A/N: Hello again! I've got a much longer chapter today and I hope you enjoy. Content warning at the bottom so as not to ruin the plot.
Let me know what you think! :)
Her vision blurred as her eyelids, heavy with fatigue, slowly dropped and closed in surrender. Maybe if she rested them…if only for a moment…
The faint glow of her tablet, the clacking of keys, even the uncomfortable strain in her neck all faded away as she slipped into the land of dreams. Everything darkened and the harsh light from the fluorescents above softened to moonlight. She could smell leather and candle smoke, could feel the furs against her cheek, could hear his voice in her ear.
"Rogers?"
Her eyes fluttered open and the sight that met them at first confused her – stacks of books, a large whiteboard, and…Alan?
She blinked hard and reabsorbed her surroundings. Without a doubt, she was in her lab. She had even pinched herself to make sure. But if that was the case, then why had Ronon's voice felt so real? So close?
"Rogers?"
There he was again. In her ear.
"Rogers, can you hear me?"
Of course. Her earpiece.
She tapped the side of it. "Y-yes," she stammered. "I can hear you. Go ahead."
"I need to talk to you."
Her stomach did a cartwheel. "You? Need to talk to me? About what?"
"Are you in your lab?"
"I am."
"I'll be there in ten minutes."
Alan had looked up from his work and was eyeing her suspiciously from across the room. She hoped he hadn't noticed her midmorning catnap. This was the third time she had fallen asleep at her desk in about as many days. One time alone would have been unprofessional at best, but three times? It was enough grounds to temporarily remove her from duty.
"Actually," she said into her earpiece, "I think it's about time I took a break. There's a balcony two corridors down from the linguistics lab. Do you know which one I'm talking about? The one that faces the Southwest Pier?"
"Yeah."
"How about you meet me there instead?"
"Fine."
The connection went dead, but it didn't elude her that he hadn't told her what it was they suddenly needed to discuss.
"Well fine," she whispered to herself.
She yawned and stretched almost painfully, spending a few extra seconds to roll out a knot in her neck.
"Taking a break?" Alan asked as she made her way to the coffee pot.
"Mhmm." She poured the coffee nearly to the brim of her ceramic mug. It was a simple white one with the phrase There's a chance this is tequila stamped on it in black typewriter font. "I can hardly keep my eyes open. Maybe some fresh air will wake me up."
"Another long night?" he asked with an insinuating wink.
She waggled a finger at him as she added sugar and cream with her other hand. "Don't you dare start with that again."
"Okay, okay. I'm sorry. I'll quit it. Enjoy your break."
Coffee in hand, she walked down the corridor toward the small balcony that overlooked the Southwest Pier. It was unseasonably cool and the ocean was still choppy below due to the previous night's monsoon. Little puddles that hadn't yet evaporated dotted the floor of the terrace and cold, clear droplets of rain and seawater clung to the railings.
The ocean air stung her eyes and made them water, sensitive as they were from lack of sleep, and her heart was thrumming in her chest. She hated feeling like this – physically exhausted but so hyped up on caffeine, steroids, and adrenaline that she couldn't fully let go. Glancing dubiously at the brown liquid in her cup, she took a long sip. A bad idea, perhaps, but it was cold out and the coffee was deliciously warm.
With her mug warming her trembling hands, she took a few steps forward and leaned over the railing to watch the waves. This view was the same day after day, and yet it never seemed to get old. She wondered if that was what spouses thought of one another after years of marriage. You wake up to the same person every morning but never tire of their face. Some days it's calm and serene, other days it's agitated and roiling, but always familiar, always beautiful.
It wasn't long before she heard approaching footsteps. An unbidden smile came to her lips as she turned to greet him.
"Now there's a view."
The mug fell from her hands and hit the floor, shattering and splashing hot coffee everywhere.
"Oh shit. Here, let me help you with that."
If her heart was thrumming before, now it was hammering, as she backed into the space where the railing met the wall.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she asked the Captain as he bent to the ground and began picking up the broken pieces.
"I thought I'd come and check on you."
"Check on me? What are you talking about?"
"I just got word from Woolsey that you had a security issue last night?"
