They didn't sleep. She had never talked to one person without interruption for as long as the two of them talked that night. She had never felt closer to him--maybe to anyone--than she did by the time the sun came up again. It came as something of a shock when he finally left... sometime during the night, she just forgot that he would go.

Cole had stayed after Animus disappeared. All of them had, actually, a fact that Shayla found indefinably reassuring. Cole wanted to know how the animal spirits were--he seemed less concerned about Merrick, but instead of being offended Merrick had relaxed enough to tease him about it.

To tease him. Merrick was teasing Cole now. She knew that Cole and Alyssa had opened their home to Merrick, and that they regularly invited him to stay or socialize with them. It was still strange to see her protector on such familiar terms with the teammates he had shunned when he first awoke.

Jen had explained the temporal threat, at least as much as she could, to those of them who understood what she was talking about. Taylor had explained the Silver Guardians' peripheral involvement, which had been key but entirely coincidental. Eric had grumbled about the inconvenient nature of anything involving morphers. This prompted Wes to deliver a mock-lecture on the subject of stealing, which made sense only because Taylor had told her entire team how Eric had come by the quantum morpher. Cole just watched, exchanging amused glances with Merrick from time to time.

Finally, Jen took her leave of them. To go write a report that didn't mention Animus, she said. Wes went with her. The others disappeared soon afterward: Cole and Taylor with identical well wishes for Merrick, Eric with ill-concealed impatience. And so it was only the two of them left, alone on this island of the past, with everything said between them and still nothing truly acknowledged.

He was sitting on the table now, and he had been since Jen started talking about the timestream and the difference between trizerium and time hole detectors and how long she had actually known this was going to happen. He looked less tired, oddly, which she attributed to Animus' influence, but now that the others were gone he didn't look any more open. She didn't like the awkwardness she saw in him when he stood.

"Well," he began, glancing around the temple as though he wasn't sure what to say. "I guess..."

He didn't finish, and she didn't let him. "Don't leave." She was afraid that any motion she made, to him or away, would prompt a response on his part. And she couldn't shake the feeling that his response would be to retreat.

Instead, his mouth quirked in a half-smile, and he inclined his head. "As you wish, Princess."

She bit her lip. She wanted to tell him that if she heard him call her that one more time, she was going to do something drastic. What, she didn't know, but she suspected it would involve shouting.

She managed to ignore it, though, in favor of the things she knew she had to say, things that weren't as easy as getting angry. "I'm afraid," she blurted out. "I'm afraid that you're going to turn and walk away, and this will all be nothing, that it won't mean anything and we'll never speak of it again."

His expression sobered, and he looked at her for a long moment before he said, "I wasn't the one who walked away, Shayla."

She swallowed. "You've turned your back on me many times since," she said quietly.

He just looked at her, and she could only wonder what he was thinking. But she was right. They were both right, and they were both wrong. She was tired of laying blame, but she wasn't going to take all of it just so they could move on.

Finally, he inclined his head again as if ceding the point. "True."

It was harder to smile than she'd thought it would be. "Can't we put those times aside and talk to each other as we have today?"

Merrick looked away. When she followed his gaze, she saw the deer crystal lying beside his abandoned dagger... the deer and the wolf, natural opposites--enemies, even, anywhere but the Animarium. Yet here they had worked together, for a time. And again, perhaps, today.

"I remember," Merrick said abruptly. "Animus made me remember."

She turned back to him, surprised by the sudden self-consciousness in his tone. He barely met her gaze, shrugging a little when he saw her watching. "What I saw--what I said--when I wasn't really... here."

When the wolf overwhelmed him and the crystal shards altered his perception of time. "I thought you weren't embarrassed when you stood before me," she said before she thought. Maybe teasing him wasn't the best idea right now.

To her relief, though, there was amusement in his eyes when he lifted them to hers. "Perhaps I lied," he said, a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth.

"Then don't think of it," she said firmly. "It's over now, and you said nothing worthy of your embarrassment."

