When The Past Comes Back To Shove (Power Rangers Wild Force/Time Force Fanfic)

Her Pain

Taylor's heart started racing at first when she felt the arms wrapped around her waist and her back against a man's rock hard chest. Then the memories of the day before flooded back and she relaxed slightly. It was only Eric. She'd spent the night at his place and was on his couch.

After he told her to stay, they'd stayed there for a little while. Just enjoying each other's company. Enjoying the safty she felt with him. He'd pushed her hair out of her face and kissed her. They cracked a few jokes and took some cheap shots at each other. And they laughed. Oh, did they laugh.

After she'd calmed down, she called Alyssa and asked her to bring some things over, but not tell the boys anything. She didn't need more teasing from Max. There were a lot of things he didn't need to know about her.

The main one was that she'd lived a bit of a double life for a few years as a teenager. Before everything with Arthur, of course. Alyssa and she were in a band, Authors of Disguise, under aliases. Taylor's had been Sadie Jackson and Alyssa's Sasha Snow. "Sasha" was the lead singer and "Sadie" was the songwriter, lead guitarist, fiddler, and harmony. There were three others, Taya Lockett (Abbie Thomas), Polly McCoy (Janessa Reynolds), and Yumi Langford (Jade Cervantes). "Abbie" played bass guitar and the banjo, "Janessa" on keys, and "Jade" was the drummer. The five girls were best friends. They did practically everything together. Play, ride, act. They were in a few movies together, as Sasha, Sadie, Abbie, Janessa, and Jade, of course. One, she and Alyssa even wrote together, a musical they named "Unafraid" about whom, they had learned after becoming rangers, were indeed the guardians of Animaria, as they'd been depicted in the movie. Even the names were right.

Tara was a curly blonde Scottish princess with a bit of an attitude problem, but could easily and confidently take charge when the need arose. No wonder both Tara and Taylor had been chosen by the Eagle. On the other hand, Alysondra, or Aly, was calm. The Witch Princess, as they'd called her, was the peacemaker, which made it quite obvious why the White Tiger had chosen her and Alyssa. William was a happy-go-lucky sailor who always seemed to get on Tara's nerves, though was like the little brother she never had. With the exact same dynamic Taylor had with Max, no one had to really guess why both had been chosen by the Shark. Hananiah was a faerie prince who had fallen in love with Serena, the daughter of the head gardener. With the shared love of flowers and both being hopeless romantics, who else would the Bison pick but Hananiah and Danny? Then there's Jacob. He'd been a thief Merrick had found trying to steal some bread from the castle. Princess Shayla and Aly had compassion on him when he told them he'd been stealing so that he could survive. Turned out, he'd been orphaned at a young age and was never taken in. He turned out to be quite the leader, and it was for that reason he and Cole had been chosen by the Lion.

Despite not wanting to, Aly had fallen for Jacob in the middle of a war. And he fell even deeper. William had quickly fallen in love with a siren named Maria. Hananiah and Serena ended up marrying. That left Tara. Slowly, she'd fallen for, for a lack of a better word, the gamekeeper, Jeremiah. He took care of the animals both in Anamaria and on nearby islands, like the one he'd met Tara on, but that's a story for another day.

From how he'd been written, and how Princess Shayla described him, Jeremiah and Eric seemed to have a lot in common. As had Jeremiah's relationship with Tara, and Eric's with Taylor. One difference, though, was that she and Eric had fallen faster than Tara and Jeremiah had. She could only pray she and Eric wouldn't end up like them.

Jeremiah was tricked into giving Tara up a few years after getting married. It was for that reason that she died. When he realized what he'd done, it had been too late. He raised their only child, their daughter, on his own.

Taylor was shaken from her thoughts by Eric nuzzling the back on her neck. She chuckled. He wasn't quite awake yet.

She turned over to face him. "Good morning, sleeping beauty."