A Darker Shade of Red (Time Force/Power Rangers, T, Chapter 3: Fallen Hero)
I woke up too early and my brain won't shut up. Too much on my mind. Mostly not-good things.
So I'm ignoring them all and writing instead.
He'd walked this hall so many times before he could recall every detail of the pictures on its walls from memory. To his immediate left was a picture of the Red Time Force and Quantum Rangers, posed and ready for action. To his right was Wesley Collins and Eric Myers, Myers looking cool and indifferent while Collins slung an arm around his shoulders with a bright grin. After that they separated, keeping Collins to his left and Myers to his right. Pictures of each one throughout their careers, at work or - in Collins' case, at least - relaxing. Something about the separation seemed wrong from the little he knew of them, but it wasn't his place to complain.
At last he reached a side door, almost hidden from view between frames of Eric Myers and the Quantum Ranger. He raised his palm for fingerprint identification, and was admitted. The inside, unlike the well-lit hall, was dark and cold. A box was placed at the far end, hooked up to various medical equipment. There was a chair to one side, and he went to sit in it.
He remained silent, leaning forward to rest his chin on clasped hands. He came here when he needed time and space to think, the only place where he could be really be alone. He could be found in his apartment, but hardly anyone even knew about this room, let alone cared about what it was for.
His body was still protesting the sudden removal of the morpher after only two hours of feeding off it again, and the feeling of withdrawal was making him nauseous. Was he already getting addicted to it again, or had he pulled it off in time? Would he know?
Even in the months he hadn't worn it, when the Red Chrono Morpher was in the past with its owner, he'd still felt strange without it. He was sick and weak, and having that extra source of strength taken away from him left him feeling vulnerable. It had taken too long to heal from his injuries, and he kept wondering if something was wrong with him in all the time he'd spent holed up in that dark room, watching over the Rangers.
The nightmares hadn't helped of course. Remembering his last moments had only affected his dreams for maybe a week. But waking up in the medical wing, surrounded by bright lights and machines and people he didn't know ...
He'd panicked.
The resulting struggle from him trying to escape had led to a couple of months in counseling, where he'd been forced to lie through his teeth about why he'd reacted the way he had. The therapist wasn't someone who knew him or who he really was, so she'd bought his excuses about Ranger instincts kicking in when he woke up in an unfamiliar place. He fed her some lines about Ransik's attack and facing his own death bothering him more than he'd thought, and she'd eaten it up. He suffered through her assurances that his reactions were perfectly normal, that there was nothing to be ashamed of. That he should be proud that his instincts of self-preservation were so strong.
Proud. He snorted. Pride had nothing to do with it. And self-preservation? That wasn't something he'd ever really had. Protecting others ... protecting Ben, and Trip, and eventually Newtech City itself, that was what he knew. But him? He wasn't important.
He sighed, leaning forward as he contemplated the box in front of him. 'Cryogenic containment unit', he corrected himself. Supposed to be keeping him alive or something.
One of the 'doctors' who puttered in and out of here once in awhile to check the equipment had once suggested that he talk, in hopes of waking him up. He knew better, though. *If* Ben was even capable of waking up, of hearing him, he wouldn't want to. A lifetime of sleep was the best reward for the life he'd lived, and Alex wouldn't take that away from him.
There was irony, and a sense of injustice, in the fact that this secret room was so close to the labs that had created them. The labs they had lived in for fifteen years, being pushed to be stronger, faster, smarter, better. Enduring the pain and torture of testing the Morphers over and over again. At night when their only comfort was that they were together - each of them the only person the other could trust.
He could still remember the realization that the Quantum Morpher was hurting him. It had started out with small things, moments of weakness where Ben's strength simply gave out, or sudden flares of what was normally an almost non-existent temper. That had moved on to seizures and violent mood swings, which left one of the scientists pondering if he'd become schizophrenic. His body had begun to fail him after that, suffering massive nerve and tissue damage. The morning Ben had woken up and quietly declared he couldn't feel his legs was the day Alex knew he was losing him.
Not that that had stopped the scientists, of course. To them this was a chance to test the physical boosting capabilities of the morpher, and test it they had. It had proven that it could give the ability to walk to a handicapped person, and they hadn't cared that it left Ben screaming in agony afterwards.
The sound of Ben's screams still haunted Alex's nightmares sometimes. Memories of the sweat on his face, the unbearable pain he could see the other boy suffering. Knowing that no matter how strong or how many painkillers he snuck him each night, they never made it stop.
Morphed, no one could have known the Quantum Ranger was in pain, and *while* he was morphed, he wasn't. He was as strong and fast as the Red Time Force Ranger, and could easily defeat him in combat on a good day. But Ben was becoming addicted to being a Ranger. Morphing took away the pain, and to him, it was worth the excruciating pain afterwards just for that time when he was strong and perfect again. His body decayed faster and faster, until he began begging to morph again. The scientists took it as a sign of a willing patient and pushed him harder, testing to see how long he could hold his Ranger form, and how much pressure and pain it would take to make him lose it.
