A/N: Hope you all like this chapter. :)

BIG content warning for domestic violence, described somewhat graphically from the victim's POV. If you avoid the flashbacks in parentheses, you will get past the bulk of it.

She didn't want to be here.

What good would a review of hand-to-hand combat do for anyone against heavily-armored Wraith should they somehow find their way into the city? If any citizen did come face to face with a Wraith intruder, wouldn't a refresher in firearms be a better use of their time?

Hugging her arms close to her body, she looked to both sides of her and recognized plenty of familiar faces – other scientists who, just like her, rarely saw any off-world action. The softies who needed a little bit of toughening up before the invasion. How embarrassing.

A small, annoying voice in her head reminded her that she did, in fact, have time for this. There was no place for linguistics during this particular time of need. The only alternative was to go back to her desk and keep translating readouts from Eva's tracking device, but even that wasn't a truly viable choice given that Woolsey had made attendance of the combat course mandatory.

The doors behind her opened and the person entering spoke immediately.

"Everybody pair up."

Though Emma turned to look, she didn't need to do so to know who their instructor would be. His voice alone was enough. Eva's appearance by his side, though, was a bit of a surprise.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder, drawing her attention away from Ronon.

"Feel like being partners?" the scientist asked, one of his dark eyebrows quirked up in invitation.

"Um…" Her eyes flitted about the room. Why wasn't Lacey here? Lorne probably got her exempted somehow, she thought bitterly. "Sure."

"Try not to sound so excited."

"It's nothing personal," she explained, drawing her jacket closed. "I just don't want to be here in general."

"I get what you mean." He gave her a charming, if lopsided smile.

She lifted her chin and shook her hair out of her face. "Dr. Branton, right?"

He nodded and extended his hand for her to shake. "Mike, yeah. You're Emma?"

"Rogers, yes." She felt her stomach constrict at the immediate abandonment of last names and titles.

Ronon resumed speaking and everyone looked toward him at the front of the room.

"All of you are here because you passed Level 1 hand-to-hand combat but haven't undergone any other close combat training."

"Passed" was a generous way of describing how Emma had gotten that certification. Limped through would have been more accurate. Thank goodness Teyla, ever patient and kind, had been her instructor then. Too bad that wasn't the case today.

"With the Wraith on their way and a siege of the city possible, those basic skills need review. We'll go over what you learned in Level 1 and add Level 2 techniques as needed."

Ronon didn't make much eye contact with anyone as he spoke, but Emma couldn't help but think he was avoiding looking at her in particular as he gave his explanations.

"Close combat fighting is essential in case you lose your firearm. Some of you already had weapons lessons this morning or might have them later today. This is what you will need to do in case you don't have or can't access that firearm."

So there had been remedial weapons classes, too, though this was the first she had heard of them. Maybe she had been excused from those, which made her wonder who she could thank for that. Would Ronon have done that for her? Or were her skills alone deemed proficient enough to exempt her from attending?

"You have three choices if you encounter a Wraith in close quarters. One, disengage from the Wraith to either escape or regain projectile weapon range. Two, gain a controlling position and use a secondary weapon like a knife. Or three, close the distance and gain control to finish the fight." Ronon's voice dipped in volume. "If the Wraith do invade the city, we can expect them in large numbers. So, while you might be able to incapacitate a Wraith or even kill one using these techniques, remember that the real winner of a hand-to-hand fight is the one whose allies arrive first…with guns."

Ronon lowered his gaze to survey the crowd and this time, he did make eye contact with her. She was sure of it, for her heart slingshot into her throat when his eyes met her own. His little introduction had contained an appropriate amount of intensity given the situation at hand, but that intensity had flared when he caught sight of her. A few nights had passed since he had last looked at her like that, and his regard still sent an immediate flush of heat up her back and neck. Suddenly warm, and no doubt already pink in the cheeks, she refused to remove her uniform jacket for fear of letting him in on what she was feeling.

A small muscle at the edge of his mouth twitched, but other than that he seemed utterly unaffected by her presence and carried on with his instruction.

"In your groups, decide who'll be combatant one, who'll be combatant two, and we'll start with Drill A." He then turned to Eva and whispered something to her.

