Disclaimer: Don't own them, don't sue. If I did open, I doubt it would be classed as children's show. Also, there'd be a distinct lack of monsters to keep them busy. So yeah, definitely not mine. A girl can dream though.
A.N: Thanks to everyone for the brilliant feedback I got from part one. I actually didn't expect it. It's nice to get such positive reviews and it certainly helped me through my stressful exam period. I only have one exam left then no reason not to write/update. Well… actually there is a very good reason for me not updating after that point but she'll probably push me into writing anyway!
So, this is the second of three chapters, still unbeta'd. Although, there may be an epilogue. I just can't seem to finish things! On the note of my inability to finish things, the last chapter of Cabin Fever should be done some time today. Addition: It is done, it's complete - this was supposed to be updated first. Also, I have new Beta's but this hasn't been sent to them.
Final note, my pen name may be changing slightly. I despise it, but it's my own fault for not setting the account up myself to begin with. Anyway, whilst it won't become the pen name I use elsewhere it will be some variation of Rach. You'll know it's me though, either way. Then again, I might not.
Thanks: To everyone who reviewed. To Ren for actually writing more of this chapter than I did. She's a good little copy girl when she has the promise of smut as a bribe… even without it! Final big thanks to Charley and Carlawhoare my new beta readers. Apologies to Kris, my old beta reader, who I kept forgetting to mail stuff too – mainly because I lost her email… whoops!
Tommy rubbed wearily at his eyes, pushing his glasses up no his face as he blinked a few times before returning his attention back to the screen in front of him. This was something he hadn't missed, that was for sure. Post-battle diagnostics. Fun for all the family, with an IQ of 400, and just plain irritating for those who didn't quite meet a Billy standard. He knew he should've gotten someone else to do them, but as the leader it was expected for him to take control. For him to know what he was doing and what needed to be done. To let the others enjoy the post battle haze of adrenaline.
He really needed to learn to delegate.
Then again, he wasn't the only one in the solitude of the side room, avoiding the raucous tales of how someone avoided that laser beam or threw this monster fifty feet over impossible.
No, he certainly wasn't alone. He had Jason.
At one time – before the mission – Tommy would have been happy to have his best friend here. However, over the course of the past few hours old angers had arisen and he wasn't sure he could deal with the original red. The constant bar he had to keep reaching. Constantly trying to make the grade set by his friend. To repent for his past mistakes and show that he was just as good.
But he wasn't just as good, was he? He was better. He was the Ultimate Ranger. He stayed on more teams than anyone else. He'd lasted long past the others. He'd fought evil again and again and kept on winning. He stuck it out for the long haul. Longer than anyone else. Especially longer than his marker.
After all, he didn't leave.
Twice.
No, Tommy wasn't bitter about that fact in the slightest. No, he was perfectly fine that his best friend had walked out on him not once, but twice. That he'd dumped the sole responsibility of an entire Ranger team in his lap. That he abandoned their close friendship – the first and only of its kind for Tommy – in search of something new, more peaceful and European.
The fact that he came back and left again didn't hurt either. Nope, no anger or resentment for Tommy. He didn't care that the one person he was closest to in the universe had upped and left after almost dying without so much as a goodbye. No, it didn't hurt Tommy in the slightest, didn't even bother him remotely. He was used to people walking out on him. First his parents. Then, slowly, his friends, one by one. Prolonging the process, drawing it out. Still, he was used to it. It didn't bother him anymore.
And Tommy had gotten much better at other things than just fighting and saving the world over the past few years of his life. Bullshitting was one of them.
It still bothered him. It still hurt. It would always hurt. But along with the fighting and bullshitting he'd learnt something else. Shielding. He'd been taught that by the person who was currently causing him to shield himself, the one and only person who could see through the defensive barriers. Oh, poetic irony.
Now, rather than allow himself to be hurt he put up a front. He stopped other's from seeing what they did to him, how they affected him. How they made him weakened and susceptible.
He isolated himself.
