Archive of Our Own ^beta

Bridge sits in the shower long after the other rangers have left the locker room. He's shivering as the water flows over his skin. He feels cold, though the water is warm. Water is the one substance that doesn't hold onto memories, and he savours the steady wash of nothing.

"Bridge?" Adam's tentative voice comes from behind the shower curtain. Bridge hadn't heard him come back in. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Bridge says. "I'm fine, insofar that anyone is fine after a battle. And really, how do we define 'fine'? Do we mean 'yeah, I'm great' or 'yeah there's something wrong but I'll deal –'"

"Bridge," Adam says, and there's that quiet authority in his voice that Bridge responds to blindly. "Why don't you get out of the shower?"

That's probably a good idea. It's not right to waste water.

Bridge turns off the tap and takes the towel that Adam hands to him through the curtain. He wraps it about his waist and pulls the curtain open. Adam passes him his gloves without a word and Bridge tugs them on, securing that brick in his armour.

"Here, sit down," Adam says. "I'll dress that cut on your knee."

Bridge sits down. He must be in shock, he thinks. His thoughts are distant and fuzzy. He responds to Adam's gentle directions because he can't think of what else to do. Stupid. He's the red ranger. He ought to be the leader. But Adam had slid so naturally into the role, Bridge hadn't either the will or means to take it back.

"Ow!" Pain shoots through his knee, wrenching his attention to the present.

"Sorry." Adam is holding Bridge's leg still as he dabs at his knee with disinfectant. There's an open first aid kit on the floor. "This won't take long."

Bridge subsides. Adam's not touching his skin directly. He's being very careful to only the towel or the cotton wool bud. Adam has been the best at that so far, avoiding skin-to-skin contact, meticulously respecting the boundaries that Bridge set down. Either Adam has known empaths before, or he just intuitively picked up that touching Bridge's bare skin without an invitation would be a greater violation than if he'd shoved his hand down his pants.

Still.

Bridge doesn't like having the black ranger so close. The hands treating him now are the same hands that this afternoon had wielded the Power Axe as it hacked apart a chiller. Remembering the frozen bits of blood and entrails flying across the gravel makes Bridge queasy and he has to close his eyes, for once desperately grateful that the uniform short-circuits all civilian powers. Seeing it was bad enough. The only thing worse would have been feeling it.

Bridge is different from the others. Not just in terms of his empathy. No, next to Xander's magic and Kira's gem and Tori's element, he's practically normal.

No, Bridge is a different kind of ranger.

The rangers of this time are casual in their brutality, killing almost without thought, without hesitation. The concept of rights and reasonable doubt has never occurred to them. They react faster than Bridge, and their reactions are deadly. In battle this afternoon, he'd found himself lagging, shocked and repulsed. Even Xander, who would rather talk rather than fight, had showed no mercy once the fight began. Bridge has a flash of Xander slamming a chiller's head into a tree again and again until something finally cracked, and it didn't sound like bone, it couldn't have been bone, because what it really sounded like was someone dropping a watermelon on concrete so that the hard rind split open and the soft pink insides came spilling out–

Adam closes the first aid kit with a snap.

"There," he says. "All better."

Bridge nods distantly.

"Thanks."

But Adam doesn't leave. He puts the first aid kit aside and sits down next to Bridge.

"I wanted to talk to you," he says. Bridge nods again, and Adam continues in a gentler tone: "You didn't tell me this was your first battle."

"It's not," Bridge says, hugging his knees and trying not to rock. Adam frowns, truly confused for the first time.

"But I thought – the way you reacted this afternoon–"

"I've never killed before. Not like that."

It takes a moment for Adam to get it.

"You mean - "

"We don't need to kill in the future," Bridge says miserably. "We just contain them. I've never – what we did this afternoon – "

He covers his face and tries not to shake. Adam is kind enough not to try and touch him, even indirectly.

"Bridge," he says softly. "What you're feeling is normal. Every ranger gets it after their first kill. Their hundredth kill, even. It's good. It means we're still human."

Bridge's voice is muffled.

"It doesn't change what we did."

The worst part hadn't been seeing what was happening. No, the worst part – the shameful, sneaking, terrible part he can never take back – was once the shock wore off, how easily he fell in with it, how naturally a blow intended to disable became one intended to kill. He is beginning to suspect that this is what rangers were originally designed for, and that the use SPD puts them to is a dilution of their true purpose.

For the first time in years, Bridge doubts his vocation. A psychic as a ranger. An empath as a killer. What could be a worse fit? But then, he's never thought of rangers as killers before.

Beside him, Adam shifts.

"I don't know how to help you," the black ranger says uncomfortably. "Maybe Wes–"

"No."

That would be too close to SPD, too much temptation to nudge history in a kinder direction and inadvertently throw it off altogether.

"I don't understand," Bridge says miserably.

"Understand what?"

"Why you kill them." He probably is risking messing with history right now, but he needs an answer. "I mean you have the technology. You could have adapted it from Time Force, or there was Mesagog a few years back. He could shrink and store things. Or if you didn't want to shrink them, you could just contain them the old fashioned way. Most monsters would have trouble breaking out of a cell, if you took the right precautions –"

"Bridge." Adam's voice stops him more completely than Jack or Sky ever did. Only Doggy has ever managed to sound so bleak and so gentle at the same time. "We're in a war. We don't have the time or the strength to take prisoners, let alone keep them imprisoned."

"Yes, but –"

"Your time." Adam stops, and Bridge wonders what he had intended to say. He continues in a careful voice. "In your time, rangers sound more like law enforcers than soldiers. Would that be a correct assumption?"

"Yes."