"You know damn well that I did," she snarled, taking a small step forward. "What you did was –"
He looked up at her with a professional expression of concern masking his face, but there was a cold glint in his eyes. "Sounds like Ronon Dex may have broken into your room?"
"What?" The question came out as hardly more than a puff of air, like the wind had been knocked out of her.
He stood up from the ceramic mess and shifted his attention to the tablet in his hand. "Unfortunately, some of our security cameras went down last night due to the power outage. We think it might have had something to do with the monsoon that's passing through," he said, waving vaguely at their surroundings. "The cameras on Floor 4 of the South Corridor were some of those affected at the time you say the incident occurred, but luckily a few in the East Pier rebooted pretty quickly. You may want to take a look at this." He offered her the tablet.
Hesitantly, she took the screen into her hands and watched. A series of security video clips had been stitched together and were playing on a loop. The first clip began with a pair of transporter doors opening to reveal Ronon and Emma together, his hands steadying her after her dizzy spell. The next clip showed them walking through a corridor together, Ronon in watchful proximity. And finally, there she was leaving Ronon's quarters the next morning – her hair a mess, uniform wrinkled and hastily pulled on, pace urgent.
Confused, she nearly handed the tablet back to Hanson until the tiny white print at the bottom of the screen caught her eye.
"Wait a minute…these location markers are wrong," she said. "All of these say East Pier, but only that last clip is actually from there."
"That can't be." He clasped his hands behind his back. "Like I said, most of the city's cameras were down last night."
She furrowed her brow and looked at the screen again. Damn the Atlantis corridors for all looking the same.
"No," she declared with even more certainty. "These first two clips are taken from the West Pier. We were on our way to have dinner together. I'm positive."
He shook his head. "I'm afraid you're mistaken. I verified this footage myself. Luckily, though, we do have the log of your radio call to Ronon Dex from 22:33."
The clips repeated once more and, on this loop, the time stamps caught her eye.
"Captain, your camera system needs a major reboot. All of these time stamps are wrong, too."
"You think so? Look closer," he said.
22:33. She calls Ronon in a panic about the flowers, asking if they're from him.
22:41. The transporter doors open to show Ronon gripping her tightly by the arms.
22:42. Ronon tails her through the hallway, never letting her stray more than a couple feet away from him.
00:57. She leaves Ronon's quarters, disheveled and distressed.
Like a piano dropping to the sidewalk, the pieces all fell into place.
What she saw in these clips was Ronon's concern for her after her bout of vertigo in the malfunctioning transporter. Without that context, though, it wasn't a stretch for someone to interpret what was playing on the screen as force and coercion. And her exit the next morning, which had been hasty out of pure embarrassment, on video made her look shellshocked and scared. With the smallest amount of editing, the evening she had spent under Ronon's protection had been twisted into a narrative of violence and violation.
"You cockroach," she said as she brought the tablet to her chest. "You doctored these! You're doing this to frame him! Our city is under impending attack from the Wraith, but you decided your time this morning would be best spent playing Scorcese?"
"Look," Hanson sighed, "I've been up all night trying to fix the issues from the power outage and you're right – the Wraith's timing isn't ideal. But, I care about you. So I managed to find some time to ask a couple of Dex's neighbors in the East Pier if they heard anything last night that might support what's in those videos."
Her hands were still shaking but she knew it wasn't from the caffeine and it wasn't from fear. She was furious.
"A few of them said they heard loud banging – either on the walls or the door – as well as strange noises, almost like muffled sounds of pain."
Her asthma attack. To anyone who had never witnessed or experienced one before, the sound of her wheezing would definitely have sounded strange.
He glanced at her hands. "And I'd say that those bruises on your wrists seem to corroborate their claims."
"You were the one who gave me these bruises and you know it," she hissed.
"Yeah? And what about that big one on your jaw?"
Taking advantage of her momentary shock, he reached to snatch the tablet from her but, in a movement so instinctual she couldn't believe she actually went through with it, she dropped it over the railing and into the ocean below.
Now it was his turn to be shocked, but he quickly stifled that disbelief and regained his snide composure.