Eva nodded her understanding and made her way into the crowd of people, separating a couple pairs, including botanists Dr. Parrish and Dr. Brown, to guide Dr. Brown toward Emma and Dr. Branton.

"Hi," she said, looking up at Emma. "I'm splitting you up. Old man wants same-gendered pairs only."

The grip of tension Emma hadn't realized was still lurking in her stomach released as Eva started to lead Dr. Branton to his new partner.

"Too bad," he said to her before he took his leave. "Maybe I'll see you after? For lunch or something?"

"I –" don't think so, was what she was going to say before she stole another glance at Ronon, several feet away. "Yeah, maybe," she said a bit louder than her usual volume, forcing a smile. Out of the corner of her eye, she could tell he was pretending not to listen, but as the groups finalized and he began the demonstration of the first drill, he showed his hand.

"You," he called.

Dr. Branton checked to see if there was anyone behind him and, upon finding no one, pointed to his chest, frowning. "Me?"

"Yeah, you. Up here."

Branton looked uneasily at the crowd around him as he cautiously made his way to the front of the room.

"You'll be my Wraith for the first demonstration," Ronon said.

Branton unsuccessfully tried to conceal a look of terror.

"In these close-quarter situations, a Wraith's main goal is to feed. To get you into a feeding position, they will either start to choke you with the non-feeding hand or they'll go for your face." He mimicked a slow-motion punch to Branton's face with his left hand. "We'll start standing." He lifted his chin and gestured to his neck. "Choke me."

"What?"

"You heard me. Left-handed. Go."

Branton tentatively gripped Ronon's neck in his hand. Branton was a tall man and they were well matched in size; Ronon was perhaps only an inch or so taller and, though more muscled than Branton, the scientist was broader in the shoulders and longer limbed. Maybe that was why Ronon had chosen him as his demonstration partner, and not out of the petty jealousy Emma had tried to rouse in him.

"When you're this close with a Wraith, your instinct will be to focus on the feeding hand," Ronon continued. "But the feeding hand can't do its job if the other hand isn't restraining you, so concentrate on the non-feeding hand. If you are being choked, whether like this, up against a wall, on the floor…"

The edges of the room fell out of focus and Emma's concentration faltered.

He had locked the car doors. Maybe they locked automatically. Hands shaking, it took her more than one try to open the passenger side, but she managed to do it before he even put the car into park. She hadn't bothered to fasten her seatbelt in the first place and was already halfway through the parking lot by the time the engine stopped. She reached to the bottom of her bag, fingers groping for her keys. The driver's side door slammed shut. Footsteps behind her. She should run.

She made it through the first unlocked door of the apartment complex.

Mailboxes. Keypad. Speaker.

"What have I said about walking away from me?"

Why did all her keys look the same?

Gym. Pool. Mail. Main entrance. Unit.

His hands snatched her waist, he forced her to face him, and her keys fell to the floor with a clatter. His forearm across her throat, her back against the wall. The corner of a mailbox dug into the side of her head.

"Don't ever get in my way like that again."

The palm of his hand struck her cheek, but pain was secondary as she gasped for air.

Increased pressure on her windpipe. Constriction in her chest. A fist to her stomach and what little wind she had left in her was knocked out.

How low had he punched her? Would that cause her to lose the baby? Would she be devastated or relieved if it did?

"Emma?"

Reality came back into focus just in time for her to see Ronon sweep Branton's legs out from under him and drop him to the floor. It was Eva, now at her side, who had said her name.

"You okay?" The girl's look of concern almost veiled her suspicion.

She swallowed and nodded. "Yeah. Fine," she tried to say as cheerily as possible.

"All right," Ronon said to the crowd, sending a bruised Branton back to his new partner. "Let's see it."

"Do you want to attack or defend first?" Katie Brown, her new partner, asked.

Emma shook her head. "I don't care."

She was holding it together, but barely. Thank goodness Eva had taken Branton away, as Katie ended up being the perfect partner. The botanist was a relatively small woman, quiet, patient, and understanding, which helped immensely. Emma also discovered that if she was the one to attack first, she would get used to what they were practicing, which mitigated some of her nerves.

In the meantime, Eva and Ronon circulated the room, fixing things here and there. Eva would step in and help the women more than anything else, and Ronon would either help the men, or work with anyone who requested a larger partner.

