Look after your brothers.
It wasn't meant to be portentious, the last thing their father had said to them. Scott and John had just happened to be on the line with him, happened to take that last call before the fateful crash that had taken him from them.
It means a little more, to the two eldest. It's right that it's the last thing they were told.
John's boots hit terra firma fifteen minutes after the last transmission from TB2. The Space Elevator only travels so fast, and it's a rough ride down at emergency speeds. It's a rough enough ride that he stumbles and nearly trips down the stairs down from the landing platform, but even in spite of dizziness and nausea and gravity, John keeps his feet. And more than that, once he's regained his balance, he takes the stairs two at a time, and sprints across the hangar when he hits the bottom.
TB2 is down. It had been nothing more than the weather, the sort of raw fury of nature that serves as a reminder that none of them are invincible.
Admittedly a blizzard in Antarctica is a little more raw fury than most of the rest of the world can ever be expected to handle.
The Antarctic Polar vortex is at its peak, and the usual supply chain out to the Amundsen-Scott station had been delayed for too long. So Virgil had taken the call, brought Alan and Gordon along in pods for extra muscle to unload quickly, and flown right into the heart of the blizzard. By all the usual vectors, Thunderbird 2 should have been fine. But between the cold and the heavier than usual load of cargo and the fact that the module had been loaded right to capacity–when it had gone down, it had gone down hard.
Scott's already aboard when John reaches the base of TB1, and Brains is waiting for him. John unholsters the grapple pack at his hip and glances briefly at the Engineer. "Go for launch?"
"W-waiting on you." Brains rarely looks worried, but there's a slight crease between his eyebrows. "A-are you going to be all right? Your re-entry d-data looked d-dreadful."
"Well, it's not like you're going. And Scott's not going solo, that's for damn sure." John rolls his shoulders and lines up a shot at the open cockpit hatch. There's a moment's hesitation. "Spare polar gear's aboard?"
Brains nods. "Loaded it myself. I-it's Virgil's backup set, it should fit."
This is answered with a slight grimace. John's got three inches of height on Virgil. "Better than Gordon's, I guess."
"G-good luck, John."
"Thanks."
There's a sharp impact of magnet on metal, and then the whirr of the high-powered winch in the grapple pack. John's used to this motion in zero-G, the quick ascension up the cable is disorienting and the way he comes to an abrupt, dangling stop as the grapple brakes is as jarring as an impact. But there's no time, and he takes a deep breath, grabs an interior handhold and swings aboard.
Thunderbird One has a glass gut and a steel head. Thunderbird One's pilot has a steel gut and a glass head. They balance each other out, Scott and his 'bird, so maybe that's why Scott feels so at home in the pilot's seat.
When he first started flying, his father had told him time and time again to keep his eyes forward – quit watching the ground, boy. That voice is still in Scott's head today, reminding him to keep his chin up, but it's hard. There's always an internal battle to resist a quick glance towards the glass at his feet and this time, he loses about six minutes in.
They're well over the ocean now, out where currents are consistent and the waves have only been touched by the wind. It's almost disorienting, watching the water fly by so quickly, and it reminds him that he's aboard one of the fastest vessels built by man.
One is fast. Really fast. He'll get there. Sure, his brothers are freezing and who knows what shape they're in after a brutal landing like that? Virgil's a good pilot, but when Two comes down, it comes down, and it's got no choice but to take the passengers down with it, but he'll get there. He has to.
Scott had sent three brothers away this morning. He's not sure what he'll do if he comes home with anything less than that.
Ahh, and there's his father's voice again. Look after your brothers.
Scott's not watching the glass anymore. Instead, he's listening to his gut as he slides his control forward and his thrusters pick up. He'll get there. It's not an option and it's not a plan. It's an action – wholehearted and undivided – and it's moments like these that make Scott feel particularly transparent.
The safety's off. From a strictly technical standpoint, One's not built to go this fast, but everything Brains builds has a safety margin that could reach the moon – literally, in some cases – so Scott can risk a little bit of speed. He can make everything go just a little bit faster. Faster. He's got to get there faster.
But John – god. Everything about him must be made of steel, because he puts his hand on Scott's and dials back the controls. "We'll get there," he assures the older brother. "We're not any good to them dead."
Scott can't land, so John's going to jump. And though they're hovering above the blizzard and there's no time for argument, they're arguing anyway.
You're going to kill yourself is about all Scott's got to offer in counterargument. As per usual, John's the one with the plan, and he's already thought his way through all possible objections. And he's got the numerical advantage of three brothers on the ground who desperately need him, and Scott's not really going to win this fight.
John's wearing Virgil's polar gear over his already thermal spacesuit. Gore-tex over fleece over his vacuum proof spacesuit. The green brings out his eyes. He's already fastening the clips of his helmet, standing over the hatch in the bay behind the pilot's seat, and there's no talking him out of it. "I wouldn't have brought you if I'd known you were going to do something so stupid," Scott says, acrid and angry, because it's a brilliantly clever plan.
"You'd be doing it yourself if you could remote pilot 'One in this weather," John responds over the radio, rechecking his harness and securing the clip into the grapple he's about to ride down into the heart of a blizzard. According to Brains, it should hold against the force of the wind and the snow and the cold, though he'd gaped and protested when told what the plan was. "It'll be fine, Scott. I watched you do it onto a runaway train in Japan. At least 'Two's stationary."
