notes: for palmtreelights on ao3, part of the awesome women of pr ficathon challenge. prompt was trini coming home to angel grove.

this is our someday

take your time coming home
hear the wheels as they roll
let your lungs fill up with smoke
forgive everyone

― fun., take your time

The thing about Angel Grove is that it's not a town that leaves you. You can leave it, but the imprints of it remain – the memories of the juice bar, laughing with friends, fighting monsters – nothing goes away, even when you're halfway across the world working for world peace.

So, Trini takes a break in her senior year and decides to come home for Christmas. Letters and emails only do so much to curb her curiosity – apparently everyone has new colors and new teammates and new suits – and nowhere in the world calls her quite as strongly as Angel Grove does.

She's not quite sure what she expects – she knows Jason and Billy and Tommy are there, but they're all wearing new colors and she remembers Adam and Rocky but it's not like they had been close, and Aisha's left and Kim's left, and she's not all that sure what there is for her in Angel Grove anymore, but she goes home anyway.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and maybe it's true. Or maybe it's not.

But here she is, and nothing's the same, but maybe, underneath it all, everything is.

-:-

She's missed the city more than she remembers. All those buildings she'd raced past on her zord – oh, they have shapes now instead of dinosaurs and it's weird – and the lake and the park where they'd had so many battles and of course, the high school, the youth center and the juice bar, the gym where they all worked out.

It's all the same but the energy is all different. Trini takes a seat at their old usual table and watches a new room of people pass her by.

Jason, predictably, shows up first in response to her text – hi, I'm in town for Christmas, wanna hang out? – and swoops her up in a giant hug that almost makes her dizzy. It's been a while since she's been hugged like that – Jason had left scarcely a year ago and already his absence had carved a hole in her heart where once it had been filled with him, and Zack, and Billy, and Kim.

"Billy will be here soon," he promises, settling down in the seat beside her. "And Tommy's gathering the gang. Oh, you haven't met Tanya or Kat, have you?"

Trini smiles politely as he tells her how much she's going to love them – and she's sure she'll like them, but it's weird. Everything is weird now, and Kim isn't here to talk to about it, and Rita and Zedd are gone, and Angel Grove is different. She knows change is inevitable – hell, she'd been one of the first of their group to make changes – but it sits oddly with her that Jason and Billy are part of a new team, a team without them.

"How's Zack?" he asks and she pauses, because it's an unexpectedly loaded question for being so simple.

How's Zack? He's great. He's having the time of his life in another country without all his friends, with his best friend leaving him, with no powers, no way of getting them back, and that feeling in the pit of his stomach like he's given up on the greatest thing of his life.

But maybe that's just her.

"He's great," she says instead. "He has a new girlfriend now. Is Angela still around here?"

"Don't think so," Jason says. "I heard her family moved away last year. Guess she and Zack lost touch, huh?"

"Feels like all of Angel Grove did," she replies, and it's only half wistful. Only half bitter.

Jason touches her shoulder, smiles at her. Reminds her that he knows how she feels, even if he scored the second chance she doesn't think she'll ever get – or, if she's being honest, need. Her time is over, and she doesn't have Kim here to help her settle into the new Angel Grove the way he had Tommy, so it's probably for the best.

She has a lot of life ahead of her. She just has to see where her home is at without her first.

-:-

Tommy's red, now, and different, too. He and Kim broke up – she knows, she got the calls, but it hadn't feel real until just now – and so he's a little more subdued and a little more focused. Still scatterbrained, though, still Tommy. Mostly.

It's weird. Trini smiles and hugs him and hugs Billy – Billy, who has no color now, who doesn't even wear blue that much anymore, who looks a little older and a lot more damaged now, and she wonders what it's like to have lost your powers and stayed behind to help – and then there's a whole new team standing in front of her.

She remembers Rocky and Adam – not well, but she remembers them. They have new colors, now, too, and they somehow fit them much better than the colors she left them with. But maybe she's biased, because red is Jason's color and black is Zack's, and no amount of replacing and color-switching can take that away from her.

Tommy's still green, in her mind. Still the shy new boy with the curly hair and the crush on Kim. In front of her, though, he's a different boy. A different man. He has straight hair and a red shirt now.

It's weird.

"Hi, I'm Tanya, it's so nice to meet you!" and then she's being hugged by a girl who sort of feels like Aisha and sort of doesn't at all. She misses Aisha suddenly, violently, like a stab through her stomach. It's not fair, she knows, to compare them, but she can't help feeling resentful – she left her power, her legacy, her entire world with Aisha, and she just went and picked someone else to take over, someone Trini has never before met in her life.

And the thing is, Tanya is nice. She's sweet and kind and cheerful, and she positively glows in her yellow dress. It makes Trini realize she stopped wearing yellow constantly a long time ago. It makes her realize that maybe it's not her color anymore. Maybe it hasn't been for a while.

"It's nice to meet you, too," she says with a smile, and Jason nudges her shoulder like he knows what she's thinking. He probably does. He had to deal with these introductions too, these new girls standing where Trini and Kim once had. She wonders how he seems so fine with it, and then wonders if maybe it's because he got powers again. Maybe that makes all the difference.

-:-

It takes her a while to meet Kat – she had a late ballet rehearsal, or something – and she has to admit, she's kind of dreading it. Everyone loves Kat, like everyone loves Tanya, and she's sure she's lovely, but Kat isn't Kim. It shouldn't matter, but it does. Kim, more than anyone, had always been Trini's constant.

