"You don't scare me," Sam said as Tommy just shook his head. He had been afraid that the man across from him would not understand what they were going through at all and he was right about that. Sam didn't have a damn clue about how important it was for him to just understand what they were trying to do here. Then they would work on adjusting his attitude towards the others.
"My point isn't to scare you, it's to teach you that there are other ways to lead. That you don't have to be an arrogant asshole and that you'll learn not to call women bitches, just because they make you see something that you don't like," Tommy said as he sat down against the door and looked at the man. He didn't have the energy to physically fight, so he was just going to have to outsmart him, which he was sure that he could do. "I'm not going to fight you, I don't think that the government would be happy if you came into work tomorrow black and blue."
"I will be going to sick call if you keep me here until midnight, that is absolutely ridiculous," Sam said as Tommy laughed. He would love to hear the sickness that the man would come up with and he was pretty sure that it would not be anything that would honestly concern him.
"Nice, I won't get to sleep until about two o'clock because my wife is going to be upset by the time everything sinks in and I really want to thank you for calling her a bitch since I'm sure she hasn't really processed that yet and when she does, I wouldn't be surprised if she barges in here and gives you a piece of her mind," Tommy said as Sam looked over at him. He could see that he was more mad about what he had said to his wife than anything that he had said to him. It seemed that he could take personal insults pretty well, but he could not take it when he crossed the line and went after his wife.
"I didn't realize you were married to the woman, you didn't seem like the marrying type, but I guess I was just wrong about you," Sam said as Tommy looked over at him and just shook his head. That was the biggest bunch of bull shit that he had ever heard and he wanted to tell him that but he just couldn't bring himself to it. He wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible after he made his point.
"I said that I saw my wife on a hospital bed because I put her there, who did you think I was talking about?" Tommy asked as Sam looked over at him. He hadn't thought that he had been serious. He thought that she was just another woman who didn't know the father of her child.
"Not her," Sam said as Tommy just shook his head. "Why is it so important that I change?"
"Because they will be fighting beside you and if you don't want to be hung out to dry, you have to be able to be friends with them and you don't have that many friends right now. We don't trust you farther than we can throw you and for some of us that is a decent distance," Tommy said as he looked him in the eyes and Sam gave him a scared look. It almost seemed to him like Tommy was tempted to make his point by actually throwing him. "You have to admit it all, you have to learn to think that you can be human and make mistakes. That's why we couldn't make you the human element, that's why you had to be the element of darkness. We saw what none of your superiors wanted to see, but we had to see it because of our job, the job that we now have to entrust you with. You are now a ranger, which is going to try you just as much as being an officer, if not more because of some of the choices that you will have to make."
"But I've always been in charge," Sam said as Tommy looked over at him. He knew what it was like to always lead, but he knew that it was time to teach the man to follow. It was a lesson that he had learned the hard way and he didn't want for it to be the same for Sam or anyone else if he could help it.
"You may not like Madeline, but I know what she is capable of, we all do. You've seen her in action and you've seen how well she works with Maddox, despite the fact that they don't seem like a likely pair," Tommy said as Sam barely nodded. "They care about each other, we need to see that you care about something, even if it is only your pride."
"My pride?" Sam asked as Tommy looked over at him.
"Well, if you just wanted to protect your image with your colleagues, we could deal with that, but you are actually an arrogant asshole and you just want to do this for the hell of it," Tommy said as he looked him dead in the eyes. He could see that it was the first time that anyone had told Sam this and he hoped that he took it seriously, otherwise they wouldn't be able to work with him. Their rangers just couldn't take this sort of thing. They had enough conflict without them having any problems within the ranger team itself. "I need you to listen to me and try to understand this…if you can't admit that you need to work on you, we can't work with you."
"What was she trying to point out?" Sam asked as Tommy looked over at him. He knew that he had to be wondering what Kimberly's point was about all of it. He knew exactly what it was, but he didn't know if he would be able to explain it to him or whether or not it would be better to not even try it right now.
"I've only ever dated one other person besides her, she had two other boyfriends besides me, but we both ended it with them. We knew that something was not right, but I can almost bet that every girl broke up with you," Tommy said as Sam barely nodded his head yes. "Is it them or is it you?"
