Disclaimer: Good heavens no, I own none of this. I'd be a lot richer if I did.
Notes: Ah, finally a whole chapter of nothing but Billy. Well, sort of. Billy's PoV, anyhow. It's a little short, but the next one will be longer and I didn't want this to be a bazillion times longer than all the other chapters. Again, if someone wants to see something, or even just point out something where I messed up, you gotta PM or review, because I don't have a beta and it won't be caught otherwise.
After Tom's guard dog impression, it was a welcome relief when he vanished for a day. After that, Billy started to get worried. When he called the Lewis residence, at first he received the information that the telephone line was disconnected, then he started to get a wrong number. Upon going to the house, he was startled to see it was no longer occupied by the couple and Tom, but by a new family.
Truly concerned, he volunteered to help in the school's office the next day, only to discover that Tom had been officially transferred from Angel Grove High, to where, he could not determine.
"He's just gone?" Kimberly asked, eyes wide, when he told them. "He didn't say anything?"
Billy shook his head. "I have heard nothing from him and I have yet to determine where he may have gone." A thought occurred to him. "He did indicate in the past that he has often experienced frequent alterations in the identities of his caretakers. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that he has been sent to another foster care home."
"Just like that?" Jason said, concerned. "With no warning?"
"He never did unpack his things from his luggage," Billy replied. "Tom seemed to expect it."
Zack exchanged looks with Jason, then said, "That's harsh, man."
Practical as always, Trini said, "Then we'll just have to find him and let him know we're still his friends. He can write to us. Keep us posted on where he is."
"And if we can't find him the normal way," Kimberly proposed, "We'll ask Zordon if we can use the Command Centre to find him. I mean, it's not like that's abusing anything. He's one of us."
It was a reasonably logical argument for use should Zordon balk at the idea, but Billy preferred to save using those resources for more urgent things. So, while he searched various records attempting to determine Tom's location, life went on.
Then the whole of Angel Grove got sucked into one of Rita's dark dimensions and that was a terrible several hours as they struggled desperately to beat her and her monsters without Tom's steadfast help. It was on coming home after the whole debacle was over, including the continuation of Power Rangers Day that had gone ahead despite the drama that had gone before, that Billy heard about Tom.
"Billy!" his father called. "Would you take down the messages on the answering machine?"
"Affirmative!" he called back.
*Beep* Billy, man, this is Rocky. It's about Tom. Call me. A number with a New York area code was left.
*Beep* Billy? It's Rocky again. Seriously. Hurry up and call. Tom's . . . it's not good. You've got the number.
*Beep* Mr. Cranston, this is Hannah Roos from the New York CPS. It was recommended that I contact you about the possibility of you taking temporary guardianship of one Thomas Oliver. Please call me at another phone number with a New York area code.
*Beep* Mr. Cranston, this is Hannah Roos, I called earlier. Please return my call at your earliest convenience. My number is the same number followed as the last time.
*Beep* Billy, please pick up, it's Rocky again. Seriously, where are all you guys? I've called Zack, Jason, Trini and Kim too. Call me.
*Beep* Billy? It's Adam. Park. When they couldn't get ahold of you and your dad, Rocky volunteered us. So, looks like Tom's moving to Stone Canyon. Call me asap. Rocky says Tom thinks you hate him. Again.
*Beep* Hey, it's Aisha. Are you guys okay? No one's answering when we call. I just heard the news about Tom moving in with Adam's family 'cause his latest foster family was beating him. Rocky was kinda scanty on the details but he seems pretty upset. Call me.
What had happened while everyone was in the dark dimension? What had happened to Tom while he was trying the regular ways of finding him? Billy felt a surge of guilt. He knew Tom reacted poorly when others became angered at him, and yet he'd snapped instead of finding a calmer way to handle the situation.
His first order of business was calling Rocky. He got a busy signal over and over again before he finally got through. "Can I speak to Rocky, please?"
