When Angels Commit
By EclipsingFlames
There was so much fury erupting within him; blinding scorches of pain, bashing through his torso and numbing his limbs. The sounds sharpened before they lapped away into muffles, then whispers to just pulses seeping within him. Colors whipped in and out of shape, fleeting around, like prisms melting into one another.
Someone was calling him.
Beams of light were poured down into his eyes.
Faces that hung over him faded transparent, and the street lights subdued, calling out the stars to burn, like individual suns. Rose and golden hues shivered with memories that sung him lullabies and wrapped him in dreams.
Till he found himself eased into sleep and the pain resided.
Tommy awoke to a sudden jolt that ran warmly within his body stirred him away from the lights at a simple thought- Kimberly.
Everything around him swam, translucent, till the lights made way for details the of hallways and people in blue outfits and face masks, hanging around their necks. Tennis shoe soles lightly wailed and patted against the shine of the dingy floor casting back the reflection of the people and light fixtures above. Everyone one was rushed to and fro, diving in and out double doors, while a monotone voice called on persons to destinations Tommy could not understand.
"Where am I?" He whispered, baffled, and literally, at loss.
He couldn't remember anything. He couldn't recall a thought before this place that lead him to be
here. Where ever here may be.
"Reefside Hospital, how can I help you?" Tommy spun. A woman behind him stood behind a tall desk in scrubs and a phone wedged between her ear and shoulder as she jolted notes on a clipboard within her hands.
"Reefside hospital? How did I get here?" He echoed, the words rolling across his tongue at their sudden familiarity. Another nurse came behind the desk in matching blue scrubs as the first and many nurses around them. Did someone get hurt? Was that why he was here?
Oh, god...Kimberly!"Excuse me, miss? I need someone to help me- Please!" The nurses were now engaged in a conversation, completely paying Tommy no mind to his frantic calls. Tommy bit back his choice of words as a another doctor made his way around the desk. " Doctor, please, I need some help; I think my wife may be in here-"
The doctor's face was vaguely familiar. He recalled it from somewhere- maybe from the day he was emitted for his comatose the year before when he was a ranger. No, it was sometime recent.
He couldn't remember.
"...Such a shame." The middle aged male doctor, hiked up his wire frames higher on to the bridge of his nose. He signed a form and handed to one of the nurses to file.
"Poor guy," One of the nurse's spoke. " He became a hero and lost his life all in one night."
Tommy felt his body still, his mouth slowly coming undone from clenching.
"Well, it looks like the old man will have to settle with sending his regards to his wife. Were you able to contact her?"
"Yes, sir. She's waiting for you in room waiting room C."
The doctor nodded, soberly.
"Wait- who are you talking about? Somebody talk to-," Tommy words fell dead on his lips as he reached to grab the arm of the doctor only to find that his hands went right through him. He snatched his hand away, rubbing the tips of his fingers together as he gazed at them, stricken. His vision blurred in and out of focus as his eyes bored down on his two hands, before he watched the doctor retreat down a hall and through the double doors.
" No, wait!"
Tommy ran, racing around the bodies of people till he reached the doors, coming face to face with a window that out-looked the other side. The doctor walked across the hall to an open room with a dark carpeted floor and matching chairs where people sat, nervous and unkept with fatigue. The doctor edged forward, a woman that came no more to his shoulders stood upon his presence, another woman and a man standing close to her side.
" Kim..." Tommy reached for the door, his entire forearm nearly eloped within its chest. Tommy trembled, his thoughts racing in untamed circles in his head. What was going on? What was happening to him? Kim- he had to see her, to talk to her, get to her.
He pushed through the door as if he were stepping through thin air, unable to let the insanity of what had occurred process within his head. He rushed forward, gaze never leaving the doctor as he spoke quietly to the three before him, his body positioned in a angle that blocked their faces.
" ...We did everything we could do to stop the bleeding, but we just couldn't resuscitate him. I'm sorry..." The doctor's forbidding words drew Hayley and Jason closer to Kim's side.
"Kimberly..." Tommy edged close to her as she frantically shook her head from side to side, withering under the doctor's stern gaze and severe words that slapped her with utter aghast.
His mind was reeling, his insides shutting down as images rinsed through his mind like cold water. Bellowing sirens and red flares of light bathing. Pain piercing through his lower abdominal, the numbness plowing through his limps and lightning imploding within his head, until everything melted into shapes.
"Oh, god...!" The harrowing wail wavered, twisting in intoxicating waves of hot agony throughout her body. Tommy's heart deformed as Kim's legs buckled beneath; her face distorted in the utter coldness of griefs agonizing throes. Jason held her, her body withering in the circle of his arms as he tucked in his own will to prostrate from the shock.
Haley stood stoic; the rest of the doctors words slipping over her soundlessly, before he excused himself from the austere of their tragedy.
