notes: warnings for off-screen character deaths and general sadness.

so, turns out i had to scrap a chapter. as much as i wanted to include tenaya, it just didn't feel right. this fic is down to five chapters which means the next one is the last. this one is the longest so far, and it contains plotty things, which is basically just headcanoning certain things into logic. it probably doesn't work because i suck at timelines and plot, but hey, i tried. hope you enjoy!

we could be immortals (but not for long)

some far away
some search for gold
some dragon to slay
heaven, we hope is
just up the road

― coldplay, atlas

iv. cassie

He's out looking for Summer and Dillon in the wastelands the day he stumbles across a spaceship buried halfway in the sand.

His first thought is VENJIX, which he discards when he notices a woman sitting in front of the ship, watching two little boys playing together in front of her. She's dark-haired and dressed in pink, old enough to be the little boys' mother, though she doesn't look related to either of them.

When she notices him approaching, she smiles, but doesn't stand. Scott isn't quite sure what to do as the blond boy nearly runs into him while chasing the other one.

"Um, excuse me?" he asks slowly, stepping closer to her. "Can I ask what you're doing out here, ma'am?"

She hums under her breath. "Scott Truman," she says in response, and he blinks. Her voice is harder, brighter than he'd expected. "RPM red ranger? I'm surprised you don't recognize me."

He stares at her. "Should I?"

She tilts her head up, allowing him a better view of her features. "My name is Cassie Chan."

Scott has to work very hard not to let his jaw drop. "You're – the Cassie Chan? Pink ranger Cassie Chan?" Saved the world from an invasion, fought the Alliance of Evil, lost all your friends to Venjix Cassie Chan? He doesn't say it, but he knows she knows what he's thinking.

"The one and only," she says, gesturing for him to sit down next to her. "Well, not the only pink ranger. Though, I suppose you wouldn't know." Her sidelong gaze is critical, but amused, like she's making fun of him for not having a pink ranger on his team. "What brings you out here?"

"Oh, um." Scott has to think about it to remember what his original mission was. "I was out looking for my friends. They're out here somewhere, working on some restoration projects."

"Mm," Cassie says, turning her attention back to the boys. "Black and yellow, plus black's sister? I've seen them around."

"Wait – really?" Scott blinks at her. "You mean, you… you live out here?"

Cassie chuckles. "No, I live in Corinth. But I have friends out here. And I'm babysitting, and the boys like fresh air," she adds, nodding to where the boys have started a sparring match. Given that both of them are around ten years old, it's less sparring and more just trying to hit each other, but they're pretty good for kids.

"But – " Scott tries to work through this information before he speaks. "The dome is still up," he points out, even though he knows it's easier to get permission to leave Corinth these days, ever since Venjix was defeated. The dome was only still up as a precaution, and there were plans to lower it in the next year or so, barring any accidents. But still.

"I have pretty high clearance with the government," Cassie says, sounding amused that he'd have to ask. "They weren't exactly going to deny a former power ranger, you know?"

"I do know," he admits. "But there are parks in Corinth. And – why do you have friends out here?"

Her face darkens. "Not every ranger made it to Corinth," she tells him, her voice light but her words heavy. "Some didn't want to. But we kept in touch."

"Um." He frowns, trying to puzzle that one out. "How?"

A grin brightens her face, if briefly. "We have our ways," she says airily. "Once a ranger, always a ranger, and all that crap. You'd be surprised how many ways there are out of Corinth that even the government doesn't know about. Even the rangers don't know about."

Scott makes a face. "How many of you are there, then? And how come we've never met most of you?" He amends any of you into most of you before the thought leaves his mouth, remembering in time the photography studio where he went without Summer once just to see what left her so unsettled, and the scientist on the third floor of the government building where Flynn spent half his free time when he could.

There are others, too, he knows, working in the government, helping with the ranger program, or just around the city. He's run into a few, though never talked for very long – a dry-witted man in green who helped Dr. K with biofield mechanics once; a café near the outskirts where the waiters had sad smiles; a lifeguard at the city pool; a blue ranger barely older than him who never looks him in the eye when they pass in the hallways.

But none have ever stopped to say hi, and honestly, he finds it easy to forget that they're there at all. Corinth has its power rangers. They don't need any more.

"Because most of us hate you," Cassie tells him frankly, and he's startled out of his musings with a jolt. She half-smiles when she notices his stare, but not in a way that makes it seem like she was joking. She clearly isn't.