"Billy? Man, I'm glad to hear from you. Kim was just telling me all about being stuck in an alternate dimension or something."
"Yes," Billy was oddly grateful Kim had beaten him to the call. At least he hadn't had to explain why they hadn't answered. She was better at not sounding suspicious when these things needed explaining. "I've been trying to call for the last half hour. I assume Kimberly has been monopolising the telephone?"
Rocky laughed. "You got that right." Then the amusement faded and he sounded worried. "Billy? What happened with you and Tom?"
How to explain? "There was another incident with Rita Repulsa's monsters," Billy said carefully. "Tom reacted by becoming overprotective of me. I became . . . irritated."
"He was hovering?" Rocky asked. "Because it seems like something he'd do."
Billy sighed. "He did. And when I expressed my vexation it was perhaps not in the most . . . tactful of ways."
"So," there was a sudden scuffling sound and Rocky's voice sounded oddly muffled when he said, "You don't hate Tom, right?"
"No," Billy said, confused.
There was a pause, then he heard Tom's voice, muffled as Rocky's was. "He's not going to say something else when you ask him," protested the former Green Ranger.
"He said it, no take-backs," Rocky half sang. "Talk to Billy, Tom."
Another lengthy pause passed, then Billy said, "Tom? Are you still on the line?"
"Yeah," Tom said. "Look. I'm sorry, okay? It just . . . when Z-" There was a pause, and Billy, hearing ambient noise of other persons, assumed that Tom was trying to determine a way to explain without risking the secrecy maintained by the Rangers.
"Zordon?" Billy asked. "I understand you are among other people," he assured Tom. "I will attempt to follow whatever subterfuge you use."
"Thanks," Tom said with a small laugh. "Yeah, him. He said it'd make me crazy seeing you getting walloped without me there to back you up, and he's right. It does."
"I can take care of myself in such situations, Tom," Billy reminded him. "I can morph, you know."
"I know," Tom sounded miserable. "And Kim said that too, but I just . . ." he trailed off again.
"You have determined your goal is to act as a protector," Billy said. "It upsets you when you are prevented from performing as such. I do see, but-"
"Are you talking to Tom?" came Trini's voice behind him.
He turned to see her and the others standing behind him. "Yes. Tom? The others have just arrived. Do you want to talk?" He looked at them and Trini held out an imperious hand.
"Tom? Kimberly called me after she talked to you. You're being stupid."
Billy shook his head and left Trini to attempt talking sense into Tom. "Let me guess," Kimberly said, looking mildly irate. "He gave you that junk about wanting to protect us."
"Affirmative," Billy nodded at her.
Her face screwed up and she spoke in a strange tone clearly meant as a mockery of Tom. "It's not that I don't trust you, I just don't trust Rita's monsters."
"Tom," Trini was saying, "You don't have to protect everyone, that's not why we're your friends." She paused, listening, then said, "So . . . you're saying you think Billy spends time with you out of pity?"
"Not this again," Billy groaned. "It is most stressful maintaining a friendship with someone suffering from poor self-esteem."
"I'm nice, but I'm not that nice," Trini told Tom. "Seriously. Don't ever try to tell me that Zack is a paragon of anything ever again."
Zack turned to stare at Trini. "I think I should be insulted," he said. "I'm just not totally sure why."
"Jason either," Trini said.
"Now I think I should probably be insulted," Jason mused.
A few more exchanges later and she was handing the telephone back to Billy. "Here."
"Hello?" Billy said.
"When this call is over, tell Trini I'm still terrified of her stabbing me to death," Tom said.
"Tell her that yourself," Billy suggested.
"Not while I'm scared she'll find a way to crawl through the phone and kill me," Tom told him. There was a pause. "Do you think I'm stupid?" he asked.
The non sequitur made Billy blink. "In general or at this specific point in time?" Billy asked. "Because in general you have struck me as eminently intelligent, often more so than some others I could name."