Two is extremely stationary. Neither of them have said so, but there's a very real fear about what they'll find in the downed Thunderbird. There's been no response over the radio. The weather's too bad, and from what they can tell remotely, Thunderbird Two might have lost power. No power, no heat. All three of the boys are dressed for the weather, but there's a limit. It's been over an hour since the last transmission, the one that had alerted the island to the imminent crash, to the state of TB2's failing engines.
TB2's half-buried already. Scott can't get too much lower above the storm than he already is, TB1's being buffeted from below, and Scott's already got doubts about whether or not he can even grapple on to Thunderbird 2 through this sort of wind. It's possible. But it'll take a jet powered grapnel and Scott's only got so many shots. And John, however good he is with the space elevator, wouldn't be able to make them.
Scott barely makes them. It takes four tries and he's down to his second to last augmented grapnel before there's a clang. The sound is lost to the blizzard below, but the impact reverberates all the way up the 7/8th inch of cable that hits.
So. Scott has to chance the last younger brother he has to the storm and the wind and the cold, and to stay hovering above the blizzard, ever watchful, where he can only hope he's made the right choice. He grits his teeth and stays angry, because it's better than doing what he's doing internally; barely restraining himself from panic.
Scott thumbs the switch to open the hatch, fills TB1's interior with roaring, screaming wind, and privately hopes to rattle his younger brother, at least a little. John's infuriatingly calm. He sets the auto pilot and brings up the remote controls, just to be safe, as he joins John near the edge of the hatch. There's another point John hadn't mentioned–Scott hasn't dressed for the weather. He's in his standard uniform, and it's all he can do to keep his teeth from chattering.
John's methodically clipping his harness into the zipline down to TB2. Scott watches and when John finally looks up, he opens the radio channel. "You could be a little freaked out, you know," he says, reproachful. "I'd understand."
It's not very often that one is on the receiving end of a look from John. He ratchets the line a little tighter, and teases a foot over the edge of the hatch. But then, it's also hard to remember that John's just as capable as the rest of them are. He's just capable in space, where no one ever sees him. "Scott, I dropped two hundred miles out of orbit in a tin can a half hour ago. Four hundred feet into a blizzard on a stable line is going to be a cakewalk."
Scott snorts back a laugh, in spite of himself, in spite of the situation. "Fine. I'd tell you to be careful, but there's no careful way of ziplining into a blizzard in Antarctica."
John grins through the clear plastic of Virgil's borrowed helmet. They're both putting on brave faces. He gives a little wave and a final comment, "I imagine gravity does most of the work."
And then he steps from the edge and drops into the swirling whiteness below.
A lot of things have failed Virgil in the past 24 hours. Sleep, apparently, had been the first thing, which is probably why he had been so slow to notice when his 'bird started to fail him too. To his credit, it hadn't been a significant delay, but all it takes is one second – one instant – of lost control to send Thunderbird Two tumbling.
And now the backup generators can be added to that list. The three of them have been without heat or power for hours now, which any amateur knows is a very major no when it comes to sub-zero climates. Especially while dealing with injury.
And they are dealing with injury. Bad injury.
A lot of things have failed Virgil in the past 24 hours, so Gordon really, really hopes that he doesn't become one of those things.
Gordon's just managed to pop Virgil's shoulder back into place – an act which did not go appreciated by the older brother. But it had kept him awake, at least, and at the moment, keeping Virgil awake is the biggest battle. Virgil and John have always been more informed when it comes to medicine, but Gordon's spent enough time in a training room to know that those who are concussed are not supposed to sleep.
Honestly, Gordon would rather have Virgil stand up. Walk around. Try and fix this damn 'bird before they freeze here, except when Virgil does speak, he complains about a pain in his chest, and Gordon's pretty sure Virge has a broken rib or two. Gordon's not going to risk a punctured lung. Not in the middle of Antarctica.
So they've got him in a pod, trying to keep as much solid metal as they can between him and the cold. They've torn into the supplies already, surveyed the inventory and given every spare blanket to their big brother.
"How's it coming, Al?" Gordon asks over his shoulder.
Alan looks like a chipmunk, holed up inside of layers upon layers of insulated clothing. His cheeks are puffed, barely held together by a pair of pinched blue lips. He swallows. "Pretty soon I'm going to be the one blowing chunks," the youngest moans, glancing at Virgil who, on his way down to the loading bay, had thrown up not just once, but twice.
Virgil gives some sort of moan in response, and then Alan gives another pointed look at Gordon. "If you make me eat one more spoonful of cold baked beans, then you won't have to worry about hypothermia – I'll kill you before the cold gets the chance."
"Okay Alan," Gordon says, and he swears it's Scott's voice coming out of his own mouth. "How many cans have you got?"
"Just the three," the youngest answers, scraping the remains out of the ones in his hand. "Remind me why we're doing this again?"
"Because I don't want to freeze to death," Gordon answers.
"Well maybe if you'd put your coat back on – are you sure your arm's not broken?"
Gordon waves the question off with his good hand, but the answer is definitely a no. He's not sure. And that's another problem he doesn't have time to deal with. "It's a sprain," he says. "Where'd you put the toilet paper?"
"What are you going to do with the toilet paper?" Alan asks. "I'm going to need that, you know. I just ate three cans of baked beans."
Alan isn't being much help, so Gordon knows that he's got to delegate. Alan's good at following orders, but he's not quite used to giving them yet. "Go keep Virgil awake, okay?" Gordon says, and the real secret here is that keeping Virgil awake will help Alan stay awake, too. "Don't let him fall asleep anddon't let him move."
