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Disclaimer: Power Rangers is so very not mine. I'm just borrowing & I solemnly swear to give them back when I'm done.

Summary: Crossover between Stargate Atlantis and Power Rangers Dino Thunder. Secret identities meet military paranoia.

Warnings: This chapter involves some non-graphic discussion of torture involving a minor (and apparently that does look just as bad as it sounded in my head).

Chapter 15: Insight

"Is something wrong?"

The question penetrates Ethan's daze and he realizes that Teyla is giving him a querying look across the mess hall table.

"What? No, we're fine. Nothing wrong with us."

It's not very convincing and Teyla's look turns dubious and faintly suspicious. Ethan ducks his head, looking down at his half-eaten plate. He really doesn't want to explain how the rangers' morphing signatures might be leading Elsa to Atlantis. That's a job for Conner up in Weir's office and Ethan's more than happy to dump it on the guy.

"I just…" He makes a vague gesture. "With Elsa here? In this dimension? Not cool."

"Tell me about it," Kira mutters. Like Ethan, she's picking at her food, having only managed to get through two plates. Trent at least is eating with grim resolution, now putting away his fourth. The escort Marines, crammed onto the table alongside, are shooting him looks somewhere between horror and fascination.

Teyla doesn't seem to quite buy Ethan's excuse. Like Kira she has a discerning ear for bullshit.

"You all appear somewhat… agitated," she says, eyeing where Ethan is absently tapping his fingers on the tabletop. "As if you are in a hurry to be somewhere."

This is normally Trent's cue to smoothly intervene with an ingenious misdirection. This time however, Trent is off in his own little world, eating mechanically, gaze fixed past Ronan's shoulder. It's left to Ethan to come up with something to say other than the truth – which is that they're all on edge waiting for Conner to convince Weir to open up that stargate thingy, so that the rangers can lead the monsters away.

"We just want to go back to killing monsters," he says. "That's all."

"Of course." Teyla still isn't convinced. Fortunately she seems to be thinking along completely the wrong line. "Is Elsa truly so terrible?"

"In a word? Yes." Ethan pokes at the soggy broccoli on his plate, pretending it's Elsa's face.

"You fear her."

It's not really a question, and she's not wrong, but Ethan feels obligated to argue anyway.

"Not the way I do Mesagog. I'd like to break her face, that's all."

"You talk about all women like that?" One of the Marines mutters. Kira makes an indelicate sound.

"Elsa's not a woman. She's a monster, a vile piece of sadistic filth that dares to look like a human being." She stabs at a piece of carrot. "Ethan can break her face, I'll break both her knees and stuff her in a woodchipper."

Even Ethan blinks at that threat. Kira has wonderfully creative ways of getting around the censor.

Sitting opposite, Ronan is picking at his teeth with a toothpick, as unconcerned as if Kira had said she wanted a tea party with pink ribbons and teddy bears. Teyla gives them this thoughtful look that makes Ethan feel horribly transparent and asks:

"What did she do to you?"

Ethan pauses in mutilating his broccoli. He very carefully keeps his eyes on Teyla, not betraying anyone with so much as a glance.

"She does stuff to everyone," he says. "We're nothing special; we just happen to get in the way more."

"In my experience, some types of loathing cannot be taught, only felt. I hated the wraith as a child, but they were a fact of existence to be accepted. Like old age or death. I did not truly loathe them until they took my father."

Trent looks up.

"A monster took your father?" He says. He looks vulnerable, as if Teyla had hit a nerve with her statement.

"Some years ago," Teyla answers. "In the last great culling. I was considered lucky that even one member of my immediate family survived." In her voice, Ethan can hear the faint echo of a very old bitterness. "Is that what Elsa did? Did she hurt your father?"

"No." Trent look away, flustered by the question. "Something else."

He doesn't sound entirely truthful, and for the first time Ethan wonders – had some sort of threat been leveled against Anton, in order to get Trent's compliance? Trent back before joining the team had been pretty ignorant of the rules regarding ranger-villain interactions, and even crazy-Trent had been pretty fond of Anton. If he'd had no idea that parents were off-limits, it would have yet one more tool to ensure his cooperation.

Ethan goes cold, wondering how bad it must have gotten that Trent was willing to risk so much to escape.

