Home Art Gone (Power Rangers Time Force)

[estinose]

Summary: How do you mourn somebody who isn't dead? (Moving On storyline)


Disclaimers: Characters belong to BVE, not me.

Author's Notes: Despite not really wanting to write anything else in this series (I'd been writing a sub-serial featuring an OFC), this one just snuck up on me from behind. It won't make much sense unless you've read previous stories in this serial (Moving On, Lawful and Good, Breadwinner). No, not a Jen/Wes fic, sorry. Written in memory of Fireball, elderly kitten, died May second. The fragments that Wes and Eric quote are from Shakespeare's Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene II.

Home Art Gone
by Estirose
copyright 2002

Wes stared at the piece of paper in his hand, given to him by a well-meaning staffer of his dad's. It was almost time for the memorial service, though three of the attendees knew that the person they weren't mourning wasn't truly dead. Of course, since she was a thousand years in the future, it was as if she was truly gone.

Of the three, only he knew that there was a tenuous connection to the future. Jen had left him with a communications device, one that connected to a booster on Trip's side that had allowed her to keep in communication with their former teammate. Reconfigured it, so that he could use it. All under Alex's nose.

But she wasn't with him. Alex and Fate had nicely arranged it that way. And he, knowing that their choice was Jen going home or dying, had asked Jen to consider living. Without him.

That day, thanks to Alex, Wesley Collins was a widower. A man who had lost his wife and two children in an unfortunate accident after a sudden desire to see the beach.

Except that he couldn't grieve. He knew the kids were safe, that Jen was safe. That Jen was living a lie ten centuries in the future and that he was going to be a father again.

The door swung noisily on its hinges and Eric, an extremely uncomfortable-looking Eric, walked in. An unlikely friend, and one who could understand.

Eric retrieved the piece of paper from Wes' hand, and read it silently, frowning. "It's appropriate," Wes said, in the staffer's defense. "'Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages....'"

"'Golden lads and girls all must, like chimney sweepers, come to dust.'"

The reading was neutral, but Eric's eyes told a different story. To him, to Wes' dad, Jen was truly out of reach. The children, lost forever. But Wes couldn't share what he knew. To share it meant that Alex would hear, and his last tie to Jen and the children would be severed.

That, he couldn't take. He had a feeling that it was that day in which he would truly grieve. But not now. Not while he knew that she was alive. Living. In a future he would never know because he was from the wrong time period.

"I can't believe I'm going through this," Wes said, though it was more to break the silence than for anything else. "I guess I have to. To gain some *closure*."

"You could have said 'no'," Eric said finally.

Wes shook his head. "What good would that have done? The guy was going to take Jen away whether either of us wanted it or not. Besides, Alex might have the personality of a potato peeling, but he's right. If he said that the three of them would die, I believed him."

"Sure," Eric said, his voice gaining a sarcastic edge. "So you let him walk off with her without a fight? You should have stopped him, Wes. Don't go moaning about it again. You could have stopped him. You could have called me, and I would have stopped him. But instead you just handed Jen over to him like she was some three-day-old bread."

"I didn't *hand* Jen over to him. She knows... knew him very well. He doesn't take trips into the past unless there's some critical reason."

He was defending Alex, heaven help him. To Eric. When what he really wanted to do was go back in time and force his way onto that ship. To be with Jen.

As he studied Eric's face, he realized that just maybe Eric had gotten used to Jen being around. Just as his father had, after getting used to a daughter-in-law from another century. Both of them were grieving for someone that they would never see again.

Of course, it was different for him. How did somebody mourn in a case like this? How did one grieve when they knew that those they seemed to mourn was actually still alive, and quite well?

"She knew what she was doing, Eric. She had a family to think of. Jen... was pregnant."

At that, the Quantum Ranger's face became a shade or two lighter, followed shortly by a reddening. "Jen was pregnant and you didn't tell me?"

"We found out when Alex told us. I mean, I never got the chance to confirm it, and he didn't mean to let it slip, but it was the final thing that convinced her. What parent wouldn't like their children to survive? That child would have been three months old when it died, Eric."

He felt quite safe referring to the newly-named Colleen as an 'it', since nobody would ever know her true sex. Colleen would never know her grandfather, never know Eric, and the two of them would never know her. It was safer that way.

And he knew Eric would have done anything to protect Colleen, to protect Jen, to protect the twins. But how did one protect three children who originally never had existed, and a wife that one was never supposed to be married to, from something that was bound and determined to kill them? Kill or move out of fate's way, that had been Jen's choice. Personally, he preferred to know that she was alive rather than being dead on some roadside. That his kids would grow up under his teammates' influence.

But it didn't stop Eric from grieving, from thinking of what he could have done to not be in the side room of a chapel, saying goodbye to somebody who was good as dead. He, like Wes, was stuck grieving for a woman both dead and alive.

He had been the one to verbally kick Wes into accepting that Jen had come to the twenty-first century, breaking all of her Time Force oaths to be with him. He had been the best man at the wedding, and the ex-Officer and the Silver Guardian had struck up quite a relationship. Eric was a colleague, sure, but somewhere in there he had become a *friend*.

Only Wes, only Jen, only Alex had seen that things had to be done. Nobody else could have done it. There were some things that had to be given a wide berth and accommodated whenever possible, regardless of one's feelings.

The door opened, admitting the pastor. "Are you ready?" she asked gently, interrupting his thoughts.

Wes nodded. "I think so," he replied, getting up and taking the piece of paper. "Fear no more the heat o' the sun...."

The pastor smiled in her own way. She had been accommodating, willing to do whatever was needed, whatever they wanted to have done. He hadn't had any idea what to do, so he had let her lead. "Just say what is natural to you," she suggested. "If that's not natural, toss it."

Wes nodded, aware of Eric behind him. "I'll be there in a minute," he told the pastor. For some reason, some inscrutable reason, she left him standing there, sweeping off with a brief nod. As if he had privacy with Eric in the room. As if he was ever going to be prepared to make a speech.

After all, how do you do a eulogy for someone who's not dead?

-end