And Jason – along with other factors – was to blame. Unfortunately for Jason he was the only one present, so when Tommy snapped – which was inevitable – he'd bear the brunt of it all. Maybe he needed that. To see how much his disappearances hurt the slightly younger man.
But that would mean Tommy had to show him. Tommy had to let him in, let him see what went on below the surface, what damage there truly was lying under the calm façade. What annoyance, and anger, and regret, had morphed into. Tommy had to allow Jason back into the place where he had been before. The best vantage point for causing devastation to a human heart.
Too be honest though, which he rarely did with himself anymore, he wasn't sure he could be hurt any more. Maybe his heart really had grown cold, devoid of counterbalanced feeling it had just given up. Oh, on the outside he would seem his usually happy, perky, friendly self. It was amazing what kind of masks he could erect. Who needed stage makeup when you were perfected in the art of acting?
"So, Bro," Jason opened, putting the last of his readings down and coming to sit, one hip propped up on the desk by Tommy, "How have things really been?"
"Fine!" Tommy snapped, "I already told you."
Jason just shook his head slowly. "Bullshit. We both know that. Something's wrong, or something went wrong. You've slowly gotten tenser over the entire mission. Shouldn't you be relaxing after a win like that, celebrating your success like the others?"
"As the one in charge I can't just shrug off my responsibilities and run off to play when I please, like the rest of you," Tommy told him scathingly, failing to keep the bitterness from lacing his words.
"Tom…" Jason began but was cut off abruptly.
"Just leave it, Jason, okay? Just go back to the play room with the rookies and leave me be to finish these damn post battle duties so I can actually close this chapter in my life and go back to the hotel to get some sleep!" The brunette yelled loud enough for the commotion outside the room to cease into anxious silence. All those in the adjacent room waiting with baited breath making Tommy sigh as he knew he'd crossed a big line that he couldn't, and frankly wouldn't cross back over again.
"Here we go. Tommy take a breath and center yourself and tell me what the hell is-" Once again Jason was cut off.
"Do not, and I repeat do not tell me what to do Jason, nor talk to me like some over emotional child." Swallowing and realizing that was in fact where he was heading with this, Tommy never the less forced himself not to back down. "Just get out. Go back to the other room, I'll call you and the others when we land and that'll be that. I don't want to talk to you right now. I don't want to share, just go; you should be good at that by now."
"What?" Growing a bit upset at the last line, Jason narrowed his eyes. "What exactly does that mean?"
"Oh please." Shaking his head, Tommy took a heavy breath. "Just get out of here and go, before I say something I'll seriously regret." 'Not that I'm not already regretting half of what spewed from my mouth in the last two minutes', Tommy though bitterly to himself.
"No." He answered, matter-of-factly, "Not until you tell me what your problem is and what you were getting at with that little snippy remark."
"Do you seriously need me to draw you a picture Jason? How many times have you just shown up only to walk back out of my…all your friends' lives! God it must be so easy for you huh? No seeing the people you leave behind? No having to clean up your own messes? Just come back when everything is finally getting back to normal, uproot it all and then take off again. Never saw the backlash you leaving did, left all that for me to deal with. Well I don't need it a third time Jason, you hear me. I have a life, one without you, and I'll be damned if I let you make me fall into some best buddy crap again and then walk out….god damn you, just go." Growling at his own ramblings and turning back to the computer, Tommy shook his head more at himself then the original Ranger.
Taking a few moments to absorb what his one time best friend had ranted; Jason slowly stood up and cleared his throat. "So that what's this is about. Can't say I'm too shocked, I mean you've keep this unsaid for how many years, I guess it was naïve to think you'd just let it all go. Tommy I'm sorry for what I did, for leaving the team, Angel Grove, you, but I can't change the past. If this is what you're getting worked up over all I can say is I'm sorry. There's nothing else I can do Tommy. I made some selfish choices in my life, but it is my life and they were my choices to make. Just like coming here and helping you all was my choice."
"Why the hell did you come here? If you knew…you know what, no, I don't care, I really don't." He answered venomously.
