I wasn't even supposed to be writing this but I had a really bad day and somehow ended up channeling everything into this.
I hope you enjoy reading this because it took me through a rollercoaster of emotions, making me relive some very personal moments.
I do not own Power Rangers. And all mistakes remain mine.
NAVY
She is seventeen and she has never been in love till there is a dash of navy in her life and she finds herself falling, far too quickly, far too recklessly.
It's effortless and perfunctory.
He quirks a smile at her and she forgets what it is like to breathe. His fingers brush against her and her skin seems to be on fire, burning so bright that she is blinded. He finds her in the midst of a sea of people, seeks her out and makes her laugh and she starts thinking this is what love must be like.
It's effortless and perfunctory and feels so very right.
It feels right till it's not. Till he lets the mask drop and all the warmth and smiles disappear and leave her cold and broken and betrayed.
Did she ever know Blake Bradley?
"It's not your fault," Shane tells her, a gentle hand on her shoulder.
She finds herself crumbling at this display of affection and bites her lip to hold the hollow sob from escaping.
There will be time for tears later. For now, the world was waiting to be saved.
The cave is dark and surreal. She sees pain in him that she can't even imagine and she wants to forgive him for whatever he has done.
For breaking her heart.
But she just can't.
When they reach Blue Bay Harbor, he tells her he is leaving. It shouldn't hurt as much as it does. She doesn't want to feel this way about him, not after what he has done.
But he is the fiery thunder to her calm water, the vanquishing flame to her helpless moth and he draws her in dangerously, scathing her with his fire till the Tori Hanson she has always been blinks out of existence.
He leaves her with enough memories to last a lifetime though.
Or so she hopes.
His lips are soft against hers initially, easing her into the kiss, his hands holding her steady. She is thankful for that because her knees are wobbly and she feels like she could melt into his arms despite the hell he has dragged her through. Before she knows, there is a shift in momentum. His tongue duels with hers, dancing with sin and she forgets all her guilt and pain. All that she is aware of is him, and her, and him and her.
And for that tainted moment, it is enough.
She does not think about him all the time but when she does it is an all consuming force. She takes to riding a bike to grasp onto the memory of him and when the world sleeps around her, she cries into her pillow, craving for the boy who had crushed her heart into far too many pieces and yet had made her want to love him.
Somehow the world throws him back to her. Her foolish heart thinks maybe it is because some things are meant to be.
He asks her out on a date and she says yes. Because for one moment she wants to feel like a giddy teenager with a crush and not the only hope that humanity has against the forces of evil.
Slowly the scars that he had carved on her heart begin to disappear. Maybe she is naive but she lets herself fall in love with him again: drops all her guards and opens all the doors she had locked in despair.
They don't kiss after the night he left her for the first time. Never for once does she believe that it is because of anything other than the burden of the world on their shoulders.
But then there is a woman to meet him and she is prettier than she ever was or ever will be.
Leanne.
She hasn't known herself to be petty and mistrusting and jealous. But Blake Bradley brings out colors in her she didn't know existed.
She hates these colors and she hates herself.
"Why would you think I liked her?" he asks it like it's a question that shouldn't ever have come to her mind.
"I don't know," she confesses, meeting his gaze hesitantly.
"Oh Tori," he whispers and kisses her for the second time.
She wonders if this will be the last time she ever sees him when he leaves to save Cam. She quickly shakes the thought away and wonders instead why they have to be saviors all the time.
He comes back. But leaves again.
This time he leaves her with words that don't help, not kisses that scorch. She wants him to kiss her but is afraid that if he does she will disintegrate into dust, broken by the love she had thought would mend her, save her.
Maybe he doesn't kiss her because he is tired of building things that won't last, things that are not meant to be.
She knows she is.
YELLOW
She is nineteen and she never wants to be in love again till there is a spark of splendid bright yellow far away in the distance and it sends her reeling.
She meets her in Reefside, a town that reminds her a little too much of Blue Bay Harbor which reminds her a little too much of her first love, the navy who broke her heart.
Kira is pretty and vibrant and lovely with golden curls that she wants to run a hand through. She makes her want to give love a second chance, to let herself fall again, fall quickly and recklessly.
She does not tell her though. Obviously she doesn't.
She watches how Blake looks at Kira, almost like how he looked at her a year back. She doesn't blame him because who wouldn't want to love Kira Ford?
She watches how Kira looks at Trent, with a wondrous mix of affection and caution. Trent seems to reciprocate the feelings and she dies a little inside without even knowing it. But their story seems too similar to hers with Blake and she hopes that this girl in yellow who has somehow managed to creep into her heart lives a better ending than she did.
She has never loved girls before so by the time she returns home, she begins to think she had imagined the whirlwind emotions of the last two days.
She has always found it easier to live in denial.
A month down the line, on a Friday night when she is alone in her room, a book open in front of her as she finds herself absent mindedly wondering of a girl in yellow, her phone rings.
"Hey Tori. It's me, Kira."
She would have known even without the introduction.
"Hey," she says, fighting hard to keep her voice steady. She keeps the book aside, her heart pounding in her chest.
"How have you guys been?" Kira asks, her voice always so alive.
"We have been fine," she replies. Her heart is no longer doing catapults and she finds it easier to speak. "What about you?"
"We have been fine too. You know, as fine as we can be with Mesogog around."
Her heart goes out to Kira. She knows what it is like to live with a responsibility that you didn't ask for weighing you down.
