"In My Mind" - Bridge Carson/Sky Tate - #10 Fear
Title: In My Mind
Author: shurifanstuffs
Claim: Power Rangers S.P.D.- Bridge Carson/Sky Tate
Table: Do-It-Yourself
Prompt: #10 Fear
Rating: PG for darkness
Summary: An AU version of the episode "Missing", where Bridge is toyed with by Morgana and forced into believing that his friends don't care about him.
Warnings: Implied M/M romance.
Notes: Assumes basic knowledge of S.P.D. characters and canon. Some dialogue and situations were shamelessly cribbed from the episodes A-Bridged, Sam pt. I, Idol, Samurai, Robotpalooza and Missing.
"It's no coincidence that we're all here!" Bridge looked expectantly at his friends, but none of them responded.
"Sorry, man, I think you lost it," said Jack after a moment.
"Nonononono, think about it," Bridge pressed on eagerly. "We all have powers, we're all here… at the Academy… Power Rangers? The odds are astronomical!" He was pleased when Syd seemed to catch on to what he was trying to say.
"Maybe Cruger picked us because we have these powers," she said thoughtfully.
"Yeah, but why the five of us?" Bridge wanted to know.
"...I'm confused," said Syd.
"Hello. Bridge is talking?" Sky smirked.
"Urrrgh..." Bridge rubbed the back of his head where Bork had struck him to knock him out and opened his eyes, looking around fearfully to see that he was imprisoned in a small concrete room. The only light came through a tiny grille in the ceiling. "...Where am I?" He then looked down at his bare hands and gulped- that must be why he'd had such a vivid- dream? Hallucination? Memory? While he was unconscious. The gloves were gone. His powers had no inhibition.
"Bridge..." a voice whispered, and he instinctively took a fighting stance, looking around for the noise. However, there was nothing- and he couldn't detect any people nearby with his powers, either. "Bridge..."
"Who's there?" he cried out, but the voice spoke no more. Shivering involuntarily, Bridge hugged his jacket tighter around himself, then shook his head. OK. Even though his powers were unchecked and his mind was very muddled because of it, he still had to do something. Had to take stock of his position, to figure out what his options were. He began to pace, mulling over what he could do, talking to himself as he did so. He also took a mental note of the sounds he could hear around him- several trains passing by, and a church bell. It wasn't the same as knowing where he was, but he figured knowing this could come in handy later.
"No way out...," he mused, "yet somehow I got in. But I got in. No way out. In... out... in... out... in... out..." He paused, having listened to what he was saying. Outside of his head, it really did sound strange. "You know... I'm beginning to realize how I sound to other people."
"Yes," said the voice. "You sound weird to them..." He jerked around again, using his powers to try and find out what was there- but all he could see was the faint energy signature of Bork throwing him in there, and something else, too faint to make out exactly what it was. The voice seemed to be coming from a different place than before, too. "Your friends don't care that you're here. They think you're silly. They're always laughing at you."
"I... Who are you?!" Bridge demanded, but the voice was silent again. He slumped dejectedly against the wall. Not only was he shut up in this tiny room, but he was hearing voices.
Great.
He was going crazy.
"No, I'm not," he told himself firmly. "I'm NOT hearing voices. Focus." He looked down at his belt to see that his laser had been stolen, but miraculously... "My communicator!" he cried out happily, taking it out. "I can just call for help-" However, when he opened it, it sparked and popped. Pursing his lips, he sat up against the wall. "OK. I can call for help when I fix this." He pulled a flashlight and some small tools out of his jacket pocket and began to repair the morpher, ignoring the growing sense of dread and panic within him. Repairing the morpher was easy, almost automatic- because, of course, at the first opportunity he'd taken his apart and re-assembled it in case of just such an occasion- so much so that his mind began to wander. It kept going back to bad memories again and again, as it often did when he was scared or depressed, and with his powers uninhibited, the memories were very real and very clear.
Bridge knew he was getting a little too into investigating the robbery witness Diane and her dog, but there was something not quite right about it. However, before he could put his finger on it, he felt himself getting jerked up off the ground by his collar, and Jack's irate voice in his ear.
"It's rude to sniff other peoples' dogs without permission!" he said pointedly.
"My bad," said Bridge apologetically to Diane.
"My friend is improperly trained," said Jack, rather condescendingly, Bridge thought. He glanced at Jack, hurt, and he glared back, forcing Bridge to shoot an embarrassed smile at Diane.
"There we go," Bridge heard himself say, and snapped back to reality. His morpher. It was fixed, and now he needed to call for help. That voice had no idea what it was talking about, even though there were times his friends could be-
"Don't bother trying to call. It's fruitless. Nobody will come," said the voice, as though it was reading his mind. Bridge decided to ignore it, steeled himself, stood up and called Jack.
"Jack? Are you there? Jack, can you read me?" He felt a rush of relief to quell his panic when Jack answered, though his doubts and fear didn't completely go away.
"Bridge! You're alright! Where are you?" Jack responded. Well, at least he was concerned... or sounded it, anyway.
"In a room," said Bridge, some of his panic returning when he remembered that he had no idea where he was or how to tell Jack to find him.
"Could you be a little more specific?" Jack asked.
"I'm afraid not," Bridge replied. OK. He had to describe his surroundings. However, it was difficult- because not only did his thoughts wander further when he was nervous and scared, his speech did the exact same thing, so he rambled even more. "There's a small grille in the ceiling, but no windows and no doors. If there was a door, I could just walk through it, and if there was a window, I could just-"
"I get the point," Jack interrupted, and Bridge felt a tiny stab of pain in his heart, like he did every time this happened. "You've gotta give me something. Anything."
