Underneath It All: Sky and Syd
Disclaimer: #Consults her lawyer# Nope, not mine.
Challenge: Protection
Timeframe: Somewhere before Endings, I suppose.
There was just something about her that made Sky want to protect her. He just wanted to be the one who pulled her from harm's way to hold her and tell her he was going to make everything better for the two of them so they could finally have what they needed: a home in a safe world and each other.
But she made it confusing. There were times where Sydney definitely portrayed the damsel in distress, as was in a pink ranger's job description, and Sky had rushed in to be her knight in shining blue armor. And then there were times when she kicked evil's ass so thoroughly that Sky kicked himself for even thinking that she needed to be rescued by anyone, especially him.
At the same time, she still had this innocent quality about her person. Perhaps it was just that she looked every inch her nickname of SPD princess, all luxuriously soft, shiny blond curls; big blue eyes; tiny, delicate hands. She looked like a porcelain doll, far too precious to be out on the battlefield with a bunch of evil Troobian warriors, and Sky sometimes wondered what Carter and Dana had been thinking by allowing Syd to join the academy.
If he were to ever tell Syd of his theories of her needing him to protect her, he wondered what she would think of them. Did she even want him the way he wanted her? Did she want him thinking about her almost obsessively the way he did?
Would she want him to protect her the way he wanted to, more than half knight in shining blue armor, half I'm-Sorry-For-Even-Thinking-About-It,-Please-Don't-Hurt-Me?
And so, afraid of what her reactions to his theories (if you could call them that, anyway) he protected her about half of the time when she needed someone. He left the rest of it up to her, and that was probably how she wanted it anyway.