Sophie's Choice

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By: Akiko, Keeper of Sheep

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"In my case, I learned that although God loves us, He doesn't grant us immunity from the consequences of our choices." ~ Donna Rice

The first night she'd been jarred from sleep by a sharp knee to the stomach, Penny thought that she was being attacked by an alien.

It wasn't uncommon for those who had lived through the five years of constant battle and destruction to be a little wary, especially those who had been undergoing their developmental years. The first time Rita Repulsa attacked Angel Grove, Penny had been just shy of six years old, and she had spent her grade-school years doing alien attack drills and learning first aid. She had come to the conclusion as she grew older that no six-year-old should have to learn to perform CPR on her classmates.

So it wasn't too surprising, really, that when Tommy had kneed her in the gut in his sleep Penny had rolled off the bed and hidden underneath it with her Beretta M9. Childish though it may have seemed, cowering under her bed was usually the safest Penny ever felt. Her uncles Rob and Dave had been forced to lift her bed up and away to retrieve her for her parents' funeral.

"Penny?"

Tommy's voice had jerked her back into the present, and she'd felt like a moron. She hadn't been attacked - not really. Her on-again/off-again lover had just had a nightmare. Considering who and what he was, she shouldn't have been surprised, but she was.

Penny had wriggled out from under the bed, leaving the pistol where it was and clambering back under the sheets to curl up next to Tommy. He had watched her guardedly, which wasn't new, but it was frustrating. No matter how much he seemed to open up to her, there was always a wall there.

He hadn't spoken again that night, and come morning he had vanished, leaving behind an empty carton of milk and his grading pen.

Since then, Penny had forced herself to get used to his nighttime thrashing. It hadn't been easy; after a particularly bad episode that ended with his elbow breaking her cheekbone, the ER staff had suggested a battered women's helpline. When she told him about it, intending to make it a joke, Tommy's face had twisted into a tormented expression that left her speechless. It would be several months before he'd stay the night again.

A quiet murmur caught Penny's attention. Tommy had started tossing in his sleep again, and now she was debating whether or not she should just get up and save herself another urgent care trip. When the murmur turned into a whimper, Penny groaned to herself, turned to face him, and raised her arms to shield her face.

Black eyes were harder to explain.

Miraculously, Tommy jerked awake without inflicting any damage on his lover. This time. His dark eyes flickered back and forth, and slowly, he began to drag himself out of his agonizing dream. He looked at Penny, who was slowly rising into a sitting position beside him, with a silent plea in his gaze.

"No bumps tonight," she whispered soothingly, reaching out to him.

With a groan, Tommy tumbled over into her, his head resting against her bare thigh, his lips barely brushing her hip as he replied. "Night's not over."

Which was true, and Penny couldn't think of a reply that wouldn't make him feel worse, so she simply hummed a little, running her fingers through his rumpled hair. Of course, his hair always looked like he'd just rolled out of bed and into a hurricane. Considering how long it took him to style it, she wondered why he didn't just meander through a wind tunnel every morning. Male vanity never ceased to fascinate her.

"Have you ever…" he began, his voice fading as his courage failed him. Strange how he could be so brave in the face of certain death, yet here, with only a naked librarian half his size in the vicinity, valor deserted him.

Stroking his forehead with her thumb, Penny ceased her humming. "Have I ever what?"

Tommy wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly as though to prevent her from escaping once he'd spoken. When he did speak, Penny was alarmed to hear that his voice was hoarse and wavering on the edge of tears. "Have you ever had to make a choice, and no matter what you chose, it would end badly?"

Penny thought for a moment. Then she sighed. "You don't mean a choice like whether to shower and go to work with wet hair or to just leave it dirty, do you?"

"No," he answered quietly, his eyes closed tightly against whatever he was seeing.

This wasn't an idle, getting-to-know-you question. He'd plied her with tons of those when she'd shown up in Reefside for a weekend, just five days after they'd met. The questions had ranged from inane to introspective, and she was certain that every one of them had revealed something about her to him. He was just that sneaky.

And energetic, and sweet, and appallingly forgetful. But she digressed.

"Sophie's Choice," Penny muttered, running the hand that wasn't touching Tommy through her own disheveled mop of hair.

