Disclaimer: All owned by Disney.
Author Notes: My first Operation Overdrive fic. All Mercurian characters and culture etc mentioned is created by me. From what little we saw or heard of it, I loved Ty and Vella together as a couple and I wanted to explore where they would go from the finale. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Enjoy!
BACK AND FORWARD
Any departure plans the former Rangers had before were immediately postponed after Vella made her surprise appearance. Mack used it as excuse to stop his friends from leaving and insistently got an impromptu barbeque sorted out and generally got under Spencer's feet as the butler tried to get everything organised.
Whilst the food was good and spending more time with his friends was something Ty appreciated, particularly so close to the team's imminent split, it also meant he didn't get a moment alone with Vella until much later.
While most of the scattered group's attention was focused on Mack trying to take over manning the barbeque from Spencer, Ty took Vella's hand and led her away deeper into the Hartford grounds. Part of the garden, with the flowers that Spencer so carefully tended, reminded him a little of Mercuria. He knew Vella would like it.
"Your team mates are nice," Vella told him when they sat on a beautifully-sculpted stone bench.
"They're good people," Ty agreed. "I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met them."
Vella didn't miss the brooding tortured look that briefly filled Ty's moonlight eyes. She turned so that she could look at her fiancé properly and studied what she saw. The man she loved, briefly bowed by a guilt he no doubt had placed on himself. It touched her heart deeply. It was a look she had seen too often before. He might have been wearing Terran clothes, but it seemed that a lot had not changed.
"Ty, what is it? Tell me," she said softly.
The pain seeped back into Ty's eyes as he interwove his fingers with Vella's. Thinking and talking about his days under Moltor's command no longer pained him as much as they once did, the Rangers had helped him with that. But discussing with Vella what had happened would be difficult and painful. But it had to be done, she deserved to know.
"I let you down," he stated quietly, pinning her with his intense gaze. "The Fearcats should have been destroyed sooner. I tracked them to Earth but Moltor found me and when I refused to join his army, he changed me so that I would."
Vella watched her beloved stretch out his hand and study it. But Ty didn't see skin, for a moment he saw yellowed claws and thick red scales. Only for a moment until Vella took hold of his hand again, wrapping hers securely around his, and watched him worriedly. Her expression asked him to continue.
At the end of his story, concluding with the day's events, Vella smiled tenderly and gently lifted a hand to push his bangs out of his eyes, her heart swelling with love and compassion and pride, all for him. He thought he was telling her a tragic story of an undeserving Ranger. But more than the tragedy Vella heard how, just from his story alone, he did deserve his Ranger status. He hadn't stopped rescuing people, or given up trying to stop the Fearcats from destroying more lives. He had done so well. She wished, as she always had, that he could see the good more than the bad.
Tyzonn was the person that she'd expected to die for by Flurious's hand. It was a miracle that the two of them were here, sat side by side in a Terran garden. A beautiful, wonderful miracle that filled her with a happiness she wished that Ty could allow himself to truly feel.
Ty looked up at her, slightly amazed that she was staying so close to him. What he had done was dishonourable and Vella had every right to leave him. He would understand if she did.
"You did not let me down," Vella told him firmly, her hand moving to cradle his chin. "You defeated Moltor, destroyed the Fearcats. You made things right."
Ty couldn't form words. He was too riveted by the happiness sparkling in Vella's eyes. That hadn't been present in Crazar's impersonating gaze. How had he missed that? Just thinking about how he'd been so stupidly fooled made any progression towards a good mood disappear so quickly that Vella lifted his chin so that he was forced to look back into her eyes. This time, all he could see was determination. The kind he'd always seen there on rescue missions, or when she was confronting him afterwards.
"You're doing it again," there was sadness in her voice. "Ty, we're both alive and…." her other hand squeezed his fingers gently. "We're together."
Ty sighed, the puff of breath touching Vella's hand. Vella had always been the one to rally the team together, to rally him when he was low. She would insist that they had done their best, done a good job, and people were alive still because of them.
