Note: "You Can Still Be Free" is sung by Savage Garden.

The cycle of the seasons... quiet, steady, and inexorable. Not a variable, but a given. As surely as the sun would rise tomorrow, the bright paradise of summer was slowly fading into fall. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it, and few of them were even trying anymore.

Maybe that was a good thing. Despite the frosty fear of winter that followed so closely on autumn's heels, without it there would be no spring. No new beginnings, no rebirth--no way to start anew when the old ways became too frayed to patch over even one more time. Yet for all its luster, even the promise of new life could not soften winter's chill.

There was war on the horizon. She could feel it, and she knew the others could too. Some said it was already here. Others denied it would ever arrive. But the Rangers, the warriors with the urge to protect written indelibly into their souls--they knew. They knew that every sunset brought them one day closer to a battle they might not win.

She wondered if he felt it too. Sitting there alone in the courtyard, eyes closed and back stiff as he leaned against one of the estate's oldest trees, it was hard to say whether he felt much of anything. He never volunteered, and she knew better than to ask.

A leaf drifted to the ground beside him, dislodged from its summer resting place by the strengthening wind. Another followed, tossed briefly about on currents of air, and she shivered as the wind eddied into the doorway where she stood. It cut through her lightweight tunic with ease, making her shiver, but he didn't stir from his position by the tree.

She studied him, unobserved, watching the wind tug at his clothes and hair. She couldn't remember the last time he'd had a new tunic made, and those bangs were almost long enough to hide his eyes. She had to be careful about when she offered to cut his hair--she had picked the wrong day once, and had nearly been thrown against the wall for her effort.

Behind her, a quiet voice broke into her musings. "Clouds moving in," Tobin observed, his low baritone a soothing counterpoint to the restless whisper of the wind.

"Yes," she murmured, leaning back without looking. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, a welcome warmth to ward off the creeping chill. "It's going to rain."

She felt him nod once in agreement. "Think he's noticed?"

Of course he knew what she was doing. They five were the only ones who knew the face behind the Shadow Ranger's visor, and they were as fiercely protective as if he were one of their own. At least, they were when he allowed them to be.

"He's noticed," she said, suppressing a sigh. "He just doesn't care."

"It isn't your job to make him care," Tobin said, resting his head against hers. "He has to choose that for himself. He has to want it."

She relaxed a little further into him. She was afraid to ask a question he might have no answer for, but she was more afraid not to know. "What if he never does?"

"He will." He said it with such quiet assurance that she was almost convinced. "He will want it again someday; I promise. Just give him time."

How much time? She couldn't ask it aloud, but the question crossed her mind almost every day. Every day that passed took him farther from the trauma of his team's demise, yet he showed no signs of letting go. It had been years, now, and still he remained locked inside a place that none of them could reach.

"I see them around him sometimes," she whispered, staring out at the solitary figure in black. Tobin's embrace tightened almost unnoticeably. "On days like this, when he's just him and not that faceless hero he somehow created... When there's nothing driving him, nothing for him to *be*... they gather. Like ghosts."

She could almost hear him frowning. "You see them? Or he does?"

"I don't know if he sees them or not." She didn't move, eyes tearing a little from the wind. "But they're there. I can feel them. I'm never sure if they're coming for him--or for me."

This time he squeezed her roughly, holding her to him as though he could erase her words by sheer force of will. "You did your duty," he said, his voice gruff with emotion kept tightly in check. "You had no right to let him die when he could still be saved. The choice you made was the only one the Power would have *let* you make, and if you can't see that and let it go, then you're as trapped as he is."

She swallowed, reaching up to touch the blue triangle patch on her tunic. The symbol of her Ranger powers... knowledge and strength beyond that which she had been born with, but nowhere in her Power had she been given the right to choose who lived and who died.

Was he right? Did she truly believe that she had made the only choice possible?

Could she live with herself if she didn't believe it? Was the choice to believe or not hers in a way that the decision she had made almost three years ago had not been?

With a sigh, she put her hands over his arms and rested her head against his shoulder. "More alike than I realized," she murmured.

She felt him relax a little at her words. "That's why you take such good care of him," he answered softly. "If the both of you would just learn to take better care of *yourselves*, we'd all have an easier time."

She smiled, feeling--*knowing* that he was right. "Did you come out here just to cheer me up?"

"Is there a better reason?" he countered.

"I can't think of one," she said lightly, but her smile faded a little as the first drops of rain started to fall. They were cold and biting when the wind blew them into the sheltered niche, but the figure in the courtyard didn't budge. Who was there for him, now?

