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Children of Two Centuries (Power Rangers Time Force)
Summary: Beja, Richard, and Colleen are nearly grown up. (Moving On storyline)
Disclaimers: Alex, Jen, and the mentioned Rangers belong to someone besides me. Richard, Beja, and Colleen are all mine. Unfortunately.
Spoilers: Mostly previous stories in this series.
Author's notes. It's all Colleen's Fault. I should know better than to listen to a second gen, but I didn't get away in time. A lot of exposition married to one stubborn character.
Children of Two Centuries
by Estirose
copyright 2002
Richard is the one who comes up to us, panting as he tries vainly to catch his breath. "Mom just had a pretending visitor."
He's my older brother. My older sister, his twin, is Beja, who is having lunch with me on this sunny summer day. I am the youngest, born after mom's return to the thirty-first century.
But we aren't supposed to know that. Mom isn't supposed to remember what had happened in the time she was with Dad. That's why we have evolved our shorthand about those who are safe to be ourselves around, and those who we have to be careful about.
This visitor isn't safe. This visitor thinks that Mom's memories have been purged, or that she has been in this century the whole time. That means that the three of us have to pretend that Uncle Alex is our somewhat absentee father, and that we know nothing about how we came to exist.
Beja and Richard were born out of Mom's body, as was normal for the early twenty-first century. I had been conceived the same way they had, but Uncle Alex had found Mom before I was born. In order to have any peace, she had let the medical techs of this time remove me and let me be born 'normally'.
In fact, from what the three of us can figure out, Mom has done a lot to convince the people in Time Force that she had not gone back to Dad's time for love. That's why the three of us, Mom, Dad, and a handful of non-biological aunts and uncles are the only ones who knew about what Mom had truly done.
We are probably closer than any other sibling groups I have ever met, just because of the secret we hold. We also like Uncle Lucas, Uncle Trip, and Aunt Katie, Mom's former teammates. They had been to 2001 on my Mom's first trip there. I regularly talk to Dad, but have never seen him in the flesh, only in pictures my mom has smuggled in.
In fact, we have mutually agreed that Uncle Alex is the only one the three of us really dislike, and Mom and the others don't really care for him either. Oh, we are good at pretending he is our Dad, but it's awkward, because both we and he know that he isn't really.
He isn't Dad, and we know that nothing will change that. Mom occasionally has fantasies about returning back to Dad, but she has told us that there is no possibility of returning, not if we want to live. And it is not safe, for reasons she can't explain, for Dad to come to our time.
It isn't ever safe to totally be ourselves, to be the children of two centuries. It wasn't ever safe for Mom and Dad to be together. Only the two of them, and maybe her teammates, knew.
Better to be out here. Better not to endanger Mom's secrets. We don't want to think what would happen if she was found out.
So we sit out here, waiting for him to go away. That's what we do best. At least until Richard let out a curse. "I forgot it."
I raise an eyebrow. Totally typical Richard. Good thing people don't know about his origin. They'd pity him for his genetic inperfection, call him a mutant. I'm the only one of us who has been genetically 'corrected', and that was because It had not been too long after my conception when I was removed from Mom. Then again, the two of them can boast that they're products of the twenty-first century. I've never known it and I was never born there.
But I still know who I am.
"I'll get it," I tell him. I'm the least conspicuous of the three, the one born in the public eye. Some rumors about mom say that her 'secret mission' was no more that Time Force cooperating so that she could raise the three of us out of the public eye, and it was forced to end that policy in order to cover up a failed mission.
Some consider Mom as knowing about and participating in the coverup, others aren't so sure. Oh, there was a coverup, and mom continues to participate in it, but it isn't what anybody outside the family thinks.
Family. Mom keeps in touch with her biological family. We have Alex's as well, but not as much. And we have Alex too, but we don't consider him family unless we have to. It's Mom and Dad and my two Uncles and my Aunt that are the ones that are closest to us. Yes, the three of us have a Xybrian for an uncle. Don't laugh.
I walk into our house, just big enough for the four of us and a spare room for whenever one of our 'relatives' visits. Mom smiles at me as she walks in, the text of one of her latest speeches or chapters floating in the air. I don't really care. I'm here to snag Richard's stuff, and to see how it went.
"Hi, Mom. Had a visitor?"
"Someone who had a few questions about my latest," Mom tells me. "By the way, your father called, and he'll be coming over this weekend to see the three of you."
Translate that to mean Alex, not Dad. Mom hasn't had a chance to sweep the house for surveilance equipment yet.
