Disclaimer: They’re still Saban’s, and still not ours, unfortunately. :) “She Dances With Her Shadow” is by Blackhawk. It’s an *awesome* song with beautiful harmonies from their album, Blackhawk III: Love and Gravity.
Author’s Note: This is After Space #5 of 8. This series might end up having 9 fics. I don’t know. Hey, I’m a woman. I have the right to change my mind. *smirk* Thanks to Starhawk, my fellow stalkee, for the proof. Okay, Cassie’s back this time, starting right where we left off with her last time. How convenient. *grin*
Sitting miserably on the floor of her room, freezing with the cold, but burning up with fever, she glared with contempt at the radio. “Damn country music!” she swore, and reached for something to throw at the radio.
Her hand found a book on the nightstand and she held it aloft, ready to send it airborne at the boombox, when something fell from the book and fluttered to the floor. She looked down, her hand still raised. It was a photo, fuzzy and not quite in focus, taken months ago. She tried to set the book back on the nightstand, but she could not stop staring at the photo and she missed the nightstand by a clear foot. The book made a loud thump against the floor, adding an extra beat to the song playing. As nothing had been hurled at it, the tape continued to play on to the next sad country song.
She was shivering, mostly from the cold, but partially from the weird feeling brought on by the unexpected appearance of the photo. She found it hard to tear her eyes from it, but she did long enough to search for her blanket. It had fallen from the bed with her. She gathered it up and pulled it over her shoulders, trying to keep in her body heat. She finally picked up the photo, her eyes never leaving it. No one knew she had it, and getting it had taken some doing.
Zhane had thought no one knew about his picture of Astronema, but Cassie had seen it when Ashley and she had gone to invite Zhane to the movies that long ago day. They had gone to see a “chick flick” as the guys called it, a love story. She had spent the movie watching Andros and Ashley, trying not to be jealous, and thinking of the one who should have been at her side, filling the empty seat next to her in the dark theatre.
She had kept quiet about Zhane’s picture, because she thought she understood where Zhane was coming from. He had feelings for someone that society said he shouldn’t. Cassie sometimes felt the same way. She had cornered him later that night, and he had admitted to his failed attempt at a date with Astronema. He had confided in her, and she had kept his secret. Because Cassie had had an ulterior motive for confronting him. She wanted to know how he had gotten a picture of Astronema. For she wished she had a picture of her absent love as well.
Cassie had been kicking herself since that day on Hercuron… the last time she had seen Phantom. She wished she had picked up the recorder to take with her. But for some reason she had left it. She didn’t know why. Some morbid part of her had thought that if he had not survived his injuries, the recorder would act as a final marker for him… a gravestone of sorts. But she tried not to think that way. She felt that somehow she would know if he were dead. She didn’t know how; she just knew that she would feel it.
But she had left the recorder lying there on the jungle floor on a far-off, distant planet. And she had regretted it ever since. So using the trick Zhane had taught her, she had managed to get the picture she held in her hand. It had meant scanning back through DECA’s database to that day on Hercuron. And then finding a clear picture taken by DECA’s sensors that she could print out.
Like a true phantom, the Phantom Ranger did not show up well on film. There had only been one shot of him that was even remotely clear. It was of Cassie and him together; she was supporting him, holding his arm as he sagged against her. He was clutching his side, hiding his injuries, though she knew they were severe. She had felt his pain that day. She could not forget it. She had felt his pain again during the war as he fought alongside Blue Senturion on Tatooine. The last report had him vanishing as soon as the war ended, but she knew in her heart he was alive.
If she had only picked up the recorder, she would have had some link to him, a way to see him other than in her dreams... her wretched, hurtful dreams. And that’s all it had been, she told herself, a dream, nothing but a terrible dream. But in her mind she could still see the Phantom and his wife walking away from her. She pushed the dream away, pulling herself back again to reality, which at that moment wasn’t much more comforting than her dream had been.
The tape started into the next country song, about ‘cryin’, lyin’, lovin’, and leavin’’. She reached out her other hand to touch the picture, wishing that just once she could have touched his face. It would have been something to let her know that the person who held her heart was real; that he had at least for a short time been a part of her life. She drifted back, letting the song take her back to a time when she still believed she might see him again.
Too sick to try to go back to sleep, she stood and took a step toward the window. A wave of dizziness hit her suddenly, her head pounding, her stomach lurching. She quickly reached out for the bed as she started to fall, grabbing for anything. Her hands caught the end of her bed, stopping her fall halfway. Her strength quickly gave out, and she lowered herself back to the floor. She leaned back against the bed, waiting for the spinning in her head to stop or at least lessen enough so she could move again.
