Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Ronon/Elizabeth, mild Ronon/Keller, implied John/Rodney
Length: 3100 words.
Spoilers/Warnings: Up to and including 4.10, This Mortal Coil. Canon character death.
Summary: "Sometimes I feel like I could spend my whole life getting to know you," Elizabeth said, and Ronon heard it like a tone scale in the pretinh mode, deep indigo and heavy with sadness.

A/N: For iykwim, who has long wanted me to write a Dex/Weir fic. Parts of this are inspired by Malozzi's revelations about scenes cut from 4.03, Reunion, but you don't have to read them in order to understand the fic. It just gives some context. Oh, and, um. This is kind of sad. Sorry about that.

"I just can't believe you never told us about your music career," says Sheppard, swinging his P-90 over and nudging Ronon in the ribs with the butt of the gun. "What are we talking, here? Karaoke superstar? Satedan Idol?"

"The missing fourth tenor?" adds McKay, grinning. "Come on, Ronon, let's hear an aria."

Ronon can't quite wipe away the grin that's been bobbing to the surface over and over since they found Tyre and the others, and much to his own surprise, Ronon opens his mouth and favors the team with a tune. It's a war-song, the sort of thing they always sang the night before battle maneuvers when well in their cups and bursting with anticipation. It's weird to sing it alone, to lack the sound of others chiming in with more enthusiasm than intonation, but Ronon was always the song leader, the dunshayda, so he's used to the sound of his own voice.

He finishes around the time they reach the gate and McKay's dialing Atlantis, but he ducks his gaze to avoid the different looks he's sure to be getting: warm approval from Teyla (who is usually the only one singing), uncomfortable feigned indifference from Sheppard (who has the weird Tau'ri squeamishness about live music), and derisive boredom from McKay (who doesn't hide his feelings about alien cultures). His throat is warm and open and his head is still buzzing from resonance and his guts feel good, satisfied with the work of supporting his tone.

"Hard to believe we never heard you sing before," says Sheppard again, after a moment's silence. "Like a secret side of you we never knew about. What else you been hiding from us, buddy?"

And the warmth of the singing abruptly sputters out and dies, and Ronon has to busy himself with studying his new cuff tattoo -- because there was one Tau'ri who'd heard him sing before, and he didn't want to think about her, not yet.


The first time he sang for Elizabeth, it had been full dark, the kind of dark they never get on New Lantea with its multiple moons. His head was pillowed in the narrow cradle of her hips, her fingers toying idly with his hair, and Ronon had been humming before he'd been aware of it. He heard himself, coughed to cover his embarrassment, and Elizabeth had said, "No, please," and stroked the shell of his ear.

It was a low song, an uriq'esh that was more mournful than loving, but Elizabeth couldn't know the difference, and so Ronon breathed in and hummed the chorus with his whole voice this time, the melody escaping his body in rushes of phrasing. His voice was tired -- it had been a long week and he had to be quiet, so quiet, when he came to Elizabeth, clamping down on his need to voice his pleasure -- but she didn't seem to notice or mind, and when Ronon repeated the chorus, he opened his jaw and turned it into a vocalise, ten segments of uriq'esh adorned with breaks and stepping notes to tell Elizabeth everything she wouldn't let him say when they lay together.

"That's lovely," she said, when he finished, and he planted his chin just below her navel and lifted the corner of his mouth at her. She pushed up on her elbows and gazed down at him. "Sometimes I feel like I could spend my whole life getting to know you," she said, and Ronon heard it like a tone scale in the pretinh mode, deep indigo and heavy with sadness.

Ronon bowed his head again and kissed the top of Elizabeth's mons, reproaching himself inwardly. The bedroom was no place for an uriq'esh, and he made amends with his mouth, drawing Elizabeth's milk-white thighs apart and composing an extemporaneous set of inventions on the melody of Elizabeth's fragile lovely collarbone.


