Work Text:
don't have to be superman
rest your eyes now, take my hand
even heroes fall now and then
— rachel platten, superman
-:-
Tyler doesn’t understand why his father left him.
At age eight, he spends the first night crying. His mother sits with him the entire night, cradles him in her arms and promises him that his father will come back. Outside his bedroom window, the sun sets and rises within the blink of an eye, but his tears don’t dry for days. He doesn’t understand why his father can’t just come back home like he always does.
“Something’s gone wrong, Tyler,” his mother explains, or tries to explain, even through her own tears. “He’s gone missing.”
“But he’ll be back, right?” Tyler asks, sniffling.
“He’ll always come back for you,” his mother promises, pressing a kiss to his curls. “He loves you, Tyler.”
-:-
At age eighteen, he thinks his mother might have been wrong.
Dear Dad,
Today I found you again.
His pen freezes over the word ‘again. All of a sudden, he can’t figure out how to move it, or what to say afterwards. He’s imagined writing this journal entry so many times, imagined the ecstasy of the moment, but right now –
Today I found you again, and then you left again.
This time, maybe, he understands better. This time, he’s eighteen and he’s traveled the entire coast looking for his father and he’s fought monsters and stood on top of dinosaurs. The world is different now than when he was eight. There’s a reason his father had to leave him.
Eight-year-old Tyler inside him doesn’t understand it, though.
If you’re here now, why can’t you stay?
He crosses that out. I’m glad I got to spend a day with you. He crosses that out, too. The sun begins to set over the horizon, vividly red and orange tonight. The day he found out his father was gone, he remembers the sunset being purple and pink, soft and soothing. Tonight, he doesn’t feel very soothed.
I wish you could stay longer. I haven’t seen you in ten
He stops. Ten years. It doesn’t even feel like ten years. The minute he saw his father, it felt like it had been ten days without him, that everything was all right now, and would be all right forever. And then he left again, and the weight of the ten years is pressing down on Tyler’s heart heavier than ever.
“Hey,” says someone, making him jolt. He looks up to see Shelby standing in front of him, somehow having missed her shadow coming over him. Her brow furrows as she takes in the expression on his face, and then she sinks down to her knees on the grass next to him. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Tyler says, quickly closing his journal. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Shelby shrugs, leaning back against the tree he’s sitting under. “I don’t know, I just figured – you must be dealing with a lot, with your dad coming back and all.”
She doesn’t say coming back and leaving. He’s not sure if he appreciates the omission or not.
“I’m fine,” he lies, flashing her a smile. She doesn’t seem like she’s buying it. Shelby has a pretty good bullshit detector. “I promise, Shelby, I’m – ”
“Want some company?” she asks simply. His shoulders deflate.
“That’d be nice,” he admits. She smiles at him, but doesn’t say anything, content to sit in the silence with him. That, he knows he appreciates. It makes the weight of the journal with its unwritten entry feel a little less heavy on his heart.
-:-
Shelby doesn’t stay with him the whole night, but he hadn’t expected her to. In the morning, he wakes up to a text from his father that makes the entire last ten years of his life feel surreal.
Hey, Tyler – I got to Panorama City last night. Still no sign of the silver energem. Hope everything’s good at home. I miss you already. Love, Dad.
He almost throws his phone against a wall. He wants to rip his energem off his necklace and throw it against the wall, too. For a minute, all he can see is red – the red energem, the red power, the dinosaurs that kept his father away from him for ten years, the powers that still keep his father in another city, looking for another energem, to win a battle Tyler isn’t even sure he can fight.
He doesn’t want to be the red ranger. He doesn’t want his father to be the aqua ranger. He wants them to go home and be a family again. It feels like the only thing getting in the way of that are the energems, except –
Tyler presses his face into his hands. It’s not the energems. If his father wanted to stay, he would have.
-:-
At age eight, Tyler asks his mother, “Why couldn’t Dad just stay? Why did he have to go on the expedition?”
His mother sighs as she packs his lunch for school. “Nothing could keep your father away from his caves and his fossils, Tyler,” she says sadly. Tyler doesn’t think it then, but later he wonders if she was going to add ‘Not even me.’
“What about us?” he asks her with a frown. “Why did he have to leave us?”
His mother walks over and takes him into her arms for a hug. “He’ll come back, Tyler,” she says, but her certainty is already starting to waver. “If he can come back, I know he will. He loves us.”
But at age eighteen, Tyler knows his father can come back – and hasn’t.
-:-
He calls up his mother, but he doesn’t know how to tell her. The words stick in his throat, sandpapery and rough, dying before they reach his lips. Instead, he asks her, “How are you?”
“I’m good, sweetheart, how are you?” His mother has his ability of making everything sound cheerful, but he knows her life hasn’t been good since her husband disappeared and she had to take care of a child on her own. He wonders if his father would be able to spot the lie in her voice.
