Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eighty-seven pounds.

Eighty-seven pounds and still alive at over six feet tall and without the aid of sunlight for over two years in captivity made up of repetitive torture and only speaking with someone whose skills at being a human were wildly hindered by isolation and total bodily confinement.

And still he'd managed to coax three fellow prisoners out of their cells, half-carrying one and holding the other's metal-bound hand like a pre-school teacher leading a five year old into class for the first time while the other followed at an agonizing lope from the hardware in his back giving him trouble.

"Life finds a way," was what Dr. Sterling had said to K after their examination of the prisoner on the moon that the other sentries had undone the locks of the entire prison for before the rescue attempts by the other Rangers took place. The one that greeted the Ranger Slayer with a friendly, "Hi, Kim," once Terra Venture found itself cut off from the Grid and the sentries (former?) that had been protectively circling him and the other wounded finally let up and let Grace and the others with some form of medical understanding take them to the medical bay.


The Tommy Oliver that seemed much older and wiser (probably, if the Red Ranger McKnight who kept calling him Dr. O was anything to go by) than the one that had gone off the rails in an effort to bend reality to his will was actually rather helpful in walking Dr. K through the process of ignoring the impressions and reactions of everyone that saw them on the way to the medical bay; reinforcing that some things could wait and some things couldn't.



The spy-turned-prisoner-turned-rescue that the Ranger Slayer and a dozen other people were worried about, with his fractured shoulder from half-carrying Dr. Oliver with his emaciated form that shouldn't have even been able to walk, could not wait after passing out.


The Jason Scott in the metal bindings that was having an onset of PTSD at the sight of sentries--even ones that weren't making to advance on him and mostly remained in a corner like feral animals--could not wait. He had to be subdued by half a dozen Rangers without their suits and sedated, but they were doing their best to get the gear off of him and then deciding whether or not it was worth the chance of setting him into a panic with hand restraints in a medical bed.


The eldest version of Tommy Oliver seen by the crew so far, with facial hair, and grey, and metal works bound to his spine from an injury the others could only guess at, could not wait as he kept grinding his teeth at the little shocks and tweaks from the hardware that Drakkon had personally tampered with just to be a bastard. Terona was good enough to offer a shoulder and a smile, but not much else as Andrea had to open up the whole thing just to attempt to mitigate the damage.


The worried doctor with slightly cracked glasses and a considerable number of bruises and contusions and possible head trauma--



"This really can wait until after we've got the results in on Jason and Skull."


Dr. K huffed and, without counting down or giving the slightest bit of warning, gave the signal for the Astro Ranger T.J. to pop Dr. Oliver's shoulder back into place as Conner and Dr. K held the man still. Neither of them letting go when he cursed and went limp, teeth biting into his already bleeding bottom lip.


"Just like the other Ranger series. Even with old age, so impatient," Dr. K grumbled, Conner giving her a dirty look and smoothing hands along his mentor's back to ease some of the tension out of his shoulders. Dr. O gave his Red a side hug at the sight of tears trying to make themselves known, despite his blinking them back.


"He's not that old," Conner defended, leaning into that hug most appreciated as the doctor that couldn't be older than himself rolled her eyes and made her way back over to the small cluster of Sentries. 


All of them had been a little miffed at being asked to remove their armor, but had consented when informed that it was the only way they would be allowed to stay in the medical wing with their captain. 


Without the reds and yellows and blacks of stolen Grid Energy, without the weapons and without any idea of their fate, they looked much like the other Rangers out on deck, tensed up and worried and knowingly afraid.


It was strange that a lot of them bore reflections of some of the Rangers they were cut off from, as well as faces that looked in to check on the wounded and got spooked by seeing their alters with different life experience.


The Blue Astro Ranger especially kept sneaking a look over at the Red Sentry that shared his face, but could not be more different, had made it perfectly clear that he and the Yellow Sentry Aisha were in charge of their little group of outcasts, and that he had never heard of the Space or Turbo Rangers.


Not Dr. K's problem for the time, but it was interesting.

K is not ungrateful that at least one of the members of her Ranger Series survived to be on the ship with her, but Mr. Grover keeps shifting from being incredibly depressed over their lost (fallen) teammates, to strangely full of boundless energy. It is hard for her to adjust when Ranger Series Black had been something of Ziggy's handler for this sort of thing.


The Green SPD Ranger by the name of Bridge was the initiator of when he started to mellow out, she supposed. Someone who rambled just as often as Ziggy, but who could keep up with Ziggy's nonsense.


She caught them sharing toast so often in the middle of the "night" that it became her go-to for finding the (her) frazzled Green when she required assistance that Sterling's helpers and the unpowered Rangers were too occupied to be of much use with.