And she knows – she knows, she left first. She changed first. She said goodbye first. Of course Kim wasn't going to stay here forever; she had dreams, and plans, and ambitions that stretched far from Angel Grove. Just like Trini.

For a second, Trini hates the both of them, and Jason and Zack, too, and even Billy, for giving up his power like the rest of them. It feels a lot like they all gave up their friendship, their connection, their home. Like nobody thought to hold onto their heritage, the gift they'd been given.

She hates herself for thinking it, too. She's supposed to be the calm, rational one – but then, she supposes, roles change when you leave the group. She's not sure who the rational one is now.

Turns out, it's Kat.

"Oh, I've heard great things about you," Kat says when they finally get to meet – Jason drives her over to Kat's ballet studio, then abandons them for a snack at the refreshments table. "It's so lovely to meet you in person!"

She has an Australian accent – somehow, Trini had not realized she would. In theory, she knew Kat was Australian, but to hear her speak was a shock. It was so very different from Kim's clear, bubbly, valley girl tones. Kat was so different from Kim, in every conceivable way except perhaps the pink clothes she wears.

"They've told me a lot about you, too," she says with a small smile. "All good, of course."

Kat laughs and shoulders her ballet bag. "Come on, we were planning a slumber party at Tanya's tonight. Girls only. You should definitely join. Jason, would you drive us?"

Trini's not sure if that's a good idea, but Jason winks at her and leads them back to his car, and before she knows it, she's on her way to Tanya's house to spend the night.

It's weird. But maybe in a good way.

-:-

The thing is, Tanya and Kat are fun, and they're sweet and funny and beautiful. They're exactly what power rangers should be, exactly what Trini had hoped for when she'd given her coin and her powers to Aisha all those years ago. They're the legacy come to life, passed down from hand to hand until it reached them.

And it makes her happy, but it also makes her sad. She doesn't really know what to think about it, or them, or the way they have their own nonverbal communication and hand gestures the way she and Kim had. The way they have different morphers and new communicators and different shades of pink and yellow.

She likes them, she really does, but it's weird. She misses Kim so much, it's like a constant thrumming just beneath the surface of her heart. She misses what they used to be.

"Hey," says Tanya in the middle of a cheesy rom-com that Trini hasn't really been paying attention to, "Is something on your mind?" and she looks so genuinely concerned that Trini wants to cry. She'd thought that Kat would be more like Kim, but if she's being honest, Tanya is their Kim, and Kat…well, Kat reminds her of herself.

"No, I just…" She pauses, sighs, runs a hand through her hair. "It's just strange, you know. I haven't been back properly in years. And everything is just – it's different."

"I can imagine," says Kat sympathetically, dropping down on the couch on her other side with a fresh bowl of popcorn. "It's like everyone's moved the furniture just a few inches to the left, isn't it?"

"Yes," Trini says in amazement. "It's exactly like that. How did you know?"

Kat smiles and offers her the popcorn. "I took a trip home to Australia just a few months ago. It was bizarre. It's like everything is the same, but not."

"I bet the whole ranger thing doesn't help, does it?" Tanya adds with a soft smile of her own. "All of us new kids in your old colors, with your friends' powers…"

"Well, they're not exactly our old powers," Trini admits, smiling back just a little. "You have your own powers now. You've made your own place in our world. And I'm happy for you guys, I really am."

"But it's weird?" Kat suggests. "I know we're not Kim or Aisha or Zack. But you'll always have friends in Angel Grove, Trini. That's what this is all about."

She taps her communicator on her wrist meaningfully, and Trini is suddenly transported back in time, to years before, with Billy in his garage working on the first version of their communicators, telling her –

"It's a way to communicate, right? We have to be able to keep in touch with each other, or we'll lose track of where we are in battle or even outside of battle, and that would have disastrous consequences in a life or death situation. We need to be in tune with one another as much as we can."

"We'll always be in tune with one another, power or no powers," Kat says, a distant echo of Billy's words from the past. Trini feels her stomach jolt, wonders how much Billy has told her, how much she knows about her old friends. How she's Billy's friend, too, and so is Tanya, and Jason and Tommy are still there, and Adam and Rocky – and Kat's right.

"Besides," Tanya adds with a grin, "it's always nice to have another girl around. There is so much testosterone around us all the time! It's a nightmare."

Trini giggles despite herself and reaches over to take a handful of popcorn. "You don't have to tell me," she agrees empathically. "The amount of whining I heard whenever I beat one of those boys in arm wrestling…"

"The other day, Rocky asked me to help him ask a girl out," Kat says, laughing. "He has the worst pick-up lines I have ever heard. It took me most of lunch to talk him out of those."

"They're a handful," Tanya agrees, smiling at Trini.

"But they're our handful," Trini finishes, a line she's certain she and Kim have said before about their boys, too. "Thanks, guys. I'm sorry if I've been moping around."

"No, not at all," Kat says immediately. "It's your home. You have every right to feel sad about changes."

"Change isn't all that bad," Trini replies, glancing over at her with a smile. "I'm glad you guys were chosen."

"I'm glad we got to meet you," Tanya says earnestly, then steals some of the popcorn from her hand. "Also, the movie's over. What did we wanna do next?"

Trini smiles, thinking back to all the slumber parties she and Kim had growing up – prank calls and giggling over boys and planning their weddings – and says, "I have a few ideas."

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