"That's none of your business," Kira says firmly, drawing attention away from Trent. "None of you will see Elsa. She's like Mesagog; she does her fighting from a distance with monsters. If she does come, you run away and let us handle her. That's our job."

"This is our home," Ronan points out. "We don't run away."

"Yes you do," Ethan says grimly. "Because Elsa's not like your monsters. She's built to take on a fully morphed ranger. She'd squash you like a bug and care less."

"We don't squash easy," Ronan says, smirking like someone who's never seen Elsa rip a car door off its hinges.

"We're serious." Ethan really wishes for a couple of extra years and maybe some beard scruff to make Ronan take him seriously. "We're not even sure that we can stop her. Maybe all four of us together, but I wouldn't put any money on it."

"And leave you to die?" Teyla says, like he'd made some distasteful joke. Ethan rolls his eyes.

"Don't be stupid. Elsa doesn't want us – ow!" Someone just kicked him under the table, and by the way Trent's glaring at him, Ethan knows who. "Trent, that hurt!"

"Elsa doesn't want you dead," Teyla says thoughtfully. "That is what you were going to say, Ethan?"

Ethan glares at Trent and tucks his legs out of reach before answering.

"Mesagog wants us alive. Elsa will do her best to give him that."

"Why does he want you alive?" One of the older Marines – Atwood, Ethan thinks he's called – is watching the rangers suspiciously.

Ethan momentarily stumps, realising too late why Trent had wanted him to shut up. It's impossible to explain why Mesagog wants the rangers alive without explaining the gems and the symbiotic bond that keeps them active.

"It's complicated," he hedges but no one's buying what he's selling. He can tell by the way the adults are all looking at him, like Hayley when she knows he's been using the Lair computer to play video games but can't prove it. One of the younger Marines breaks the silence.

"Yeah, right. If I went up against something like you, I'd kill it with fire and bury it at the cross-roads."

"That so?" Kira says, amused.

"Yeah. Fuck fighting you guys. I'd call in a fucking air-strike."

Ethan won't lie; he's totally flattered. This guy hasn't even seen them morphed and he still thinks they're that badass. Kira preens a little as well, unable to quite hide how much she likes his opinion.

"What Harris is trying to say," Atwood says. "Is that taking you alive is high risk. Why bother?"

The smile fades from Ethan's face. Kira laces her hands together, squeezing so tight her knuckles turn white.

"He wants us to serve him," she says shortly. "He thinks if he can take us alive, he can convince us."

"Is he right about that?"

Trent gives a huff of laughter that's totally fake.

"What can we say? He's a convincing guy." His voice is slightly higher-pitched than normal, the only sign of a hysteria that so far has been kept well under wraps. Ethan shifts on his chair, wondering if he should make some excuse for them to leave. If Trent's going to crack up, the last place he'll want to do it is a public area like this. Kira's hand twitches as if she'd reach for Trent's but knows it would be rebuffed.

Before any of the rangers can say or do anything, Ronan speaks.

"So you're not really risking anything." He's still slouched in his seat, eyeing Trent with impersonal interest. "By helping us."

Ethan's rage surges like an electric shock. It's lucky that the ranger programming is so strict about restraint in non-combat situations because what Ethan really wants to do is punch Ronan in the face. Kira's gripping her spork and glaring like she wants to stab him in the eye.

"You have no idea what we're risking," she snarls.

"I'm listening." Ronan makes a broad gesture that's vaguely mocking, as if he's already dismissed their fears as childish and irrelevant. Ethan thinks that for a guy who'd recognised and respected them for what they were from the beginning, Ronan's making a lot of missteps right at the moment. "What would this Mesagog do?"

"Oh nothing at all," Trent says, and his tone is chilly like ice. "Just torture us into submission. No risk at all."

The 't' word – the word that they've all been avoiding using or even thinking – doesn't do anything for Ethan's temper. In fact, it makes his more aggressive ranger instincts surface, subconscious frantically searching for the threat to his teammate, and unable to find it.

He's catalogueing all the ways he can take Ronan apart when he realises that Ronan doesn't look disturbed. Or even surprised. He just keeps chewing on his toothpick, gaze steady as he asks Trent:

"How long did they have you?"

Trent falters.

"Three months," he says automatically, and covers his mouth as if horrified to let that much slip.