"This can't be...No..." Tommy fell to his knees at Kim's side, needing to touch her skin and feel her lips... to erase the fat blazes of diamonds that spilled over her eyes and rolled down the rose of her cheeks and saccharine lips. His arms wrapped around her...fell through her as if she were a breath of air in the form of his precious godsend.
Tommy pulled his hands away, fingers trembling.
" No...!" His fingers touched her lips, melting through them... there was nothing touched at all. His eyes, slipping beneath the film of tears clouding his eyes. He touched his own tears, tiny rivers of thriving desolation pouring out of him.
"Tommy..." Kim sobbed in Jason chest, again and again. " Tommy, come back...!"
Tommy shot out of bed, cold chills pouring out of his body in sticky sweat on his skin as the dark room surrounded him. A hand grabbed his arm...
"Tommy? Baby, what's wrong?" Kim sat up beside him, the dim glows of the stars and moon peaked in the window to glaze her white tank top and grey boy shorts with blues and cream.
Tommy felt his heart spin around in his chest as her hands reached out for him.
"Kim?" Tommy grabbed her hands, sliding his palm eagerly across her fingers and wrist and up her arms to crest her face. "I can touch you..."
" Of course, you can touch me. I'm right here." Kim said softly, her frown deepening as he kissed his way over to her lips, before clenching her tightly within his arms. " Shh. Tommy, it was just a dream. I've got you."
"Just a dream..." Tommy repeated over and over as he drowned himself in the vanilla peach scent of her long hair. " Just a dream..."
His eyes remained widen with alert as he clenched his wife close. The walls around them liquified, rippling in their vertical structure as red and blue lights fluttered rapidly over them. Suddenly, Tommy felt a sharp penetration in his lower belly, fire erupted in hot tides of lava as the breath was pulled from his lungs.
Tears thicken over his eyes as his arms fell away from Kimberly and his fingers gingerly touched his stomach.
"Kimb-" His words hit like a ton of stones to the floor. The person before him had a mask with three holes cut out to expose only his lips and a set of cold eyes. Tommy backed away, staggering steps that made him ill with each one. He wasn't in bed anymore, but in an alley with two other people donning the same mask, and a woman wailing, before she took off out on to the sidewalk tugging an older man along.
"You should have known better than to try to be a hero..."
Tommy's eyes snapped wide open as he found himself staring right outside his bedroom window. The sun pierced his eyes, cutting through the glass with its rays of light. He didn't remember falling asleep; he sat the entire night perched on the windowsill, just watching her... being with her.
Not once had she closed her eyes; the lids hung in heavy drapes over the honey depths gazing phlegmatic from one place to the other for a massive amount of time.
He talked to her, though she could never hear him.
Touched her, though she could never feel him.
Kissed her though, she could never taste his lips...Nor could he.
Her body never laid across their bed. Her cloths were never removed from her body, her hair tangled and messy in its bun on top her head. She touched the sheets and the pillow cases his head and body had rested upon... kissed the fabric of his favorite night shirt that rested on her lap, but no more tears came.
She ran out over the night.
Tommy sat down beside her, the bed mindless to his weight as he gazed at her.
"I'm so sorry, Kim." He told her again in so many ways, wanting to pull out the pain from within her, but it seemed, even a spirit had its limits. "I'm so sorry, I didn't come home to you, beautiful."
Kimberly's eyes wondered to the window opposite of the bed before them, the day was clear and bright with sunshine rays that illuminated the room and the pastels of her face. Tommy ran his fingers through her hair, remembering how each mahogany strain felt against his skin, baby soft and addicting. Her eyes fluttered closed as they tended to when he did this, and for a moment, Tommy wanted to believe that maybe she had felt him beside her.
" Kim?" There was no knock at the door as Jason walked right in, softly taking the steps to the further side of the room where they were. Tommy never took his eyes off Kimberly as Jason stood before her.
" I really screwed up, bro." Tommy whispered gently, watching silent tears mist onto Kim's long lashes.
Jason ignored his words as he crouched before Kim, taking her hands within his own. " Kimberly, you have to sleep." His thumbs ran over her knuckles. "Kim-"
"Don't!" Her voice squeezed out from the knot in her throat, barely audible to their ears. She trembled weakly with each word as she swallowed the swell of saliva down her throat. " Don't you dare, Jase. Don't you dare ask me to do something I cannot possibly do."
Her eyes opened, freeing more tears that cut through both their souls.
"From the first time I laid beside my husband, I knew... I knew that was the only way I ever wanted to fall asleep." Tommy's eyes fell closed with defeat as he cried, wrapping himself within her words. "I knew he was the only one I ever wanted to spend all my days falling asleep next to and be the first one, whom I would wake up to for all my days of life. For all my days..."
Jason bowed his head, unable to meet the ill- gotten despair that haunted her eyes and weighted her words in his chest.
"Now, he's gone... And I'm just trying to learn... I'm trying to remember, how I ever fell asleep without him, before... before he came back into my life. And I can't, Jase, because I can't ever see how life was even worth waking up to without him. And I don't want to find out, I'm just not ready." Jason's soggy eyes met her own, his lips trembling as she slipped her hands from his. He couldn't speak; how could he say anything after words like that?