After they get back from the hive ship, after Ronon's had to kill Rakai and watch Ara die, after Carter comes by Ronon's quarters and makes an awkward ceremonious affair out of saying 'I told you so' and also, 'I'm glad I was right but I'm sorry you were wrong', Ronon sits cross-legged on the floor and tries to perfect Teyla's art of non-thinking -- meditation, she calls it.

He ends up lying on his back, staring up at his painting -- the one he'd rescued from the ravaged Satedan National Gallery. It's funny that McKay tried to steal it, mostly because the first time Sheppard and McKay had come over after Ronon brought it to Atlantis, their reactions had been extreme and opposite.

"That," Rodney had said, "is the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life."

John had rocked back on his heels, tilted his head, and said, "Cool," in a deeply appreciative voice.

"Oh my god, you're picturing it airbrushed on the side of a black van, aren't you?" Rodney had returned, and John had grinned and shrugged and Ronon had told them both to get the hell out of his quarters.

It was a nice gesture for McKay to make, if weird as hell, Ronon concedes now. Sheppard probably would have appreciated it, as much as Sheppard showed appreciation for anything McKay did, and by way of a courting gift, it wasn't half-bad.


The qualities of a good courting gift -- a nafinim -- are threefold: first, that it be the work of a skilled hand; second, that it convey the concept of indala, of the light-dark balance, which is the essence of romantic love; and third, that it be neither purchased nor commissioned, but gotten through some other means, so that the nafinim should never be limited by any kind of monetary worth.

"Oh, Ronon," Elizabeth had said, lifting the piece of jewelry from its nest of tissue paper. "I can't possibly accept this."

"You have to," Ronon told her, matter-of-fact. It was true, nafinim from a suitor could never be rejected.

"I don't even -- how did you get this?" Elizabeth asked, eyes wide as she stroked a finger over the silver clasp.

"Here, let me," said Ronon, dodging the question. He took the necklace from Elizabeth's fingers, opened the clasp, and stood up behind her to fasten it around her neck. The silver chain was the right length, he had judged correctly -- it lay in a loop just over her collarbone, and the secondary chain fell in a plumb line between her bare breasts, the shivering pendant coming to rest midway between her navel and the bottom of her ribcage.

"No one can see it," she said, not asking.

"No one's supposed to," Ronon answered anyway, and pushed Elizabeth back into the blankets, kissing the green stone of the pendant. There was no way of explaining to Elizabeth everything that this signified for him: that the wearing of his nafinim signaled her acceptance of his courtship, that this kind of necklace was considered deeply erotic by Satedan men -- so much so that the word 'pendant', used casually and somewhat randomly by the Tau'ri, never failed to make Ronon flush with confusion -- with its hidden connotations of intimacy, and that this pendant in particular had been last worn by the Satedan princess Yeshmi, crafted by a legendary Satedan metalsmith, on display as a priceless artifact of the seventh dynasty until Sateda's final brutal culling.

"No one's supposed to know where it ends," Ronon said, and licked a circle around the pendant, "except me, because I put it there." The idea was making his breath come short, the thought of Elizabeth in the gate room with her businesslike red top and grey trousers, arms crossed and hair tucked behind her ears, talking in the clipped tones of diplomacy with that fine silver trail disappearing into her collar, swaying a little with her movements, marking her as taken and known and --

"Shh," soothed Elizabeth, because -- Ronon abruptly realized -- he was making soft frantic sounds into her flesh as he chased the necklace's chain up her body. "It's okay, shh," she murmured, and Ronon clambered up on his knees, desperate and hungry and lonely. "I'm here," she told him, understanding, "I'm right here, Ronon."

He closed his eyes and moved inside her, feeling the green stone of the pendant pressing into his stomach, pressing into hers, its smooth cool surface heating and becoming slick with the sweat that sprang up between them. The presence of the pendant spurred him past reason, thinking of all the places he would lay it on Elizabeth's body, imagining pressing it against her clit as she rode him, on the small of her back while he drove into her from behind, against the hollow of her throat while she swallowed around him. His fervor was pushing Elizabeth outside herself, making her noisier than usual, greedier, and they struggled together, against control and for it, and then Elizabeth arched her back and let go and Ronon closed his eyes and thought about indala, light-dark and sound-silence and void-fullness, and he came with a shout knowing that this moment, this joy, would someday find its dark twin.


