Disclaimer: It's someone else's sandbox. I just play here because other people have all the best toys.

Author's Note: The reunion fic has become its own kind of genre to the Power Rangers. So much so that I've thought long and hard about what I could bring to the party, and this is the result. This fic is very much in my style, which means if you're for funny, fluff reminiscences and easy declarations of love, write me, I can recommend some good ones, but this ain't it. I've been wanting to do this for awhile, but have been trying to hold off and maintain some semblance of discipline in my writing. However, right now I'm studying for the bar exam (two day written exam 13 subjects of law, my career on the line), which means I'm grateful for any writing that seems to flow for me.

- + - + - + - + - + -

St. Louis, Missouri

Well, this was a complete waste, Tommy Oliver thought as he looked around the packed room, uncomfortably aware of just how out of place he was. The bar wasn't exactly the place to be in St. Louis—did St. Louis even have a place to be?—but it was enormously popular with a particular crowd—affluent, young singles, particularly media types, people with a face to be seen. Making the circuit primarily because it was a favorite hang out for reporters not old-style, cigar-chomping, bull pen reporters, but the glossies, talking heads and style editors, it wasn't the first stop or the last, but a nice waylay, a moment to be photographed and drop a name to a gossip columnist before taking in too many martinis and a hit or two of something at a more exclusive place where cameras got broken.

It had the quiet refinement of an after hours hang-out for busy professionals, a certain cache that required him to buy new clothes and be eminently grateful he still possessed a charming smile and the kind of physique not found on moneyed professionals trapped too long behind a desk. The combination had garnered him easy admittance and the phone number of the cool as ice hostess, which he'd surreptitiously slipped to the bar-tender in exchange for a seat with a view of the entrance. Even so, he fingered his glass with the self-consciousness of someone who knew he only really met two of the requirements. Okay, one and a half.

He didn't want to be here. As it was he rarely frequented bars, and when he did, well, it wasn't this kind of place—no pool tables, no smoking, top shelf drinks only, and although people wore jeans, it was not dress casual. No, he'd decided on the bar because it was his only option, at least the only option that wasn't likely to get him slapped with a restraining order. St. Louis wasn't the type of city were you could pull off the unexpected pass and double-take on the street, because nobody walked. People went from air-conditioned offices, to air-conditioned elevators, to the parking garage and their air-conditioned BMWs, and parking garages were definitely restraining order territory. So in the end a bar was the only option available to manage the kind of casual, 'isn't it funny we're in the same city', encounter that a grown man could survive with dignity.

But he hadn't counted on being so ridiculously out of place. True he didn't have Joe's ability to belong absolutely anywhere, but a place like this . . . well he'd just thought all his old natural ease would carry him. He could almost hear his partner laughing. You ain't prom king anymore, Oliver.

Well, this was an explicit lesson, complete with bullet-points and visual aides. Disgusted with himself, he motioned to the bartender to close out his tab. Fucking expensive waste of time, too. Sure, the bar might have the best Grey-Goose martinis in town, but it didn't make much difference when you were a beer man.

He caught sight of her, just as he was peeling off the last of the bills for his too expensive drink, walking away from a mixed company group, to a small secluded table, where stopped to chat amiably with a short, prematurely bald, gentleman, who somehow managed to exude all the charisma Tommy felt he lacked.

Funny, he'd spent all night waiting for the fanfares, for that absolute heart-stopping, breathtaking moment when she'd enter the room; remembered it from high-school even, that way Kimberly Hart had of connecting with everyone, so that when she was around you felt it in the air, there was a vibe to people.

And yet, ten years later, nothing.

There'd been no trumpets, no swivel of heads, not even a murmur in the crowd, because she was nobody special, just another very important person in a room of very very important people. With her flippy, layered bob, caramel highlights, and grey pinstriped pants-suit she wasn't even the most attractive woman in the room, a pixie in a den of sirens. Strangely, the let-down was almost a relief, a freeing moment. He could do this. It would be easy to do this. Again motioning over his new friend, Trevor, he laid a few extra bills on the bar.

"See her," he pointed over to Kim, "I'd like to take her one of whatever she's having."

Trevor frowned at him. "I'm sorry, sir, but Ms. Thorton has a strict policy against accepting drinks."

