The Long Way Home

Chapter Fifty Seven: Ghosts

Can you help me? I'm bent.
I'm so scared that I'll never
get put back together.
Keep breaking me in,
And this is how we will end:
With you and me, bent

MatchBox 20 - Bent

Ronon's dreams were filled with blood, ash and darkness. There were glimpses of silver flashes in the night as the sound crashed in his ears causing his pulse to race and his heartbeat to pound in his chest like the rush of drums. It was loud, so loud it hurt his ears. The whistling was back, that loud, shrill familiar shriek that had haunted every breath he had taken in the past seven years and before that even longer. The agony was trembling through his body as he remembered the fire burning, twisting up through the windows of the hospital, swallowing his lover Melena as she cried and screamed into the air around him.

When he had woken up this morning she had been the first thing on his mind. That crushing sense of grief and loss was weighing on his chest so heavily he could barely bring himself to move. It had taken every ounce of his will power to raise from his bed and brush the claustrophobic cloud aside.

Although Melena had been dead for seven long years, the wound was still fresh and rancid. Now it was festering at the news that Sateda had fallen. Every measurement of the person he had used to be had been stripped away and vanquished. Now Ronon Dex was just an desolate husk of the warrior he used to be. He didn't have a place any more, he had nothing.

The Mess Hall wasn't as busy as usual, he had started to arrive at a later time because the staring made him feel uncomfortable. As usual his two military guards were flanking every single one of his movements. Ronon understood why he was under guard, it made people here feel safer knowing that they could be protected from him. His size was hulking and intimating, they didn't realize there was a person underneath his gruff, impassive exterior.

The truth was Ronon didn't know what to say. It had been an age since he had interacted socially with people and if he was honest his blunt, brisk manner didn't seem to go down so well with the people on the floating city. Instead Ronon listened to their chatter, most of it was mindless or inane but he did pick up some things that interested him from the conversations.

Teyla had some sort of gift he didn't fully understand. The Atlanians talked about it with a revered air, something to do with the Wraith. There were many who did not like it, they thought it made her dangerous but there were others, the ones that mattered that respected Teyla in the way that she deserved.

Ronon was organising people into two separate categories in his mind. The ones he liked and the ones he didn't. Him and Teyla had a lot of things in common, they were both outsiders to the city and he found himself discussing his opinions with her more freely than with anybody else in this place.

Sheppard was ok, Ronon seemed to constantly surprise the other man with his skills and abilities. It was clear the other man hadn't expected Ronon's military skill to be so advanced. Ronon had to admit that it felt good impressing the other man, the two of them challenged one another as equals. Sheppard readily admitted that Ronon was a better fighter than he was and he did not resent it. Instead he patted the other man on the back with that care free grin. He was becoming a comrade again in the eyes of the other man and it had been so long since he had felt that kinsman-ship.

Beckett was friendly. He was a humanitarian and his easy going nature made the procedures that Ronon had to endure all the more bearable.

Cass slipped down into the seat across from Ronon, her smile bright and cheery as she set down the white tray containing her lunch. She had been grinning a lot the last few days, he had no idea why. She was an enigma to him in some ways. Teyla, he could understand, Sheppard's mindset contained the same basic pattern as his own but Cass was something different. The woman was sunny and polite but Ronon knew there was more underneath the surface. She had skimmed the abyss the same way he was doing now. Compassion was not something he had understood before Teyla, Sheppard and Cass had showed him what it meant to be human once again. He had lived like an animal for so long the savage impulse primal impulses were hard to shed.