The Life I Never Lived: Choices in Hindsight (Masked Rider, K+)
Fandom/: Masked Rider/Power Rangers crossover)
Characters/: Dex Stewart, Molly Stewart, Albee Stewart, Hal Stewart, Barbara Stewart, Justin Stewart, Patsy Carbunkle
Pairings/: Molly/Patsy
Rating/: K+
Disclaimer/: Still not mine, or Masked Rider wouldn't have been nearly so cheesy.
Summary/: Being Masked Rider is different after a life growing up as a child on Earth with his adoptive family. Dex makes a choice to protect the people he loves, and struggles to live with the consequences.
Warnings/: Angst. So much angst.
Author's Notes/: I have issues with the Zeo Crystal. (We all do, really.) And I have issues with the handwavy canon that manipulating time did not fuck up the lives of anyone besides the Zeo Rangers.

It's Justin's fault, really. I always wondered why he was so broody in the beginning of Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie.

He never really knows what happened.

One moment he's in school, watching Molly and Patsy passing notes that let their fingers brush together and trying not to smile at them so obviously as to draw attention to what they're doing. It's still new enough, this connection between them, that they're both reveling in it. And Patsy is still shy with all of them, even Molly, and it's all any of them can do to convince her that she's welcome and wanted. That they love her and want her.

The next he is still in school, with a teacher he's never met, surrounded by children he doesn't know. Molly is gone, and Patsy is a tiny, scowling brat who mocks him when he falls out of his chair in a mix of confusion and fear. He stretches his mind, reaching desperately for everyone he knows and loves, the people who ground him and keep him from losing control.

He finds Dad, who is trying to fix someone's broken sink and wondering why he's still doing a job he hates. Mom in a restaurant, filling orders and feeling frustrated at the lack of creativity she's allowed. She wonders briefly what she should make her boys for dinner that night.

Molly is nowhere to be found. Neither is Albie, Justin, or Ferbus. Patsy's mind is closed off and strange to him, in a way it hasn't been in months. No one seems to even know their names. Magna and Chopper don't answer when he tries to reach for them, and the place he used to feel them in his mind is empty, as if they were never there to begin with.

There are new memories in his head now, of a life he doesn't know. Where he has been sent to Earth as a child to be kept safe from the growing threat of war on Edenoi. Where he is found by Mom and Dad, not crash landed in the backyard, but wandering the streets alone and confused. Where he is taken in and adopted by a kind couple, when he is only six years old and suffering from 'amnesia'.

He doesn't cry. Not in front of everyone. He's alone and lost and terrified, but the words Patsy once told him are ringing through his head and he holds them close, like a mantra.

"Don't ever let them see you cry, Dex. People are cruelest when they see you cry. And they never, ever forget. Never."

He saves his tears for that night, curled up in bed in a room he doesn't know, surrounded by toys and gadgets he's never had. He is alone, and scared, and he has no idea what to do.

And he cries.

In many ways, growing up a second time is harder than the first.

There is a difference between coming to Earth as a full-grown, fully-trained warrior of Edenoi and Masked Rider, and coming to Earth as a six-year old child with barely any training who has lived in a palace all his life. His body doesn't always move as he wishes it to. It's small, clumsy, and tires easily. Even his insectopathic powers seem to have regressed, and he often has to fight to keep the abilities he does have under control.

His mind however, is exactly the same. The memories of Edenoi remain intact. He remembers his life there, his education as Prince of Edenoi and all that Grandfather taught him. He can still feel the Masked Rider powers within him, even when he can't use them. He remembers his time on Earth the past year and a half. He remembers that this is not the way things are supposed to be, and that's what makes him so desperate to know what went wrong.

But he's still too young and too small to access his Masked Rider Powers. Hours of searching and nearly getting lost in the mountains tell him that Magna and Chopper are gone. Even Count Dregon is nowhere to be found, and that unsettles him more than anything else. What is he supposed to do when the reason for his time on Earth is no longer there?

Maybe ... with Count Dregon gone, he's supposed to return to Edenoi. But it had Grandfather who sent him before, and he no longer has the power to leave himself. Grandfather would know that of course, so there must be an escort being prepared to retrieve him.

He waits, but no one comes.

The day that things change, he finds himself on edge in a way he hasn't been in months. He's agitated enough that even Mom comments on it, as he's now known for being a quiet child in this strange world. Dad tells him to go run off some energy for awhile, and he gratefully takes the chance.