"Let's see… I've heard a few sounds since I've been here," said Bridge, forcing himself to focus. He was going to be getting a way out. Of course he would. "Okay… there's a church bell," he relayed, "and the sound of a train. Then another train, then another train, then another train, then another train and a…"
"Bridge," said Jack impatiently, and Bridge actually swore to himself for his rambling habit this time. "Newtech City train station. Near a church."
"I also heard a foghorn," Bridge added, vaguely remembering it from when he was fixing his morpher. "And the sound of a buzzer."
"OK. Train station, church bell, foghorn, buzzer. That's a start," said Jack. "Hang in there, buddy, I'm gonna find you. Call me back if you hear or see anything else, alright?"
"Sure," said Bridge, hanging up and leaning against the wall, closing his eyes, breathing heavily. "So... you called me 'improperly trained' and now all of a sudden I'm your buddy?" He hadn't realized he'd spoken that aloud until the unknown voice replied.
"You see what I mean? Your friends don't really care about you..."
"Yes, they do!" said Bridge vehemently, fully aware that he was speaking to thin air for all he knew. "Who are you, anyway? Why are you doing this to me?!"
"They really don't care," the voice simpered. "Even just now, before you got here, they were treating you like you were an idiot. Shaking their heads... sighing... acting like you were being a nuisance when you were only trying to help..."
"No... that's just..."
"How they usually act toward you?" Bridge swallowed hard, tears suddenly stinging his eyes. He sank back down to the floor, and though the voice didn't speak again, it didn't need to, as another brief memory flashed in his mind. Downtown, after the defeat of "Diane", who in reality had been an alien bank robber, unmasked by his detective work.
"Then there was the breath in my balloon. Pure oxygen. Not carbon dioxide, which would only make sense if she was a plant, which she was." He turned around triumphantly. "Then there was the… where’s everybody gone?!" His friends had all left during his explanation, and he was alone.
"They do care," Bridge told himself, but the more he thought about it, the more it didn't really seem like it. He stood up, arms hanging limply at his sides, eyes downcast. "No. It can't be true. They DO care about me... otherwise, how could we have gotten this far as a team?" He was startled when he felt something hard press against his back, turning to see that the wall was rapidly closing in on him. "... Uh-oh."
* * *
Aboard Emperor Gruumm's ship, Morgana watched what was happening on her viewscreen with purely evil delight. The Green Ranger was trapped inside his cell, trying to push back the rapidly-advancing wall, and as the camera zoomed in, she could see the faraway look in his eyes.
She was the one who had instructed Bork to remove the gloves from the Ranger's hands, knowing about his powers and how this would affect him. She had then used a remote-controlled speaker and camera to toy with him, whispering to him that his fellow Rangers weren't going to come for him, in order to demoralize him. After all, distracting him would mean he couldn't think of ways to escape- and those Rangers always did escape...
It worked far better than she could have hoped. She could see the self-doubt on his face, hear it in the tone of his voice, see it in the way he trembled every time she spoke to him.
"This is FANTASTIC," she gushed to Cindy Sunshine. "Even if he does manage to get out of there somehow, he's not going to be the same." Cindy Sunshine was, as usual, silent, but Morgana imagined that she told her how purely, brilliantly evil she was.
"Morgana!" Gruumm shouted, and she hid a derisive snort as the Emperor entered her chamber. "I thought you were going to go down there and destroy the Green Ranger for me!"
"I am doing so much more, Emperor," Morgana simpered. "Ever since he woke up, I've been whispering to him that his other little friends think he's worthless and that he won't be rescued. He's starting to believe it. Look at him- he's barely struggling against that wall!"
"And what good will that do?" Gruumm asked impatiently. "What is wrong with simply leaving him there to be crushed?" Morgana was about to snap back at him before remembering that she had to stay on his good side.
"Why, I've planted the seed of doubt, sire!" she said with her most winning smile. "If the others do manage to rescue him, he's never going to trust them again!" Morgana braced herself, as it seemed for a moment as though Gruumm was going to yell at her, but he relaxed, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
"Internal strife," he mused, more to himself than her. "Making him their weak link. If the Rangers have even one of their number unsure of himself, the rest of the team could fall apart. That's always how those humans are. Excellent, Morgana. Keep up the good work."
Morgana held back a delighted squeal and simply nodded to her Emperor. When he'd left, she cracked her knuckles, picked up the controls of the remote speaker, and pondered what to say next.
* * *
Bridge's life was flashing before his eyes as the wall loomed ever closer, pushing weakly with his arms, as he now didn't even have enough room left to sit down. He saw a few good moments, but they were interspersed with many more bad memories. More and more of his friends mocking him, making him feel irrelevant, or crazy...
"I've got it!" said Bridge, finally able to clearly sort out Z's thoughts from the many trying to force their way into his brain. "...You're thinking that I've lost it, right?"
"I was thinking that, too," said Sky, shaking his head.
"Me three," said Syd dismissively.
"That's right, Bridge... it will all be over soon..."
"And how is it you've fought five and everyone else here fought two?" Commander Cruger asked severely. Behind him, Bridge could see Sky wince and heard him quite clearly say,
"Don't answer, Bridge..." However, this was too important to let slide. Those dreams had to mean something.
"Dream-fighting, sir," he said firmly.
"He answered," the girls groaned at each other.
"Why don't you stop struggling? That's right..." At that moment, Bridge was startled by a shout, a familiar voice, a white-gloved hand reaching down to him.
"Bridge! Take my hand!" Bridge looked up at Jack, feeling as though he were in a haze. "Come on, that wall's gonna crush you! COME ON!" Bridge experienced one very brief moment of hesitation before he finally did reach up and allow Jack to pull him out, but he remained silent, feeling extremely drained.
Jack had saved him.
Well, he guessed his friends couldn't very well let him die...
No. They weren't his friends. The voice... maybe it was his own head, maybe someone who knew better... whichever it was, it didn't matter. It was right.
His friends didn't really care.