"Aye, aye, Cap'n," Alan replies, standing up alongside something that could be a salute, but would definitely earn him some sort of dish duty in any branch of the armed forces. "Oh Virge," he sings. "I bet you're just dying to know how many stars are in the sky right now."
Another moan from the pod.
Gordon can't help a smile as he rummages through the boxes of supplies with his good arm. He's had the med supplies open for a while, his arm wrapped up in a half-assed sling and the bump on Virgil's head all bandaged up. The alcohol's been sitting there, waiting for Alan to finish the beans.
When he finds the toilet paper, he stuffs the roll into the empty tin cans, then pours the alcohol in. It takes another five minutes to hunt down matches, but it's all worth it once he sets the can aflame.
The warmth is the greatest relief he knows. They have heat now, however minor, and it'll last them through a night. Trick he learned in the boy scouts – or, well, it's a trick Scott learned in the boy scouts. Honestly, they're just lucky that Scott's such a showoff.
But they have heat. The pods are both dead, he can't get the communications up and running, Virgil is going to pass out any minute, but they have heat, so at least that's one less way to die.
It's not much, but it's something, and Gordon's just starting to feel like maybe he can handle this. Like maybe he can keep knocking potential deaths off the list, one by one. Like maybe they're going to be okay.
That's when he hears the banging.
Cakewalk was maybe the wrong word to choose. That had maybe been bravado and adrenaline and the vague giddiness of being stood on the edge of a blank, roaring void of white cold.
The white of the snow is like the blackness of space.
Gravity had done most of the work, and John hates gravity. If he had to rank the four fundamental forces in order of most to least favourite, gravity definitely ranked last.
The grapple pack in his hands had almost been hot when he'd hit the brakes, and gone screeching to a halt near the terminus of the zipline, the big, robust electromagnet tethering TB1 to TB2 above the storm. Electromagnetism. Good old, reliable electromagnetism. Definitely his number one. Strong and weak nuclear he could take or leave. Electromagnetism you could bank on.
Virgil's borrowed winter boots hit the hull of Virgil's downed ship and Virgil's older brother releases his death grip on the handle of his grapple, unclips his harness. John has to double over and heave a few steadying breaths into lungs that had wanted to scream the whole four-hundred feet down. His radio had been wide open, though, and he wasn't about to give Scott the satisfaction.
"A–ight–d–n..kizzzt…ere, John?"
Electromagnetism can be a bit of a pain sometimes, and the storm is interfering with their comms. Or with Scott's comms, anyway, John's already cycled through a few higher frequency channels and found one less likely to be affected. "Fine. I'm gonna bang around a bit, see if I can get the hatch opened from the inside. It's–it's all iced over out here, I'm going to need to cut through if I have to get to the manual override for the main hatch."
"Try the secondary. My sensors say the aft side of the ship isn't under the snow yet, you should be able to get in. Keep me posted."
"FAB, Thunderbird 1."
The green of Thunderbird 2's hull beneath his feet is the only colour in the world. John's borrowed gear is coated with white sleet from his drop down through the storm, and snow has drifted nearly to the top of the downed ship. Everything else is just screaming, shrieking wind and driving snow, and it's cold cold cold.
John knows it's not actually colder than space, but somehow it feels colder than space. This is consummately unfair.
The upper hatch has iced over, but there's that secondary hatch on the leeward side of the ship, an overwing exit. There are anchor points on the top of TB2, and John clips his secondary line into one of them, sidles awkwardly off the top of the ship. And skids, buffeted by the wind, and falls abruptly off the side. It's only about eight feet, (only eight feet, after falling about four hundred) and he makes a sprawling, painful landing on the wing, thoroughly undignified.
Scott doesn't need to know about that. All the gear is padding enough that John's probably not bruised anything more than his pride. He keys his radio on again, thumbing the manual switch on the side of his helmet. "I'm at the hatch. Do I need an override code?"
The answering hiss of static is a curious echo of the white noise of the storm outside the little pocket of insulated silence inside his helmet. "Shouldn't. I've got the schematic up, and Brains says if they're running on emergency power then you should be able to disengage the maglock with just the manual release. Let me know when you're in."
John doesn't remark on the tension in his older brother's voice, in the way he clearly wishes he were the one down here, only a few dozen feet from his youngest brothers. "FAB, Scott."
The sheltered side of Thunderbird Two is quieter, but there's still only the weathered green paint of the ship's exterior. There's no horizon, no ground, no sky. Just a whirling wall of white. John's amazed and puzzled by how distracting it is, how he keeps catching himself staring into the apparent nothingness of the storm, transfixed.
It's not an urge he has in space. He's heard of it happening, heard of people who just–let go. Who just can't fight the bizarre, irrational desire to launch themselves into the vacuum, people who die drifting, cold and alone. John'saware of it. He's never felt it.
Never felt it until his hand leaves the solidity of TB2's exterior. Never felt it until he's pulled back from the edge, caught by the tether he'd clipped (for no reason he'd actually been able to apprehend) to the ring of solid steel welded into the side of his brother's ship. Never felt it until he realizes he'd been about to walk into a blizzard for no conceivable reason, about to leave his brothers for dead without even finding out whether they were even still alive.
What the fuck.
From then it's all haste, all stifling every panicky impulse he has to try and figure out what the sensation was, fumbling with thickly gloved fingers at the override for the magnetic lock. The stars have always called to him. But this is the first he's heard from the void.
