Author's note: Sorry if I confused you. Feel free to ask any specific questions in the comments.
In which we finally get some answers...or do we?
"You guys, we have to find out what's wrong with Bridge."
The Rangers, currently plastered over various pieces of furniture, made vaguely affirmative noises to this proclamation.
"Jack!" Syd protested.
"I hear you." He waved in approximately her direction. "We'll sort it out tomorrow."
"Tomorrow we have training all day! And Bridge is trying to get out of the infirmary, and then he can just avoid her until she leaves and…" She shrugged helplessly. "It'll never get any better."
Jack sat upright, staring at her. "You're really worried?"
"He thinks he's angry at her, and he's not. But we can't get him to see that if we don't know why he's not-angry in the first place."
"Ok." Jack looked at Z. "You up for a little investigating?"
"Sure."
"Don't get caught." Sky didn't look up from his book as he spoke.
"You're not going to help?" Syd asked, with her best little-girl-lost pout.
"Someone's got to distract Cruger and Kat when they come looking for you." He still didn't look away from the book. "Try the personnel records. You should be able to get into them without too much trouble."
"Thanks, Sky." Jack said with a grin. "C'mon, Z."
"These records are useless." Z shoved away from the terminal. "All we know is Bridge didn't start coming in for training and check-ups until well after the other two. There's no mention of Joanne, and without a last name I can't track her in any database."
"Alright. Clear up your trail and we'll try something else." Jack glanced at the door as he spoke; they'd found an empty lab to use for their technically not-legal investigation, but they couldn't count on it staying that way for long.
"Got it." Z bounced out of her seat. "Let's go, brother."
The door opened as Jack reached for the button. He backed up, phasing through a table without realizing it.
Kat glanced briefly at them as she came in, pausing almost imperceptibly before continuing across the lab to pick up a device from the far table. On her way back out, she paused just short of triggering the door and said mildly, "Records don't always tell the whole story. Sometimes it's better to go straight to the source."
"Uh—yes ma'am!" Jack said brightly.
Kat smiled at them before leaving. Jack laughed, turning to high-five Z. "Bridge or Joanne?"
"Bridge." Z said quickly. "I'm not sure Joanne's awake yet, and besides he told Syd he'd talk about it later."
"It's later." Jack agreed. "Let's go."
Two days later, Joanne was sitting cross-legged on her bed in the infirmary, staring into space, when Z paused by the bed. "Hey."
Joanne blinked, refocusing. "Hey, Z. How's Bridge?"
Over Kat's complaints Bridge had discharged himself the day before and was now sulking in his room, refusing to leave.
"He's good."
"Something wrong?" She gestured to the bandage on Z's arm.
"Ah…slight training accident. It's nothing."
"Cool." Joanne nodded, looking away again.
"Can I talk to you?" Z dropped to sit on the foot of the bed.
Joanne eased upwards towards the head of the bed, glaring at her. "You can. But I'd rather you didn't, since I'm pretty sure I know what you want to know."
"What happened between you guys." Z suggested.
"That's the one. It's his story, Z, not mine. I can't…" She trailed off, shaking her head.
"He's already told us some." Z assured her. Jack approached; Z ignored him to continue, "He didn't tell us everything. But he knew we were coming to you."
"And what did he say to that?"
"He sent you this." From behind his back, Jack produced a plate with two slices of toast on it. "It's, uh…" he wiggled his fingers. "Buttery."
Joanne smiled, reaching to take the plate from him. "Thank you."
"Look." Z said softly. "Bridge is unhappy. And you're not happy either. Let us try to help you."
"This isn't something you can fix with teamwork and a spiffy new invention. I don't know that it's something can be fixed at all."
"Never know unless we try." Jack pointed out, sitting down and shoving Z over.
"Yeah." Joanne took a bite of the toast. "I guess that's true. I hate buttery." She wiggled her fingers, dropping the toast back onto the plate. "Uck."
"So start at the start." Jack suggested, grinning. "You worked for Bridge's parents."
"Yeah. They called me a housekeeper, which sounds so much more impressive than it actually is."
"My parents called her their housekeeper." Bridge had told them earlier. "Really she was my baby-sitter, because my parents worked a lot. We'd had others; I was seven when she came to us first."
"I guess Bridge was about seven or eight when I started, and he was so…that's wrong. That's not the way to say it." She frowned down at her hands. "Bridge's parents had hoped there'd be no repercussions for Bridge from the experiments here. Sky and Syd had already manifested by then; you guys had disappeared, pretty much. But his parents had talked themselves into the belief that he was normal and so they never let him be anything else. Not because they didn't love him; because they did."
"My parents didn't much like me talking about my powers. I guess they thought I was imagining it, or making it up."
Z nodded, remembering Bridge's quiet, 'It was tough growing up different.' Those few words, spoken during the search for Sam, were all he'd ever said about his childhood, she realized now.
"So…what'd that do to Bridge?"
"He…was very introverted. Didn't talk to people, ever. He self-isolated himself as much as he could. He was seeing all these fantastic things, and no one would ever believe him about them…" she trailed off, staring at her hands.
Bridge shrugged. "I didn't have many friends."
"I didn't…it didn't take me long to figure out what was going on. It took longer to figure out what to do about it; his parents weren't going to hear it from me."
"What'd you do?" Jack asked.
"Nothing. For more than a year. I fed him toast and played with him and left him alone when he needed it and lied to his parents about how well he was doing. And just before he turned nine he decided he trusted me well enough to tell me how he saw colors, all the time, and how when he touched things…" she trailed off, gesturing. "Well, you know."
"I thought I could trust her, so I told her about my powers."
"And what happened?" Z prompted when Joanne didn't continue.
"I…thought about it for a while. I knew his parents wouldn't listen to me, nomatter what. So I dug a bit, I asked his parents some fairly innocent questions and I tracked down Kat Manx. And I turned Bridge in."
"I don't want to talk about her anymore."