This is just something short.


"What's going on with you today?"

"Me? We're on a mission. We need to do everything we can to get there ASAP and you're taking the scenic route!"

"It's the safe route."

"I didn't come here to be safe."


If Alan and Gordon hadn't been able to listen in, ready to engage in a conversation… Virgil might have broached the subject further.

If Scott hadn't been so brusque with him…

He'd seen the risk the eldest was going to take, but he couldn't stop him. He saved the three endangered workers, but they just didn't matter to him. His brother – no matter how much older, no matter how much he told him the elder protect the younger – would always be his priority. There was something that made your breath catch when you saw your brother dangling precariously on the edge of a tower. Something that made your blood boil with anger, something that made him dare.

Because someone had to say something and the only someone in a position to do so was him.

"What was that?"

"Saving lives."

"Don't joke, that was ridiculous."

"That was our job."

"No."

"Yes Virgil."

"It wasn't safe. You should have waited!"

"They'd be dead!"

"And you wouldn't have been in harm's way."

"I'm fine so it doesn't matter."

"What-" He received the cold shoulder: quite literally.

"We need to go."

He wanted to ask what was wrong…

Yes they'd been busy, yes they were tired, no that was not a reason to endanger their own lives.

The journey back just wasn't the time or the place to finish the conversation.

Scott knew that.

He knew it, but he didn't risk it. He had to assure Virgil couldn't pique up (that and keep Alan and Gordon awake and focussed) so he started that stupid competition over who would do the dishes. Alan had been doing them all week, knowing he could always claim he made it back 'not last' whether in Thunderbird Two or Three. Scott was taking advantage of it for himself.

Part of Virgil couldn't blame him. He'd want to avoid the subject too.

Tracy Island: the welcome sight for the weary rescuers.

They all slumped onto the sofas with trepidation. Adrenaline running off, the chance of another call dwindling by the minute – give it five and they would be home safe.

Alan and Gordon swung their legs down, tried to make themselves seem ready, but their façade was wasted as their exhaustion seeped through in obvious pelts. They would collapse if they came with that much should have been obvious.

"Scott and I will handle this."

"We will?" It was almost laced with sharpness, a bitter, jagged edge in the middle of a tired, rickety mood from which arguments could spark with a single word. So Virgil made himself near equally as curt in a low voice.

"They stay here."

That had been the end of it.

They would at least be safe, even if he wasn't.

And Scott would be safe even if it cost him.