Author's Note: This short moment in Scott's morning would not have been anywhere near what it is now without Samantha Winchester. ::bows humbly:: Thank you.
RESPONSIBILITY
Scott stopped at the very edge of the beach, water threatening to wet the tips of his sneakers. He bent forward, hands resting on his thighs, and allowed his breathing to slow until at last he felt ready to stand fully upright again.
The sun was only just peeking over the horizon, casting a canvas of pinks, oranges and brilliant yellows that rivaled even Virgil's most beautiful painted works. Scott closed his eyes, letting the rising warmth spread through every cell of his body. A lost seagull cawed some distance away and the gentle breeze that had begun to stir as he completed his morning circuit around Tracy Island, ruffled the leaves of palm trees and plants alike.
He relished these precious moments where he could cease to be the eldest son of a famous billionaire, where he could stop being a big brother, where he could forget for a moment that he held the lives of so many past, present and future in the palms of his hands as International Rescue's field commander. At this time every morning – assuming they weren't out on a call – Scott Tracy reveled in the silence, in the feel of his heart pumping sure and strong, and in the illusion that he was alone.
He knew his father was already prowling the villa, rising as early as Scott did more often than not. Kyrano was probably doing his morning exercises and, had his grandmother been on the island, she would've been stirring shortly to make sure John was taking his proper turn at making breakfast for everyone. He grinned to himself at the thought. Grandma didn't treat them like little kids anymore, to be sure, but sometimes she could make them feel like little kids just by virtue of acting like a grandma...something that always amused them.
He breathed in deeply once more, then turned to head for Thunderbird Two's runway. Every morning after his run, he basked in the rising sun and then made his rounds of their equipment. Call it anal retentiveness, call it obsessive-compulsive, call it responsible...whatever it was, he did it without fail. And this morning would be no different.
No, he hadn't been an adult when his mother died; he'd only just turned nine. And yes, there'd still been his father, his grandparents on both sides, and a myriad of other uncles, aunts and doting grownups who'd wanted to help.
The thing none of them had ever understood, however...the thing even their father hadn't really gotten, was that when Virgil had a nightmare, he didn't go to Jeff's bedroom or crawl into a Grandma and Grandpa's bed. When John was inconsolable after doing something perfectly innocuous like accidentally breaking the wheel off one of his toy cars, he didn't seek Aunt Lisa's arms for a hug, nor cry on Uncle Joshua's shoulder.
When Gordon responded to everyone's sorrowful faces and tear-filled eyes by growing sullen and morose, seemingly incapable of the laughter that had once bubbled forth from his lips like an unstoppable waterfall, Great-Aunt Miranda and their second cousins Julie and Mike weren't the ones who got the dimples to appear in the toddler's chubby cheeks again. When Alan screamed his little head off because he missed the voice he'd heard the entirety of his time within his mother's womb, a voice he'd never gotten to hear for real after his birth, it wasn't the arms of their second cousin Teri or Great-Uncle Jack that calmed the infant's cries.
The adults took care of most of the day-to-day stuff. Earning money was their father's way of dealing with the time. Keeping the house clean, doing the laundry, feeding the boys, giving them their baths and making sure they took their vitamins and did their homework, were tasks split equally amongst the family members who stuck around for months in the aftermath of Lucille Tracy's unexpected death.
But from the very first night, the night that five young boys had all lost their mother for good, there was really only one person who'd been sought out for emotional comfort by four of those little boys. That had been eldest brother Scott.
Lost in his musings over the past, Scott walked next to their gigantic drilling machine, the Mole, running his hand along her recently-cleaned, smooth metal surface. It wasn't so long ago that Virgil had been injured underground, and it'd been up to Scott to get him aboard this very machine, stop his excessive blood loss, and try to get him to the surface in time for a medical team to take over and save his life.
More often than not, back at the farmhouse, when some adult or other made the rounds of the boys' bedrooms to check on them overnight, they found one or more of the younger ones piled into Scott's bed. And more often than not, found him sleeping on the floor next to them, squeezed out of his own bed by the press of bodies. At first, the uncles, aunts and grandparents moved the kids back into their own cribs and beds, even scolding Scott the next morning for bringing a newborn baby from his cradle into a place where multiple siblings could easily have squished him to death in the night.
But what they never knew was that Scott very rarely slept. For some reason even he probably wouldn't be able to explain without the help of a few top psychologists, from the moment he'd witnessed his mother's last breath, Scott had felt wholly responsible for his younger brothers. The fact that they in turn were mostly only assuaged by his words and hugs, increased this sense of responsibility in him.
If Alan cried out in the night, many times it was Scott who got to his cradle first, picking him up and getting him settled down so quickly that the adults always thought that Alan had soothed himself back to sleep. Scott had often heard them commenting on what a good baby Alan was to sleep through the night...for oftentimes, Scott would sneak him back to the cradle before the first adult awoke the following morning, just to avoid getting in trouble. Then he'd wash, dry and put away any bottles he might've fed the baby, so that no one knew of his and his youngest brother's nocturnal adventures.
And because Gordon and Alan shared a room, inevitably Scott's trips to check on the littlest one woke the second youngest, who then insisted upon staying with Scott and the baby. Virgil always sought Scott out anyway...in fact, he'd spent more nights in Scott's bed than his own even before Lucy's death. And John, old enough to know he missed his mommy but too young to understand why she wasn't coming back, simply didn't want to be left out of the pile of arms and legs that filled Scott's twin bed.
As he moved past the Excavator and its rock-grinding metal teeth, his mind's eye showed him it wasn't so very long ago that this machine had thrown a rock the size of a watermelon right at Alan's head and knocked him unconscious. It had been Scott who'd managed to get him to the nearest head trauma hospital in Thunderbird One in enough time for the resulting hematoma to be drained, avoiding brain damage or worse in the youngest Tracy.
Yes, they were all grown men now. Yes, they'd each gone on to have their own careers separate from each other, and then had come back together to live out the dream of International Rescue. But the one still in charge – at least in the field – was the same one they'd always looked to for love, for comfort, and for leadership since the early days of their lives.
Of course, it wasn't only Scott who saved his brothers' lives now. Just as when they were children, he had by no means been their sole caregiver, often coming upon Gordon soothing Alan, or Virgil calming John. But it was Scott who had felt the responsibility for them then, and it was Scott who still felt the responsibility for them now. Right or wrong, logical or illogical, healthy or unhealthy, it was simply the way he was. Not because anyone had forced it upon him, but simply because it was there.
And so, as he completed his rounds of checking out the pod vehicles, Thunderbird Two and eventually Thunderbird One, he chided himself as he did each morning for those few moments when the peace and solitude of the sunrise tempted him to forget his responsibilities and pretend that his life was his own. No one ever witnessed those moments of his and even if they'd seen him, they wouldn't know what was running through his head. Yet none of that made him feel less guilty for thinking them.
He had cared for them his whole life, in one way or another. And he would care for them until his last breath escaped his body. For they were his brothers. Knowing they would be beginning to stir by now, one by one, he took a moment to lift that familiar sense of responsibility back to his shoulders and settle it into place. It was time to attack another day.