"Let's see how it's going," Ronon called out to the class. "Branton again, Parrish, and…Garrett." He motioned for them to join him for another demonstration.

Emma appraised the selected men and realized Ronon had picked the three tallest people of the group. Ronon knew full well that no Wraith was the size of an average human woman or even man. All Wraith were at least over six feet, many by much more than that. Evidently, he wanted everyone to practice on someone closer to the size of the actual enemy.

The rest of the group huddled toward the front of the room, but Emma hung back, hoping to get lost in the fray.

Katie was the first to get chosen. Up until this point, they had practiced four types of chokeholds: two from the front, one while on the floor, and one from behind. From working with her, Emma knew Katie's weakest move was the escape from the floor chokehold. Emma wasn't sure if it was better or worse that Katie and Dr. Parrish worked in the same department as this technique began with the assailant mounted on top of the defender. They both took it in good stride though, made a quick joke about the awkwardness of it all, and as professionally and respectfully as possible, got into position for the move. Parrish's hand went to Katie's throat and again, Emma felt the room dissolve around her.

His fingers twisted and yanked at her hair, ripping the roots from her scalp, as he brought her face close to his. His breath was hot and reeked of expensive whiskey. How she had enough air in her lungs to make any sound of pain astonished her, but she heard it anyway, faraway and strangled. He said something horrible to her, accusing her of something she never did, and his fist met the bridge of her nose. There was a snap and blood filled her nose, her mouth, the back of her throat. The blow had made her vision go white for a moment and when it returned, she had barely enough time to brace for another hit to the stomach and one more to the ribs, before sinking to the floor.

Through her swimming vision, she watched him storm out of the apartment vestibule and get back into his car. She spat a mouthful of blood onto the linoleum, fumbled in her purse for her inhaler, and breathed what little of the medicine she could. Just as she felt the world around her fade, she reached up to the call box and typed in her apartment number, hoping with all of her crushed heart that her roommate was home.

"Dr. Rogers, you're up," Ronon said, looking down at the floor.

Her eyes snapped to the front of the room. How many people had already gone so far? Had Katie's turn just ended or had she missed more than that?

She took a few tentative steps forward, glancing from Branton, to Parrish, to Garrett and back again. Ronon must have sensed her hesitation, for he lifted his eyes and followed her gaze before making a split-second decision, waving her toward him instead.

The glass cage surrounding her racing heart shattered.

"Which hold is your weakest?" he asked as she approached, loud enough for the whole class could hear.

She swallowed hard. "Um, the rear chokehold."

He nodded once and spun his index finger in a circle, indicating she turn around. He came up behind her, close enough for her to feel the heat of him all along her back. Her body's instincts were strong, instantly recalling the feeling of sleeping in his arms. For a split second, she closed her eyes and remembered what it was like to to melt into him, to be alone in the world with him and let the quiet fortitude of his spirit flow into her. As much as the sight of him made her heart pound, he had an equally, though paradoxically, calming effect on her.

"Ready?" he said in a voice low enough for only her to hear.

She nodded.

His arm came around her neck from behind, dragging her body into his. There was still control in his grip – he was restraining her rather than actually choking her – but this was the first time she had felt his strength used against her. His arms were like limbs of a tree, his legs planted like roots. The force of it caught her so off guard that her mind went blank and, rather than use anything she had learned in the past half hour, she panicked. She gasped, one of her hands went to her rapidly-constricting chest, and she tapped on his leg to release her. There wasn't a millisecond of delay on his part and he let her go.

"Excuse me," she managed to say as she reached in her pocket for her inhaler and left.

She sat in the hallway, leaned against the wall, contemplating if it was better to rejoin the class or duck out early. Fiddling with the inhaler in her hand, she supposed she'd better wait until her breathing normalized before making that call.

Ronon knew she didn't like it when men grabbed her, and she was sure that was why he had stepped in to be her partner. She could only imagine how much worse her reaction would have been if one of the others had been tasked with subduing her.

"Hey," a voice called to her from the edge of the sparring room entrance.

She looked up to see Ronon walking to her.

"You okay?"

She bit the inside of her cheek and nodded very slowly.

