Those Little Things
1.) She grew up in a big house on the outskirts of Millennium City. Her parents had renovated the long abandoned property when they were young, and they had really made it something special. To her, it seemed there was a kind of magic about it, floating in the halls, or maybe wrapped up in the little turret at the top of the house.
Everything she learned that would help her she learned in that house. Her big brothers used to play all sorts of games with her. They would run around the big lawn in the front of the house and climb everything in sight, and they played hide and seek with her for hours, always wondering how their baby sister found them every single time.
Who would have known that such simple childhood games would be building blocks for later in life?
2.) Originally, she met Alex through her middle brother, Randy. He and Alex were friends at school. One day, she walked into the kitchen after school to get a snack, and there he was, helping her brother study.
It was the first time she remembered thinking a boy was cute.
For the rest of the afternoon she found excuses to go into the kitchen, just so she could look at him.
Later, Randy teased her about it, and she denied everything. Then she punched her brother and tried to forget it had ever happened.
3.) Three years later, she saw Alex again. It was her first day at Time Force, and Alex was one of her instructors. When he saw her, he made an expression close to a smile and welcomed her.
That night, she fell asleep smiling into her pillow. He remembered her.
Somehow, the simple fact that a cute boy remembered her name was the best thing to happen to her. It made her determined to impress him.
With Alex's tutelage and her determination, she rocketed to the top.
4.) And then it was all taken from her. Alex was killed in a fight with one of the most notorious criminals Time Force had ever encountered, and then she and her team were on their way a thousand years in the past to stop him.
There was no time for her to grieve, no time for her to attempt to deal with the fact that the man she loved was no longer there with her.
The only thing she had to keep her going was the vendetta she carried against Ransik. She was determined to make him pay.
5.) She wanted to hate Wes. She wanted to hate him for trying to take the place of their real leader; for being in the red suit she had always thought Alex would wear.
She wanted to hate him for being so damn happy.
But as she got used to seeing a smile on his face and hearing his laugh, she found that she couldn't hate him. He was too easy to like.
6.) When she found out Alex had lied to her and faked his death, it was impossible for her to trust him. He lied to her.
By that logic, she also should have stopped trusting and caring about Wes. He had tricked her and the others into going back to their own time period.
But it was different with Wes somehow, maybe because he really was willing to give up his life for hers.
That was why she gave Alex his ring back before going to help Wes. She knew it was more important to be with Wes.
He loved her, and she could finally admit that she loved him, too. At least they could go down fighting together.
7.) Leaving Wes a thousand years in the past was the harder than leaving Alex in the future with the engagement ring.
It honestly felt like someone had ripped her heart in two.
When she was sent back again in search of the Mut–Orgs, she was torn. The whole year she'd been back at Time Force, she missed Wes, and would have given anything to see him again.
On the other hand, leaving him again would be unbearable.
8.) Katie was the one to show her something that changed her life again. It was common knowledge that past military organizations that trained rangers led to the creation of Time Force.
She was reminded of this unnecessarily, but then Katie showed her one of the SPD Commanders…one who looked like Wes. Katie went on to tell her that this commander was Wes' son.
This information confused her. Why would she want to know that Wes had a son? Katie, frustrated, finally blurted out that she was the man's mother.
Two days later, Captain Logan gave her permission to go back to the year 2002 and live out the remainder of her life with Wes.
9.) Wes reacted just as she'd hoped he would. When she told him she was there to stay, he picked her up and spun her around, laughing.
Then he set her down and laid the kind of kiss on her that she'd never shared with Alex.
He whispered two words into her hair as she was tugged into the house.
"Welcome home."
10.) After Wes' death she wondered if her coming back was the reason he died in the first place.
If she had stayed in 3001, he would have stayed with the Silver Guardians. But she had returned, and they were offered positions with the fledgling SPD Earth base.
It was all her fault. She had no husband and their son had no father, and it was all her fault.
She was sure that Sky hated her for a long time.
It wasn't until Sky was married and had children of his own that she realized that he had never hated her.
That was when she started to forgive herself.