Scarily enough, Alex has tried several times to move in with Mom, even trying to persuade her to have a fourth child - his, this time. Mom refused. I'm too young to remember, but I got this out of Trip, and he wouldn't lie. Not most of the time, anyway.
Ugh. A whole weekend of pretending to be good little thirty-first century teenagers while Uncle Alex tries to be paternal with us. We aren't his kids, but that doesn't mean he doesn't try. I think if Mom hadn't gotten him to promise that our memories would left intact, he would have swept in and raised us as his own. By himself. With mom no more the wiser.
Can you how we would have turned out? Every time I try to, I'd shudder. We'd be formal little junior Time Force members by now. Thank goodness that Uncle Alex holds by his word.
But we still had to put up with him, and he with us. And he does love us in his own way. It's just he's... so bad at it.
"I'll tell the others," I tell her, and she nods, turning back to her stuff. She'll get the place cleaned up soon enough, and I don't mean of dirt.
* * *
The three of us are at home with Mom when Uncle Alex arrives. I have to admit, he and Dad look a lot alike, enough that when Beja was told that Uncle Alex was going to pretend to be our biological father she thought that he was wearing a mask to look like Dad and not scare her. Uncle Alex had never heard of Scooby-Doo.
Later, he told us it was because he and Dad were remotely related, and that my grandparents, trying to give their son a "Collins" look, had used quite a fair amount of my father's DNA. Grandfather was so scared of losing him after he lost Mom, Beja, and Richard, that a large amount of material perfect for cloning had been salted away. It had probably happened in Alex's original timeline for some other reason, but we were the reason now.
"Jennifer," he said, greeting my mother with a stiff hug. "Beja. Richard. Colleen."
He's almost always warmer with me that he is with Mom or the twins. Maybe because I wasn't 'contaiminated' to the extent that Mom or the others were. Apart from my origin, I have touched little of the twenty-first century.
Alex has plans for me, I'm sure. I'm the nearest thing he has to a true daughter, and he can pretend I'm his most of the time. I'm not sure I'm always flattered, but I guess he can get lonely, seeing his ex-fiancee with her husband's children.
And all of us resemble him, me most of all. Beja and Richard definitely take after Mom. I am most definitely Dad, though sometimes I wonder if Alex had anything to do with that.
He settles down in the big fluffy chair Mom insists on having. "Maybe it would be better if I discussed things with your mother, alone."
If that wasn't a patented Alex clue, I don't know what was. The three of us wander out, in Perfect Children mode, leaving Alex to discuss whatever he needs to with Mom.
It takes a long time. Richard, ever impatient, goes out with the flimsy excuse that he needs to get a snack. He comes back quicker than we thought. "They're screaming at each other," he reports grimly. "But I can't hear what they're saying, exactly."
Beja shakes her head. "At least one argument every three months, right on schedule. Wonder what it is this time?"
Whatever it is, Alex leaves by the time Mom comes back, her face reflecting the strain of the argument. They had nearly married one time, long ago. In a way, Mom still respected Uncle Alex. But they had definite ideas on how the three of us should be raised, and as Beja said, it seems every three months Alex comes over and has a major argument.
She turns towards me. "Alex wants you to go live with him for a while."
I stay silent, knowing that the contract that Uncle Alex had come up with specified visitation rights, not custody rights. Not that he wasn't beyond altering a contract, but this was Uncle Alex. He keeps his word.
"I suspect he's being put under pressure. Now that you're old enough, they want to see if you turned okay. And everyone knows that Alex is closest to you."
Great. Not only do I have to pretend to be a 'normal' person some of the time, but all of the time?
"It's up to you," she says, clearly reading something in my expression. "Alex would have taken you home with him today, but I thought you should have a choice."
She's right. Uncle Alex probably would have walked out of the living room and in his most solemn voice told me that we were leaving. That's Uncle Alex for you. If he becomes convinced that what he's doing is in your best interests, watch out! Clearly, he's become convinced that a little show-and-tell is going to work wonders for Mom's reputation, no matter how we or she feel about the matter.
And how do I feel about it? I may not have spent any time in the twenty-first century, but because of Mom and Dad I still feel the ties. Not as heavily as Richard or Beja, but I do feel them. And I don't know if I can spend that long with my 'father' without feeling the urge to strangle him. I am a daughter of two times, and nobody can ever take that away from me.
Trouble is, I think someone may try. And they might try harder if they don't see one of us up close on our best behaviour. They might start suspecting things.
Can't have that happening, can we? So someone has to make a sacrifice. That sacrifice is me. I can take a month or two with Uncle Alex, right?
