A/N: A very belated gift for Rebershekk. Thanks for the prompt.
He hasn't entered his studio in two hundred and two days.
It's an infinity considering he used to create every single day, rescues permitting. It's the longest he's ever gone without indulging his creative passions, far outstripping the too-frenetic-for-art weeks after Dad's still-unexplained disappearance, and long ago now, the horrific shock of Mom's death.
He isn't here now because he wants to create. Music, not art, has always been his catharsis of choice. He still isn't ready to lay color to canvas.
But it's been two hundred and two days, and he needs to do this. So he's standing in the doorway, his gaze slowly traveling over the upright easels scattered around the room. Some are empty. Most bear unfinished projects draped in protective cloth.
Shrouded like the dead.
His heart thuds dull and heavy in his ears, simultaneously too small and too large for his chest as he approaches the painting. He doesn't want to be here. Doesn't want to have to face this. But he's been told he must—by John, by Gordon, by Alan, by Grandma. Kayo and Brains haven't said anything to his face, even though he's certain they've wanted to. Maybe his brothers have talked them out of it. Maybe they've felt it isn't their place to approach him—not about this.
Maybe, if circumstances were different, he'd lament the fact he hasn't put enough effort into affirming that they are as much a part of this family and have the same right to approach him as his brothers do.
His brothers. Who have told him "it's time." Who have told him he needs to face this "for his own good." Who have told him nothing he doesn't already know—but they also don't understand. And, really, that's his fault: he hasn't explained why he's been avoiding his studio.
Not because they haven't asked, either.
Moonlight trickles around the drawn blinds as he weaves without needing to think between the obstacle course of benches and easels and tables. Unfinished projects languish everywhere he looks, miserable in their abandonment. He thought he would be back the day he last left, or maybe the day after; he thought he would come put everything away, or maybe start new projects. Instead, all he sees now are the dust-damaged surfaces of canvases left on tables and a heavy gray fuzz blotting out everything that was once vibrant and alive—a measuring stick for the passage of time.
Two hundred and two days. Almost twenty-nine weeks. Over six and a half months.
Awareness of how much time has passed hits hard—a gut-punch from reality that no calendar can deliver. He stumbles, winded, to a stop.
He can't do this. He's not ready.
Ready. How tragic, that he isn't ready now, like he wasn't ready then. His whole life, he's tried to be as prepared as possible, from studying for a simple math test, to hundreds of hours of research and development and testing equipment to ensure it's ready to save lives. Measure twice, cut once, Grandma told him as she helped him piece together a fireman's outfit for his first grade's "When I Grow Up" day.
Ironic, then, that life saw fit to prepare him twice—not once, twice—and he still wasn't ready. He supposes there are some things that no amount of foreknowledge can prepare a person for. Things like death.
There's a dull, tight pounding behind his eyes and in the base of his throat. Time to leave. He'll come back later. Some day. Eventually.
His hands tremble on the table he's bracing himself against, leave shiny smears in the thick dust. He sucks in a shuddering breath, allows the particulate-riddled air to scrape the bottom of his lungs before he straightens his spine. No. He's allowed himself to flee without facing this too many times. Not again. Not tonight.
The sight of the assembly line of incomplete projects grinds like salt in an open wound—look at all you haven't accomplished, look at all the ways you've given up—so he keeps his head down, focuses on his bare feet, the way his toes dip in and out of shimmering silver puddles. Moonlight provides no warmth, no comfort; the concrete is chill no matter where he steps.
He barely feels it. No chill can compare to the one that cradles his heart.
The painting looms before him, both bigger and smaller than he remembers. A square ghost that, like any proper phantom, hides the horrors of its true face beneath a featureless sheet.
Except he knows what lurks beneath. He should—he's spent too many hours that he should have been sleeping instead tracing every brush stroke across the dark expanse of his ceiling. Thinking, scrutinizing, trying to find the flaws, the missing special something. Trying to improve a painting that was never going to live up to the unreasonable standards he had set for it.
No painting is perfect. He knows that. Has for years. It normally doesn't bother him, the notion that art is open-ended, always ready to be improved, but only able to serve its purpose when it's released into the care of the person or people it's intended for. He's always strived to do his best, but achieving perfection has never been his goal as an artist.