The name threw him for a moment before he remembered, not Kimberly Hart anymore, not the sweetheart gymnast of Angel Grove. It was Kim Thorton, once the best paid female sportscaster in the southeastern United States. Tommy sighed, "Well then I would like to order for myself, a . . ."

He trailed off significantly as he laid out another twenty. Trevor was not an extremely well-paid bar-tender for nothing. Sliding the money into his hand without so much as a flicker of expression, he nodded, "Yes sir, one cranberry vodka tonic, coming up, and perhaps as a chaser?"

"Do you maybe just have a beer?"

- + - + - + - + - + -

"So she's sitting across from me at the table smiling that Georgia-Peach-beauty-queen smile like she's just asking whether I'd be so good as to get her another iced tea. An extra three million dollars of work, and she hasn't even cracked her makeup. I mean, she might as well have said, 'Dahlin, would you be so kind as to take this knife and hack off your balls? Could you do that for me, sugah?'"

Kim laughed at Charlie's deadpan impression of Annette Saunders, right down to the silk and grit drawl, an imitation made more humorous by the contrast to Charlie's usual south Chicago accent. When she finally calmed down enough to speak she cautioned, "Careful, I know Net, that might be her next request."

Charlie scowled and took another sip of his drink. "Fucking steel magnolia."

"Good thing I'm a California girl."

"Oh no, you may have a laid back vibe going when you're out, but I've seen you operate, you can't fool me. There's no question where you learned to screw all us stupid Cro-Magnon men. That whole naïve former gymnast, cheerleader, beauty-queen, I'm too sweet for your own good shit, that is pure, uncut, Southern businesswoman complete with an extra slice of peach pie."

Kim smirked with no little pride—she knew how much Charlie respected Annette—and reached over to grab a maraschino cherry fro his drink, murmuring with her best fake drawl, "But Mr. Nowak, sir, I don't know how to cook."

That earned her snort. "None of 'em do unless they've turned it into a multi-million dollar business I can't negotiate against."

She patted his arm in mock-sympathy. "Poor Charlie."

"Yeah, yeah, poor me. All arms pats and sympathetic smiles, and yet three months . . . no tongue."

"Cheryl would kill me."

"I'm willing to risk it." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"Cheryl would kill you."

Charlie's eyebrows stopped mid-waggle and shot up. "I'm not willing to risk that." He sighed melodramatically, "Well, my love, it appears we are doomed to carry on our separate lives, only able to admire each other from afar."

Kim smiled fondly at her friend. "Does Cheryl know how lucky she is?"

"No. Please feel free to mention it."

"Seriously, Charlie, thank you for looking me up. I was beginning to think St. Louis would never feel like home."

"Well, it's a long way from Miami or New York."

"It's a long way from a lot of things." Kim murmured quietly, a little of the old pain slipping into her voice.

He reached over, covering her wedding band from sight with one of his incongruously, meaty dockworker's hands. "Listen, I promised Cheryl I'd be good, but . . . are you really certain this is what you want?"

"Yeah, no . . ." God, her voice sounded thin and uncertain to her own ears. "It's what's best, Charlie. I wasn't meant to be a part of that scene. I'm just sorry it took me five years to figure that out."

"Don wishes it had taken you twenty more. He would have given them all the finger for you, kid."

Her laugh was hollow. "And been absolutely miserable once he'd done it. You know him. He wasn't meant to live out of that world, any more that I was meant to live in it."

"You guys were magic though."

She closed her eyes, partly to keep the tears at bay, partly in realization, and managed a knowing smile. "You saw him, last week in New York, didn't you?"

"That obvious, huh? No wonder Annette is ripping me a new one."

Sucking in what failed to be a calming breath, she asked, "How is he?"

"Let's put it this way." He stroked the little band of gold on her finger, "You're not the only one still wearing this after six months."

Snatching her hand back, she sighed, "It's for the best Charlie."

"Sure it is, kid."

They smiled at each other in a sad companionable silence, mourning the death of something beautiful. Kim just kept hoping that one day she would stop feeling like she'd killed it.

Someone set down another drink on her table, and she blinked in confusion.

"Excuse me, but I didn't order--" The words died on her tongue as she looked up into a pair of brown eyes, just as familiar to her as they were ten years ago.

