Prism
Standard Disclaimers apply…I don't own them, wish I did, and thus am receiving no financial compensation for my writing.
Well, I said I was going to update once a week (laughs wryly). But, I'm getting ready to graduate from college, get married, and join the 'real world', and as usual, those things take up time - particularly the wicked hard chemistry class I'm taking right now to finish my science credit. So updates to this will probably be sporadic. But I'm trying…I promise.
Kimberly remembered going to cheerleading camp as a young teen and listening to the other girls tell ghost stories. She hadn't admitted it to anyone, but she had been scared badly and had nightmares. She now felt the same, creeping chill going up her spine and resisted the urge to put her hand on either Jason or Billy's arm to remind herself that her two friends were there and were flesh and blood, not phantoms of a nightmare. She shook herself slightly to try to escape the feeling, but she couldn't. Kim felt vulnerable now. Not that she hadn't before, but only this close call to discovery had put all her senses on alert and her fear to rise.
Jason let out a long, slow breath. "What was that?" he whispered, barely audible even to himself. Jason tried to force himself to remember that at the moment, he was probably a little spooked and his senses weren't necessarily to be trusted, but he had gotten a distinct aura of menace from the woman. Whoever or whatever she was, she instantly tripped his instinctual responses, and he wasn't willing to discount that entirely. He had rarely been wrong about people even before becoming a ranger, but since then, Jason knew that the instinct had only been honed further.
Jason slowly turned his head to survey his companions, trying not to make a sudden movement that might startle them into making a noise and giving away their position to anyone who might be listening. Billy's face, ashen in the dim, ghostly light, was unreadable. His pale eyes followed the course the woman had taken, scouring it as though a detective looking for clues. "Footsteps", Billy finally murmured in an undertone, almost to himself.
"What?" hissed Kim.
"Footsteps," Billy repeated. "She is not a figment of our collective imagination or hallucination, whichever you prefer. Ghosts or hallucinations do not leave footprints in the sand."
Jason took this in for a moment, mulling it over. There was no doubt in his mind that the woman had been real. Billy's bizarre accident and ramblings about a secret passage only confirmed to him that a physical being had come out of the cave. However, there was no denying that his mind had also automatically jumped to the spooky stories he had heard throughout his life at the woman's emergence. Billy, as usual, seemed to have put his finger on their collective pulse and answered their unasked question.
Swallowing hard, Jason tried to pull himself together, force his heart to stop racing, and assume his unspoken role as leader. "Okay," he said softly, to break the thrall over all of them. "That was…weird."
"Decidedly strange," Billy muttered quietly.
Seeing that none of this preamble was getting them anywhere, Kimberly cut straight to the point. "Are we, like, staying here?" she asked, reverting in her agitation to a quirk in her speech she had long abandoned. "I, for one, am completely freaked out."
"If we move, I'm not sure where we'll go," admitted Jason. "We could head to the mines now, but we're mentally and physically exhausted. And we're probably not going to be as on our guard as we need to be."
"I concur," said Billy firmly. His role had nearly always been as a de facto second in command, first to Jason once Billy's skills fighting and thinking had improved, then to Tommy. It was a comfortable position for him, and he slipped back into it without another thought. "I believe we must stay the night here. It will be too dark for travel soon in our condition. However, we ought to appoint watches so that at least one person will remain awake for any…unpleasant visitors."
Decision made, the lucky two lay down to sleep, too tired to protest further or even to take a meager supper from their provisions. Billy sat at the entrance, hidden but alert. He had volunteered for the first watch, desperately needing to sort out some thoughts before he could even consider sleep. He yawned, his body making its exhaustion palpable, but his mind whirled. Though Billy had faced his own mortality before, it had always been in situations where dying was a possibility . Not that that hadn't been terrifying enough, but there had always been a chance of getting out of it through some sort of weapon or a miraculous cure. He rubbed his left knee, which had a deep ache in it. That, now that he was thinking of it, was one of the few things that the Aquitians hadn't been able to cure for all their advancement, a memento of his narrow escapes. Billy still had a touch of arthritis from his sojourn into aging that acted up when he exerted himself too much.