"Bulk and Skull don't count," Tom said, laughing.
"I was thinking of . . ." Billy paused, looked at the friends he considered the greatest in the world, his teammates, fellow Power Rangers, and decided to go ahead anyhow. "Zack, for one. Honestly, his pursuit of Angela leaves something to be desired in its indications of his intellectual capacity."
"What is this, pick on Zack day?"
"You make it so easy," Kimberly told him.
A sigh. "Okay. And right now?"
"Trini's right, you're being stupid," Billy said, echoing her blunt assessment. "And I am entirely certain you would receive the same evaluation from Rocky, Aisha and Adam."
"Wow," Zack said. "I was worried for a second there."
"Yeah, Billy. You sounded kinda normal and stupid like the rest of us," Kimberly added.
He ignored them. "Tom, friends are allowed to be mildly irate with one another without it meaning the friendship is at an end. Interpersonal relationships do not maintain a perfect amicability at all times."
"I just . . ." Tom seemed at a loss.
"We will work on this once you are back," Billy told him.
"I'll be in Stone Canyon," Tom objected.
"If Aisha's presence in Stone Canyon does not present a significant obstacle to my relationship with her," Billy said, "I hardly think that such distance will offer a different result in my friendship with you."
"I dunno," Tom said, his voice suddenly teasing. "I think Aisha has some things I don't have that might make you put in extra effort where she's concerned."
Before he had to come up with a reply, the sound of Rocky getting into a physical altercation with Tom over saying things of that nature about Aisha emerged from the telephone. "Billy," Rocky's breathless voice came down the line, "Tom has to go because I have to explain to him that Aisha doesn't have any things he needs to be talking about. For the record, I shouldn't be hearing any things where you're – awk!"
There was a click, but Billy turned away from the telephone, rolling his eyes. "Rocky and Tom are now in an altercation on the topic of Aisha."
"Why?" Jason frowned.
Kimberly was glaring at Jason and Zack. "It's big brother syndrome, isn't it?" she asked.
"I suspect something of that nature, as before he hung up Rocky was attempting to warn me about ill-treatment of Aisha," Billy informed her.
She made a disgusted sound. "Boys," Kimberly muttered, glaring at Jason and Zack all over again.
"That reminds me," Jason said to Zack. "We need to talk to Tom about-"
"Don't you dare!" Kimberly shrieked.
Billy ignored the byplay and collected a notepad and pen. Sometimes, handwriting notes on conundrums he was faced with could be both soothing and helpful to the thought process. As he wrote down his rather abstracted thoughts on the matter of Tom's self-esteem, as well as his potential adaptation to a more normalised parental interaction, he was joined by Trini.
"What's got you so interested?" she asked.
"Tom's psychological issues regarding his sense of self-worth, his tendencies to mildly anarchic violence-"
Frowning, Trini interrupted. "Anarchic? I mean, I know what the word means, but how do you apply anti-government sentiment to Tom, exactly?"
"His lack of trust in the system of justice, whether school-based or otherwise, has led Tom to make many of his actions based on a principle of lack of effective governance," Billy explained. "It is having quite a negative impact on his educational career."
Trini nodded and they both ducked the cushion flying through the air from Kimberly's altercation with Zack and Jason. It was second nature. "Suspension number eight hundred and three," Trini said with commendable hyperbole. "I honestly don't know how he passes."
"He brings to bear a tremendous degree of focus in very short passages of time," Billy said. "Enough that he can succeed at a passable grade average." It was the pattern he'd noticed. "He puts in little effort otherwise, convinced he lacks the capability to perform well constantly and consistently."
"Self-sabotage?" Trini inquired. "Not deliberate, of course, but still . . ."
"Exactly," Billy said. "In fact, I am of the belief that it may behoove us to apply to Adam on Tom's behalf, explaining Tom's difficulties."
She shot him a sceptical look. "So, going behind his back?"
