This is gonna get jossed in a week, I just know it

[pockysquirrel]

It's been less than 2 days since the episode aired, and you're looking at the proud mama of the fandom's very first Orion fic. So...yay, me? I guess?

(And it's not on AO3 either because there's no Orion tag yet and IDK how to make one. Herp a derp.)

Title: Aliens
Fandom: Power Rangers: Super Megaforce
Pairings/Characters: Troy, Orion. Shippy if you squint at it. 
Rating: G-ish.
Summary: Orion is literally alone in the world. Troy feels like he is, but that's nothing new.
Notes: Troy being in foster care has been my headcanon ever since Gosei mentioned him having faced adversity and then completely failed to elaborate. This is just the first time I've managed to actually write something about it. Expect more at some point. 

Troy finds himself reaching out to Orion, not because he wants to, but because he needs to. There’s a voice in the back of his mind that won’t shut up, that keeps on reminding him that this is exactly the sort of thing that made him get so attached to Robo Knight, and he feels a pain in his chest every time he thinks about his missing teammate. But he can’t help himself.

Everyone he ever really lets himself care about ends up vanishing in the end, and he still can’t help himself.

It’s because Orion is literally alone in the world. The only one of his kind on the planet and perhaps - Troy hasn’t asked in part because he’s afraid to know the answer - the only one of his kind left in the universe after the Armada had its way with his homeworld. Because the only home Orion has left is a cramped and stolen spacecraft that he’s hidden on the outskirts of town and a team that accepts but doesn’t quite know what to do with him. He’s fluid and fearless in battle, confident and poised enough to pass almost flawlessly as a native Earthling. And yet the only thing Troy ever seems to notice about him is the pair of steel-colored eyes that seem to somehow reflect all the terrible things he’s been forced to see.

It’s because Troy knows that look, knows it all too well, that he finds himself drawn to the newest Ranger.

And he wonders, sometimes, just what it says about him that he feels more kinship with a robot and an alien than he has with any human he’s ever met.

By now, Troy’s sure the other Rangers know the truth about him, even though he’s never told them outright. If he had to guess, Emma would have figured it out first, then acted on her - frankly correct - assumption that he didn’t want to talk about it and told the others to keep their mouths shut. It’s an open secret, obvious enough once someone’s collected enough of the clues to put them together. Troy never invites anyone over to his house. The couple he lives with don’t share his surname, and aren’t the right age to logically have a teenaged son. He transferred into Harwood High so abruptly, and every couple of weeks he’s forced to spend a period in the school social worker’s office instead of class.

He knows he could talk to his teammates about it, if he really wanted to. He just doesn’t want to. Not because he thinks they’d think any less of him if he did; after all, one of the cardinal qualities Rangers are selected for is tolerance. He doesn’t want to talk to them about it because he knows from far too much experience that for them, foster care is something that happens on TV shows and newspaper pages. His reality is their intangible fiction. And they’d offer him their support, their unconditional love, but they could never offer him understanding.

So he doesn’t tell them. But he does tell Orion, one night when he’s out past curfew again, lying on the roof of the stolen spaceship and gazing up at the stars. When Orion spots and points out to him the star that his home planet orbits, and it looks so impossibly far away. Troy tells him then.

“...And I realize it’s not much compared to losing your entire planet,” he concludes, somewhat lamely. “But I guess I’m telling you all this because...I think I know how you feel.”

Orion turns his head, regards the Red Ranger with eyes as carefully unreadable as Troy’s own. Curtains on the windows of a haunted house.

“Thank you, Troy,” is all he says.

It’s more than enough.