The door disengages, swings outward. John stumbles inside and pulls it shut behind him. TB2's interior is dark, except for the faint glow of emergency lights from the console. John's blind in the sudden blackness, his helmet is fogging up, darker still, and he unclips it and wrenches it loose from the collar of his borrowed suit. He's gasping for breath again, a ragged white ghost in the silence inside the downed ship.
He has to paw his hands over his face to wipe away tears before they freeze against his skin. He sniffles, raw and red in the nose. But there are noises in the cockpit below him, and he hears them over the storm outside. John he flicks his radio on again.
"I'm in, Scott."
"FAB, John."
Alan can feel his heartbeat.
Truthfully, Alan can always feel his heartbeat, usually in his fingertips. Sometimes in his head. When he's angry, he feels it in his shoulders and when he's scared, he feels it in his stomach. When he hears Three's launch sequence, his heartbeat shoots straight from chest to throat until it inevitably smacks him in the ears, hard enough to force a grunt. Alan can always feel his heartbeat.
But this one's new. He's never felt this one before.
If he had to describe it, he'd say that it's closest to the heartbeat he feels in bed. The slow, rhythmic pacing that comes just before sleep. Except his sleeping pulse lives in his head, and this one is very much in his chest, sluggish and steady and cold. Even his own heartbeat is cold.
Buh-bump. Buh-bump. Buh-bump.
"Antarctica is one of the best places in the world to observe the solar system," he slurs.
Buh-bump. Buh-bump. Buh-bump.
"You can see sixth magnitude stars – that's 6.3 times dimmer than what we see back home."
Buh-bump. Buh-bump. Buh-bump.
"We'd have to come back during the polar night to see them, though."
"I am… never coming back," wheezes an exhausted Virgil, and Alan's just remembered that anyone else is even there. He's just remembered that Virgil is the reason he's spouting off star facts to begin with. "Never."
Alan turns his head, the word hibernation coming to mind when he sets his sight on the oldest of the three. There's a glow stick in the pod, burning bright, left over from when Gordon did a patch job on Virgil's head and Alan tells himself that this is the reason Virgil looks so green.
Alan hears his heartbeat again, banging in his head. He's vaguely aware of Gordon, shuffling around somewhere behind him, but Alan's stuck on his own heartbeat. Metallic and determined and cold. So goddamn cold. And abnormally loud.
"Probably for the better," the youngest says with a shrug. "Polar nights are colder. And it doesn't happen often – only when the sun is between 18 and… 18 and…"
"23.5, Alan."
His heartbeat and John's voice. The only two things that are ever in Alan Tracy's head, so he shouldn't be surprised to hear them now. Except – wait. He's not just hearing John. John's here. Actually here. "The number you're looking for is 23.5. Polar nights occur when the sun is between 18 to 23.5 degrees below the horizon."
"John."
All at once, Alan feels warm again, and the relief melts over him. Gordon's been handling things well enough, but they've been down here for hours, and all he's managed to do is start a few fires. Important, definitely, but Gordon's not thinking about the longterm. Gordon never does. Three little tin can fires isn't going to do them much good in this tundra. This stuff is over his head, no matter how hard he's trying to make it seem like it's not.
In the end, John's mission control. John's the voice in Alan's ear. This time around, the occupants of Thunderbird Two are the ones who need rescuing, and John always follows through on a rescue.
Alan suddenly realizes why the words International Rescue always sound like an answered prayer on the lips of the people he saves.
"What's the situation?" John wants to know, and when Gordon doesn't answer, Alan reels off the information.
"Two went down at exactly 14:27 hours, most likely due to – "
"Skip this part," John says. "I know this part. What's the situation with you?"
Again, Gordon doesn't answer, so Alan does all the talking. "Virgil's concussed. Did have a dislocated shoulder, but Gordon fixed him right up. Not sure about his ribs though. Left side – all of it's on his left side. We've been doing the best we can. I was sitting in the back when we crashed, so I walked away okay, but, I gotta tell ya, Johnny. I have had a lot of beans. So many beans, John – oh and Gordon broke his arm."
John looks to Gordon like maybe that's the kind of thing that should have already been said, but to be fair, Gordon's not really saying anything right now. In fact, he's been quiet, which is just not a good sign when it comes the the second youngest Tracy brother.
This fact doesn't escape John's notice. "Gordon?"
Gordon's been running on adrenaline since the crash. Gordon's been running on the fact that Virgil's down and Alan's cold and someone's got to keep them alive. Fact is, Gordon's been running on fumes and Alan finally realizes just how bad his brother looks.
Because now John's here. And Gordon's done pretending. He starts to sway, like he's caught the winds from the blizzard, and soon he turns as white as the storm. There's something frighteningly empty – frighteningly absent – about Gordon in that moment and it's as if the brother calls to John as he falls, wordlessly willing him to launch out and catch him.
Not even a second passes before John's talking into his comms, praying that someone will pick up. "Scott," he growls. "Now would be a really good time to figure out how to get down here."
That's when Alan feels his heartbeat again.
Look after your brothers.
Scott and John were the only two who'd been told explicitly, but after Dad–after Dad had–well. With Dad gone, there's a certain trickling down of the sentiment, in the economics of brotherhood. Look after your brothers.
It's why Alan had come through the crash mostly unscathed, because he'd had Virgil and Gordon making damn sure he was safe and secure as possible when they'd started going down.
It was why–when Virgil had made his last, desperate bid for the cargo bay–he'd left Gordon to clamber into the pilot's seat at the controls. He'd managed to route power to the engines long enough for Gordon to wrangle them out of a downward spiral.