"Not exactly," Billy explained. "As Tom has never been in the milieu of a home with legal guardians who perform such tasks as discipline as well as offering monetary support and lodging, Tom may well come into conflict with them due to a lack of understanding of the rules innately understood by others. By offering Adam these explanations in advance, he may be able to . . . head off as it were, some of the difficulties Tom will undergo over the course of an adjustment period." He looked hopefully at Trini, who was clearly giving his idea serious consideration.
She slowly nodded. "But I think we'd be better off doing it when Tom's aware we're doing it. The last thing we want to do is have him think we don't trust him or we're doing things behind his back. And that sort of thing is too easy to slip up on and say, 'This is just like what Billy warned me about,' or something."
A call to the Park home that evening, and the next day the Power Rangers headed out to Stone Canyon to help the Parks with clearing out the spare room that had been in use as a sort of junk storage room and set it up for Tom's use.
"Oh, look," Adam smiled reminiscently when Billy uncovered a box of toy dinosaurs. "I remember those. I stopped playing with them, but when Mom tried to sell them at a garage sale I pitched a fit and wouldn't let her."
"These are eminently accurate," Billy said, interested. They were excellent representations. "Oh, triceratops," he heard himself say.
Looking amused, Adam said, "You want them?"
Billy shook off his distraction. "Actually, no. I was figuring on leaving the collection out for Tom. His paleontological aspirations should be encouraged," he said.
"Pterodactyl!" Kimberly squealed as she passed by. A moment later she had the toy ornithodira in hand and was digging in the box. "T-rex . . . hmm . . ."
"A mastodon and saber toothed tiger are not dinosaurs," Billy told her. "I suspect you will not find such in here. Adam seems to have been reasonably determined to stay within the bounds of the Mesozoic."
"Then I'll have to go buy them," Kim said. "In the meantime," she dropped the tyrannosaurus back into the box and waved the pterodactyl at them, "Tom's got the most important one."
He smirked at her, taking the flying reptile away and replacing it with the triceratops. "Yes, the triceratops."
"I really don't want to know," Adam said, "But sure. We can set the dinosaurs up on a shelf for Tom."
With six teenagers, seven when Aisha joined them, and two adults, it took very little time to clear the room, set up the furniture and decorate. Billy had brought a poster he'd discovered of an artistic reconstruction of a Jurassic environment, Jason had brought a poster detailing the precise breakdown of movements in some type of karate spin kick, Zack a poster as well, this one of some pop music singer in very little clothing and Trini a photograph of all of them that looked like it had been created from archived footage from the viewing globe.
Kim surprised them all, producing a book of Native American folklore and myths of tribes from the California region. "What?" she asked defensively. "He's from an Indian tribe from somewhere around here, he just doesn't know which one. I thought he might like to have a connection or something."
Mrs. Park smiled at her. "That's wonderful of you, Kimberly," she said. "I know it doesn't often seem it, but the roots of our heritage can provide a sense of stability and belonging when all else fails."
"Or it can bore you to tears while you're waiting to get out of some interminable –" Adam started muttering to Billy.
His father shot him a sharp look. "Adam."
"Sorry, Dad," he said, as contrite as any teenager caught misbehaving.
His father raised an eyebrow at him but seemed to realise it was the best he was going to get and said to his wife, "We'll have to ask him about that. There may be some way to find out where he's really from."
The rest of the rangers didn't stay much longer. Billy sat with Aisha, both of them enjoying the entertainment derived from the interactions of his friends with the Parks. Adam's parents seemed to have decided that Trini was just the sort of nice girl they wanted Adam to get together with, sending Jason and Zack into an overprotective brotherly frenzy, Trini into retreat from the whole awkward scene and Kimberly cheerfully telling Trini it served her right for making fun of Kim's suffering whenever Jason and Zack did it to her. Eventually the others all left, picked up by Jason's father, and Adam stopped hiding behind the bushes.
