A very belated Christmas fic
This is the reason I asked a bunch of friends whether Sky seemed like a waffle kind of guy or not :) A vignette from Sky's mother offers a small glimpse of the Tate family. Rated K.
- -
I pulled into the visitor’s lot at Space Patrol Delta with about as much apprehension as I had expected. I’ve only returned here a handful of times since James’ death, the first time three days after the funeral to resign from SPD’s research and development sector. The memories were too painful to keep walking around those hallways, and I couldn’t take the furtive looks from other people, the empty sympathy from strangers who didn’t really understand what I had lost. I had nothing left there…
And yet, SPD continues to take from my family. The second time I returned was to drop my son off for his new recruit orientation and try not to feel like I was consigning him to death. It was the autumn after his high school graduation, the moment he’d been waiting for his whole life. As a little boy, he’d been determined to follow in his father’s footsteps, and he never once wavered from that path even as he matured. As a lone parent who loved him the world over, and who had to fight to not hold on to him too tightly, who was I to crush his dream? To tell him that I didn’t want him to join SPD-if he’d even listen to me-and that in his insistence on chasing a legacy, he’d forgotten about his father as something other than a Power Ranger. Let the rest of the world remember James Tate, SPD Red Ranger. What mattered to our family was the man who called at bedtime to say goodnight if he was coming home late; the man who taught both Sky and Ari how to slide down the banister despite my explicit disapproval; the man who fell asleep first when putting the kids down and had his badge flushed down the toilet as a result.
My son seemed to have lost those precious memories, and I didn’t realize until too late that perhaps they were too painful for a young boy to keep. Daddy had died, but the Red Ranger couldn’t, not if he could step up to fill that role himself. It was a ghost in the house I could never compete with.
I park next to the only other car in the lot at this time of day, on this particular day. I can’t help but wonder who it belongs to. Another parent with amends to make, perhaps. Another aching mother whose child hadn’t made it home for the holidays. A mother who felt incomplete inside because her nest had seemed empty even before the kids were actually gone. I wonder if she had needed convincing to come here like I had.
The glass and steel atrium is the same as I remember it. My footsteps echo to the ceiling in the absence of other noise from the upper floors. It’s so quiet that the man behind the reception desk jerks to his feet with startled eyes as I approach. I smile and cross all the way to the desk before speaking.
“Merry Christmas, ma’am,” he says with a natural pleasantness that transcends his drowsiness. “How can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Sky Tate,” I reply.
“I’ll have him paged.” He picks up a phone. “Who should I say is looking for him?”
I smile. “His mother.”
He picks up on my humor, and proceeds to call my son.
A few minutes later, a tall form descends the escalator. A tall form in red. I stare at him in surprise, the same way he does me.
“Mom!” He stops in front of me. “What are you doing here? I mean, uh, Merry Christmas. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it home this year but-”
“Merry Christmas,” I interject, and reach out to touch the red stripe on his jacket tentatively. “What is this?”
“I got promoted. I thought Ree said she told you.”
It’s just a color, the red; one out of a whole spectrum, as common as any other; and really, the uniform is completely different. But for a moment, I saw my James. His chin, his eyes, the set of his shoulders. I had just come to remind my son that I love him, and instead, I got another Red Ranger.
“She didn’t tell you?” He looks anxious now because I don’t seem to be excited about his news.
“She must have forgotten.”
And for lack of any other words, I pull him down for a hug. There are some things a mother can’t reveal to her children, like how hurt she really is that neither of them remembered to tell her about something as important as this. Ari’s always been the one to give me general updates over the years, but lately, the phone calls have been even more sparse. I’m not sure if that has to do with her own rise within the Academy, or if she’s simply outgrowing reporting to her mother. She’s always been the more affectionate child-though no less independent than her brother-and so she and I are closer, despite the fact that I know even less about her motivations.
My son hugs me back awkwardly, but instead of immediately pulling away like I expected him to, he holds on until the embrace becomes more sincere. I can’t see his face, but I can sense the effect this small bit of warmth has on him. He hasn’t really welcomed affection since he was a little boy.
“I’ve missed you, sweetheart,” I say, words so true in so many ways.
“Me too.” But it’s more of an automatic reply. He lets go. “But…I thought you were going with Wes and the kids to Aspen.”
“You’re my baby,” I say, which makes him turn a little pink. “And I decided it’s time to stop letting you spend Christmas on your own.”
