Disclaimer: The quote comes from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. Sleeping Beauty was written by Charles Perrault. The ballet was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and the lyrics for the Walt Disney adaptation of said ballet, as well as the specific versions of the characters therein, are the property of the Walt Disney Company.

A Euro-Trip I'll Never Forget
Part II: Music I Heard, Mistakes I Made
by MegaSilver

"Ye think you're all immune, then, do ye? That you'll never do the sort of thing that you enjoy watching cut powerful men to their knees?"

From the spiralling baroque pulpit, the thirty-five-year-old priest—"Me first cousin, Ryan O'Connor," Brendan had told Kimberly—spoke with a powerful, piercing voice that resonated—but not annoyingly so—throughout the beautiful Gothic revival interior of the Church.

"Well, I'll end with a quote from a man who was not a Catholic, but who well understood the truth about the penetration of evil in our own midst.

"'Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil… It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.'

When he had finished reading the quote, Father O'Connor gazed out upon his family all three hundred and fifty Quinns plus one Hart crowded into the edifice for a special familial celebration that Sunday. His mouth was straight and stern, but his eyes were warm, alive and sympathetic. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN."

Kimberly's own eyes were practically popping out of her head as Father O'Connor descended the pulpit and made his way back up to the altar.

So much for good-Rangers-evil-space aliens, huh? was her first thought. Kimberly was rarely wont to dwell on her Power Past—her life and her mind were very much elsewhere these days—but the seeming clash with what she had known for so long really brought out the highlights of what had established her own line of thought regarding good versus evil.

"Credo in unum Deum…"

Along with all the other parishioners, Kimberly arose for the recitation of the Nicene Crede. She had learned it in English and in Latin many, many years ago in her catechism class and since forgotten it entirely. It had come back fairly quickly after she had attended Mass four or five times with her grandparents and Brendan, but this morning she did not recite it. This morning the Credo was sung exclusively by the chorists, and in an unfamiliar intonation.

On those occasions when Kimberly went to Church with her grandparents or Brendan, there did sometimes happen be Gregorian chant. But the choirs she had heard at those parishes in Florida had absolutely nothing on this one. It was an ensemble of about thirty of Brendan's relatives—all among the musical ones—who had banded together specifically for the reunion and assembled a mix of mono- and polyphonic chants for the Mass, and who executed them so skilfully that Kimberly, sometime folk-rock guitarist and singer though she was, thought she might have to rethink her definition of music. She had never been into classical music: occasionally her mother had put on a nice Bach or Beethoven CD, but Kris Rougé wasn't all that musical herself and it never seemed to make for a natural atmosphere in the house.

But this music, this just seemed to belong where they were on so many levels.

The family had even made out a short program for those non-musicians among them, and Kimberly glanced over it after the Credo. The piece they were singing now was César Franck's "Dextera Domini – Offertory for Easter Sunday," which she had never heard before. Actually, she had never heard of anything that was in the program.

The singing, the organ and the priest's chants held Kimberly's steadfast attention until suddenly they all stopped. The ceremonials did not stop, but suddenly total silence reigned, to be penetrated only at a few select moments by the cassock- and linen-clad young knights servicing at the altar.

Then, just as suddenly, once the priest had raised and then set back down a beautiful golden goblet, the music reigned again. And just as suddenly it stopped yet again.

At last Kimberly noticed those around them rising from the pews to receive Communion. She herself would not—and had not, not in nearly twelve years, mindful as she was of what Sister Bernadette had taught her:

"To receive Holy Communion, one must be a baptized and practicing Catholic. One must have fasted at least one hour—ideally three—and must not have any mortal sin on one's conscience. If one has mortal sin on one's conscience, one must attend Confession before receiving Communion."

Mostly okay. It was the "practicing Catholic" part that had Kimberly impaired. She still couldn't get herself to climb all the way back into religion. Not that she had anything against religion; in fact, she kind of liked it. But if she hesitated, it was because she wondered just why she would it. Without being narcissistic, she honestly thought herself a pretty good, stable girl already—especially given what her parents had done.

As more and more people began rising, Kimberly felt something on her right side. Odd… nobody had touched her. But what she felt was the warmth of another human being radiating from right next to her. Strange that she would have felt one person in a crowd of 350, but so it was. Or maybe it wasn't heat, but whatever it was, it was enough to alert her to the fact that someone remained kneeling next to her and prompt her to look and confirm that that someone was in fact none other than Brendan O'Driscoll.

Brendan was pretending to look straight ahead toward the altar in prayerful meditation, but he noticed Kimberly looking at him, because he turned his head to face her, a somewhat sheepish expression on his face. He grinned a little and shrugged his shoulders.

Kimberly just shook her head. She knew for a fact Brendan had been to Confession just a couple of days before they had jumped on that plane over to Paris, and that whatever sins he might have committed were certainly not of a "mortal" nature. He was obviously trying to keep her from feeling "left out" for not taking Communion.

Maybe it was supposed to be cute. Kimberly found it little more than an annoying affectation. After all, there were at least a few others in the Church not communicating. More ominously, though, if she and Brendan—the unmarried couple in the bunch—both abstained, she could definitely see some of the folks who'd inquired or mouthed off about wedding plans heckling them about the "scandal."

So right then and there she bared her teeth and leaned just a little bit inwards towards Brendan. "Go," she hissed in a whisper.

Without a word, he complied.

Thank you, dear Lord.