Except... Scott. The only person who's ever made him give in to the lure of perfectionism. Not always, thankfully, and not for everything, but the desire to make big brother proud has dogged almost every project he's undertaken during his entire life.
And when that project is for big brother...
His fingers aren't exactly steady as he eases the sheet off the painting with slow movements that, on a practical level, are intended to limit the size of the mushroom cloud of dust—but truth told, taking his time allows him to delay having to look at the work beneath.
He turns away from it. The sheet drops over a nearby stool, fingers are cleaned on the hem of his shirt, and eyes roll at how stupid he's being. It's just a painting.
But... it's not just a painting. It's the last painting he worked on before that fateful call-out. It's the last painting he worked on before he was forced to give up the most important part of himself—the part that never got to see the finished work, and all because of a stupid, unrealistic, unattainable expectation he placed on himself.
A humorless smile tugs at his lips. Perfectionism gave him nothing but guilt and pain and regret, heavy, terrible weights he's been dragging around since they were sent to that oil refinery. No, since before then, when he made the decision to delay signing the painting off as finished when it probably was.
He would know if he turned around, but he doesn't want to have to face that painting.
He remembers what it looks like.
Except... when he musters his courage and forces himself to stand face to face with the actual image for the first time in two hundred and two days, he realizes he doesn't remember what it looks like. It looks...
Wow.
Even in the monochrome light provided by slivers of a full moon, the colors are more intense than he remembers: fiery oranges and yellows melting into warm violets and deep blues. Filling the bottom third of the canvas is a field of golden wheat, all aglow with sunset.
He steps closer, but he doesn't need to in order to find what he's looking for. Five small figures, all in silhouette, stand against the fence on the edge of the field. No features can be made out—they're generic, interchangeable, exactly the way he wanted them. Four of the figures are looking up at the sky, one with an arm raised, pointing at something beyond the borders of the canvas.
One figure isn't. One figure is looking at the other four, watching them instead.
Always watching them. Watching over them, watching out for them.
He misses being watched like that. Misses watching in return, misses being one half of a whole. It isn't that he doesn't work well with his other brothers, but the two of them were different. Unique. Something he will never find again no matter where or how long he looks.
The memory of the painting and the sight of the physical painting merge and overlap halfway between where he stands and the canvas sits, and it's almost a relief to realize it is missing something and that he knows what it is.
Almost, because he would give anything to not know why or what. Get a painting just right or lose a brother—the choice is obvious now, two hundred and two days too late.
His fingers still remember what to do: they locate paints and a brush and soon have the proper colors mixed. He drags the easel forward into moonlight so he can see what he's doing. Midnight blue here, a streak of orange there, steely silver and the tiniest touches of red for emphasis.
He doesn't think about it. In the bottom corner, he adds his signature, steps back to give it a once-over, nods. Only once his paints have been returned to their proper places and his brush is completely clean and dry does he let himself sit down on the stool and allow himself to begin releasing his stranglehold on the guilt and the pain and the regret.
Scott wouldn't want him to hang onto it any longer than he already has.
Standing, he wipes his eyes and gives the painting—finally finished—a last look before pushing it back into the shadows.
He will unveil it at John's birthday party tomorrow, but it will be a gift for all of his brothers, Grandma and Kayo and Brains too. It has sat abandoned, gathering dust and heartache in equal measures, for far too long.
Two hundred and two days too long.
He turns away, intent on getting a few hours' sleep. No doubt this completed painting will continue to live under his eyelids, but for the first time in two hundred and two days, he doesn't dread the thought.
A tiny Thunderbird One, where Scott lived and died, is now the focus of four younger silhouette brothers. After two hundred and two days, the painting that was supposed to be Scott's thirty-fifth birthday present is complete. Not perfect, never perfect.
And as he exits his studio for the first time in two hundred and two days, he realizes that's okay. Maybe he'll return tomorrow after the party and try his hand at another imperfect painting. Maybe it'll be worse than the last. Maybe it'll be better.
Maybe it won't matter, because perfection isn't the goal. Creation, enjoying the process and then sharing the results with others is. That's what always made big brother proud.