FAIR WARNING: This chapter contains slash, more specifically femslash. Nothing graphic, promise (or apologize, depending upon your viewpoint).

Punishment

She had tried, over and over again, but the moment she heard his voice she invariably lost her nerve. Every time they spoke over the communicator or on the phone or in person, the sound of his voice stopped her cold. In the end, they both agreed that there was only one way it could happen, one way for the lie to end.

It’s still a lie, of course—the masculine pronoun, the implication that it’s someone new—but it’s less of a lie than the one they’ve been living, so Trini doesn’t argue when Kimberly shows her the final copy of the letter. Trini goes with Kimberly to the post office, and forces herself to watch as Kimberly shoves the letter in the mail slot. In a way, that’s her punishment. She doesn’t get to turn a blind eye to this, because she caused it, and she couldn’t make it go away.

Trini tries not to think about it over the next few days as the letter makes its way towards Tommy, but she can’t help herself. She can’t stop herself from wishing for some way to take it back. She spends her time dreaming up scenarios that could stop the letter in its tracks. If only it would get lost in the shuffle of the postal delivery system, if only a monster would trample the Angel Grove Post Office during a zord fight, if only Ernie would take up a sudden grudge against Tommy and decide to stop fielding Tommy’s mail and mark it return to sender.

It’s only three days until the calls start. Four o’clock in the afternoon, Florida time, which means it’s only been a half hour since the letter would have arrived at the Angel Grove Gym and Juice Bar.

Kimberly spends the entire day sitting on her bed, hugging her knees to her chest, and watching the caller ID on the phone. She’s turned the answering machine off.

The first time, it’s Adam. The second time, it’s Billy. Adam again. Jason. Rocky. Kat. The Juice Bar, which could be anybody. Adam again. Zack. Billy. Billy. Jason. Adam. Billy. An unfamiliar number with an Angel Grove area code, which could be Tommy but is more likely the number of whatever place they dragged Tommy to cheer him up, because that’s what Rangers do in times of crisis. They band together and help each other out.

Tommy doesn’t call. Not once.

Maybe it’s just some sort of karma. After all, Tommy had been the one to betray them in the beginning. A damaged Alpha, a lost Zordon, a demolished Command Center, a missing Jason, all the work of a fellow Ranger. Or maybe Tommy’s just a victim again, because there is no evil spell at work, no glowing flashes of light burning in the eyes. This can’t be fought or cured. This just is.

She sits next to Kimberly all day, listening while the phone rings and rings. Kimberly makes no move to shut off the ringer. In a way, this is her punishment, their punishment, for causing Tommy pain. Trini longs to comfort her, to say something soothing or pull her into an embrace, but she can’t bring herself to worsen the betrayal by touching Kimberly while their friends call to ask why.

They both flinch when the familiar tuneful beeps sound from Kimberly’s communicator. Kimberly makes no move to activate it. Trini stands and wordlessly begins to gather her things, knowing that sooner or later one of the others will get worried and use the Viewing Globe—or whatever it is they have now in their new fancy Power Chamber—to check and make sure that Kimberly’s silence is voluntary.

That night Kimberly doesn’t come back to Trini’s place for the first time since they started being more than friends, since they added another item to the long list of secrets no one else could know. It’s just as well, because Trini isn’t home an hour when the calls start coming for her.

Adam is the first to reach her, and her heart breaks for him when he tells her about reading the letter aloud to Tommy in front of the whole team. Tommy’s pretty broken up and there’s some new evil to fight from the Machine Empire and if truth be told everyone’s pretty shaken because this wasn’t supposed to happen, because Tommy and Kimberly belong together, and everyone knows it, even Kat, even Skull, even everyone who ever hoped otherwise.

Trini’s the one they call for comfort, always has been. She was the gauze for every emotional wound and she can’t bring herself to take away their only hope at healing by telling them that she’s the reason for their latest affliction. So she does what she can to be their Trini, the one who always knows what to say and how to quiet their fears, the one who can reason through any event and soothe any pain.

She assures Adam that Tommy will be okay, that in some ways it was probably best for him to hear it that way, from a friend in front of friends, because he needed their support at that moment, will need their support for a while yet. She tells Rocky that there isn’t much anyone can really actively do for Tommy right now, because when Tommy gets upset he likes to disappear, fade away, work through it on his own and then come back like nothing ever happened. She commiserates with Zack, agrees that if two people as well-suited for each other as Tommy and Kimberly can’t make it there isn’t much hope for the rest of the world, and she jokes and leaves openings for him to come up with his own puns until there’s enough laughter for Zack to regain his footing. She makes Aisha believe that it isn’t the distance that ruined things between Tommy and Kimberly, that space isn’t enough to make love fade, that even if no one else remembers the timeline where Aisha grew up in Stone Canyon the Rangers will never forget her, will never stop caring about her, and as someone who left almost two years before the time spell Trini’s a monument to the fact.