***

The call had come in some hours before. They seldom heard from Aquitar anymore, ever since the last negotiated peace accords had taken effect. The system was at peace and the Ranger team was in a period of transition, and as far as the troubled Border was concerned the planet might as well have ceased to exist.

It had come as a surprise when Zordon asked him to respond. He had never even been to Earth's galaxy, let alone the planet itself. Nor had any of the Eltaran Rangers, if it came to that. Why Aquitar had sent the request for an envoy to Zordon instead of simply sending someone from their own planet was beyond him. But he would go anyway, because Zordon had asked and it was his duty to obey.

And because it got him out of the rain, he thought irritably. He had felt Linnse's eyes on him, had heard when Tobin joined her, and he had known that there would be no avoiding their well-meaning concern if he made a move for the door while they were still there.

The thrusters flashed green and he took the navcomp off of standby. The computer was already linked into the launch bay system, and it cleared him as soon as he sent the request. Within moments, the cold of space had wrapped welcoming tendrils of darkness around his starfighter and yanked him out into the stars.

He had never particularly enjoyed spaceflight, before. It had been a means of transport, nothing less and certainly nothing more. Now, though... among the stars, he felt that much closer to infinity. The stars were a way out, a way *home*--if only he could find it.

His starfighter crept toward the edge of the system, and he cast a single glance back. As the ship accelerated toward lightspeed, Eltare's brilliant sun receded to a luminescent spark against the star-speckled heavens. The familiar thoughts of rebellion slipped through his mind as his gaze returned to the navcomp, and he felt the Power object violently.

Without another thought he demorphed, feeling some amount of satisfaction when the Power faded a little. He watched as the navcomp hummed to itself, taking in his current vector and using every starchart in its databanks to plot a safe course toward galaxy 1987A. As it had been programmed, it came up with a course that would set him down outside the target system, well away from the potentially dangerous gravitational pull of the system's star.

He aborted the course suggested by the navcomp and re-entered his destination. This time he punched the coordinates in by hand, rather than letting the computer fudge them enough to create a reasonable safety margin. Earth orbit, not system entry. Lightminutes from the star, instead of lightyears. Close enough that the planet's gravity would grab him before the sun's could--maybe. If he was lucky. He always had been before... too lucky.

The navcomp chimed a polite warning, informing him that this particular vector was not recommended. He overrode it, ignoring the restless muttering of the Power. There was nothing it could do, for he wasn't giving up or letting go--he was only taking a chance. The Power thrived on chance, adrenaline, even recklessness. But it recognized unnecessary risk too, when it saw such a thing, and like a sulky child on the edge of his awareness it would not sit quietly and accept.

He would, however. He would program his navcomp in any manner he wished, and then he would sit patiently and wait to see how the journey ended. No matter what hold the Power had on him, it could not deny him that much.

He felt the hyperrush engines coming to life, felt the subtle changes in the small fighter craft that told him he was about to leave the visible universe behind. The transparent cockpit canopy began to darken, and he closed his eyes briefly.

For just a moment, he considered the possible outcomes of this trip through intergalactic space. He might arrive at his destination exactly one hour and 37 minutes from now, his starfighter igniting a fiery trail of atmospheric gases as it screamed out of hyperspace and fought for equilibrium between the planet Earth and its sun.

The ship might find that equilibrium and settle into orbit, or it might not, plunging deeper into the atmosphere at an angle his heat shields wouldn't be able to accommodate. Or, hyperrush vector radically skewed by the gravitational pull of the star, it might be vaporized by the corona the moment it emerged from the safety of hyperspace.

The Eltaran Rangers would be furious if they knew the risks he took every time he left their planet, but he had never miscalculated a hyperrush vector.

Not yet.

The tinted canopy went black, and the engines tossed the little ship into hyperrush along its preprogrammed vector. He did not check the calculations. He didn't even bother to wonder if they were correct. The quiet had closed in, and now the waiting began. It didn't matter much... he had waited years. He could wait a little longer.

***

***

"No!" The cry was torn from her throat and she found herself sitting bolt upright in bed, staring into suffocating darkness. She fumbled for her sweatpants instinctively, knowing only that she had to go, get away, get *to* something.

She was stumbling across the floor before her eyes had adjusted to anything conscious again, and she knew in some distant part of her mind that this had to be a dream. But the rug was rough beneath her bare feet, and the front door was cool to the touch as she yanked it blindly open and plowed out into the damp nighttime air.

She felt pavement sting her feet and windblown fog twist snarls into her hair as she ran, but she couldn't stop. She didn't know where she was going, only that she had to get there soon. She could feel him fading, faster with each passing moment; she could feel it as though it was her own life slipping through her fingers.