Tommy smiled down at her. "It's nice to see you again, Kim."

For a moment, she was speechless—not him, not here. St. Louis was supposed to be a city free of complications, a place where she could regroup and figure out what direction her life was supposed to go in after Don had turned her world upside down so completely. The man standing before her embodied all the things she'd come to avoid.

"Kid?" Charlie's hand on her arm was gentle, questioning. It grounded her a bit, snapped her back into the here and now.

Gathering all the poise that had earned her Murrow and Peabody nods, she turned to smile at Charlie. "I'm so sorry. Charlie, may I present an old high-school friend, Tommy Oliver. Tommy, this is Charlie Nowak."

"Pleased to meet you." Tommy extended a hand to Charlie, giving him one of his best friendly smiles.

It had no effect. Charlie shook his hand in a way that Kim knew was meant to size the other man, searching his face as he did so. After they broke off, Tommy asked her, "Would you mind if I joined you?"

Part of her wanted to say yes, she would mind a great deal, that in fact she minded him being here in the middle of nowhere mid-America, but all that social grace she'd gained over a five-year marriage to one of Florida's most prominent businessmen, kicked in. "No, no of course not."

Charlie stood up. "Here, you can take mine. I need to go have a little chat with the bar-tender."

As Tommy settled himself in the chair Charlie had vacated, Kim watched her friend bear-down on the bar-tender with the kind of Mack-truck determination that usually earned him his paycheck as a corporate pit-bull. She sighed, "I hope you gave the bar-tender a very good tip for telling you my drink."

"Yeah, I had to pay him and extra twenty for it."

She groaned as she watched Charlie tear into the young man. Not nearly good enough.

"Excuse me, Tommy, I'll be right back. I have to go save a life." Before he could protest, she was off her chair and walking to the bar.

Charlie was just working up a full head of steam. "What part of strict policy do you people have trouble with? I don't think the arrangement was no drinks unless the tip is really good, was it? Was it? Tell me, just how good was it? What are you gonna do with all that cash that you've earned praying on someone else's heartache?"

The bar-tender was ignoring him from the most part, but his hands shook a little as he poured the drink for the lady down at the other end.

Putting both her hands on her friend's shoulders she whispered, "Charlie, hush."

He dropped his head, shaking it slowly back and forth in sad disappointment. "You're too sweet for your own good, you know that kid?"

"What happened to my steely Magnolia persona?" She protested with mock offense, but he saw through her bravado.

"Got stripped away by pretty-boy over there," He turned to survey Tommy, who was doing his best not to be aware of their scrutiny. "Want to explain him to me?"

"Not really, no." Kim sighed. She knew she should be telling Charlie not to stare, but his rudeness served as a nice shield for her own assessment. Why was he here? Not St. Louis, after all it was still a city, for all its small-community attitudes, but here in this bar. He looked amazing with his closely cropped hair, a goatee that gave him an air of coarseness uncommon here balanced by intellectualism of the rimless-frame glasses, but her trained eye could tell from the way he wore the wine-colored shirt and dark-charcoal slacks that they weren't his usual every day clothes. He was too conscious of them. Likewise, he was too conscious of this place of how things were done here. This wasn't his usual hangout, and she didn't like the connotations of that.

What did he want from her? He knew of her marriage. She'd bet on that. She hadn't sent him an invitation to him, but she'd sent them to the old gang—Jason, Trini, Zach, and Billy. Only Billy's had come back marked returned to sender. Surely one of them had told him, and even if they hadn't, well it wasn't exactly an unpublicized event. So what was this about?

"Do you want me to get rid of him?" Charlie asked, half-meaning the offer.

Kim shook her head. "He'd break you in half."

"I don't have to do it physically." This offer he meant completely.

To her horror, she found herself thinking about it. It would be so much simpler, but she owed him more that. She watched as Tommy tapped absentmindedly at the neck of his bottle, trying hard not to look at her, once meeting her eyes and smiling awkwardly before going back to looking at the photographs in the alcove.

The sweetly self-conscious move tugged at her, brought up memories of another man in another bar, who had been just as sweetly self-conscious.