He planted himself in front of her and offered to help her stand. She stared at his hand for a moment before taking it in hers and allowing him to lift her to her feet.

"What happened back there?"

Emma gave a small shake of the head and looked to the floor. "I just…got scared, I guess."

"Scared of me?" A pained expression surfaced behind his eyes, but notably absent was surprise; he was clearly used to people being afraid of him.

All she could provide in way of a reply was a half shrug.

"Emma…"

She could count the number of times he had called her by her first name on one hand and the sound of it from his lips sent a flutter through her stomach.

"You know I would never hurt you, don't you?"

"I didn't think you would," she said. "But then you grabbed me and I felt like I couldn't get out and I panicked and it just made me think – it made me remember –" Tears were welling up in her eyes and her throat became too tight to talk.

Ronon stood like a monolith, silent, watching her.

She swallowed and took a few steadying breaths, enough to get her voice working again. "Have you ever noticed that my nose is crooked?"

She watched his eyes zero in on it before he nodded, slowly.

"A guy I was with in college broke it. Beat me up in the entrance to my apartment unit and left me there."

"Emma," he whispered, closing the gap between them.

She carried on and shoved her sleeve to her elbow, revealing the spiderweb scar on her wrist. "Same guy. Different incident. Beer bottle shattered as I went to protect my face." Her voice broke with the effort of keeping back tears, but she had only truly cried once in front of him and was determined to not let it happen now. She yanked her sleeve back down. "Before that was was my first real boyfriend in high school. I was sixteen," she gestured toward the sparring room, "same age Eva is now, the first time he hit me. He was the one who left me, if you can believe it."

By this point, Ronon was contemplating her with such anguish on his face that she wondered how tragic she must have appeared. "I…" He opened his mouth and closed it a few times, seemingly at a loss for words. "If I had known –"

"It's fine. No one knows. It was in the past, right?" She sniffed, straightened her shoulders, and crossed her arms. "We move on as best as we can, but sometimes it rears its ugly head."

"You shouldn't keep that kind of shit to yourself," he chided, all the while taking her by the elbow and pulling her closer to him.

"Don't tell me what to do," she said softly, but allowing herself to be drawn in.

He let his surprise in regards to her response show on his face. "Sharing that burden with someone else helps you move through it."

"Speaking from personal experience?"

As close as they were, she felt him bristle at her words. She had him there. The man didn't practice what he preached.

"Look, what I went through, as terrible as it was, pales in comparison to your past, Ronon. I know you're healing just like I am, and it is slow, and there are setbacks and reversals of progress every day. But if I've learned anything, there isn't ever an end to it; it's not like one day we wake up and are totally cured and it doesn't hurt anymore. It hurts less, sure, but it will always hurt."

"What are you saying?" He was staring, almost unblinkingly, into her eyes.

She took a deep breath in, released it, and steled herself. "I am saying that my skin feels like it's on fire when you touch me. That it is impossible for my heart to beat at a normal pace whenever I see you. That I hate sleeping alone now and every night have wished you were there beside me. And I know, I realize this is all idiotic because I haven't known you for very long and after everything I've been through I should know better." She could feel the hot blood rising to her face as she poured her heart out to him. "But I am falling harder for you than I have ever fallen for anyone in my entire life. I have tried to tamp these feelings down, to control them, to understand them, but I can't."

Ronon closed his eyes and lowered his forehead to the top of hers.

"But despite all of that, despite everything I feel for you," she continued, voice trembling, "I refuse to wait around, letting you treat my heart like a yo-yo, until you feel like you are finally over Melena."

His eyes shot open and he looked down at her in bewilderment.

"How do you –"

"You called her name in your sleep, that night you had a nightmare. For how much you evidently loved her – whoever she was to you – you will never be over her, Ronon. Never one hundred percent. So thank you for coming to check on me right now. Really. But until you come to terms with losing her, you," she stifled a sob that threatened to cut her off, "you need to stop holding me like this, you have to stop coming to my rescue, you have to stop looking at me like that…because it's confusing the hell out of me."

She removed his right hand from her arm, his left hand from her hip, and, though it almost physically pained her to do so, gently pushed his chest to move him backward before taking her leave and heading to her office.