A/N: This is the first time in about four years I've even attempted to write anything longer than a oneshot. So... good luck, me. I'm not 100% sure exactly what order to write these in, or even which points of view to use, so honestly, any feedback on whose viewpoint you'd like to read next is more than welcome. Yes, it's a cheap ruse to try and get reviews - and no, I have no shame!

I'm still reeling from Saturday's episode. My poor Gordon. I'm sure he'll get well soon, he just needs some good home-cooking from Grandma, and lots of TLC from a certain aristocratic It Girl...! And yes, I'm quite sure I'll be writing extensively about that too!

Disclaimer: Thunderbirds Are Go! isn't mine. But my love for Gordon Tracy is all mine and never-ending. I've lifted a few lines of dialogue from the episode SOS Part 2 for timeline references, but they'll all be italicised so you know which bits they are!

Crash

Part One: John

"Gordon, you've activated your emergency code."

Of course he'd activated his emergency code. It isn't something that you can do by accident. At first, the detached part of my brain decided he'd run into a little trouble, but was quite safe otherwise. Perhaps the emergency code had been activated prematurely. My little brother has always been one for unnecessary dramatics, since the day he did a double backward somersault as he fell out of his treehouse back at the farm in Kansas. I expected to hear an embarrassed giggle and an apology. "Sorry Johnny, guess I got so excited I came too soon!" or something equally innuendo-filled and flippant.

Instead, there was only silence.

"Gordon?"

I refused to believe that he was really in trouble. This is Gordon. Gordon Tracy. He is practically an amphibian, the amount of time he spends between water and land. In fact, there have been several occasions in his life when I've wondered if he isn't actually part toad. Gordon wouldn't really be in trouble, not in water, I told myself. Water is his home. I never feel safe unless he's surrounded by the stuff. The ocean is to him as the stars are to me. Our natural habitats. Although we're literally atmospheres away, our love for the stars and the sea is what has always bound us together, in a strange way that makes sense to nobody but us. The object of our love may be vastly different, but the intensity of our love is exactly the same. There have been so many occasions when Gordon has made comparisons between the sea and the stars - and his madcap analogies have made more sense to me than any astrophysical textbook.

There was no sound I wanted to hear more than Gordon's voice. I willed it to ring out over the comms link, but it was no use. Still nothing.

"Gordon?" I repeated.

My cool, detached façade came crashing down around me with that one word. A thousand questions filled my brain and clogged the back of my throat so that I felt I couldn't breathe. Why isn't Gordon responding? Is he okay? Is he fooling around? Why would he fool around for this long? It isn't funny any more, Gordon, why aren't you answering? What's happened to you?

What did they do to my brother?

This was the exact kind of thing I was trying to avoid all along. I wanted to filter out the distress call. Out of sight - out of earshot, more accurately - out of mind. Gordon and Virgil had already lost an entire night's sleep after being forced to listen to a heady mixtape of "Emergency! Emergency! Situation Critical!" and "Sailing, Sailing, Over the Bounding Main!" for twelve hours straight. It was a robot. A heap of junk stuck at the bottom of the ocean with, no doubt, plenty more scrap metal from sunken ships, now home to nothing but sealife. Braman was fine. It wasn't real. It wasn't a person, it wasn't one of my brothers, it didn't need rescuing - just filter out the call. Let's all get some sleep. Simple enough solution, right? But no, obviously it wasn't that easy.

"Is anybody out there? International Rescue! Please! Help me!"

Before I had time to even open my mouth to try to make a plan of action, Gordon had leapt out of his chair with a fervent promise to rescue an inanimate object who absolutely was not waiting for him to rescue it, and gone. Typical of Gordon, so intent on saving the day he doesn't stop for too long to worry about the danger. Perhaps he leaves the worrying to me, after all, I am the communications guy. I have all the facts, figures and statistics at my fingertips. All I could do was give Gordon as much help as I could. Which is exactly what I did. He was fine. Right up until the moment when he wasn't. Right up until the moment the Chaos Crew launched an unprovoked attack on my brother and tried to blast him into oblivion.

Do you know how far away I am from Earth at any given moment? Twenty-two thousand miles. Give or take a few hundred. It takes me a couple of hours to return to Earth in the Space Elevator. It's the sort of time-frame you'd take to travel from one side of Kansas to... well. A bit further into Kansas, I guess. Although really, why would you want to? Still, the Elevator means that I'm always far enough away to not have to deal with all the noise and bustle of being in a family that includes my two younger brothers, and always close by enough to come home when I need to. I dunno who said it, but the person who said that the most important place for any traveller is home was absolutely right. Even when 'home' means you have the Terrible Two to contend with.

