Disclaimer: Nope, not mine, I'm just playing with them...
This is a one-shot that I originally wrote for a friend (lttledvl) but I thought I'd share it with everyone else. It remains un-beta'd and is a little angsty, but then all my writing tends to lean that way these days.
The leather bound book sat on his shelf collecting dust. He looked at it every day, wanting to take it down and flip through its pristine pages, but every time he reached for it he felt his stomach turn over. He would draw his hand back slowly before grabbing his jacket and running off to perform his duties for the day.
There were a plethora of reasons for his hesitation, but perhaps the biggest reason of all was that he was ashamed. He was ashamed that he was alive and the people on the pages weren't.
Z called it survivor's guilt. She said that in time the pain of losing his friends would ease, but Bridge admitted to a certain amount of skepticism. It had already been three months, and he still felt as horrible as ever. How could he look at pictures of happier times, when all he could see was their final moments? That fateful day was etched so clearly in his mind that all he had to do was close his eyes and he was there. He dreamed about it at night. There were even times when he woke up to the sound of his own screaming with his heart pounding in his ears and the taste of blood in his mouth.
So how could he open those pages and look at his friends smiling faces, frozen forever in time. Whenever he had tried he felt as if they were screaming at him, that their smiles betrayed more than a subtle hint that he had failed them, that he was the reason they were gone. Each time these feeling overwhelmed him, he slammed the book shut and tossed it onto his roommate's empty bed. Tears were not a luxury he allowed himself much any more, because even the million tears he had cried had failed to bring his friends back to him.
Sitting on the bed, staring forlornly at the album, he heard the door to his dorm hiss open.
"Bridge?"
A moment later he felt Z's hand touch his shoulder and the bed sank slightly with her weight as she sat next to him.
"Are you okay?"
He shook his head as he felt a hot, traitorous tear slid from beneath his eyelashes. "I'm fine." The lie came readily to his lips and slid off like honey. He had used it so often that he didn't have to think about it anymore, it just flowed out.
He heard Z sigh with consternation. "Bridge, I know how you feel, but it…."
Bridge felt something inside of him snap at her words. A thousand sermons from Z had started out just like this one, but today he wasn't in the mood to listen to her admirable attempts at consoling him.
"How could you possible know I feel!" He jumped up from the bed and flung her hand away. His anger and pain getting the best of him as he exploded at the only friend he had left. "You weren't there! You didn't watch Sky and Syd die! I was captured by that raiding party too; I should have died with them. But I didn't! I got lucky! But I saw it and I couldn't stop it! I tried; I tried my damnedest to save them while you were here, twiddling your thumbs and hoping for the best."
A look of hurt contorted Z's features, "It wasn't like that," she began, but Bridge's rage cut across her and drowned out the rest of her sentence.
"They died Z, and I just stood there! I let it happen. You might as well say I killed them, that's what it comes down too!"
Every bitter and resentful thought that Bridge had had in the past three months came pouring out of him. All the feelings he was half-ashamed of came bursting out, his anger directed at the only outlet that he had: Z.
Z sat on his bed, her mouth half open, clearly stunned and at a loss for anything to say.
"DON'T YOU DARE SIT THERE AND TELL ME THAT YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL! YOU DON'T HAVE A CLUE! I CAN STILL SEE GRUMM TORTURING THEM; STILL HEAR THEIR SCREAMS, WHENEVER I CLOSE MY EYES. AND I CAN SEE SYD LYING ON THE GROUND IN A POOL OF HER OWN BLOOD, PLEADING FOR HELP! BUT I COULDN'T SAVE HER. NO, I JUST STOOD THERE!"
Z's eyes glittered with a mysterious wetness. Suddenly, she understood why Bridge had been so distant and broody. It was more than the fact that he had lost his friends; it was more than having watched them die. He blamed himself for their deaths. Blamed himself when there was nothing he could have possible done.
"Bridge, please," she begged. She reached out for his hand, but he pushed her away again. "Don't do this to yourself Bridge! You know it's not your fault! You were hurt, your leg was broken. Bridge, listen to me! There was nothing you could have done. Syd and Sky wouldn't have wanted you to do this to yourself, they…"
But Bridge was raving again and there was only one way to get his attention. She stood and closed the distance between them. Grabbing both his arms she forced him to meet her eyes.