"Hey um, I hope you don't find this weird." She swears she hears a hint of reticence in Kira's voice. "The guys are fun to hang out with. They are great and all that. But sometimes their macho pride gets a little too much, so I thought it would be nice to talk to someone of the other gender for a change."
She lets out a low chuckle. Kind of because she can relate to guys being guys but mostly because the hapless yellow on the other end makes her want to laugh and smile and just be happy.
It's not like she isn't happy. But it's not like she is either.
She feels like she merely exists these days, survives and does not live.
She doesn't know how it came to this.
Somehow their phone calls become a routine fixture. Their conversation flows smoothly, hopping from surfing to music to life to Power Rangers to everything.
And in these few moments of talking to a girl miles away, she begins to remember how to live and not merely survive.
She wants to ignore this, whatever she feels when she hears her voice after a long week.
But she can't.
It's a little too dominant and powerful for her. It's something she would have been able to handle before Lothor and life and Blake, not now. Now she is too weak, too needy and she is tired of fighting.
She lets it slip on the day she hears about Mesogog's defeat but catches herself just in time. She is glad she does because the next thing Kira says is, "Trent asked me out. I mean, not on a date. Kind of like a vacation. Somewhere far away from this mess, just the two of us."
So she locks away her heart and goes back to not wanting to fall in love again. It's simpler this way and she begins to wonder why she had ever wanted to fall in love a second time.
The phone calls continue but they no longer make her feel alive and happy. They leave a hole in her heart and make her cry into the pillow that knows all her stories.
And then the phone calls stop just as suddenly as the storm of yellow had crashed into her life.
She must be easy to replace.
Years pass and the navy and the yellow blur from her life.
She sees Blake once a year and spends hours wondering of all the things they could have been.
She doesn't see Kira for many years till they meet on a battlefield in a town where her heart hasn't been broken.
Yet.
They win the fight, like always.
And somehow they end up together with a tub of ice cream for company and somewhere in between "I miss talking to you, Tori." and "Trent and I didn't work out.", she leans forward and kisses the only girl she has ever been in love with.
Kira responds after she recovers from her initial shock and when she does there is no turning back and running for cover.
They spend the night together, learning each other's curves and scars.
She begins to believe that things will fall into place after all as she lies naked and exposed in their afterglow.
But she wakes up in an empty bed and starts to hate belief and hope and love.
CRIMSON
She is twenty three and she does not remember how to fall in love till there is a blaze of crimson who has never known what it feels like to be loved.
It's a rediscovery of sorts.
They merge their Academies into one and she starts to see more of Hunter Bradley, the enigma of a man she has never fully understood.
He starts walking with her through the woods after their classes end and through the resplendent lights of the town that no longer seem bright to her. They don't talk much, walk bathed in a silence that she imagines could feel so complete and heartening only with him.
It's in one of these quiet moments that she realizes how many colors have painted her world. And just how badly she wants a splash of crimson on her portrait.
But she keeps that want repressed. She guards her heart with a lot more intent these days. It has been stomped on one too many times and she is wary of love.
But there are days when her loneliness pierces into her and leaves her damaged and then she has trouble suppressing her desires. And when she walks through the woods with him, their shoulders brushing occasionally, his heavy voice sometimes breaking the beautiful silence they have crafted around themselves, she finds herself willing to risk her heart one more time.
One last time.
She finds him alone on the beach one morning when she is out to surf. Her feet start to work before her mind does and before long she finds herself beside him.
"Couldn't sleep?" she asks him.
"I never can."
He has his own demons and she has her own monsters and maybe if they let their beasts out, they will kill each other and gift them a peace that they haven't known in a long time.
And that's how they start sleeping together: sometimes in her bed amidst the pillows that are learning yet another story and sometimes in his bed where it smells too much like him.
Too much like home.
The first few nights, they lie beside each other listlessly, staring at the ceiling and perhaps wondering how of all the people in the world to turn to for shelter, they had chosen each other.
It takes a few more nights for them to bridge the gap between each other and let their hands entwine, the action setting her skin on fire at once.
It takes a month for him to wrap his arms around her as she presses her back against his chest, feeling the assuring beat of his heart.
It's far from ideal and verges on being wrong.
But at least this way she doesn't wake up feeling lonely and broken and used. And he doesn't find it so hard to go to sleep again, after a nightmare preys on him, with her hands firmly wrapped around him.
The nights that they spend together nurture the seeds that had been planted in her heart in those long walks home and before she knows it, there exists something between them that feels a little too much like love. It should scare her. Should but doesn't.
"Have you ever been in love?" she asks him one night as they try to sleep.
He thinks for a long time and finally asks, "Does this count?"
She never gets to reply because he leans across and kisses her with life and passion and color. Kisses her with everything she has lost and forgotten.
It takes her a while to find the feelings he is showering her with. She has to dive into rusty old memories of navy and yellow with which she had kept these feelings locked away. She worries that the ghosts of her past will rear their ugly head but crimson is stronger and brighter than navy and yellow and it triumphs over the pain and heartbreak that those colors had left behind in their wake.
She wakes up knowing she won't find him beside her.
They always leave.
But miraculously he is still there and she smiles in what feels like ages.
This isn't the fire that has scathed her or the storm that has wrecked her. This is a soothing balm to all that pain and all that loss and she likes it just the way it is.
"I wish we had found each other sooner," she whispers one night.
"Things wouldn't have worked out then," he tells her quietly, tracing a pattern on her bare back.
Years later she stares into his blue eyes and thinks of all the colors that have painted her world and decides crimson is her favorite.