A/N: Oh hey wow look how original, a post-hydrofoil accident angsty Gordon fic, there are hardly ANY of those knocking about... *eyeroll* But nonetheless, here we are. I haven't written in so long I don't even know if I can do it any more. Let's see, eh? I may not know much about swimming but I know a hell of a lot about losing a fundamental aspect of yourself to a thing you have no control over. If you have any issues with swearing in stories please go and read something else because there's one point in the story that contains a LOT of it.

For Mon Ammy for her constant love and fabulousness (or, should I say... FABness... No. No, I probably shouldn't!) and Bow Echo for her stalwart support.

Disclaimer: Thunderbirds was created by the late great Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. There's a new one doing the rounds these days that was created by someone else, but that's not the Thunderbirds I'm writing about today. Maybe next time.

Sparkle

Gordon didn't often lose his temper. Not really. He'd bluster sometimes for comedic effect, maybe throw in a frustrated high-pitched growl in the style of Curly Howard now and again to punctuate his annoyance. Whenever he got mad, he would take to his beloved pool and thrash out twenty or thirty lengths, depending on how cross he felt. It always helped. Swimming always seemed to soothe the buzzing sound in his head when things got too much and when his smile was in danger of completely disappearing. It brought him back to earth and refreshed his soul. He was a man of many talents - a marine biologist, an aquanaut, the family joker and the class clown - but he would always describe himself as a swimmer. Swimming was the one thing that he essentially believed made him Gordon.

Until he couldn't do it any more.

As he was recovering from the hydrofoil crash, learning to walk and talk and eat again, building strength up in his atrophied muscles, his physiotherapist suggested he start swimming again. Not competitively, of course. Maybe a slow breaststroke for a few minutes, let the water take the strain as he was regaining his strength. He had chuckled dirtily at the phrase 'slow breaststroke', but agreed to try it. The following day, he gently lowered himself into the pool Jeff had had built for him at their Kansas home, took a deep breath and set off. He managed three strokes before his legs started hurting. A searing pain through his left shoulder made him scream out in pain and he stopped, mid-stroke, and began to sink. He panicked. He had worked so hard. He had tried so hard. He wanted this. Swimming was what he did. Swimming was who he was. That goddam accident had taken enough away from him, it couldn't take this away from him too, could it? He tried to catch his breath but took in a mouthful of water. He tried to stand up but the water was too deep. Maybe this was it. After all this time, all this hard work to not be defeated by the accident, he was destined to meet his end by failing at the one thing he loved the most.

Before he had time to really finish his train of thought, he felt a strong hand pressing firmly in the middle of his chest and pulling him into their body.

"For chrissake, Gordon, next time you decide to go for a swim can't you at least tell one of us?" his father demanded, the panic in his voice evident. Jeff had almost lost him more times than Gordon even knew, he was not prepared to lose him at this stage in his recovery. He pulled Gordon effortlessly out of the pool and wrapped a towel around his shoulders to dry him off. Gordon looked at his father and realised he'd jumped fully clothed into the pool to rescue him. A wave of shame rose up from the pit of his stomach, and his cheeks flushed a deep red. "You know I didn't even start going grey until you came along? It's a wonder I'm not bald!" Jeff said, sensing Gordon's embarrassment and trying in vain to add a little levity to the moment.

"I'm sorry," Gordon said in a small voice. Jeff sighed heavily and shook his head. He gently placed his hand on the back of Gordon's neck and pulled him into a hug. Being a dad was by far his favourite job of all, but his inability to wave a magic wand and make everything better for his boys was a thing Jeff would never be able to get used to. He felt every bit as helpless as Gordon did at that moment.

"Me too," he said, pursing his lips into a rueful smile.

As soon as Gordon had dried off and changed his clothes, his embarrassment gave way to anger. He headed outside to the pool and glared at it. The pool had always been his friend, his therapist, his confidant. Now it had turned against him and for the first time in his life he hated it. He hated it for abandoning him when he needed it the most.

"Fuck this shit," he muttered.