He left the room as quietly as he came in with Tommy not too far behind. He closed the door behind them, his body instantly falling feeble against the opposite wall of the hall. Tommy kneeled beside his best friend, the gold ranger holding his face within his hands. Tommy had never seen another grown man cry before today, stripped of all his fortitude and surrendering into vulnerability.
" I'm here, bro." Tommy assured, knowing his words nothing to Jason's ears. " I'm always here."
Tommy cried along with him.
" Tommy Oliver lived saving lives; he was everything that defined the type of man...the type of person, any of us could ever hope to be. Compassionate, strong willed, selfless, and gallant beyond his years, yet still, so much more." Jason's lips quivered as he swallowed. He struggle to keep his composer strong and eyes steadied before him as the collective people gaze sorrowfully at him. " He was a son, a friend, a teacher, a mentor, a husband... a legend that I will forever be proud to say was my best friend."
Tears curved down his cheeks as his eyes looked over his friends. Adam and Tanya hugged close beside Justin who hung his head low; Kat's fingers entwined with Billy's as she cried gently into his shoulder. Aisha leaned into Rocky's side as the former blue ranger stared stoically beside Zack, who hunched forward with his head in his hands.
Throughout the congregation, rangers of every generation sat or stood in the overflow of the church. When Tommy Oliver's death had made the newspapers and news, everyone came to attend. Students of Reefside High, which included former rangers Conner, Ethan, Kira, and Trent to the young newscasters, Cassidy and Devin. Hayley came with Anton Mercer and Principal Elsa Randall, who unknowingly sat beside more close friends, Bulk, Skull, Ernie, and former Lieutenant of Angel Grove Police Force, Jerome Stone. Both Tommy and Kim's immediate family sat in the front row as Kim. Kim sat in the inner corner of the same seat, where an empty space awaited Jason to refill it.
Kimberly soaked within the bellowing gloom shoving its way into her system as reality burned a holocaust of pain through her soul. She was so numb, the sound of Jason's voice stifled by the crashing of her heart beat. Her mother reached across to link their hands, but it felt gaseous in her hand. Nothing existed around her; the room was vacant except for the two of them.
Her and Tommy.
Her and the coffin.
The hollow chestnut glistened with the sun light bursting ungraciously through the mosaic windows on either side of the church. Picture frames and momentums surrounded it as if to make the transition of putting her husband into the ground easier. The way he gazed down at her in their wedding photo; all the holidays and gatherings spent with friends; Tommy teaching his students...each frame was just a reminder that no more photos like these would be taken.
Tommy was gone.
Deceased.
Leaving her all alone to...
She was a widow and ...
Kimberly couldn't take it. The images, speeches, people...the coffin, everything was just making her ill. The room spun and twisted in sickening ways, all she could do was curse him. Hate him. That bastard. That selfless bastard! Even without powers he had to run off and be a hero. Why couldn't he had just come home? Turn away?
Why couldn't he, for once, be the person she didn't love, otherwise?
Why did God have to take his hand, his blindingly good soul, away from her?!
Why couldn't she follow him?
Kimberly rocked slightly forwarded, the tears collapsing in waterfalls down her chin as she inhaled a quiver of breath within the nausea swimming in her stomach.
"...Not one of us wasn't touch by what this man had to offer us," Jason was saying. " His heart. His example. His love. We'll miss you, bro. We'll always love you. And not for one second, will we ever forget you."
Kimberly couldn't take anymore, she stood, her mother's concerned voice only pushing her further away. The entire congregation stirred as she took off down the aisle and out the double doors, praying no one followed her.
God owed her that much.
Jason chased after her, urging his friends and her relatives to remain where they were. Pushing though the doors, the sunlight dissolved all dimness he left behind, the light casting down, like tsunamis that momentary blinded him. He raced across the grass of the side garden beside the church to find Kimberly fallen to her knees beside the fence, vomiting and eloped in sobs, while clenching her stomach. Jason rubbed her back, gently, the former pink ranger too weaken to flinch under his touch.
He was about to speak when her gasping cries broke killing away all consoling thoughts from his mind.
"I didn't get a chance to tell him," Kim cried, her body shaking violently as he wrapped her in his arms and eased down on to the ground with her.
"Tommy knows, Kim." Jason confirmed as her puffy red eyes widen, gazing up at him. " He knows you loved him-"
She shook her head feebly, the shivers within her stopping abruptly as she uttered the words that turned Jason's blood into dry ice.
"I never got the chance to tell him," She swallowed meeting Jason's gaze. " I'm pregnant."
Neither of them would never know Tommy's spirit sat beside her, dying all over again.
Author's Note: I did some editing to this chapter, so hopefully, everyone enjoyed it. This story was inspired by Simple Plan's 'Untitled' song and the movie Ghost that feed me the ideas I turned into my own. Review!
EclipsingFlames