Remembering Delphine's admonition to him to be more careful about the lasting scars from his rapid aging, Billy suppressed a slight snort, bringing him back to the present. He had no choice but to keep going, no matter how bad it was for his knee. This was, he mused, the first time he had faced a situation of certain death. He had long ago made his peace during his time as a ranger that he could die in the heat of battle or from one of the spells, had faced down death and won, but now the specter came back, looming greater than ever. Billy supposed this was how people awaiting execution felt, or prisoners in war.
Sitting and sorting through his musings a bit further, Billy realized he wasn't scared of death, per se, and even now, as he sat watching the night, he knew he still wasn't afraid of dying. More, he concluded, it was the realization of imminent death that made him hyperaware that he hadn't thought it would come this way to him. In any case of his premature death in battle, Billy had always had the utmost faith that somehow his fellow rangers or Zordon or someone would save the earth even if he perished. Now, he would die, but it would be without that faith. Billy felt that loss keenly, fearing that far more than death itself. As far as he was concerned, to see his home in this state, with his friends enslaved and tortured was as bad as any hell could offer.
My friends , he mused. What about my father? He wasn't a ranger, so there is no way that the Power Chamber in its limited capacity could trace him. I wonder what became of him. If he's alive…or dead…or captive and tortured. I don't know what would be worse. His stomach twisted at the thought of his father being forced to work in a mine. If only I didn't know…Billy tried to stop the thoughts from coming into his mind, but he was powerless against them.
I never realized…humans are not the only ones who fight amongst themselves. I knew when I went to Aquitar that of course they were being attacked by the HydroContaminators, but I always figured them as far more civilized than human beings. So many dead…so much anger. The Aquitian rangers bore the brunt of it. They were supposed to have 'intervened sooner' or 'worked faster' or anything, really. Some of the survivors of the attack were half-deranged from the loss of their families, their homes…Billy had to consciously suppress a shudder at the memory. He had gone, he had worked, and his reward had been wrath piled on his shoulders.
The Aquitians were never much for showing emotions. Maybe that's why I was so shocked to see those…out of control. They broke all the cultural taboos, laws, everything. And I, I was shunted off to the side…it wasn't my battle to fight, my peace to restore. It was like…like…being on…Earth… Billy stopped himself. He refused to allow himself even the slightest thought of disloyalty to either the Aquitians, who had, frankly, saved his life during the uprising so vivid at the moment in his memory, or to his Earth Rangers, his friends in the current situation of great trouble. He gritted his teeth, breathed deeply to keep the tears in his eyes from streaming down his face.
At that moment, Billy felt more awkwardly childish than he had in many years. He wanted very desperately to sob aloud, as though he was still the young outcast he once had been, the half-orphaned child. Over the years, it had become a greater shame to him to allow even the smallest moment of weakness whether emotional or physical. So many painful fights, doctoring his own bruises, and hiding them from his father…teaching himself not to cry, not to complain, had been the only way to combat the bullies' assertions that he was a baby, a geek, a nerd. Billy stared out into the night, watching blankly for any danger, still forcing himself to be stalwart. He had a job to do now, and tears could not blur his vision, for he felt that any moment, danger could present itself. He did not catch the irony of his need to prove himself, even with his best of friends, to refuse trust, yet again.
Jason slept fitfully, interrupted by the occasional ragged breath he could hear from the entrance of the cave where Billy sat watch. It pained him to feel the hurt his friend was going through. As a child, he remembered overhearing his mother speaking with Zach's one time about Billy. "I wonder if he'll ever trust," he remembered his mother saying. "I wish I could help, but the only thing I can give him is safety and love."
Jason understood his mother's wishful sigh. Billy had opened up so much since then, but there were still certain things Jason knew his friend never spoke about. Sometimes Jason had been able to draw them out, but in the moments of deepest agony, Billy remained silent, inscrutable, refusing to ever allow himself release or to cry out. Jason understood this was one of those. And yet, he couldn't help himself. "Billy," he said, sitting up, "it's my turn for watch?" It came out as a question.
Billy started slightly, but quickly regained control. "Yes." Belatedly, he realized how bleary and sleepy he was, how even though at some level, he would have been content to watch all night, he wasn't alert enough now. And he refused to be the weak link that allowed danger in. "I'm exhausted," he muttered with an enormous yawn.
In the pale moonlight, Billy could just barely make out Jason's wry smile at the obviousness of the statement. Too tired to think of any kind of joke or repartee, he simply returned the glance, and crawled over into a blanket. Even though the ground was hard and the cave cool in the night, he was asleep even as his head drooped into the dirt of the cave floor.