"I think I did," he told her. He looked just as determined to relive it as she had been to let him forget again. "I would explain myself, if you'll listen."

If he was asking, she could do nothing but agree. "Of course," she murmured.

She felt his fingers touch her chin, ghosting across her skin when she lifted her face. "Don't tell me what I want to hear," he said, very gently. His voice was so warm that she could read no reproof in his words. "I told you that wasn't my fantasy. Not that you weren't."

"You're not my fantasy, Princess." She could still hear that moment echoing in her mind.

"You said you wanted me with you because I wanted to be," he said softly. "Not because I had to be. It's no different for me. I don't want a princess who feels she owes herself to me, for whatever reason. I want a woman who wants me in return."

She swallowed hard. "Is that what you thought I meant?" She didn't know how to talk about this, she didn't know what to say or how to say it, only that it had been unsaid for too long and she couldn't wait anymore. "That I was--holding on to you, trying to keep you with me because I felt responsible for you somehow?"

He took a step back, utterly failing to look more comfortable with the conversation than she was. "I was confused," he muttered. "I couldn't tell when I was, and... and hearing you say things--"

He broke off, giving her a miserable look that made her heart ache. "You know I love you," he said, searching her expression. "You know that."

He seemed to be waiting for a response. She couldn't help but smile, charmed by how quickly he went from confident and tender to uncertain and vulnerable. "I know," she agreed quietly. "You have my heart as well."

"I've imagined you saying that," he confessed, looking away. "And to hear you say it then, when I had no idea what was real and what wasn't..."

"That made it worse." She didn't have to ask. When he put it like that, it seemed so obvious to her. She would change it if she could, but she couldn't. All she could do was to make it clear now, when he would know it was real.

"Merrick." She waited until he looked at her again. "I'm not just saying it. Not then, and not now. I mean it."

He smiled, a real smile that made him look happier than she'd seen him look in a long time. All he said was, "I know."

"I'm sorry I asked you to leave the Animarium," she murmured.

"I know," he repeated, before she could continue. "Don't apologize again. It's over. I shouldn't have held it against you. As long as you don't plan to do it again, there's nothing else we need to say on the subject."

"I won't," she said softly. "I won't do it again."

He looked at her, the silence stretching so long that she began to wonder if he doubted her. Then he said, "I'm sorry for... for what I said, at Willie's. This afternoon," he added, as though it needed clarifying.

She stared back at him, trying to decide which part, exactly, he was apologizing for. "Did you mean it?" she asked at last.

He shook his head no. But he said, "Yes," and she thought that made about as much sense as anything else that had happened today.

"Yes," he repeated, after a brief hesitation. "Not what I said when you first came in. I wasn't talking to you then," he added. "I've seen--Zen-Aku sometimes speaks... or he did. Sometimes... we talked."

He was looking at her worriedly, nervously, maybe wondering what she would make of that. It didn't surprise her. She didn't like it, but it didn't surprise her. "So you said," she agreed gently. "For how long?"

His expression twisted in something like pain, or maybe disgust. "How long have I heard him talking to me," he muttered, "or how long have I been answering?"

"Merrick--" She didn't know what to say, didn't know how to reassure him. "He's gone now. He left. You don't have to talk to him anymore."

"I want to!" He looked worried and angry and anguished all at once. "He's part of me, Shayla! There was no one who understood me better!" He paused, almost choking on his words as he saw her, and still he mumbled, "No one."

She couldn't answer that. She couldn't do anything but nod to show she understood even when she didn't.

"Since that time he tried to take me back," he said with a sigh. "He didn't disappear with the mask." Glancing away, he added, "Or maybe he did... to everyone except me. No one else could see him after that, but every full moon--I'd see him again. Hear him.

"He didn't threaten me," he said quickly. "He just... talked. Then, after the Animarium rose again--"

His gaze met hers again. "I was very alone," he told her. "A feeling you know well, I think." He folded his arms, sighing, but he didn't take his eyes off of her. "So I started talking back."