"Huh?"

"Sophie's Choice was a novel by William Styron," she explained. "The eponymous woman was a Polish Holocaust survivor who was forced to choose which of her children would be gassed to death and which would be spared. A choice like that is sometimes called Sophie's Choice, or sometimes the devil's choice."

Tommy was still and silent for several beats. Then he sighed and kissed her hip. "You read too much."

"No such thing," she snarked back, privately worried about how to handle this conversation.

The day she'd met Tommy had been on the sixth anniversary of her parents' deaths. From the beginning, she'd known that Tommy was not the normal human being he'd pretended to be. By the end of their meeting, she'd known exactly who and what he was, even though she hated it. Not simply because it meant that a normal relationship with him was out of the question, but because of her own mixed feelings on the subject of superheroes.

'Where were you when my parents were killed,' she wanted to scream. 'Why didn't you save them?'

But then again, if she was reading him (and the way his closet was organized) correctly, he hadn't even been a Power Ranger at the time. The deaths of her parents weren't his fault. If she was being honest with herself, he wasn't responsible for anyone's deaths. He was responsible for those who lived, but the blame for the casualties that seemed to mount up around Power Rangers belonged to the forces of Evil. Unfortunately, Penny wasn't always honest with herself.

She didn't want to feel it or think it, but a part of her - the ugly, dirty, shameful part - was gratified to see that he felt some accountability. She raged at herself as the older man quivered in her lap. What kind of monster was she, that she was glad to see someone so good drowning in anguish? How disgusting could she be?

Trailing her fingertips over his brow, Penny considered how to continue. Should she pry, or let it go? Was she ready to take on this responsibility? Did she want another reason to feel connected to this warped individual?

He was pulling away now, rolling onto his back and gazing up at her from his place in her lap. His eyes were wide, almost luminescent in the moonlight that peeked in through her window. He was smiling at her wanly, obviously trying to convince her that he was fine and doing a piss-poor job of it. He was so unsure of her, and so conditioned to hide things, that he didn't even feel safe talking about a nightmare in the safety of the darkened apartment. And that, Penny supposed, was the most heartbreaking thing in the world.

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

His mouth pressed into a firm line, Tommy averted his eyes and shook his head, the fingers of one hand picking at the sheets that coiled around them. "It's nothing."

"Really? Because I've got a fifty dollar emergency room co-pay that says differently."

Which any moron would have known was the wrong thing to say, because now Tommy was on his feet, gathering up his discarded clothing. "Nobody asked you to stick around," he grumbled, wrenching his shirt on and fumbling with the buttons.

"You don't have to," Penny replied consolingly. "I'll stick around regardless."

"Just a glutton for punishment, huh," was his sneering reply.

"No. I just like you."

Tommy's frenetic motions stilled as the silence grew more oppressive. For a panicky moment, Penny was afraid she'd said something else stupid. Then, as the tension drained from his frame, he turned and knelt beside the bed, resting his forehead against her knees as she sat up to face him.

"I guess I do owe you some kind of explanation," he conceded.

Rolling her eyes, Penny ruffled his hair affectionately. "You don't owe me anything, Tommy. You never will. I just don't know how to help you."

Rising with his usual, eerie grace, Tommy leaned forward and pushed her back onto the bed with a lingering kiss. "You do help," he whispered in her ear, tilting his weight to the side to avoid crushing her. "You're here in the morning, no matter what. That's enough."

"For now," she agreed. "And when you're ready, you can tell me all about it, and I'll still be here in the morning."

He curled his body around hers and placed a gentle kiss on her shoulder. "I'll hold you to that."

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Author's Note -

Okay, so this is set in the same universe as Cenotaph. This Penny is not the Penny from Power Rangers Zeo - that Penny was blind and infinitely more fun than my Penny.

I have a few other one-shots in this series planned, and not all of them are so angsty and contemplative. What do you think of a Ranger reunion type-fic?

Again, please read my collaborative fanfic Chaos Theory, which is under the penname Plus2Brilliance. It's worth it, I promise!

As ever, I crave your reviews. Indulge me, please.

Peace.

Akiko =D