What a day it had been. Mass at 9 AM, farewell brunch at 10:30, round of goodbyes starting at 11:30, jump into the car at 12:10 ("I thought we'd never get out in time to make our flight!" gasped Brendan—goodbyes in his family tended to last about eight minutes multiplied by the number of people to bid farewell to), arrival in Shannon at 1:00, departure for Heathrow at 2:00, arrival at Heathrow at 3:30.

Everything had seemed to go so smoothly, so much more than they could have hoped for. So, that little scandal averted, Kimberly got to have a pretty uneventful farewell brunch right after Mass before she and Brendan hopped into the little economy car to head back down to Shannon and its airport.

Now, on the Heathrow Express train into the city, Brendan let out a sigh of contentment. "Boy it'll be a culture shock to get back to the States, won't it?"

Kimberly smiled and replied, "Yeah," although she was thinking, For you.

Well… objectively speaking, it hadn't been a BAD weekend per se. Not at all what she would have expected, had indeed she thought to try to expect anything at all. She would never have been mentally prepared to confront three hundred and fifty close-knit relatives all gathered in one place at the same time, sleep in a bedroom of bunkbeds along with Brendan's two sisters and one female cousin—Is this what the college dorms would have felt like? she'd wondered—get her ass squeezed twice, get hit on by some horny teenager and be confronted nearly a dozen times about her future marriage to Brendan when they had never even mentioned up the subject between the two of them.

I wonder if anyone had ever heckled Brendan about that over the phone… or—more disturbingly—if Brendan had been the one to bring it up!

Surely not? Brendan was always so gallant with her. But she'd never met his family; she'd never really gotten to know his culture on such an intimate folksy level and see where he came from. There might be a whole lot she didn't know.

She tried to put that out of her mind. Right now, she was with Brendan, and happy because she knew they were going to London together. Just the two of them, no family pressures… they always had fun that way.

Besides, it hadn't been a bad weekend. She tried to think about the positives: many very nice people, endless—albeit EXTREMELY fatty and salty—food, the traditional céilí ball last night… oh, boy, had that been an experience. Kimberly and Brendan had gone out dancing rock or waltz, but the céilí was just so much faster and electrically charged than anything she had ever tried in her life. She'd not had a clue about what to do, but it was pretty simple to follow along and do what everyone else did—especially when they'd started on the spinning. The girls had been whisked around from man to man and at one point Kimberly had even found herself spinning a few moments with that redhead named Frankie—and of course very grateful when the moment had come to pass on to the next one.

And then there was the musical ambiance. That she had loved, and surely the music from this morning had to stand out as the one thing purely positive about the whole weekend.

If only she could forget Brendan's very close faux pas in the middle of that. She'd never seen him take piety to quite that level; nor had she ever seen her grandparents—or Rocky, another practicing Catholic reasonably close to herself—behave so sanctimoniously. She debated whether to bring it up, but decided against that: Brendan had seemed to get the message when she had whispered him to go communicate, so he probably understood how silly he'd been.

Still…


At approximately 4:45 PM, the Irish-American couple knocked on the door to a flat inside a nice residential unit a bit northwest of Soho, a bit east of Marylebone.

A jovial, slightly pudgy red-headed young Irishman flung open the door to welcome Kimberly and Brendan into his flat. "Ye made it alive!" he laughed as he and Brendan exchanged a bear hug.

"How are you?" Brendan laughed. "This's my girlfriend Kim."

"How are you, Kim; I'm Darren," Brendan's friend announced, kissing Kimberly's hand.

"Hi, nice to meet you." Kimberly could never help but be amused at the way the Irish casually tossed about "Howareyou"s, almost more as a salutation than as a question.

"Well, there, come on in! Let's set ye up before the crack's upon us!" Darren bowed and showed his friends the way in. "Brendan probably told ya, Kim, we go way, way back to the National School: we started being friends one day in second grade… see, back in those days, Brendan was a good boy and got good marks, so I mocked him and said he was in love with Mrs. Leahy. But I did it just outside the schoolyard—see, Brendan was too smart to try to fight at school, so we had thought he wouldn't fight back…"

As Darren prattled on, Kimberly's attention turned to the décor of the flat. A cozy abode, the panels and ceiling trim testified to the building's old age and classical architectural style. And yet the walls were plastered not with lavishly framed Renaissance or Romantic paintings, but with posters of classic, Celtic and British rock musicians—Elvis Costello, the Pogues, the Beatles and so forth—and the living room was furnished with retro-1970's trappings.

So it seemed rather odd to behold the sight of Darren's roommate—tall, slender, blond, clad in conservative slacks and a sweater vest, in contrast to the apartment but also to the blue-jeaned, sweat-shirted Darren.

"Brendan, you know Roger, don't you!

"'Course! Nice seein' you again," Brendan bade Roger, shaking his hand.

"Same to you," Roger agreed, sporting a full smile. He turned to Kimberly. "How do you do, Miss. I'm Roger Wyndham."

He spoke English with a perfect Received Pronunciation accent, something that took Kimberly a bit by surprise. "Kimberly Hart. I'm Brendan's girlfriend."

"American?" Roger retained his smile, but his eyebrows rose just a bit.

"Yeah," she said, grinning a little. She couldn't help but look at Brendan mischievously. "So you have an English friend?" Over the weekend she'd heard English, Brits, Saxons, Proddies and so forth in quite the variety of derisive contexts, particularly from the mouth of that Rory Maguire from County Down in the British-governed north of Ireland.

Darren put his arm around the straight-laced Englishman and squeezed. "Ah, well, we forgive him for that, now!"

"Besides," said Roger, looking at Brendan, "you've got an American for a girlfriend!"

Brendan raised one eyebrow and corner of his mouth. Kimberly gritted her teeth, not quite sure how to react to that, before she saw Roger trying to catch her eye.