When she cannot find him in this place of comfort he's found for himself, wanders around with purpose, but much slower than she would have under the domed City she knew, she finds herself noticing and observing and taking in the other people she finds in these close quarters to be far more interesting than they have any right to be. Their behavior is something to catalogue in her genius brain, consider what is "normal" under these circumstances and what is a social trespass.


(She is still young and, in many ways, still that sheltered girl under the guard of minders that only let her see things when they're not paying attention. The fascination is still in her very bones.)

*
*


The Ranger Slayer stops hissing and dropping insinuations towards the two Olivers--the younger one with the glasses especially--when the Red Dino Thunder Ranger finally snaps and looms over her after he'd finally had all of his stitches and can move his arm again; the young man tall as a scarecrow and not at all scary when he yells at Kimberly, "I don't care if the one from your world is a psycho, Dr. O hasn't ever done anything to you, so shut up and back the hell off."


Conner is not intimidating to someone with a body count as big as Kimberly's, even being over a foot taller than the woman, but she relents when Dr. O tries to tell Conner it's okay; not quite so hurt by this woman's words--probably because he could understand the hatred.


He had been tortured, after all, by someone with his face.



Dr. O tries to focus on other things; assisting with repairs, helping the others train, talking with his other other self with the wedding ring and grey hair and beard that was always incredibly amused by Conner's attitude and flurry of activity.


"They grow up so fast, and trust me," the elder Oliver promised, sipping tea and parsing through the computers to look over the locations they floated through in space; some of the planets almost familiar, some of the energies keeping his attention longer than his interactions with his-not-self, "Conner will be all the better for having lived through this. He isn't a Red for nothing, Tommy."


In her eavesdropping, Dr. K has a harder time believing this.


*
*

When Conner crosses paths with the youngest sentries that stay close to the medical wing of the floating ship where Skullovitch remains unconscious and loaded up with as many injections of calories and fluids and drugs that they can spare, perhaps he does suffer a little bit of growing up. Two of the sentries tense up, one practically growling when he calls their names and approaches with familiarity; the other two cast suspicious looks at the too tall, too healthy, too happy seeming young man, but leave him alone with the duo to go back to assisting the Sentry Aisha with repairs on the bridge when they see the look on Conner's face as he realized his mistake.


The Devin he called on was rather low in voice and lower in spirit, head down like he was waiting for a hit on Conner's approach, and the Cassidy beside him was not bouncy or cautiously inclined to understand his confusion--just wanted him to stay three feet away and well out of the sterile room in case their captain woke up. Her head half buzzed and left ear burnt at the edges caused Conner to balk when she looked him dead in the eye and fingered a little pin on her belt shaped like a purple swan that in itself wasn't supposed to be dangerous, but this Cassidy had been taught by the best in their division. 


When it became obvious he didn't know what to say, didn't know how to talk to people that looked so familiar (a joy in this place) but didn't know him at all; they went back to curling up in oversized cushions and fat chairs they'd stolen from the breakroom and largely ignored him until he went away. 


*


This was much similarly repeated when the still active Green Ninja Storm Ranger found himself in the dining hall with the two other young sentries, them not noticing him until he called on Marah, laid a hand on her shoulder, and spooked her so bad that she dropped the plate of pancakes she'd been taking away back to the medical bay; the whites of her eyes showing when she looked at him as if she was expecting a knife, a gun, or something worse.


It clicked in Cameron's brain this was not his cousin from his world, just before he was laid down low into unconsciousness with the blink of an eye and woke up an hour later with a black eye and screaming pain in his gut from the Kapri that was also not from his world. The black sentry Kai Chen had been alerted by the blonde that had injured Cam that she would be attending to Marah and, "Someone might want to take the idiot to get painkillers," leaving him to exchange glances with the yellow sentry Kelsey Winslow--worried, but not surprised--and retrieving Cam to do just that when they loped over to find him groaning on the floor, flopping around like a fish.


He'd landed in Marah's pancakes. They didn't clean the food off of him, but dumped him in medical and went to get their subordinate a replacement meal without a word to anyone but Dr. K; mentioning Kapri's enhanced strength and to check for internal hemorrhage like he might have a splinter in his finger or had slipped on a stair.


(Dr. K might have been rather lacking in social cues, but even she was aware there was something wrong with that.)


"I'm sorry about your injuries, but you should feel lucky that she didn't have one of her knives on her," was about as much of an apology as the older, adult T.J. in Red was willing to give, wandering into Cam's orbit after the Green Ninja Storm ranger had finished a full roster of scans less to explain things and more to give a fair warning that Marah was damaged and Kapri was always angry, "So making some noise and warning them before getting into their personal space is really in everyone's best interest."


Cam seemed to choose his words, biting his lip before he said anything to T.J.'s warning/advice.


"Shouldn't they be...in space? With Lothor?"



