Author’s None: To make this story make sense, you must do the following: Please assume that Kim and Tommy are back together, in a relationship and that she is living with him in Reefside. She’s not a ranger, but has been there for Tommy and the team through the events since PRDT episode 1.
Gif below courtesy of Dan McCue, c2004
Fighting Spirit
Revised
By Jeannine Trevizo
If watching the man she
loved create a new ranger team, suffer at the hands of Mesogog only to gain new
ranger powers, fight a new evil white ranger and be encased for weeks in that
damn amber prison only to get released and be invisible, this final straw was
more than she could stand.
That was how Kimberly Ann
Hart came to stand in the doorway of the hospital room looking at the hospital
bed where her love Tommy Oliver lay, unconscious and unresponsive.
She knew that Hayley was
trying something to return Tommy to his normal state, which was fine by her,
since sleeping with an invisible guy was interesting, it really pained her to
not see his loving face every day. So while she was at work at her advertising
consulting job in Surfside, the neighboring town to Reefside, the disaster had
occurred.
Hayley had rung her cell
phone and told her to hurry to Reefside Hospital. When she arrived, she
had found Tommy laying in the hospital bed, the doctor there with Hayley,
Conner, Ethan, Kira and Trent. When she walked through the door, all eyes fell
on her, and the sorrowful expressions she found there nearly buckled her legs
right then and there.
“Kim,” Hayley began,
moving to the other woman in her friend’s life, the one he loved.
“How…” Kim murmured, her
eyes locked now on the still form of the man why she’d only just begun to
repair things with.
“Ms?” asked the doctor,
confused at the arrival of this second woman.
“She’d Dr. O’s
girlfriend,” explained Conner, feeling again sorry for the rough road Kim and
Dr. O had been walking since Trent had fossilized him.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid
that Dr. Oliver’s condition is very serious. The longer he stays in this state,
the less likely he’ll be able to come out of it.”
Kim swallowed hard and
found herself unconsciously clutching at Hayley’s sleeve. This couldn’t be
happening. Tommy always survived, always. He had been through more than any
other ranger ever had. Had been the leader to so many teams, worn so many
different uniforms that this couldn’t be the way it ended. She couldn’t lose
him now…
The doctor continued to
watch the petite brunette held by the taller red-headed woman and felt as if he
was intruding. With a nod, he exited and left the group alone. With the room
clear of all non-ranger personnel, Hayley guided Kim to the side of the bed as
Kira located a chair and slid it into place, allowing Hayley to sit Kim down.
It was once she felt the solid plastic beneath her that Kim slowly drew her
eyes from Tommy’s placid face to look again at the dino rangers and Hayley.
“What happened?” she
asked in a small voice, her hand moving towards Tommy’s, uncaring of the
consequences of her affections being viewed by Hayley or anyone.
“We used the black dino
gem to try and remove Tommy’s invisibility. It backfired…”
After hearing the details
from Hayley and the team, she was glad she hadn’t been there. The convulsions
that they’d described wracking his body, though invisible would have made her
panic, and perhaps worsened the situation. If that was even remotely possible.
Now he lay in a coma, and
there was no telling when he would come out of it.
Behind them, the
television that the teens had put on for some normalcy interrupted the program
with a news bulletin. A monster was attacking the downtown and that the power
rangers had deserted Reefside. Kim and Hayley looked to the four rangers, and
they knew that they were responsible for keeping Reefside safe, even without
powers.
“We’ve got to go,” Conner
said, turning for the door.
“But, you don’t have
powers,” Hayley remarked, concerned.
“No, but we’re all that’s
standing between Reefside and that monster. It’s what Dr. O would do.”
“Alright, but be careful.
I’ll stay with Kim and Tommy,” Hayley said before the four headed off to do
battle.
Once the teens were gone,
Hayley got another chair and sat by Kim, taking the other woman’s hand. She
wasn’t sure if Kim even realized she was there, as the former pink ranger
stared at Tommy’s closed eyes.
When Kim finally spoke,
it was a shock.
“You know, I still don’t
understand how you could accept me so easily,” Kim said softly, her voice unable to raise with anger or fear as the pain of possibly losing Tommy filled her.
“I don’t understand what
you mean Kim.”
“Me, Tommy, us… I know
that you were his friend for a long time, and Jason said you and Tommy had a
relationship for a while in college. When I walked back into Tommy’s life, you
must have hated me.”
Hayley sat there stunned.
She had never realized that Kim knew about the year that she and Tommy had been
an item. He’d just come off his relationship with Katherine and they’d clicked
as friends, and then something more during the latter part of their junior year
in college. But it didn’t last, and Hayley had realized why.
“We weren’t really meant to
be like that Kim,” offered Hayley as partial explanation. “We cared for each
other, maybe even loved, but we never really were in love. He never could give
his whole heart because it wasn’t possible for him to love anyone as fully as
he loved you. That’s why Kat didn’t work, and why he and I didn’t last. It’s
why I was alright with him being with you, because that’s what you do to him…
make him happy.”