"Look, it's all in good fun, Kim! Come on; it's two-on-two, non-Irish on Irish: you and I can josh the Paddies around a bit here!"

"Not if ye know what's good for yez, you won't!" Brendan growled, smiling.

"Hey," said Kimberly, "sorry to be antisocial, but… would you guys mind if I used your bathroom? I could just use a little refreshing."

"No, not at all," offered Roger. Spotting her traveler's kit, he whisked it up and led her to the washroom, she following with her suitcase. "There you go."

"Thank you." When he had closed the door, Kimberly surveyed the place. She had definitely seen worse men's bathrooms—she would at least be able to shower and feel clean in this one—but still it looked about due for a ritual deep-bleaching. Maybe she'd make herself useful at some point on this visit. Feel like she fit in more in an apartment with three guys…

An apartment with three guys, she reflected as she finished brushing her teeth and pulled out her makeup kit. She couldn't remember having ever been the lone female in a crowd before. It was just a little intimidating.

Only four nights, she reminded herself.

That was, of course, exactly what she had said to herself when she, Brendan and her family had arrived back at the small Parisian flat last Monday morning. And it was about what she had said to herself during the family reunion: Only two nights. And then after these four nights in London they would be headed back to Ireland to spend a long weekend in Brendan's parents' house… the famous four-bedroom abode, to be shared with Brendan, his parents and his six siblings—no, just five: "John's got his own place in Galway city now."

So much new stuff this trip. So many new people. So little space! After this vacation, getting back into gymnastics would seem like a vacation.

Gymnastics. New stuff.

It dawned on Kimberly that she and Brendan still hadn't had time to discuss that little Texas issue. She hadn't been able to think of anything really productive on the car ride to Shannon, and she had slept the entire flight and part of the Heathrow Express journey into the City of Westminster.

Oh, my gosh.

So, this was her future husband and father of her two kids plus one more on the way by 2004—thank you so, so much, Great-Aunt Maryellen—and they go on a nice two-week trip across northwestern Europe together and couldn't even find a nice romantic moment alone to gaze into each other's eyes or discuss, oh, a little thing such as Kimberly maybe moving a thousand miles away within the next couple of months?

She sighed to herself. What had she expected, that they'd be staying in Ritz-Carltons in all the capital cities and sipping cocktails in black-tie and red dress every night at various embassies? She ought to have been over the whole romantic dreamy stage. She'd been to Europe before—and Paris, no less, and quite often.

But not with my boyfriend…

When Kimberly emerged from the bathroom twelve minutes later, she heard a man crying out, "NOOO!" She made her way quickly back to the living room, where Darren had Roger in his death grip and the pair had their sides pressed up against the wall. Brendan had both of his hands pressed against Roger's shoulder and hip respectively and looked as though he intended to drive the poor English boy right through the wall.

"Who's gonna win the Rugby World Cup this fall?" Brendan growled, grinning mischievously.

Roger was grimacing, trying to break free but clearly sequestered. "ENGLAND, you cunt!" he cursed. "AAH!"

After that little nasty name, Brendan was obviously pushing Roger harder into the wall.

"Who's it gonna be-e?" taunted Darren. He stuck out his tongue and wiggled it. "Bleah-leah-leah-leah-leah!"

"I just… told you—AAUGH! Let me go!" cried Roger.

"Not until you say Ireland plants England, 63 to 14, this October!" insisted Brendan.

Kimberly rolled her eyes and couldn't help but recall a memory Tommy and Zack ganging up on Billy this way one day outside the Youth Center after Billy's blue belt test: Tommy had effectively immobilized their poor blue teammate on the ground while Zack had shaded the entirety of his face with a broad-pointed blue laundry marker to accentuate the symbolism. That day, it had been supposed that she and Trini had left to go to the mall, although they had stood outside the Youth Center just chatting for about fifteen minutes before getting in the car… and once the spectacle had started, there was no way they were going to leave—or intervene by making their presence known, so they had ducked behind some trees and enjoyed the little WMA translucent paint demonstration.

She supposed, as Jason, Zack, Tommy and even her mother had advised her, that guys will simply be guys.

Still, a little chivalry couldn't be all that bad… especially since today, unlike that day in Angel Grove, she didn't have the feminine security of Claire's or her own bedroom to retreat to after the show.

"Hey, guys!" she called, grinning.

At the sound of her voice, the trio jumped. Brendan and Darren quickly released Roger and grinned sheepishly. Roger, for his part, was blushing like a rose and covering his mouth, probably conscious of the filthy word he had applied to Kimberly's boyfriend. She just kept grinning innocently at all three of them.

"Hey, Kim," said Brendan quietly. "Ah, we were just… it was Darren's idea, see."

"Yeah," said Kimberly, still smiling.

"What're you talkin' 'bout? You were the one who brought up rugby!" Darren retorted.

"No, I brought that up after you said we should have an Ireland-versus-England match after Roger made fun of our accents!"

"Lads, lads!" said Roger, smiling and laughing a little but shaking just a bit. "Let's not have Ireland-versus-Ireland on the same day, too!"

Darren rolled his eyes and sighed. Then he pointed at Brendan and said, jocularly, "Tomorrow, you're goin' down!"

Brendan smacked Darren lightly on the shoulder. "Easy, not in front of the ladies, now!"

Kimberly certainly appreciated the chivalry. But it did dawn on her just now that she was probably capable of physically intervening to break up any match among these three if need be. A perverse side of her wondered if maybe it would be fun to get to show off that way at some point…

Brendan walked over to her. "Hey, ah… The boys wanted to go hit the pubs, then find some food and then meet up with another friend here—usually means we're in for a pub crawl. Are you up for it, are you?"