Sitting at the entrance of the cave, Jason shivered with cold. Readjusting had caused him to lose some of the carefully trapped body heat he'd conserved by remaining in one spot and wrapping completely in his blanket. Even so, he was grateful. The cold had sharpened his sleep-dulled senses, putting him on a high state of alert.
As he watched over the desert, he allowed himself the brief luxury of a stretch of his stiff muscles. Feeling them scream in protest, he pinpointed a feeling the physical pain produced in him. He fought, warring in his mind against it. It had never been a part of his life as a leader, or a part of his life even as a civilian, he realized. For the first time in many years, Jason realized he was afraid. Very afraid. If I screw up…if I lose Billy and Kim…The familiar burden of responsibility settled heavy on him. This time, it felt far heavier a weight than he'd ever had before.
We're fighting a losing battle, he realized, and I've never been a good loser. I'm not starting now, either. Jason struggled against the defeatist attitude that he realized had settled into him to an extent over the last several days. Even despite his grim motivating of the other two, his refusal to allow Rita possession over Earth…he recognized that in the depths of his private soul, he felt lost. I can't even get through to the guy I call one of my best friends he thought, angry at his own impotence. I can't even protect any of the others, or Billy or Kim. Suddenly, Jason fought a soft laugh. If Kimberly had read his thoughts on that one, Jason had no doubt she would have kicked his butt. He could remember her huffing one time at Tommy, injured after an admittedly slightly stupid stunt to protect her: "Just because I'm small…you're always telling your classes that size doesn't matter. Well, it's no wonder they don't always believe it! You sure don't seem to!" With that, she'd stomped off, leaving a be- and amused Tommy on the medical bed.
Jason had always tried to remember that Zordon never would have chosen the girls for the team if they couldn't protect themselves and function as full team members, but even so, sometimes, that had been hard. He didn't think of himself as inherently sexist, but he supposed, to a degree that his parents' warnings and lectures never to treat women badly along with his innate personality had always made him want to protect anyone smaller than himself, and Kim did look vulnerable. Of course, that's before I saw her kick putty ass , thought Jason unable to suppress some slight mirth at the unorthodox juxtaposition of Kim disposing of a large number of putties then squealing "Ohmygosh! My hair is so RUINED!" as she had after one fight. Kim put up a pretty good façade, but she was a formidable person when pissed.
Thinking about Kim's penchant for suitably putting the boys in their places when they became too overprotective made Jason think of Tanya, the yellow Zeo ranger as well. The woman had a dead-on sense of accuracy when seeking a mild and usually funny form of revenge, and yet, Jason remembered, Tanya was a very kind person, not overstepping any boundaries into embarrassing someone or upsetting them with the jokes.
This brought his thoughts around to Katherine, besides Trini the only other female he had served with. Kat, as he recalled, had never had quite the outrageousness that accompanied Tanya (and, from what Jason had been told, Aisha), nor quite the cool sense of humor Trini had always possessed. Katherine was…well…a sweetheart. Jason remembered that she had never had the straight face to pull her through anything she was involved in. A slight smile she would attempt to suppress would cross her face, then become more and more obvious until she was laughing and had entirely given away any involvement she had with a joke. Jason had found it quite…endearing.
Yanking his mind away from his friends' laughter, Jason shivered again. Before he could think any further, he heard a small voice from the inner sanctum of the cave. "Are you alright?" Soon, the petite woman had crawled over to his side. Jason, looking back, saw Billy sit up briefly, awakened at Kimberly's voice, and then fall back and roll over to go back to sleep when it was apparent there was no danger and he was not needed at that moment.
Jason smiled slightly, darkly. "I was thinking about you, actually," he admitted. "And Tanya, and Katherine."
"Oh?"
"How mad you would get when us guys were too overprotective - and your senses of humor in dealing with it," he clarified.
Kim rolled her eyes and shook her head. "And goodness knows it happened enough," she grumbled, a touch of suppressed mirth in her voice. "None of you – ever – gave it up either."
Jason shook his head. "Nope. And no matter how many practical jokes you play or lectures you give, I doubt it'll happen."
"A bit of a nonsensical train of thought to get started on in the current…well, conditions."
p Jason sighed. "It was easier than thinking about…what's happening…now." The words were strained in his throat. "Easier than being…defeated." The last came out as a whisper of intense pain.