“I’m good,” he manages to get out. “I’ve been hanging out with my friends. I got last month’s paycheck, so I can send you some – ”
“Oh, honey, you don’t have to do that,” his mother protests. “I have a job, remember?”
He does forget that sometimes. “No, I want to,” he insists. Somebody has to take care of his mom, even if she can handle it herself. His father couldn’t be there, so he has to be. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” his mother says softly. “Stay safe out there, okay, Tyler?”
She says that to him every time he reaches a new city. Even though he’s been in Amber Beach for months, he still smiles at the reminder. She doesn’t know – can’t possibly know – everything that’s happened to him, but she says it, anyway.
“I will, Mom,” he promises. “Talk to you soon.”
“Bye, sweetheart,” she says, a smile in her voice that still sounds sad. “Come back home soon.”
-:-
The next time his father shows up at the café, empty-handed and without anything to show for his travels, Tyler backs him into the kitchen and asks quietly, “Did you go see Mom yet?”
His father stares at him, as if the idea of seeing his wife is something he hasn’t even thought about. Caught off-guard, the way he was when he learned Koda was a caveman and Ivan was a knight. That the world is different now, except in this way, it is the same it was when he vanished. Tyler still has a mother. He still has a wife.
“No,” he admits. “No, I – I wouldn’t know what to say.”
Something inside Tyler coils, angry and hurt and a million other emotions he’s never wanted to feel for his father, but he takes a deep breath and steadies himself. “Why don’t you start with ‘I missed you’? Or, ‘I love you’? Or, ‘How have you been for the past ten years?’”
His father frowns at him. “Tyler, are you mad at me? You know I can’t tell your mother where I’ve been – ”
“You don’t have to tell her!” he snaps. “You just have to see her! She thinks you’re dead, Dad.”
There’s a horrible pause, and then his father says, slowly, “Tyler, I think it’s better that way.”
Tyler’s stomach drops. And then so does his father.
-:-
“You punched him?” Shelby asks incredulously. Tyler stares down at his fist, unthinking. The other rangers crowd him, but nobody moves to help his father up from the floor. “Tyler, are you okay?”
“Of course I’m okay,” he says. His hand aches. His father’s eye is purpling. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Shelby stares at him for a moment, though he doesn’t meet her eyes, and then she says, “Guys, can you get him an ice pack? Tyler, come with me.”
She doesn’t give him time to protest, just grabs his hand, uncurling the fist and linking her fingers into his, and tugs him away, out of the kitchen with its suddenly blistering heat, out of the café full of people whispering, out of the museum, out of everywhere. She only stops when they’re alone in the parking lot, far away from everybody else.
“What?” he asks when she doesn’t speak, just stands there and looks at him, really looks at him. He shifts his weight under his gaze, disliking the way it feels like she’s judging him. As if he’s not the guy she thought he was.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were so angry?” she asks softly.
“I’m not angry,” he lies. “Why would I – ”
“You just punched your father, Tyler!” Shelby bursts out. “Would you at least tell me why?”
“Because he won’t go back to my mom!” Tyler explodes, voice rising above hers. “Because he won’t stay and he won’t come home and he won’t even say he misses her or he loves her or he’s sorry or he – or he loves me or – or – ”
“Tyler,” she breathes, and then her arms are around him, holding him, pressing his head gently down into her shoulder as he tries not to cry. “Tyler, it’s okay. It’s okay, I understand – ”
“How can you understand?” he mumbles, voice muffled by her pink hoodie. “Your father – your father is so great, Shelby. He loves you so much. All he does is support you.”
“Your father loves you, Tyler,” she tells him, letting him pull back and placing a hand on his cheek. “You know he does.”
Her hand is soft on his skin, warm, grounding. He finally feels like he’s not about to float away, but the anger remains bubbling inside him. “Then why won’t he stay?” he asks her.
She doesn’t have an answer.
-:-
He doesn’t see his father again for weeks. Everyone carefully sidesteps the subject, shushing Koda when he tries to ask, only giving him sidelong glances and quiet questions about whether or not he’s all right. Tyler doesn’t know the answer, so he doesn’t give them one.
Eventually, something has to give. He's in a battle when the aqua ranger appears to save them, and his first instinct is to recoil. It gives the monster just enough of a moment to swipe at his legs, knocking them out from under him, and he goes crashing to the ground, hard. The monster hits him again and this time his head gets knocked onto a rock and by the time he looks up, he's so dizzy and almost unconscious, that he completely forgets the aqua ranger is his father.
Later, when he wakes up in the base to his father looking over him, concern etched onto his face, onto the features Tyler sees and hates every morning in the mirror, he wishes that he could forget.
"Are you okay?" The words don't come from his dad but from Shelby, on the other side of his makeshift bed, leaning over in concern. She presses one hand to his forehead, the other intertwining with his and squeezing gently. "I think that bump is swelling."