"Ask them yourself," was all he was going to get as an answer, the older man drawing in and standing straighter, implying something that neither genius could parse out of his tone as he walked out without saying anything else.



(K decided upon more eavesdropping and observation and Ziggy's blathering off-hand comments that stuck in her brain as time continued on and adventure found its way onto the ship with the reveal of Grid Energy the still active Rangers went chasing: the sentries didn't reveal each other's secrets, but tried not to lie if they could help it. Seemed to think the rangers would kick them off the ship if they turned wrong with the wind.)



Cameron did eventually ask, introducing himself proper with an apology for spooking Marah. Adding in a missive of understanding in Kapri's violence as a bit of an olive branch since bringing either of them food was heavily implied to be a bad idea from Aisha (something about Marah's shitty luck with authority figures and not having access to salt that Dr. K had a conversation with Ziggy about that made the ex-mafia extremely uncomfortable).



And, oh, how different things were.



Cameron had always assumed that when worse came to worse, Lothor would dump the two like dead weight, but the idea of him selling them as breeding stock to secure his future in a new world order seemed almost too insidious. He was a villain, malicious and cruel, but he never presented as someone so disgusting.


Perhaps the way he looked sickened was the opening he needed, because Marah seemed to open up a little more at his apologizing for something ridiculously beyond his control and Kapri could tell he was a good egg in the face of his worrying about his cousins suffering the fate of strangers with only the barest similarities.




"...And in the end he died anyway," Kapri snorted, taking the opportunity to block Cam's kick on the training mats with her arm and backflip him.


His back made a hell of a thud, wind knocked right out of him as he processed their story, eye drawn over to Marah getting her form corrected by the Ryan Mitchell from their universe with his horns and claws and toddler demon prince clinging to his leg demanding attention. 


These two could fight because they had been taught properly, adopted into the ranks of sentries that were largely unconcerned with anyone but themselves, but were constantly in the process of picking up people that could have been heroes, had fate been less horrendous.



...K couldn't be sure, but sometimes she caught him looking at them with a pinched look that reminded her of when Scott talked about his brother. Which didn't make sense, really; Cameron wasn't actually related to these two, there shouldn't be any fellow feeling towards them.

It was strange, but not the strangest of things to come.

Chapter Text

"It's just...weird. I'm sorry if that makes me sound like an asshole, but it's true. Back home in our universe, he and Bulkmeier basically just...act like clowns."


"Well, you know what they say about people shining brightest when circumstances are at there most dire."




This is not something that Jason wants to wake up to, first time in his own head and not in the muck and mire of rage fueled dissociation.


Grace had removed his wrist and ankle cuffs the night before, all of his prison armor removed and stowed away, and herself too tired and sad after the deconstruction to put the older looking Jason Scott back in binding. It was stupid, but even she was soft as a brush sometimes. Especially with Terona buttering her up and practically carried her over his shoulder to go to bed.


The first voice wasn't the problem. The problem was the second voice that he knew deep as his marrow... But it wasn't right.


He sounded sad. And calm.


It made Jason flex his jaw and close his fists as he continued to listen, not letting his body move more than that above the crisp white sheets or under the soft muslin that at first thought on waking made him think he was finally dead; Drakkon had finally lost all semblance of rubbing his victory in Jason's face and punched a hole through his chest like a shot, a missile, an ending.


But no. Memory was returning.



The bastard had gone full-blown batshit insane and left the sentries running around like chickens and sheep and Jason's cell had been unlocked, same as the man that came to get him and two others and take them out into safety.


Everything after that was still fuzzy with utter panic at being outside for the first time in decades, and so many people in sentry uniform coming towards them and circling them to run for the exit--all without their helmets and keeping them close like sheepdogs rounding up strays in a wild herd.



Hands on Jason, and a body hitting the ground with all the noise of a bird against wet pavement, and Kim's voice without the malice steeped in it and more panic, panic, panic--



A voice rang in from outside the hall, neutral, but powerful in it lighting up Jason's brain with familiarity and something he missed so bad in his cell, in his full-body prison, that sometimes it made him sick (something Skull couldn't fix from his own cell with the holes in the very top, except by standing underneath them so his voice carried further and Jason could hear him say it was going to be okay).

"There's not supposed to be so many of you in here. Grace told you--"




Just that voice should not have gotten Jason to sit bolt upright like some one-off character in a horror movie, a jack-in-the-box with a nasty face painted over the little doll's head and something nasty coming along with it instead of glitter or confetti, but it couldn't have been helped. Not when it had been so out of the blue, and not something Jason expected to hear ever again.



"Kimberly?"



She looked different from the blank eyed puppet that had been walking around the palace, only a few steps behind Drakkon for years. Her clothes seemed more like something she would choose for herself, not that horrible suit tailored by that little monster that had stolen and perverted Alpha's body.


