Disclaimer: Power Rangers and all characters therein belong to Disney.

Note: Well, it finally happened…..I’ve joined the slew of writers taking part of the Ars Amatoria challenge. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, but it seemed like the couples I wanted to do where already being done by so many people or I just couldn’t figure out how to write ‘em.

Anyway, here I am, finally working my creative muscles to participate. Hope you like it.

Guilt

Summary: Takes place during Rock Solid. Nick looks back at his own actions as he feels responsible for Madison’s condition.

Note: The dialogue in italics is supposed to mean sort of flashback-ish stuff taken from the episode itself….Actually, all the dialogue is taken directly from the episode. Heh.

She’s not herself. She’s not the same girl who walks all over the place with that camera in her hands. She’s just standing there, blank eyes staring ahead of her. I can feel Vida’s eyes…………so similar to hers………boring into me as she is fooled by my false callousness. If looks could kill, I’d be a goner. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe this gnawing, churning feeling inside of me would disappear along with me. It’s all my fault.

“Gotcha!” Her voice floated into the atmosphere like a song as she walked into the room.

“Oh no, get that thing away from me,” I replied. If I could go back in time, I’d jump into that moment and give myself a swift kick in the behind. She was just trying to show me I was important to her like the others. She just wanted me to feel included.

“Oh, come on Nick, don’t be shy,” she teases me.

“Me? I’m not the one who’s always hiding behind that camera.” I practically felt the air in the room change as she lowered the camera.

“I’m not hiding,” she says. I’ve offended her. I could’ve just stopped there and apologized…….but, I didn’t.

“I’ve watched you, Madison. You’re so busy filming other people having fun, you never get out there and have fun yourself,” I don’t know why I openly admitted to the fact that I had been watching her. There was something about her. Ever since the day we first came across Udonna and Rootcore. The way she came to me and tried to get me to stay, it somehow chiseled a cavern in my head where thoughts of her began to collect. Since that moment, I’ve watched her whenever I could. Maybe it was me trying to figure her out, figure out why she was in my head. I guess I thought that if I observed her long enough, the answer would ring out clear as a bell.

“I have fun,” she tells me. I remember smirking at the fact that she used a change in toothpaste as a way to prove her wild nature. Now, I would gladly let her tell me about her purchasing a tube of wintergreen toothpaste at the store over and over again just so I didn’t have to see her like this. Blank eyes, blank stare, blank expression. Blank.

She’s not the girl I’ve been watching these past few days. The girl I’ve been watching is a flash of blue dancing in my head as I watch her walk through the store. The girl I’ve been watching smiles and looks down shyly from time to time. This person standing in the middle of Rootcore is not that. She’s gray, unmoving and dull gray. There is no smile on her face or mystery in her averting eyes. There’s nothing. And it’s all because of me. I took away the blue.

“Then there’s Nick. The new guy in town. We don’t know too much about him yet, but I can feel it, he’s something special. So those are my friends, old and new. I know I can count on them for anything,” The rock music fades as we finish watching the video she had been making.

“Everyone expresses themselves differently, Nick,” Udonna speaks, but her words are lost on me. Everything is drowned out by this churning inside of me. “Maybe Madison does it through her films.” The churning only worsens as I try to bring myself back into reality.

“You’re right,” I say, looking at Vida who is still looking at me through narrow eyes. She knows. She knows I somehow hurt her sister. “I was clueless.” My feet move on their own as I walk back to this imitation of mysterious blue. “I shouldn’t have gone shooting my mouth off,” the words just flow out of me as I look at the gray thing. The gray thing that isn’t the dancing thought in my head. I step closer to her; her eyes are unmoving, blank. “I’m going to get you out of this Maddie, I promise.” I promise. Even if I have to sacrifice myself……..all that matters is this gray thing disappears and my flash of blue returns to where she belongs. It’s the only remedy to this churning and gnawing feeling inside of me.