"All of our video footage is backed up to several external hard drives, you know." He stepped closer to her, and her back hit the corner. "Here's the deal, beautiful," he said through his teeth. The sneer on his face disappeared, his eyes narrowed, and the true Captain Hanson emerged. "You keep quiet about last night's little incident and we say it's resolved – a misunderstanding. But if you go running and crying to Woolsey again, he will get a front row screening of that little video and anything else I may find to add to it."
"I don't have a problem going around Woolsey to get you to leave me alone," she threatened. "Ronon –"
"Ronon Dex is a stupid, angry Neanderthal who acts without thinking. He may be part of Sheppard's special little club, but you know perfectly well that his position on this base is tenuous at best. I'll let you imagine the actions the IOA would take if he were to attack a decorated officer of the US military."
Hanson was jealous. All of this was happening because he was jealous of Ronon. But that didn't help the reality of this all-too-familiar situation. Here she was once again with her back against the wall being intimidated by him, with no security camera to catch the interaction.
Then it dawned on her. Hanson was intimately familiar with the locations of all the security cameras in the city and he knew that most balconies, this one included, weren't equipped with one.
"You've been tracking my radio transmissions," she whispered. "You knew I was going to be here, alone and out of sight. You waited for me to leave my lab so you could –"
The corner of his mouth turned upward. "Smart and beautiful."
"Rogers?"
The hammering soared from her chest to her throat at the sound of his voice and the relief she felt was so overwhelming, it made her lightheaded. She looked over Hanson's shoulder to see Ronon standing in the doorway. His eyes volleyed back and forth between the two of them, fist clenching and unclenching at his side.
Hanson turned around and Emma finally released the breath she was holding. "Dex. Heard you've been recruited for Woolsey's suicide mission."
"Won't be my first; won't be my last." Ronon's lip curled up in disgust.
Although Emma empathized with Ronon's reaction, she found the immediate strength of it a bit puzzling. Then again, she had never seen them interact.
The two men stared at each other in tense silence until Emma spoke up. "The captain was just leaving. You wanted to talk with me, Ronon?"
"Yeah." He turned his suspicious gaze from Hanson over to her. "In private."
Both Ronon and Emma stared expectantly at the captain, indicating that it was time for him to leave, but it took much longer than it should have for him to make himself scarce. As Hanson contemplated his next course of action, Emma glanced down at Ronon's hand and saw it clench once more into a fist.
She broke the silence. "I'm sure with the Wraith on their way, you have plenty of security matters to deal with."
"Yes." He paused. "Yes, I do. I'll see you later, Emma. Maybe tonight." He turned and left, brushing past Ronon on his way out.
Ronon watched Hanson disappear down the hallway and only stepped onto the balcony once he was convinced he was gone. He stood next to her and leaned against the balcony railing, arms crossed over his chest. Considering he had come to talk with her, he was being unnaturally quiet – even for him.
"You okay?" she asked.
He nodded to the broken coffee mug on the floor. "What happened there?"
"Oh! That. I…slipped in one of the puddles and dropped my coffee." She forced a smile. "A real shame, too. That was my favorite mug."
He gave her a scrutinizing glance. "Good thing you didn't spill on your uniform."
"Yes. Very lucky. This is my favorite uniform."
She thought the joke might lighten the atmosphere, but he wasn't taking the bait.
"Did I interrupt something just now?" he asked, gesturing around the balcony.
Her chest tightened into a painful knot. "No," she said quietly. "Nothing at all. We used to work together back at Cheyenne Mountain and he was just dropping by to say hi."
He grunted in reply. "I saw the broken cup and he was standing pretty close to you – I uh, I was worried that I was gonna have to beat someone up."
This time he was the one making jokes, but there was an underlying conviction in his tone that made her nervous. She laughed nonetheless, but it came out thin and high-pitched, almost maniacal.
Ronon continued in spite of her ridiculous outburst. "And then I wondered, maybe –"
"No," she cut him off. "He's just a colleague. That's it."
He narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth, no doubt to ask some probing question about Hanson or her relationship with him, but once more she beat him to the punch.
"What's this suicide mission?" she asked.
His stance relaxed with the change of subject and he sank more of his weight into the balustrade. "You heard the Wraith might be on their way to Atlantis?"