* * *
Bridge wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to make it through the final fight against Bork. Maybe it was the knowledge that his kidnapper was being brought to justice. Maybe it was knowing that, even though his friends really didn't care, he was still part of their team, and if he ducked out now, innocent people could have gotten hurt or killed.
Whatever the reason was, he managed to shake the others off from swarming around him and fussing by saying he was tired, sore, and simply wanted to go to bed. Which was true enough- but more than anything, he wanted to be alone. For one of the few times in his life, he wanted to be by himself- with nothing else around. Quite unlike himself... but then again, it wasn't every day that one realized that one's friends weren't really their friends.
He did want comfort. He wanted someone to care. He wanted to feel loved.
But nobody here could provide that.
He could sense that they were sorry, at least. That they wanted to find some way to get through to him. That they were worried.
"And it only took me almost dying for them to feel like that," Bridge mumbled to himself.
With that statement, something within him seem to break, and before he knew what was happening, he was hugging his pillow and crying himself to sleep. The painkillers and sedatives that Dr. Felix had dosed him with soon took effect, and instead of consoling him, sleep made Bridge feel worse.
Because with sleep came dreams.
Bridge fell back behind the others, gritting his teeth as he watched the others swarming around Sky and the newly-returned Dru.
He knew that something was up. Something had to be. Dru had been missing for over a year and had come back... and nobody had been notified? He hadn't even bothered to contact Sky, the guy he was now telling the others was like his brother?
But Bridge knew that it would be useless to mention his suspicions to Jack, Syd or Z, much less Sky. The others all seemed enamored with him, except perhaps Jack, and of course, Sky would never stand for a word spoken against Dru. It didn't help, of course, that Dru had been one of the few people Bridge did not get along with at all, and Sky knew it.
So instead, Bridge sat back on a couch in the rec room, playing a video game and doing his best to ignore Dru's voice.
Bridge awoke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, panting, and turned over. He sighed heavily when a sparkling ball quickly floated out of the room, knowing that Sam had probably been watching him ever since he'd fallen asleep. Sky lay with his back to him, still fast asleep. Bridge swung his legs over the edge of the bed, sitting and watching him for a while.
I considered you my best friend, he thought as he got up. My best friend, and all this time, I was totally blind to how much you actually didn't like me. How much you thought I was weird. How often you made me feel like crap. Bridge slipped into his uniform shoes and exited the room. Where he was wandering to, he didn't know, but right how, he didn't want to be around Sky, even if the other man was asleep.
What am I going to do now?
* * *
The other Rangers were mystified and hurt when Bridge seemed to be pulling away from their attempts at comforting him, or even checking on him after the harrowing rescue from the death trap he'd been placed in. He seemed to be unusually quiet and withdrawn over the next few days; he often didn't show up at normal mealtimes, and spent a lot of time shut up alone in the lab or his bedroom, working on some invention or other. Not knowing why he was acting that way, and because they could barely get a word out of Bridge every time they tried to talk to him, Jack, Sky, Z, Syd and Sam finally sought advice from Kat.
"He went through a very traumatic experience," she'd told them. "I'm not surprised that he's been acting like this. Give him some time to open up and talk about it; we will intervene if he doesn't seem to be getting any better after a long time, but right now, we can't pressure him to talk about it if he's not ready."
"I know Kat said that, but I'm still worried," said Jack as the others went to the rec room to eat that night, but any further conversation was cut short when, much to their surprise, they saw Bridge at their usual table, seemingly waiting for them and picking at his meal.
"Hey, buddy," Sky said, smiling at him before going over to the synthesizer to make his own dinner. "Are you feeling better?"
"I guess," said Bridge, though he still sounded morose. The meal passed in awkward silence, broken up only by small talk which quickly died down.
"So," Jack finally said, "what is it you've been working on in the lab anyway, Bridge?"
"Why do you want to know?" Bridge asked snippily, and Jack furrowed his eyebrows, taken aback.
"I was just asking. No need to snap at me," he said with a hint of anger. Bridge said nothing more and poked at his spaghetti some more before excusing himself, taking his plate off to the matter recycler and leaving without another word. Sam hovered anxiously in midair for a moment before following him at a distance.
"I'll come get you guys if he wants you," Sam assured the others.
"What's the MATTER with Bridge?" Z asked hotly after he, too, had disappeared. "If you ask me, he's being overdramatic about this whole thing.
"Come on, be fair, we don't know much of what happened to him," said Syd fairly. "Jack said his gloves were off, right? There's no telling what it made him see..."
"Still no excuse for rudeness," Z mumbled, but she no longer sounded angry.
"I just wish he'd talk to us," said Sky.
"Tell me about it," said Jack. "Still, you know we've been ordered to butt out until he's ready, so..."
However, Sky couldn't stop thinking about Bridge as the rest of the day slowly wore on and he showed no signs of wanting to communicate. Bridge, as the others often pointed out when they talked about him (there had rarely been a different subject of conversation at mealtimes since that day), was acting completely out-of-character. He tended to babble more than usual when depressed- and Sky could never remember him snapping at someone the way he just had at Jack.
Finally, he vowed to talk to Bridge and try and get something out of him that very night. After all, he very well couldn't avoid their dorm room entirely... When he came in for the night, though, he was disappointed to see that Bridge was fast asleep, snoring. Sky frowned and briefly thought about going to wake him, but shook his head, changed into his pajamas, and went to bed himself, his mind churning as he drifted off. He hated seeing his best friend like that and wanted to reach out to him... but they had been ordered to give him space...
Sky jerked awake unexpectedly, groaning and rolling over at once- only to find that Bridge wasn't in his bed. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he glanced at his clock, which read 2:37 A.M.
