A small piece for Scott, inspired by both 'Up from the Depths' part two and 'Heavy Metal' (series one). Enjoy.
He lived his life in the air.
As soon as he'd known what a plane was, as soon as his father had made the mistake of showing him one, their mother the mistake of taking him aboard one, the attempts to keep him from them were to end the same sorry way: failure.
Putting International Rescue together hadn't been too hard for Jeff Tracy, or at least that was his remark. All of the pieces fell into the relevant places: John followed his father and lived for space before Alan followed them both into many endless nights; Virgil may well have been born a mutli-tasker, an incredibly talented one at that with a capacity for detail like their mothers; Gordon should have just been born with underwater breathing abilities, possibly even a set of fins and a tail; whilst it would just have been easier to stick him up in the clouds.
So there it was. The whole of IR without a moment's thought. It was just like joining the dots.
He lived his life in the air from the moment his father agreed to teach him to fly, from the moment he began reading every encyclopaedia available to him, every piece of work there was on planes, every waking hour spent learning what he needed to know. Taking stock of all the important details, memorising everything key control, the most significant signals and radio commands. He learnt so much flying wasn't even second nature, it was first.
Crashes were incredibly dangerous and damaging, the sort of thing anyone and everyone feared usually for all the right reasons. He'd learnt how to be a very good pilot over the years, learning from some of the best and of course the best in his eyes. He'd learnt all the possible techniques to avoid crashing, to recover if it was necessary. He knew all of these things and yet still he felt he knew absolutely nothing.
In those moments, those brief, fleeting moments of twisting or swirling or falling, he really did not know a thing about flying. His mind began to die… to slip away and perish as though none of it had ever existed. Part of him knew it was still there but the rational side couldn't dig deep enough to unbury it.
He could try the obvious solutions, to could notice all the problems (of course Thunderbird One's advanced systems helped in picking those up) and somewhere know what his action should be. No, the problem simply was that his cognition failed and he was paralysed by his own fear.
A fear he'd never had until…
Well, before that incident the fear of falling was just a well-accepted side risk to flying. Now it was a fear, a paralysing, bone gripping, mind numbing, jaw locking, and unescapable fear. It was a fear made worse by the fact he'd never had any form of crash yet. Not one which could be deemed a crash or one which hadn't had the Tracy Patriarch waiting with the ultimate solution. He'd been grounded even in the air and his mind had not once failed to give him the information he needed to fix the situation before it became dire.
He'd never feared it; there'd not been a need.
Now he feared it, constantly, because the consequence could be seen. Before it was just the nagging warning – if I crash, I could potentially die. The key word had always been potentially. Dad really did.
He knew it was just as much a fear for his family on the ground – they'd endured losing dad too and of course they had no wish to lose him too, despite how irritating he knew he could be. He had no wish to die in the exact same manner as the pilot before him. In fact he simply had no wish to die whatsoever, least of all now. They needed to be a family, not animals picked off one by one for slaughter.
The first time had hardly been his fault, but either way he'd lost all clue as to how to pull out of the dive. Alan had come through with an idea that was just as likely to fail him as it was to succeed, but the truth was it had been an idea viable to his use. It had been the only hope in a situation dire, wherein his own process of thought had departed.
He supposed he'd been slightly less panicked then about his own safety for Alan was on the ground and just as likely to be immediately affected by any crash in the location. The panic had still been present though, building up, ultimately controllable.
Emotions were running high though, his considerably so for he'd watched the painstaking labours of his father to build a ship which only left him in a state of catatonic mourning. He'd wanted so desperately to recover it just for their father, even if it have to be in pieces, he'd wanted the wreckage of the TV-21 in their possession, painful to see or not. As a whole, intact piece, he yearned for it all the more.
Had he gone with John's solution – the well thought out, methodical, "we may not even be able to get it back but at least the bad guys won't have it", safe option, not a single thing following of this day would have happened, including the destroyed look on Alan's face at letting the plane be destroyed. Practically, Thunderbird One wouldn't be in need of the repairs he was currently making, nor would he be gazing down from the gantry mulling over how close he'd been to the icy ground. He knew he wouldn't have walked away from that crash if it occurred. He may have lived, but certainly not walked.
Yet it happened again. Even with the skill to work through it he simply blanked. Nothing seemed to be working so his mind slipped into giving up mode, the one thing his father had always taught them all to avoid, whatever the circumstance. He was lucky Grandma had bothered to learn so much about the Thunderbirds, something she'd done only as they were her son's creation, only as it would be her grandson's risking their lives with piloting them, something he was sure she'd lacked knowledge in before Jeff's death.
She was right with her solution though and he levelled off just in time as a result from it. He made it home because he recovered without any further damage. He made it into the evening in one piece because she rightly ordered him to sit down, not to fix Thunderbird One on the spot and rush back out, not to immediately use anything which would get him airborne straight away to continue hunting The Mechanic, even if it be Thunderbird Three. No, she further advised him away from piloting.
He was silently glad.
It wasn't that he lacked the appropriate knowledge or skill. It wasn't that he hadn't trained days on end to be able to match his father. It wasn't that he'd let his abilities slip from grasp due to ill use. No, it was all for one far simpler, difficult to control and even harder to admit, reaction. One he didn't suppose he was capable of stopping. Answer: he panicked. He knew his own skill set, he knew how to pilot over half the equipment they had or ever came into contact with but he did not know – well he knew how so– maybe more like could not cope with crashing.
Coping was the one thing he thought he did well at though John had often argued the opposite. He smothered his brothers when they were ill or injured because he couldn't cope with it. He gave them extra instructions and warnings they didn't need because he wouldn't be able to cope with the consequences of things he wasn't even to blame for. He constantly insisted on maintained communications with someone – preferably him – during rescues because he couldn't cope with having his brothers risking their lives, especially if he wasn't in the field with them. He focussed on their grief and hid away his own because he couldn't cope.
In all fairness, Virgil had spotted that one. He'd called it self-destructive. John called it a coping mechanism.
Either way, his way of 'coping' with the things he struggled to cope with was entirely self-destructive. How was he meant to right Thunderbird One's position when he was essentially the problem? Paradoxical, much. There seemed no way out of that cycle either for when he really considered it in the sharpened view of his younger brothers they were right to the letter. His way of managing had always led to some kind of suffering on his own back or originate from some sympathy pain at seeing offers suffer. Either those, or intense worry.
He sighed, looking back at his finished work. Thunderbird One was fine because of Grandma. He'd let her down. He'd very nearly let down International Rescue all for stupid, childish whims. He'd very nearly let down his brothers. The burnt out equipment would always serve as proof of that. Maybe he should even get it framed in case the mental reminder ever faded.
It couldn't keep happening. He couldn't let it grow. Whatever it was that gripped his head over his heart in these panic ensuing crash situations had to be quashed before it could strike again at a time when no one else could come to his rescue. For goodness knows what John actually knows about flying a plane.
The simple was decided. He needed to fix his new-found fear, right after accepting it. Dad died in a crash, yes. He would not die in a crash. He would make sure of that. He would once again be the self-sufficient pilot Jeff Tracy had left knowing.
He just needed to find a head for losing height.