I hope so. Looking at Mom and the twins, I open my mouth and volunteer.
-end
Disclaimers: Alex, Jen, and the mentioned Rangers belong to someone besides me. Richard, Beja, and Colleen are all mine. Unfortunately.
Spoilers: Mostly previous stories in this series.
Author's notes. It's all Colleen's Fault. I should know better than to listen to a second gen, but I didn't get away in time. A lot of exposition married to one stubborn character.
Children of Two Centuries
by Estirose
copyright 2002
Richard is the one who comes up to us, panting as he tries vainly to catch his breath. "Mom just had a pretending visitor."
He's my older brother. My older sister, his twin, is Beja, who is having lunch with me on this sunny summer day. I am the youngest, born after mom's return to the thirty-first century.
But we aren't supposed to know that. Mom isn't supposed to remember what had happened in the time she was with Dad. That's why we have evolved our shorthand about those who are safe to be ourselves around, and those who we have to be careful about.
This visitor isn't safe. This visitor thinks that Mom's memories have been purged, or that she has been in this century the whole time. That means that the three of us have to pretend that Uncle Alex is our somewhat absentee father, and that we know nothing about how we came to exist.
Beja and Richard were born out of Mom's body, as was normal for the early twenty-first century. I had been conceived the same way they had, but Uncle Alex had found Mom before I was born. In order to have any peace, she had let the medical techs of this time remove me and let me be born 'normally'.
In fact, from what the three of us can figure out, Mom has done a lot to convince the people in Time Force that she had not gone back to Dad's time for love. That's why the three of us, Mom, Dad, and a handful of non-biological aunts and uncles are the only ones who knew about what Mom had truly done.
We are probably closer than any other sibling groups I have ever met, just because of the secret we hold. We also like Uncle Lucas, Uncle Trip, and Aunt Katie, Mom's former teammates. They had been to 2001 on my Mom's first trip there. I regularly talk to Dad, but have never seen him in the flesh, only in pictures my mom has smuggled in.
In fact, we have mutually agreed that Uncle Alex is the only one the three of us really dislike, and Mom and the others don't really care for him either. Oh, we are good at pretending he is our Dad, but it's awkward, because both we and he know that he isn't really.
He isn't Dad, and we know that nothing will change that. Mom occasionally has fantasies about returning back to Dad, but she has told us that there is no possibility of returning, not if we want to live. And it is not safe, for reasons she can't explain, for Dad to come to our time.
It isn't ever safe to totally be ourselves, to be the children of two centuries. It wasn't ever safe for Mom and Dad to be together. Only the two of them, and maybe her teammates, knew.
Better to be out here. Better not to endanger Mom's secrets. We don't want to think what would happen if she was found out.
So we sit out here, waiting for him to go away. That's what we do best. At least until Richard let out a curse. "I forgot it."
I raise an eyebrow. Totally typical Richard. Good thing people don't know about his origin. They'd pity him for his genetic inperfection, call him a mutant. I'm the only one of us who has been genetically 'corrected', and that was because It had not been too long after my conception when I was removed from Mom. Then again, the two of them can boast that they're products of the twenty-first century. I've never known it and I was never born there.
But I still know who I am.
"I'll get it," I tell him. I'm the least conspicuous of the three, the one born in the public eye. Some rumors about mom say that her 'secret mission' was no more that Time Force cooperating so that she could raise the three of us out of the public eye, and it was forced to end that policy in order to cover up a failed mission.
Some consider Mom as knowing about and participating in the coverup, others aren't so sure. Oh, there was a coverup, and mom continues to participate in it, but it isn't what anybody outside the family thinks.
Family. Mom keeps in touch with her biological family. We have Alex's as well, but not as much. And we have Alex too, but we don't consider him family unless we have to. It's Mom and Dad and my two Uncles and my Aunt that are the ones that are closest to us. Yes, the three of us have a Xybrian for an uncle. Don't laugh.
I walk into our house, just big enough for the four of us and a spare room for whenever one of our 'relatives' visits. Mom smiles at me as she walks in, the text of one of her latest speeches or chapters floating in the air. I don't really care. I'm here to snag Richard's stuff, and to see how it went.
"Hi, Mom. Had a visitor?"
"Someone who had a few questions about my latest," Mom tells me. "By the way, your father called, and he'll be coming over this weekend to see the three of you."
Translate that to mean Alex, not Dad. Mom hasn't had a chance to sweep the house for surveilance equipment yet.
Scarily enough, Alex has tried several times to move in with Mom, even trying to persuade her to have a fourth child - his, this time. Mom refused. I'm too young to remember, but I got this out of Trip, and he wouldn't lie. Not most of the time, anyway.
