Chapter Text
Angel Grove is in ruins.
The Krispy Kreme is once again a wreck, the building little more than boulders strewn across what had once been a busy main street. The rest of the town looks similar.
Houses which aren’t touched by the fight are non-existent, ones still standing few and far in between.
He almost doesn’t dare to breathe, not because of the dust in the air which drapes itself over everything like a shroud suffocating the town, but because of the feeling of his chest being squeezed together. Choking he wanders further through the remains of his city, past destroyed cars and around an uprooted tree.
No one is on the streets, he is completely alone. He tastes ashes in his mouth, dry and oh so bitter on his tongue.
The quite is what kills him. No noises, no birds singing or leaves rustling, no live.
There is a quiet panic inside him and it’s rising like a tidal wave. He knows, just knows he is looking for something. Needs to find it or- Or.
He stumbles. Falls to his knees.
“No.” he doesn’t know if the word really tumbles from his lips or if it stays nothing but a thought.
In front of him, bodies are laid out on the floor. Strewn around like debris.
He knows most of them; Angel Grove isn’t that big after all.
A teacher from school, an elderly neighbour who had looked after him when he was younger, a few former team members and friends.
His dad. His little sister.
And the other rangers, his friends.
Zack. Half buried under concrete. His arm, strangely twisted, reaching out for something.
Kim. Lying on her side, half curled into herself in pain. A halo of blood around her head.
Trini. Only a few steps between her and the other female ranger, felled in her defence probably.
Billy. Thrown down from far above, lying in a crater. Looking like a horrible recapture of a moment not long ago.
Dead eyes looking at him like an accusation.
He doesn’t need them to tell him all of this is his fault.
‘THIS is a tragedy of your own making Jason. You are their leader, it’s your duty to keep them save. You failed them. Their blood is on your hands.‘
“Jason” he knows the voice. But he also knows he shouldn’t be able to hear it because- The reason puts his heart in a vice.
“Champ, come on wake up it’s just a bad dream.” His dad beckons softly.
And since the warmth of a hand on his shoulder is such a welcome change from the cold of his nightmares, for once Jason does exactly as his dad asks.
*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*
It’s actually Pearl who was the first to realise Jason is having another nightmare tonight.
Jason knows this because his little sister is standing at the door looking scared, and concerned and just about every other emotion he doesn’t want her to feel. Which makes him feel a hundred times worse than he already did, anyway.
‘Way to emotionally scar her even more after the whole thing with the car accident and their city being attacked by aliens. A+ for being the worst big brother to ever walk the earth.’
“Champ?” Apparently his dad had been talking to him. And calling him by the old nickname, he hadn’t heard in what had to be months.
Jason somehow manages to rip his eyes away from the small figure standing in the half-light between the darkness of his room and the floor lamp to look at him and grunt as answer.
The warmth of his dads hand on his shoulder vanishes.
Sitting up and re-arranging his legs to stop the burning in his knee he adds:
“I’m fine. Sorry for waking you.”
Jason can see his dad isn’t buying it, he probably wouldn’t buy it himself with how he is bound to look, but he doesn’t press either the way he normally does so Jason counts it as a win anyway.
“You didn’t do it on purpose.” Then after a pause and a look to the door “I’m bringing Pearl back to bed, if you like we can talk, after.”
Jason does not want to talk and doesn’t plan to either, yet he hums back in agreement anyway.
They both know Jason will just act asleep.
The rest of the night goes as following:
Jason goes to give his sister a hug and a kiss to reassure her he’s ok and reassure himself she is still there and fine.
He gives his dad a smile he hopes looks thankful while steady but has the feeling in reality just looks suspiciously pained and unsteady.
Listening to his father and sisters muted voices through the wall he settles back into the mattress, letting them lull this still too fast heartbeat back to normal.
Next he lies still in bed and breathes evenly until his dad comes by to check on him and then waits 10 additional painfully long minutes to be certain he left and went to bed himself.
Only after Jason is absolutely sure he’s asleep and won’t realise his son’s absence until morning, he moves out of bed to dress quietly: A shirt under his washed out red hoodie and a soft and comfortable pair of grey sweatpants he learned to love after his car crash and the following PT.
Since his leg and knee are for once not seriously acting up, the underlying pain easy to ignore since becoming a power ranger, he decides to leave the brace.
So he pockets his phone and the power coin and slips out of the window into the night air for another of his check-up rounds.