Actually, it was Wes who reminded me that it’s never too late to remind someone that you love them. We were talking about the twins, but I know he was thinking of someone else. A part of his heart belongs to a woman he knew long ago, the same way James still owns a part of mine. But we’re mutually okay with this. In fact, it’s nice to have someone who understands how that feels.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Sky says. “I don’t mind. Really.”
“Well, I do. I love you, Schuyler, and I thought today was an appropriate day to start acting like it.”
“I know,” he mutters, and blushing an even deeper pink, he adds on, “I love you too.”
I can’t resist a smile. “Am I interrupting anything? I know I should have called, but I didn’t decide to drive out here until late last night. Maybe we could go somewhere off-base, get some breakfast.”
He glances up at the clock on the wall.
“Did you have something planned?” I press. “It’s all right if you did. In fact, I’d be happy to hear it.”
He makes a face. “No. I mean, Jack said he’d stop by at some point, but he never gets up before eleven anyway. Not if he doesn’t have to. Oh, and Ree’s spending Christmas with Kara.”
I nod. “She told me.”
He looks down at his uniform. “I guess I should go change.”
“It might be a nice break.”
We use the lift, where he presses the button for the eighth floor. The first few pass in silence.
“That looks good on you,” I say, appraising the uniform. He smiles, not very modestly. No, my son’s heart hasn’t changed at all.
Another silent pause elapses.
“I’m proud of you.” I don’t remember the last time I told him so. “We haven’t talked much since you started at the Academy, and I wasn’t sure if you…if you knew that.”
What I’d almost said was ‘if you felt like I’d abandoned you.’ But to say it was to admit it, and that was another thing a mother shouldn’t tell her child-that she’d let herself become distant because her children were running straight down the path that their father had died on.
“Thanks, Mom.”
We reach the eighth floor and he waits for me to step out first.
“Did you want a tour or something?” he asks, back to being awkward.
“Maybe later, if there’s time. It doesn’t look like much has changed, anyway.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot that you used to…” He doesn’t finish and shifts uncomfortably.
“It was a long time ago,” I say gently.
He leads me to the cadet common room that adjoins his squad’s personal quarters.
“I’ll be out in a second,” he says, and disappears into one of the sets of silver doors. I get a brief glimpse of red-red stripe on the wall, red futon, red curtains. His room in our old home had never had an overall motif like that.
I explore the common room, and all the little bits of cadet life left about, until he comes back out, dressed in creased trousers and a leather coat. The coat fits him wonderfully, and looks entirely unworn. A flash of mother’s pride fills me when I see how handsome he looks. I ask him when he’d gotten it on the way to the car.
“It was a present,” he says, “from Syd. She wanted to watch me open it, so I opened it early.”
“That was kind of her,” I say, naturally wondering if such an expensive gift has a significance. I touch the sleeve of the jacket. “This is very good leather.”
“She said I needed one,” and rolls his eyes.
“I’m inclined to agree,” I reply with a smile, and pat his elbow. “She has good taste.”
He sees my knowing smile and blushes, turning forward again. I assume that’s all the answer I need. We reach the visitor’s lot and he offers to drive since I’ve come such a long way. I hand him the keys and he opens the door for me.
“Where do you want to go?” he asks after adjusting the driver’s seat.
“Do you still like blueberry waffles?” I ask.
It takes him a moment to realize what I’m referring to, but when he suddenly grins, I know he understands. There’s a small pancake house we use to frequent on James’ days off. The kids had loved it, but we seldom went after his death, and we didn’t go at all after Ari left for Cornell. The place was a reminder of happier times that had ended a long time ago…but maybe it didn’t have to be. Maybe those happier times could be the present instead of the past.
“We should call Ree,” he says.
Maybe it was just me who couldn’t handle the reminder. Maybe I was what had kept our family from healing.
He takes out his morpher, one of the set I’d helped to create so long ago. I look at it-and him-questioningly.
“Oh. Um, Ree’s our trial Green Ranger,” he admits guiltily. “I was supposed to tell you that.”
“Is that how it works now?” I give him the reproving look that is every mother’s prerogative. “We’ll have to work on our communication schemes.”
“Critical communication?” he asks with a faintly mischievous smile. When I don’t follow, he explains, “Morpher use is only for emergencies or critical communication related thereto.”
“I think Ari would find chocolate pancakes fairly critical.”