“I never planed to come
back to him,” Kim admitted, her face a picture of pain. “I’d decided that we both
needed to live our own lives and that what we had was in the past.”
“So why then…”
“It was an accident
really. I was visiting Jason when he got the call from Tommy to help destroy
the remnants of the Machine Empire. Jason tried to leave without telling me
what had happened, but I wouldn’t let him. So he finally admitted that Tommy
wanted him to help out, be a ranger again.”
Hayley sat there in
surprise. Tommy had never mentioned seeing Kim during that time…
“So I stayed put, waited
for Jason to get back. When he did, he told me how things had gone, and the
fact that he expected Tommy any minute.”
“Whoa, wait a second.
Tommy didn’t say he saw you during that time, and he didn’t mention seeing
Jason afterwards.”
“I don’t know why he
didn’t mention it. All I know is that Jason said he’d made a comment that he
knew Tommy had overheard about me, and well, he was banking on him wanting to
yell at him about it some more. I tried to leave, but Jason told me to stay
put. I guess he was tired of how Tommy and I had avoided one another for six
years at that point. So when the doorbell rang, I knew I had to finally face
everything I’d done.”
“But that was nearly two
years ago Kim. That doesn’t explain how you and he got back together again, and
the fact that you moved in days after he got the house here in Reefside,”
Hayley asked, unclear of where Kim was going with this.
“You see, we talked that
night, and I had to lay out my sins on the table, told him everything… how I
betrayed him with another man, and felt so bad about it that I broke up with
him in the worst way possible. How I’d spent years in imperfect relationships,
trying to find someone that made me feel like he used to. And we realized there
that we had a second chance. We could try again, if we had the courage. So we
decided to be friends. And if we could survive that, we would try a
relationship again. We’d been secretly dating for a year before Tommy came to
Reefside, and only then did he ask me to be with him all the time, to move in
and really be the couple we’d wanted to be for years.”
“I didn’t… I had no idea.
He never said.”
“I know,” replied Kim
with a watery smile. “We wanted to keep it to ourselves. We thought too many of
our family and friends wouldn’t believe in us again. That our past break up
would color their opinions of our reconciliation.”
“But you came to Reefside
anyway.”
“Yeah. I didn’t know you
were here, or I would have found a way to talk to you before…” she remarked,
remembering Hayley’s shock the first time she came to Tommy’s house and Found
Kim there, dressed in his boxers and one of his t-shirts. “All we wanted was a
second chance. And now…”
“He’s not going to die
Kim,” Hayley assured her, squeezing Kim’s hand tightly. “You know he’s been
through worse, right?”
Kim nodded her head
slightly. How many times had she feared she would lose him; ten, twenty, more?
Every time he used his green ranger powers after being re-infused with them.
During his white ranger years… she wasn’t there for the red ranger incarnation,
even if she had heard every scary tale from Adam and Rocky. No, he’d always
pulled through. But he’d never been in a situation like this.
“Could you give us a
little while?”
“Sure.”
With that, Hayley got up
and headed out the door, leaving Kim alone with Tommy. Her eyes watched as his
danced beneath his eyelids. He was there, under whatever held him prisoner –
his own mind, the shattered power of the black dino gem, his body’s collapse.
Yet as long as he was alive, she had hope.
“Come on handsome,” she urged
pushing up to lean over his still form. “It’s not supposed to work like this.
You’re the one who always delivers the kiss.”
With delicate precision,
she brushed her lips against his, hoping against hope that perhaps that fairy
tale existence they used to lead could still work its magic.
-x-
Tommy found himself in
the bare waste of the desert. He was himself again, no longer invisible, but
obviously lost.
“Great, now what?”
Tommy looked around and realized that the pace seemed familiar. It
reminded him of Gasket's Arena on Rita's Planetoid. But how…
He heard a sound and turned to see a gate or doorway on the top of
a sand dune. And in that arch stood someone that couldn’t be there…
Red Zeo 5.
Him.
-x-
It had been a tough series of fights… first he’d found a way to
battle his Zeo 5 self to a draw, letting him pass to another stage. One that
reminded him of the forest in Angel Grove that he seemed to always end up in
during his white ranger days.
It had been just after he’d made that realization when the white
ranger appeared, looking for a fight. He’d been happy to oblige him. Somewhere
in the back of his mind he knew that there was a reason for all this, as if he
was fighting himself, his subconscious, the parts of himself that made him who
he was, the ranger he was today.
And when he again held his armored former self to a draw, he’d
been transported again to somewhere he recognized; this time the ruins he first
fought the Power Rangers at.
As the green ranger.
It was as they fought
that Tommy realized that beating his green ranger self would never be easy. The
guilt and sorrow that fueled him after being turned from the evil spell that
had held him had formed what made him a ranger. Had tapped into the part of him
that made him a man.
But he refused to
surrender, and that was all his former ranger selves seemed to require.
They stood there, staring
at him before they vanished, and another ranger came and took their place. One
he was intimately familiar with.
“Kim…”
-x-
In the hospital room,
Kimberly found the weight of fearing for Tommy’s life too much to stay
standing. She nearly fell back into the chair at his side and closed her eyes.
