Notes: I wrote this oneshot with the original series in mind, but it can fit into any incarnation of Thunderbirds. Huge thanks goes out to ScribeOfRhapsody, SoulfireInc, VendettaSmiles, and Alternate Reality1 for their brilliant editing.

The fantastic cover artwork is by Obscenely Befuddled on Tumblr and used with her permission.

dissonante silenzio

Sometimes he forgets what the world sounds like.

He forgets the bustling energy that exists in a gathering of people that are so very alive. Forgets the whisper of wind tangling around palm fronds, the squabble and chatter of colorful tropical birds, the steady, salty crash from the eternal metronome surrounding the island as the ocean breathes. Forgets the comfortable murmur of familiar voices as they ebb and flow in accordance to the strains of music released from his hands into the airy lounge.

It's difficult to remember that the world has sounds, good sounds—excitement and laughter and joy and love—because sometimes all he can hear is the guttural roar of an inferno they don't have enough diacetylene to tame. Or the creak and the crack and the yawning moan disgorged from the core of the Earth as another section of ground and buildings and people crumbles away, swallowed by the planet they work so hard to maintain. The gurgling hunger as rain-loosened soil deluges towards a remote, primitive village. The black growl of white snow burying families under heavy avalanches and heavier memories.

Sometimes all he can hear is the clipped exhaustion in his older brothers' voices as they bark in his ear, the empty echo of his own voice ricocheting inside his head as he snaps orders at his younger brothers. They fire off code names and wind speeds and coordinates and fluctuating temperatures and structural integrity statistics like they're bullets, released to shatter against each other with the thoughtlessness characteristic of those pushed beyond their limits and the unerring precision honed by a lifetime of brotherhood.

It's impossible not to hear the sickening squelch when one of them strikes too deep. Everyone hears the sharp inhale. The abrupt, abnormal pause in a constant flow of communication. The hollow thud of five stomachs dropping when everyone realizes it's gone too far.

That's when the sounds of the world are smothered by a frigid, crackling silence, like a radio that needs tuning, broken only by Base's imperative they finish the job. There are hushed updates and subdued confirmations that follow, and the grumbling of machines too dangerous for the rest of the world to operate—as though their imperfect selves are any better.

Sometimes all it takes is a pithy comment or joke. Then they smile and laugh, or groan and roll their eyes, and the dial is reset, silence swept aside, replaced with the constant din that suffuses danger zones the world over.

But sometimes... sometimes the silence doesn't resolve itself. Sometimes it stays with them, hitches a ride in the cockpits of the mighty Thunderbirds, spreads across the island in a thick buzz of too many words unsaid: unpleasant and distracting and burrowing into the nape of his neck, his temples, setting his teeth on edge and clawing at the base of his spine as though he's listening to an instrument that needs tuning.

It's instinct to settle behind his piano as soon as possible, rescue zone filth scrubbed away to leave him a genteel civilian once more. It's instinct to create a relaxing ambiance capable of banishing the tension by exhausting his repertoire of scores, the ones that clear his head and clear his brothers' heads. It's a shortcut to rationality and objectivity that Mom used to employ after long days filled with five rambunctious boys, and he's put her techniques to good use over the years.

It's effective, too, so he knows they're in trouble when the first bar of notes screeches hard against the tapered edges of his brothers' anger. During these times of knife-sharp silence, when cool ivory beneath long fingers hurts more than helps, he stays far, far away from his glossy Steinway, opting instead for solitude that should offer peace but can't.

Only in solitude does it start. They start: sounds that demand his attention, relentless in their pursuit of his sanity until they consume his every thought. At first, they're nothing more than a disquiet in the void, a monotone almost-nothing, ghost notes on the staff. All it takes is the grave mistake of noticing for them to swell in an uncontrollable crescendo until all he can hear is the screaming, the crying, the wailing and the mourning. There is nothing that can shriek louder, demand more attention than the sibilant voices of those already gone, infecting him with whispered words of failure and doubt and guilt and he can't make them stop.

When all he hears is destruction, decay, death, when he can no longer hear the hissing static-silence of a family in strife over the unbearable cacophony in his own skull, he slips headphones on, the solid, durable pair with impeccable noise isolation. He cancels out the world and lets ribbons of notes weave up his ear canals to bind the toxic noise in his head between rippling arpeggios, staccato jabs smoothing under elegant slurs, clashes between bass and treble clefs, major and minor chords, sharps and flats and naturals that coax him towards the end of the act and slip him into the next without pause and, more important, without time to think.

Some days are worse than others. Some days he knows the grand swell of a philharmonic orchestra won't be enough. That's when he needs something heavier, something that can overpower the screaming in his head with brute force, so he cues up his most aggressive playlist, the one bristling with blinding fast drumming and tortured vocals like nails scraping chalkboard and metal guitar strings shredded beyond hope of recovery. He closes his eyes, allows the onslaught of explosive cymbal chokes and crunchy rifts to thrash the atonal voices tearing him apart into submission until they have no choice but to synchronize with the overwhelming force and passion behind each belted lyric.

He hates the thought of that playlist and what it represents, but sometimes, sometimes it's the only thing that helps. Besides, although he enjoys the knowledge that it flies in the face of others' assumptions that he only listens to music composed no less than three hundred years ago, he enjoys the heavy-hitting songs even more. Man cannot listen to Bach alone.

With headphones on and volume cranked—sometimes the mellifluous delight of an orchestra in perfect synchronization, sometimes the rage of distortion grinding the insides of his brain raw—that's when he forgets. Forgets the voices trying to drive him over the edge. Forgets the chilled hush over the island. Forgets the droning clouds of static surrounding his family members that escalate into piercing feedback whenever they stray too close to one another and tempers flare.

He shuts it all out, cocooning himself in the symphonic shield music provides until he forgets what the world sounds like.

But he can't stay within a reality of his own making forever. There are machines to maintain, brothers to sort, wounds to mend, silence to banish with rolling melodies and entertaining glissandi that provide an effortless backdrop to the cadence of life on their island home.

So once the music has fortified and restored him, when he is himself again, he ends the playlist. Slips the headphones off, allows his ears to ring in the abrupt, deafening absence of his private concert.

A parrot squawks from its perch on his balcony railing before it vanishes into the jungle with a rustle of feathers. In the distance, the ocean caresses the beach with its foamy kiss. A startled yell is underscored with a body-sized splash followed by teasing laughter and amused reprimands.

And he remembers that, yes, this is what the world sounds like. It is boisterous and vibrant and unpredictable and so very alive that it can never be suppressed forever. So sometimes he has no choice but to forget the discord and the silence and take up his place once more as a performer in the melody of life.