I sit back as he contacts his sister. Aside from having my family together again, I know I will receive no greater gift today than my son’s genuine smile, lost to me for so many years.
- -
I pulled into the visitor’s lot at Space Patrol Delta with about as much apprehension as I had expected. I’ve only returned here a handful of times since James’ death, the first time three days after the funeral to resign from SPD’s research and development sector. The memories were too painful to keep walking around those hallways, and I couldn’t take the furtive looks from other people, the empty sympathy from strangers who didn’t really understand what I had lost. I had nothing left there…
And yet, SPD continues to take from my family. The second time I returned was to drop my son off for his new recruit orientation and try not to feel like I was consigning him to death. It was the autumn after his high school graduation, the moment he’d been waiting for his whole life. As a little boy, he’d been determined to follow in his father’s footsteps, and he never once wavered from that path even as he matured. As a lone parent who loved him the world over, and who had to fight to not hold on to him too tightly, who was I to crush his dream? To tell him that I didn’t want him to join SPD-if he’d even listen to me-and that in his insistence on chasing a legacy, he’d forgotten about his father as something other than a Power Ranger. Let the rest of the world remember James Tate, SPD Red Ranger. What mattered to our family was the man who called at bedtime to say goodnight if he was coming home late; the man who taught both Sky and Ari how to slide down the banister despite my explicit disapproval; the man who fell asleep first when putting the kids down and had his badge flushed down the toilet as a result.
My son seemed to have lost those precious memories, and I didn’t realize until too late that perhaps they were too painful for a young boy to keep. Daddy had died, but the Red Ranger couldn’t, not if he could step up to fill that role himself. It was a ghost in the house I could never compete with.
I park next to the only other car in the lot at this time of day, on this particular day. I can’t help but wonder who it belongs to. Another parent with amends to make, perhaps. Another aching mother whose child hadn’t made it home for the holidays. A mother who felt incomplete inside because her nest had seemed empty even before the kids were actually gone. I wonder if she had needed convincing to come here like I had.
The glass and steel atrium is the same as I remember it. My footsteps echo to the ceiling in the absence of other noise from the upper floors. It’s so quiet that the man behind the reception desk jerks to his feet with startled eyes as I approach. I smile and cross all the way to the desk before speaking.
“Merry Christmas, ma’am,” he says with a natural pleasantness that transcends his drowsiness. “How can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Sky Tate,” I reply.
“I’ll have him paged.” He picks up a phone. “Who should I say is looking for him?”
I smile. “His mother.”
He picks up on my humor, and proceeds to call my son.
A few minutes later, a tall form descends the escalator. A tall form in red. I stare at him in surprise, the same way he does me.
“Mom!” He stops in front of me. “What are you doing here? I mean, uh, Merry Christmas. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it home this year but-”
“Merry Christmas,” I interject, and reach out to touch the red stripe on his jacket tentatively. “What is this?”
“I got promoted. I thought Ree said she told you.”
It’s just a color, the red; one out of a whole spectrum, as common as any other; and really, the uniform is completely different. But for a moment, I saw my James. His chin, his eyes, the set of his shoulders. I had just come to remind my son that I love him, and instead, I got another Red Ranger.
“She didn’t tell you?” He looks anxious now because I don’t seem to be excited about his news.
“She must have forgotten.”
And for lack of any other words, I pull him down for a hug. There are some things a mother can’t reveal to her children, like how hurt she really is that neither of them remembered to tell her about something as important as this. Ari’s always been the one to give me general updates over the years, but lately, the phone calls have been even more sparse. I’m not sure if that has to do with her own rise within the Academy, or if she’s simply outgrowing reporting to her mother. She’s always been the more affectionate child-though no less independent than her brother-and so she and I are closer, despite the fact that I know even less about her motivations.
My son hugs me back awkwardly, but instead of immediately pulling away like I expected him to, he holds on until the embrace becomes more sincere. I can’t see his face, but I can sense the effect this small bit of warmth has on him. He hasn’t really welcomed affection since he was a little boy.
“I’ve missed you, sweetheart,” I say, words so true in so many ways.
“Me too.” But it’s more of an automatic reply. He lets go. “But…I thought you were going with Wes and the kids to Aspen.”
“You’re my baby,” I say, which makes him turn a little pink. “And I decided it’s time to stop letting you spend Christmas on your own.”