There was a small gym area in an annexed room next to the pool, and Gordon wandered in. Fixed weight machines, a treadmill and various other cardio equipment stared unhelpfully back at him. He didn't have the strength to use any of them, even if he wanted to. His eyes finally rested on the seventy-pound punchbag in the corner and he set his jaw as he strode over to it. His fist connected with the thick plastic and he felt nothing. Perhaps he should try again. He punched harder and faster, punctuating every connection with the word "fuck" until it stopped sounding like a word and started sounding like a shout of pain.

"Fuck - this - fucking - shit - to - fucking - hell!" he roared, pummelling the poor innocent punch bag until he started to lose feeling in his hands. He was so intent on teaching the punch bag a lesson it would never forget that he didn't even hear Scott walking in.

"Gordon what the hell?!" Scott asked. Gordon ignored him. "Gordon?"

Without pausing for breath Gordon started shouting again, pouring every bit of venom his body had stored up into every expletive as the punching continued.

"I - can't - fucking - swim! I can't fucking swim the one fucking thing I could fucking do right I can't fucking do any more my fucking stupid useless fucking piece of shit body fuck it all to hell fucking fuck fuck shit goddammit fucking HELL SCOTT!"

Gordon finally ended his tirade, panting heavily, sweat pouring out of his body, his arms and legs shaking with exertion. He wrapped his arms around the punch bag and rested his full weight against it. Before he even knew what was happening, tears started rolling down his face and he broke down into uncontrollable sobs. Scott gazed helplessly at his little brother. He had never seen him like this before. Gordon would always find the silver lining to every cloud. Gordon was the one who was always guaranteed to brighten the darkest days with his thousand kilowatt smile. Gordon was the one who faced every challenge that had been thrown at him with a tenacious grin and a joke. Scott didn't know what to do. For the first time since Virgil was born, Scott had no idea how to help one of his younger brothers.

"I can't swim, Scott."

"You're an Olympic gold medallist, Gordon, of course you can swim!" Scott winced as he heard the words come out of his mouth and knew that he had just said entirely the wrong thing.

"I'm telling you I can't swim," Gordon said, quietly. "I can't swim any more."

"It's just time. Your body's been through a lot. You'll swim again."

"I CAN'T. SWIM."

Scott paused as he realised exactly what Gordon was saying to him. Gordon knew that he would swim again. Muscle memory would eventually come into play. He would try harder every day until he could swim almost as well as he used to. That wasn't the point. That wasn't the problem. He had almost lived in hospital for the past eighteen months, his body had been through hell. Operation after operation had left him weak and exhausted. The scars on his body were still a deep red, nobody could know what was happening on the inside of his body, but he felt that the basic process of Getting Better was killing him. It wasn't that he wouldn't swim. It was that after all the operations, all the promises of being well, all his hopes of getting back to normal - the one thing he wanted to do was still beyond his reach. He would swim. Eventually. But he couldn't swim now. It was another battle he had to face and he didn't think he had the strength to fight it.

Scott didn't know what to say. He didn't know if words would help, or a hug would help, or if anything would help. After a long pause, he walked over to Gordon and squeezed his shoulder affectionately. Gordon looked up at him and it broke Scott's heart when he saw that the cheeky sparkle in his brother's eyes had disappeared, having been replaced with the results of months of pain, insomnia and frustration. The final blow was finding that the accident had taken his ability to swim away from him. What could he say to make it better? What was there to say?

"You will swim," he said, his voice gentle and reassuring. Gordon nodded wordlessly and Scott patted his shoulder twice before leaving the room.

Of course, Gordon did swim again. He had to let go of a lot of ego as he used floats and armbands for the first two months, but as time went on he gained enough strength to swim unaided. He swam for ten minutes twice a day and slowly built up to twenty minutes twice a day. When he was training for the Olympics, he used to swim for up to nine hours a day - but he finally learned to accept that those days were long gone. He was no longer a swimmer. He was just a guy who could swim. He supposed he should be grateful for that, because at least he could do the basic strokes again, even if his ability was drastically reduced. His mood lifted, he laughed and joked again, he worked and trained hard until he was almost as strong as he used to be. He fought every day until most people forgot that he was still fighting. He had almost fooled everyone into believing he was completely recovered.

