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SGA: Picture Imperfect
Title: Picture Imperfect
Genre: SGA, Missing Scene/Episode Related
Season/Spoilers: 4.03 Reunion
Rating: PG-13
Synopsis: She knew that the best way of ridding oneself of pain was to share it.
Author’s Notes: Takes place immediately following the last scene of the episode. Slight Teyla/Ronon if you squint really hard.
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to people with a lot more money than me. I’m just playing around in a solely not-for-profit way.
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Teyla stood outside the doorway, reflecting on everything that had happened over the last few days. The memories, like her bruises, would take time to fade. She could only imagine what Ronon was feeling and, as was the custom of her people, was to give him time to think about the events, process them, and hold them dear before sharing.
She took a step out into the hallway and paused. Ronon was not of her people. Subtle contemplation was not for him. She had learned much of the Satedan ways this week, but this was something she had known for quite some time. Her meditation sessions with him alone drove home this fact. No, Ronon was not a man of delicate dispositions. Like so many things in his life, he needed to face this head on. He was hurting, that she knew, and she also knew that the often times the best way of ridding oneself of pain was to share it.
Decision made, she turned back around and pressed the chime on the door. “Come on in, Teyla,” the familiar voice sounded from inside the room.
She entered cautiously, finding everything much like she had left it moments ago. Ronon sat with his back to her, eying the warrior painting she had returned from Rodney. Nothing else had been touched, but then again, only minutes had passed. “You do not seem surprised that I have returned,” she mused.
“Nah,” he agreed, turning to face her. “I’m just surprised you waited in the hallway so long.” He smirked, and the light hit his eyes for the briefest of moments before the darkness from within returned.
That was why she was here, she reminded herself. She crossed the room slowly, hearing the door swish shut behind her as she thought of the many ways to begin the conversation. She thought of comparisons, trite and trivial, of the words her tribe would say when one was hurting, even of what Colonel Sheppard or Doctor McKay might say should they be there with her. Instead, as she sat down beside him on the bed, the only thing that came out was, “Tell me about the painting.”
Ronon looked at her as if trying to gauge how serious she was. She had to admit, it was not the route she normally would have chosen, but now that her curiosity was piqued, she realized she truly did wish to understand its meaning.
“It’s a victory scene from a famous Satedan battle,” he said simply. That much she could tell by the stances of the three warriors, arms and armaments thrown high in the air.
She nodded as if she understood, but part of her questioned why these three warriors? Why this particular battle? She said nothing, but their years of working together had created an unspoken form of communication, and he must have known she was waiting for more.
“I told Weir it was from an important museum and, if this Carter asks, I’ll tell her the same,” he shrugged.
“So it is not?” she presumed.
Ronon smiled and ducked his head. Grin firmly under control, he looked back up at the object in question. “Not quite,” he admitted. He folded his hands in front of him, leaning forward to rest his arms on his knees. “There was a wall in the common room of our home that we called ‘The Museum’. Family pictures went up there, as did pretty much anything we made.”
“Your family created this?” Teyla asked, getting a better idea of its importance.
The grin resurfaced for a moment before the shadows crossed his face again. “Melena was thankfully a better healer than she was artist,” he began. “She worked so hard on this while I was out running scenarios with my squad, but...”
“The quality of the art is based more upon its heart than its skill,” she supplied diplomatically.
Ronon snorted. “It’s pretty bad,” he admitted. “She would have been the first to admit it. She didn’t want it up on the wall at all, got all embarrassed about it. I insisted, mainly just to give her a hard time.”
Teyla watched as he became lost in a clearly happy memory, his injuries forgotten, even if just for a moment. She knew the moment the remembrance changed. His posture became stiff, even as his shoulders sagged. Everything that had happened, not just in the past week, but in the past several years had returned.
When he next spoke, his voice was harder, quieter, with an edge she knew was normally reserved solely for those who had done him wrong. “When I went back to Sateda, after the Wraith, after... after everything, I looked around for a piece of home. Pretty much everything was destroyed. The place had been ransacked by the survivors on their way out, but no one wanted that damn picture.”
She reached out a tentative hand, resting it gently on what she knew to be his bruised shoulder. “You did,” she said simply.
He sniffed; the edge was gone, replaced once again by sorrow. “It was her. It was us. It was our life, you know?” he asked, almost pleaded. He did not wait for an answer before continuing, “Victory and survival and beating the odds. Your squad may be down, but if even another member makes it, then the enemy didn’t win.”
He turned to look at her and her heart broke at his expression. It was more than the painting, though she was certain the memories it had invoked undoubtedly played a role in what was going through his mind right now. “I wanted to believe that they made it. I wanted to believe that we were just that good. Tyre, Rakai, Ara... We survived. The Wraith threw everything they had at us, but we still made it.” Tears threatened to spill from his eyes, and she knew just how much it was costing him to say it when he whispered, “But we didn’t, did we?”
She pulled him close knowing that, for all their shared stoicism, sometimes they both needed the reassurance of touch. “Yes, you did,” she swore. “You moved on to new responsibilities, a squad of not just Satedans, but of the entire Pegasus Galaxy. You lead and you protect and you fight and you win and you survive, just like you always have. I will not pretend to understand what happened to your friends, but they had moved on long before we met them on that planet, just as you had. They were a piece of your past, of your home, and you wanted to shelter that, as was your right. Do not let their actions tarnish your memories. They did what they thought they had to do to survive. You do what you must to survive as well.”
He pulled back, and she saw a wetness on his face that she knew matched her own. “And if I decide to survive here?” he asked quietly.
“Then I will be most pleased,” she promised him.
“And if I want to make this my home?”
“It already is.”
End.
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