There was no one to tell her she was crazy, no one to tell her that this couldn't be happening. She felt what she felt and the achingly sharp stab of loss as he was torn away from her had pierced even her deepest dreams.

Cement scraped her palm as she put out a hand to slow her headlong dash, and the tunnel floor slammed against her knees as she half-knelt, half-fell at his side. "Please," she whispered, a sob snapping the word in half as she stared down at his motionless form. "Please, don't go. Come back to me..."

He didn't move even when she reached out to touch his pale skin, unmorphed and painfully vulnerable to anything that might roam the tunnels at night. "Please, Phantom!" She heard her voice rising, verging on hysteria, and she didn't care. "I can't do this alone!"

***

It was finally gone. The Power was gone, completely, irrevocably. He had waited so long that he hardly dared to believe in its absence. But it was true; he could feel life's hold on him weakening with every breath and still nothing urged him to fight. Nothing prodded him to reach out and grasp at consciousness as it slipped away; nothing shoved duty and obligation back in his face just as he had managed to turn away.

The Power was gone.

The dusty track was steep and rocky, offering uncertain footing even under the best of conditions. But it was a trail he knew by heart, and he knew too what waited for him at the top. He climbed eagerly, without thinking about it, without wondering. He didn't have to wonder anymore; he *knew*.

The higher he got, the more real the trail became. Soon he could feel the gravel beneath his feet, and the rough edge of the rocks against his hands when he reached out to steady himself. The sun grew warm on his back, shining down out of a starless daytime sky, and the slightest hint of a breeze stirred his hair.

At long last, he heard it. He froze, straining his ears to catch the sound again. As though it had been waiting for his acknowledgement the laughter came once more, louder this time and closer. He scrambled higher, making his way toward the top of the cliffs as fast as he could go.

He caught the last rush of air from someone's windrider just as he reached the plateau above the thermals. He knew they were out there, waiting for him--waiting for him on the wind, as they always had been. He stepped up to the edge of the cliffs, daring the vista to swallow him whole as he stared down toward the desert floor. He could just make out four flecks of color, flitting back and forth, riding the thermals for as long as they would hold the silken wings aloft.

Saryn... He heard the name drift up to him on the wind, and for the first time in a long while, he smiled. He had come home.

He lifted his arms to the sky and a crimson rush of fabric snapped open behind him, mimicking his movement. He heard the tiny braces click into place, and he shifted slightly, testing each one with a tug from wrist or arm. When they were all secure he swung forward, the fabric billowing taut behind him as he prepared to leap out into the air.

The desperate entreaty in the voice made him hesitate, glancing over his shoulder as he tried to isolate the source of the plea. "Phantom" was surely not a name he'd ever gone by before--but it was, somehow, familiar.

He snapped the glider wings back, impatient with the way the wind whistled over the fabric. It was as though the wind was trying to drown the voice out. The voice didn't deserve that. He took a step back from the cliffs, listening harder.

"Please," the voice repeated, growing quieter with every word. "Don't leave me alone, Phantom, don't..."

Try as he might to get it back, the voice had faded into silence. He sighed, glancing back over the cliffs. It was probably nothing... but that cry had been too heartfelt to ignore. He knew what it was to be that alone--didn't he?

He frowned. There was something he wasn't remembering quite right, and it irritated him. He was supposed to be out windriding with his teammates, not wasting the day chasing the memory of some dark-haired--

Cassie! He closed his eyes tightly, taking another step backward. What did he know about "Cassie"... where was she; how could she have found him? Those tunnels went on for distances greater than he had measured.

He felt the warmth of the sun dim, the light beginning to fade, and he snapped his eyes open. The landscape wavered back into view around him, and for a moment he clung fiercely to this vision from the past.

Then Cassie's anguished cry rang in his ears once more, and he clenched his hands into fists at his side. How could he leave someone his own teammate had told him to look after? How could he turn his back on someone who had poured out her own heart to fill his, who had helped him find the soul in him that he had thought gone forever? And how could he ever leave *anyone* to face what he had faced these last, lonely years?

The cliffs began to fade again, and this time he let them go, tears stinging his eyes as the desert wind whispered away into the cold darkness of the tunnels. "Cassie?" he whispered hoarsely, a little surprised to find that his voice worked.

He turned his head with an effort, feeling the hard stone press unforgivingly into his skin. She knelt next to him, tears streaking her face as she reached out and laid one hand possessively against his forehead. "Phantom..." Her voice caught on the words. "Never, ever do that to me again. Never, as long as you live, or I swear I'll hunt you down and make you--"

Her next words were lost as he pulled her down to him in a deep, lingering kiss that took most of the breath he had and went a long way toward restoring his meager will to live.