Kimberly leaned over and hugged her friend. There were times for words, but there were also times when only physical contact would do to express a sentiment. "I know, Jason," she said quietly. "But we're still alive…still free. There's still a chance, still hope. There's always hope."
"What if there isn't this time?" Jason asked bitterly, giving voice to the thoughts that had dogged him even as he'd tried to inspire Billy and Kim and ignore the deeper chasms of his own doubt. In this moment, however, he knew he desperately needed reassurance. "What if…" he trailed off.
"There is." There was strength to Kim's voice, a steely quality Jason recognized as Kimberly's core of belief showing itself. "There has to be." Suddenly, she touched his hand lightly, as if coming out of a brief trance at the echo of her own words. "Jason, you need to go sleep. I'll watch. It's my turn. You won't do us any good exhausted. And," there was urgency in her voice now, "we need you. None of us can do it on our own. It's either all three of us working together, or you're right, all hope is lost."
With that, Kimberly sat, looking straight ahead. Beside her, she felt Jason stir and crawl back over to the sleeping space, obviously too tired to argue. Kim soon heard the soft sound of heavy breathing in sleep and knew that Jason and Billy both slept, peacefully, she hoped. In the meanwhile, she tried to keep her mind alert and focused. Slowly, she became aware that she wasn't really physically tired but that a high anxiety was playing on her already taut nerve strings.
At first, Kimberly thought she was afraid of what might happen to them. Examining closer, she realized that she was afraid of the earth being forever destroyed by Rita, but that what was sapping her now was a more common case of the shivers. She wasn't so much afraid per se, as spooked, with the telltale nervous chills clustering at the base of her spine. Kim had always hated ghost stories. They usually scared her badly, even when she wouldn't admit it. The emergence of the woman had reawakened some old phobias within her, and, improbably, was causing her to think of every scary movie she'd ever watched.
Kim tried to remind herself that Billy and Jason were right behind her, that if anything tried to harm her, they would be at her aid within a split second. She was very jumpy though, this she recognized. Get a grip, Kimberly Anne Hart! she mentally commanded herself. This is sooooooooo stupid! To take her mind off the shivers crawling up and down her spine, she forced herself to look out over the desert, to watch carefully. In the east, she noted a wisp of light across the sky. Daylight was coming, thank heaven, she realized. Soon, at least the nightmare of this night would be over. She refused to think of the many nightmare darks that lay ahead of her and what those might contain. Kim knew she'd feel, however improbably, better when dawn broke.
From far away, a faint sound broke across the desert. Looking out, Kim could see lights far away in the mining settlements flickering on. From the solid looking rock faces near the lights, movement began to hum as what Kim assumed to be people spilled out and others began to pour in. She was too far away to make out individual people, just the mass moving out from the face. For an instant, true fear seized her: what if she and her friends could be spotted from over at the mines by an astute worker. Then she remembered that distances in the desert often looked far closer than they were in actuality. She couldn't hardly make out the entrances or exits to the mines, which she was sure had to be far larger than the cave's entrance. She couldn't even make out actual people. All these things reassured her that they were, indeed, as safe as they could be under the circumstances.
Kimberly yawned, relaxing slightly. Her vigilance, however, continued. Watching the workers' movement in and out of the mine bothered her deeply. Perhaps, she reflected, her concern was far less even than that. For the first time in many months, she thought about Tommy. Seeing him enslaved, that proud, strong man, had wounded her in a way nothing else had. It wasn't, she amended to herself, that she wouldn't have been just as concerned if Tommy had been with them, and it would have raised another set of issues for her. But seeing him in such a condition had cut her to the quick, and silently, she realized that regardless of how she had reassured Jason earlier, if there was one pivotal image that could on one hand inspire her extraordinary hope and on the other cause her to sink into the mires of doubt and despair, that was it. Kimberly was not a terribly religious person, but now, she issued a heartfelt prayer to whoever might listen and come to her aid. Please, God, she prayed, If we must die, let us do so before we lose our hope and dignity. And she added to herself, I'm not going down without a fight.
Nothing seemed to answer her declaration. Yet, Kim felt succored by her own defiance, even if it was a little anticlimactic. As she stared out over the desert, she dared someone to answer her prayer. Just as she thought nothing would happen, a brief movement below the entrance of the cave caught her eye.
To Be Continued
