Work Text:
What happens when you mess with the time stream?
That's not something I really ever thought about. Not until I did it, anyway.
You wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I'm a girl out of time. I made a choice, and that choice changed the flow of time. And now I have to live with the consequences.
It's gotten harder since then, since things started to settle down, but I still remember the time before.
I remember places my parents tell me I've never seen, people I could never have met. It seems impossible, but I remember being a Power Ranger. I remember saving the world. And I remember giving it all up.
But those memories have started to fade, like dreams I can only half remember. I'm afraid that someday I might not be able to remember them at all, and that's why I'm writing them down now: so I won't forget.
There are so many things I could write here. So many things I want to remember, but this is the most important.
I have to remember Rocky and Adam.
The day I first met them is one of the few memories that's still clear.
I was seven. My family had just moved to Stone Canyon and it was my first day at a new school. I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid. I remember that fear – not that the other kids wouldn't like me, but that maybe the kids at my new school wouldn't be as fun as the ones I'd had to leave behind at my old school.
I was wrong, of course. The two boys who would become my best friends were right there in my homeroom class. But I didn't know that, then.
I didn't figure it out until afternoon recess, when I was suddenly ambushed.
"Hey, I'm Rocky," he said. I vaguely recognized him from class. "You're new here, right?" he went on. Hardly giving me a moment to respond, he added, "Wanna play ninjas?"
Nobody had ever asked me to play ninjas at my old school. Things were looking bright.
It was a while later, when Rocky and I were in full ninja mode, that I met Adam. That is, I rescued Adam, because what caught my attention was the bigger boy pushing him around the playground. Adam was clearly overwhelmed and the other boy was clearly being a jerk. And since we were ninjas, it was up to me and Rocky to save the day. I didn't even have to say anything; I just had to glance Rocky's way and he understood. That's how in-tune we were, right from the start.
I ran in itching for a fight, but as it turned out I was new and for all that other boy knew I really was a ninja. All it took was a couple of shouts and some ninja poses to get him to leave poor Adam alone.
I don't think Adam really trusted us at first. He didn't know Rocky very well and he didn't know me at all, he only knew that we'd stepped in and saved him when nobody else would.
I didn't know him, either, but I could see the confusion on his face when Rocky asked him if he wanted to join us. And then I saw the confusion slowly turn into acceptance, and maybe trust, too.
And the rest, as they say, is history. Or at least it was. I'm not really sure anymore.
But I remember their faces, their smiles. Even now, with everything all screwed up and fading away… I'm smiling too, just thinking about them.
No matter how confusing and blurred my other memories become, that one still shines bright. And I hope it always will.
There's nothing left to prove to me that they ever even existed, that I didn't just imagine them and all the things we did together in that other life… but I know they're real and I know they're out there somewhere.
And someday I'd like to meet them again.