"That's what he meant," she said softly. "When he said you'd told him a lot about me... about all of us, I mean. The Rangers."

"About you," he corrected. "You're right the first time. I did tell him a lot about you. And I'm sorry about that, it's just that... who else did I have to talk to?"

"I guess--" She tried to smile. "I guess you never seemed to be a person who got lonely, Merrick."

She couldn't read his expression at all when he said, "This is a lonely time, Princess."

"Shayla," she said, more vehemently than she'd meant to. "I asked you to stop calling me 'princess.'"

His face didn't change. "I thought... that might be just to help you recognize me."

"No." She knew what he meant. "Please, Merrick, I'm tired of not hearing my name. Willie and his customers are the only ones who use it--and Jen sometimes--and I know you disapprove, and you never wanted me there in the first place, but I'm lonely too!"

"It wasn't that I didn't want you there," he said, his arms falling to his sides as he shifted uncomfortably. "It's just--" He reached out to tap one hand against the table, a nervous gesture that he seemed to recognize as soon as he started. He pulled his hand away again.

"Just what?" she insisted. "You say you want a woman, not a princess. But the moment I leave the Animarium you treat me like a child who can't handle the world the way it is today!"

"The world is different now," he declared, "and you're too trusting, Princess. Just because Willie takes care of you doesn't mean half the men in that bar wouldn't take advantage of you the second he turns his back."

"Just because you knew me when I was fifteen doesn't mean I haven't grown up!" she retorted. "I'm not helpless, Merrick!"

"And I can't forget the night we met!" he shouted back. "I'm sorry if it's all I see when some drunken guy leers at you and you smile at him!"

"I was fifteen!" she repeated furiously. "I made a mistake! I won't hold all men accountable for the foolish things I did as a child!"

"I will! I'll hold them accountable and I'll put my fist in the face of anyone who so much as looks at you sideways if that's what it takes to keep you safe! This isn't the court, and women aren't the untouchable icons they were in the past!"

"A lot of good it did me then!" she snapped. "Alyssa and Taylor live on the earth without fear, and I'm at least as capable as either of them! You say I live in a shell, yet you would keep me here out of some misguided sense of preservation!"

"I don't want you to stay here," he growled. "I want you to be more careful when you leave! Taylor is soldier, trained for combat longer than either of us has been awake. And Alyssa--"

He stopped suddenly, his mouth twisting into a rueful smile. "Fine, granted, Alyssa has no concept of personal safety. Which is why Cole, who stands head and shoulders taller than her when she's on her toes, follows her everywhere!"

"Oh, that sounds familiar," she shot back. "Do you think I don't know that I can't leave the Animarium without you knowing about it? Do you think I don't see you, don't sense your presence every time I go somewhere with one of the other Rangers?"

He made no apology for his actions. "I swore to protect you!"

"If it's a choice between your protection and your respect, then I want your respect!" she shouted at him.

He turned his back on her, head down, the angry set of his shoulders achingly familiar. She wouldn't apologize. It was only the truth. And if it was a choice between his respect and his love, she wanted his love--but she didn't think she could have the one without the other.

"Do you know what I remember about that night?" His voice drifted to her, suddenly devoid of heat, of anger, of any emotion at all. "The night we met?"

She swallowed. She shook her head before it occurred to her that he couldn't see her. She wasn't even sure she wanted to know.

"I remember how beautiful you looked," he said distantly. He hadn't waited for her answer. "I remember thinking that your protector... that he was the luckiest man alive. And to see you there--talking, laughing with the Guards like they were your own brothers..."

He shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest again. She twined her fingers together anxiously, wishing she could stop him, certain she heard condemnation in his voice. It had seemed like such harmless fun at the time. Her protector had invited her to join him for an illicit drink, to meet some of his friends--to see the way the other half celebrated, he'd said.

It was terribly improper, and so all the more exciting. It had been a fair day, with feasting and fires long into the night, and she had still been giddy with her own step up from childhood. She had her own protector now! She'd been eager to prove her maturity, and the chance to grace a gathering so below her had been thrilling and dangerous and so very grown-up.

