Disclaimer: Power Rangers belongs to Disney and the like, which I am not affliated with. Spoilers for "Endings". Mild slash.
It was hard to pretend like it didn't bother him. Every time he looked in the mirror and saw that backwards number one and the swatches of red, it stabbed at him. What made it worse was that while the SPD uniform was new, the morpher was Jack's old morpher. And Sky had gotten promoted to his own room, which was also Jack's. Getting Jack's castoffs, while irritating Sky, wasn't the major source of his irritation, it was the fact that Jack was gone. He'd left to work with the Samuels family, just like he'd told Sky he'd leave. "Of course I'd leave SPD if I thought there was something better for me." Sky had foolishly allowed himself to believe that 'something better' meant he and Jack could have an SPD-approved relationship, like they'd discussed. Jack had said he'd be willing to wait until they defeated Gruumm. Now, all was said and done, and Jack was gone.
He hadn't even said goodbye.
Z popped her head into Sky's room, pausing to glance around. "Still haven't unpacked?" she asked, referring to the sparse decorations.
"I unpacked the day I moved," Sky said, rearranging his clothes in his closet. When his mother had heard about the promotion, she'd sent some new civilian outfits with red in them, and he was in the process of pushing his blue-accented clothes to the back of his closet. Much as he enjoyed finally being the Red Ranger, he almost missed his blue wardrobe.
"Oh." When Jack had been the occupant of the room, there'd been comic books strewn everywhere, posters, some CDs. Jack owned very few personal effects, and those he had, he liked to display all at once. Whereas Sky had never much believed in excess and disorder. "Well. We're going to go deliver some clothes at one of Jack's drop sites. You want to come?"
Come and see Jack, come and be reminded about how Jack just up and left without so much as a word to his teammates. It was the most irresponsible thing he'd ever done, just disappearing with the idea that everyone else would clean up his mess.
If he went, he would at last get a chance to let out all this anger in a productive fashion, by releasing it on a deserving recipient, rather than trashing the training room. Sky liked being productive. He slammed his closet door shut. "I'm in."
"You might want to take that surly look off your face before we go," Z said, waving at her own face to demonstrate. "This is supposed to be a happy visit."
Sky glared at her until she backed out of the room.
"Hey," Z said cheerfully.
Jack laughed and wrapped his arms around Z in a warm hug, a brilliant smile splitting his face.
"You guys need some clothes?" Sky interrupted with some resentment.
"Guys, thanks." Jack crossed the distance between them, his fingers brushing Sky's hand slightly as he accepted the bundle of clothes SPD was donating, then he went back to the truck without so much as a second glance.
Sky saw Jack in civvies so rarely that he'd almost forgotten what it looked like. These weren't the rugged gray scraps he'd had when Sky had first arrested him. He was in loose white clothing, and he looked carefree and happy, a changed man.
"You might've left SPD," Sky said, "but you're not leaving our lives." Sky's heart was hardly in the statement. It was more for posterity's sake. Jack had, of course, already left his life.
However, Jack didn't get a chance to comment on this, if he'd ever intended to. Z sighed, looking at Jack proudly. "Well, brother, guess we both get to do something bigger."
Piggy chose that moment to waltz up in a dark suit that actually looked nice. "Well, hello there," he said smoothly.
Grateful for the distraction, and fighting to keep the laugh from his voice, Sky asked, "Piggy, what are you doing here?"
"Oh, didn't Jack tell you? I've gone into business with him and Ally." He stretched his arm around Ally's bare shoulders, and without a second thought, Jack's hand reached up to slap the arm away. A burst of jealousy exploded within Sky at the implications of the possessive gesture, and he was glad to hear his alarm going off so that he wouldn't have to think about it. As Sky reached to answer the call, he saw Jack staring at his old morpher on Sky's hip. Sky tilted his head questioningly, feeling guilty about it still.
But Jack smiled. "Go for it."
Sky called the morph. Ever since Gruumm's defeat, things had been fairly quiet on the 'evil supervillains attempting to dominate Earth' front. That particular call had been merely criminal apprehension, in and out within the half hour.
"Jack looked good," Syd said as the Jeep headed back towards the Academy. Sky's hands tightened on the wheel. "And how cute is Ally?" Syd continued obliviously.
