Hello again! I've got a long chapter for you tonight and part of it is very near and dear to my heart. There's a flashback in this chapter, which was actually the first scene I wrote once the inspiration for Eva struck me. I had initially intended on putting it into a different story (one that I'm working on that would take place before this fic), but it didn't end up fitting in that one. I personally love this little flashback because it shows just how close Ronon and Eva once were. I think it also redeems Eva's character a little bit.

I hope you enjoy! Please let me know if you do. I love all the reviews, favorites, and follows. They make my day! Thanks again for reading. :)

The ocean surrounding her was vast and black and the lights of the jumper reflected like little pinpoints against the murky waves as it flew past.

"Breathe," she whispered to herself. "Breathe. Don't think about crashing. You just have to make it to the mainland."

She wasn't sure why she did it. One minute she was arguing with her father, wishing she could be anywhere but cooped up in the city, and the next she was stunning the two scientists in the jumper bay. One of them had hit his head pretty hard on the way down…she did feel badly about that. Taking off had been easy enough; it was just a matter of touching the controls and thinking "fly." But now that she had to navigate through the night - the dark, cold depth and sheer immensity of the ocean finally starting to register - she was beginning to question her rash decision making.

As the thought of the mainland popped into her mind, a map of the planet appeared on her heads-up display. Small red dots appeared across the screen, tracing the path from her jumper to the nearest section of the continent.

"100 kilometers," she read. "That's nothing. We'll be there in no time." She wasn't entirely certain what she would do once she reached the mainland, but she would cross that bridge when she came to it. Instead, she focused on the little red dots and continued on her trajectory toward land. "Just like Pacman," she whispered. "I assume…"

With the HUD masking the majority of the front window, she heard the raindrops before she saw them. At first, they sounded like little pebbles hitting the roof and sides of the jumper, but soon the rain picked up and those little drops quickly evolved into sheets of water that assailed the hull of the ship. She glanced down below and saw that the seas beneath her had become rough and choppy. Multiple strikes of lightning flashed in the distance and an instantaneous clap of thunder rumbled deep, as though it had emanated from her own chest.

"Shield," she immediately thought. The HUD displayed an image of a forcefield forming around the craft. Feeling safer, she let out a quiet breath of relief. "30 kilometers," she muttered to herself.

Though the rain no longer pelted the exterior of the jumper due to the protection of the shield, she could still view the lightning strikes and hear the thunder roll across the sea. The storm around her was worsening.

There was a beeping on the HUD and a small, red target blinked about 5 kilometers west of her position. Minimizing the display, she glanced out the window to see a tower of clouds, like smoke from an erupting volcano, illuminated from the inside by pure white light, blinding against the navy sky. Jellyfish tendrils of lightning erupted incessantly from the edges of it.

It was an electric storm.

She pulled the HUD back up. Only 15 kilometers to go. She stayed her course, urging the jumper along the route outlined on the map. As the distance remaining dropped to single digits, she squinted and tried to make out the coast of the mainland. "Search lights," she thought. The jumper's high beams activated and pierced through the darkness. "It should be straight ahead," she murmured, comparing the HUD's map to the great ocean in front of her. She craned her head, looked to the east, and caught a glimpse of what she thought was a sandy beach. Unless she was reading the map incorrectly, if she followed its path, she would just end up in the middle of the ocean.

"Mainland," she thought harder, closing her eyes tightly. "Take me to the mainland." She opened her eyes, but the map in front of her remained unchanged. "Fine," she sighed, and the HUD disappeared. Ignoring its directions, she veered the aircraft to the east in search of the beach she thought she had seen. For several minutes, she flew without the assistance of the mapping system, but encountered nothing. The mainland continued to prove elusive.

Her chest tightened and her palms began to perspire as panicked thoughts raced through her mind. The mainland was nowhere to be found. Maybe the map was right the whole time and she had been wrong. It was dark, after all. For all she knew, she was now flying in the total opposite direction.

A crack of lightning flashed in her vicinity. She jumped in her seat and yelped. This was foolish.

"Atlantis," she thought. The HUD made itself visible, but no destination appeared on the map. "Atlantis," she said out loud and with force, but there was nothing. "Home." Still nothing. "City of the Ancestors." Nothing again. "Shit," she hissed.

Her body heat rose and her back was sweating. She was lost. Desperately lost in the dark in the middle of a storm with no landmarks as far as the eye could see. Tears clouded her vision and her throat swelled. Just as she started to lose a grip on her composure, she saw it: large waves breaking against tall rocks planted deep into the sand. The coast of the mainland. Relief coursed through her veins as she lowered the ship's altitude.

It appeared that this particular portion of the landmass was primarily forest. She flew the jumper along the coast, searching for a clearing wide enough, smooth enough, and far enough away from the tempestuous waves for her to land.