"I knew you were special," Merrick was saying quietly. "It was obvious in everything you did. The fact that you were there at all. I couldn't believe it. I think any one of us would have done anything for you that night... if we hadn't been too drunk to notice what was going on."

"It wasn't your fault," she tried, hoping to stop him before he went any further. "Merrick..."

"That's what I remember," he said, raising his voice. "I remember you being kind to us, treating us like we mattered next to you, and taking your leave of us as though it was we who had done you the honor."

He turned then. "And if your protector was more familiar than anyone expected," he said, his gaze glancing off of hers, "we were too blinded by your friendliness to notice."

"Not you," she said into the sudden silence. She took a deep breath, bracing herself to invite his response. "I never knew what made you follow us that night."

He looked at her. She didn't know what to read into his expression. She looked back, making herself wait, telling herself that so many things had changed since then. She wasn't that girl anymore. But sometimes, when she was under his intense scrutiny, she couldn't help but feel scared and helpless and very, very stupid all over again. He knew things about her that no one else did.

"I don't know either," he said at last. "I don't think I knew then, though it's possible I've simply forgotten. Perhaps there was someone running, or a child screaming, or some other of a hundred things that made me step outside just then.

"In time to hear you say no," he continued, his eyes seeing deep into hers. "And to know that he wasn't listening."

She folded her arms, cold and embarrassed and wishing desperately that this had never come up again. "It wasn't his fault," she murmured. "I shouldn't have been there. I didn't understand."

"It was his fault," Merrick growled. She could feel him, still staring at her even when she looked away. "It was his fault that I risked my rank by escorting a distraught and protector-less princess through the halls of the castle, and it was his fault that you were confined to your rooms for three days afterward! It was his fault that we were all anyone talked about for months! Until your crazy sister--"

He stopped immediately. For the first time he looked as uncomfortable as she felt. "It's his fault," he said after a moment, and his voice was quieter now, "that I can't imagine kissing you now without remembering him."

"I've suffered for his mistakes ever since..."

"I've never thought of him when you were close to me," she said softly, unable to meet his gaze. "Never, Merrick."

"I think of him every time," he muttered. "Every time I touch you without asking. Every time you come to see me at Willie's. Every time someone looks at you with something other than love in their eyes, and you're kind to them anyway, as though you don't even think of what could happen."

"I can't--" She swallowed hard. "I can't be afraid all the time. I won't."

He shook his head, and she interrupted him before he could start to speak. "I trust you," she reminded him. "I trust Willie. I trust the training you gave me. I'm not fifteen anymore, Merrick. And I'm not helpless."

He looked away then, staring down at the ground. "Maybe it's not you I'm afraid for," he said under his breath.

She just looked at him, confused and rushed and strung out, the way she always was when they argued. She hated to yell at him, but she hated to have him yell at her more, and she wouldn't watch him walk away again. She wouldn't. Not without telling him what was really on her mind.

"Maybe it's me," he muttered. "Maybe I'm scared that I'm no better than he was."

She opened her mouth before she knew what she was going to say. "Does it matter what I think?"

It startled him into looking at her. "What else is there?"

"I think you've spent seven years being everything my first protector was not," she told him. "I think you should stop now. Your oath is gone and I have no need of a protector these days--except maybe at Willie's," she allowed, before he could interject.

"I think I want Merrick more than I want a protector," she continued. "And I hope you want me more than you want a princess. So please... let us try. Let us be Shayla and Merrick first, instead of an Animarian princess and her protector."

He was already shaking his head. "I've always been a soldier first," he said. "Your protector, before anything else."

"Well, I'm letting you go," she said, with some asperity. "I don't want a protector anymore. You're fired."

He just rolled his eyes, as though the idea wasn't even worth his comment.

"I just want Merrick," she said, more gently. "Just you. However you are. Is that so hard?"

He sounded frustrated when he burst out, "I can't erase my past!"

"I don't want you to erase it," she insisted. "I just want you to stop living in it!"