Alex had been forced to watch him dying, slowly and painfully, and know there was nothing he could do. There was nowhere to escape to, and Ben was in no condition to leave even if there was. Worse than that, he had become so addicted to his morpher that he would have refused to go, too desperate for those moments of painlessness. Nothing else could make him stop hurting, and now there was nothing else he wanted more.
Trip's arrival to their nightmare had been a mixed blessing. With Ben losing his sanity, Alex was alone, and losing himself in the experiments and pain. The price of a companion however, was high. Trip had been another fascination to the scientists, and Alex was forced to watch once again as another friend endured.
Ben finally collapsed one day in the middle of a standard blaster test. The test was nothing new; he and Alex would stand across from each other and fire their blasters until one of them demorphed. The Quantum Defender was far more powerful than his simple Chrono Blaster, and often the scientists would take extra shots with blasters of their own to even the odds. He could never be completely sure, but somehow Alex knew that it was *his* Chrono Blaster that gave the last blow that day.
Ben had gone down and stayed there. There was no screams, no curses, no begging for them to power up the Morpher again. He was just ... gone.
Alex had remained silent as Ben's body was taken away for regenerative stasis, in hopes of bring him out of the coma. He knew Ben wasn't dead, but something in him had just ... shut down at the sight of the body lying so still and cold. It wasn't right. Ben was supposed to smile and boast and ... and ....
Alex shook his head, closing his eyes. It hadn't been until late that night, with Trip trying vainly to comfort him over something the younger boy didn't even know had happened, that he had given in to his tears. That had been the one and only time he'd allowed himself to cry over Ben.
Ben had given his life to the Quantum Morpher project, in all senses of the word. He was born to test that morpher, and he had, right up until the day it killed him. The scientists had fixed the 'glitches' as they'd called them, and had assured Time Force that it was merely a self-induced coma, that he could wake up any time he wanted. Alex honestly doubted it was so simple, and if it *was* self-induced, they might as well just unplug the machines and lay him to rest now: he'd would never wake up of his own choice.
And frankly, Alex didn't want him to.
He had gone on alone, knowing there was nothing else he could do. Time Force had eventually rescued him and Trip from the labs, and he'd taken their offer to join the academy automatically. If he'd been smart enough back then, he would have taken Trip and run as far away from Newtech as he could. But how were a fifteen-year-old lab rat and a thirteen-year-old Xybrian refugee supposed to take care of themselves without any knowledge of how the world worked?
Instead he'd become Time Force's Red Ranger, wondering every time he morphed if today was the day it would start to poison him, the same way the Quantum Morpher had done for Ben. He was still terrified that one day the other Chrono Morphers would start to do the same. He had worked his way through Time Force, trying to achieve greater status for reasons even he couldn‘t define. Maybe because there was nothing else left for him. Being a Ranger and doing what he was told was all he knew.
Trip had been his little brother, his best and only friend along the way, giving him someone to protect. Then there had been Jennifer, his beautiful girlfriend with a charming smile and fierce determination. They had been everything to him, right until the day Ransik tried to kill him.
And then he woke up to find that everyone thought he was dead, that Jen had taken her team and the rest of the Time Force Morphers to the past. That his morpher, that he had fought and bled and nearly lost his *life* for, had been given to Wesley Collins. Perfect, normal Collins, who had no idea what he had gone through because of that morpher. Who would never know how much Alex hated him just for existing, because without Collins, there would never have been a need for the Red Chrono Morpher.
And Jen and Trip and the others had taken him into their lives without a second thought.
It was true that Jen and the other two didn't know what he'd gone through, but Trip *did*. And if it was anyone but Trip, it would hurt even more than it already had. But it *was* Trip, and he knew, when he forced himself to think about it, that Trip had wanted to do what was best for the team and the people they were protecting by trying to bring in Ransik. Alex's own feelings on Collins had never been part of the equation for him.
But that didn't stop Alex from feeling betrayed anyway. Whether or not Trip meant it, or Jen had even known, or Kendall and Walker had known anything about him that wasn't already public knowledge, it still hurt to be replaced. And his one trip to the past, to try and put things back on track before Jen and her team forgot where they were from, what they were truly fighting for, had just driven home the fact that they didn't need him anymore - never had. And now, they didn't even *want* him.
They wanted Collins.
He reached out to the tank, stopping himself moments before touching it and withdrawing his hand. Fifteen years of pain and torture, all for a piece of techno-junk that would be forced on Ben the moment he woke up, just like they'd done to Alex. Time Force couldn't pass up the opportunity for the return of its own Quantum Ranger, after all.
But Ben didn't deserve that. He deserved his hard-won rest, and Alex wouldn't let them take it from him. He'd keep *one* of them safe. Somehow.
Few members of Time Force's officers, even the higher-ups, remembered this room even still existed, let alone the occupant inside that had yet to stir. Some of them had even forgotten the body that had been found when he and Trip had been liberated. That anonymity had been their life long dream, one Alex still longed for. The chance to simply *be*, rather than to exist as the remake of a long-dead hero. With the completion of the Quantum Morpher and Ransik's capture, the world no longer had a need for Benjamin Myers.
He wouldn't let them take that from his brother for anything.
With a sigh, he finally dragged himself to his feet. Hanging around here was only going to put off the inevitable.