"REPEAT"

Summary: It's the most disastrous day in International Rescue's history. And Virgil has to live it over and over and over again.

CHAPTER ONE

He was up and on his feet. The first thing he grabbed from the dresser drawer was a blue pair of shorts that hadn't even registered as he hauled them on over his briefs. There was no grace in the stumbling movements that carried him somehow (mostly) upright through his bedroom, through the outer sitting room, through the obliging sliding door and into the hall.

He even made it down said hall and into the Command Center without so much as tripping over the laces of his boots. Didn't mean he was actually awake to hear what his father said, though he knew that by the time he got his flight suit on in Thunderbird 2's cockpit as she clicked her pod into place, he'd remember it all because in some strange, supernatural way, reality always caught up to him around that point of these things.

Still and all, did rescue calls really need to come in at...he glanced at his watch as his painting upended him into the chute...two-fifteen in the morning? Groaning and happy as shit that the automatic coffee maker in his 'Bird would have a cup ready for him, Alan and Gordon by the time he was ready to trundle them out to the runway, Virgil allowed his descent to magically do what it always did: wake him up inch by inch as he barreled toward his destination.

Turned out it was a pretty straightforward rescue, all things considered. As they went, this one would go down in the log as short and sweet, he knew, as he lifted a gigantic boulder out of the way with Two's grabs. Ease up on the throttle, let his baby move just a sliver ahead, drop the boulder, and come back for the last one. Easy stuff, then Al and Gordo would head into the small above-ground cave and lead what was hopefully going to be five live victims out into the rising sun, and that'd be it. Scott was a good half-mile down the beach, safe and sound away from the cave in question and the big boulders.

"After all," Scott had joked with him once Mobile Control had been set up, "I know how you are on only four hours of sleep."

Virgil grinned, remembering that Alan from the seat behind him had asked why it was okay for Scott to send his little brothers into where they could get their bones crushed, but was all sorts of protective to keep the same thing from happening to his precious computers. Then Virgil had to stifle a full-blown laugh to keep his hands steady on the grab controls as he recalled Scott's short reply. "You're getting two extra laps around the island for that, soldier."

Yeah, best not to mess with the field commander, Virgil thought as Two signaled the incoming call.

"Thunderbird Two from Mobile Control."

He didn't take his attention from the monitor that was zoomed to that last boulder. "Go ahead, Scott."

"Double-time it, Virg. Local geologists are saying the rest of that hill could come down any second."

"F.A.B.," Virgil replied, though he wasn't going to double-time anything. Because really, he couldn't make the grabs move any faster, couldn't try to rush getting its long, metal fingers around the biggest boulder of the five he had to remove in total. And he honestly didn't need to put a rush on moving barely two feet with the boulder so it could be dropped on the shore of the Atlantic. Maine, for all its lobster glory, was also well-known for its little caves that cropped up here and there on the coast. But unfortunately for this group of early-morning spelunkers, a car careening off the cliff top above them had caused a fantastic crumbling of said cliff.

Virgil shook his head. The drunk driver could have killed five people if they'd been standing anywhere else but actually inside the cave, and here International Rescue had to be called out just because some pissed off college kid decided to get tanked and go for a wild drive to his ex-girlfriend's with the sole purpose of forcing her to take him back, was precisely the correct thing to do.

He'd heard the whole story over Scott's main line when the drunkard's (apparently) new girlfriend (maybe four hours into it, anyway) had come screeching to a halt at Mobile Control bawling her story out and begging for forgiveness. Before, that was, she realized what a "hot guy" his older brother was (her words, he added mentally) and thought drunkard Jimmy was nothing compared to big, manly rescue guy (again, her words) Scott.

Virgil rolled his eyes at the memory as the grabs dropped the final boulder. Reporting it on their multiple-line bandwidth, he got a chorus of F.A.B.s in return, followed by instructions from his field commander about where to set down. Then came the call from Gordon informing them all that the five tourists were perfectly fine, just scared shitless, and they'd have them in the hands of local EMTs within minutes. Virgil grinned as he walked out of the pod. His eyes zeroed in on his brother not twenty feet away sitting at Mobile Control with a local police officer.

Slowly he made his way toward the compact computer setup, allowing himself a moment to check out the landscape as he did so. The entirety of this part of the coastline was craggy cliff face, with only about a thirty-foot wide strip of beach littered with the same brown craggy rocks that made up the wall. Thunderbird Two was half in the water with her struts and pod as it was, but it was low tide and so she would be off again before any real danger of flooding out the pod came their way.

When it happened, it was like every cliché he'd ever heard about Time seeming to stand still. Everything was in slow motion from the second he heard the big crack, to the following nanosecond when his eyes darted up to see what had caused it, to the shock of realizing a bus-sized shard of the cliff face was breaking away from the wall, to the visual projection of the shard's fall, to the all-over tightness of muscles and chest that came when he realized where it was going to land, to the sickening knowledge that his bellowed warning to Scott was not going to change the outcome.

And that's when Time decided to speed up again, to put the shard and his body into hyperdrive. To make sand fly up from his heels even as the sickening crunch of metal, and he was sure he heard more than metal crunching, washed over him like a tidal wave. He'd seen it. He'd seen it happen with his own eyes, but he wouldn't believe it. Not when Gordon and Alan came running and yelling from down the beach. Not when the bloody and ripped hat was yanked from the outer edge of the shard. Not when red, red blood began tinging the wet sand around the smashed screens and circuitry.

He didn't believe it. He couldn't. He wouldn't.

Sinking to his knees next to the rock, hat clutched so tightly in his fist he could feel his own nails cutting into his palms through the fabric, he felt the primal scream gurgle up from his belly as shock and disbelief and anger and grief churned his gut. But the scream wouldn't emerge. It stuck right there in his throat, stopping his heart, he was sure. Stopping his breathing. Stopping coherent thought. It couldn't be. There had to be some mistake. He felt himself hyperventilating, hands desperately pushing against a rock he knew there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell he could move.

Hands on his shoulders, gripping hard, trying to pull him away. Then the sound of Thunderbird Two taking off, where had that come from? The whine of her engines overhead as the hands grabbed him under his armpits and dragged him away and he didn't even fight. He shouldn't be letting them take him away from Scott, Scott needed him. Scott couldn't be left alone there, he needed help. He wouldn't survive unless Virgil helped him and yet for all his brain screamed that into itself, he found he couldn't move a muscle.

All he could do was watch as Two's grabs lowered, secured themselves around the rock and began to lift it away. He felt someone drop next to him on the sand, and vaguely registered small waves making it past his knees to soak the fabric of his pants, but the sickening reality of what was caught on the bottom of the rock and in the sand below it made him turn to the left, retching violently as the image burned itself into his brain.

He never would remember how it was exactly he got home.