All the action and fighting of the last few weeks had drained her, tired her out enough that she had managed to catch a really nasty flu. Being sick was one thing, being sick and alone was another. She knew she was happy for her friends, but it was hard to keep the jealous thoughts out of her mind. If Ashley had been sick, Andros would have been at her side. Cassie thought bitterly, and here I am alone, again. It just wasn’t right.
She tried to pull the blanket closer around herself, and felt something in her hand. She let the blanket fall, looked at her hand and the ruined photo it held. In her instinctual grab for the bed to prevent her fall, she had crushed the picture she had been holding. Now, crumpled and creased, it was just like their relationship... flawed and damaged beyond repair. Among the other bends and folds, a jagged white line now bisected the photo down the middle, separating Phantom and her. How appropriate, she thought, as she sadly opened her hand and let it fall again to the floor.
The tape continued to play, and this time the song hit even closer to home. Her eyes snapped up from the floor and the photo, to stare at the boombox as one of her songs started to play. She had loved that song when she had written it. It was a love song, of hope and joy, written during her Turbo Ranger days, back when she still believed in him, believed she meant something to him, actually believed he would return.
But the song was more than just a painful reminder of a failed love. For now there was another dashed hope connected to it, another dream over too soon. They would reach Earth soon, their home planet, the planet where they were now known world-wide as the Power Rangers. That the world had that knowledge changed everything. As soon as the war ended, she knew the press had started digging into their pasts. Nothing was a secret anymore, nothing private.
Long ago, all she had wanted in life was to be a singer, a writer, a musician. There was no chance of that now. Sure, she could probably get a record deal in a heartbeat. Producers would be knocking down her door, along with the press. But she didn’t want it that way. They would all want her because she was “Cassie! The Pink Power Ranger!”. They would only want her music to cash in on her popularity as a Power Ranger. She didn’t want to be known for that. They were probably already searching for bootleg copies of her when she played with Crash and the Creeps. Any hope of being recognized for her talent was gone. She didn’t want to be a star, she just wanted to be a singer, to earn her way to the top of the charts on talent alone.
She grabbed her blanket and pulled herself to her feet, fighting the nausea and her throbbing head. She just couldn’t listen to that song any longer. It hurt too much. She slowly made her way to the boombox and hit stop, interrupting her song just as she had reached the chorus where she again proclaimed her hope for the future of their love. She ejected the tape, pulled it out, and stared at it for just a moment. She drew her hand back and smashed it against the wall. She held her hand there for a minute, then pulled it away, watching the pieces fall, joining the ruined photo on the floor. Phantom, love, her music... so much lost, so many broken dreams before her.
The last of her recovered strength was disappearing quickly. She was surprised at how tired just smashing the tape had made her. She so wanted to sit down, to rest and forget.
She had chosen this room on the MegaShip on purpose. Some of the rooms had no windows at all, but this one had a very large one, one that in a conventional house had what would be called a window seat. She had always loved to curl up in that window and dream of the day when she might one day see a small fighter fly beside the MegaShip, something she had been kidding herself about. He had never come back, and he never would.
She wrapped the blanket around herself, pulling it tightly, then settled in the window seat. Curling up in the small space, she looked one last time at the floor. As the MegaShip passed a nearby moon, it shone its reflected light into her room. It cast an eerie glow, with her shadow falling on the broken and tarnished objects that littered the floor.
Shadow, she thought. That was a good word for him. For that’s what he was, an intangible object, something she could sometimes see, but never touch. She had fallen in love with someone who almost didn’t exist. ‘Phantom’ was an appropriate name for him, as he was little more than a ghost in her life, a shadow of someone who should have been there, a shadow that danced in and out of her life. Yes, a shadow, an illusion of light and dark... then why did his absence hurt her so?
She had promised herself she would never let him make her cry. His duty had taken him from her, and once upon a time she believed him when he said he would return. But she couldn’t do that anymore. It hurt too much, and had cost her too much. As a silent tear slid down her cheek, she told herself to accept the fact that he would never return, that she had to forget him.
She laid her head against the window, the cold glass a comfort against her burning forehead. The empty space outside the window served only as another reminder of the hated truth. She closed her eyes, blocking it out and resting her weary eyes. If only she could open them and see him. Just once, if just once he could have been there when she wished him to. To see him, unmorphed and beside her when she needed him... Another tear fell, and she cursed herself for letting him make her break her promise. But that didn’t help, so she cursed him. Alone and forsaken, she cried for all her lost and broken dreams as the MegaShip slipped quietly on its journey through space.
THE END