His best friend, Tin-Tin Kyrano, had come to stay with the family for a fortnight between finishing her engineering degree at university and spending a year travelling through Europe. Her father had worked for Jeff Tracy for years and so Tin-Tin and Gordon had grown up together. The other four Tracy boys all had varying levels of crushes on her, but as far as Gordon was concerned she was his sister from another mister and Tin-Tin adored him for it. Besides, her crush on Scott had been practically visible from space since she was thirteen years old. Gordon wasn't sure if either of them would ever get their act together and go in for a kiss, but he presumed that if they didn't, eventually he'd have to step in and embarrass them into it or something.

They sat on Gordon's bed, flicking through brochures of tourist activities in Greece, Italy and Spain and joking about the adventures she'd have out there, when suddenly Tin-Tin paused and gazed at Gordon.

"What? Have I got something on my face?" he asked, frowning as he rubbed his hands over his cheeks and chin. Tin-Tin shook her head.

"No, it's not that. It's just. That sparkle in your eyes has gone," she said. "You're smiling but it hasn't reached your eyes."

Gordon hadn't expected her to say that. He hadn't expected anyone to notice. He looked away and swallowed hard.

"Yeah I think that left somewhere between the operation on my L5 and the repair job on my rotator cuff," he said, letting out a breath of laughter. He finally chanced eye contact with Tin-Tin, who looked back sorrowfully at him. "Don't look at me like that," he said, shaking his head.

"Like what?"

"Like you're sorry for me. I don't need it," he said, his tone sharp and defensive.

"I am sorry for you. You're my best friend and I love you. You've been through hell and I haven't been here for you. I'm sorry," she said.

"It's all good," Gordon said with a dismissive shrug. She clamped her lips together and nodded.

"That sparkle will come back, Gordon. It's what makes you you."

"Ah, man. I don't think I've been me for a long time. I've been a boring-ass schmuck!" he joked. She grinned and shook her head.

"You've never been boring."

"You'd be surprised," he said. "Honestly? Since I quit swimming with the team, I dunno what I'm meant to do with myself." Tin-Tin let out a sigh. 'The team' was Team USA, consistently the most accomplished and successful swimming team in the world for the past God knows how many decades. Gordon wasn't just a good swimmer. He was one of the world's elite. Tin-Tin had no idea what to say. How did one even begin to know how to comfort their best friend after they had lost so much of themselves?

"Something will come along and you'll find a way to be you again," she said, ruffling his too-long hair with her fingertips. He chuckled and held up a holiday brochure.

"I'll come stay with you in Paris, it's been WAY too long since we were each other's wingman! Remember that weekend we had in Tijiuana a couple years back? Besides, Paris is cool, I love it there," he said.

"I didn't know you spoke French?"

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" he said, waggling his eyebrows. Tin-Tin burst out laughing. "I'm tellin' ya bro, I don't need to know anything else!" She pushed him playfully in the arm.

"I guess you can't keep a good Tracy down!" she said with a giggle. Gordon grinned impishly at her.

"You wanna tell that theory to Scott, I'm sure he'd be happy to help you test it out," he said. She hit him full in the face with a pillow and a full-blown tickling fight ensued.

Spending time with Tin-Tin was always good for Gordon, and by the time she left for Europe he was feeling far more positive about his future. He'd spoken about perhaps setting up a swimming school. He had looked into it, and considering that all anyone needed was a pool and a swimsuit, he was shocked at how extortionate swimming lessons were.

"It's ridiculous, Dad!" he had said, bursting into Jeff's office and waving a sheet of paper with some hastily scribbled numbers on them. "Swimming can literally save a person's life, why the hell would you have to pay for the privilege of someone teaching you how to not die?!" he demanded. "I could open a school here for free - hell knows we have the facilities, the overheads would be minimal. I don't need to be paid to stand there telling kids how to do breaststroke, that's not exactly work!" he said, hoping his use of the word 'overheads' would somehow make him seem more grown-up and knowledgeable.