That woke him fully. Something was definitely wrong. Bridge shouldn't have been out of his bunk at that hour. Sky quietly left the room, walking through the empty base and checking all of the usual spots, even though he knew good and well that there was no good reason for him to be in any of them in the middle of the night. No Bridge when he passed through the rec room. No Bridge in the lab. No Bridge in Delta Command. Finally, Sky was about to give up and go back to bed, lest he get spotted and get in trouble himself, when he thought he heard someone crying, and the whimpering of a dog.
Listening intently, Sky located the source of the sound- a nearby conference room. Sky went up to the door, only to find that it was locked, so he said very clearly,
"Lock override, authorization code S-T-0-3-7-5."
"Acknowledged," said the computer, and the doors slid open to reveal that Bridge was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. R.I.C. was with him, and nuzzled him softly when he turned to look at Sky and fresh tears flowed.
"Bridge," said Sky, feeling his heart sink.
"Go away."
"... What?"
"Go away, Sky. ...Please."
"Why?" Sky demanded, stepping in, the door sliding shut behind him. "I think it's time you stopped hiding and talked to us. You are doing yourself no good whatsoever by pushing us away. Believe me, I've been there." Bridge opened his mouth, then turned away from Sky.
"No, I don't need to talk to you guys."
"Why NOT?" Sky demanded, feeling a prickle of anger. Bridge finally stood up, his body trembling, before he turned to Sky and suddenly burst out,
"You don't care about me, so stop pretending like you do, alright?!" Sky's mouth fell open as he absorbed that statement, and he actually took a step back, feeling as though he'd been slapped. Bridge, however, took no notice and plopped back down, putting his arms around R.I.C., who whined loudly as he looked from Bridge to Sky and back.
"...How could you say something like that?" Sky finally asked in a whisper after he'd found his voice. "How COULD YOU?" He felt a strange mixture of emotion rising within him- sadness, anger both at himself and at Bridge, confusion... "How... how could you?" he demanded a third time, unable to form any other words. Bridge didn't move to respond, just crossed his arms, hugging his knees to his chest. Sky stood there, his mind reeling, before he heard a whine, felt a nudge on the back of his leg. He allowed R.I.C. to lead him over to Bridge and sat down next to him. He turned away, but didn't make any move to leave. Sky felt that this, at least, was a bit of a good sign...
The two sat in an uncomfortable silence for quite a while. Bridge kept sniffling, wiping his eyes on his pajama sleeve, and Sky kept staring at him, wondering what could possibly have made him feel that way, and even more importantly, wondering what on Earth he could do or say to make things right.
"Talk to me, little buddy," he finally said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. "I don't know what on Earth could have made you think that, but..." Bridge looked over at him, but still didn't speak. "Look. I don't know what happened in that cell. But you have to believe me- we DO care about you. All of us do."
"Sure," Bridge mumbled. "You care about me so much that you're always making fun of me. Always making me feel like I'm nothing more than an annoyance to you guys. You never listen when I see things with my powers... even after whatever I see comes true." Sky buried his face in his hands, for some reason feeling like he was about to start crying, too.
"...I don't really know what to say to that..." He felt a few tears leak out, then jumped when he felt a hand placed on his shoulder, and looked over to see Bridge looking into his eyes... and Bridge's bare hand on his skin. He thought he could feel an immense sadness coming from him in return. "...What... what are you doing?"
"...You..." He hesitated, then said in a barely audible whisper, "...you do care... don't you?"
"Of course I do!" said Sky hastily as Bridge replaced his glove, feeling an immense weight of guilt in the pit of his stomach. "I... I don't always show it in the best way, but..."
"I know you're sorry." Sky's head began swimming.
Bridge thought the others didn't care about him.
And, Sky thought with another huge stab of guilt, thinking about it, he had pretty good reasons to feel that way too...
"... Sky..." With an effort, he looked into Bridge's eyes again, from which tears were falling once more, and the two of them could say no more.... but Bridge did lean against Sky, and Sky put his arms around him in return, simply held Bridge, unable to think of anything else to do or say to reassure him, to show him that he and the others did care, a tear or two leaking from his own eyes. He continued to hold Bridge even when R.I.C. led a very confused Jack, Z, Syd and Sam into the conference room they occupied, his mind in a fog, time feeling like it was slipping away from him. He let go briefly when the story came out in-between sobs, when lots more tears fell, when they got up and walked back through the base- then Bridge was suddenly there in his arms again when the two of them finally went back to bed.
He held Bridge even when Jack, Syd and Z came barging in, laden with blankets and pillows, insisting on staying with him for the rest of the night.
He still held Bridge while the others finally rearranged themselves- when Sky had insisted that Syd take his bed, when Jack and Z had fallen asleep together on the floor, when Bridge had finally fallen asleep, and when he, Sky, felt his eyelids getting heavy as well...
* * *
Bridge felt very warm when he slowly began to stir awake. He half thought that the previous night had been a dream or some other hallucination, because it had seemed so surreal. One moment, he was thinking about leaving S.P.D. because he was so sure that nobody there loved him, then the next Sky was there, and then he was hugging Bridge and it felt so GOOD... and the others were there, and Bridge read them with his powers, knew he'd made a horrible mistake...
His eyes fluttered open, and he immediately knew why he was so warm. He was still draped across Sky's body, and the larger man's arms were still wrapped protectively around him.
Bridge then took a moment to look around at the others.
While he still didn't feel quite right, he couldn't help but feel a surge of affection for them as his eyes traveled over Syd, curled up with her stuffed elephant Peanuts... at Sam, who was oddly still and was perhaps asleep, if sparkleballs even could sleep... and at Jack and Z, a tangle of limbs and brown hair on the floor.
He allowed himself a small smile as he adjusted himself so that he was more comfortable. Sky grunted in response, wrapped his arms tighter, so Bridge relaxed.
For now... even though he still wasn't quite right... even though he knew it would take a long time before he fully recovered from his ordeal...
For now, Bridge felt loved.
