Disclaimer: I don't own the Power Rangers.
Chapter 7
"How is she?"
"Sleeping." Andros looked up briefly, glancing down again as he met Zhane's eye. "Cassie said she'd check up on her."
"Really, how is she?" Zhane asked. "And how are you?"
"She'll be okay." Andros stared hard at the console in front of him. "I'm fine."
"Are you?"
"Yes," he snapped shortly. "I am. And I'm trying to find the rest of the team right now."
"If you say so." Zhane studied him dubiously, obviously unconvinced. "Look... all I'm saying is that you have--had--a complicated history with Lyra. Now that she's gone..."
Andros shook his head slowly. "I'll be fine," he said softly. "Really, I will be. It's Ashley that I'm worried about."
"You can go sit with her," Zhane told him, sliding into the seat next to him. "I'll be fine here."
Andros hesitated. "In a little while," he said finally. "I'll do what I can before she wakes up."
"And then you're not leaving her," Zhane finished for him, and sighed. "It's just as well, you're not fighting anyone until your ribs heal."
Unconsciously, he touched his chest. The regenerator sped his healing and he would be back to normal in under a day, but--it still hurt to breathe. "I know."
He shook his head and tried to focus on what he was supposed to be doing. Deca couldn't find any trace of TJ, Carlos, or Karone and no matter how much he suspected that they were on the Dark Fortress, Andros wouldn't order an invasion of the enemy battleship. Especially not now and especially not after how well his own mission there had gone.
A faint smile touched his lips as he remembered the night he'd snuck onto the Dark Fortress in hopes of getting his morpher back. He'd never expected that Ashley would follow him, though he really should be grateful that she had. She'd saved his life that night and he'd finally worked up the courage to kiss her.
"Anything?"
"Still no." Zhane leaned back unhappily in his seat, arms folded across his chest. "I can't hear Karone, either."
That was never good, and Andros felt his stomach tighten in concern for his twin. She was the only family he had left and he couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to lose her.
"I... I'm sure she's fine," he said lamely.
"Yeah." Zhane agreed too quickly, nodding his head. "Hey, why don't you go keep Ash company for awhile? Tell Cassie I could use her help up here."
Andros rolled his eyes at the less-than-subtle hint for him to leave, but went along with it anyway. He'd gotten nothing done in the last two hours and all he really wanted to do was sit with Ashley and make sure that she was all right.
Cassie was just leaving Ashley's room as he approached it. He looked at her curiously and she offered him a sigh and a tight smile.
"She's okay," Cassie said softly. "Or she seems to be."
Andros nodded in acknowledgment of her words, guilt stabbing into the pit of his stomach. Ashley shouldn't have had to be the one to kill Lyra; he'd had dozens of chances before the two of them had ever met. But he hadn't and now she was hurting because of it.
With a sigh, he knocked lightly on Ashley's door. "Can I come in?"
Oddball purred softly when she scratched beneath his chin, rolling over onto his back in a demand for more attention. Ashley smiled faintly and hugged her cat, letting out a deep breath as she calmed a little.
She groaned and shook her head when there was a knock on the door. She heard Andros's voice on the other side and for a moment was tempted to shout at him to leave. She didn't, and sat up as the door opened for him.
"Hi," he said quietly.
"Hi," she said, her voice as soft as his. "Where'd you go?"
"Zhane wanted some help searching for the others." Andros slowly sat down on the edge of her bed, one hand on his ribs as he winced. "Did you get some rest?"
"Some." Ashley shuddered at the lingering visions from her nightmares, hugging her arms to her chest. "I... can't really sleep."
"Oh." He nodded sympathetically, swinging his legs up onto the bed. "That might last for awhile."
He'd been there, she remembered suddenly, and let him pull her closer. Different circumstances, maybe, but he'd been in her place once and he understood.
"What was it like?" she wanted to know. "For you."
Andros let out a slow sigh, shaking his head. "I... Do you really want to know?"
"Please." Ashley nodded without hesitation, her fingers searching for his. Some part of her knew that she shouldn't be asking him this, that she shouldn't do this to him, but she couldn't help herself.
She'd killed someone. She hadn't wanted to, but she still had and it didn't matter how many times Lyra had threatened to kill her or Andros or any of them. She'd still killed her and all she wanted to do now was curl up and hide from it.
"I... I couldn't stop thinking about her," he started, his voice soft and not quite steady. "Every time I closed my eyes, I'd see her just watching me... it was months before I stopped dreaming of her."
"Oh." Ashley shut her eyes, trying not to imagine the torture that it would be to relive that moment time after time, asleep and in dreams... She remembered Andros as he had been when they had first met and shook her head in denial. How long would she be haunted?
"I shouldn't have said that," he muttered. "I'm sorry, Ash."
"I..." She couldn't think of anything to say. "But... why does it hurt so much?" she finally whispered, her fingers squeezing his hard. "I--I wanted her gone."
"I know." Andros kissed her hair, soothingly rubbing her shoulders. "I'm sorry," he said again. "You shouldn't have had to be the one to kill her."
"But..." But Lyra would have killed him, or at the very least hurt him badly. Ashley bit her lip. "I..."
Andros held her a little closer, not stilling the gentle motion of his hands on her back. "We're not... angry with you," he said softly. "If that's what you're worried about."