"That's a great idea, son! Let me get one of the accountants to look into it for you," Jeff said, taking the sheet of paper from him and giving it a cursory glance before realising he'd have to decipher and rewrite it before he let an accountant anywhere near it. "It'll be good for you to do something to get that sparkle back in your eyes." Gordon stared at him.

"Have you been talking to Tin-Tin?" he asked, suspiciously. Jeff shook his head and fixed a pointed gaze at Gordon over his glasses.

"No, Gordon. I'm your Dad."

The swimming school, while a very noble idea, also turned out to be a financially inept one. The initial outlay to turn the private family pool into a swimming school - before governmental permission to use the facility as a school, before running background checks on anyone who would be working there and before a single student even so much as put on a pair of goggles - was astronomical. As the service was supposed to be free, it would rely on governmental funding, and the fact that the Tracy family were already part of America's One Percent meant that no governmental funding would be forthcoming unless they all went bankrupt overnight.

The unfairness of the situation was not lost on Jeff. He would have happily invested into the project just so that Gordon would have something useful to do and to give him a sense of purpose again, but if the project was doomed to failure, he didn't think that Gordon could take another blow to his confidence. All Jeff could do was to wait for another opportunity to come through. This Rescue Project that one of his contacts in London had mentioned... maybe that was worth investigating.

After many months of secret discussions and meetings, the Rescue Project had finally started to flesh into what would eventually become International Rescue. Jeff had ensured that only a small handful of his most trusted friends and advisors were in on the project, and he finally made the decision to ask his sons if they wanted to be involved. He had no desire to push them into anything, they all had careers and ambitions of their own, but it was a cause Jeff passionately believed in, and he hoped that the boys would be just as excited as he was about what International Rescue could achieve. Jeff decided to speak to them all separately about it, to save any of them feeling pressured to commit to something they weren't completely in agreement with. Scott and John were on board immediately, and were full of ideas about the day to day running of the organisation. Next, Jeff decided to speak to Gordon. Gordon had spent the day in bed, he'd been on his feet for too long the previous day and had twinged a nerve in his back.

"How's the patient?" he asked, knocking as he walked into Gordon's bedroom. Gordon raised both thumbs and shot his father a sarcastic smile. "Do you have a minute?"

"Well just one, Dad, I was planning on hitting the town later on," Gordon said, a rather obvious hint of bitterness in his tone. Jeff grinned as he sat on the edge of Gordon's bed.

"So for a few months now, a few associates have been working with me on a new venture that I thought you might be interested in," he said. Gordon let out a groan.

"Jesus Dad, do I have to wear a suit for this?"

"Well... there may be a uniform involved," Jeff said, undeterred. Gordon mulled the idea of a uniform over for a moment before nodding once.

"Go ahead."

"How would you like to join a top secret security organisation who rescue people from situations that nobody else can?" he asked. Gordon swallowed and shrugged.

"You think an organisation like that would want someone like me?" he asked. "I can't even get outta bed right now and I gotta tell ya, my bladder is not happy about that." Jeff couldn't help but laugh at Gordon's way with words, but continued with his pitch.

"Where else would we find a world-class aquanaut?"

"You need an aquanaut?" Gordon asked, hopefully. Jeff nodded.

"How would we be able to rescue people from any situation if we didn't have an aquanaut?"

Gordon thought about this for a moment. It was perfect. He could go back to being an aquanaut. He had loved his time working for the World Aquanaut Security Patrol. He could actually help people. And nobody would embarrass him by thanking him for it. He could just go in, help people, and come home. What more did he want from a job?

He looked up at Jeff, and to Jeff's absolute delight, he saw that Gordon's eyes were sparkling with life and excitement. His joy was compounded as Gordon's beaming smile led him to utter the four words Jeff prayed he would hear.

"When do we start?"

THE END