Kimberly cocked her head a little, gritting her teeth again. The last few days of immersion in Irish culture had been rather intense; England's pub scene might—might—be milder, but she needed a respite anyway. "Look," she said low enough so that Darren and Roger couldn't hear, "they're your friends. Why don't you just go? I'll relax a bit."

Brendan looked a bit sympathetic. "C'mere, Kim; he really meant that American bit as a joke. They're good mates, though, real easy to talk with; you won't be left out."

"No, it's not that; it's just… I think I could just do with something a bit more low-key. You go, though. Have a guys' night out."

She could see that Brendan was a bit relieved not to have to look after anyone but still feeling guilty and responsible all the same. "Look, tomorrow we'll go do something, just you and I, we will. I promise. I know these accommodations aren't…" He sighed. "After the reunion I thought, if only I could find some rogue priest and propose and elope—"

Kimberly held up her hand. "Brendan, I understand. Besides, my mother asked me a million questions and she would have flipped out if she'd thought I was staying in a hotel with my boyfriend."

Some might consider Kimberly's mother Kris paranoid for that stance; others, puritanical. In reality, it wasn't so much that Kris wanted to force her hand on Kimberly's actions—something that Kris would have been all too conscious of her inability to do given the degree to which she and her ex-husband had forfeited their moral authority over the past six years—as that she wanted to remind her daughter to think prudently. For Kimberly's mother had a sister who had dropped out of college due to a pregnancy and then been abandoned by her boyfriend in the sixth month. And for Kimberly, still doing competition gymnastics, the stakes were very high.

"You're not uncomfortable here; you're sure?" Brendan pressed.

It was a little awkward, but Kimberly could think of worse situations. In any case, staying with friends was far preferable to dealing with either the awkwardness or the logical conclusion of a room together. "Really, they are nice guys… I'm just not used to the whole cultural thing."

Brendan nodded, not looking directly at her. "Well, maybe you could do with a night to yourself, then."

"Yeah; look, it's light really late in the summer here. I'll take a walk around the park, see what there is in the neighborhood. She leaned up to kiss her boyfriend. "You'll be back late?"

"Not too late; most pubs close by eleven in London."


One thing Kimberly really loved about Europe—and that she hadn't gotten enough of on this trip—was the high latitude. Back home, one was always careful never to bask under the more direct rays that hit the Florida beaches without at least fairly powerful sunblock, reapplied regularly throughout the day. Not that one couldn't get cooked in northern Europe, but one had far more latitude. Just don't sit in one place with little clothing for over an hour looking straight up at the nearest star and everything should be fine.

So Kimberly leaned her head back, closed her eyes and sighed contentedly as she stood on the sunny side of the willow tree between the lake and the bandstand. Whatever else may be said about the apartment they were staying in, the location was unbeatable: just five blocks south of Regent's Park.

And Soho, Mayfair all within walking distance? Tomorrow she was definitely going to hit the shops.

Oh, wait… tomorrow's my day out with Brendan. Oh, well. He's getting his rugby-boys' night right now. He can deal. She grinned mischievously.

She was feeling a little bit annoyed with her boyfriend—and a little bit guilty for feeling annoyed. After all, Brendan had probably been a bit stressed himself about the oddball marital situation of her mother, and they'd stayed with the Rougés far longer than at the Quinn family reunion.

Still, this whole hard-drinking close-knit communal fun was just so far removed from anything the two of them had ever done together—including the things Brendan propositioned—in Florida, and yet it was all natural for him. He wasn't forcing her into anything, of course, but she just felt so… exposed to the elements in a way she wasn't used to. Just plunked down into an unfamiliar world and no refuge, no sanctuary, nothing with any sort of affinity with her past to ground her down and remind her that it was okay, that she belonged somewhere… nothing and no one—

Suddenly, Kimberly saw a familiar figure heading around the lake, coming in her general direction. She blinked a couple of times, but the familiarity only persisted. She squinted her eyes and tried to get a better look.

Yes. She would know that outfit, that face shape anywhere, anytime, from any distance—even if the haircut was radically different.

Should she just let him pass? Or should she try to say hi, catch up?

It's… it's something from my past… a part of me.

But how awkward would it be?

It's been over two and a half years, she told herself. Plenty of time for emotions to settle. He's moved on—boy, has he moved on…

Looking at the ground, trying to convince herself to just swallow her fear and approach, she failed to hear the footsteps approaching her directly from the front. "Kimberly?" came a shocked voice.

Startled that he would recognize her, Kimberly looked up and stated him straight in the eye. "Tommy!"

He hadn't changed a bit. Well… his hair had changed. Where the long locks have been, his mop was now short, textured, tapered… but his expression was still the same: deep, humorous, pensive. And sure enough, he was clad in a steely black Karate uniform.

"What are you doing here?" exclaimed Tommy.

"I'm on vacation with my boyfriend; he went out on a pub crawl with the guys and I just decided to take a stroll through the park! Oh, my gosh! What are you doing here?" Kimberly was just a little nervous about mentioning that infamous boyfriend—still the same one she had mentioned in her last letter to Tommy—but with the nervous shock it slipped out a bit more easily.

Tommy shrugged, a puzzled expression on his face. "I live here! You didn't know?"

Kimberly had indeed known… but she had put the thought out of her mind when Brendan had suggested they visit friends in London, not sure how it would be if she tried contacting the Olivers—and certainly not expecting to actually run into them in one of the largest metropolitan areas on the globe.