The bar had been an almost empty jazz club, and the drink hadn't been vodka tonics then, but cosmos, the height of fashion for a girl who'd just turned twenty-one and seen the first season of 'Sex and the City.' He'd sent the drink by a waitress, written something on the napkin—Italian from his favorite movie, Bongiorno Principesa—and it had made her laugh, seeing him there, so disparate from her image of him, rubbing Kyle's hair affectionately, imploring her, with mock-desperation, to set his no-account son straight.

It hadn't been his intention to pick her up, and he hadn't, but it had started . . . something . . . something that made her ask to be seated at his table the next time she came, and seven years later led to the gold band still adorning her finger and a strict, no drinks from strangers, policy.

She'd owed Don more, too.

"No, no it's okay." She finally responded, and kissed Charlie on the cheek, "I'll see you next week, okay?"

But he grabbed her wrist before she could turn away and gently tilted her chin to look at him. "Don't get yourself hurt, Kim, not so soon."

"It's just an old friend, Charlie."

He kissed her on the forehead, whispering, "That's what's got me scared."

- + - + - + - + - + -

Angel Grove, California

Why do they always reorganize just when I'm starting to get the hang of things? Katherine Hillard mused as she wandered aimlessly up and down the grocery store aisles, trying to figure out why the powers that be had decided moving the ketchup and mustard away from the other condiments and over to the "party aisle," with the chips, sodas, and hot dog buns, was such a good idea. Determining that it would just have to remain one of life's great mysteries, she stopped in front of the frozen food, pulled out her coupon file, and began to calculate the best deal.

How had this become her life? Nine years ago, she fought intergalactic battles, saved the world on a daily basis, and surrounded herself with close dynamic friends. Now her daily routine consisted of pinching pennies to get by on her teacher's salary. The only battles she fought were with the girls on the dance team she coached, and the closest friend she had was Mary Connor the chain-smoking, over-weight, science department head whose favorite topic of discussion was why the teacher in-services they were required to attend were nothing but a load of crap.

No, that wasn't really fair.

No it wasn't fair at all. She had Jason.

Yes, she had Jason, sweet, steady, utterly confounding Jason. But there was always that one, niggling little issue that prevented her from counting him whenever she tallied her friends—she didn't really know exactly how she had him.

Forcefully drawing her thoughts away from the path she had refused to let them travel time after time, Kat turned her attention back to the task at hand.

I have got to learn to like to cook.

Firmly making the same resolution she made every week, because frozen meals were prohibitively expensive, even with the coupons, she picked out a few passable selections from the brand that was on sale this week. Remembering, as she did so, one of the many decadent feasts she and her classmates had treated themselves to back in London, when they were all convinced they were about to become world renowned stars, and go down in the history of dance as the group of bohemians who had single-handedly revived popular interest in classical ballet, Kat allowed herself a rueful smile. They hadn't been bohemians by a long shot. Mostly middle-class kids spending every last penny of their parent's money pursuing a dream, while convincing themselves that they were deeply misunderstood, tragic, starving souls.

No they most definitely had not been Bohemians.

But they had been hopeful, and they had been talented, and some of them had even gone on to reach the dream, and the rest . . . well the rest were probably doing exactly what she was doing, inspiring the next generation of dreamers, while they lived out their drab little lives. God, when had everything taken such a hairpin turn?

It wasn't that she really resented the turn her life had taken. She loved teaching and coaching. They gave everything else so much meaning. It was just sometimes, when she was feeling in a particularly morbid mood, she wondered how the monotony had crept in, and she would think of all her fellow Rangers, all those brave souls filled with so much promise, and wonder whether they ever stared up at the ceiling thinking that something had gone drastically wrong. Or was she the only one?

"They want how much?"

Maybe it was the turn her thoughts had taken, that she'd been dwelling on her former comrades with such intensity, maybe it was just that people's voices were sometimes strikingly similar, but at the scrap of conversation that had drifted towards her, Kat whirled around on her heel, utterly convinced that she knew that voice.

And just as quickly wheeled back around in profound embarrassment.

Whoever the man behind her was, he was definitely not the person she'd been thinking. In the first place, he was scary. The type of man that if he'd been walking towards her at night she'd find an open shop or restaurant to go into until he'd passed. Rough and intense, with dirty hair pulled back into a ponytail, out of date clothes, and apparently a penchant for talking to himself, he made her quietly wonder whether maybe it would be a good idea to call the store manager. Then, as she stood there debating whether she really needed one of those skillet meals because that would involve moving down the aisle towards him, it sunk in with Kat exactly what he was muttering to himself.