Elizabeth had never worn the nafinim outside her bedroom, but, Ronon figures, that was probably for the best.


It's safer, this flirtation with the new doctor. She's young and small and sweet-smelling and once, when Ronon catches her humming and dancing around the infirmary with an iPod in her hand, she turns pink and laughs and bites her lip. It's like a love affair in one of the Tau'ri movies, where the hero and heroine make fleeting eye contact and smile back and forth and eventually kiss just before the credits roll, like that's the only ending that's needed. Ronon thinks he can probably put off the ending for a long while, because this -- just this -- is nice, it's frivolous and simple and he's always liked the way doctors talk: big complex words for frail simple flesh.

"So," says Sheppard over lunch, "you and Keller?"

Ronon lifts a shoulder and stirs his noodle soup. "You and McKay?"

Sheppard makes a frustrated noise and smashes his saltines accidentally under his clenched fist. "All right, message received," he says, and they go back to talking about marine rotations.


It was never like a Tau'ri movie with Elizabeth, at least not like any movie Ronon's seen.

It started because Ronon liked the way Elizabeth sat in chairs: this tall slender beautiful leader who commanded the city of the Ancestors, who had the trust and authority of the Tau'ri on her shoulders -- she folded herself up into her desk chair like a little girl gazing out the window of the schoolroom, knees up against her chest and arms clasped around like she was holding herself together. It made Ronon's heart lurch protectively, made him want to gather her in his arms and take up the task of keeping her whole, if only for a few minutes.

It made his breath catch in his throat because it had been seven years since he'd had leisure to protect someone other than himself, and when Elizabeth had noticed him hovering in the doorway to her office, when she'd looked up with sharp green eyes and snapped back into leadership mode with an eyeblink, something inside Ronon leapt into full-grown being. If it had been a Tau'ri movie, Ronon thinks, they would have had to roll the credits right there and then, scarcely three days after he'd arrived on Atlantis, because in less than a minute, Ronon was kneeling beside Elizabeth, tugging her out of her chair, pulling her shirt over her head and urging her hand down to touch him.

"Well," she'd said, afterwards, tousled and flushed with Ronon's seed glistening on the skin of her belly, with Ronon's fingers still shifting lazily inside her, "that was unexpected."

"No kidding," said Ronon.

"Next time," she said, meeting his gaze, "not in my office. No one can know about this." But she gentled the directive immediately, smiling and reaching up for a kiss, and Ronon fell and fell until he stopped worrying about when he'd land, and how.



Ronon knows from the moment he sees the not-Elizabeth, instinctively accepts what it takes Sheppard and the others two days to acknowledge: that their Elizabeth is gone. He can't say why, or how, only that this Elizabeth feels like an echo, a vivid dream. She talks and thinks like Elizabeth, even sits in the back of the jumper like her, makes Ronon's fists clench with frustrated need, but it's not Elizabeth, and the sooner they're rid of the whole goddamn non-team, the better.

She -- the non-Elizabeth -- corners him for a second on the rendez-vous planet, just long enough for her to say "I know you don't want to hear this from me, but --" and Ronon to push past her, answering "You're right, I really don't."

It isn't until later, when non-Elizabeth volunteers herself (just like their Elizabeth had) to let them escape, that he hears what she was trying to tell him, the message from beyond the grave that's clawed its way into Ronon's knowledge: There is no world in which I would not do this for your sake.

Ronon digs his nails into his palms and thinks, as loudly and fiercely as he knows how: And now there is no one who will ever know me the way you did.



The day McKay nearly acsended and then miraculously didn't, Ronon went to Elizabeth, found her in her quarters with soft music playing and her laptop perched on one knee. "Oh," she had said, looking up, tired. "Ronon, tonight's not the best --" and she stopped when Ronon stripped off his shirt, turned around and spread his arms wide to show her what Rodney had done.