"Of course I knew!" she said. "I mean, I'd heard—Jason told me. But… like, are you just out for a walk? Where's… where's Katherine?"

"Oh, she's in Vienna." When Kimberly looked surprised, he continued. "She had a ballet performance this weekend; she's coming back in… when was it? Oh, yeah, tomorrow morning. No, I just… I got off a couple tube stops early so I could walk through the park to get home; we live up in Swiss Cottage," he explained, pointing northward.

There was an awkward silence and a little bit of heavy breathing. The two former Rangers were both quite flustered from this sudden encounter. A few seconds later, they both asked in unison, "How have you been?" Both laughed at the synchronization. "Umm…" they both began, again in awkward unison.

Then Tommy motioned towards Kimberly. "Go ahead."

"Umm… good! I umm… well, there were the Global Games, and—"

"Oh, yeah, that's right!" interrupted Tommy. "You got a silver and a bronze; congratulations!"

Recalling that bit of news, Tommy wanted to feel happy for his former teammate and girlfriend. But there was just a little bit of pain, just a little bit of jealousy masked behind his warm words. Tommy was probably not going to make the WMAC or anything like that, and he had given up a chance to compete in something spectacular when he had left his uncle's racing track behind.

Here was Kimberly, his ex-girlfriend, living her dream. Down in Vienna was Katherine, his wife, living her dream.

And Tommy's dream? Since 1993 his only dream had only been to be with and protect the people he loved. In getting married, he was supposed to have opened the door to that.

Yet now he wondered if some sort of athletic performing dream such as Kimberly and Katherine were presently pursuing might not be less stressful.

No, he told himself. I couldn't. No, because thinking about racing or fighting, the sight he imagined and cherished the most was that the people he loved there in the stadium cheering him on.

Katherine's my wife. My dream. My future.

Tommy's thoughts were clipping along at the pace of a TGV, but then Kimberly quickly cut into them.

"Oh, you knew?"

"Yeah! Kat keeps up with the Pan Global Games; she saw you in the paper!"

"Wow!" Kimberly laughed. "Yeah, thanks… no, it was awesome. And Guadalajara, Mexico… really cool town! We all had such a blast, the whole team. Oh, my gosh, the food…" She shook her head. "I swear, I will never eat at a Mexican restaurant in the United States again! It just blew us all away!"

"Aww man! You've got to tell us all about it! I guess… you're gonna meet your boyfriend for dinner?"

Kimberly blinked. "Umm… no, actually… they, uh… I told them they should go have a guys' night out; they wanted to do a pub crawl and I was a bit wiped out from this weekend." She let out a puff of air. "Ho, another series of wild stories!"

Tommy's heart leapt a little. Someone he knew, very well, here in London, free for dinner. In his conscious mind he forgot that that someone happened to be an ex-girlfriend with which a very emotionally intense relationship had ended quite abruptly.

As for the sub-conscious… who knew?

"Y-you ah… maybe want to have a bite?" he said. At that moment the thought entered into his conscious that perhaps that was not a good idea, but it was too late. Quickly he worked to push the thought back.

"Uh…" Kimberly looked as though she might be hesitating. That didn't make it any easier to suppress his own self-redoubting.

Then, with a sheepish grin, she said, "Sure, why not? Um, do you know a good place?"

A good place. In London that wasn't easy, certainly not without a ton of cash on hand. That was something Tommy didn't really have… but come on. He couldn't just take Kimberly to a cheap gyro stand.

Then, an idea hit him. "Well, actually… I've got a ton of food at the house and I'm afraid it might go bad if I try to keep it too long but… I wasn't sure how I'd heat it up by myself. I don't know, would you… you want to come see the flat, we can catch a bite, then I'll walk you back to your friends' place?"

Kimberly seemed to hesitate once more. But at last she assented: "Okay. Sure, why not?"


It probably was a mistake for Tommy to ask to dine with Kimberly, though an understandable mistake given the circumstances. But the legitimate budgetary and culinary concerns aside, it was a mistake to invite a lonely young lady—particularly this one—up to his apartment with his wife absent.

And it was a mistake for Kimberly to accept the invitation. Still, the longing for some sort of deep connection to her past after years so far away from anything she had ever known in her childhood, barely keeping in touch with her oldest friends and seeing her family only occasionally and in places so unlike anywhere they had ever lived together, and after this last weekend and in the middle of what seemed to be a week of immersion into a different culture and with no lonely refuge to creep out to, she could scarcely resist the temptation. Certainly she told herself consciously that it was legitimate for her to care about Tommy, despite the way she had ended things so abruptly.

And perhaps in itself it was legitimate. But when one is away from one's established routines and traditions there is a risk that one will lose touch with norms and codes of daily life, not simply from a ceremonial point of view. There is a risk that, under the stress or simply because of the unfamiliarity, one will forget certain codes that help make life in community and among even close friends and family possible and liveable.

Such as standards of propriety.

And those were certainly standards that both Tommy and Kimberly were allowing themselves to flaunt openly, there around that beautiful oak table in the rustic Georgian flat, eating up that sumptuous Ritz dinner that Tommy had originally bought to share with Katherine. In fairness to Tommy, had he remembered why he had bought it, he probably wouldn't have been inclined to eat it with another woman.

But then, Tommy and memory are like water and oil.

"This is good!" exclaimed Kimberly.

"Yeah, I know; I can't believe it's been in the fridge for three days!" remarked Tommy.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah—I took it out now because I thought it might go bad or something."