She nodded. "I overheard the news this morning."
"Well, Woolsey wants us to attack a Wraith outpost, kill some Wraith, and harvest their enzyme."
Blunt as usual, his reply left her a bit stunned. "What? Why?"
"If the Wraith are on their way here, Woolsey wants to wake Janus up. Beckett said we couldn't do that unless we got more of the enzyme."
Emma blinked a few times. "I see…" She relaxed onto the guard rail next to him and let the information sink in. "How long will you, I mean your team, be gone?"
He shook his head. "No clue. Could be hours, could be a couple days."
Which could mean a couple nights. Nights that she would have to spend alone in her quarters. Her eyes flashed toward his. "Who – who else is going?"
"Our team and Lorne's."
"That's it? Just eight of you to infiltrate a Wraith outpost?"
It was now Ronon's turn to look at the ground. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."
She frowned in confusion. Surely, they didn't need a linguist for the operation.
"Sheppard wants Eva on the mission," he said.
"Eva?" The fear that had begun to dissipate from her body at Ronon's arrival slowly crept back into her heart.
"She's probably killed more Wraith than anyone but –"
"You," she breathed.
He nodded.
"What did she say?" she asked.
"I haven't asked her yet. I wanted to…see what you thought first." He scratched awkwardly at the back of his head. "I mean you're her – you know."
"Are you asking my permission? Are you asking me to approve sending a – a teenage girl on a suicide mission?"
"I'm asking your opinion," he stated matter-of-factly.
"And if my opinion differs from yours? Then what?"
"I haven't landed on an opinion yet."
"So then it's all up to me and what I say? If I say no, then you can report back to Sheppard and shift the blame to me. If I say yes, then you're free of any responsibility or any guilt should something bad happen to her." The adrenaline from her encounter with Hanson was still flowing and she felt the crescendo in her voice with every sentence, but couldn't control it. "Sounds like a win-win for you. You don't –"
She continued speaking, but Ronon wasn't having it. "Nothing bad is going to happen to her," he said, voice raised enough to drown hers out.
"You don't know that. You can't promise that."
"As long as she stays with me, she'll be safe."
"You know she won't stay with you," she whispered. "She doesn't listen. Not to you. Not to anyone."
"She needs this, Rogers. She's alone here…wasting away with overflowing talent and no purpose."
She let silence descend between them before speaking again. "Sounds like you landed on your opinion."
He sighed, turned around, and looked out over the waves. "It's like when you flip a coin. The minute that coin goes in the air, you already know your decision, even before it lands."
Her gaze was so singularly focused on his face, she felt as though her stare might burn a hole through him. She knew exactly what he meant.
"And hearing my opinion was your coin toss?"
When he looked back at her, he returned the intensity of her gaze in kind. "The Wraith took her from her home, branded her like she was nothing more than cattle, and hunted her like a wild animal. This could be a chance for her to get revenge."
Subconsciously, her hand went to her neck to touch the healing wound there, and the dried-up bits of liquid suture that were flaking off as the cut healed. She thought of the video McKay had shown her on the Alpha Site, and she remembered what the Wraith had said about having a plan for Eva. Who knew what would happen if she were to fall into the hands of the Wraith again?
"I'm sorry, Ronon," she whispered.
"If I promised I could keep her safe?"
"We just went over this. It isn't your abilities that I doubt, but her willingness to follow orders and listen to you. I know that you would do anything within your control to keep her safe. But Eva…she ain't under anybody's control."
"You mean that?"
He stared so deeply into her eyes that gooseflesh broke out along her arms and neck.
"Yes?" She wasn't sure what part of her statement he was asking her about.
"What if I told you that I could get her to listen to me? Guaranteed?"
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Now that I would pay good money to see."
He placed a light touch on her arm. "Come with me."
CW: Typical dickish Hanson shenanigans. If his previous intimidation chapter bothered you, this one probably will too. :/
What do you think Emma should do? Go to Woolsey again? Tell Ronon what's going on? Wait a bit and hope that Hanson perishes at the hands of a nasty Wraith?
And how do you think Ronon is possibly going to get Eva to listen to him?