"Because I messed up," Jason told him, "I messed up big time and I thought it was finally time try and make up for at least in some aspect. If it was something as simple as feeling I was needed then no I probably wouldn't have come. You're a good Ranger Tom, you could have handled this mission without me but I thought maybe…I don't know, maybe we'd be okay and maybe I could make up for leaving like I had before. Just like you after Rita."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Growing more and more angry by how calmly Jason was handling his outrage; Tommy was verging on a full blown brawl with the original Red Ranger if he didn't start over reacting at least a little
Running a hand through his hair Jason sighed, knowing he was about to cross a line of his own but Tommy really wasn't leaving him much choice in the matter. "Tommy come on, we all knew. The only reason you pushed yourself so hard back then, worked yourself into such exhaustion, became this ultimate Ranger you seemed to think we all wanted you to be was because of your time under Rita's spell. You thought that you had some huge debt to us, that you needed to prove yourself time and time again so you could apologize for something you couldn't control. Tommy none of us ever asked or expected you to do that. If anything we tried time and time again to stop it and make you see you didn't have to bear that burden alone. You didn't have to prove yourself to anyone but you. It's the same thing in its own right Tom. I felt I had to correct what I'd done by-"
"No!" Cutting him off and standing abruptly from his chair, Tommy was not about to let this be turned around on himself. No way, no how. "It is not the same! I didn't leave; I'm never the one that leaves! You left everyone! Kim, Trini, Billy, Zack and all the others. You affected all of them by walking in and out of their lives with barely a word in recognition before walking back out!"
Swallowing hard and reaching out to lay a soothing hand on his arm, Jason took a step back in the end at the glare his friend was shooting him. "Tommy, you named off everyone but yourself, bro. Is this really about them, or is it more about something between you and me?"
Snarling and for the first time in years feeling the rage associated with his evil days pick at the corners of his nerves, Tommy had clearly had enough of Jason's too calm and logical response. "You want to know how you affected me? Fine. You saunter in, mess with everyone's hearts then leave me to pick up the fricken' pieces when you disappear again. You're a selfish, manipulative jerk who leaves when the going gets to rough or too serious no matter who it affects or hurts. Get out of here Jason. Get out now before I completely loose it and beat you into the ground."
Closing his mouth on any response he had left, Jason swallowed hard as he could practically feel the hurt and rage coming off the Red Zeo Ranger. Not even about to reply with 'when have you ever been able to do that' Jason shook his head before turning to go. He couldn't solve this now. Tommy was too far over the edge and too hurt to listen to any explanation he could offer. He'd know this was coming, yet it was still unexpected. He felt as if he'd been living for this very moment, for years and now that it was finally here, now that he was finally faced with it, he unfortunately had to do the one thing he swore he wouldn't do again. "Alright Tom, if that's what you want."
Meanwhile, the assembled group of mismatched Red Rangers listened on in silence as the door opened and Jason exited the main control room. This had been unexpected. Sure, there had been tension running high throughout the mission between the pair, but of all the possible outcomes to said tension this was one no one had seen coming. These were the original two leaders. The two best fighters, not to mention best friends they'd ever heard of. What on earth had happened?
"Yeah go, just go like always." Sitting back down in his chair and muttering more to himself than Jason's fading form in the hall, Tommy clenched his fists tightly and willed back the pain that threatened to consume him.
Swallowing hard and looking up to see the Earth coming into view he shakily unclenched a fist to hit the intercom switch beside his keyboard. "All Rangers report to the docking bay. We'll be landing in ten minutes." Flipping the switch back off, Tommy mentally kicked himself. Ten minutes. Had he held out just ten more minutes none of it would have happened. But would he really want that? Could he have stood Jason leaving without knowing what he'd done to him?
Suddenly realizing that Jason would undoubtedly be leaving now, Tommy laid his pounding head on the control consol, practically seeing Jason walking off the ship only to climb on his bike and take off without a word. "God, what have I done?"
Even as he said it though he knew; Jason may have been to blame for a good deal of his hurt and anger, but he was now to blame for the loss of their friendship.