Kimberly had been the one to show him how to reheat the food properly to get as close to the original flavor and texture as possible. "Yeah, you don't really want to leave this stuff in too much longer than that." She took another bite of the lamb shank in front of her, chewed and swallowed.

"So," said Tommy, shifting the subject, "tell me about your trip."

"Hmm? Oh, this weekend!" Kimberly took a sip of the red Bordeaux wine in front of her and began. "Actually… okay, see, my boyfriend, Brendan, grew up in Ireland, so… this weekend they had a big family reunion out near Galway. And I was already going to come to Paris this summer to visit my mother. But since none of our parents except my dad had ever met the other one, we decided we'd come up together and see everyone. So, we spent a weekend in Oise with my mom and stepdad and brother, then went back to Paris for four days, then went to Galway for the family reunion, then… hopped over here, because he had some friends who'd been after him to come stay with them so we decided we'd just visit around the city."

"Whoa, man. The family reunion!" Tommy chuckled. "I never met most of Kat's family until our wedding day. How was it?"

Eyes wide, Kimberly inhaled deeply. "It was… interesting; let's just say it was interesting!" She chuckled nervously. "No, they were all really nice, like, really nice. Well," she corrected herself, thinking back to Rory and to her assailant from the pub—"mostly. But it's a huge family—three hundred and fifty people there… everyone just like, knows each other, knows what everyone else is up to, thinks they need to help get you married as soon as possible…" She chuckled. "Total culture shock."

"Yeah, I'll bet." Suddenly, Tommy had an idea. "Hey… do you want to hear the ballet Kat's doing in Austria?"

"Sure!"

Quickly, Tommy walked across the reception room and put on a CD.

Kimberly nodded. "It's really nice!" And she did find it sounded nice, but… this first piece, at least, didn't really speak to her.

Returning to the table, Tommy relaxed and stretched out a bit. His plate was empty, and little food remained in the casseroles. "I'm starting to get to know classical music a little bit. You know, all these ballets and everything… aw, man, if I could sing, I'd probably be able to hum The Nutcracker without any sheet music by the new year!"

Kimberly chuckled. She didn't know ballet compositions at all, although she did pointe and bar work for gymnastics and she certainly appreciated the art. She hadn't ever tried to force Tommy to take her to The Nutcracker around Christmastime—though she had definitely done so to Brendan this past year. "This isn't The Nutcracker, though, is it?"

"No, it's Sleeping Beauty. Same composer, though: Tchaikovsky."

"Oh, okay." Kimberly swirled her wine a little bit. She had heard it was desirable to do so to release the bouquet, though she had not tried enough wine to know just what she was supposed to be smelling for. At any rate this wine seemed to taste good enough. "Brendan's family's really musical," she remarked. "He and his siblings had this little improv Irish folk band, there's a whole lot of orchestral instrumentalists and he said probably over half the people there sang in Church choirs for some extended period of time." She chuckled a little. "Except Brendan."

"He's like me, huh?"

They had been there for an hour and Kimberly was just barely finished with one glass of wine, but she was settling quite comfortably down, there in the ambiance of very familiar, very dear company. An hour and a half ago she would have been shocked at this, openly comparing her old boyfriend to her new—in front of the old. Right now, she wasn't even thinking about how improprietous that might be. "He can sing. He doesn't really have an incredible range, but he's not too bad technically. But his brothers and sisters all sing in their parish Church choir and according to Brendan they're all really good singers, so he feels like he—"

She paused as something on the track of the CD caught her ear. "Wait—I do know this! It's—" She stopped and listened to a couple more bars before trying to insert the words she knew: "Health to the princess, wealth to the princess/All hail the Princess Aurora! It's the music from the Disney movie, but instrumental!"

Tommy nodded, smiling. "They adapted the music from the Tchaikovsky ballet for the movie."

"Wow." Kimberly laughed. "I cannot believe I'm such a doofus I didn't even know that. That was always my favorite Disney movie when I was a little girl."

"I can't say I had a favorite."

"I didn't think you would have."

"I did kind of like Fantasia, though."

"I saw that one one time, I think."

"Yeah, I watched it with Kat about eight months ago, I think. If you like classical music, it's just a bunch of really colourful animation set to Tchaikovsky and Bach and other famous composers' pieces, but it's pretty cool."

"Yeah, I remember that much. But I don't really know a lot about classical music," admitted Kimberly. "After the last couple of days, though… they had a family choir at Church this morning and it was just amazing. Like, I'd never heard classical music that was that good and that just totally fit the mood of the room but wasn't in a theatre." There was a brief pause. Then Kimberly asked, "So how're things going? Do you like London? How's Kat?"

Tommy blinked a few times. So many emotions, so much complexity. So not sure what to say. "I… yeah, I mean, it's a nice city, and we're so close to the rest of Europe we can do interesting weekends every two months or so, just see something new. And Kat… well, what can I say? She's a professional dancer; it's what she'd always wanted."

Though Tommy wore a smile, he spoke with a rather nuanced tone that suggested all was not roses. Kimberly could tell that he wasn't entirely at ease but she didn't want to ask for information he might not want to divulge.

Tommy, however, wanted to say something to someone. He hadn't talked about his loneliness to anyone, not even Jason. Katherine knew, but they never really spoke about it, and if she tried to bring it up he'd always stop her, for fear of making her feel guilty.

"Sometimes I wonder how much longer we can keep up this place," Tommy admitted. "I've got a steady Karate teaching gig, but we're not saving all that much money with the salaries around here, especially with the cost of living in London. And it's kind of hard sometimes… like this weekend, Kat had to go away to Austria and I had to supervise a belt test yesterday all day, then I had one extra class this afternoon that I went in for. Since she started doing professional dancing she's been occupied a lot of nights and weekends and so it's gotten harder for us to go out with her classmates and colleagues… and mine are both married with children." He sighed. "So… we don't really get out as much as we'd like together—or at all."