"Are you going to make me ask a question for everything you say?" he asks when she doesn't elaborate, a twist of annoyance unfurling in his stomach. He tries to stamp it down – Summer would definitely hit him if he did anything to piss off a former ranger, especially a Space ranger, Earth's first public heroes, but it's there anyway.

One of the boys interrupts them, running up to Cassie and declaring proudly, "I win!"

Cassie grins, genuinely this time, smoothing down his blond hair. "Good job, Sky," she says fondly. "Bridge, are you okay?"

The other boy, Bridge, comes up to them with a bright smile on his face. "That was so fun!" he enthuses. "Can we go again?"

Cassie sends them off with a smile before she turns back to Scott and her expression changes. "It's not because of you," she says, her smile turning wistful. "It's just the fact that…"

"We survived?" he guesses, because he figures most people feel that way. Most people have lost loved ones. Most people carry around the anger and guilt with them, even now that the war is won and the world is starting to turn again. She'd be the first one to hate the rangers for it, but he supposes former rangers get a pass.

"You survived as rangers," she corrects. "And we didn't. You survived with your team and we didn't. Not one of our teams escaped whole. Well, except – "

"Except who?" he presses when she trails off, a frown on her face, like she's lost track of her thoughts.

"Except the Galaxy rangers," she finishes, shaking her head. "Other planets got Earth's distress call too late. But that's not the point. The point is you're wearing our colors, our powers, our mission. And you won, and we didn't."

She doesn't sound angry or even upset, just tired and sad. Scott's heart aches, but before he can figure out the right thing to say, the blond boy – Sky – comes up again, this time looking at him more closely.

"Aren't you the red ranger?" he asks curiously, and Scott takes notice of his bright red shirt for the first time.

"Yeah, that's me," he says, pulling up the smile he uses for kids and other citizens who are excited to meet him. "My name's Scott, what's yours?"

"Sky," he says very solemnly, offering his hand to shake. "My dad was a red ranger, too."

Scott raises an eyebrow, but doesn't question the past tense, instead shaking Sky's hand with a smile. "It's nice to meet you. Do you live in Corinth?"

"No, I live with SPD," Sky says as Bridge wanders over, having lost interest in a bug he'd been chasing. Scott's eyebrows get even higher. "I'm gonna be a red ranger too, one day."

"Are you?" Scott asks, struggling to keep his smile in place. He'd met kids who wanted to be power rangers before, but this boy, with his wide eyes, too understanding of the world already, who speaks about his father in past tense – it's unsettling. "That's great. Give me a call when you do, yeah?"

Sky's face brightens. "Yeah! Oh, this is Bridge, by the way," he adds, as Bridge gives a cheery wave. Scott realizes that he's wearing gloves, which strikes him as odd.

"Hi!" Bridge says, then turns to Sky very seriously and whispers, "I thought we were gonna spar," very loudly.

Cassie looks down to hide a smile as Sky rolls his eyes and lets Bridge drag him away again. Scott turns to her, practically overflowing with questions. "I know," she says, holding up a hand before he can ask. "What's SPD?"

"That would be a start, yeah," he agrees. "And who was Sky's father?"

"SPD stands for Space Patrol Delta," Cassie explains, leaning back on her hands to stare up at the sun. "And the rest, I'm afraid, is classified. Need to know basis."

Scott gapes at her. "I'm – I'm the red ranger, how do I not need to know?"

She smiles at the sky. "You'll find out one day. Probably when the dome drops and your father stops keeping so many secrets. I can tell you it's an organization dedicated to stopping evil."

"That's nothing," he grumbles. "We're an organization dedicated to stopping evil."

"To stopping Venjix," she corrects. "Not all evil. SPD spans galaxies. Hence the name."

Something she said earlier in the conversation clicks in his head. "Does that mean – the galaxy rangers – ?"

Cassie brings her head back down to look at him with a thoughtful smile. "You're smart," she says. "You'll figure it out."

Scott frowns, watching Sky flip Bridge onto his back. "Can you tell me who his father was?"

She shakes her head. "Nobody you know. He worked for SPD, one of the first volunteers to help with the mission. He was a good fighter, so we gave him a test suit and a team. They didn't operate near Corinth."

"Wait, you mean there are other places – other cities that need rangers?"

Cassie smiles. "The world is big, Scott," she says softly, staring at him like she's thinking of somebody else. "Corinth may be the last bastion of humanity, but there's more out there than just us. Aliens came down to help, and with good aliens come bad aliens. That's why the Earth chapter of SPD was started, to help us recover from the Venjix attacks and to keep the criminals from other planets in check."