"I don't think I've ever seen Jack that happy," Z agreed.
"So he's really left SPD for good then," Bridge said, leaning forward thoughtfully
"Let's hope so," said Z. "You look good in blue."
They shared a look that made Sky bristle. It was knowing and shy all at once, filled with truth and secrets and open, blatant affection that Sky had ever shown for another individual once in his entire life, only to be cast aside. Sky tuned his friends out, lost in his own frustration. He pulled into the Transport Center, killed the engine, and was climbing out of the Jeep with the others when Bridge clapped him on the shoulder. "I just remembered! I left something at Jack's. Well, I guess it wasn't 'Jack's', exactly, I mean, it was his van, but... I left something with Jack," he clarified, when Sky narrowed his eyes. "But I can't go; I told Kat that I'd fix her... her, you know... um, toaster... Do you think you could go back for me?"
Sky stared at him, but somehow, in the past ten seconds, Bridge had become a master of hiding his feelings. There was nothing in his face that Sky could read. But whether Bridge intended it or not, Sky was given his opening. "Yeah, sure." The girls were already halfway towards the door, chatting to themselves, and Bridge, with a small grin, ran off to join them.
The van was gone when Sky drove back to the drop site, but he was only a few blocks from one of the Samuels warehouses, so he decided to try his luck there. There were a handful of vans in the lot, all identical, and Sky wished that Jack still had a communicator of some sort on him. He idled the Jeep and hopped out to look for an employee.
There was a receptionist of some sort inside, half-hidden behind a wall of folders. "Excuse me, I'm looking for Jack Landors?" said Sky.
The woman looked up, eying his SPD uniform with interest, and Sky turned very slightly to one side to show off the red accents more. Whatever worked. "Jack?" she said. "Yeah, he just came in a few minutes ago, with Ally. I think they're up in the break room. Just take those stairs up to the third floor, and it's the first door on your right."
"Thanks very much," he said, and slipped into the fire exit where the staircase was.
Third floor, first door on his right, with a small, ugly purple plaque reading 'BREAK ROOM'. It seemed foolish to knock, so Sky let himself in.
Jack was there, all right, squished onto a tiny couch with a book on his lap, craning his neck upwards to meet the kiss that Ally bent down to bestow upon him. The room suddenly seemed to be without a floor, and Sky could feel his entire body flailing in empty space.
Jack looked up. "Sky!" he said, standing so abruptly that the open book clattered to the ground. They stared at each other for an uncomfortable stretch of time, before Jack, without looking at her, muttered, "Ally, could I have a moment, please?"
"I'm going to call it a day anyway," she said. "Um, I'll see you tomorrow."
Though she must have passed him to exit the room, Sky couldn't recall Ally actually leaving. His gaze didn't stray from Jack, and that curious burning sensation continued to rage in his gut.
"That wasn't what it looked like."
It had been a casual sort of kiss, which could only come after a serious relationship had already been established. "I shouldn't have come."
"Yes you should've," said Jack immediately. "Do you want to sit down?"
"I don't think I want to stay," Sky said, shaking his head. He was beginning to regret having ever come here, for having ever thought that he was doing a good thing.
"Then I'll come with you," said Jack. "C'mon, we'll go for a drive."
For some reason, Sky found himself blindly following the (not) order of his former leader. They didn't talk for the duration of the trip downstairs to the garage, shuffling awkwardly past the curious receptionist, and it wasn't until Sky realized that he'd been staring at the dashboard for a few minutes, and that Jack was letting him, that he blurted, "Is she your girlfriend?"
"Sort of."
Sky wanted to scream, or throw something, or crash the car, or grab his blasters and open fire on Jack. But he didn't. "You left two weeks ago, and didn't tell anybody, and figured it'd all be okay, just because you're Jack." Jack relied on the fact that he was Jack to get out of a variety of things. "I kissed you," Sky said unnecessarily.
"I know," Jack said in a low voice. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?" he said. "Sorry that I did it?"
"No. Sorry that I ran away. I'm sorry that I said that I would... and then I didn't..." He sighed. "It was stupid. I didn't think."
"Have you ever?" said Sky bitterly.
