He'd heard of Rangers' Rest, but he'd never thought it was a real place.  It sounded like a metaphor, or a parable, or something talked about so often it had taken on the ghost of tangibility.  They said anyone could find it when they needed it the most, and once found, it became easier and easier to revisit.

They didn't mention that it was out of time.  He didn't even notice the first time he went in, thinking it was one more watering hole on the frontier run.  He just walked up to the bar, took a seat, and admired the brunette who smiled at him from the other side.

She looked human, but so what.  It hadn't taken him long to learn that didn't mean anything offworld.  He appreciated her eyes and her ponytail and the way her fingers curled around the glass she pushed in his direction, but he didn't wonder where she was from and he didn't try to make conversation.

He was glad he hadn't when a tall man in a leather jacket came in and got a kiss across the counter before he even sat down.  He called her Charlie, which she didn't seem to mind, and he flipped a familiar-looking device onto the bar when he took a stool.  A morpher.  No doubt about it.

"Nice," he said, nodding at the device.

"Yeah."  The man's reply was brief and to the point.  "For Earth."

"Yeah?"  Who knew.  "I lived there, once."

This got him a second look and a slightly less confrontational nod.  "And her," he said, as Charlie dropped off his drink.  "Guess today is Earth Day."

"Every day is Earth Day," Charlie said with a sardonic smile.

"Thank god that's not true," the man muttered.  Then their eyes met, and he added, "Nothing against the planet.  Just bad memories.  Sometimes it's easier out here."

He knew how that went.  "Believe me," he said.  "Sometimes you just don't want to go where everyone knows your name."

That got a real smile, from both of them this time, and the man remarked, "Nice to be able to make jokes people actually get, though.  That doesn't happen a lot with aliens."

"Like your sense of humor is so compatible with humans," Charlie said.  "No one gets your jokes."

"You laugh," the man pointed out.

"I laugh at you," she countered.  "Not your jokes."

They went on and he just listened, more comforted than he could have told them to hear strangers using slang he understood, to see a morpher on the bar in plain sight like it didn't even matter, and to not have to say a single word until he felt like it.  Which lately had been never, but now he was starting to think talking might not be the worst thing in the world.  Not when no one was waiting to analyze the first word out of his mouth.

"Get you another?" Charlie asked, when his glass was empty.

He thought about saying yes, if only to see how long they could keep up the insults before one of them said something nice by accident.  They were obviously crazy about each other.  He missed that: being so sure of someone else that he could say anything at all.  Without thinking.  Without fear.

"No," he said with a sigh.  "Thanks.  Overdue."

"Little longer can't hurt," she offered.  "We've got food and rooms."

He wouldn't have guessed that--the rooms part, at least--and for just a moment he envied the kind of person who would take her up on it.  To be anonymous anywhere was a privilege he couldn't even remember having.  Here, though... when he traveled, this was as close as he came to being no one.  Sometimes it made his identity stronger.  Sometimes it made the loneliness worse.

Sometimes he was glad to be reminded how little he really mattered.

"Maybe next time," he said.

She looked genuinely disappointed to hear this, and he thought that was strange until she said, "I'm sorry," at which point he thought it was really strange.  But she added, "We're here whenever you need us," and he smiled politely and thanked them both for the company.

It wasn't until he was walking away that he thought to glance back, looking for a sign near the door that he might have missed or ignored on his way in.  It was there, now that he wanted to see it, and it made him turn all the way around.  He squinted, not sure he was reading it right.

Rangers' Rest.

He almost went back.  But what would that change?

He got all the way to the courier before he hesitated again, turning back before he could climb inside.  This time, though, there was nothing behind him.  No matter how carefully he looked, he couldn't see so much as an outline.

It was gone, and he wondered if he had rejected it or if it had rejected him.  Had he let it do what it was supposed to do?  What was it supposed to do?  Had it even wanted him in the first place?

Even without answers, he felt like he'd missed an opportunity.

Maybe that was what made him pause over the flight console when his comm flashed the hitchhiker signal at him: short-short-short-long... short-short-short-long...  Normally he ignored the automated signals from people willing to take a chance on no-contract rides.  But normally he didn't see metaphors come to life, either.

He acknowledged the signal, sent out a directional, and rolled the hatch open when the response indicated proximity.  He had the room, after all.  And his ship wouldn't have picked up the signal if his flight plan didn't match the hitchhiker's request.

He was almost beyond surprise when the man who climbed in was wearing a morpher.  This one wasn't human, at least: gold eyes glowed faintly above a necklace morpher that matched the green duffel over his shoulder.  He didn't say anything, just held up the HH signaling device that indicated how far he wanted to go.

Nodding, he closed the hatch and reinstated the preflight.  Then, because it was only fair, he twisted his right wrist and held it up so the sleeve of his jacket slid back.  The other man's eyes went right to his morpher, and he glanced at the necklace again to show he recognized it.

"Former," the man said.  The first word he'd uttered.

"Is anyone ever a former Ranger?"  It was out before he'd thought, but oddly, it seemed to make the man relax rather than putting him on his guard.

"Not so far," the not-so-former Green Ranger admitted.  "I keep trying."

"You too?"  He blurted it out without thinking, and for once, no one pounced or coaxed or tried to sympathize with things they couldn't understand.  

The man next to him just grimaced, and after a moment, held out his hand.  "Cam," he said.  "Thanks for the ride."

"Mike," he offered, taking a hand off the console to return the gesture.  "Anytime."

They were barely off the ground when a jetcycle flitted close enough to set off alarms, racing through the courier's lift vector on its way toward the planetary traffic grid.  Not an accident, he thought, when his eye caught the two figures on board.  Tinted visors obscured both their faces, but the one in front was wearing a leather jacket.  Dark hair, perhaps recently freed from a ponytail, streamed behind the second.

Until next time, he thought.