Chapter 7: "Badge"

"Is there some kind of remedial training for Rangers who refuse to morph? Some sort of seminar you can attend, a class or something? After school tutoring?"

Sky opened his eyes, staring up at the ceiling of the infirmary for the simple reason that he wasn't allowed to move his head. That was getting old really fast. He obviously didn't have spinal damage.

"You waited long enough to get that morpher," Jack's voice continued. "I don't get why you wouldn't want to use it."

His throat was rough with forced unconsciousness, but he managed to get out, "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you and your fucking stupid overconfidence!"

Jack was mad. He only swore when he was really pissed. Or when he was nervous and trying to cover it up, but Sky wasn't the only one with arrogance issues and he was pretty sure Jack wasn't worried for his own safety just because three of his teammates had been laid up by the same criminal.

"Good," Sky told the ceiling. He was still just a little dissociated from events. "I haven't been humiliated enough, I definitely needed you to come down here and add to it. Thanks for making my day complete, Jack."

"What did Bridge and Syd do when they were threatened?" Jack demanded, paying no attention to him. "Oh, hey. They morphed to SWAT mode and defended themselves. They didn't stand there in their SPD uniforms and tell the guy to bring it on!"

"Which really made a big difference," Syd's voice declared from the next bed over. "Lay off, Jack. Sky did the best he could."

Sky gritted his teeth, because the last thing he needed was for someone to say he'd done his best. If that was the best he could do, he didn't have a future in SPD. It clearly wasn't his best, since the guy had gotten away and taken down two of his teammates on top of it.

"Yeah, the best he could do with hand-to-hand combat in civilian form!" Jack retorted. "If civilians could handle the stuff we face, New Tech wouldn't need Power Rangers!"

"I morphed," Sky snapped.

"Not to SWAT," Jack shot back.

"SWAT didn't help!" Syd exclaimed. "We tried it!"

"That's so not my point!" Jack yelled. "That's so far from being my point, you can't even see my point from where you are!"

"Spell it out for us, Jack," Sky growled. "Apparently we can't keep up with your vastly superior intellect."

Jack leaned close enough that Sky could see his expression without trying to watch out of the corner of his eye. He held up something between them, silver glinting in the harsh hospital lighting. Sky could only stare at the thin circle of metal, stamped with the letters "SPD" and on display for everyone to see.

"Were you more careful before this?" Jack asked. "Because I don't remember you getting into this much trouble when I first knew you."

Sky snatched it, and the sharp motion must have taken Jack by surprise because his fingers wrapped around the bracelet and yanked it away without resistance. "What are you doing?" Sky hissed.

"You said you didn't want it anymore." Jack's voice sounded more reproachful than apologetic.

"I don't want to talk about this now," Sky informed him, acutely aware of Syd and Bridge in the room with them and the door open behind Jack. Or ever.

"Do you need a reason to come back?" Jack wanted to know. "Because I'll give you a damn bracelet if it'll help."

"Not. Now," Sky gritted, his fingers clenching convulsively on the metal.

"Then when?" Jack loomed over him, taking full advantage of Sky's helplessness. "When do we talk about it? When do we talk about watching you risk your life for stupid things, trying to prove yourself to people who are already convinced? When do we talk about me?"

"We talk about you when you explain what the hell you were doing locking down the autopilot on my SWAT flier," Sky ground out. "You tell me what gives you the right to decide what's too dangerous and what isn't, and then you explain your own fucking suicide mission, and until then you don't get to lecture me on being the one who gets left behind!"

There was a quiet moment, just long enough for him to realize what he'd said. What he'd implied. Then Jack said, "Okay. The meteor mission. That's fair."

It was a lot more than "fair," but Sky didn't have time to get the words together before Bridge's voice said thoughtfully, "Technically, it was a meteoroid. Meteoroids only become meteors when they hit an atmosphere and start to burn. If they make it through, of course, they're called meteorites--"

"Bridge," Syd interrupted. "We're supposed to pretend we can't hear them."

"Oh. Right." There was a pause, then Bridge added, "Sorry guys."

Jack lifted one hand to scrub at his face, but he didn't give any other indication that he'd heard them. "Is it weirder if I keep standing over you," he asked abruptly, "or if I sit down and you can't see me?"

Sky sighed, only realizing when he went to wave his hand that he was still holding Dru's bracelet. "Just sit down," he muttered.

Jack did, a constant but mostly silent presence in Sky's peripheral vision. Sky couldn't see his face anymore, so he had no idea what his expression was doing. He did hear Jack start drumming on the edge of his stool after a moment.