". . . can rewire an entire interplanetary communications system, but can't plan for inflation, very nice, very intelligent."

It wasn't just that the words were so incongruous to the general mutterings in a grocery store. After all wasn't believing in aliens one of the typical past-times of dangerous tramps? No, rather it was the way he said the words, wryly, intelligently . . . sanely, as though he really had rewired an interplanetary communications system . . .

Slowly, nonchalantly, she turned halfway, and pretending to peruse the nutrition label on a bag of frozen peas, studied him out of the corner of her eye, looking for some indication that she wasn't crazy.

Well, if she wasn't, he'd been through hell, possibly twice. His face was gaunt, hollow, and while that alone might have almost been attractive to some women, there was an unnatural paleness to his skin that gave the impression he'd been through a long illness. All of this faded into the background however as he shifted slightly, causing the lose strands of his dirty hair to move as well, and there, in stark relief, running down the side of his face and along his neck were a pair of twisted, cord-like scars.

Stifling a gasp, Kat moved to put the peas back on the shelf, suddenly feeling very much like an intruder, but at that moment the object of her scrutiny did something that nearly made her drop those peas.

"Well, you've lived on less." He muttered to himself, and as he pulled out one of the bags he'd been looking over, the corners of his mouth curved ever so slightly in a self-deprecating smile that she knew all too well.

"Billy."

She wasn't even aware she had spoken the name out loud until he paused in the midst of reaching for another bag. Then, without once glancing up from what he was doing to look in either direction, he dropped the other bag into his basket, and turned to head down the aisle, away from her.

Thinking maybe he hadn't really heard her, Kat took a few quick steps forward.

"Billy!" This time she spoke loudly enough that a few people turned to look at her, but he did not, just continued to make his way down the aisle, and then with a turn was gone, leaving her standing there feeling like the kind of idiot one does after chasing an old friend down on the street only to find out it was someone they'd never met.

Except, he had paused the first time.

Hadn't he?

- + - + - + - + - + -

Houston, Texas

"Her director says that she's got real talent, that she could go pretty far, like the next Yo-Yo Ma or something, but cellos cost serious money."

Rocky didn't look up from his paperwork he had propped on his knee. "I thought the school provided that. I mean that's why she chose it and not the violin, right?"

Carl shook his head. "They do, but those are crap practice instruments, not like what she'd need. Not to mention the private lessons, the travel, the extra tutoring for all the school she'd miss, but . . . Geez DeSantos, someone comes to you and says your kid's special, what're you gonna do?

Rocky frowned at his partner, a beefy middle-aged black man, who frankly thought all four of his kids were special—next Jordan, next Einstein, or, what was it last week? Oh yeah, . . . next Sidney Poitier. Carl and his wife Bella poured everything they had into those kids. Both worked—Carl with Rocky as a paramedic and Bella two jobs, one as a manager at a Starbucks and the other working out of her home as seamstress, specializing in re-enactment costuming, something Rocky tried to talk to her about as little as possible—and still the couple constantly found new ways to cut back, to squeeze out an extra hundred or so for education because one kid or another was destined for greatness. Still with Precious, his eldest daughter, Rocky thought Carl might be on to something. He'd heard the girl play and, even to his musically challenged ear, there was something magical about what Precious could do with a bow.

"How much is the cello?"

Carl narrowed his eyes, and then shook his head. "No man, no. I can't let you do that."

"I haven't said I'm doing anything yet."

"Yeah, but I can tell. Look Rocky, it's one thing play Santa Claus, but a cello? No, they're my kids, my responsibility. 'Sides one of these days you're gonna meet a beautiful woman who'll be smart enough to marry you and give you lots of little Rockys, and what're you gonna tell them? Sorry kids, spent all my money on my no account partner's children."

"First, it wouldn't be my money. It'd be Nana Mia's, and you know what Precious meant to her. Carl, your daughter came and sat with her once a week for the last three years of her life. Precious was as close as Nana Mia ever got to a great-granddaughter, you know she'd want this. Second, think of Precious. Stop being a proud ass, and think of your daughter."

