways… he learned the importance of a good team; he learned the value of the gun in his hand, the knife at this waist, and the blood in his veins.

He was born for this, like all the ancestors had gifted him with strength of body and mind so that he could be what he was, a fighter. There was no weapon that when placed in his hands didn't feel right, no enemy to big or to powerful for Ronon to take down. He could fight or talk his way out of just about everything … in the exceedingly rare times when brute strength and unrivaled strategy failed… he sounded himself with people he could trust. Men and women who were like him, made for this life… born to fight.

When he met Melena, she fell right into place in his world. A piece of his soul that had been missing returned in her. She was the light and the air. A healer, a strong and good woman… a woman he could grow old beside. A woman who would teach their children to be strong and true, who would laugh, and cry, live, and die beside him, with him.

When the Wraith came… it was like his world fell apart. Like the stars that the Ancients hung to watch over them ceased shinning and plummeted to Sateda taking all of his hopes with them. Melena refused to leave the city… she said that she was needed in the hospital. For a moment he cursed his foolish heart for falling in love with such a selfless woman. He stared at her, his heartbreaking as the Chieftain spoke his petty words over the Communication Channel. He wanted to hit something, to scream at the injustice… but he knew that he couldn't. So he'd done the only thing he could, he prepared to fight, to die. Melena's hands had carefully helped him don his Light Armor; it was the best for running and fighting… exactly what he'd need to beat the Wraith. Her nimble fingers had pulled his hair back from his face and bound it into itself. She'd laid one last kiss on his lips and clasped his hands before turning her back on him and heading for the hospital.

His men waited for him. He could see it in their eyes… none of them expected to live through this… and they hadn't. She hadn't.

His world was a cold and empty place, and he didn't plead for life when the Wraith captured him, he had welcomed death. He feared that on the inside… he was already in the ground.

He didn't know what stopped the Wraith that day. Perhaps the thing knew that he wanted to die, perhaps it knew that it would not get the satisfaction of his pleading or fear… whatever happened that day altered the course of his life in ways that he could not have imagined. He was a Runner. Tracked like an animal in the Forrest… forced to keep moving… to keep fighting, but it was not lust for life that kept him going, instead it was rage. A rage that burned him from the inside out, so potent it seeped from his pores, it drove away his sense of pain, his sense of time…

For years, many years he ran. Until all the worlds blended together, until the hunger he felt became his constant companion, until exhaustion was the only thing that reminded him he was alive.

It was on a planet, like the others before; trees, rocks, wraith, and intense skin searing sunshine, that he met John Sheppard. Well not really met… more like notched unconscious and robbed, but he was a runner and he had to keep moving. He envied the obvious familiarity that he'd seen between Sheppard and Teyla, though he hadn't known their names at first. He'd been amazed that Sheppard had offered to have their healer remove the tracker. He'd never met people like this before. It made him all the more aware that he was tired… too tired to keep running.

So when John Sheppard had offered him a place on Atlantis… it was hard for him to consider saying no. He didn't know if he could trust again… he didn't know if he had a heart left. Years of running from the Wraith had made him into a person that he didn't recognize. A man who rarely talked, never smiled, who was never without a weapon… a man with nothing inside of him but pain and anger.

He knew he had no other choice. Sateda was destroyed… the ground poisoned and the cities like relics of a better time standing broken on the horizon. He'd never met a man like John Sheppard. He'd heard the stories after a little time on Atlantis… stories of what he'd done to the Genii, stories of his actions during the siege of Atlantis. All things that spoke to military might… instead he seemed lazy, easy-going, and sometimes even hyperactive. He liked movies and football… things Ronon couldn't begin to understand… but what surprise him… what shocked him… was the way John Sheppard took to him. Immediately he stood up for Ronon, made him part of his "team," started going running with him, started looking after him.

It was early morning on Atlantis, when he realized what had happened… his team sat around him, cracking jokes at McKay. John sat slumped back in his chair, his eyes constantly moving and aware despite his relaxed pose. Teyla sat next to John, her smile open and honest. McKay was slumped over in the chair next to him completely comfortable despite around him despite his constant teasing. That was when he realized it… John Sheppard hadn't just made him part of his team… he'd made him part of his family.

It was like a flashback to his childhood, like all the world was contained and made right on that Mess Hall table.

He knew, though he'd never say it out loud, that he would do anything for John Sheppard, because Sheppard had saved him, made him feel alive again… and he knew that no matter what happened in his time on Atlantis and without asking that he could count on John Sheppard to do anything for him… because that was the kind of man he was.

Thanks! Be sure to Review!

P.S. I'm looking for a BETA please aid in my search! Thank you!

Next Chapter: Teyla