Why–after the jarring, world-ending impact of TB2 into the bottom of the world–Gordon and Alan had pulled themselves together, and struggled down to the cargo hold, because Virgil needed them. Between the two of them they'd managed to get all two-hundred and forty pounds of Virgil tucked securely, snugly in one of the pods.
And it's why John's got Gordon propped limply against his chest, while Alan kneels nearby and gnaws a chapped lower lip.
"What's Scott gonna do?" the youngest asks, blue eyes wide, as John finds a pulse at Gordon's throat, mentally starts to work out Gordon's sluggish heartrate. The cold. Cold and shock and a broken arm, and John wouldn't be surprised if Gordon had cracked his thick skull off of something, because Gordon's got a knack for that. Virgil's already bad, but they've done all they can, and suddenly it looks like Gordon might be worse. The void's pulling at the both of them, but there's no way in hell John's giving any ground this time. This time he's ready.
John doesn't answer immediately, pulls Gordon's jacket closed over the re-tied sling immobilizing his broken arm. "I don't know," he says finally. He'd told Scott he needed to come down, but he hadn't know how exactly he proposed that would happen. "But he'll figure it out."
Everything's fading. The sickly green shine of the cracked glow stick, the feeling in his fingers, and even Virgil himself – all of it. He's stuck somewhere in between. In between nothingness and presence. In between numbness and pain. Virgil Tracy can't quite figure out how to make himself whole again, which sucks. It sucks a lot because the crash keeps replaying in his mind and he's got to try and get his kid brothers the hell out of here.
And maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe he wouldn't hate it so much if the sounds weren't fading in and out, too. He feels like he's got his helmet on – all stuffed up and heavy – except the comms units are malfunctioning and something's screwing with the volume.
"Gordon?" someone says, and Virgil swears it's John, but he knows better than to trust his ears right now, and on top of that John's still up in Five, and – god. His head hurts.
Not to mention the spinning. Oh god, the spinning. It's like he's still falling – like Thunderbird Two is still caught on the air and he's just going to keep failing his brothers forever. 'Round and around – an endless tailspin. Jesus Christ, he's gonna hurl again.
"Respiratory's at 7," someone says and this time Virgil thinks that it has to be John.
"I've got 30 bpm," and that's Alan, reciting vitals for someone… someone…
Gordon.
Gotta be. It's gotta be Gordon, and it's gotta be bad, because Gordon can check his own damn vitals. Virgil sees him do it every morning at the side of the pool and, on top of that, these are shit vitals. Even banged up and spinning, Virgil knows that his kid brother's falling apart. Athlete or not, 30 bpm is toolow.
And there's not one single thing Virgil can do about it. His head's made of steel and he can't even turn it, much less get his whole body up and moving. He's got a knife in his side and he doesn't know what's going on with his shoulder, but he's not going to move it any more than he has to. Something's wrong. Something's wrong.
A lot of things are wrong.
Someone turns the volume up again and Virgil jerks back into consciousness. "… grappling hook to pull Pod A to the Amundsen research center," says John.
It's through haze and a mental mountain of cotton balls that Virgil hears Alan ask, "So he found a way through the storm?"
"Scott Tracy is up there and four of his brothers are down here," John says. "If you name one force on Earth that can stop him, I'll eat Virgil's boot – now here's what we need to do…"
Virgil can hear John go on. He knows that the words keep going. Except he's having trouble stringing sentences together. Meanings are diluted to nothing but sounds and all Virgil can think about is thespinning. He's going to puke.
Soon the seconds lose meaning, then the minutes. He's not entirely sure how much time passes before he understands the words, "Scoot over big guy, make room for squid kid."
John's smiling at him, illuminated by the ghostly green, and Virgil recognizes that smile. Hell, he's worn that smile – hundreds, thousands, millions of times. It's a rescuer's smile. It's a reassuring smile. It's the everything's-going-according-to-plan smile, and Virgil knows that the only time he ever wears that smile is when things are going horribly, terribly wrong.
But in a blink, John's gone, and Gordon's there. Gordon's there.
He's never seen Gordon so still.
Blue lips. Frozen chest. Cheeks a rough, rosy red. Virgil's seen the cold swallow enough people whole to know when it's taken a bite out of his brother, so he does what Tracys do best and he tries to fix it. He turns, and the action sends fire down his entire left side, but to be honest fire doesn't sound like such a bad idea right now, because Gordon's a popsicle and he's not getting enough breaths in.
Virgil's blankets don't feel particularly warm, but he's willing to bet that Gordon would disagree. Besides, any amateur who's spent a night in the woods can tell you that sharing body heat is beneficial, so it's a thoughtless fact for the professionals who are spending a day in freaking Antarctica. Even concussed and confused, Virgil knows that he can at least help that much.
And he's going to help. Dammit. He's going to do what he can.
It's been a long time since Gordon's been tucked in his arm like this. Virgil's hit with intense memories of video games and blanket forts and the ever sophisticated chapter books. There's a moment when he wonders what happened to those days. He wonders which time had been the last time Gordon had curled up next to his big brother, and then he wonders if maybe this is that time. "I fucked up, Gordon," he says. "I fucked up, I fucked up."
There's a banging on the outside of the pod, and if Gordon's ever fully conscious again, Virgil just knows that he's going to tear John and Alan a new one after he sees whatever damage they're inflicting on his beloved crafts.
But in the middle of it all, there's a faint, breathy, "Get your head… out of your ass… Virge."
