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Intimidating. Commanding. Determined. Pushy. Bossy. Terrifying.
If you asked her friends to describe her, it was pretty much guaranteed that one of those words would feature prominently in their descriptions (terrifying coming most likely from Rocky and Adam, who had learned long ago to stay out of her way and do what she said when she was on a crusade) but those descriptions were all said with love.
The thing about Aisha was that when it was all said and done, she was the one who got things accomplished. She knew how to organize, how to get things done, how to make people do what she wanted (and of course, what was best for them.) Rocky had once joked that the main reason that Aisha fought against Rita and Zedd was that they were her competition for taking over the world - but of course, she would do it better and way more efficiently, and probably without any monsters destroying Angel Grove. (Adam had looked concerned when she’d mentioned it was a possibility, but considering all the years he had known her, he should have more faith in her! She wouldn’t need to destroy Angel Grove to take over the world, and besides, considering the amount of time she spent protecting it, it would be counter-productive for her to destroy it anyway.)
All of this added up to one clear conclusion - Aisha should never have left them on their own. She loved her team - and her boys. Choosing to leave them all behind to move to Africa and accomplish things was a hard choice - it wasn’t like she wasn’t doing excellent work as a Ranger. She was saving the world every single day. But there were other ways to save the world, and she’d thought that she was making the right choice to leave her life as a Power Ranger behind.
That was before some new Ranger she’d never seen before showed up in a ship and told her that Adam had basically tried to kill himself, and it had been suggested by some other former Rangers that she go back to Angel Grove immediately.
Because that was when it struck her that not only did she not know that the Rangers had switched again (last time she had checked, Adam was still a Ranger!) but clearly her boys hadn’t given her all the details.
She let Carlos (the random new Ranger, who she vaguely remembered had been on Angel Grove’s soccer team) tell her about all that she had missed while she was gone, or at least the parts that he knew about. Rocky had given his powers to some little kid. Adam and the rest of her team had all left for college (or apparently racecar driving, she wasn’t entirely sure what could have possibly made Tommy do that) and then the new team had managed to a) get the Power Chamber (not the Command Center, she had to remind herself) blown up and b) lost Zordon to some sort of new invading aliens.
In other words, everything was bad and wrong, and since her whole purpose in life was to fix things that had gone horribly wrong, she was going to have to go back and make sure that she could put the pieces back together. Before something even worse happened.
*
The nice thing about having a spaceship was that it didn’t take particularly long to get back to Angel Grove. It wasn’t quite as fast as teleporting would have been, but it was still way better than Civilian travel. She’d have thought that they would have kept Adam on the ship so that she could see him immediately, but instead he was apparently at Rocky’s place, as Carlos had called Justin (the kid that had been given Rocky’s powers even though he was twelve) who had called Rocky (at least proving that the kid had some sort of common sense.)
When she got to Rocky’s place, she wasn’t expecting Rocky to greet her - if she knew anything about her (ex, she had to assume at this point, considering how rarely they’d spoken since Aisha had moved away) boyfriend, he wouldn’t be leaving Adam’s side until he was convinced that Adam was safe. It wouldn’t be like this was the first time that two of them had to keep a watch on the other - Aisha and Adam had been there for Rocky as he shouldered ever more responsibility with his family and taking care of the younger siblings, her boys had both been there for her every time she’d managed to work herself into exhaustion, and she and Rocky had both watched Adam very carefully after the incident with the Mirror of Regret. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust anyone else to look after them, it was that they took care of each other first, and anyone who got in their way would end up regretting it.
So it was a surprise when she found a thirteen-year-old dressed in blue at the door.
“You’ve got to be Justin, right?” she greeted him.
“Aisha?” he asked. “I’ve seen your picture.”
She nodded. “How is he?” she asked, as Justin moved aside to let her enter Rocky’s apartment.
“Which one?” Justin asked, and Aisha smiled at him. He seemed to care about both of her boys, which made him perfect in her book.
“Both.”
“Adam’s still sleeping,” Justin told her. “The morpher drained a lot of his life force before Andros, you know, the new guy, was able to stop it. He’s going to be fine, eventually,” he continued quickly, as Aisha had started the second the words ‘life force’ had come out of his mouth, “but he’s going to be really tired for a while.”
“What about Rocky?” she asked.
“He’s coping,” Justin said, hesitating slightly. “I think he’s blaming himself again. I mean, Rocky hasn’t really spoken to Adam since he gave his powers to me, and I heard Kat and Tanya talking once about how it was affecting Adam, and I know Adam resented me being on the team at first, and...” he trailed off. “Sorry, it’s just my problems, you’re here to take care of Adam and Rocky.”
“I’m here to fix things,” Aisha corrected. “That includes you.”
“You don’t like the fact that I was a Ranger,” he said.