"Look, I'm sorry," Jack said at last. "Maybe the meteor thing was out of line."

Sky hadn't meant to say anything, but he couldn't help repeating, "Maybe?"

"I'm not used to thinking about other people," Jack admitted. Sky could see him lift a hand, maybe to push his hair back out of his face. "I'm not really good at it yet. Sometimes I think too much... sometimes I don't think enough."

"I can't tell you what a shock that isn't," Sky grumbled.

"I need you to work on this with me," Jack insisted. "We both have people to come back to now, okay? Let's try not to screw them over any more than we have to."

"Jack, I don't have a death wish," Sky said bluntly. He really wished he could turn his head. "I'm no more or less careful than I've ever been. And I kind of resent the implication that my life isn't worth living unless there's someone back on base worrying about me."

"Well, there is!" Jack exclaimed. "I'm sorry if I flipped out when I heard a cakewalk patrol sent you to the infirmary!"

"This is our job," Sky reminded him. "If you can't handle the risk, turn in your badge and leave."

"He's trying to say he's sorry," Syd's voice said from the other side of him. "You probably can't understand him, because, being Sky, he has to pretend he's better than you. But he really didn't mean to end up here."

"Well, none of us did, really," Bridge pointed out. He seemed to take Syd's interjection as permission to speak again. "I mean, if it had been Jack out on patrol this morning, he'd be the one in the hospital bed and Sky would be the one storming in here to chew him out."

"They're sort of cutely predictable," Syd agreed. "If you think loud and obnoxious is cute, which I personally don't."

"We've put up with them for this long," Bridge said.

"What's a little longer," Syd added, as though they'd had this conversation before.

Sky might have snapped at them, except that Jack was standing next to him again and he must have put his hands on the bed because the mattress shifted slightly. "I want you to be more careful," Jack repeated, staring down at him.

"You can't change the way I do my job," Sky told him. He said it before he could think better of it, before it could make his stomach clench into knots. "And you wouldn't love me if you could."

Jack didn't laugh. His expression didn't change in any way. "You saying I love you because you're a stubborn fool?"

His palms were sweaty and his skin felt cold. "Do you?"

Jack smiled at him. "Yeah."

"Shut up," Sky whispered.

Jack's smile widened, and Sky felt fingers fumbling for his hand on the bed. He relaxed his grip, letting the bracelet fall, and Jack's hand took its place. The metal made a quiet clinking sound as it hit the floor, but Jack didn't look for it.

"Hold still," he told Sky. "If I get in trouble for compounding your injuries, you know they're gonna throw me out."

Sky didn't move, and Jack's free hand held his hair back as he bent over the bed to kiss Sky gently. It was something Dru never would have done, Sky thought distantly. Nowhere so public. Never so unashamed.

As he drew back, though, Sky's partial view of the room was unobstructed again and his eyes widened.

Jack misinterpreted his expression. "What," he teased, "you thought I wouldn't kiss you just because you're laid up in the infirmary?"

"No," Sky said, trying to decided between horrified and very, very entertained. "I thought you might not kiss me because Commander Cruger is standing right behind you."

He got a skeptical look for this, but Jack turned anyway, and it was a measure of his disbelief that he didn't snap to attention right away. "Sir..."

The way Jack said it, the word was little more than a nod to the chain of command. But he sounded genuinely uncomfortable as he continued, "I was just, ah... well, trying to seduce one of my teammates. Sir."

One part uncomfortable. One part Jack Landors.

"You may find, Cadet," Cruger rumbled, "that being in the infirmary makes one unsuited for certain activities."

Now Jack came to attention, hands behind his back as he declared, "Appearances can be deceiving, sir."

"Indeed," Cruger said gravely. What that meant was anyone's guess, especially since his next question was, "I don't suppose any of you have seen Kat recently?"

Jack gave them a token look, but of course Kat could have been and gone five times since he'd arrived and Sky wouldn't know the difference. "Sorry sir," he said, after a moment. "That's a no."

"Very well." Cruger seemed preoccupied, which might explain why he added, "As you were," before he left.

The silence lingered, but nowhere near long enough for someone with the commander's hearing. Sky could only hope he wasn't listening by the time Jack snickered and Syd started to giggle. His teammates were ridiculously juvenile sometimes.

"When he says 'as you were,'" Bridge remarked thoughtfully, "do you suppose he means the way we were? Or the way Jack and Sky were?"

"I think he means the way each of us was individually," Syd replied. Then, clearly having a Bridge moment, she added, "Or together."

Jack didn't say anything. But when his fingers laced through Sky's on the bed and squeezed, Sky figured that for once he didn't have to.