"I guess it could be me, but all of them are still my friends," Sam said as Tommy nodded.
"They aren't that close to you though and I can still look at my ex-girlfriend and smile. We are actually friends, you can't really call them friends," Tommy said as Sam sat down across the room from him. He could definitely see the point there, but it was a harsh reality to face, considering everything that he had been through. "It's about being a better person it is not about how well you fight or lead."
"So you're telling me I'm a horrible person?" Sam asked, as Tommy barely nodded his head.
"You just have to learn, you have to understand, we are a team and the team doesn't work the way that you are used to it working. You order one of the older rangers around and they will laugh in your face at the very least. Believe me, we know what we're doing and just because we don't have medals for everything that we did, doesn't mean that we haven't pulled off some things that no one ever expected us to do," Tommy said as Sam looked over at him. If he only knew about the missions that they had been on that had almost taken their lives, then he would certainly appreciate and respect them just a bit more but Tommy didn't want to throw any of that out there for him to think about unless he absolutely had to. "When do you think that the government figured out who we are?"
"They've known who you were since the beginning," Sam said as Tommy shook his head no. That idea could not be further from the truth. The government had had to do so much research to find them, although they were helped by the fact that Billy conveniently would lose anything with the word Power Ranger on it that came across his desk.
"No, Billy did a good job keeping everything about us from being discussed. He was the head of the committee to discover us and was able to throw them off track for a long time, until they began suspecting him and had another person investigate. I think it took them more than a decade to confirm just him, after they backed him into a corner and explained the situation, he suggested the rest of us. He didn't want to be a member of the PANEL, but he has helped us more than you would ever believe," Tommy said as Sam just shook his head. He could not believe that they had been unable to find them.
"There is no way that it took them a decade," Sam said as Tommy just shook his head.
"It took them a decade because we didn't want to be discovered. There is a difference in the way that we protect the country and the way that you do and it begins at the most elemental level. We protect the country, because we were chosen and because we knew what would happen if we didn't. You volunteered, which is more than the rest of us can say, but you have a system that has been built in stone for years and sometimes an old system needs a change. We're here to bring about a change; it's all that we can do. This is not a military mission, by any means. We have found an evil that is ready to attack the earth any time now. The government was afraid the day would come when there wouldn't be any rangers. That is why they found us. That's why we were needed and why we are here. I think that you might find that we do have some sort of mangled system, but you need to understand there is no protocol for how we fight a battle, we do what has to be done to win, because losing means that people die. Can you accept that?" Tommy asked as Sam looked over and then nodded that he could. A lot of this was actually making sense and that worried him, he thought that becoming a ranger was odd and career suicide, but the more that he found out, the better it sounded.
"I understand that things are going to be different, but is there any way that I will lead?" Sam asked as Tommy shook his head no.
"You may be more trusted by Madeline and the more she trusts you, the more likely it is that she will come to you for some help. There is a reason that she is the human element, she can forgive and that is something that we know you have a very hard time doing. She is going to need everyone to be on board and ready to do whatever is asked, because the strategies that you would employ, won't work here. You can't get a tank and blow the things head off, although we'd have loved that sometimes, you have to fight and the strategy gets tricky. We all trust her, you just have to," Tommy said pointedly, as Sam barely nodded and the headed towards the door. "You think that we are done?"
"I think I need to go home and think," Sam said as Tommy stood up and allowed him to exit the room, he certainly didn't blame the man for that. It was a lot to take in a couple of hours and he was dealing with it slightly better than they expected.
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"Hey," Kim whispered as she rolled over to look up at Tommy and he crawled into bed next to her. "You're back early."
"He actually listened," Tommy said as she settled her head on his shoulder and he smiled down at her. "You okay?"
"Yeah, I knew that he would probably call me a bitch. I just didn't think he would be stupid enough to do it with you around after that speech," Kim murmured as she drifted back off to sleep and Tommy gently pulled the covers up over the both of them. Coming home to this was something that he had always loved, even when it seemed like it would never happen. He knew that they could pull this off, as long as they were together and no one was stupid enough to cross their path.