“I don’t know enough about you yet,” she told him. “That probably isn’t going to stop me from yelling at Rocky about giving his powers to you though.”
“He said you were going to do that,” Justin rolled his eyes. “He also said you could snap Adam out of whatever funk he’s in.”
“That’s what I do,” Aisha said. “And you need a hug, so come here, kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” Justin muttered, but he gave her a hug anyway.
Aisha smiled at him. “Not anymore,” she told him. “You’re a Ranger, and we take care of our own.”
*
She waited until Rocky came out of the bedroom where Adam was sleeping. Justin went in to keep watch over Adam, while Rocky eyed her warily.
“I’m not going to yell at you,” Aisha said, as she gave him a hug for the first time in over a year. “Well, not yet, anyway.”
“You wouldn’t be Aisha if you weren’t yelling at me for something,” Rocky said finally. “Thanks for coming.”
“Of course I’m here!” she said.
Rocky just stared at her, and then he turned and sat down on the couch, gesturing for her to take another chair.
“Do you really think I wouldn’t have come?”
“You were gone for so long, and you never wrote or called or anything, except to give that key thing to Tanya...” Rocky trailed off. “I guess... we thought you’d moved on.”
“Please,” Aisha said. “Just because I moved, it didn’t mean I’d moved on from you - I mean, yeah, it made it harder for us to be us, but it isn’t like you guys really called either.”
Rocky had the decency to blush. “I guess... with everything that was going on, and then Kim dumping Tommy in a letter at the youth center,”
“Wait, what?” Aisha interrupted him, and they spend the next few minutes analyzing that particular piece of Ranger gossip.
“Well, she could have handled that better,” Aisha said finally. “I’ll have to yell at her about proper dumping decorum at some point.”
“Shouldn’t you be yelled at for that?” Rocky asked, and there was pain laced in his words. “I mean, we were always the three of us, and then you were gone, and Adam and I didn’t know how... if things had changed...”
“And you two didn’t talk about it, and then you got hurt and then gave your powers to a little kid and then you and Adam didn’t even talk about that, and now none of us are talking to each other.”
Rocky shrugged. “Justin’s a good kid,” he said. “And he was a really good Ranger. I mean, he’s really smart - Billy smart. He made a really good blue.”
“And?” Aisha pressed.
Rocky shrugged. “I didn’t think Zordon was actually going to give him my powers when I sent Justin to the Power Chamber,” he said. “I mean, I had just seriously screwed up my back, and I was on a lot of pain meds, and then Justin crawled out from under the bed having heard us all talk about being Rangers... so I sent him to Zordon figuring that Zordon would give him the same speech that he gave us. You know, about protecting identities and all that. Instead, suddenly I wasn’t a Ranger anymore, and my back was all messed up, and everything that had started to go wrong with me and Adam after you left just got worse...”
“And you felt like everyone had moved on without you and you didn’t know what to do without being a Ranger,” Aisha finished.
“Yeah,” Rocky said.
“You’re still an idiot,” she told him. “Call me, next time.”
“You could call me!”
“Fine!” she snapped at him, and he flinched away. She got up and sat next to him on the couch, wrapping her arms around him.
“I am sorry, sweetie,” she told him. “You were right, I got caught up in my own things, and well, I figured you boys didn’t need me. I was busy trying to save the world without being a Ranger, and... I moved on. It doesn’t mean that I forgot you or I stopped caring, I just... got caught up in my own life and didn’t think about you and what my leaving meant. I’m sorry.”
He smiled at her.
“But you’re still an idiot,” she said affectionately.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re never going to change, are you?”
“Probably not,” she said cheerfully. “But you wouldn’t like me if I stopped trying to boss you around.”
He laughed.
“So,” she said. “Since I’m going to be here for a while...”
“Wait, what?” Rocky asked.
She rolled her eyes. “What, you think this was going to be a quick fix, where I come in and say the magic words and then go back to Africa? I mean, I’m glad that you have so much faith in my fixing people skills, but do you really think I’d leave you boys again? You need me. And well... what’s the point of saving the world if I lose the two most important people in my life in the process?”
“So you’re staying?” Rocky asked hopefully.
“Of course,” she told him. “And we can discuss living arrangements later. I mean, you’re the best cook I know, so I’ve got no real problem with staying here, assuming you want me...”
“I never stopped,” Rocky told her. “Neither of us did. When it was the two of us, we never stopped missing you.” He hesitated. “And really, is that all you want me for? The cooking?” He pouted at her.
Aisha kissed him lightly. “Idiot,” she teased.
*
It was another few hours before Adam woke up. A few hours in which Aisha had sent Carlos and the Megaship to pack up all of her belongings, called Kimberly and had a very long conversation about how not to break up with a boy (and then teased Kimberly endlessly about her new girlfriend), talked with Justin about his plans for the future and how he was coping with civilian life, and made plans to go out with Tanya and Kat to catch up on everything that had changed since she’d left the team.