She was so afraid…
-x-
“Hey there handsome,”
spoke the pink clad ranger, her pterodactyl shaped helmet tipping to the side
as she spoke.
“Kim… what are you doing
here? Where are we? How are you in your old uniform?” he asked rapid fire as he
moved toward her.
“I’m with you, where you
are for the moment. And as to where we are,” she said, and then waved her hand
to the side, and the scene changed, and they stood on the rock beside Angel
Grove lake, “I would think you still recognize this place.”
Tommy felt his heart
catch in his throat.
“We’re in your mind my love.
Your connection to the black dino gem had fractured you, along with it. What
you have seen, what you have fought are the parts of you, the ranger pieces and
roles that have made you what you are today. And while you are now and have
always been a ranger, you have been more,” Kim said, her smile hidden by her
helmet, but heard by Tommy in her voice.
The scene changed again,
and now they stood in the place that held him to his promises, that had placed
him on this path…
The original command
center.
And around them now were
the others.
There were the red,
yellow, black and blue original dino rangers. Next to them were the yellow, red
and black ninja rangers. Then the yellow and pink zeo rangers, and lastly the
blue turbo ranger. Every ranger he had served with, served for or led stood
around him and Kim.
Suddenly they all
unmorphed, their uniforms sluicing away like water and he stood looking at the
faces of the rangers who had stood before him. Jason, Zack, Billy, Trini,
Rocky, Aisha, Kat, Adam, Tanya, Justin… and Kim… who smiled at him with the
glowing grin that had melted his heart the first day he’d seen her.
“You are here to validate
what we, and you have always known. That no matter the uniform, not matter the
powers and no matter the team around you, you have always been a ranger. Your
power is not simply though a coin, a spirit animal, a crystal shard, a key or a
gem. It is within you,” Kim said, and the others around her nodded in the misty
atmosphere of the command center.
“But you said that my
mind fractured when the dino gem did. How do I get back? Can I?” Tommy
questioned, his mind fighting to process everything he’d seen or been told.
“By accepting once and
for all what and who you are,” said Kim.
With that, she stepped
forward and opened her hand. There, three pieces of his gem sat, cold and
black. He glanced up at her and saw the slight frown on her face and paused,
even as his hand moved towards the shards.
“Kim, what is it?”
“You need to accept
*everything* Tommy. By taking this, you accept that this is your life. It will
always be a part of you, and you will have to understand what it may cost you.”
He stared and then
understood. Being a ranger had been the thing that had brought them together,
but pushed them apart as well. What he heard now was not her fear, but his own
that by accepting the power, embracing his ranger self fully that he would lose
her in the process.
But he’d learned his
lesson, had lived his life without her. And he knew that as long as Kim wanted
to be at his side that he’d want her there. It was her decision, and he knew
that his dedication, his compassion, his fire to protect was what Kim loved,
not something she hated.
“My own foolishness cost me
you once Kim,” he said to the Kim image, “and I’ve grown up since then. I know
that my being a ranger is what I am. And that you love me for who I am, as well
as what I am. And that’s what I’m counting on.”
Kim smiled at him again,
and he reached forward to take the pieces of the stone from her. She placed it
carefully in his palm, and closed his hand. Under his fingers, he could feel
the power. And he closed his eyes as he willed himself and his dino gem
together again. He opened his eyes slowly and opened his fist, finding a
glowing, complete gem before him.
He glanced up, pleased
and surprised to find the landscape changed again, now pitch white, but with
nothing there, and no one there.
“Kim!” he yelled
frantically, and spun in a circle, hoping for his guide, for his life to return
to him so he could return to her.
-x-
“Kim!” yelled Tommy,
nearly bolting up from the bed and jolting the woman at his side out of her
exhausted thoughts and up out of her chair to stand next to him.
“Oh God Tommy,” she breathed,
her hand touching his face and her eyes locking with his.
He smiled at her, and
then turned to his right hand, opening his fist to find the black dino gem,
once more whole.
Like his life.
The news came on again
behind her, and Kim turned to see the new announcement that the monster was
still on the rampage, and the rangers had not appeared. She knew that the team
was fighting it the only way they could at the moment, without their powers.
They were trying to live up to the ranger legacy that Tommy had shown them.
“Kim…”
She looked and saw the
expression on his face, one that she knew well. He was going. And she wasn’t
about to stop him. No matter what, he came back to her.
And being a ranger was
what he was. Just like he loved her… they were part of the same man that she
loved.
“Be careful,” she said,
and he pulled the IV from his arm.
He nodded and swung his
feet over the edge of the bed. Standing, he took her hand and pulled her to him
for a kiss, one that promised her that she was as valuable to him as breathing.
Then he stepped back and found his clothes, dressing quickly.
“Remind me to tell you
about my dream,” he said at last, standing at the doorway. “And to thank you
when I get back for being here, loving me… all of me.”
She smiled and nodded,
watching him run off to help the team. To be what he always was meant to be.
A ranger.
-End-
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