notes: warnings for off-screen character deaths and general sadness.
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we could be immortals (but not for long)
i used to roll the dice
feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
listen as the crowd would sing
now the old king is dead
long live the king
― coldplay, viva la vida
ii. rose
ROSE ORTIZ, SCIENCE & TECH DEPT.
Flynn blinks as the plaque on the office door comes into sharp view, gold and embossed over mahogany wood. Tentatively, he knocks on it, only to find it swinging open without much pressure, revealing the inside of the office to him – a quiet, tidy little room with white walls and a desk and a whole lab set up in one corner.
"Rose Ortiz?" he asks as the woman sitting behind the desk looks up at him. She's pretty, with warm brown skin and short dark hair tied back in a ponytail, her eyes holding that world-weary look he's come to expect in most of Corinth's citizens. "I'm – I'm Flynn McAllistair. Ranger Series Operator Blue, I'm here to – "
"Yes, to work with me on Operation City Storm, I've been briefed," Rose says, offering him a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "Please, come in, have a seat. I'm just finishing up this project. You have the files?"
Flynn waves the manila folder in his hands at her, closing the door behind him as he steps fully into her office. The scent of sweet lemonade wafts across his senses, sweet and welcoming, like coming home. It brings to mind summer days, back in a world where they had real weather, when they didn't have to manufacture their storms. He finds himself filled with a sudden burst of nostalgia for a life he never even had.
"How are you?" she asks, probably more for the appearance of polite conversation and small talk than because she's really interested. She takes the file from him as he sits down in a chair opposite her desk, not looking at it until she finishes whatever she's been typing away furiously on her computer.
"Uh, good," he says in a somewhat belated reply, a little caught off-guard by the question. Most people doesn't stop to ask the rangers how they were, just giving them missions, asking favors, saying thanks for saving the city, that sort of stuff. "I mean – you know. Fighting monsters, all that fun stuff."
Rose's lips quirk in a half smile as she opens up the manila folder for the instructions for their project. "I do know," she agrees, and he has to pause to think on that. "This should be fairly easy. They sent you to explain the mechanic schematics, right? Is this it?"
She pulls out a sheet of paper filled with said schematics, all drawn in his barely-legible scrawl. Flynn smiles apologetically at her, but she only laughs and shakes her head. The sound is bittersweet when it leaves her.
"I used to have a friend who was – way worse than this, don't worry," she tells him with a wistful look on her face. "He was Blue, too, actually."
"Blue?" Flynn repeats, befuddled, and then it clicks. "Oh – oh. You're – you're a power ranger!"
"Didn't they mention that when they sent you here?" Rose asks dryly, ignoring his fascinated in gaze in favor of perusing his schematics. "I figured Truman or K would've pointed that out."
"No," he says slowly, still staring at her thoughtfully. "No, they didn't. I mean – K told us about other teams, well, she told me and Scott and Summer, because we were there first. But we didn't really go into detail, just a rundown of who survived and who was living in the city. You're – you're a Pink, right?"
"That's me," she confirms with a tone that verges on the fake side of cheerful. "Rose Ortiz, Overdrive Pink. Save the autographs for the end, thank you."
This gets a chuckle out of him. He leans forward, placing his elbows on the table as he watches her work in fascination. "So – you were an Overdrive ranger? And now you're…working for the government in Corinth?"
"There aren't exactly a lot of jobs in this city, you know?" she retorts, raising an eyebrow at him. "I had the expertise, and the ties to the Morphin' Grid. Not to mention a working morpher. How do you think K got access to her biofield?"
Flynn blinks. "Wait, so – you've been helping? With our operation? How come we've never met you before?"
Her eyes fade out for a moment, like she's somewhere else. Flynn feels a shiver run down his back; the office suddenly seems to be haunted by ghosts.
"I keep busy," she explains shortly, scribbling down notes onto the schematics. "You're all busy, too, I'm sure. Saving the world, fighting Venjix, all that fun stuff." His words in her mouth are somehow bitter, stinging with loss and grief. Rose doesn't look mad at him, but she's not smiling, either. She looks lost, more than anything, though she shakes her head and focuses back in on the papers in front of her quickly.
"Right," he says, exhaling slowly. "Right, of course. Sorry, I just – it's really cool to meet other rangers, you know? Not a lot of them made it to Corinth – "
He winces immediately, knowing the sentiment came out wrong. Rose tenses, but she doesn't say anything, instead sliding the paper around and back to him, as if they're just having a casual conversation about their work.
"I think the lights could do with some rearrangement in sector three, what do you think? They could work as a blinding mechanism for Grinders in case they attack there, since that sector can't have lightning strikes." Her tone of voice is brisk and earnest, and Flynn finds himself nodding dumbly as she marks the changes on his schematics.