Sometimes it had frustrated him. Once after a badly botched rescue mission early on in the team's career that had resulted in several Triforian deaths, he had lashed out at her angrily about her attitude, not understanding her behaviour, so different to his own reactions. He couldn't imagine getting that upset at her now, not ever.
"But so much has happened," he ploughed on, because he had to make her understand what she was so carelessly sweeping aside. "I almost killed the Rangers and when Crazar impersonated you I abandoned them. I put my own happiness before the fate of this planet and everyone in the surrounding universes."
"Because you thought this didn't exist," Vella didn't gesture to the blue sky or the Hartford Mansion but Ty could feel it anyway. "And you saw through Crazar and you came back," she pressed her forehead to his. "I am so proud of you, Tyzonn."
She placed her hand over his heart and the significance of the gesture went right through him. Heart bound. It warmed every part of him in a way that he hadn't felt since he'd last been in her presence. Their vow was reiterated. She wasn't going to leave him, despite everything he'd done. She had chosen him again.
"I do not understand," Ty confessed quietly, his own hand reaching to cover her heart. "But I'm glad."
"I love you, Tyzonn," replied Vella simply. "I am not leaving you."
They stayed that way for a moment, suspended in heavy thick silence with eyes closed. Ty had never understood why his Terran friends often felt need to fill the quiet. Then Vella shifted and smiled at him. She leant and curled against his side. It was a very human gesture.
"You've begun to speak as they do," she told him, as though sensing his thoughts. It was strange to be with someone again who could read him so well.
"As have you. Is that because of the…..yeti?"
"Norg," Vella smiled, thinking about the strange and furry creature who had become so important to her in Flurious's cold and isolating prison. "We've both made new friends," she paused before speaking again, her voice soft and gentle. "We don't have to leave Earth yet, if you don't want to. I understand."
Ty looked down at her and heard his friends' laughter nearby mixed with the smell of burning meat. He was not going to lose contact with his Terran friends, but there was no way of knowing when they would all be together again. Mercuria was a long way away.
Mercuria.
"We're all moving on," he replied at last. "Even if I stayed, we wouldn't all be together. Earth has been home to me, these people have become my friends, my….family. But I want to see Mercuria again, even if……."
"Even if our team won't be there?" finished Vella softly.
Ty nodded and Vella smiled, squeezing his wrist. She wasn't looking forward to seeing her friends' empty homes and stations either. But she wanted to see Mercuria. The others wouldn't have wanted her to stay away because of them, she was sure of that. Tania would have given them his most scornful look. The thought made Vella smile even more and her eyes water.
No Tania to complain about the food he was forced to eat at the Primes System. No Kyle to press a hand to her shoulder when Ty was too focused and caught up in past mistakes and sit with her in silence. No Chell in her beloved tunics with the braided collars and cuffs and trying to persuade Vella to buy suitable event clothing rather than more seeds. Vella planned on creating a memorial garden for her fallen friends in the base's grounds. She'd had a lot of time to plan and detail the idea recently.
They would be home in time to see the Mercurian season change. It would look……Vella smiled at the flowers and grasses and the way the shadows fell on the ground, her fallen tears already drying……it might look something like this part of the Hartford's garden did.
"This looks like Kinosha," she observed quietly with a smile. "How did you do it?"
"Spencer did, a long time before I arrived," corrected Ty. "I have spent a lot of time here."
He watched as Vella's eyes lit up, still with a gleam of tears, as she took in what surrounded her. He remembered her, hands deep in the dirt as she worked outside their station. It was one of those vivid memories that he could only enjoy now she was here beside him. Vella had always loved flora, alien or Mercurian, and would come to many team briefings looking serene and spotless with dirt under her fingernails. She and the flowers that would carpet Kinosha during this season were forever intertwined to him.
"The flowers……." She reached out to stroke a silky petal. "They're so Mercurian….." she shook her head in delighted disbelief. "It's wonderful."
"It helped me," Ty told her. "To be here, when I felt……distant and the loss….. .It's soothing here."