Kimberly nodded. "I know what you mean. My last year of high school, when I first… met Brendan…" Boy, was this awkward. "I was bouncing around in that gymnastics center like never before. I made a couple really good friends and we hung out a lot—actually, we still do—but that was most of our lives. Then after… I met Brendan and we started dating, I'd have to put in maximum non-school, non-gymnastics time to make it work. It got better after graduation, but still sometimes I feel like we never get to relax, veg all that much… He's really sweet. I think this weekend I'm just learning a lot about him and his culture that I never really knew existed, even though… for a Europe getaway we haven't really had any time alone together except on the planes, and then we sleep." She smiled sadly.

Make it work. Just hearing those words brought back painful memories for Tommy. So she'd been willing to make it work for Brendan… but not for him. Quit it, he told himself. It's over. It doesn't matter. You've moved on now…

This seemed like a good time to change subjects. "So, uh… speaking of gymnastics," said Tommy, "what do you think is next?"

Oh, my gosh. Texas, thought Kimberly. She cleared her throat. "Well, actually, it's kind of exciting… see, right after the Pan Global games, I went to see Coach Schmidt, and he told me Larissa Rustakov had been there at the games and that she'd really liked my performance."

"Larissa Rustakov." Tommy searched around mentally for a moment before shaking his head. "No, I don't know her."

"Oh, my gosh. Tommy, before there was Nadia Comeninci, there was Larissa Rustakov. She got six medals in three different Olympic games for the Soviet Union and then moved to the U.S. from Kiev just last year—she works for the National Team Center over in Texas."

"Seriously? Wow, Kim, that's incredible!"

"I know! And when I get back I'm flying to Texas to meet with them to see about signing on and training to go to Sydney next year." Kimberly smiled as she spoke, but the tone of her voice, considering the nature of the news, was somewhat subdued and almost wistful.

Tommy wasn't sure what to make of that. In the old days he would have expected Kimberly to be completely giddy, practically skipping around. "So you're excited?"

Still smiling, Kimberly shrugged. "I guess." Her eyes wandered elsewhere.

Tommy's gaze tried to follow hers. "You… you're going to go, though, aren't you? I mean… if you can?"

Kimberly took a deep breath. "The thing is, I… I haven't had a lot of time to think about it and I haven't even discussed it with Brendan all that much; we left for Europe almost right after I found out and we've just been running around seeing people and doing different things…" She sighed.

"You'd… you think you'd stay in Florida for him?"

Kimberly shrugged. "I think… well, I guess that's part of it, but it's more like… when I went to Florida I was still in high school and so I was still at the age where you can kind of carve out a life, and so I've kind of built one up. But if I went to Texas I'd pretty much be doing just gymnastics, no other classes or anything… I'd be alone and then afterwards I'm not sure where I'd go. My dad's not in Angel Grove anymore. I could go back with my grandparents to Florida but everything would change. I could go off to college somewhere; I have about two and a half years of classes left but I'd be twenty-one already—twenty-five, even, if I kept going until 2004." She paused. "I mean, I know it's a really good opportunity, but… what would it do for the rest of my life to give up the next five years like that? Coach said maybe a scholarship to a better school but…" She grimaced. "I just don't see myself at Harvard."

Tommy was nonplussed. He almost wanted to tell her about his own situation, how he'd had to choose between racing and Katherine, but he was so downtrodden about the whole mess and he was afraid of discouraging her.

He was also afraid that it would be construed as regret on his part. He didn't want to be thinking that—and he certainly didn't want anyone else to think he regretted marrying Katherine.

He thought maybe he should say, Talk to Brendan: you can make something work. But Kimberly hadn't mentioned Brendan all that much, and Tommy wasn't sure yet whether her boyfriend was in fact her central point of concern.

Plus, much as Tommy may not have wanted to believe that he was unhappy in his present circumstances, he didn't want to risk giving advice that might have similar fallout in someone else's life.

Finally, regardless of his marital status, Tommy frankly didn't feel up to giving Kimberly advice on trying to salvage a relationship with the man she had dumped him for. He had tried so hard to forget—they hadn't even invited Kimberly to their wedding on the double pretext that it was a small wedding (which was true) and that neither Tommy nor Katherine had really talked to her at all since the letter—but something inside kept prying at him: You still don't understand. You've never understood. You must understand. You must defer any semblance of normalcy until you can understand.

And yet he knew so much time had passed, that was unreasonable. He couldn't bear to ask.

Kimberly was chuckling a little. "Kind of wish someone would just teleport me off to one or the other place and say, 'You have been chosen. This is your mission.'"

Tommy laughed and got up, starting to collect the plates.

"Tommy, no! Please, let me!" Kimberly began clearing off the casseroles.

"Kim, no, you're a guest!" Tommy protested. But his former teammate was far more efficient at this than he, and she started whisking everything into the kitchen and running the sink.

Whistling along to the vaguely familiar Sleeping Beauty tune now emanating from the living room, Kimberly began scrubbing the dishes until she felt powerful hands grip her forearms and nearly cause her to drop the porcelain bowl she was working on.

"Hey!" Tommy hissed into her ear. "Put it down."

"Tommy, let go," she said, but she was actually surprised at how amused she was. Tommy had done that once before, when she'd cooked a sumptuous lunch for the two of them at his house back on Easter Monday 1995 and he wouldn't let her do the dishes.

