Chapter Text
I.
Sid is allergic to fur.
It wasn't something he'd known about until he'd been on Zangyack payroll, as the planet he was from literally hadn't a single animal with fur. Even after he'd learned about it, it still hadn't come up much until he'd managed to escape to earth and meet up with Joe and the Gokaiger crew.
For some reason or other, and he was not going to listen to whatever insane theories the rest of the crew had, cats and dogs seemed to like him quite a bit. If he happened to pass an alleyway, he was bound to be followed by a parade of strays and if he had the misfortune of going near a dog park, he'd soon be mobbed.
Of course, even if he didn't listen to what the others had to say, there were still some leading theories. Such as the animals knowing he was allergic and deliberately antagonizing him, courtesy of Luka. Maybe they just instinctively knew he was a good person, courtesy of Gai.
Or perhaps it was because he smelled good, but Leo had immediately left the room after he said that.
It was so bad Gai had tried to get Leo to exorcise whatever curse had been placed on him, despite the fact that there probably wasn't one. But until someone, probably Hakase, invented a way to talk to them, he was going to believe it was a curse himself.
II.
Leo was going to leave one day.
He would leave in the same mysterious way he arrived, through some unseen path, following some unseen thing. He would disappear as though he'd never been there and Sid was not sure what he would do then. The crew was his family and his friends. Joe was like his little brother and his precious kouhai. The others had near and dear places in his heart as well.
But Leo was his lover and just like the others, if he died or disappeared all that would be left was a gaping wound in Sid's heart.
Leo had never said whether he wanted to go home eventually, but Sid knew, from painful experience, that there would always be a longing. So at night he held Leo close and during the day, sat with him while he tinkered with his tools and when there was a fight he trusted Leo with his life, just like he would the others.
III.
Sid was afraid of being alone.
Part of it was just because he had grown up in a place that had some truly... interesting ways of handling social interaction. Another part was that from the time he'd been born to the time he'd ran from Zangyack, he'd rarely been alone. Been alone meant that the person he was with had died or been capture. Being alone meant being put in isolation for not being good enough.
It took all he had to separate from Joe when they escaped, but he knew, more than he knew that being alone was bad, that they would have better odds.
He was right.
The time between that separation and his arrival on Earth was the most painful, nerve wracking, and horrible time in his life. The reunion with Joe fixed every single insecure fear and made it all worth it. Mind, he still slept in other people's beds for a week or so and he absolutely refused to be alone in a room if he could avoid it, but things were looking up and he could pretend he'd never been alone in the first place.
IV.
Sid can't shoot worth a damn.
Even before he'd injured his eye, he was still a lousy shot. In fact, it was one of the reasons he was so good with a sword. The higher ups had let him focus on it after it became apparent that a) his aim wasn't going to improve and b) he could probably fight off twice as many people in the time it took most of the other recruits to aim.
Of course, that wasn't to say it didn't come back to bite him in the ass every now and then. Like Joe putting him with Ahim and Hakase, just to be a funny guy. Or Gai asking him to teach him how to do a trick shot when one of the two was busy.
It always seemed to come back whenever it would embarrass him the most.
V.
He knows what happened to his planet.
Zangyack, even with such a big focus on Earth, never really waits around to conquer or destroy a place. There was absolutely no way they were going to wait the five months (Earth time) for the worst of winter to be over when they could just as easily chuck poison gas down into the winter havens and be done with it.
He's been told that in the spring, it's beautiful, but quiet.
VI.
He did resent not being a member of the team at first.
He didn't want to displace any of the others, but he had wanted to be the hero for just a little while. Not just temporarily filling in for Joe when he had been down with a serious cold, but for always. After all, some of the teams in the past had a black or a white instead, didn't they? Wouldn't it have been all right?
Still, there were only so many Mobirates to go around and he had never been petty enough to deprive someone of something so important. He still fought and he still pulled his weight.
The resentment slowly went away, but it was always there... At least until Leo stumbled into their world. Then suddenly there was someone else who didn't have one and then he thought that maybe it was all right that he didn't have one either.
He was still a little sore about Gai though, but not nearly as much as he would have been before.
VII.
There was that one time Ahim knocked him out.
The bad part about that particular incident was that she hadn't done it on purpose and she hadn't even realized she'd done it in the first place, which meant he kept getting questions about what had happened to him.
During a particularly strenuous fight, they had wound up in a playground with a particularly complex jungle gym. In between the shooting and cutting, swinging and jumping, and generally acting like big kids instead of allies of justice or some such thing, a heeled boot connected with the blind side of his face.
The worst part, beyond the fact that it had happened at all, was the sound of Goumin laughing at him.
VIII.
There was a monster that could briefly connect people's thoughts.
Sid, like many others most likely, had wondered what people were thinking at various times. From what exactly Doc was talking about when he rattled off statistics to what made Joe decide to put in a cake. From what it was that made Luka want one thing, but not another, to what made Ahim irritated. What did Gai really think when they met past teams? What were Leo's thoughts on this world that wasn't his own? There were also things Sid didn't know how to say and kept quiet.
But he had never, ever had a desire to live in someone's head and he knew that anything more than a glimpse would be enough to make him view someone in a completely different way.
That particular monster had already done its thing on a group of bystanders, so they had a fairly good idea of what they were in for. It didn't really prepare them, but at least they knew what had happened.
“I wish Marvelous would listen to me just a little more.” Gai's thought came unbidden to him. He remembered the first thoughts of everyone as the connections between them jumped and changed, but he couldn't remember what he'd thought.
“Get to the point, Hakase.” Though Luka had said it out loud a few seconds later, he was still ready for it and Hakase's protest.
“If this keeps up, everyone will start fighting...” Came Marvelous' thought a minute or two later, it was much quieter and much more steady than he would have given Marvelous credit for.
“...” Joe's thoughts weren't verbal, but rather visual cues and while it was fascinating to watch him turn the incident and his thoughts around in his head, it was also deeply distracting. Ahim's... well, she had a pretty expansive and intimidating vocabulary for someone who seemed so sheltered. Leo's thoughts, like Joe's, were half-indecipherable, but only for the speed with which he went through his thoughts and ideas.
If anything, Hakase's had been the worst. For someone who was so nervous all the time he had pretty blistering thoughts and it seemed like he was capable of thinking in two directions at great speed. Sid had to sit down at that point and he vowed to wipe the whole thing from his memory, agreeing with whoever he was sharing his thoughts with at the time.
IX.
There were actually things worse than the Zangyack.
Whether they actually existed in this world was a different matter, but just knowing that Horrors existed at all was like a splash of cold, dirty water on his mind. He didn't care how good at dealing with them Leo was supposed to be, the thought of anyone being near one of those things was enough to want Sid to lock everyone on the ship up, safe and sound and away from anything that could bring the things to their world.
But if Leo did eventually leave, regardless of what sort of things there were out their, Sid was pretty certain he wanted to follow any way.
X.
He had thought about killing himself once.
He doesn't think about that any more.
He has a place to call home and people to fill his heart and that was that.