And she might have made out with Rocky for a while too.
Aisha was the one sitting by Adam’s bed when he woke up. He looked awful, honestly. Justin had said that the broken morpher had drained some of Adam’s life force, but she hadn’t entirely understood what that meant until she saw him. He looked.... drained. That was the best way to put it. Aisha wasn’t the writer of the group who was good at describing things (that was Adam) and she wasn’t the super insightful one (that was Rocky), she was the one who got things fixed. The one who planned and organized and made lists of how things needed to be done. And looking at Adam just made her add a ton of things to her list. Put him to the top of current problems that she would have to work on.
Carlos had told her a little bit about what had happened as they made their way to Angel Grove. How Carlos had been fighting with his own issues of insecurity and feeling that he wasn’t good enough to be a Ranger (which put him fairly high up on her list of things to fix - you really couldn’t have a Ranger walking around with issues, it just led to things like the Mirror of Regret or Scorpina trying to seduce you - or monsters rapping about hate). How Adam had been carrying around his broken morpher and that he’d used it even after Alpha had warned him it would be fatal. How Adam just so happened to be wandering around sections of Angel Grove which were prone to monster attacks.
And okay, so Adam morphing had probably saved Carlos’s life. As Rangers, they were all willing to sacrifice themselves to save the world - that was part of what it meant to be a Ranger. You learned that pretty quickly - the first time one of Zedd’s monsters threw you through a window, or when the Zords exploded, or when you had to stop studying for a test that you really needed to do well on because there was yet another monster attack in the park.
Being a Ranger meant putting everyone’s safety and security above your own. And it was a mindset that was hard to get out of; she’d had her own problems adjusting. But she’d been ready to leave. It didn’t sound like Adam had been.
“How are you feeling?” she asked as she helped him sit up in bed.
“Aisha?” he asked.
“One and only,” she said as she passed him a cup of water, holding it to his lips as he drank.
“What are you doing here?” he asked finally.
“Rocky told Carlos to call me. Something about you needing to be yelled at,” she teased.
“I’m at Rocky’s?” he asked.
“Yep,” she said. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“We’d just finished fighting the monster...”
“And then you passed out, and the new red guy had to do something because you were dying. Don’t do that anymore, it’s against the rules.”
“Sorry,” Adam muttered.
“Don’t do it again,” she told him seriously. “I mean it. I’ll be staying here for a while, so I’ll know, and Rocky took away the broken morpher anyway so you won’t be able to do it again, but the don’t do it again applies to anything else that might hurt you.”
“I just...”
“Just felt alone and lost, and wanted to feel like you were making a difference,” Aisha supplied.
Adam winced, and she wasn’t sure for a second if it was from what she’d said or because of aftereffects of the broken morpher.
“Honey, this probably isn’t the most helpful thing to say, but we’ve all been there. All of us, when we gave up our powers. Maybe not in the same way as you feel it, but the general idea is the same.”
Adam turned away from her.
“And we’re not going to leave you because of this. I just came across the world because I was worried about you. Rocky hasn’t left the apartment since you were brought in, seriously, there is no food anywhere. Justin’s been staying here so that Rocky could sleep. Kat and Tanya will be here in a little while, and I told Carlos to pick up Kimberly on his way back from getting all my stuff.”
“Your stuff?”
“Of course. I’m back to stay.”
“Really?”
“You really think I would go back when my boys need me? I’m staying. We’re getting a better apartment though, the three of us.”
“All three?”
“If you want us to be,” she said. “That’s how we’re best together, you know. I love you, and Rocky loves you, and I know you love us, even if you’re probably going to be mad at us for babying you for the next.... oh I don’t know, until we’re convinced you’re going to be okay.”
“I really don’t need...” Adam started, but she silenced him by kissing him.
“Private party, or can anyone join in?” Rocky asked from the doorway, and they broke apart.
Aisha glanced at Adam, who smiled, the first smile she’d seen since he woke up.
“You’re always welcome,” Adam said, and Rocky joined them on the bed, kissing them both in turn.
“Don’t do that again,” Rocky said.
“The kissing?” Adam looked confused.
“You can do that as much as you want,” Aisha said exasperatedly. “I think he meant the broken morpher part.”
“Right,” Adam said. “I just...”
“Didn’t think you had anything besides being a Ranger,” Rocky supplied.
“Which is stupid, really,” Aisha said. “I’ve got a list of reasons.”
“Do I want to know?” Adam asked.
“Well, numbers one and two are sitting on the bed with you,” Aisha told him. “If you need me to keep going, I can.”
“That’s okay,” Adam said. “I think I can remember those two.”