Healin' You
She reached out her hand, and then quickly pulled it back, pretending that she had never intended to interlock her fingers with the other woman, to push their palms together, to offer a sign that she was not alone, that they were together. Yet they weren't, she reminded herself, her expression darkening. They weren't together, not any more, not in the way they had been.
Around the sacred spring, the once tranquil waters now disturbed by the flux of a new Org birth, her fellow Rangers conversed in low, hushed tones—Alyssa, with her practical straightforwardness, Danny, with his steadfast sensibility, Max, with his playful levity, and, at last, Cole, with his brash excitability. She stared hard at each of them, and then turned to the boiling waters, allowing her eyes to go out of focus, anything to look towards the older woman at her side, the sixth person at their gathering, the Princess of Animaria, Shayla of the Fair Isles, noble and just.
The water seethed, the shape of a creature within, a hulking shape partly shaped from dull clay and rock, the other half of its body crafted from scuffed and yellowed plastic, an orange swirl discoloured in the centre of the absence of other features.
Despite herself, Taylor looked away, her attention again drawn to the woman at her side, her arm held at her side, fingers balling in a fist so as not to reach out for her.
No one had lost more to the Orugu Nation than the Princess. Everyone she had ever known, everyone she had ever loved lost in the invasion of her homeland, the ruin of cities, the salting of the earth. The Animarian civilisation had ended in blood and fire, and, from the ashes, modernity had evolved, unaware of the sacrifices that had made in order that life might again flourish.
She had grown up believing fervently in the fairy story of Animaria, the island that had floated away to save its sleeping princess in the wake of the Orugu invasion. Yet it had not been until her plane had been drawn there, until the shape of the eagle had passed over her, and her engines had cut out, that Taylor Earhardt had truly understood the import of such stories passed down.
For a year before the others had been found—before practical Alyssa, steadfast Danny, playful Max, and brash Cole—the two of them had lived together amidst the ruins of the world Shayla had known, entwined as lovers, at odds as pupil and teacher.
In those early days, when it had been just them, Taylor had stupidly convinced herself that she was irreplaceable, that as the Yellow Eagle Ranger, she was the only person to whom power might be promised, the only person who could fight off the Orgs on behalf of the Princess; she had imagined herself as one of the knights from the fairy stories she had been told as a child.
Shayla herself rarely spoke of those men who had once fought to avenge her fallen people, she rarely spoke of the past at all, yet in that long year in which they were alone together, in the quiet moments when the sacred spring was silent, the pain was evident in her words, in her gestures.
In the dark, Taylor had gone to her, holding her close, her arms around her on her bed of grass, and somewhere along the way, in the outpouring of that grief, comfort had turned to touching, and touching had eventually turned to sweating, to whispering words of want, her lips against a trail of tears.
Before her feet had touched the ground of the floating island, her relationships had been short and abrupt, drunken encounters in bars during downtime, a string of women passing through town on their way to somewhere, anywhere but Norquist, Santa Clara.
The thing about meeting people in bars, she thought, a pang of regret stirring within her, was that no one expected any better of you. Shayla had been different.
For the first time in her life, someone had expected something of her that wasn't rooted in her physical prowess, her technical ability; for the first time in her life, someone had challenged her to be better than she was, to act on something more than simply the orders she had been given, and, more importantly, to believe in the righteousness of those actions.
In that year in which they were alone together, in that year in which Wild Force was simply her, and her sword, and those moments she shared with the Princess of Animaria, amidst the violence and urgency of her situation, she had found a kind of peace with herself.
"Taylor?"
She looked up, blinking, her fist uncurling as she was suddenly drawn to the present, finding the others staring at her with confusion.
"I'm sorry—"
A hand reached out for hers, fingers interlocked, palms pushed together. Her gaze met that of Shayla's, and the other woman smiled kindly, and though she did not say it, Taylor felt it.
We're still us, she seemed to say. We're still together. We're still one.
"Are you okay, Taylor?" came the soft, lilting song of her lover's voice.
She squeezed the other woman's hand in hers.
"I am now," she answered softly.