He put his hands on his hips, glaring at the ground, but he didn't say anything. He didn't pull away when she put a hand on his shoulder, either. She laid her other hand against his cheek, and he looked up before she could ask. Blue eyes met hers, still staring, maybe seeing in her gaze whatever she had seen in his before they stepped back through the time hole.

She moved closer, her feet sliding a little as she kept her eyes on his face, silently asking permission. She tilted her head carefully, and then their mouths met with a gentle closeness that didn't abate. For a long moment, they were utterly still, and then she felt his shoulders shift and his hands settled on her waist as he kissed her again.

It was a feeling more vulnerable than any she'd ever known. And she trusted him with that, the way she wanted him to trust her. "Stay with me," she whispered against his skin.

He didn't pull away, and she could feel his breath on her cheek as he murmured, "All you ever had to do was ask."

She could smile at the irony, now. "Maybe that's why I didn't."

She felt his kiss again, soft against her mouth. Then his forehead came to rest against hers and he said quietly, "It's my choice too."

There was a long moment when she could hear her own heartbeat, when her breath came and went between parted lips, and she was afraid to move lest she break the spell that held him so close to her for this indefinable moment. Then he whispered, "It always has been," and she understood that he wasn't going to step away.

"You heard Animus," he murmured. "My oath is gone." His hands on her waist were a comforting warmth, and she let her fingers caress his neck as he added, "It's been my choice to follow you all along. Just as it was the night we met."

"Tell me," she said impulsively. Her hand slid over the collar of his t-shirt to rest on his shoulder, and the absence of his uniform made her love this time all over again. "Tell me about you and Animus. I knew you were friends, but I never knew how or why until today."

"Yes..." She didn't have to be able to see his whole face to know that he was smiling. "Many have said the same of us, I think."

If it was true, it didn't keep him from telling her. He told her about the lord of the wild zords and his sudden interest in one of the Royal Guard, a whim of Animus' that many had written off as a courtesy to his temple guardian, or perhaps a defensive gesture on behalf of the same. He told her how it had caused problems with some of his fellow Guards, and how he had befriended some of her servants in self-defense. They were all happy to invoke Princess Shayla's authority on his behalf early on, when his own was still in question.

She didn't apologize, sensing he didn't want it, but she told him about her own struggles in court after her first protector was dismissed from the Guard and Merrick took his place. She told him about the truth behind her "crazy sister's" affair, something he had suspected at the time but her sister had made her promise not to reveal. And she told him that she had been grateful for his friendship from the beginning, only becoming more so as the years passed. It was funny that his presence had always been a grounding influence, first because he was separate from the court and then later because he reminded her of it.

They talked long into the early morning hours, and somehow, instead of bringing those times closer, the words seemed to widen the gulf between now and then. It was as though by acknowledging the distance they finally made it real. And now she knew the answer to the question she had asked him when they left the banquet: it didn't feel like a loss after all.

It felt like freedom.

The stars finally began to fade, but true dawn was still a long way off when they made their way back to earth and Merrick let them in to the kitchen at Willie's. They tried to be quiet, but she couldn't help giggling when he knocked over a glass and of course, Willie came out to growl at them. His impatience softened slightly when he saw them together--and, she thought, seeing Merrick in such a good mood didn't hurt--but even if he had been angry, they hadn't done anything wrong. They were just two people who had made too much noise at the wrong time of day.

When she sat down at one of the empty tables out front, her temple dress replaced by a gauzy skirt and sleeveless wraparound shirt, she wasn't a princess anymore. She was just a woman eating supper at sunrise with a man who worked the night shift in this very building. His grey t-shirt and irreverent smile were a happy combination of her favorite things: his new informality, and his old humor.

The insistent conversation had quieted as their comfort in the silence grew. Without having to say it, they each knew the other wouldn't sleep until the new day was well established. So when the dishes were washed and the last star had disappeared from the sky, Merrick went upstairs to retrieve his flute.

By the time the sun climbed above the horizon, the deer had come to hear them sing.