Her hair was growing out from that awful haircut and--



She was standing in front of the one bed with the oxygen tanks constantly running beside it that Jason had been hearing on and off since consciousness without sedatives coursing through him started to come in. The other machines surrounding were things that Jason couldn't name, but heard from the tiny little girl of a doctor here and there that they were for pulse monitoring, provided liquid nourishment, provided a warning system in case something went wrong.


And atop the bed--well, no, it was more like an adjustable gurney; Jason could see that it had wheels on the bottom and could fold any which way with a bar along the bottom that would flip up to hang more medical bags--and underneath what looked like a million-billion wires and tubes and electrodes, was someone not quite as familiar to him as one of his best friends and teammates, but someone he had on again off again known more than half of his life. And more than that when he was placed in the cell right across from Jason for the trespass of not buckling to Drakkon's accusations of treason and espionage, only willing to say his piece when Drakkon actually had proof of any behavior that could be called into question.



It just took Jason a second to process it, because his brain was pulling at the blind rage for Drakkon always active in his subconscious, when Jason looked to the left of Kim to find a man with Drakkon's face holding the unconscious other's hand aloft to splay fingers delicately; fingernail clippers in his other hand paused and completely still as the other looked startled at Jason. The teenager beside the not-Drakkon (obviously not; Drakkon would have died before wearing glasses and cutting his hair like that) very similar in looks to the Red Sentry that Jason remembered helping open the doors to what Jason always thought would end up being his crypt on the moon that would keep his bones for Drakkon to gloat over forever; looking anxious and stiff at Jason's rough and unused voice echoing like a gunshot.



The man in the bed was skeleton thin, black hair like a brush of dead crow against the white of skin and sheets and sterile medical equipment. His lips and the rings under his eyes looked like the most colorful parts about him, both a blue-purple color that Jason could only remember from oil paintings showing off artist renditions of dying Victorian girls or corpses cut up in theater for medical students.


Whichever doctor had been seeing to Skull--how suitable, how horrible--had tied multiple knots in the ties of the face mask providing him with oxygen, obviously too loose otherwise; and had pinned his hospital gown tight to provide him with warmth to relieve the shaking Jason could see from his bed.



Jason blinked from the display and reminder of escape and hope rolled into one person and over to the side of the bed that didn't have the not-Drakkon and not-sentry; standing at attention, an actual sentry he was familiar with, who had once been a child in his karate lessons Jason gave at the Youth Center. Johnson, the second in command of 8th Division and temporary captain while Drakkon let Eugene Skullovitch 'think about his choices' while being tortured for almost two years.

He looked very ready to jump Jason if he went into hysterics and started try to fight anyone and everyone if the former prisoner went into a state of rage and dissociation. He wasn't wearing his armor, he wasn't even wearing the underclothes that came part and parcel with the (stolen) suits each sentry was made to wear in service of the empire. Rather, he looked hastily put together, with jeans and boots and a blue cotton undershirt and a mixed red-white-black plaid button up with rolled sleeves. The shirts clung to the muscles he was sporting and the pants looked a size too big, but...he was still ready to make a go of defending his Captain if Jason tried anything.

Of course that was nothing compared to looking at the started copy of a younger him that was holding his hands up in the peace or surrender position; this one a good two decades younger, still tall, but not all the way there yet--and in an actual uniform that screamed 'true ranger' with clean lines, and Blue in important signal places at the jacket, with the lines of a morpher at the wrist hiding under his sleeve along one arm.

"...Jason," Kim finally spoke, not moving. But when he looked back at her, he almost felt like he should have been moving towards her; her eyes were wet and she looked...suddenly young again, "You're awake."

There was a slight unclenching of...something in his gut. One that had been there since he'd been taken prisoner in his failure to get the White Light, in his being put in chains underground where nobody could see him with Drakkon goading him into fights, laying him out with electricity when the bastard new he was losing even with two coins; since he'd nearly lost his mind at finding not just Billy in service to Drakkon under a spell, but Kimberly there, too. 

It wasn't a full unfolding. The hard fist, heavy and tight as a ball of iron, would take time to let go fully and completely, surrounded by people he didn't know, on a ship moving through a universe completely unknown to any of them...

But.

Kim's voice was clear. Nobody in the room had a weapon. Eugene was somehow still alive.

He looked Kimberly in the eye and raised his head, moving his own blankets from his person to taken his first conscious steps out of what felt like twenty years in a bad dream.

"Yeah, I'm awake. And it looks like you are, too."

His smile was weak, but it earned a return from his Pink Ranger. A return in grief honey as well.

(And this interaction, small as it was, eased the shoulders and haunches of everyone else in the room that they didn't really need to think about; at least for the moment).