"So," Aisha said to him once he'd emerged. "Now that you've been on the wrong end of it, are you gonna stop helping Rocky make my life hard?" She pointedly curled into Billy's side, which was exceedingly pleasant, and Billy tried very hard to avoid bringing Adam's attention onto himself.
Adam thought about it. "Probably not," he admitted. "Rocky's very good at freaking me out," he explained. "The next thing I know, I'm absolutely sure something bad's going to happen."
It was, perhaps, the most opportune moment he was going to get, Billy decided. As much as Trini was right about not hiding this advice from Tom, he also wanted to explain this without the need to constantly override Tom's protests on the veracity of his evaluations. "I actually wanted to talk to you a moment, Adam, about Tom."
Adam sat down and said, "This have something to do with his whole crappy parent foster care thing?"
"Yes," Billy said. "You know that he's been through so many schools, expulsions and moves that his education has been interrupted very frequently."
Perceptive, as he often was, Adam frowned. "The reason he keeps thinking he's stupid."
"Precisely," Billy said. "But it has been amplified by the fact that he's ceased putting in any effort into his schoolwork, convinced as he is that there is no purpose to doing so." Before Adam could say anything else, Billy went on. "I'm . . . concerned that he won't . . . understand the disciplinary boundaries of a normal family. He's never had them, only no boundaries or irrational and abusive ones. There may even be boundaries that are implicit that he will not realise are extant until he has run afoul of them."
He watched Adam's concentrating face throughout his speech. "I think I've got that," Adam said finally. "You think that, since he hasn't had normal parents or guardians that he won't know a whole bunch of things he's supposed to do or not do, just because he's not used to parents who care enough to ground you when you flunk a test."
"Yes," Billy said, relieved. "He may well run into those despite your best efforts, but if you could attempt to convince him to do his homework, it will go a long way to keeping his grades reasonable." He then added, "And you may find some inexplicable behaviours on his part." He told Adam about the way Tom had borrowed the dinosaur text early into the days of their acquaintanceship, then Tom's reasons for having done so.
When he was finished, Adam leaned back. "Wow. Okay. So, he may do something that looks really really bad, but there's a good chance it'll be like his bully vendetta," he said. "I'll . . . see what I can do about that."
"One other thing," Billy said. "Trini said I ought to do this with Tom present. While I disagree, if only because we might have spent far too long in discussing the validity of my observations, I do intend to tell Tom that I have spoken to you about this."
Aisha, who had been silent through the whole discussion nodded. "You don't want him to find out and think that you're doing things behind his back or something," she said.
"Precisely," Billy said to her with a smile. It was strange in some ways that he should feel so comfortable with Adam, Aisha and Rocky. Sometimes it was almost as though they'd been his friends as long as he'd been friends with Trini and the others.
"All right, kids," Mrs. Park said. "Time to pack it in."
Billy had taken the RADBUG out as he usually did, enjoying the fact that he had his own transportation. Unfortunately he couldn't exactly tell Adam and Aisha that he had a flying VW Beetle that he'd take home. So, he said, "Why don't I walk you home, Aisha? I'll call from here to have my father pick me up there."
He pretended to dial home, keeping a finger subtly on the receiver button the whole time, faking a conversation. Then Aisha put an arm through his and half dragged him out the door.
"I'm telling Rocky," Adam said with an amused grin as they left.
With the technology he'd borrowed from the Command Centre, it was easy enough to set the remote control to fly the car over to Aisha's. Once on her doorstep, she glanced over, apparently checking to be certain no one was looking, then she kissed him. It was sublime.
"Aisha and Billy, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" came the voice of Aisha's younger brother Jamal.
She pulled away and turned, chasing her sibling into the house. "You little cretin!"
"Goodbye Aisha!" Billy called.
"I'll see you when I get out of prison for killing my brother!" she called back.
Just as well, since it meant no one saw him climb into the driver's seat of the bug and fly off.