(Cross-posted to shurifanstuffs)
Author: shurifanstuffs
Claim: Power Rangers S.P.D.- Bridge Carson/Sky Tate
Table: Do-It-Yourself
Prompt: #10 Fear
Rating: PG for darkness
Summary: An AU version of the episode "Missing", where Bridge is toyed with by Morgana and forced into believing that his friends don't care about him.
Warnings: Implied M/M romance.
Notes: Assumes basic knowledge of S.P.D. characters and canon. Some dialogue and situations were shamelessly cribbed from the episodes A-Bridged, Sam pt. I, Idol, Samurai, Robotpalooza and Missing.
"It's no coincidence that we're all here!" Bridge looked expectantly at his friends, but none of them responded.
"Sorry, man, I think you lost it," said Jack after a moment.
"Nonononono, think about it," Bridge pressed on eagerly. "We all have powers, we're all here… at the Academy… Power Rangers? The odds are astronomical!" He was pleased when Syd seemed to catch on to what he was trying to say.
"Maybe Cruger picked us because we have these powers," she said thoughtfully.
"Yeah, but why the five of us?" Bridge wanted to know.
"...I'm confused," said Syd.
"Hello. Bridge is talking?" Sky smirked.
"Urrrgh..." Bridge rubbed the back of his head where Bork had struck him to knock him out and opened his eyes, looking around fearfully to see that he was imprisoned in a small concrete room. The only light came through a tiny grille in the ceiling. "...Where am I?" He then looked down at his bare hands and gulped- that must be why he'd had such a vivid- dream? Hallucination? Memory? While he was unconscious. The gloves were gone. His powers had no inhibition.
"Bridge..." a voice whispered, and he instinctively took a fighting stance, looking around for the noise. However, there was nothing- and he couldn't detect any people nearby with his powers, either. "Bridge..."
"Who's there?" he cried out, but the voice spoke no more. Shivering involuntarily, Bridge hugged his jacket tighter around himself, then shook his head. OK. Even though his powers were unchecked and his mind was very muddled because of it, he still had to do something. Had to take stock of his position, to figure out what his options were. He began to pace, mulling over what he could do, talking to himself as he did so. He also took a mental note of the sounds he could hear around him- several trains passing by, and a church bell. It wasn't the same as knowing where he was, but he figured knowing this could come in handy later.
"No way out...," he mused, "yet somehow I got in. But I got in. No way out. In... out... in... out... in... out..." He paused, having listened to what he was saying. Outside of his head, it really did sound strange. "You know... I'm beginning to realize how I sound to other people."
"Yes," said the voice. "You sound weird to them..." He jerked around again, using his powers to try and find out what was there- but all he could see was the faint energy signature of Bork throwing him in there, and something else, too faint to make out exactly what it was. The voice seemed to be coming from a different place than before, too. "Your friends don't care that you're here. They think you're silly. They're always laughing at you."
"I... Who are you?!" Bridge demanded, but the voice was silent again. He slumped dejectedly against the wall. Not only was he shut up in this tiny room, but he was hearing voices.
Great.
He was going crazy.
"No, I'm not," he told himself firmly. "I'm NOT hearing voices. Focus." He looked down at his belt to see that his laser had been stolen, but miraculously... "My communicator!" he cried out happily, taking it out. "I can just call for help-" However, when he opened it, it sparked and popped. Pursing his lips, he sat up against the wall. "OK. I can call for help when I fix this." He pulled a flashlight and some small tools out of his jacket pocket and began to repair the morpher, ignoring the growing sense of dread and panic within him. Repairing the morpher was easy, almost automatic- because, of course, at the first opportunity he'd taken his apart and re-assembled it in case of just such an occasion- so much so that his mind began to wander. It kept going back to bad memories again and again, as it often did when he was scared or depressed, and with his powers uninhibited, the memories were very real and very clear.
Bridge knew he was getting a little too into investigating the robbery witness Diane and her dog, but there was something not quite right about it. However, before he could put his finger on it, he felt himself getting jerked up off the ground by his collar, and Jack's irate voice in his ear.
"It's rude to sniff other peoples' dogs without permission!" he said pointedly.
"My bad," said Bridge apologetically to Diane.
"My friend is improperly trained," said Jack, rather condescendingly, Bridge thought. He glanced at Jack, hurt, and he glared back, forcing Bridge to shoot an embarrassed smile at Diane.
"There we go," Bridge heard himself say, and snapped back to reality. His morpher. It was fixed, and now he needed to call for help. That voice had no idea what it was talking about, even though there were times his friends could be-
"Don't bother trying to call. It's fruitless. Nobody will come," said the voice, as though it was reading his mind. Bridge decided to ignore it, steeled himself, stood up and called Jack.
"Jack? Are you there? Jack, can you read me?" He felt a rush of relief to quell his panic when Jack answered, though his doubts and fear didn't completely go away.
"Bridge! You're alright! Where are you?" Jack responded. Well, at least he was concerned... or sounded it, anyway.
"In a room," said Bridge, some of his panic returning when he remembered that he had no idea where he was or how to tell Jack to find him.
"Could you be a little more specific?" Jack asked.
"I'm afraid not," Bridge replied. OK. He had to describe his surroundings. However, it was difficult- because not only did his thoughts wander further when he was nervous and scared, his speech did the exact same thing, so he rambled even more. "There's a small grille in the ceiling, but no windows and no doors. If there was a door, I could just walk through it, and if there was a window, I could just-"
"I get the point," Jack interrupted, and Bridge felt a tiny stab of pain in his heart, like he did every time this happened. "You've gotta give me something. Anything."
"Let's see… I've heard a few sounds since I've been here," said Bridge, forcing himself to focus. He was going to be getting a way out. Of course he would. "Okay… there's a church bell," he relayed, "and the sound of a train. Then another train, then another train, then another train, then another train and a…"
"Bridge," said Jack impatiently, and Bridge actually swore to himself for his rambling habit this time. "Newtech City train station. Near a church."
