You Found Me: A Story of Sky and Syd
Disclaimer: If I owned Power Rangers it would be rated TV14, not Y7, thank you very much.
Challenge: Mirror
Timeframe: Post Endings. Slight AU because Jack is red ranger.
Sometimes she wakes up screaming. Vivid nightmares plague her weary mind, every solitary night. Vivid nightmares of the day he was taken from her.
Flashback
Mirloc had escaped, though no one quite knew how he had done it. When they hear it is Mirloc who needed to be captured, she squeezes his hand before running off with the other three of their team. Such a fateful day.
The five B-Squad rangers fight bravely, nimbly avoiding Mirloc's treacherous mirrors.
There is one thing the rangers don't know, though, and it is that Mirloc has been granted a new ray of the deadliest uses. The blue ranger is the first to take a hit from it.
She runs to his side, demorphed and terrified. He is robbed of his blue ranger uniform as well, and his eyes hold a weak quality to them.
"S-Syd," he manages to choke, causing the threatening tears to follow through and fall down her face from the lovely crystal blue eyes he had cherished.
The others have run forward to protect their teammates, the smaller of which is cradling their blue giant as tenderly as she can in her arms, sobbing hysterically.
Z and Bridge double team, furious about the damage done to their friend, managing to get Mirloc on the ground. Jack helps, confining the alien once more. The green and yellow rangers move towards their blue and pink counterparts, but Jack holds out a gloved hand, signaling to stay where they are.
"Syd, you have to know," Sky manages, his breathing shallow and eyes slowly growing glassy, "That I love you more than anything."
"I know, Sky, I know," Syd murmurs as she cups the side of Sky's face in her hands. "I love you too."
His face is graced with a smile for what Sydney eerily knows would be the last time. He is too weak to be jostled all the way to the hospital, and Sydney knows there really wasn't anything the damned doctors could do for him anyway.
Sky's chest stops moving up and down, and all at once Sydney is hit with an overwhelming sense of loss. "Oh God, Sky," Syd blubbers, fisting his jacket and pulling his body (she refuses to think corpse) to her so she could cry against his chest, like she'd done numerous times during the course of their friendship.
But this time he can't embrace her to reassure everything was fine.
End Flashback
This time when she wakes up screaming, she lets the tears flow without bothering to wipe them away. Then she curls up on Sky's side of the bed, where he should still be, sleeping peacefully. She can almost feel him hold her, like old times.
And then she pads quietly down the hall to Kristin's room. Kristin, the baby Sky didn't even know he was going to have, let alone see. The only person who inspires Sydney to live, simply because the baby is only six months, and she needs Syd, the only parent she'll know.
Z and Bridge help, and Jack and Ally do as well. Her friends and daughter keep her sane. Syd shudders to think about what would happen if they weren't there.
Her parents had bought she and Sky a house when the couple announced they were engaged, and the first few months alone after Sky's death were nearly impossible to bear. Kristin's arrival has helped greatly.
Syd lifts her daughter from the bassinet and tucks her into the crook of her mother's caring arms. Kristin mostly looks like a mirror image of Sydney, but with Sky's nose, as Syd is always quick to point out to adoring family and friends.
She is closer to Aunt Jen now as well, Jen having raised a child by herself. Sometime Syd thinks she and Jen are closer than she is to her own mother.
Mother and daughter rock quietly at a leisurely pace, Kristin's peaceful breathing a comfort to her mother.
Sydney doesn't know how much time passes with Kristin in her arms, but it is enough to make her tired enough to sleep. An affectionate peck is planted on Kristin's forehead and Syd gently lowers her sleeping infant.
Opposite Sydney's bed is her dresser, over which hangs a mirror. Sydney hates that mirror. Every time she looks in it she sees Mirloc's face, hears his haunting laughter, taunting Syd with her loss.