mayachain

Title: Mine to shape and belong
Characters: Ronon Dex, Evan Lorne
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1200
Summary: Ronon would have been surprised if most of the Lanteans had even realized he had been issued BDUs. With Atlantis on Earth and a conscious choice to wear them, his thoughts kept circling back to the fact that there was no nationality patch on his upper arm.

Mine to shape and belong

No one ever commented on the fact that there was no patch under the Atlantis insignia on Ronon’s BDUs. Not just because he really didn’t wear them all that often – though he’d have been surprised if most of the Lanteans had even realized he had been issued some. While Ronon might not have been offended and might even have considered the offer depending on the tone and who was doing the asking, no one sure as dône ever thought to ask if he’d like to choose among the symbols the Earthers – Tau ’ri – wore on their upper arms.

Yet on those rare occasions he put the uniform on – rare occasions that were growing less rare now that they were on Earth and he thought it wise to markedly throw his weight behind Sheppard – he had come to think that there ought to be one. A patch that declared where Ronon had come from.

Except – what would such a display look like? There had been no such thing as a Satedan equivalent of a national flag. Ronon supposed he could draw one up sporting the first symbol to the planet’s ring address, but would that be specific enough? Did he dare presume to speak for the whole of Sateda, even if for all intends and purposes he was ~~as good as~~ the last? What of the continent of his birth, his clan, his unit, what? It seemed better to go without instead of prancing around with a fake piece of cloth.

The longer they stayed in the Milky Way, the less satisfied Ronon became with his jacket’s empty space. As much as he had come to believe he could tell Amelia anything, he didn’t know how to burden her with this. Nor Teyla, whose son’s absence the team had never found sufficient words for in all the months they’d spent on Earth. Nor Sheppard, who was stretched thin fighting for the expedition’s very right to return, nor McKay, who was stretched even thinner doing the same.

Such was the state of his mind the night Sheppard had held him back when their brittle party of four had broken up after the one joint meal they were bending backwards to find the time for every day. “We’ll never get back if my XO breaks down,” he’d said. “He’s got the night off, do me a favor and make sure he gets the fuck out of here, huh?” Ronon had agreed because he’d had nothing better to do and, more importantly, Parrish had been with his family in Alaska and AR-2’s marines had been on salvage duty at Area 51.

He’d spent the evening identifying a marine and two airmen that seemed especially restless. Opting for a friendly shooting contest so as not to risk broken bones, he’d enlisted their help in getting their CO to the mainland. Lorne had come kicking and screaming – or at least weakly protesting that “there are three more IOA reps scheduled to arrive tomorrow, there’s still so much to be done!” – but he had come. Two bars, a tipsy major and exactly no bar fights later they’d ended up on a San Francisco beach, trading war stories and sharing the last of their – now – illicit beer.

Ronon, who had taken advantage of tea-total Arnaud being on watch and had decimated one and a half bottles for every one of his companions’, found himself describing all the different pennants he’d thought up since he’d first understood that part of the Lanteans’ uniforms. He specified at length the five most promising possibilities. “Choosing just one of them feels wrong,” he explained, and only vaguely noticed that Martinson, Hernandez and Arnaud weren’t within earshot anymore. Conscientious task master that he was, Lorne must have made sure there’d be no witnesses to Ronon’s naked ramble.

(His hangover the next morning was worse than the one he’d had as a mirkai fresh out of his first training cycle. Woolsey, in accordance with his and Sheppard’s conspiracy to give Lorne an evening off, had managed to hold the IOA reps off until the afternoon. Ronon glared blearily at the contents of his closet for over a minute before he once again discarded his koronda in favor of the incomplete BDU.)

Three days later a decidedly less stressed-looking Lorne passed Ronon a shipping tube the size of a bantos. “Let me know if you want any changes or if I got something wrong,” he said before jogging after Mitchell in search for Daniel Jackson.

Ronon would have postponed his sparring match with Teyla if not for his suspicion that their weekly sessions constituted her lifeline. “She needs something to do that doesn’t require diplomacy,” Amelia had observed, and this was barely enough.

Back in his quarters with the door locked and his radio turned off, he uncapped the cardboard roll and uncoiled its contents, carefully spreading the sheets out over his floor. It took a while to fully comprehend what he was seeing.

There were two versions. The first one was highly stylized as to be simple enough for a patch. It was postcard-sized, with a miniature replica sketched in the corner. The second was larger, more detailed. Five symbols integrated with one another.

There was the Ancient arami for Sateda intertwined with the emblem Ronon had chosen for the capital city, ” – the space port, looked a bit like your SETI program’s satellite dish. We didn’t have more than two ships but it was to show the whole planet which way we were going, okay? Not that it did us any good when the Wraith came. Seemed like progress at the time but in hindsight it was arrogance, futile arrogance – “ Lorne must have searched the database for pictures.

Inside the dish but none the smaller for it were the symbols of his unit and his clan. Ronon didn’t remember telling Lorne that’s what they were, but it was feasible that Carson had put it in his file. Regardless of how he’d learned their significance, Lorne had had ample opportunity to study them from where they were displayed, indistinguishable from one another to the untrained eye, on Ronon’s neck for all to see. They were foregrounded by the symbol Ronon had picked for his continent of origin, “ – never had one of its own because our leaders were all about Satedan unity, not this federalism you people are always on about – “ He remembered sketching out the dome of its second largest city’s theatre in the sand.

Ronon glanced at the tiny note that read Talk to me about colors next time. He looked the stylized version over once more before he put it aside and simply sat there and stared at the proposed banner until his radio croaked back to life.

“Why haven’t you barged in here yet and dragged me off to dinner?” McKay’s voice asked.

“Coming,” he said absently, then left it all there on the floor because McKay had actually sounded concerned.

Walking the familiar path across Atlantis’ corridors, he resolved to search San Francisco for a sturdy frame on Amelia’s next day off. No colors, though; the flag was perfect the way Lorne had drawn it.

He also made a note to take Teyla back to his quarters and ask her for help with the weaving.

Sadly, I cannot draw like Evan Lorne. I appropriated the symbol for Sateda from this site.