"I also heard a foghorn," Bridge added, vaguely remembering it from when he was fixing his morpher. "And the sound of a buzzer."
"OK. Train station, church bell, foghorn, buzzer. That's a start," said Jack. "Hang in there, buddy, I'm gonna find you. Call me back if you hear or see anything else, alright?"
"Sure," said Bridge, hanging up and leaning against the wall, closing his eyes, breathing heavily. "So... you called me 'improperly trained' and now all of a sudden I'm your buddy?" He hadn't realized he'd spoken that aloud until the unknown voice replied.
"You see what I mean? Your friends don't really care about you..."
"Yes, they do!" said Bridge vehemently, fully aware that he was speaking to thin air for all he knew. "Who are you, anyway? Why are you doing this to me?!"
"They really don't care," the voice simpered. "Even just now, before you got here, they were treating you like you were an idiot. Shaking their heads... sighing... acting like you were being a nuisance when you were only trying to help..."
"No... that's just..."
"How they usually act toward you?" Bridge swallowed hard, tears suddenly stinging his eyes. He sank back down to the floor, and though the voice didn't speak again, it didn't need to, as another brief memory flashed in his mind. Downtown, after the defeat of "Diane", who in reality had been an alien bank robber, unmasked by his detective work.
"Then there was the breath in my balloon. Pure oxygen. Not carbon dioxide, which would only make sense if she was a plant, which she was." He turned around triumphantly. "Then there was the… where’s everybody gone?!" His friends had all left during his explanation, and he was alone.
"They do care," Bridge told himself, but the more he thought about it, the more it didn't really seem like it. He stood up, arms hanging limply at his sides, eyes downcast. "No. It can't be true. They DO care about me... otherwise, how could we have gotten this far as a team?" He was startled when he felt something hard press against his back, turning to see that the wall was rapidly closing in on him. "... Uh-oh."
* * *
Aboard Emperor Gruumm's ship, Morgana watched what was happening on her viewscreen with purely evil delight. The Green Ranger was trapped inside his cell, trying to push back the rapidly-advancing wall, and as the camera zoomed in, she could see the faraway look in his eyes.
She was the one who had instructed Bork to remove the gloves from the Ranger's hands, knowing about his powers and how this would affect him. She had then used a remote-controlled speaker and camera to toy with him, whispering to him that his fellow Rangers weren't going to come for him, in order to demoralize him. After all, distracting him would mean he couldn't think of ways to escape- and those Rangers always did escape...
It worked far better than she could have hoped. She could see the self-doubt on his face, hear it in the tone of his voice, see it in the way he trembled every time she spoke to him.
"This is FANTASTIC," she gushed to Cindy Sunshine. "Even if he does manage to get out of there somehow, he's not going to be the same." Cindy Sunshine was, as usual, silent, but Morgana imagined that she told her how purely, brilliantly evil she was.
"Morgana!" Gruumm shouted, and she hid a derisive snort as the Emperor entered her chamber. "I thought you were going to go down there and destroy the Green Ranger for me!"
"I am doing so much more, Emperor," Morgana simpered. "Ever since he woke up, I've been whispering to him that his other little friends think he's worthless and that he won't be rescued. He's starting to believe it. Look at him- he's barely struggling against that wall!"
"And what good will that do?" Gruumm asked impatiently. "What is wrong with simply leaving him there to be crushed?" Morgana was about to snap back at him before remembering that she had to stay on his good side.
"Why, I've planted the seed of doubt, sire!" she said with her most winning smile. "If the others do manage to rescue him, he's never going to trust them again!" Morgana braced herself, as it seemed for a moment as though Gruumm was going to yell at her, but he relaxed, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
"Internal strife," he mused, more to himself than her. "Making him their weak link. If the Rangers have even one of their number unsure of himself, the rest of the team could fall apart. That's always how those humans are. Excellent, Morgana. Keep up the good work."
Morgana held back a delighted squeal and simply nodded to her Emperor. When he'd left, she cracked her knuckles, picked up the controls of the remote speaker, and pondered what to say next.
* * *
Bridge's life was flashing before his eyes as the wall loomed ever closer, pushing weakly with his arms, as he now didn't even have enough room left to sit down. He saw a few good moments, but they were interspersed with many more bad memories. More and more of his friends mocking him, making him feel irrelevant, or crazy...
"I've got it!" said Bridge, finally able to clearly sort out Z's thoughts from the many trying to force their way into his brain. "...You're thinking that I've lost it, right?"
"I was thinking that, too," said Sky, shaking his head.
"Me three," said Syd dismissively.
"That's right, Bridge... it will all be over soon..."
"And how is it you've fought five and everyone else here fought two?" Commander Cruger asked severely. Behind him, Bridge could see Sky wince and heard him quite clearly say,
"Don't answer, Bridge..." However, this was too important to let slide. Those dreams had to mean something.
"Dream-fighting, sir," he said firmly.
"He answered," the girls groaned at each other.
"Why don't you stop struggling? That's right..." At that moment, Bridge was startled by a shout, a familiar voice, a white-gloved hand reaching down to him.
"Bridge! Take my hand!" Bridge looked up at Jack, feeling as though he were in a haze. "Come on, that wall's gonna crush you! COME ON!" Bridge experienced one very brief moment of hesitation before he finally did reach up and allow Jack to pull him out, but he remained silent, feeling extremely drained.
Jack had saved him.
Well, he guessed his friends couldn't very well let him die...
No. They weren't his friends. The voice... maybe it was his own head, maybe someone who knew better... whichever it was, it didn't matter. It was right.
His friends didn't really care.