Virgil almost smiles, but it's immediately smacked off of his face with more sounds of metal on metal. That banging. What the hell are they doing? Sure, the pods can be manually constructed, but in Virgil's opinion, they never should be, and it certainly takes more than just a hammer to put it all together. There's just too. Much. Banging. Virgil's going to knock their teeth in once he's standing again.
And then it's bright. Too, too bright. Virgil's heard of the gates of heaven, but this seems a little extreme, even for that. It makes his head throb and his eyes burn and everything about him hurts.
There's one more defined bang against the top of the pod, louder than all the others, sending reverberations all throughout Virgil's body. Someone's driven a stake through his skull. It's all too much and everything's wavering again – he can feel it all shutting down. Leaving him. Everything is leaving him.
But through the white that rips past the windows above, Virgil spots the sleek steel of Thunderbird One, holding the pair of them up by a grapple.
There's always a distinct sense of relief that comes with seeing a Thunderbird. His own 'bird, his brothers' – doesn't matter. A Thunderbird is a Thunderbird, and with that comes a promise. A pledge to keep people safe. So when Virgil looks up at his brother's 'bird, he takes a breath in.
And then he fades out, one last time.
Good old electromagnetism. Always reliable in a pinch. TB2's systems have been jump started with a jolt from the magnetic grapple, wired into the appropriate ports. And then it had simply been a matter of getting Gordon and Virgil and their little pod out of the downed ship. Simple enough. John's clever, and Alan's game–John had made him run laps of the cargo bay to get his body heat up–and between the both of them, it's easier than it should be. The boys deserve a few things going easy.
John's clever, but Brains is a genius. He's the certain sort of devilish genius that dwells in the details. It took a genius to realize that it might be advantageous, in a certain someday situation, if the pods in the module were just small enough to fit on the elevator up to the cockpit, and to squeak through the open upper hatch, if necessary.
So the little capsule–every unnecessary part of it stripped off, loaded snugly and securely with Gordon and Virgil–had been hauled to the top of TB2. Then the grapple had banged onto the top, sealed tight to the metal surface, and the pair of them were up and away, lost to swirling whiteness as Scott started to wind in the cable.
Alan's standing at John's elbow as they watch the little yellow capsule vanish. He's rolly-polly in all his layers, not his usual echo of John's tall, slender frame, but he's trying to stretch himself up to equal his older brother anyway. Gordon, in his brief scraps of consciousness, apparently confused by John's borrowed uniform, had acted like he was talking to the middle child. He'd chewed John out for crashing TB2. Virgil hadn't appeared to recognize the redhead, even as John had helped haul Gordon up into the pod's snug little cockpit. Gordon and Virgil, even if they'd both been fully awake and aware and conscious, wouldn't have believed it was John who'd come to the rescue.
For Alan, it's the most reasonable thing in the world. Alan's the only one who ever sees John in action. John's strong and fast and fearless, easily the equal of any of his brothers, but he's strong and fast and fearless in space, solitary, where it goes unobserved.
Alan and Scott both have the unique advantage of knowing exactly what John's capable of–Scott, because he knows John the way older brothers know their younger, and Alan because he's seen John work. He's seen John swing effortlessly through the interior of TB5, his own body weight naturally counterbalancing the absence of gravity. He's seen John clip a line onto his suit and then take a running leap out of the airlock, swinging around to the exterior of the station to perform some minor repair.
"Think they'll be okay?" Alan asks, hesitant. John doesn't seem worried, but then, John can be hard to read.
"Scott's problem, now," John answers, and turns back to the hatch. "Our turn, little brother. Time to rig up another pod–we're going overland."
Before November 1956, there was no permanent human structure at the South Pole and very little human presence in the interior of Antarctica at all, but when the Amundsen–Scott Station was built, Antarctica had slowly – very slowly – become more inhabitable. Since its opening, the station has been continuously occupied, rebuilt and upgraded several times over.
Scott's guessing that their med wing hadn't made the list for remodel.
"I told you boys," says a man who supposedly holds three separate doctorates. "You can have the best ships in the world, but they a'int gonna hold up to one of our blizzards."
Ralph – Mr. Three Degrees – is a little bit of an ass, but that's to be expected. Most of the people who live at the bottom of the world don't have any ties to the top, so they tend to be a little rough.
Ralph says that he talked to John and he swears he told John that the 'birds wouldn't stand a chance in a blizzard like this. Scott's not sure if the man is lying or if John had just dismissed the information, but he doesn't have time to debate that right now. He's too busy wondering if this is really a med wing, or if he's just airlifted his brothers into CNN's latest headline: Boys Murdered in Antarctic Mystery Shack – Bearded Doctor Questionable, Says Witnesses.
That's a little dramatic. But to be fair, when the words brothers and airlift are even remotely close to one another, Scott's always going to be a little dramatic. It's not like the place is disgusting or anything, but it's certainly not what he had expected from a US research facility. Scott's mostly just worked up about the fact that they passed labs that looked more sterile than this on the way in, meanwhile his brothers are laid out on beds that look more like cots.
Lots of blankets though. That's good.
And when it really comes down to it, the occupants of the Amundsen–Scott Station really are the best people to have around when one of your brothers is hypothermic. Sure, International Rescue knows how to deal with the cold, but the Amundsen researchers know how to deal with the cold.
"You boys are lucky you came when you did," says Ralph. "We're gettin' pretty close to the Antarctic night. You cut it pretty close – longest night in the world, y'know. Six months. Wouldn't have lasted the day"
Scott looks at his brothers. Longest night indeed.