Ronan nods as if that's more or less what he'd expected.

"Elsa helped torture you?" He asks, sounding like he was enquiring about the weather. It's a neutrality that Ethan couldn't have managed to save his life, but Trent responds to it as if it hits some hidden trigger in his brain.

"No, she just helped restrain me sometimes. Broke my feet so I couldn't run…" He stands up suddenly, shoving his chair back. "I need some air."

He walks away. Ethan and Kira jump up to follow him. Ethan's ranger instincts are an urgent pressure on the inside of his brain, telling him to go after Trent, to keep him close, to find out all the ways that Mesagog hurt him and pay them back a hundred times over, to keep him safe and protected and do it right this time–

"Sit down," Ronan tells them. Kira says hotly:

"Don't tell us what to –"

"You think he wants to talk to anyone right now? Sit down and stay here." Ronan gets up and follows Trent out of the mess hall, long legs easily covering the distance between them.

"He doesn't want to talk to you either!" Ethan shouts after him, but it's lame, really lame. He can't decide whether he wants to curl up and cry at the awful, unspeakable reality of what Trent went through or take it out on something with knuckles and violence and blood.

"Was that the first you have heard of it?" Teyla asks, and even though she looks sympathetic and like she wants to help, Ethan hates her for witnessing this.

"No," Kira says shortly, sitting down.

"We're not idiots." Ethan sits down and stabs at his broccoli. This time it's Mesagog he's picturing ripping to shreds. "He's just never gone into detail before."

Broke my feet so I couldn't run…

The back of Ethan's throat tastes sour and he has to put the spork down. Back when Trent was crazy, the rangers had had no idea. They'd simply assumed that Mesagog had presented a more appealing deal to the white ranger. Occasionally Ethan had wondered at the sudden turn around; why the white ranger, who only cared about a fight and not where it came from, had become obedient to Mesagog's will. But he'd never followed the though through to it's horrific conclusion.

To be fair, maybe he hadn't wanted to. Maybe none of them had.

Then a surge of Power had bitch-slapped Trent back to sanity and he'd fled Mesagog's lab for the rangers. It had only taken a day – a day of watching him flinch when anyone touched him and tense at the smell of ammonia – for them to realise something really bad had gone down. Even then they didn't realise the true extent until a week later when Conner initiated a playful wrestling match – something he'd done a hundred times before with Ethan and Kira – and Trent freaked out at being pinned.

Ethan still remembers the awful moment of realisation when Trent kicked Conner off him and ran for the bathroom; that utter sense of helplessness as they listened to Trent heaving his guts behind a locked door.

Trent flatly refused to admit anything had happened, of course. Pushing just makes him get nasty, and he'd stuck the verbal knife in pretty ruthlessly when Hayley and Dr O suggested he talk to someone. It drives all of them crazy with worry; does he not want to make it real by talking about it? Or does he just not trust them enough to admit how badly he'd been hurt?

This admission to Ronan is the closest they've come to progress in a month, and forces Ethan to conclude that the second assumption was the right one. Trent wants to talk about what happened to him; he just doesn't want to talk to them, the team that had abandoned him to Mesagog's non-existent mercy in the first place. And Ethan can't fault him for it.

Ethan's plate goes blurry and he blinks the tears away ruthlessly. They have enough trouble getting the adults to listen to them in the first place; he is not going to cry like a little kid in front of them.

One of the Marines clears his throat.

"So, Elsa," he says. "How do we kill this bitch then?"

Trent's aware of Ronan following him down the hall. He could trigger his camouflage and ditch the guy, but Trent is sick of running. He's done enough of it to last a lifetime.

He turns sharply on his heel, bringing them suddenly face to face. He has to crane his neck because Ronan's the size of a grizzly, but height is never going to be intimidating to someone that fights building-sized monsters on a weekly basis.

"Leave me alone," he says in the glacial tone that Zeltrax would have recognised as his final warning.

Ronan just looks bored.

"No."

"Turn around and walk away," Trent tries again. "I don't want to talk to you."

"Who says I want to talk?"

Trent searches Ronan's face suspiciously, but Ronan looks the same as he always does. Utterly uninterested in anything Trent might have to say.