That was the week after they'd all gotten back from Australia. Katherine hadn't been among them.

Oh, yeah… and just a couple of days earlier we got sent back in time by the Green Ranger clone!

And then two weeks later we had that fight with… the Student Body President elections for the next school year!

Suddenly a flood of old memories filled Kimberly's mind. Memories of Angel Grove. Memories of a life so radically different from the one she led in Florida, but still so very full and exciting—and on some level, perennially significant if not for her own person then for the world beyond her in a way that her life now was not and could not be.

And this time, she just let them flow unrestricted.

"I'll let you go…" began Tommy, "… if you obey my house rule, no guests in the kitchen!" He was tall enough to stare down at her from above and behind and give a goofy grin."

Kimberly rolled her eyes. "All right," she sighed, putting everything back down and accompanying Tommy to the black leather sofa in the reception room.

Sitting there with Tommy, smiling together, the memories just kept filling in and filling in. Though they were many thousands of miles away from where they had last seen each other, Kimberly felt as though she were living a totally different life from the one she had been living just this morning, pulled into a different setting. A very familiar one. And one that was, culturally and personally, very much her own.

She tried to relate all these memories back to that last remark she had made before Tommy had started clearing the table: "Kind of wish someone would just teleport me off…"

Zordon!

Her heart became suddenly heavy. Jason and Trini had told her about Zordon's death last December, just a couple of weeks after it had happened. She remembered crying only briefly, feeling a sort of sadness of a sort that she couldn't seem to make herself prolong into mourning of more fitting length. She had just been so far away from everything and everyone for too long to reconnect.

But now she was beginning to reconnect.

"Kim?" Tommy pierced into her thoughts. "What's wrong?"

"I was just… thinking about Zordon," she whispered. Her breaths came very deeply as she struggled not to burst into sobs.

Tommy hesitated to put a comforting hand to her shoulder, but slowly he did, for surely it was the right and natural thing to comfort a comrade in the circumstances of a fallen leader.

Indeed it was, if that was all the gesture was meant to accomplish. But to allow the tenderness to stay and take hold only constituted yet another mistake.

"I know Kim," said Tommy, fighting himself to hold back tears. "We were here in England when it happened. Adam still talked to the new Rangers we'd left behind two years ago; I found out from him. It… when he told me…" Tommy's sadness was quickly morphing into anger.

Kimberly sensed it. "Tommy, don't," she begged.

"It's just not RIGHT!" Tommy shouted, clenching his fists. His body was tremoring. "That Red Ranger… Andros—oh, man, the day I see Angel Grove again he'd better have high-tailed his alien ass far, far away from that city and not left a forwarding address!"

"Tommy!" Kimberly heard her voice crack. Without thinking she started to rub her ex-boyfriend's back. "Tommy, what if you'd still been the Red Ranger there? What would—"

"Keep fighting!" Tommy growled. "You can't do what he did. I don't care what someone tells you to do: you can't kill an innocent man to save anyone."

"Zordon's—Tommy, he was more than just a man."

"So much the worse!" A tear fell from Tommy's cheek.

"Tommy, the way Jason told it, it might not have been the breaking of the tube itself, but that once Zordon was exposed he just gave out all his energy to conclude the fight… that's not murder; it's not suicide even—I—I don't think, if he didn't want to die for death's sake…" She wanted desperately to reassure Tommy but also to reassure herself, and so she was trying to pull together some sort of hypothetical scenario that might pass the test for non-suicidal self sacrifice in her old catechism.

That was something that Brendan would do pretty well naturally, but Kimberly, not having attended religion classes or read any spiritual books in over twelve years, did not find it so easy a task.

Tommy's breaths were slowing. "I just… maybe it had to happen, but for it to happen like that…" He swallowed. "I think… I think the hardest thing was the reminder that a part of me, a part of that old life that I'd left behind was now just… gone."

Kimberly was well familiar with the old adage that you couldn't go home again but never in her life had she really understood what it meant.

Was this it now? She had never really wanted to back to Angel Grove, maybe afraid of the changes she'd see. Indeed, it had changed a bit when she had been there just briefly back in 1997—but that little adventure had been so overwhelmingly "back in the game" that she had scarcely noticed the difference.

But what neither Kimberly nor Tommy understood there, then, that evening, was that not only can you not go back home again, but also, sometimes, you must not attempt to salvage things from home for closure.

In this case, of course, that meant closure on the end of the Power Team for the both of them, at any rate certainly the Power Team as they knew it—Zordon's Power Team. And when the key to salvage for this closure happened also to be the key for the closure on a long, promising but ultimately doomed romantic love, it was all the more pressing to take guard.

Alas, everything that had happened to them since they had left each other seemed to be culminating here, tonight, in the mix of powerful, shared emotions: sadness, loneliness, nervousness, wistfulness and above all the longing for closure.

Kimberly and Tommy looked into each other's eyes and then clung together in a tight embrace. And as she sat there in Tommy's strong arms, the soft melody of the Waltz floating from the stereo filled Kimberly's head with the more recent lyrics composed to it:

I know you; I walked with you once upon a dream
I know you, the gleam in your eye is so familiar a gleam
And I know it's true: that visions are seldom all they seem…

And the childhood memory activated endorphins to sooth and temper Kimberly's mood, so that when she pulled back from Tommy to look once more into his eyes, she could perceive nothing else.

So, too, could Tommy perceive nothing more than the euphoria of sweet comfort that sat before him.

A moment later, their tongues penetrated each other's lips, commencing one last mistake to crown the evening.

TO BE CONTINUED…