A/N: I know, I know. I should be working on one of my big stories instead of random weirdness like this, but if I didn't get this out on paper I was afraid I would lose it. This is a one-shot for now, but it's also a preview of a potential re-imagining of a very important part of Power Rangers canon that I'm thinking about doing in the future. I'll let you figure out exactly what for yourselves; hopefully this will tide you all over until one of the big stories can be updated again.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of this except plot ideas. Saban owns Power Rangers.

A Matter of Last Resort

"Tell me you aren't actually thinking about going through with this."

He looked up at her in surprise. He'd hoped she would at least have waited until the others were gone to lay into him; as it was he had to look up and nod at them before they slipped through the doorway and swung the door shut behind them, leaving the two of them alone in the silent Mess Hall. He returned his gaze to her.

"Did any part of what I just said indicate that I didn't intend to go through with this?"

She shook her head, glaring daggers at him. "I can't believe this. I can't believe in a million years that the thought of this would even have crossed your mind."

"What, like it hasn't crossed yours a thousand times?" He ran a whetstone over the blade of his sword, sharpening the double edge as it lay across his lap. "The battle has been escalated. He escalated it. I'm not breaking any part of the code; that ought to be enough."

She snorted in disgust. "Are you even listening to yourself? Do you realize what you sound like?" She pointed a finger toward the wall mounted monitor that hung from the far corner, playing a live feed from the warzone that had once been downtown Angel Grove. "You talk like one of them."

He slid the whetstone down the blade again, trying to keep calm. "Yeah, well…they're the ones who are winning. Maybe they're on to something."

She leaned forward onto the table between them, gaping at him, desperate to have misunderstood. "How can you even…" the words died in her mouth, the thought left unfinished in her frantic rush to talk him down. She tried a new tack. "This is a person we're talking about. A human being, hell, a kid just like us. Somebody who, a week ago, we were making small talk with in the hallway. Does that not mean anything to you?"

"And what about the fact that this…person…has killed 27 people in the last six days?" He asked, unconsciously rubbing the whetstone in small strokes along the length of the sword. "Which, in case you're wondering, is more than Rita managed in her first six months on the moon combined. Does that mean anything to you?"

She was getting impatient now. "How can you be so callous? There's a good person in there somewhere, we just have to –"

"He fucking tortured me!" He flung the sword onto the table, watching her jump as it clattered to the metal surface. "He trapped me in what was basically the WWE cage match from hell with just him and Goldar and the kind of tools that make Abu Ghraib look like the fucking Playboy Mansion, and they had fun." He spat the last word at her as though he could physically strike her with it. "If I think really hard I can still hear what his laughter sounded like. What do you think that will do to a guy's sleep patterns?" Before she could answer, he plowed on. "How do you think I'm going to explain this…" he pointed to his throat, where a long, thin scar ran nearly half the circumference of his neck, "to my parents?" At her continued lack of response, he leaned forward, his hands absently playing with the sword, and spoke very softly, his voice almost a whisper. "When I teleported out of there, I guess my head went last, because I could still see him when his sword came down where my stomach should have been. That's how close he came to killing me; that's the most helpless I've felt in my entire life."

She swallowed and finally found her voice again. "So this is personal? This is what, revenge?" He glanced up at her and she glared back. "This isn't a goddamn samurai movie. There is no scenario here where you come out of this unscathed; don't you see how much you have to lose?" She took a page from his playbook and lowered her voice. "Is it really worth your humanity to settle a score? I thought you, of all people, were better than that."

"Better?" He scoffed, shaking his head. "This isn't about who's better. This is gonna end up being about who's alive." He pulled the sword back onto his lap as he spoke. "The idea that one of us being better matters, that the better man wins, assumes a just world. Look at that monitor. Does this look like a fucking just world to you?" He waited until she turned back to face him before he continued. "The only thing that's going to matter at the end of this is who's willing to go farther to survive. If I don't do this, that's a contest he is always gonna win."

"Don't you think a big part of beating him should be not becoming him?"

He didn't answer for a long, deathly silent moment. Finally he brought the sword up, set it gently on the tabletop and went back to sharpening it before he spoke. "Look, I've already thought this through as much as I'm going to. We're at a disadvantage every single time we fight him because we're not willing to kill him, and he's more than happy to murder any one of us at any time. Or have you forgotten that one of us has died because of him already?" She narrowed her rapidly moistening eyes at him but said nothing. "We have to stop predicating every battle tactic we come up with on this theory that he's just a good guy who's been Manchurian Candidate mind-fucked into everything he's doing. We keep trying to save him, all it's going to get us is dead." He licked his lips, swallowed, exhaled slowly through his nose. "So next time him and I meet, I'm taking off the kid gloves. No more holding back, no more going for the non-lethal approach, no more playing defense, no more reacting. He's made it very clear that this will never be over until one of us is dead. As much as I hate having to do it…at this point I figure better him than me."

She couldn't say anything else to that; hell, at this point she could hardly even look at him. She just stared down at her lap and stifled a sob for what she knew would become a permanent schism between them. By the time this was over, the man she had grown to love would be dead; if not physically, then in his soul. The thought alone was enough to make her hate him.

It was as if he'd read her mind. "Do you hate me for doing this?"

It would have been so much easier if she could've just said yes. It would have been hurtful and cathartic and so fucking gratifying she couldn't even describe it. But as hard as she tried to force those words on him, she couldn't do it. She physically could not make them leave her mouth. All she could do was answer honestly.

"I don't hate you, Jase. I don't think I could ever hate you. Shit, I think I might love you." He gaped at that and she hurriedly continued. "But I hate what you're thinking about doing. I hate this idea and I hate that you seem so eager to dive into it."

He sighed and let his head fall onto his chest. "Because it would be all right if you hated me. I would understand." He lifted his head and she could see moisture pooling in his eyes.

"If I said I did, would it stop you?"

After a long moment, he slowly shook his head; she felt a crack form in her heart with every back and forth motion. "No. It wouldn't. Because I'd rather have you alive and hating me than let you die loving me."

They stared at each other in silence for another few long, painful moments, trying to figure out when they stopped knowing each other like they thought they had. Eventually there came a point when she couldn't take it anymore. She forced herself to slowly stand up and walk across the room to the door. She swung it open and held it there, unable to cross the threshold. At last she turned and spoke to him over her shoulder. "I don't hate you, Jason. Really, I don't. And it's not too late to make things right between us. But the way you are right now…" she took a deep breath and prepared to say the six words she knew would tear his heart out. "I think I'm afraid of you."

She turned and slowly walked through the doorway, turned the corner, and was gone from his sight. He sat there alone, just him and his sword, staring through the open doorway as though he could summon her back.

"Sorry, Tri," he said quietly to the empty room. "But you have to be alive for that, too."