He tells himself he usually starts with Billy because his house is nearest, which is technically true but far from his main motive. He takes a look around the house and neighbourhood like he does at each of his friends’ homes to make sure everything is as it should be.
Hoping the genius isn’t pulling a nightshift in his ‘laboratory’ in the basement but feeling optimistic since Jason hadn’t seen any light he jumps the garage to get a look inside Billy’s room.
What Jason finds makes him smile.
The dark skinned boy is for once actually asleep in his bed but there are concept drawings, machine parts and tools carefully laid out in the room in the closest way Billy will probably ever come to actual disorder. Jason takes a minute or two to just watch his chest move up and down (a sight which has become one of the most comforting he knows) and then moves on.
Next on is Kim. Who would surely have his hide for pulling a Edward Cullen on all of them. ‘Cause Jason has no doubt that or something similar is what Kim would call Jason’s nightly rounds. Which is another reason he doesn’t want his team to know: To spare him the trash talking and them the worry.
Anyway, Kim is usually the easiest to check up on as chances are high she’s in fact in bed. Which rings true in this case, too.
Laying under a massive mountain of pink comforters and between just as pink throw-pillows, sleeping deeply and peacefully is the pink ranger.
Jason can’t help but realize that Kim’s room is terribly pink. Looking down at himself and his red hoodie he asks himself, as he always does, if that has always been the case or if it’s a side effect of the phenomenon that has them all wearing their colours more often than not. Making a mental note to already ask Zordon about this Jason makes his way over to the second female rangers place.
Trini is, closely followed by Zack, the most likely not to find at home in the early hours of the day and the night seeing as she likes to spend them wandering the wild or doing her tai Chee near the mine. One of the first times he did his check-up routine after a nightmare and hadn’t found her save and sound at home he almost had a heart attack, pictures of Rita or some other aggressor finding her asleep and vulnerable and hurting her still flashing through his brain.
To this day he isn’t exactly sure how he found her in the pit when she could have been anywhere. Jason only remembers panicking and thinking that he had to find her, had to make sure she was ok. The next thing he knew he was standing in the pit next to an upset Trini, just as his handy chimed.
She had looked at him with wide eyes like she wasn’t able to figure out how he got here either, although him still dripping water made it kind of obvious which entrance he used.
“I literally just hit send! How are you here?”
He just shrugged and asked her fretful “Are you ok? What happened?”
What had happened was her mother, if you could call the woman that. Jason had held Trini in his arms and shushed her gently until the others had arrived and since Trini and her witch of a mother had been their main focus that night the question as to how Jason had managed to get here so fast (faster than Trini’s message even) fell into oblivion.
This time Trini was at home and asleep. It was a Friday night and Trini had seemingly passed out on her bed (the bed he and the rest of the team had helped her put together) an arm thrown over her brothers after what had to be a movie marathon. A halfway empty popcorn bowl has been upturned and its contents lay scattered on the floor.
A bit calmer Jason makes towards his next and last stop.
Zack and his mother live in a small condo at the edge of town. He hadn’t known how small until his first bout of anxiety had him seek out his friends’ homes more frequently. Previously he had only seen it from the outside while picking Zack up or walking home together from the ship.
Like always Jason made sure to check up on Jacks mom first before having a look through the living room window.
They had all been pretty clingy after the whole Rita affair but Zack had been an entirely different level. He had watched all of them like a very worried hawk after the battle, as if waiting for one of them to… Well actually Jason isn’t sure what Zack had been expecting. For one of them to drop dead? To turn his or her back on them and leave?
There had been other instances as well.
Billy getting the flu and Zack going into a mother hen mode ( “Zack, calm down. You’re almost worse than Red! Billy is going to be fine” “Kim is right, it’s just- Wait what’s that supposed to mean?”). Jason himself found himself at the other end of Zack’s worried kicked-puppy-look™ every time he wasn’t hiding that his leg was giving him trouble well enough.
Moving around the house Jason finally laid eyes on the last of his friends.
There he was. Lying stretched out on the couch and snoring quietly. His legs are to long for both the couch and blanket, making his bare feet stick out over the armrest.
Snorting, Jason turns around, dragging his feet.
He takes a look at the clock on his phone. The light of the display is blinding for a few seconds before he is able to read: 5:23 AM. Still early enough to get some sleep before Saturday detention.
He thinks about dead eyes staring at him and obligations and decides to get some training in the pit instead.