Scott blinks, processing the information. "So, you're saying…there's another battle going on out there somewhere? With aliens?"

"With aliens, against aliens," she says, nodding. "There's always another battle. The only question is, who's going to fight it."

He catches her gaze and holds it. "Then why do you hate us?" he asks, watching her face go carefully blank again. "We stepped up for this fight. Other people stepped up for another fight. Why do you hate us?"

A sad smile quirks one corner of her lips. "Maybe you remind us of people we lost," she suggests. "People who died fighting a war that you won."

"That's not fair," he says automatically, then his voice softens. "What happened to your team?"

"What happened to anyone's team?" Cassie asks with a bitter laugh. "They died. They died fighting. And I survived."

He doesn't ask her if she hates herself, too. "Did anyone live?"

"Yeah," she says slowly, her face faraway. "A few. My silver. Two of the rangers who gave my team our powers survived, too, but not many more. They're around, you'll find them, if you're looking. My best friend – she died. TJ and Carlos and Andros. All dead."

The names are familiar, ringing old bells, like he read them in a book once, or a newspaper article. He doesn't say I'm sorry because he figures she knows already. "How did you end up here?"

"Crashed the megaship," she says with a wry smile, nodding at the spaceship behind her. "Got lucky, I guess. Maybe I was meant to. Somebody has to look after these kids."

Scott's gaze travels back to the boys, now arguing over the species of a bug they'd found in the sand. "Ranger legacies?" he guesses.

Cassie smiles at them. "Yeah. Red and blue. That's why we're all fighting, right? To give them a better world?"

He eyes her carefully. "Are you fighting?"

"Every day," she says, exhaling. Her breath clouds the air in front of them briefly. The sun is dipping below the horizon. "You remind of him, you know. My red. My first red. I've seen you in battle, on the news, everywhere. He had the same red confidence, the same charisma."

He tucks away the names – TJ, Carlos, Andros – to look up later. "I'm honored," he says honestly. "I've read about you guys. You fought an invasion, too. Astronema's, right?"

Cassie sighs, tilting her head up again and closing her eyes. "That's the one. Seems like forever ago. Scott – you don't have a pink, right?"

"No," he admits, feeling vaguely guilty for a reason he doesn't know. It's not like he chose their color scheme.

"Got a girl?" she asks, opening one eye to look at him. "Summer?"

He thinks, for the first time in an hour, about Summer and Dillon and Tenaya out in the wastelands. "Yeah. She's yellow."

"Be good to her," Cassie mutters, then stands, brushing her jeans off. She glances down at him and half-smiles again. "Red and yellow. I've seen that story before."

"It's – it's not a story," Scott protests. "She likes our black, I think."

Cassie considers this. "Tall, dark, and broody? That cyborg girl turned out to be his sister?"

"Yeah, long-lost sister," Scott explains, standing as well. "She was brainwashed and turned to evil. Took us a while to figure that mess out."

Cassie stares at him for an uncomfortably long moment. "Huh. Same story, different color. How about that?"

Scott resists the temptation to ask. "Too bad I don't have a pink," he offers, a little feebly, but it makes her laugh.

"You would do well with a pink," she agrees, raising a hand to wave Sky and Bridge over. "Who knows, maybe his sister will turn out to be your pink. Or just a pink. That's happened before."

Scott raises an eyebrow, but she doesn't explain it as the boys run over to her, so he doesn't ask. "Will I see you around Corinth?"

Cassie hums, the same half a tune she had when he'd first seen her. The chords are vaguely familiar now, but he still can't place them. "Maybe. You should come outside more, you know. There's a whole new world out here."

"I'll keep that in mind," he says, finally smiling as the boys wave at him before they all turn to leave. "Bye," he calls to their retreating backs. The sun sets over Corinth in shades of reds and pinks. It's a beautiful sight, from the outside. Like the world is starting to turn again.

there are no...green rangers...in all of saban era...that could have fathered bridge...

so, i took some liberties. he's justin's son here. shoutout to linkara's hopr videos for implementing the rpm - spd via aliens coming down to help earth theory in my brain.

we'll probably get to see at least syd next chapter, though i think jack and z would already be orphans at this point. maybe. who knows, not me. i hate math.

please don't favorite/follow without reviewing, it's very disheartening, and i love to hear feedback!