"This'll have to do," she said as she discovered a small, pebbly clearing. She passed it once, then doubled back in a loop to attempt a landing. She had always heard that landing was much more difficult than taking off, but she hoped that in the puddle jumper, all she would have to do would be to think "land," and so she did. She chanted the word "land" over and over again in her head and visualized the jumper gliding smoothly to a stop against the bed of tiny pebbles. She tried to think back to the way Colonel Sheppard looked whenever he landed a jumper; he always made it seem so effortless. As the beach got closer, she realized that her mental chant of "land, land, land" had become verbal.

The ground approached with sudden rapidity and the HUD made itself visible once again, this time with flares of red blinking around its border and alarms blaring. The jumper made hard contact with the ground and slid, maintaining its momentum past sand, past boulders, past grass, until it crashed headfirst into the forest. Eva's skull slammed against the control panel in front of her and everything changed from red alerts and loud alarms to silent darkness.

"You my pilot?" Ronon asked the young captain who approached him.

"Yes, sir," she answered. "Captain Melanie Schmitz."

"And who are you?" he asked the man who had arrived with her.

"I'm um…I'm one of the new techs, sir," he replied. "I'll be tracking your daughter's subcutaneous transmitter," he explained. "I also have the Ancient gene in case I need to fly the other jumper back."

"Good," Ronon nodded, turning his back to his new team. "Let's go," he ordered.

"Is your wife on her way?" the captain asked as they boarded the ship together.

"She's not coming," he grunted as he took a seat. He knew she wanted to, he knew she wouldn't slow them down, but he couldn't risk losing his wife and, more significantly, he couldn't risk Eva losing her mother.

The captain closed the rear hatch, cloaked the jumper, and ascended through the jumper bay doors.

"Hm," the captain mused, squinting at the control panel and then through the windshield.

"What?" Ronon asked.

She shook her head. "The sensors are off," she informed him. "We're currently facing the West Pier head on," she motioned the direction with her hand, "but the compass on the HUD is saying that we're facing southwest."

"Why is it doing that?" Ronon asked.

"Nichols, are you having any trouble locating her transmitter?" the captain asked the scientist.

"No. It's sending out a clear signal. Looks like she's probably on the mainland," he answered.

"Then I'd say it's the storm, sir," the captain finally answered in an effort to address Ronon's earlier question. "The electrical current is messing with the ship's electromagnetic compass. Gimme a second." She turned the jumper around and they hovered midair, facing the North Pier while she fiddled with a few of the knobs and dials on the control panel.

"We're wasting time," Ronon growled.

"Just gimme another second."

"Every second we waste is one more second my daughter is prey to the Wraith."

"Look, I understand," the captain interrupted. "I'm a daddy's girl, myself. But we will end up wasting more time in the long run if I don't take the time now to manually recalibrate our sensors. If we intend on finding her as efficiently as possible, then I need to sort this out."

"Fine," he grunted. "Just…hurry up."

"Already done," she smiled as she flipped the ship around and they sped in the direction toward the mainland.

Inside the cabin no one spoke so it should have been silent, but the hail bombarding the outsides of the ship was deafening. The technician's tracking device emitted steady, high-pitched beeps that seemed to tick away every second they had left to find Eva before the Wraith did. Ronon restlessly spun his gun in his hand, staring at the map of the mainland on the HUD.

"Eva," he called. "Come here."

She turned her head over her shoulder to look over at him, picked one more flower from the tree and added it to the others in her hair. She skipped over to Ronon, then crouched down to the ground just like him.

He placed one hand on her tiny back and pointed to the earth with the other. "You see these prints?" he asked, looking at her face as she studied them.

She nodded.

"What kind of tracks are they?" he inquired.

"Rabbit?" she questioned.

"You asking or you telling?" he said harshly.

"Rabbit," she repeated with more certainty.

"Good," he smiled. "How many?"

She scrunched her lips together and knelt so close to the ground that her nose almost touched the dirt. "Just one," she declared confidently, having learned her lesson from earlier. She examined their surroundings. "Tree cover…bushes…" she thought out loud. "It's a momma rabbit," she stated.

He tried to hide his pride in her. "How do you know?"

"Because this," she started, standing up and walking to a large bush, "is her nest." She bent down again to grab a nearby stick, then lightly pushed up the grassy covering to reveal a litter of small furry kits. "Awwww," she cooed. "Can I have one, Dad?"

"Nope," he grunted, standing up and taking her by the hand to lead her away from the nest.

"Please," she begged. She quickly broke free of his grasp and ran back to the nest.

He sighed and caught up to her again, this time gripping her harder by the wrist, and yanked her up. "Let's go," he prodded.

"Can I at least hold one?" she asked with frustration. She leaned her entire weight against his arm to prevent him from heading in the opposite direction of the rabbits.