Gordon's all bundled up, layers upon layers of blankets, wrapped around his legs and his torso and all the way up over his head. Ralph's got a pile of warm water bottles, waiting for the point when Gordon's warm enough that shock is no longer a possibility. The fractured forearm complicates the process a bit, but all in all, Gordon looks like he's going to be okay.
It's Virgil they're worried about – long term anyways. Gordon looks like hell, but Virgil's going to look like hell for longer. The kids had managed to keep him warm, but now that he's stripped down to a bare torso, Scott can see that something's broken and that Virgil's probably lucky to be breathing.
And neither one of them has woken up yet.
On top of that, he's got a pair of astronauts fighting their way through a blizzard, and contact with them is sporadic, partly because of the storm and partly because Scott's sporadic. He feels like he's buzzing – radio static just under his skin. He can't focus, so the sooner this is all over, the better.
Instinctively, Scott reaches his fingers to the insignia on his shoulder. It's what he always does when he wants to talk to John. "How's it going, you two?"
It's Alan who answers, and Scott should've known he'd be driving. "FAB, Scott," he says. "ETA of about… um – John what's our ETA?"
Scott can practically hear the eye-roll. "About an hour. Maybe two."
"About an hour," Alan repeats.
"FAB," he says, and then the fingers are gone, and Scott is brought back to the med wing of horrors. There's a window – tiny thing – across the room but he can't see anything but white. Theoretically, that's the direction that Pod B is coming in from. Realistically, they'll probably get so turned around that they'll end up coming in from the back. Either way, Scott's stuck there, doing nothing – his least favorite thing to do – knowing that Ralph had been right. They were most definitely approaching the longest night in the world.
But then Gordon moans, and he starts to stir, so Scott starts to think that maybe this night won't be as long as it could be.
It's cold in the pod. Even with Alan practically in John's lap, seated at the controls of the rugged little vehicle, it's still freezing, and there's barely room to move. They have no visibility. They just have a heading–a straight line out of the blizzard towards Amundsen, where the worst of the storm has past–and the pod's robust little engine, caterpillar treads chewing up the snow beneath them as they rumble along.
For all that it's cramped and cold and his hands are getting stiff and sore, clenched on the pod's controls, Alan is still in a fairly good mood. Scott and John to the rescue. Gordon and Virgil safely away, in good hands. Progress. Soon they'll reach the research station and everything will be fine. Maybe the weather will even clear up. They're going to need to figure out how to get TB2 out from under a mountain of snow, but that's a problem for Brains.
Chipper, Alan pipes up into his helmet radio–right into John's ear because the noise of the pod rumbling overland is too loud to talk directly over–"Shame about the storm. The skies here have got to be amazing. The Aurora Borealis–"
"Australis. Northern Hemisphere, Borealis. Southern Hemisphere, Australis." There's a pause, a beat of wry silence. "And I live in space."
Alan snorts, sniffles a little. His nose is still cold and a bit stuffed up. "Whatever, John. You know it's different."
This shuts John up, but not for any reason that Alan's aware of. It shuts John up because something about this swirling white oblivion is different. Something about it still has him wanting to reach out and jerk the steering wheel out of true, so they miss their heading for the station. In weather like this, it feels like they could just keep going forever.
Not really, though. It only feels like that, only feels like they're caught out of time, that they're not really moving forward. Rationally, if they miss the research station, then the pod will eventually run out of fuel. It'll stop. They'd be stranded. Trapped in the blank expanse of snow and nothingness; lost and freezing to death and–
And thank god for Alan. John's not sure he could do this alone, not sure he'd trust himself at the wheel of the pod. Alan's proceeding stolidly from point A to a distant, hypothetical point B. Mentally, John's not sure if points A or B or any of the rest alphabet even exist anymore. He's not sure he's not just trapped on an infinite radial plane, proceeding forever in all directions. John can and has spent weeks at a time, staring into the void of space, but when the world vanishes ten feet in front of him, he starts to get existential.
More than that, he checks out a bit. Alan's turned around and is nudging him in the ribs, and this is what it takes to get John's attention, the fact that his baby brother sounds a little worried. "Johnny? Hey, you okay?"
Well, of course Alan's a little worried. He's had Gordon and Virgil worrying him ever since Thunderbird 2 went down. John needs to take a moment to collect himself before he can manage an answering grin. "Fine. Just fine, sorry Al. Spaced out. You know me."
"You're not too cold, are you? Gordon made me put on like eighty layers, I'm plenty warm, but–"
"I'm fine, Al. Thanks for asking. Everything okay?"
Alan nods, and lifts a mittened (and gloved and gloved again) hand to point out the tiny point of the viewscreen that hasn't yet been iced over. "Yeah, look! See, the red thing, at about two o'clock? I think it's a mile marker. I think maybe we're nearly there."
And there's a red pillar of some sort, dead ahead. They haven't wavered off course in the slightest, Alan's taken them straight and true, on the bearing that Scott had provided. And John's unexpectedly filled with a warm wash of relief, gratitude that the rest of the world does exist, after all. "Good eye, Alan. Not long now."
"Nope! Should I radio Scott?"
"Nah, let's wait until we're home free. Good work."
Alan grins over his shoulder and puts his eyes back on the route ahead. "Thanks, John." There's a momentary pause and then, a little hesitant. "For everything, I mean, too. For saving us. Thanks for coming, John, I knew you would."
John doesn't have an answer, except to wrap his arms around his younger brother and give him a rare, unsolicited hug. He's glad, for all the reasons he'd never expected, that Alan's there too.