"Yeah, maybe." Carl grunted.

"That's all I'm asking. Go home talk with Bella. If it makes you feel better, consider it an investment and when she becomes the next Yo-Yo Ma she can start a foundation in Nana Mia's name or something."

"You're a good man."

"Yeah, yeah, just don't cry on my report and screw it up. I hate doing these damn things."

"91-20, 91-20. What's your location?"

Carl was already shifting the ambulance into drive and surveying traffic, as Rocky grabbed the handset to respond to the call. "This is 91-20, we are at the corner of Bay Area Boulevard and Red Bluff Road. Got something for us?"

After a moment that meant the dispatcher was checking other paramedic's locations, she came back. "We have a female gunshot victim at 3000 Nasa Road One, parking lot of the Hilton Hotel. You're the closest."

Carl flipped on the flashers and siren and took off. Rocky closed his eyes and kept talking to the dispatcher. Some teams worked with one guy driving as the other called out openings, but Carl and Rocky had quickly established that the only way they'd survive working together was if Rocky kept his eyes closed when Carl drove.

"Someone still there?"

"Patrol officers, they found her."

Rocky breathed a sigh of relief. All the cops had basic first-aid that gave her a better chance than if a civilian had found her. "Tell them we're . . ."

He paused, and Carl supplied the answer. "Three minutes out, tops."

"Three minutes away."

"Roger that."

Slipping the handset back into place, he moved to the back to prep the stretcher and concentrated very hard on not thinking. Not thinking, not worrying about life slipping away as you got there, was the only way to survive this job for any length of time. Carl drove, Rocky prepped and neither one of them thought very much.

They reached the Hilton just under two and a half minutes, thanks to the relatively empty streets. The patrol car had its lights flashing, and a police officer Rocky recognized was trying to keep the tight knot of "concerned citizens" at bay. Welcome to the big city everybody.

The moment the ambulance came to a semblance of a stop, Rocky pushed open the doors and called out, "What do we got?"

The officer who responded was a petite, Hispanic female, who couldn't have been more than a year or two out of the academy. From the tremor in her voice, Rocky would guess this was her first shooting. "Asian female, late-twenties, early-thirties, from what I can tell single shot to the stomach. Don't know about exit wounds, didn't want to move her."

"Good. That's good." He assured her, trying to make her understand with those few words that whatever happened, she'd done what she could.

Carl came around, and they lifted the stretcher out, setting it down beside the woman. The all black clothing she wore obscured his ability to see how much blood she'd lost, but he could smell it as a he bent to check her airways and breathing. "Breathing is shallow, but steady."

"Her bp's low."

"Miss, can you hear me?" Rocky spoke to her in an effort to ascertain awareness. She flopped her head in the direction of his voice, and her eyes flickered just a little, but otherwise there was no response. "She's not alert, but I think she's voice responsive."

Carl raised his head and spoke to crowd. "Anyone know when she was shot."

A thin man in a bathrobe yelled back. "The alarm started going off, maybe . . ."

He looked to a plump woman who was probably his wife, and she gave the time, "Fifteen minutes probably --"

"We were called because of the alarm." The young officer added, "We think she broke the car window just before she collapsed. We don't know with what."

Rocky nodded as he slipped the oxygen mask over her head. With her pixie cut and minimalist dress, she had a cool, efficient look to her; he could believe that she'd had the presence of mind to break a car window to get people's attention.

"Shit." Carl muttered as he finished cutting away her shirt so he could pressure dress the wound. "We gotta move."

Together they counted to three and shifted her to the stretcher.

"Guys . . ." The young cop was leaning down to look at something on the ground.

"We're taking her to Clear Lake Regional." Rocky told her. "You got any questions, ask her later."

"Guys . . ."

They finished lifting her into the back, and Rocky turned, "Dammit, what! I'm losing my golden-hour."

The lady-cop held up a blood splattered badge. "Trini Nguyen Kwan. She's a Fed."

- + - + - + - + - + -

So there you go. As always I welcome comments and criticism with open arms.

Note on Authenticity: I am working with cities I'm fairly familiar with to maintain the realism, and I've tried to research the technical aspects to the best of my ability. But please keep in mind I'm writing this on a limited time schedule. If you notice any glaring errors, I apologize.

Panache