"Would you drop it, Sky? I feel bad enough."
"How do you think I feel? You hung me out to dry, Jack. You always make it about you. You're the leader. You make the decisions. You decide what's good for you, and damn everyone else. Cruger tried time and time again to make you see that you have to think before you act, but you never do. You just do what you want, and then assume that everything will resolve itself because you're Jack. And what's the most irritating of all, is that since you do manage to get the job done every time, everyone's so happy with you that they end up cleaning up after you anyway. It's ridiculous. It's this stupid vicious cycle, and you're always the winner. But what about the rest of us? What about those of us that put our faith in you, only to get dragged across the coals when you fail to follow through?"
"I always follow through," Jack said angrily.
"No, you don't! What happened to waiting?"
"Waiting?"
"Waiting until this was over. You said you would. But Gruumm has been defeated for all of five minutes when you run off to... to her."
"Hey," Jack warned. "Her name is Ally, and I like her a lot, okay?"
Sky now wanted to smash Jack's head against the dashboard until he understood the frustration that had Sky completely consumed. It was all he could do to restrain himself from acting out that particular impulse. (It was very un-SPD.) "What am I to you, Jack?" he demanded. "Was it just some joke, leading me on?"
"I didn't mean to lead you on, Sky, I'm serious. I really liked you." Jack looked over sharply. "I still do really like you."
Jack's problem, or at the very least, one of many, was that he liked pleasing people. So therefore, he was going to say what he thought Sky wanted to hear. The problem was that Sky didn't want to hear any more. "Get out."
"Sky--"
"Get out of the car, Jack." It was a miracle that he kept his voice even. He felt like he was losing his mind.
"Sky, what can I do to make you understand? I did wait. But you... you're unreachable, you're..." Jack sighed. "You shut yourself off, Sky. You... well, you know... and then you just acted like nothing happened. You shut yourself off again. What was I supposed to do with that?"
"How did you expect me to act? Follow you around like R.I.C. follows Bridge? That would get me kicked straight out of the Academy, and you know it, Jack. I thought you understood how important SPD is to me."
"More important than me?"
Sky couldn't bite back the disbelieving laugh that he barked out. "There you go again. The world doesn't revolve around Jack Landors." Of course, he couldn't help recalling that for weeks, he'd been unable to stop thinking about Jack. Sure, many of those thoughts had been similar to the angry ones he'd been having all afternoon, but that didn't erase the fact that Sky's world had in some way or another revolved around the former Red Ranger.
"Look, if you came just to yell at me... I got enough of that back at SPD. I don't really need for you to take it on tour." Jack pressed his fist against his forehead in a gesture that Sky could only interpret as irritation. "What do you want me to say, Sky? Yeah, I left, but you can't hold that against me, because you knew I was going to. You've known for months. You were sort of counting on it, actually, remember?"
"Right, our grand plan," Sky said flatly. "Of course. Remind me again how Ally fit into it?"
"Don't even pretend like you know the first thing about her, because you don't. She's a business associate, she's a good person, and more importantly than that, she was a friend when I really needed one."
"And we're not your friends? I'm not?"
"You certainly don't act like you want to be," Jack said. "You're just as bad as I am, you know. Maybe I left, but you never even came to look for me. You had to wait until Z came up with the idea, and then you came slinking along, trying to act like you were the better man."
"That's not what happened," Sky insisted, although it occurred to him that not for the first time, Jack was unfortunately right. Sky hadn't gone looking. He'd just sat back and let himself stew in his rage.
Partially because he was lost in thought, and partially because it for whatever reason didn't occur to him to use his training on someone who used to be a teammate, Sky didn't notice Jack's attack until it was too late. The former Ranger lunged across the front seat, bracing himself on the gear shift, meeting Sky's mouth in a harsh and graceless kiss. Sky closed his eyes, unable to help himself, enjoying the moment before common sense took over. He pushed Jack away. "Why the hell would you do that?" he demanded.
"I don't really know," Jack confessed. "I felt like it."
"It's too late," said Sky. "You can't just leap in with a grand gesture at the zero hour, and expect the day to be saved." He shook his head. "It's over."