"Rose," he says, watching as she continues to make notes. "I mean – Miss Ortiz?"
"Rose is fine," she says dryly.
"Can I ask you something? You don't have to answer it if it's too personal, I just – I'm curious."
She meets his gaze for a moment, a moment long enough for him to feel the pull of her sadness, the weight of her grief, the loss of her friends and family – she looks like a survivor, with heart encased in steel and her gaze guarded. He's always been better with machines than people, but he kind of gets the feeling that so has she, that maybe they aren't so different.
After all, they're both survivors. Both rangers. Both fighters.
"Yes," Rose says, bringing him back to reality. "Let me guess, is it about Overdrive?"
Her walls are back, that dry sense of humor he isn't quite used to – sure, half his team has that same humor, but none of them are quite like her. None of them are Pink.
"How did you get to Corinth?" he asks instead of the million other questions he could have asked – where's the rest of your team and is it true your Red was an android and can you still morph? But he's found, over the years, that the journey has always been the hardest part of surviving.
She doesn't answer for a moment, staring down at his schematics like they hold the meaning of the universe. The office suddenly feels so very lonely, so very empty. It feels like there should be so many more people here – her team, the people she loves, everyone alive and smiling. Flynn gets that feeling sometimes, when he walks into rooms that are haunted by the people who survived and the people who didn't. It's ten times magnified in here.
"I was in London," she says finally, her voice quiet and the words choked. "I was teaching. When Venjix attacked, I flew out to find my team, my mentor – Andrew Hartford, his house was nearby, in San Angeles. We were together, and we were fighting, and then – "
"I know," he says softly, reaching out on instinct to touch her hand in comfort. Her hand is absurdly small and cold in his, but he holds on, anyway. "It's okay, you don't have to talk about it, I'm sorry."
Rose shakes her head, a quiet, bitter laugh escaping her. "No, you – it's okay. It's okay, you're a ranger. You'll understand. I'm the smart one, you know? I was supposed to come up with a plan, I was supposed to get us all to Corinth. And I couldn't. I couldn't."
She inhales instead of breaking apart, like he'd half-expected her to do, and he can see the breath seep into her slowly, calming her down almost automatically. He wonders if she's practiced this, bringing herself back from the edge of a breakdown with professional ease. Her eyes are still haunted, but when she speaks again, her voice doesn't crack.
"Andrew's still around," she tells him, like she's listing facts. "If you want to see him, I guess. He's pretty smart, he made all our tech and stuff. Other than that, though, there's just me."
She manages a smile at him, quick and lonely and bitter, and he feels his heart break for the rest of her team – there were six, he remembers, and now there's only one.
"I'm sorry," he says, even though it doesn't feel like enough. "You know if you ever wanna…stop by the garage or something? We'd love to have you. Summer would sure love another girl to talk to, I bet."
Rose smiles again, this time hovering a bit more genuinely on her face. "Maybe I will," she says with the kind of heartache in her voice that makes him suspect she might not, but at least the offer is out there. "She reminds me a lot of Ronny, out there on the battlefield."
Flynn smiles back. "Well, Summer's fantastic, so Ronny must have been something special."
Rose laughs and brushes a hand under her eyes, though he hadn't seen any tears. "She really was. They all were."
She bends her head back over the papers, and he doesn't say much else the rest of the day, just watching her work. Sometimes, she'll get excited and look up to say something and her smile falters a bit, like she's forgotten it's him who's sitting there and not her Blue or Yellow or anyone else, but he doesn't mind. The idea of losing his entire team, of never seeing Scott or Summer again, of having to watch Dillon or Ziggy or K die, is so painful, he doesn't think he could handle it at all.
Rose Ortiz is a lot stronger than he thinks she gives herself credit for. All the survivors are, but he thinks the past rangers must have it worse. They all saved the world once, and then they watched it fall. Looking at her, it's like letting the weight of Atlas settle on his shoulders – he can't fail. They can't fail. They have to save the world from Venjix, or else everything – Rose, the Overdrive team, and every other sacrifice ever made in the name of fighting evil – will have been for nothing.
She smiles at him when he leaves, and it makes him think that maybe, one day, they'll be okay. Maybe there's a reason she ended up here in Corinth, just like there's a reason he did, or Scott, or Summer, or anyone else on their team. Maybe the reason is that they all need reminding that they can survive – they will survive.
He comes back to visit her again, when he can sneak off between ranger duties and working in the garage. She smiles more when she's around him, and though she doesn't come to the garage, he thinks it helps her, anyway, just being around another ranger, someone who understands.
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