Ugh. A whole weekend of pretending to be good little thirty-first century teenagers while Uncle Alex tries to be paternal with us. We aren't his kids, but that doesn't mean he doesn't try. I think if Mom hadn't gotten him to promise that our memories would left intact, he would have swept in and raised us as his own. By himself. With mom no more the wiser.
Can you how we would have turned out? Every time I try to, I'd shudder. We'd be formal little junior Time Force members by now. Thank goodness that Uncle Alex holds by his word.
But we still had to put up with him, and he with us. And he does love us in his own way. It's just he's... so bad at it.
"I'll tell the others," I tell her, and she nods, turning back to her stuff. She'll get the place cleaned up soon enough, and I don't mean of dirt.
* * *
The three of us are at home with Mom when Uncle Alex arrives. I have to admit, he and Dad look a lot alike, enough that when Beja was told that Uncle Alex was going to pretend to be our biological father she thought that he was wearing a mask to look like Dad and not scare her. Uncle Alex had never heard of Scooby-Doo.
Later, he told us it was because he and Dad were remotely related, and that my grandparents, trying to give their son a "Collins" look, had used quite a fair amount of my father's DNA. Grandfather was so scared of losing him after he lost Mom, Beja, and Richard, that a large amount of material perfect for cloning had been salted away. It had probably happened in Alex's original timeline for some other reason, but we were the reason now.
"Jennifer," he said, greeting my mother with a stiff hug. "Beja. Richard. Colleen."
He's almost always warmer with me that he is with Mom or the twins. Maybe because I wasn't 'contaiminated' to the extent that Mom or the others were. Apart from my origin, I have touched little of the twenty-first century.
Alex has plans for me, I'm sure. I'm the nearest thing he has to a true daughter, and he can pretend I'm his most of the time. I'm not sure I'm always flattered, but I guess he can get lonely, seeing his ex-fiancee with her husband's children.
And all of us resemble him, me most of all. Beja and Richard definitely take after Mom. I am most definitely Dad, though sometimes I wonder if Alex had anything to do with that.
He settles down in the big fluffy chair Mom insists on having. "Maybe it would be better if I discussed things with your mother, alone."
If that wasn't a patented Alex clue, I don't know what was. The three of us wander out, in Perfect Children mode, leaving Alex to discuss whatever he needs to with Mom.
It takes a long time. Richard, ever impatient, goes out with the flimsy excuse that he needs to get a snack. He comes back quicker than we thought. "They're screaming at each other," he reports grimly. "But I can't hear what they're saying, exactly."
Beja shakes her head. "At least one argument every three months, right on schedule. Wonder what it is this time?"
Whatever it is, Alex leaves by the time Mom comes back, her face reflecting the strain of the argument. They had nearly married one time, long ago. In a way, Mom still respected Uncle Alex. But they had definite ideas on how the three of us should be raised, and as Beja said, it seems every three months Alex comes over and has a major argument.
She turns towards me. "Alex wants you to go live with him for a while."
I stay silent, knowing that the contract that Uncle Alex had come up with specified visitation rights, not custody rights. Not that he wasn't beyond altering a contract, but this was Uncle Alex. He keeps his word.
"I suspect he's being put under pressure. Now that you're old enough, they want to see if you turned okay. And everyone knows that Alex is closest to you."
Great. Not only do I have to pretend to be a 'normal' person some of the time, but all of the time?
"It's up to you," she says, clearly reading something in my expression. "Alex would have taken you home with him today, but I thought you should have a choice."
She's right. Uncle Alex probably would have walked out of the living room and in his most solemn voice told me that we were leaving. That's Uncle Alex for you. If he becomes convinced that what he's doing is in your best interests, watch out! Clearly, he's become convinced that a little show-and-tell is going to work wonders for Mom's reputation, no matter how we or she feel about the matter.
And how do I feel about it? I may not have spent any time in the twenty-first century, but because of Mom and Dad I still feel the ties. Not as heavily as Richard or Beja, but I do feel them. And I don't know if I can spend that long with my 'father' without feeling the urge to strangle him. I am a daughter of two times, and nobody can ever take that away from me.
Trouble is, I think someone may try. And they might try harder if they don't see one of us up close on our best behaviour. They might start suspecting things.
Can't have that happening, can we? So someone has to make a sacrifice. That sacrifice is me. I can take a month or two with Uncle Alex, right?
I hope so. Looking at Mom and the twins, I open my mouth and volunteer.
-end