* * *
Bridge wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to make it through the final fight against Bork. Maybe it was the knowledge that his kidnapper was being brought to justice. Maybe it was knowing that, even though his friends really didn't care, he was still part of their team, and if he ducked out now, innocent people could have gotten hurt or killed.
Whatever the reason was, he managed to shake the others off from swarming around him and fussing by saying he was tired, sore, and simply wanted to go to bed. Which was true enough- but more than anything, he wanted to be alone. For one of the few times in his life, he wanted to be by himself- with nothing else around. Quite unlike himself... but then again, it wasn't every day that one realized that one's friends weren't really their friends.
He did want comfort. He wanted someone to care. He wanted to feel loved.
But nobody here could provide that.
He could sense that they were sorry, at least. That they wanted to find some way to get through to him. That they were worried.
"And it only took me almost dying for them to feel like that," Bridge mumbled to himself.
With that statement, something within him seem to break, and before he knew what was happening, he was hugging his pillow and crying himself to sleep. The painkillers and sedatives that Dr. Felix had dosed him with soon took effect, and instead of consoling him, sleep made Bridge feel worse.
Because with sleep came dreams.
Bridge fell back behind the others, gritting his teeth as he watched the others swarming around Sky and the newly-returned Dru.
He knew that something was up. Something had to be. Dru had been missing for over a year and had come back... and nobody had been notified? He hadn't even bothered to contact Sky, the guy he was now telling the others was like his brother?
But Bridge knew that it would be useless to mention his suspicions to Jack, Syd or Z, much less Sky. The others all seemed enamored with him, except perhaps Jack, and of course, Sky would never stand for a word spoken against Dru. It didn't help, of course, that Dru had been one of the few people Bridge did not get along with at all, and Sky knew it.
So instead, Bridge sat back on a couch in the rec room, playing a video game and doing his best to ignore Dru's voice.
Bridge awoke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, panting, and turned over. He sighed heavily when a sparkling ball quickly floated out of the room, knowing that Sam had probably been watching him ever since he'd fallen asleep. Sky lay with his back to him, still fast asleep. Bridge swung his legs over the edge of the bed, sitting and watching him for a while.
I considered you my best friend, he thought as he got up. My best friend, and all this time, I was totally blind to how much you actually didn't like me. How much you thought I was weird. How often you made me feel like crap. Bridge slipped into his uniform shoes and exited the room. Where he was wandering to, he didn't know, but right how, he didn't want to be around Sky, even if the other man was asleep.
What am I going to do now?
* * *
The other Rangers were mystified and hurt when Bridge seemed to be pulling away from their attempts at comforting him, or even checking on him after the harrowing rescue from the death trap he'd been placed in. He seemed to be unusually quiet and withdrawn over the next few days; he often didn't show up at normal mealtimes, and spent a lot of time shut up alone in the lab or his bedroom, working on some invention or other. Not knowing why he was acting that way, and because they could barely get a word out of Bridge every time they tried to talk to him, Jack, Sky, Z, Syd and Sam finally sought advice from Kat.
"He went through a very traumatic experience," she'd told them. "I'm not surprised that he's been acting like this. Give him some time to open up and talk about it; we will intervene if he doesn't seem to be getting any better after a long time, but right now, we can't pressure him to talk about it if he's not ready."
"I know Kat said that, but I'm still worried," said Jack as the others went to the rec room to eat that night, but any further conversation was cut short when, much to their surprise, they saw Bridge at their usual table, seemingly waiting for them and picking at his meal.
"Hey, buddy," Sky said, smiling at him before going over to the synthesizer to make his own dinner. "Are you feeling better?"
"I guess," said Bridge, though he still sounded morose. The meal passed in awkward silence, broken up only by small talk which quickly died down.
"So," Jack finally said, "what is it you've been working on in the lab anyway, Bridge?"
"Why do you want to know?" Bridge asked snippily, and Jack furrowed his eyebrows, taken aback.
"I was just asking. No need to snap at me," he said with a hint of anger. Bridge said nothing more and poked at his spaghetti some more before excusing himself, taking his plate off to the matter recycler and leaving without another word. Sam hovered anxiously in midair for a moment before following him at a distance.
"I'll come get you guys if he wants you," Sam assured the others.
"What's the MATTER with Bridge?" Z asked hotly after he, too, had disappeared. "If you ask me, he's being overdramatic about this whole thing.
"Come on, be fair, we don't know much of what happened to him," said Syd fairly. "Jack said his gloves were off, right? There's no telling what it made him see..."
"Still no excuse for rudeness," Z mumbled, but she no longer sounded angry.
"I just wish he'd talk to us," said Sky.
"Tell me about it," said Jack. "Still, you know we've been ordered to butt out until he's ready, so..."
However, Sky couldn't stop thinking about Bridge as the rest of the day slowly wore on and he showed no signs of wanting to communicate. Bridge, as the others often pointed out when they talked about him (there had rarely been a different subject of conversation at mealtimes since that day), was acting completely out-of-character. He tended to babble more than usual when depressed- and Sky could never remember him snapping at someone the way he just had at Jack.
Finally, he vowed to talk to Bridge and try and get something out of him that very night. After all, he very well couldn't avoid their dorm room entirely... When he came in for the night, though, he was disappointed to see that Bridge was fast asleep, snoring. Sky frowned and briefly thought about going to wake him, but shook his head, changed into his pajamas, and went to bed himself, his mind churning as he drifted off. He hated seeing his best friend like that and wanted to reach out to him... but they had been ordered to give him space...
Sky jerked awake unexpectedly, groaning and rolling over at once- only to find that Bridge wasn't in his bed. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he glanced at his clock, which read 2:37 A.M.