Actually, it was Wes who reminded me that it’s never too late to remind someone that you love them. We were talking about the twins, but I know he was thinking of someone else. A part of his heart belongs to a woman he knew long ago, the same way James still owns a part of mine. But we’re mutually okay with this. In fact, it’s nice to have someone who understands how that feels.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Sky says. “I don’t mind. Really.”
“Well, I do. I love you, Schuyler, and I thought today was an appropriate day to start acting like it.”
“I know,” he mutters, and blushing an even deeper pink, he adds on, “I love you too.”
I can’t resist a smile. “Am I interrupting anything? I know I should have called, but I didn’t decide to drive out here until late last night. Maybe we could go somewhere off-base, get some breakfast.”
He glances up at the clock on the wall.
“Did you have something planned?” I press. “It’s all right if you did. In fact, I’d be happy to hear it.”
He makes a face. “No. I mean, Jack said he’d stop by at some point, but he never gets up before eleven anyway. Not if he doesn’t have to. Oh, and Ree’s spending Christmas with Kara.”
I nod. “She told me.”
He looks down at his uniform. “I guess I should go change.”
“It might be a nice break.”
We use the lift, where he presses the button for the eighth floor. The first few pass in silence.
“That looks good on you,” I say, appraising the uniform. He smiles, not very modestly. No, my son’s heart hasn’t changed at all.
Another silent pause elapses.
“I’m proud of you.” I don’t remember the last time I told him so. “We haven’t talked much since you started at the Academy, and I wasn’t sure if you…if you knew that.”
What I’d almost said was ‘if you felt like I’d abandoned you.’ But to say it was to admit it, and that was another thing a mother shouldn’t tell her child-that she’d let herself become distant because her children were running straight down the path that their father had died on.
“Thanks, Mom.”
We reach the eighth floor and he waits for me to step out first.
“Did you want a tour or something?” he asks, back to being awkward.
“Maybe later, if there’s time. It doesn’t look like much has changed, anyway.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot that you used to…” He doesn’t finish and shifts uncomfortably.
“It was a long time ago,” I say gently.
He leads me to the cadet common room that adjoins his squad’s personal quarters.
“I’ll be out in a second,” he says, and disappears into one of the sets of silver doors. I get a brief glimpse of red-red stripe on the wall, red futon, red curtains. His room in our old home had never had an overall motif like that.
I explore the common room, and all the little bits of cadet life left about, until he comes back out, dressed in creased trousers and a leather coat. The coat fits him wonderfully, and looks entirely unworn. A flash of mother’s pride fills me when I see how handsome he looks. I ask him when he’d gotten it on the way to the car.
“It was a present,” he says, “from Syd. She wanted to watch me open it, so I opened it early.”
“That was kind of her,” I say, naturally wondering if such an expensive gift has a significance. I touch the sleeve of the jacket. “This is very good leather.”
“She said I needed one,” and rolls his eyes.
“I’m inclined to agree,” I reply with a smile, and pat his elbow. “She has good taste.”
He sees my knowing smile and blushes, turning forward again. I assume that’s all the answer I need. We reach the visitor’s lot and he offers to drive since I’ve come such a long way. I hand him the keys and he opens the door for me.
“Where do you want to go?” he asks after adjusting the driver’s seat.
“Do you still like blueberry waffles?” I ask.
It takes him a moment to realize what I’m referring to, but when he suddenly grins, I know he understands. There’s a small pancake house we use to frequent on James’ days off. The kids had loved it, but we seldom went after his death, and we didn’t go at all after Ari left for Cornell. The place was a reminder of happier times that had ended a long time ago…but maybe it didn’t have to be. Maybe those happier times could be the present instead of the past.
“We should call Ree,” he says.
Maybe it was just me who couldn’t handle the reminder. Maybe I was what had kept our family from healing.
He takes out his morpher, one of the set I’d helped to create so long ago. I look at it-and him-questioningly.
“Oh. Um, Ree’s our trial Green Ranger,” he admits guiltily. “I was supposed to tell you that.”
“Is that how it works now?” I give him the reproving look that is every mother’s prerogative. “We’ll have to work on our communication schemes.”
“Critical communication?” he asks with a faintly mischievous smile. When I don’t follow, he explains, “Morpher use is only for emergencies or critical communication related thereto.”
“I think Ari would find chocolate pancakes fairly critical.”
I sit back as he contacts his sister. Aside from having my family together again, I know I will receive no greater gift today than my son’s genuine smile, lost to me for so many years.