She closed the laptop and came up behind him, wrapped her arms around his middle and kissed the place between his shoulder blades where her mouth could just reach. His skin felt new and soft and tight all over his whole body, not just where McKay had touched him, and Ronon itched to be broken in, to feel at home and rested and secure inside his own body again.

"That's extraordinary," said Elizabeth, "aren't you happy?" She didn't wait for an answer, not expecting one, and turned him around, tracing her hands over all the places he used to be marked. "Good as new," she told him, pausing at his ribs, where he used to bear a particularly nasty burn scar.

"Just as my mother made me," Ronon countered, using the Satedan turn of phrase, and kissed Elizabeth. "I'll leave you to your work," he promised, with another kiss, "just wanted to show somebody." He paused, tried for greater honesty. "I wanted to show you."

"Stay," she replied, drew a hand down his side, hooked her fingers into his waistband.

That night, Ronon had sprawled out beside Elizabeth and told her more than he'd ever told anyone about himself, before or since -- told her without pretense of song or of gifts, without even his body to explain his words -- about Melena and running, about Kel and Rakai, about his six older sisters and his mother's incomparable scoldings, about Atlantis and home and how Ronon had fallen so far, so fast, that first day in Elizabeth's office.

"What are you thinking?" he asked, after he'd finished talking and grew almost anxious in the silence.

"I'm thinking," said Elizabeth, rolling onto her side and resting her head over Ronon's heart, "that you are just as your mother made you." She turned her face just enough to kiss Ronon's skin. "I think she would be very proud."

"Huh," said Ronon, "actually, I think she'd give me hell for letting my hair get this long," and Elizabeth laughed and sprang on top of him and tickled him until he kissed her into stillness.


So his last glimpse of Elizabeth, it seems, was this:

"That's an order!" she shouted, and Sheppard hung back, reluctant, so that Ronon had to be the one to do it, to tear Sheppard away and leave Elizabeth back because there are still some ways that Sheppard is too young. Ronon recognized the look in Elizabeth's eye, the grim determination there which spoke of self-sacrifice, and so Ronon knew -- they had to make it count, they had to do this for Elizabeth so that it wasn't all in vain. He hauled on Sheppard's arm, pulled past Sheppard's protests, and ran like hell.

When Sheppard goes to pack up Elizabeth's things, months later, Ronon joins him. He finds himself explaining as Sheppard picks up each item in turn: this wooden figurine was from a place called Zimbabwe, she'd said, and that scarf from an old lover named Simon, and this book a gift from her mother. Sheppard must catch on pretty quickly, but he shows no outward signs of surprise until he opens Elizabeth's jewelry box and extracts the green-stone pendant of Princess Yeshmi. "Is this jade?" he says, draping the chain over his palm and looking at the pendant. He meets Ronon's questioning look. "In one Earth culture," he explains, "it's used a lot for jewelry. I think it's good luck, or something."

"It's Satedan," Ronon corrects briefly, and takes the pendant from Sheppard's hand. "In our culture, it means -- the word is reshvar. Something like memory and understanding and history and love, all mixed together. It's considered to be holy." His mouth twists. "And a little profane, too."

Sheppard is quiet for a moment. "You should keep it," he says at length, and moves as though to pack up Elizabeth's other jewelry.

"No," says Ronon. "It doesn't work that way. It has to be passed on." He squeezes the pendant, feels its weight and warmth, as though the last of Elizabeth's heat still lingers here. "You take it," he says, and takes Sheppard's palm, forces it open, drops the pendant there. "It makes for a good gift," he adds. "You can give it to McKay."

Sheppard looks up at Ronon, ready to protest, ready to argue, and Ronon closes his empty fist around the last of the stone's heat. He takes a deep breath, and says:

"The qualities of a good courting gift -- a nafinim -- are threefold: first, that it be the work of a skilled hand; second, that it…" And Ronon fills the room with the sound of his own voice as he explains -- the voice of the song leader, the dunshayda -- and prepares to lead Sheppard in a whole new song.