The room smells like chocolate. Rich, creamy chocolate that had to fight through miles of snow and ice at some point, just to be melted down and stirred up into this particular mug of nice warm milk. "Drink up, boy," says the man named Ralph as he hands the hot chocolate to a meek Gordon. "Warm fluids – thaw you up from the inside out."
It's taken some work – a lot of help from Scott – but Gordon's sitting up, leaning against the paneled wall at the head of the bed. He's wrapped up in too many blankets, some scratchy and some soft, and someone's stuffed him into about four coats. If he's telling the truth, the cold isn't even so bad anymore. This place is a dream compared to Thunderbird Two's cargo bay. The thing that's really getting him is the exhaustion. Getting rescued turns out to be more tiresome than rescuing.
Gordon's reaches out with his good hand, his opposite arm still throbbing due to the fact that no one will give a hypothermic boy painkillers, although he has to admit that hot chocolate makes it a little better. Hot chocolate always makes things a little better. "Thanks," Gordon says.
Theres a rough, mutilated moan and, on the other side of the room, Virgil's eyes are still closed. His forehead's pinched together and it looks like he's got the headache of the century.
Relief simply isn't a strong enough word for the feeling that washes over Gordon in that moment. In fact, he's pretty sure that there isn't a strong enough word. A lot of things have failed Virgil in the past twenty-four hours, but Gordon had not been one of them. "Nice of you to join us Sleeping Beauty," he teases.
"Easy there, Elsa," Scott cuts in. "Ten minutes ago you looked just like that."
Ralph hands a second mug to Scott, who is sitting just between the two beds, and Virgil peels an eye open. He must smell the chocolate. Virgil always does. "Hey Doc," he says, rough. "Pour me some of that, wouldya?"
The man laughs, a deep hearty chuckle that might have the power to melt the icecaps all on its own. "No can do," he says. "It's warm water for you until we can figure out what's going on in that head of yours."
Virgil's mouth twists into what Gordon feels is the appropriate response to the words warm water. Then Gordon takes a smug, brotherly slurp from his own mug just before saying, "Oh, you'll never figure out whats going on in his head."
And even during his climb towards consciousness, Virgil's ready to swing right back. "Those are some big words coming from a guppy with a – "
"Careful Virgil," Scott says, taking a sip of his own. "The kid probably saved your life today. I'm pretty sure that constitutes at least an hour without any smack talk."
"I'm thinking two," Gordon says.
Virgil almost laughs. Almost. "Now you're just making up rules."
"Gee, thanks Gordon," the blond offers. "I sure do appreciate being alive – nice job on that, by the way. You and Alan are the best!"
It's as if the words set off alarms in his mind, and Virgil is suddenly upright far quicker than anyone with an icepack bandaged to their torso ever should be. "Where's – ?"
His words stop too abruptly, and the immovable rock that is Virgil Tracy starts to lean a little too much to the left. Scott's there in an instant, holding him up, and Virgil's eyes are glazed over like he can't see a thing. Thankfully, Ralph throws a bucket in front of them right before Virgil blows chunks.
The dizziness doesn't keep Virgil from finishing the question. "Where's Alan?" he asks. "And did I see… was that John?"
The word is stretched out – complete disbelief if Gordon's ever heard it. Not that it's misplaced. Gordon himself hadn't believed that John was grounded until the shivering had stopped and he was falling right into his big brother's arms. "Yeah," Gordon says. "Last time I saw them they were fine – did something happen to Alan? I knew I should have made him wear another coat – "
"Alan's fine," Scott assures them both. When he turns to Gordon, there's something close to a smile on his lips. "You did good, Gordon. Everyone's alive. John and Alan are on their way in Pod B right now – "
And it's like the words are magic, summoning the brothers with just the call of their names. If anyone can do it, it's Scott Tracy.
Alan's the first one in, blue eyes wide as he examines the damage. "Oh," he says, his shoulders visibly falling. "Well, they're alive."
John walks in not long after, thanking a Spanish-speaking woman who had apparently led them this way. John too, assesses the damage, the cool careful eyes of dispatch versus the quick glance of a rocket boy. "They look better than the last time we saw them," he agrees. "Still look like shit though."
"You're not looking too good yourself, Johnny," Gordon notes.
John just shrugs, his gear not fitting quite right. "Re-entering within a fifteen-minute timespan is generally frowned upon," he says. "And I'm going to go ahead and guess that ziplining through a blizzard didn't do me any favors either."
With this, Gordon runs a quick tally through his mind:
One brother, so high on adrenalin that the space sickness hasn't kicked in yet.
One brother, concussed in a high-velocity plummet towards Earth.
One brother, physically okay, but more than a little shaken by the day's events.
One brother, so worried about all the other brothers that he's looking more and more like Dad by the second.
And him. Hypothermic. Tired.
They're not at their best, International Rescue, but they're all alive, and that's no small feat. After a day like today, they're lucky to be here, together, Ralph pouring two more mugs of hot chocolate for the brothers who just walked in.
Scott stands, checking for some sort of unseen damage on the youngest brother, but he doesn't find anything. When he turns to John, there's a smile from each of the two oldest. "Nice job, Johnny," he says.
John nods, strict and formal. "Nice job, yourself."
There's a smooth high-five between the two of them, which turns into a nice, warm hug. Two pats, a laugh, and the unspoken golden rule of Tracy Island all echo through the air. Look after your brothers,they all seem to think.
And so they do.
And so they always will.