"So when you go out onto the field, the monsters you face are criminals. You have a responsibility to protect them, as you would any other citizen. To stop them doing harm, but also to stop harm being done to them. And they, for the most part, probably aren't trying to kill anyone.

"In this time, the monsters aren't trying to steal or vandalise public property. They're invaders, hardened warriors recruited specifically to take over Earth. What they want – what they go out onto the battlefield with the express intent of doing – is to kill us. And for me, there's only one response to that."

Bridge is quiet, thinking. His hair is plastered to his forehead. His skin has cooled down. The mirrors are no longer fogged with steam. He doesn't like the new picture Adam has painted of rangers. Or rather, he doesn't like the picture of rangers Adam has taken and subtly twisted, giving it an entirely different meaning altogether.

"Why do you do it?" He asks finally.

"Some days I don't want to," Adam admits. "There were days there, when I would have done anything not to be the one marching out, when all I wanted was for someone to take this morpher off me and go out in my place."

It's a vain wish, Bridge knows. He's read the histories. The original morphers were keyed into their owners' life force, and the the Sentinel Knight hadn't had time to alter that when he fixed Adam's power coin. The only difference now is that Adam had known exactly what he was getting into this time round.

It doesn't escape Bridge, though, that Adam hasn't really answered his question. So he asks again.

"How do you go out there, knowing what you'll have to do?"

Adam sighs and rubs the back of his neck. He looks suddenly desperately weary.

"Because it's a fight that needs fighting," he says. "Someone needs to stop these guys, and right now, I'm the best person for the job. It's not nice or pretty, but the alternative is much worse."

That they can agree on. Bridge doesn't think he'll ever agree with Adam's methods, or be entirely comfortable with them, but he can understand the reasoning behind them. He can respect the man behind the axe.

"Bridge?" Adam's voice is querying. "What are you thinking?"

"I… I understand. I don't approve. But I understand."

"I need you to do more than that." Adam's eyes are intent. "Bridge, if you're fighting alongside us, I need to know you're in this all the way. I need to know that I can trust you to do what needs to be done."

"I'll fight," Bridge says, stung.

"I know you'll fight. What I need is for you to do is kill."

Bridge drops his gaze to the tiled floor.

"I don't know if I can…"

"The only way you're going to survive that battlefield if you go out there not just willing to kill, but intending to. I need to know you can do that, Bridge, or else I'll ask the Sentinel Knight to find someone who can."

They both know it would be a draining of a power supply that's already depleted. The Sentinel went to incredible trouble to gather up all five rangers and to repair the powers that needed it. Finding one more might well drain him completely. And that's not even considering the danger the team will face while reduced to four members. The choice Adam is offering is no choice at all, and they both know it.

"You don't need to replace me," Bridge says, his voice very low. Adam searches his face, and nods slightly. He doesn't say 'good' or 'thanks' or anything else. Bridge supposes there's nothing you really can say to a man who's just promised to kill for you. He clears his throat and continues. "If I see another way, I can't promise I won't take it. But I will – I will be more aggressive in future. I'll stop holding back."

Adam nods slightly. His hand squeezes Bridge's shoulder and Bridge gets a flash of insight through the touch of skin on skin – complex threads of relief and worry, overlaid by shame and remorse that cuts like a knife. For a moment he is Adam, and he knows that he despises what he's doing. It's distasteful work, turning a boy into a killer, and Bridge is so far out of his time and his place, so gentle, so innocent, so different from any other ranger he's ever met, like meeting someone from the nineties after living through the Blitz. Like living in dirt so long you've forgotten you're dirty. Like fighting a war so long you've forgotten what peace feels like. But Bridge is so clean, so shiny bright, and Adam hates to take that away, and loves it a little at the same time, resents him for being born into an age when he can afford these qualities. Because he can't picture this future that Bridge describes, can't see it as anything but a castle of clouds, a fairy tale, and maybe that's a good thing, because if he really believed in it, it would break his heart –

Adam snatches his hand back.

"Sorry. Shit, I'm sorry. I forgot."

"It's okay, it's okay." Bridge rubs his head and rearranges his mind, identifying those emotions that are Adam's and separating them from his own. Like putting an old housemate's belongings into a box and scrawling their name on it in felt pen. He has a whole garage of these boxes; bits and pieces of other people's lives, stuff that doesn't belong to him, but floats around inside his head, taking up space, and occasionally getting in his way. Adam's just one more box.

He looks up at Adam's worried face and forces a smile.

"I'm fine. It's just a bit worse with rangers. The connection is – stronger. It can be overwhelming, if I'm not prepared. You just startled me, that's all."

"You're sure you okay?"

"I'll survive."

Adam stands and offers Bridge a hand up.

"Why don't you get some pants on and we'll get some dinner? The way the others attacked the table, we'll be lucky if there's anything left at all."

"Okay." Bridge forces a smile. "I'll be there in a minute."

He manages to keep the smile on until Adam leaves the bathroom. He sits there, reflecting on what he'd managed to pick up.

Adam wasn't very different from him once. Bridge had been able to see that much. Once upon a time Adam had been a boy that was gentle and kind and repelled by violence. Martial arts for him then had been about control rather than lashing out, art rather than war. That boy had slowly and steadily faded, worn down by a steady stream of battles until he was nothing more than a nostalgic memory. There were compensations, of course, like love, and confidence, and purpose. But Bridge can't help wondering who that boy would have become if he'd never picked up a morpher.

Bridge closes his eyes and rests his head against the tiles. He has a sudden surge of longing for SPD with it's rules and it's frustrating systems of paperwork and lawyers. He misses perps that whine about their phone calls and cut deals with the DA. He misses the weight of the judgement scanner in his hand and the certainty of always being right.

"I want to go home," he says aloud to the empty walls.

He wishes he'd never come.