"Nope," he repeated.

"Why not?" she pouted.

"If you touch the kits, then the doe will think there's something wrong with them and will abandon the nest," he answered gruffly.

"Oh," she breathed. She stopped in her tracks and stared down at the ground. "And they'll die?" she asked, looking up at Ronon.

He nodded. "Whenever you're out here, you have to make sure you make the smallest impact possible," he told her.

"So that things don't die?"

He nodded. "So that things don't die," he echoed, then finally released his grip on her wrist.

"But we kill things when we hunt…"

"There's a difference between accidentally killing something out of disregard and intentionally hunting something for food."

"So…it's okay to kill things on purpose but not on accident?" she wondered, furrowing her brow.

Ronon got onto his knees so that their eyes were level; he placed both of his hands on her shoulders. "It is wrong to kill something for fun or for sport or for a selfish reason," he started.

"Like wanting to hold a baby rabbit," she whispered to the ground in shame.

He took her chin between his thumb and index finger and tilted her face upward so that she was looking into his eyes again. "But sometimes we need to kill things to survive," he explained. "That's how life works."

"And then it's not wrong?"

It was Ronon's turn to look away. "That's a tough question, pup," he sighed. He glanced back at her, smiled, and secured one of her flowers into her braids.

There was a rustling in the nearby bushes. Ronon got to his feet and drew his blaster from its holster and pointed it toward the sound. Eva pulled out her small knife, hid behind her father like they had practiced before, and clutched to the back of his shirt. Ronon exhaled and lowered his gun. "Just a deer." Eva sheathed her knife and peeked out from behind him. "You wanna follow it?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

Without a word, she sprinted noiselessly in its direction and Ronon followed. They dodged through trees and boulders, pursuing the white tail as it disappeared around the bushes. Eva's ankle made hard contact with a raised tree root and she hit the forest floor with grunt of pain. Ronon skidded to a halt and ran back to her. He knelt by her side, picked her up, and gingerly set her on a nearby boulder. "Are you hurt?" he asked as he worriedly examined every inch of her.

"My hand," she whimpered, holding it up between them.

Ronon grimaced as soon as he saw it. "Your finger's dislocated." He took her injured hand in his own and Eva's eyes widened as she beheld her disfigured finger, bent perpendicular to the rest. "Don't look at it," Ronon ordered. "Look at me," he instructed.

She brought her eyes to his. They were shining with tears but she tried her best to keep them from falling.

"I'm going to pop it back into place," he told her, his voice level. "It's gonna hurt, but I need you to keep looking at me," he demanded. "Got it?"

She nodded, lip trembling.

"One, two," he popped her finger back into place and Eva let out a yelp, but didn't break eye contact, "three. That's it. We're done. All fixed," he said, rubbing her hand.

"Can I look now?" she asked hesitantly.

Ronon nodded.

She looked down at her hand and flexed her fingers to test them all.

"Anything else hurt? Your wrists? Ankles?"

She shook her head. "I'm okay," she whispered.

Ronon stood up and helped Eva, whose head was hanging low, to her feet. "What's wrong?"

"We lost the deer," she lamented.

Ronon laughed quietly. "We'll find another one," he reassured her, placing his arm around her shoulders and pulling her close to him.

As the sun set and their ride returned, Ronon and a very muddy Eva boarded the puddle jumper and claimed two seats in the rear compartment. The ship took flight and once it reached cruising altitude, Eva yawned.

"You tired?" Ronon asked her.

She nodded as she rubbed her eyes with a dusty hand.

Ronon shifted her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her. "Take a nap," he ordered, placing a hand on the side of her head and bringing it against his chest.

She nodded against him and closed her eyes. "Daddy?" she said softly.

"Hm?" he grunted.

"I love you."

"I love you, too, pup," he replied, then kissed the top of her head.

When the jumper landed back in Atlantis, he carried her limp, sleeping form back to their quarters and laid her, flowers in her hair and mud on her knees, in her bed.

A wave of nausea suddenly consumed him. When they found her – if they found her – would he need to carry her back home once more? Would he be the one to lay her to rest, this time for good?

"Does that thing tell you anything about her health?" he blurted out, nodding his chin toward the tracking device.

"I'm afraid not," Nichols replied. "This type of tracker doesn't reveal anything about life signs. It will broadcast regardless of whether the person is alive, dead, unconscious…"

Ronon's stomach lurched again. "Can't you do anything about the turbulence?" he snapped at the captain.

"I'm doing the best I can with these winds," she answered with a shrug. "There's Dramamine in the first aid kit if you need it, sir."

Ronon leapt out of his chair, headed to the rear, and paced back and forth, still spinning his gun in his hand.

"Halfway there," the captain quietly announced.