"We will come back," Vella replied with her quiet certainty that had steadied him more than once before. "I want to know your friends."
"Maybe……" Ty remembered conversations he'd had with Mack about his world and space travel and Rose's fascination with the advanced Terran technology Andrew Hartford had constructed. She would love what was used in Kinosha. "I'd like them to come to Mercuria, when we wed."
Vella smiled brightly at him, and pressed a kiss to his palm. The gesture she had picked up from a rescue on a densely populated planet in the Cherrybowl Nebula was odd, but it never failed to make him smile.
"I'd love that," she said simply, her heart overflowing and flushing her cheeks. "They should stand with you for it."
Ty nodded, his happiness mirroring hers in his eyes. Vella had managed it again, to redirect him to what was good in his life and away from the darkness. At that moment, having her beside him again was a joy so intense that it was almost painful in a way that he could not express aloud.
There would be the wedding that he thought he'd never see. There would probably be a new team of responders, that brought an entirely different ache. He didn't think he'd be able to see others in his team's uniforms, not yet. Ty swallowed and felt Vella's fingers soft on his hand.
He would be far away from his new team too, but they would still be able to see each other. He was not going to lose a second team, friends that had helped him so much. Vella was right; they would come back.
"The first thing I'm going to do," Vella told him, her words as soft as her touch. "Is start on a garden for them."
Ty smiled, not needing to ask who 'they' were, and nodded. The first thing they should do was report in to the Commander. Ty had only reported in once since he had left Mercuria on the Fearcats' trail - after he'd become himself again and joined the Rangers. He hadn't even spoke to Beylin, just left a report on the feed detailing his whereabouts and that he was finally taking that personal leave suggested to him after the cave-in. He would be expected to give a longer report when they returned.
But Ty remembered Kyle's smile as he soaked in the suns, and Chell hosting a gathering in the grounds after Kinosha survived an Oxlon attack. It had been Vella's idea and she and Chell had collaborated so that on a beautiful windswept day, when they should have been rechecking Kinosha's defence and warning systems or responding to calls, most of the city turned out to celebrate their survival. The Commander had approved after Ranger teams agreed to cover the responders' jurisdiction. It had been a strange and mostly uncomfortable day for Ty, but good in a way that he wasn't used to. It was a cherished memory now.
Vella had worn a blue dress with a swirl at the collar and something wrapped about her shoulders that floated in the breeze. She had looked beautiful. She had been right.
"You're right too," Vella's voice blew away his memories, sensing his thoughts immaculately again. "Our job is important and I don't want to stop doing it."
She had felt the toll their work took in every part of her. But it was worth it. She had seen, been part of, the good that responders could do. She had missed it, as she had missed Ty and their team.
"Neither do I," Ty nodded slightly, thoughtfully but with pain in his face. "But without them……"
"I know, it won't be the same," Vella finished. "It doesn't have to be. We have time, Ty, and then we can all move on. When we're ready to."
Tyzonn smiled at her. He had missed her wisdom, how she made him look at situations differently and how enriching that was. There was work in Kinosha that he could do until he was ready to be part of a responder team again. He knew he would be one day, being a Ranger had shown him that.
Vella smiled back at the clear and almost peaceful look she saw in Ty's eyes. It settled her heart and made her happier than she thought she'd ever be again, when she'd been shivering in an ice prison.
"Come on," she got to her feet. "I want to try some of the burned meat that Norg has told me so much about. He made it sound very appetising."
"Only if Spencer is still in charge," replied Ty, capturing her hand as he stood.
Vella's laugh warmed him as they walked. They would come back. He wanted his friends to know the most important person in his life, and for her to know the people who had come to mean so much to him. And there were several other Terran dishes that he thought she'd enjoy a lot more than the barbeques that Mack and Dax liked so much.
He had two homes now, two teams, and was on his second chance for a lifetime with Vella. He kept hold of her hand as they walked towards the noise of his friends, not so very far away.
-end