Trent relaxes minutely. He likes knowing where he stands with people, and it's a relief to know that Ronan is remaining consistent. There was no show of friendship like the other Atlanteans, no fake kindness that disappeared when the truth came out. Not even Sheppard's annoying ambivalence. Ronan didn't like the rangers before, and he doesn't like them now. That stuff in the messhall was probably just him wanting to know what they could expect from Elsa.

"Good," Trent says warily and wonders what to do next. Usually anyone he threatens take the first opportunity to exit his vicinity, and he doesn't want to lose face by being the first one to turn away. After a few seconds the Atlantean says:

"You wanted some air. There's a balcony that way."

The balcony door opens automatically when they approach it and the sea air hits Trent in the face like a welcome smack of cold. He leans against the railing, curling his fingers over the alien metal, and tries to empty his mind of Ronan standing behind him, Ethan and Kira waiting in the mess hall, Conner up in Weir's office trying to explain the situation, Elsa lurking somewhere in the far reaches of space…

He doesn't realise he's started to climb over the railing until Ronan grabs his arm.

"No."

Fortunately Trent is more bemused than threatened by Ronan's grip on bicep. Then he realises what it looks like he's doing.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to jump." He's had much better opportunities back home, if he were going to go that way. "If I did that, you'd probably have to take my place and I wouldn't wish you and Dr O on each other, ever."

Ronan's grip doesn't loosen, and Trent adds reassuringly:

"I'm a flier. I like to be up high. It's relaxing."

Finally Ronan's grip loosens, though he hovers, ready to grab Trent if he takes a dive. Trent swings his legs over the railing and settles so that he's sitting, looking out over the ocean. It's a dizzying height, almost too much even for a brain adapted to deal with the incredible speeds and swoops of the DragoZord. But it's exactly what he needs, pushing everything else out.

"So what instructions has Sheppard given you about us?" He says over his shoulder.

"What do you think?" Ronan has settled against the wall, watching Trent but no longer alarmed. It reminds Trent of how Zeltrax used to watch him, except Zeltrax had a hunk of metal for a brain, and Ronan is far from stupid.

"I think he said to let us kill your monsters." Trent pauses for a second, then adds the hook: "Then once we're done, you're to kill us."

"Why waste good fighters?"

Trent nods thoughtfully:

"True." So Sheppard wants to exploit their abilities for himself. Perhaps Elsa's a blessing in disguise; at least the rangers know for a fact what she wants, while the other three remain frustratingly naïve about the Atlanteans' intentions. Not that Trent minds protecting the others (in a weird, secret way he enjoys it), but he doesn't want them to learn the hard way about how the world works. Not now. Not ever.

"Sheppard is a good leader," Ronan says. "He takes care of his people."

His total lack of subtlety makes Trent smile.

"Are you trying to recruit us?"

"Why not? There are plenty of rangers where you come from. We could use fighters like you."

"I bet you could." Trent wonders which of the others has been giving Ronan information about the teams back home. Most likely Conner but possibly one of the others; none of them have any idea how to keep stuff to themselves.

Ronan's silent, but it's the silence of one who's said all they intended, not someone waiting for an answer. For a long while, they remain as they are, listening to the distant sound of waves and the faint call of birds that might or might not be seagulls.

Then Ronan says:

"Any tips on how to deal with this Elsa?"

"Don't shoot her with bullets." Trent pauses a moment and decides that the Atlanteans deserve more information, if there's a chance Elsa might show up between now and the rangers leaving. Whatever their intentions, they don't deserve what she'd do to them. "She's like us; projectile weapons can hurt her, but she wears a projector. Anything over a certain velocity gets re-directed. You shoot her, use your energy weapon. She'll be resistant, but at least it will hit her."

"What does the projector look like?"

"Small, black thing about this big. She keeps it under her clothes, so your chances of getting close enough to find it are pretty much nil." Trent closes his eyes, leans back to enjoy the breeze. "Ethan and Kira are right about one thing; if she does show up, leave her to us. Any of your people get in the way, she'll kill you."

There's a pause while Ronan digests this.

"You've threatened to stab me four times today," he says finally.

"Five times. And so what?"

"So now you worry about us dying."

"Yeah, well." Trent shifts to a more comfortable position. "Punishment after the crime, right?"

A few minutes later, Ronan's radio bleeps. He answers it, says "Later" and switches it off again.