She expected the next call to be Billy, but instead it’s Kat, three days later, once the evil-of-the-moment is vanquished and everything’s started to really settle again. She barely knows Kat, has only met her twice, but that doesn’t stop her from listening to Kat sob about how wretched she feels, about how badly she wants Tommy and how she was secretly glad when it happened, how awful she feels for him, how she tried to set Tommy up and it imploded, how good she felt slow-dancing with him in the Juice Bar. Trini insists that Kat has no reason to feel guilty, that Tommy is free now and it’s natural to feel pleased when a boy she likes becomes single, that she never did anything to sabotage their relationship (at least without Rita’s influence). She assures her that Kimberly wouldn’t fault Kat for moving in, but warns that Tommy is vulnerable now and Kat should probably let him make the first move, and advises that maybe the best way to ease Tommy’s heartache is not to set him up with another prominent athlete devoted to her career who travels a lot.

It takes Billy a week to call, and it’s Billy at his worst. He shares his secret guilt with her—part of him feels like if he was the one hurting no one would notice, because he’s not part of the team anymore, and even though he knows that’s not true it sure seems like it sometimes. He hates the fact that for all his intelligence he never managed to outgrow his social awkwardness enough to properly comfort a grieving best friend. He feels a little bitter about the fact that he’s trying to help Tommy but kind of feels like Tommy, the only one still in Angel Grove who might know what he was going through, didn’t do much to comfort Billy about his power loss, even though he knows it was just too painful for Tommy to reopen an old wound. And part of him even feels angry with Trini, because she isn’t there for this, because he can’t fill her void when it comes to being a shoulder to cry on, because he has a hard time thinking of something comforting to say in words with five syllables or less and there’s no one around to translate, because he isn’t as much a part of the team without her there to make him belong, because he wants her to come home and be there for him and for them.

She almost cracks when he tells her how badly he misses her, how much they could use her around right now. She almost tells him that this time she’s the reason he needs her, but she can’t do that to him, not to Billy. She cares about him too much and she owes him too much and she doesn’t deserve to ease the guilt that hurts worse than anything a monster ever threw at her.

The day after Billy calls, Kimberly finally comes to her. Trini doesn’t ask how Kimberly’s week has gone, if she’s talked to the gang at all, if she’s spoken to Tommy. Trini doesn’t comfort her and doesn’t ask for comfort from her. Trini just revels in her lover’s return and prays that it will work, that somehow against all odds they’ll make it through thick and thin and be together forever.

Yet she knows, deep down, it won’t last. They have too many secrets to maintain another one, and this one is different, because they’re not protecting themselves from the outside world. They’re protecting themselves from the team.

It isn’t because they’re both women, or because they’re different races, or anything so superficial. None of their friends would care, not past the initial shock, that they’re an interracial lesbian couple. There would be no real animosity from anyone they hold dear. Whatever damage they might do with their relationship would be fixable in the end, save the damage to the team.

They know that Tommy might forgive Kimberly for leaving and Trini for stealing her away, that Jason and Billy and Zack and the others would be angry at first but come around eventually, but they would never ask Tommy or the others to try and they’ll never forgive themselves. Whatever sins they might be committing by being together, being in love, and being lovers, their greatest sin is that of betrayal, and they don’t deserve forgiveness for that.

It’s two more weeks before Tommy finally calls, at four in the morning, and he’s hysterical, sobbing, broken. She leaves Kimberly lying alone in the bed and takes the call in the kitchen, letting him obliviously pour his heart out to the girl who helped break it. Kimberly doesn’t wake up, even after the batteries in the cordless die and Trini has to use her communicator and his miserable voice fills the apartment as he releases his grief and anger and frustration and loss.

It takes three hours before he stops ranting long enough for her to do more than murmur soothing noises over the connection, and it’s another half hour before he’s stopped blowing his nose every few minutes. Finally he’s okay again, a little more stable, and now that it’s out he can start to heal. Just like when he gave his powers to Jason, just like when his temporary powers fizzled out, just like always. He always comes to her when he’s ready to talk, always has. He’s always trusted her, and she won’t take that from him. She’s taken enough.

Tommy knows that she’s attending the University of Florida and that she lives in the same town as Kimberly. He knows she sees Kimberly all the time, hangs out with her all the time, is still her best friend. He doesn’t ask her why Kimberly left him. He doesn’t ask her who stole Kimberly away, doesn’t ask Trini to betray Kimberly to him, and Trini doesn’t offer.

It’s ten forty-five in the morning—seven forty-five, California time—when the conversation ends, and it might have run longer if Tommy didn’t have to be at school soon. Trini knows he’ll call back a few more times, he’ll still draw on her for strength, but for the most part he’s done mourning his girlfriend. Tommy’s okay now, and it’s her doing. For the first time, a person feels better because of her and it doesn’t fill her with pride.

Kimberly doesn’t get out of bed until noon, and she shows absolutely no signs that she heard a word of Trini’s conversation with Tommy. Trini never asks, but sometimes she wonders, because it isn’t long before she realizes that Kimberly is also aware of the fact that it isn’t going to work out between Trini and Kimberly. Sometimes her smile is a little too sad, sometimes her kisses are a little too desperate, sometimes she clings a little too tight.