He's halfway down the street before he's hit by the flash of light that overtakes the planet.

Physically he knows that it's instantaneous: his body was that of a child, and now it is not. Now he is seventeen again, his insectopathic powers fully mastered, his body well-trained. He can still feel the Masked Rider powers, but they are calm and controlled, rather than the burning chaos of a force he could barely touch.

But for his mind, which has been aware of the change all along, years are passing. Years where he is growing up on Earth with his parents, who he has lived with for eleven years now. Where Molly was adopted when he was ten, Albie two years later. He sees the change in Patsy as she grows, becoming bitter and cruel when she'd only been bratty before. He remembers meeting Justin at a family get together when his cousin was only four, looking up at him with solemn, dark eyes and a serious expression that's far too old for a child.

And somewhere in those memories of two lives, he finds himself caught with a choice as Count Dregon arrives on Earth and his Masked Rider Powers manifest at last. In this new life growing up as an Earthling child, Dex has never crashed into the backyard for the whole family to see as Mom wails at him over her petunias. Instead he has lived with his family for years, who know him to be extremely smart and a little strange at times, but accept it as a quirk of his personality. In this life, Dex knows how to blend in on his own, doesn't need Molly to watch his back at school or Dad to cover for him when there's trouble.

In this life, he is armed with memories of Dad and Albie turning into bugs, of Grandma's kidnapping, the rise and fall of the villainess Barbaria. In this life, he knows that these things haven't happened yet, and he has a choice of whether or not to tell his family the truth. And as a boy growing up with a family who has loved and accepted him, a family he has a chance to keep safe from his secret, the choice is all too easy.

And Dex Stewart is suddenly seventeen again, in a world where no one knows who the Masked Rider really is.

The burden of his new secret is difficult, but he accepts it. As a teenager he understands what he didn't as a child, that Count Dregon will continue to pursue his family regardless of whether they know Dex's secrets or not. But the choice has already been made, and Masked Rider is no longer their burden to bear.

But there are repercussions, too. Repercussions even his restored self had not expected.

The closeness of a shared secret that had brought his family together is no longer there. Instead, Dex is now at odds with his parents for his constant unexplained disappearances. There's a distance with Molly and Albie too, now that Molly doesn't feel the need to protect him and Albie doesn't hero-worship an older brother who happens to be a superhero. He overhears late-night conversations about 'teenage angst' and how his parents can't understand what's gotten into him this past year. Molly doesn't volunteer him for things anymore, and Albie doesn't constantly beg him to bail him out of some sort of trouble.

Ferbus is gone too, as a six-year-old Edenite boy could never have been expected to care for such a complex and troublemaking companion as a Monotomonax, and the loss is a constant ache in his heart and mind.

Justin never moves to Leawood to stay with his uncle's family while his father struggles to deal with his wife's death. The expected phone call had happened, Dex listening secretly on the stairs and anxious to have his beloved cousin and best friend back with them, but the offer was never made. Instead Dad expresses sympathy, but advises his brother to do what's best for Justin, and Dex is left reeling with the realization that now Dad doesn't have the knowledge to offer that Justin will be safe under Masked Rider's protection, that Leawood is still a wonderful place for a boy who needs to be surrounded by family. Instead he has a troubled teenager and a family that stays in a city under constant attack because they can't afford to leave, and a grieving pre-teen is a burden he isn't ready to shoulder.

Patsy is still bitter and cruel, because Molly hasn't had her brother to tell her that Patsy's heart and mind aren't in sync with each other. As a result, she hasn't looked deeper into understanding *why* Patsy is such a bully. Which leaves Patsy in the same situation she's always been, because there is no longer someone telling her that it's okay, that nothing is wrong with her, that she doesn't have to hide.

And Dex himself is distant, in a way he has never been before. He doesn't mean to be, but his mind is burdened with memories of a life he's never lived, of a war he was never part of, of a family he loves who no longer knows him. Of a choice he made before he was old enough to truly understand what it meant.

He has Magna and Chopper again. They fight with him, and understand that sometimes he comes to them just to sit quietly, leaning against them and staring at nothing as he loses himself in the memories. They know that something has affected Dex on a level that they can never comprehend, and they know not to ask. They accept him as he is.

And Dex accepts his new life, broken, twisted and wrong, because this is the life he chose to live.