"I'll take care of it," says Kendall from somewhere behind Shelby, Tyler can't see her or focus on her, not with his father there, not with the anger churning up inside him again, the reminder that the last time he saw his father, he had punched him, and nothing had happened, nothing had changed, he hadn't heard anything from his mother -
"Actually," his father interrupts when Kendall walks over to the three of them. "May I do this? I need to talk to my son."
Kendall stares at him, then looks at Tyler. Shelby's grip on his hand tightens, but she doesn't say anything, although he can feel the defensiveness rolling off her in waves. She doesn't want this anymore than he does. He wonders what his father had said while he'd been knocked out.
"Tyler?" Kendall asks, which he appreciates. He swallows and nods, because that's about the only thing he can do with his head that won't make him feel like the world is spinning. She looks warily at his father before leaving the first-aid kit in his hands and gently pulling Shelby away from them. Behind them, the other rangers disperse into the base, although they keep their voices low.
"What do you want?" Tyler asks, not caring if he's too loud, if the others hear him. His body hurts too much for him to have a filter.
"Tyler, please," his father says, looking pained as he pulls out an ice pack. "I came back to apologize. I'm sorry I left - "
"What is it now, the fourth time? Fifth?" Tyler manages a weak laugh. "I can't even keep count anymore. Did you go see Mom?"
James' face twists. "I was - I was going to - after this, I got the call that you guys needed help, that you needed help - "
Tyler can't help the stab of resentment he feels at Kendall for calling his father, even though he knows it's her job. "I didn't need help," he says, although he knows he's the one lying in a bed unable to move. "I don't need your help. You had weeks to go visit Mom and you didn't.”
His father sinks down to his knees, putting him at eye level with Tyler, and gently places the ice pack on his forehead. "I'm sorry," he says again, much quieter this time. If the others are listening, they would have to strain to hear this. "I was scared. I am scared. I'm a coward, I went into hiding because of one attack, and I told myself I was protecting you guys, but I was protecting myself."
The words don't feel as good to hear as Tyler had expected. "And when you came back?"
James sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. "All I've ever wanted is to protect you, Tyler. But when I saw you, all grown up, with your own powers, your new strength - I guess I didn't feel needed. And I didn't want to be around for you to realize you didn't need me anymore."
Tyler closes his eyes for a moment. "Dad - " The word feels cold on his mouth, but he presses it out anyway. "I will always need you. You're my father. Just because I'm eighteen now, or a power ranger now, doesn't mean that I don't. I just wanted you to be around. I want you and Mom to be happy again. I don't want you to be some estranged dad who shows up once a month to pay child support or something."
His father cracks a smile, more rueful than anything else. "I don't want that either. I'm sorry, Tyler. I'm gonna go see your mom, and then..."
"Don't promise," Tyler says quickly, because he can't handle any more of those. "Just go see Mom. Then we'll figure it out."
James nods, looking grateful. "All right. We'll figure it out together."
-:-
Dear Dad,
My mom called me today. She said
The pen stops. Tyler rolls it around his fingers, thinking about his mom, his dad, the phone call he’d just had, the world as it turns pink in the sunset light around him. His mind is so busy, he doesn’t notice Shelby, again, until she sits down next to him on the bench, knees knocking together as he jumps and looks over at her.
“You get startled way too easily,” she teases, offering him an iced coffee. “What if I had been a monster?”
He smiles at her, accepting the coffee. “You smell way too nice to be a monster.”
“Shut up,” she says, rolling her eyes, a smile on her lips. “How’re you feeling?”
“My head still hurts,” Tyler admits, carefully closing his journal. He can finish the entry later. His family has all the time in the world now. “But other than that, I’m okay.”
Shelby studies him carefully, gaze soft and concerned. “Are you sure? Everything with your dad…”
“We’re working on it,” he says, as truthful as possible. “I don’t know if – I don’t even know if Mom will forgive him.”
“Will you?” Shelby asks, touching his arm in comfort. Tyler takes a deep, shuddering breath, and shakes his head. “It’s okay if you won’t. Or if you don’t know.”
“I guess we’ll see,” he murmurs, turning his head to look at her. Surrounded in the glow of the sunset, she looks almost ethereal. He smiles at her, leaning over, voice quieter. “Thanks, Shelbs. For everything.”
Shelby smiles at him. “What are friends for?”
Tyler raises an eyebrow. “Is that what we are?”
“I don’t know,” Shelby says, or starts to say, but she’s still smiling when he kisses her. For a moment, they stay like that, soaking in the last remnants of sunlight, her lips soft and sweet against his. She slides her fingers into his curls, pulling him lower, deeper, and he never wants to move.
Maybe everything won’t be okay, at least not all at once. Maybe he still has a broken family. But at least now he has a lot more than that, too.