In that second of gut-wrenching silence, I felt every single one of those twenty-two thousand, four hundred miles like a kick in the gut.

What if he's dead?

I shook my head briskly. Gordon can't be dead. Gordon is too alive to be dead. Besides, Gordon wouldn't dare die on me. Not now. Not here. Not like this. He was conscious long enough to call for help. He knew he was in danger. He was protecting himself. He's a grown man, he's an experienced aquanaut, he knows exactly what to do in these situations. God knows he has the utmost respect and love for the water - he knows the joys as well as the dangers, as well as I know the joys and dangers of space. He wouldn't put himself into danger unnecessarily, and he certainly wouldn't make sure he set off his emergency code unless he was prepared to be rescued by us.

I had to tell Scott. I couldn't take the luxury of building myself up to it, there wasn't even a half-second to lose. If Gordon had been in a smash in Thunderbird 4, then I know he would have had the foresight to put his emergency breathing apparatus on before activating his code. That meant we had exactly two hours and fifteen minutes to find him. If there had been an earthquake at the bottom of the sea, he could be buried alive down there. Two hours may not have been nearly enough time.

Scott's face blanched. I remember being so shocked, because in that single moment he looked so old. As though this was the news he'd secretly been waiting to hear for years, and now his worst fear had been realised. One of his brothers may not ever make it home. It was as though I'd dealt him a sucker punch straight to the solar plexus. He almost looked as though he was about to throw up. There I was, twenty-two thousand, four hundred miles away, unable to save my little brother and unable to comfort my eldest brother. Just sat there, a floating hologram, delivering the worst news I could ever imagine.

For the first time in my life, the stars weren't home. The stars were the very things keeping me away from my home. From my family. From everything I care about. From my annoying, loud, brash brother, with his laugh as loud and unashamed as the most thunderous of waterfalls, his shirt louder than his laugh, the sparkle in his eyes that lets you know when he's planning some dumbass prank or other. My friend. The ship's anchor that keeps us all exactly in our place, and never lets us get too serious, or too full of ourselves for a moment. Kinda sounds cheesy, I know, but it's true. You'll never understand how much I love him and want to strangle him in equal measure until you have a little brother of your own. Or two.

There was no question that I would be there when he woke up. Of course I would. All he had to do was wake up. All Scott and Alan and Virgil had to do was find him. They had to find him. They had to bring him home. Safe. He would wake up. I couldn't allow myself to travel down that dark rabbit hole in my mind and imagine the worst. That wasn't going to help anyone, least of all Gordon. The journey back to Tracy Island was the longest three hours of my life. Each second seemed to last for a minute, and all the way home I could hear the entire scene playing out over the airwaves.

"I can have him back to the Island in less than ten minutes!" I heard Virgil say.

"Virgil, no!" Grandma said, her tone final and definite. "Forget about Tracy Island. You need to get that boy to a hospital. Now!"

"Jesus Christ! Can't this fucking thing go any faster?" I growled, punching the nearest elevator wall in frustration and even jumping up and down to try and make it sink back down to Earth faster. Of course it didn't work. I didn't really expect it to. I just didn't know what else to do.

It seemed as though a week had passed by the time I actually got to see him, although it had only been a few hours. It was even worse than I had expected. His head was bandaged, his neck in a brace, an arm and a leg broken. He looked so little, so frail, lying in that hospital bed. So helpless. Like he did when he was a baby, wrapped in a blanket, sleeping soundly in his crib. That tiny smirk at the corner of his mouth still threatening, even in his sleep. Even after all he'd just been through. There was no denying it - we certainly had a badass on our hands.

His eyes slowly flickered open and he looked at me. His focus wasn't great. God knows what drugs they'd had to pump into him to keep him comfortable, but he wasn't exactly 'here' when he woke up.

"Johnny!" he said, trying to smile. His voice was hoarse from a combination of high-strength opiates and the removal of the intubation tube that had kept his airflow steady during several hours in surgery.

"Jesus, Gordon, the lengths you'll go to to get my attention. It's embarrassing," I said, my expression deadpan, folding my arms and raising an eyebrow at him. He let out a soft murmur of laughter and closed his eyes again, the effort of keeping them open far too much for him to bear.

"You're beautiful," he whispered, before falling asleep again. I chuckled.

"I know, buddy. I know," I said, squeezing his good shoulder. "Good to see you, too."

There had never been a more welcome sound to my ears than hearing Gordon snore for the first time. For what felt like the first time in forever, I finally remembered to exhale.