They both try to enjoy it while it lasts, because there’s nothing else they can do. Tommy’s moved on and it’s too late, and no matter how much they regret betraying him neither Trini nor Kimberly regrets the fact that it ended. There’s no controlling what the heart feels, and they both care about Tommy too much to let Kimberly and Tommy’s relationship continue when Kimberly has feelings for someone else.

The calls for comfort continue for a month or two, from Tommy and Billy and Adam, from Kat, Aisha, Rocky and Zack. Tanya’s never met either of them and doesn’t even know Tommy all that well yet, and Jason doesn’t bother. At first, Trini hopes the silence from Jason is because he’s dealing on his own, or because he’s too busy comforting Tommy, but as time wears on it becomes crystal clear that whether or not he’s called Kimberly to discuss the breakup, he’s not calling Trini because he’s figured it out.

Jason calls her, of course, but never for comfort or questions, never to make sense of what happened. He calls Trini because he’s her friend, her teammate, a staple in her life, and that will never change. He has always been a part of her life and he always will be and that won’t be altered no matter what happens between her and Kimberly. He avoids mentioning Tommy to her at all. She isn’t surprised.

Tommy, Rocky, Adam, Aisha and Kat don’t know Kimberly as well as Jason, Billy and Zack. They are good friends, best friends, true friends, but they haven’t always been around. They don’t know every intimate detail about Trini and Kimberly. Jason, Billy and Zack do, but of the three of them only Jason is that perceptive. Billy and Zack are brothers to the girls, but Jason’s always been the big brother, the older brother, the wise one.

It lasts barely six months, and it ends quietly. They’ll still be friends, there’s no stopping that, but one day it’s just time to stop pretending that it’ll ever work. Trini leaves Florida just after finals and Kimberly remains, alone, still trying to make it in the world of gymnastics, still trying to fly without a zord.

None of the others notice that anything has happened at all, and they keep it that way. Trini deals with the loss on her own; there is no one to comfort her. Only Jason even suspects their relationship, let alone its end, but even when Jason loses his powers he still somehow doesn’t have time to swing by for a visit, not until Trini’s already sent out the emails and letters and phone calls with her new address hundreds of miles away. It’s only a few days before he makes it to Florida then, and he spends a week hanging with Kimberly. Trini recognizes it for what it is. She isn’t the one who left Tommy; she’s the one who stole Kimberly away. So when Jason sees that they’re over, he chooses to comfort Kimberly.

She thinks of all the times she comforted Jason, from the time in preschool when he lost his first fight, to the time in high school when he first felt like a failed leader, to the time at the Peace Conference when he realized that no amount of diplomacy was ever going to make him feel like half the hero he’d been as a Ranger. She wonders if he still would have chosen Kimberly as the one worthy of comfort if it weren’t for the fact that he’s Tommy’s best friend, that he just spent months back on the team and back at Tommy’s side and knows firsthand the void Kimberly left behind. Does he really blame Trini for this mess? Does he really think that if Trini had held her own feelings in check, Kimberly would have hidden hers and stayed with Tommy? Or is he just hoping that now that it’s over, he can patch things up the way they were before?

She’s pretty sure it’s just an attempt to reclaim the past, and when she gets word from the Rangers that Jason and Kimberly have been kidnapped from a beach near Angel Grove she’s sure of it. Jason’s always had an obsession with trying to glue together broken shards of the past, particularly when it comes to Tommy and the team. She knows Jason well enough to realize that the trip to Angel Grove had nothing to do with helping orphans or having some fun or even cheering Kimberly up after her second in-team breakup. It’s Jason’s attempt to get Tommy and Kimberly talking again, to put things back like they were.

He never seems to realize that there is no going home again, that being the Gold Ranger won’t make up for all the days he spent wearing Red, that no matter how Tommy is a part of the team it’ll never be like those first few glorious months when Tommy was still The New Guy, that just because he left Geneva with a plane ticket saying “Destination: Angel Grove” doesn’t mean he can go home again. Events and places don’t create things like home and family and power, and if Jason knows that he can’t accept it.

So Trini sits alone in her apartment, waiting for the communicator to beep with the arrival of updates on the battle from the Zeo Rangers and Alpha, and when the battle’s won there’s a new team and new powers and Jason isn’t a part of it, and Kimberly isn’t a part of Tommy, and Jason never comes to comfort the girl who always comforted him.

When Kimberly comes to her soon after, Trini’s filled with hope, for just one moment, that maybe Kimberly wants to keep trying, that seeing Tommy again reminded her of why she left Tommy in the first place, but the hope is short lived. Kimberly just needs a friend. Kimberly needs Trini to comfort her about seeing Tommy again, finding out Tommy was with Kat, facing the fact that she’s no longer a Ranger, the terror of seeing Jason dangling over a pit of lava, the horror of realizing what she’d done while evil.

It’s the first time Trini’s seen Kimberly since the break-up. They really are still friends, and this proves it. It should feel good. It should be a relief.

But it still feels like punishment.

End Notes: Well, this is probably the most surreal thing I’ve ever done. I don’t ship this, but I wanted to go with one specific group of people for this fic, and let‘s face it, the letter was a hell of an opening. So next (and last) up: Tommy.