She was desperate now, and her eyes shone with tears. "Please, stop! Just--stop, okay. It's not your fault. Grumm would have killed you too if Jack hadn't…"
"Yeah," he spat, doing nothing to hide the hatred that seeped through. "Jack, the hero. Savior of Earth! I so sick of…"
Z lashed out and struck him across the face. "Just stop it! I don't know what has gotten into you!"
For a moment Bridge stood frozen, transfixed and shocked. Z took the opportunity to race from the room, tears streaming down her face.
Slowly, unbelievingly, Bridge raised a gloved hand to his burning cheek. She had slapped him. Really and truly slapped him. He glanced towards the door but it had shut tightly against the outside world, the way he now preferred it. What had he done? Z was his friend; he should have never gone off on her like that. It wasn't her fault. He had just chased away the only friend he had.
Teary-eyed, he sunk onto Sky's bed. "God, I'm such an idiot," he whispered into his hands. The tears he had held back for so long spilled freely over his cheeks and dropped onto the blue blanket that covered his friend's bed. Furious at himself, and more than a little ashamed, he pounded his fists into the wall. Over and over again until they felt as if they might break off. But he wasn't worried that anyone would come to see what the matter was if they heard the pounding, no one cared about him anymore, and he had just hurt the only person who had.
He finally curled up into a tight ball and, rocking back and forth, cried himself to sleep.
------
The green ranger woke to the cheerful singing of birds the next morning. He raised his arm to shield his eyes from the harsh morning light streaming through the open curtains of the dorm.
The events of the previous night came rushing back to him in a sickening wave of horror and he had to hurl his aching body over the side of the bed to keep from retching on himself. When he could finally breathe again he sat back up and wiped his mouth with a shirt that he found on the floor. It was then that he noticed the soreness that had settled in his knuckles. Carefully, he began to remove the glove from his left hand, hissing in pain as the leather material ripped the dried blood and skin from his knuckles. He through the glove to the floor and examined the number that he had done to his hand.
"That'll be hell to explain," he mused grimly. Sighing he removed his other glove and threw them both in the trash can.
Sinking onto his bed he reached up and grabbed the album. He ran his hands over the smooth surface and fingered the gold embroidered edges lovingly. The book had been a gift from his mother when he first entered the SPD Academy. She had given it to him the night before he left. He still remembered how she had hinted at a present all through dinner than night, but had refused to give it to him until they had finished their pizza and tasted the dessert. It wasn't what he had been expecting, and it wasn't what he had wanted. But his mother had glowed with happiness when he told her how much he loved it. He hugged her and promised that he would put it to good use.
Bridge smiled at the fond memory. He had filled it with pictures of him and his friends. And until now it had always been a source of comfort for him. But these days it only served as a painful reminder….
Slowly, he opened the first page. There were at least a dozen pictures plastered to the acid free pages. He and his friends were all smiles as they completed their first week of training. There they were on an off day, playing light ball in the common room. He remembered how much Syd had whined over breaking a nail, and how he and Sky had laughed about how 'girly' she was afterward. He flipped the page. There he was, proudly accepting the science award while his friends look on and clapped. There was Sky, grinning like an idiot with that mutt they had found near the edge of the park. They had named her Mary, after an infamous nineteenth century American brigantine called the Mary Celeste, a legend that both boys had been fascinated with as children.
He flipped a few more pages and found himself standing with his friends on the docks after a long day at the lake. There they were in their uniforms….each page brought about more smiles and more happy memories than the previous one, until he came to the last page, and the last picture that they had ever taken together. There were two new people in the picture and their uniforms were different colors, but they were all still friends, all so happy.
He felt tears welling up in his eyes again, but this time he let them flow, unchecked, as the picture contorted and blurred away. He sat there for a few long minuets before finally wiping his eyes and closing the album. He put it back on the shelf but his hand lingered momentarily on the well worn spine. Z was right. What had happened to his friends wasn't his fault and they wouldn't have wanted him to carry on like this. They would want them to move on and be happy.
He could do that, couldn't he? He could live for all three of them. But first, there were some things he had to set right.
He rummaged around in his draw until he found a fresh pair of gloves and some ointment for his wounds. He grabbed a fresh uniform from his closet and headed for the showers.
He was tired of moping around and feeling sorry for himself. It was time to start living again, time to start being Bridge again. First he would take a shower, because he was in desperate need of one. Small steps he told himself as he reached the boys locker room. After his shower—what then?
Start living, but first he had some fences to mend.
I promise to have Infinite Possibilties updated by Friday! College started back today and it seems I have a lot of free time to write between classes. So to anyone who's still reading it, be on the look out.