That woke him fully. Something was definitely wrong. Bridge shouldn't have been out of his bunk at that hour. Sky quietly left the room, walking through the empty base and checking all of the usual spots, even though he knew good and well that there was no good reason for him to be in any of them in the middle of the night. No Bridge when he passed through the rec room. No Bridge in the lab. No Bridge in Delta Command. Finally, Sky was about to give up and go back to bed, lest he get spotted and get in trouble himself, when he thought he heard someone crying, and the whimpering of a dog.
Listening intently, Sky located the source of the sound- a nearby conference room. Sky went up to the door, only to find that it was locked, so he said very clearly,
"Lock override, authorization code S-T-0-3-7-5."
"Acknowledged," said the computer, and the doors slid open to reveal that Bridge was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. R.I.C. was with him, and nuzzled him softly when he turned to look at Sky and fresh tears flowed.
"Bridge," said Sky, feeling his heart sink.
"Go away."
"... What?"
"Go away, Sky. ...Please."
"Why?" Sky demanded, stepping in, the door sliding shut behind him. "I think it's time you stopped hiding and talked to us. You are doing yourself no good whatsoever by pushing us away. Believe me, I've been there." Bridge opened his mouth, then turned away from Sky.
"No, I don't need to talk to you guys."
"Why NOT?" Sky demanded, feeling a prickle of anger. Bridge finally stood up, his body trembling, before he turned to Sky and suddenly burst out,
"You don't care about me, so stop pretending like you do, alright?!" Sky's mouth fell open as he absorbed that statement, and he actually took a step back, feeling as though he'd been slapped. Bridge, however, took no notice and plopped back down, putting his arms around R.I.C., who whined loudly as he looked from Bridge to Sky and back.
"...How could you say something like that?" Sky finally asked in a whisper after he'd found his voice. "How COULD YOU?" He felt a strange mixture of emotion rising within him- sadness, anger both at himself and at Bridge, confusion... "How... how could you?" he demanded a third time, unable to form any other words. Bridge didn't move to respond, just crossed his arms, hugging his knees to his chest. Sky stood there, his mind reeling, before he heard a whine, felt a nudge on the back of his leg. He allowed R.I.C. to lead him over to Bridge and sat down next to him. He turned away, but didn't make any move to leave. Sky felt that this, at least, was a bit of a good sign...
The two sat in an uncomfortable silence for quite a while. Bridge kept sniffling, wiping his eyes on his pajama sleeve, and Sky kept staring at him, wondering what could possibly have made him feel that way, and even more importantly, wondering what on Earth he could do or say to make things right.
"Talk to me, little buddy," he finally said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. "I don't know what on Earth could have made you think that, but..." Bridge looked over at him, but still didn't speak. "Look. I don't know what happened in that cell. But you have to believe me- we DO care about you. All of us do."
"Sure," Bridge mumbled. "You care about me so much that you're always making fun of me. Always making me feel like I'm nothing more than an annoyance to you guys. You never listen when I see things with my powers... even after whatever I see comes true." Sky buried his face in his hands, for some reason feeling like he was about to start crying, too.
"...I don't really know what to say to that..." He felt a few tears leak out, then jumped when he felt a hand placed on his shoulder, and looked over to see Bridge looking into his eyes... and Bridge's bare hand on his skin. He thought he could feel an immense sadness coming from him in return. "...What... what are you doing?"
"...You..." He hesitated, then said in a barely audible whisper, "...you do care... don't you?"
"Of course I do!" said Sky hastily as Bridge replaced his glove, feeling an immense weight of guilt in the pit of his stomach. "I... I don't always show it in the best way, but..."
"I know you're sorry." Sky's head began swimming.
Bridge thought the others didn't care about him.
And, Sky thought with another huge stab of guilt, thinking about it, he had pretty good reasons to feel that way too...
"... Sky..." With an effort, he looked into Bridge's eyes again, from which tears were falling once more, and the two of them could say no more.... but Bridge did lean against Sky, and Sky put his arms around him in return, simply held Bridge, unable to think of anything else to do or say to reassure him, to show him that he and the others did care, a tear or two leaking from his own eyes. He continued to hold Bridge even when R.I.C. led a very confused Jack, Z, Syd and Sam into the conference room they occupied, his mind in a fog, time feeling like it was slipping away from him. He let go briefly when the story came out in-between sobs, when lots more tears fell, when they got up and walked back through the base- then Bridge was suddenly there in his arms again when the two of them finally went back to bed.
He held Bridge even when Jack, Syd and Z came barging in, laden with blankets and pillows, insisting on staying with him for the rest of the night.
He still held Bridge while the others finally rearranged themselves- when Sky had insisted that Syd take his bed, when Jack and Z had fallen asleep together on the floor, when Bridge had finally fallen asleep, and when he, Sky, felt his eyelids getting heavy as well...
* * *
Bridge felt very warm when he slowly began to stir awake. He half thought that the previous night had been a dream or some other hallucination, because it had seemed so surreal. One moment, he was thinking about leaving S.P.D. because he was so sure that nobody there loved him, then the next Sky was there, and then he was hugging Bridge and it felt so GOOD... and the others were there, and Bridge read them with his powers, knew he'd made a horrible mistake...
His eyes fluttered open, and he immediately knew why he was so warm. He was still draped across Sky's body, and the larger man's arms were still wrapped protectively around him.
Bridge then took a moment to look around at the others.
While he still didn't feel quite right, he couldn't help but feel a surge of affection for them as his eyes traveled over Syd, curled up with her stuffed elephant Peanuts... at Sam, who was oddly still and was perhaps asleep, if sparkleballs even could sleep... and at Jack and Z, a tangle of limbs and brown hair on the floor.
He allowed himself a small smile as he adjusted himself so that he was more comfortable. Sky grunted in response, wrapped his arms tighter, so Bridge relaxed.
For now... even though he still wasn't quite right... even though he knew it would take a long time before he fully recovered from his ordeal...
For now, Bridge felt loved.
(Cross-posted to shurifanstuffs)