That sounded so strange coming from him that she almost wanted to laugh. Andros had been so afraid of losing Karone and Zhane that he'd kept his mouth shut for almost two years, haunted by guilt with no one to help him.
"I--I've never killed anyone before." She thought that she'd said that before, but all she could do was sit there in his arms, shaking, as she tried not to think of it.
"I know." He sighed softly and tightened his arms around her, touching his lips to her forehead. "We're not leaving you, Ash. I... I love you."
He added the last three words tentatively, and Ashley hugged him harder until she heart him groan softly in pain. She hadn't realized until then how badly she'd needed to hear those words.
"I love you too," she whispered. "Please don't leave again."
"I won't," he promised her quietly. "I'll stay with you as long as you need me to."
Ashley nodded her head slowly, carefully loosening her arms from around his waist. Andros shifted and she lay down with her head in his lap, impossibly managing to drift off to sleep again.
"Well, this sucks."
"My head hurts."
"Shh."
"Well, it does hurt."
"Shh." Karone elbowed the Black Ranger in the ribs. "I'm trying to listen."
"Oh." Carlos rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Did I miss something?"
"I think we all did," TJ explained. "But we were unconscious, too, so we don't know."
"But something's definitely going on." Hands on her hips, Karone paced back and forth impatiently. "For one, we've been here hours now and no one's come to feed us, threaten us, torture us--"
"We get the picture." Carlos sighed. "Now what?"
"I guess we wait." Karone sighed unhappily. "I can't get through to either Zhane or Andros. They must be going crazy."
"How do you stand it?" Carlos wanted to know. "Living on that ship with your overprotective brother and overprotective boyfriend."
"Zhane's not my boyfriend, exactly." She shrugged. "It's sort of cute. Sometimes, and when it's not, they leave me alone if I make it clear."
Painfully clear, she added silently and almost laughed. And even then, Andros was too dense to get it but she thought she understood why now. It made her furious sometimes, that he had been so hurt and so lonely and neither she nor Zhane had ever noticed. Since the day he was born six minutes ahead of her, he'd been her protector and she loved him for it--sometimes. But who had he had?
"You all right?" TJ touched her shoulder, and she sighed.
"I'm fine," she said, and pressed her ear to the door another time. Whoever had been on the other side had moved on. She straightened up with a frown.
"Zhane's not your boyfriend?" Carlos looked at her curiously. "If I'm allowed to ask, I mean."
"I think the equivalent term for it in your culture would be 'fiancé,'" she said. "We know that we're bonded to each other, but we never had any sort of official ceremony."
"Why not?"
She couldn't help laughing a little this time. "Well, mostly because we were fifteen at the time and our parents wouldn't have approved. Zhane's parents would have tried to convince him that he wasn't feeling what he thought he was, and mine... well, they would have said that we were too young. Relationships can go... terribly wrong sometimes."
"Oh."
She nodded slowly. "It's supposed to be perfect, the idea that two people are the two halves of a whole. But, well, there are people that hate themselves."
She remembered being terrified that that's what had happened to Andros, though she'd never said it even to him. Fortunately, she had been completely wrong and he was happy now.
"So they can't stand each other?"
"Something like that," Karone said, and sighed. "It can get complicated."
"Sounds like it."
Karone leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. "Enough of this; we've got to figure out how to get out of here."
"Any ideas?" TJ kicked at the door. "This seems to be the only way out."
"The ventilation ducts are built in, it looks like," she said. "And too small to crawl through even if they weren't. We have to break down that door somehow."
"Where's Andros when we need him?" Carlos grumbled. "How many times has he escaped out of here?"
"Too many," Karone muttered. "He's lucky he's still in one piece."
Or maybe not so lucky; Lyra seemed to like toying with him. Karone doubted that Lyra would ever do him any physical harm, though from the little Andros had told her, the mind games she played had grown increasingly sadistic.
"Only one person can fit through that door at a time," she said, forcing herself to concentrate on their current problem. Lyra and her twisted mind they could worry about later.
"So they can't all come in at once, at least." Carlos paused. "I think that's a good thing, anyway."
"The downside? We can't run past them. But we could try to fight them back," TJ mused, stretching his shoulders.
Karone nodded her head slowly, frowning as she heard some commotion outside. Backing up to stand between the two boys, she raised her hands defensively.
Her eyes widened when the door slid open. She'd expected it to be Lyra standing there instead of Cosmos, and her shock only deepened as she got a good look at his face. Metal implants covered half of his face and he stared at her through emotionless eyes.
Something had happened. She was sure of it know and not at all certain that she wanted to know what it was.
"Cosmos?" She hesitated, tentatively venturing, "Kale?"
His lips curled up into a cold sneer. Slowly, he raised one arm and Karone realized too late that it was to level a blaster at them. She lunged for it and felt TJ and Carlos moving forward with her, but they weren't fast enough. She hit the floor, deafened by the sound of the explosion.
A/N: I'm sorry for the extremely late update. I've got a week and a half to go before summer (yay!) and that should make updates come at least a little bit faster. Chapter 8 should be up as soon as I decide who I've just killed off. Or not just killed off. Much more likely not killed off. Anyway, I will try to update this story more often and any feedback is appreciated. :) Hope you liked it!