Jack laughed slightly. "Over? It never even started. And you only have yourself to blame for that."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"You know exactly what it means, Sky. We could have had exactly what you wanted, but you were too scared to go for it. 'We would've gotten kicked out,'" he mocked. "And is that so bad? No, don't answer that. We both know what you're going to say. Nothing's more important than your damn Academy, of course. But I'm the bad guy when I try to let you keep it."
"Oh, so this is my fault, of course." Sky rolled his eyes.
He was so expecting Jack to agree with that assessment that he almost didn't hear what Jack really said. "No, it's both our faults."
Incredulous, Sky glanced over. Jack met his gaze and answered it with a tired, defeated shrug. "After all this time, we still don't trust each other enough. I didn't trust you to believe that weren't ignoring me, and you didn't trust me to believe I wasn't leaving to hurt you. But you're right." His eyes seemed darker than usual. "It's too late. I'm sorry." With a half-smile that was questionably sincere, Jack turned and got out of the Jeep. Sky could only stare after him in silence.
Sky was thinking about the first time that he and Jack had kissed. It hadn't exactly been the epitome of romance, but he wasn't exactly the romantic poster boy, and at the very least, it had been sincere. It had been full of release, and hope, and a happiness that Sky hadn't felt in a long while. One that he hadn't felt since. One that was strong enough to bring him here to see if he could find it again. And he was letting it walk away.
Sky had to make a decision, and fast. Jack had to make a split-second decision to destroy the asteroid, and a million other choices as Red Ranger. And now the burdens of that color lay on Sky. He had to determine the best course of action in the smallest amount of time. This was life or death on a much smaller scale, but it was still very important to Sky's entire future. He hopped out of the Jeep. He didn't even care that he left the keys in the ignition. Jack had already made it across the garage and was heading up the concrete steps back to the office. Sky darted past the empty vans and caught Jack's elbow just as Jack closed his fingers around the door handle. "I trust you," Sky said, slightly out of breath. "Not enough."
"Maybe not. But that's never stopped us in the past."
Jack laughed. "Of course it has. Remember the diamonds? Remember Dru? Remember the time that--"
"I get it, I get it. But we got through that, and we'll get through this."
"Are you so sure?"
If there was anything that Sky was absolutely unsure about, it was this. But that didn't stop him from wanting it. Jack made him so angry he couldn't see sometimes, but he was still here. That said something. "Yes," he said, but there was a slight waver of uncertainty to his voice that he couldn't erase and that Jack definitely noticed.
"What's holding you back?" he asked quietly. "Ally?"
Sky had been so concerned about his decision that it didn't occur to him what Jack would have to give up. Jack had a life he was starting for himself, a job and a girlfriend. "You're moving on," he realized. "I shouldn't be stopping you."
"Sky, I told you before. She's a friend. SPD felt like it was choking me, and she was fresh air. She got me this job."
"She kissed you," Sky said, unable to wash that image from his brain.
"You kissed me first. And I'll be dead before I forget that."
Sky couldn't help it, and started laughing. Jack stared at him with a confused smile on his face. "What? What?"
"You'll be dead before you forget it? I'm sorry, that just sounds really..." Sky laughed harder.
Jack grinned sheepishly. "Okay, okay, maybe that was over the top. But I mean it."
It was laid down then, and now that the fighting and the making up - of sorts - was over, Sky realized that he had nothing to say to Jack and vice versa. A slight twinge of uncomfortable recognition reminded him that he was still holding onto Jack's elbow, and he dropped it. They alternately stared at each other and at other things. It occurred to Sky that the two of them had never really shared comfortable silence. It was mostly a grudging friendship, an irritating first- and second-in-command relationship, or else they were at each other's throats. Jack, of course, was perfectly capable of just kicking back. Sky had seen him do it often enough with Bridge or Z. But Sky had never in his life just settled back to relax and do nothing with his friends. He had to be playing lightball, or working out, or playing video games, or reading and rolling his eyes. Sky never just did nothing.
Until now.
He and Jack were just standing there, doing nothing, and Sky once again felt the overpowering urge to do something. So he leaned forward, looped his arm around Jack, and kissed him. Whatever residual anger was still churning inside him slowly disappeared, as did the various forms of confusion and uncertainty. This was what he wanted after all.