A/N: Just a little something that's been bouncing around in my head for a little while. I hope you like it. Mixed verse, but it isn't all that noticable.
Disclaimer: As much as I would love to own our boys in blue, I don't. I make no profits from this, and I hope to gain nothing more than to make people happy with it and, hopefully, a bit of concrit.
Midnight Blues
The great, smoking building rumbled, it's burning foundations and crisped, smoking interiors no longer able to hold the weight of what had once been the world's most spectacular, and expensive, hotel. Around it, the night sky was lit up with the dazzling heat, and flames leapt high in to the air.
"Virgil, Gordon, get out of there, that place isn't going to hold."
The voice of his younger brother was strained, and crackling fires background made it difficult for Scott to make out the words properly.
"Two minutes. We've nearly got her, Scott. Just two more minutes."
"Damnit, Virgil, I said hurry up!"
To this, there was no reply, which made Scott frown. As the tall ruins belched more fire from what had once been windows, it gave another great shudder, creaking in the winds. He looked around as the hotel manager, rescued around ten minutes previously, hurried up. His face was blackened with soot, and he had the kind of worried look that Scott had seen countless times before, all across the globe. The ruined dinner suit hung in tatters around his exceptionally round waist, and his waxed moustache drooped lopsidedly as he tried to make himself useful.
"If there's anything…"
Scott cut across him, knowing the question.
"How many people are still unaccounted for?"
The little man looked down at a clip board, and ran his stubby finger down a smudged list.
"Seven. An old lady and her daughter – Mrs and Miss Stevenson, a gentleman from England – Mr Smith, and a mother and her three children – the Zhao family." He stopped, and took a few short, wheezing breaths before bending double in to a fully fledged coughing fit. His secretary, not quite as filthy as the manager himself, handed the man a bottle of water and crooned some soothing words, whilst Scott radioed in to Virgil and Gordon.
"Listen, guys, there's still a few more people left. How close are you to getting that woman out?"
"Two minutes, Scott."
"You said that two minutes ago! Look, you're going to have to work faster, because this building isn't going to stay up much longer. Do you need Alan to give you a hand?"
Even as he finished speaking, he noticed a tall, slender woman flop out of one of the ground floor windows, helped by a blonde figure in a very familiar blue uniform. The figure, Alan, handed down a child to her, and then another. Finally, holding a third, tiny infant in his arms, he leaped down from the window himself, and was quickly met by two doctors, who had just arrived in a flurry of ambulances, sirens wailing.
'About time,' Scott thought, but said nothing out loud. Being so high up in the mountains, and cut off from any easy access to anywhere other than a small village seven miles away, it was no wonder that the emergency services had taken their time. Besides, with all the snow on the ground, there were snow drifts at several points on the narrow roads. There was no way they could have got their any faster. There was, however, still no sign of any fire engines.
Having handed over the howling child to its grateful mother, Alan jogged up to Scott.
"How much left to do?"
"Not much. Virgil and Gordon are five floors up at the moment, and there are just three more people after that. We'll. . ."
Which was when it had happened.
The base of the hotel exploded with a huge roar of energy, and the explosion carried on up through the massive, towering structure, the whole thing finally giving way and toppling, as if in slow motion, towards the ground. Scott and Alan didn't hesitate.
"Get back!" howled Alan, towards the panicking mass of doctors and soot-covered holiday makers and hotel staff. "Go!"
They needed no second bidding, running as fast as they could towards the relative safety of the snow covered pine trees. Scott, however, didn't move until Alan grabbed his arm and began pulling him away, scrambling as quickly as they could away from the falling chunks of smouldering debris, slipping and sliding on the icy ground.
The collapse of the building seemed unending, and the clouds of ash and dust billowed upwards in to the sky, blocking out the twinkling stars. In the deafening roar, petrified screams were drowned out, until the hellish cacophony petered out as much as it could, leaving only an unearthly silence, broken here and there by thin, ghostly wails. There was no way anybody in the building could possibly have survived.
"Scott, what just happened?" John's voice came over the airwaves, but Scott didn't hear it. He stared at the destruction – at where two of his brothers lay, encased in early tombs. Waves of shock began taking over his consciousness.
"Scott? Scott? Are you there?"
The man felt his knees collapse beneath him, the dirty snow seeping through the blue fabric, and a few meters away, he heard Alan give a shuddering sob.
"Virgil?" He whispered, "Virgil? Gordon? No!"
"No!" Drenched in sweat, Scott sat bolt upright, the tangled sheets around him twisted and crumpled, weaving knots around his legs. He struggled free, swung his legs over the side of the bed and buried his face in his hands.
It had been three months since the mission, and the dream had come back every single night to haunt him, without fail. That terrible feeling of despair, like a black cloud, which came back almost every day. The thought of losing any of his brothers was unimaginable.
Pushing himself up from the edge of the bed, Scott padded down the deserted hallway, having pulled on a dressing gown, in the direction of the kitchen. He needed a drink. Just one, maybe, before going down to the gym. It was the middle of the night, and Scott could feel his eyes willing themselves to shut, but he couldn't face going back to bed just yet. He probably wouldn't at all, tonight, although he'd been so tired recently that it was a miracle he hadn't already collapsed.
Reaching for bottle, he unscrewed the lid, and tipped it over the glass . . . but no liquid was forthcoming. Squinting in the darkness, Scott realised that it was empty. He frowned, trying to think back to last night. It had been at least half full then, surely! A soft voice from the sofa startled him.
"I emptied it down the sink. It was scaring me, you know. You aren't sleeping at all, you're hardly ever out of Thunderbird 1's hanger, and when you are, you're drinking."
Sighing, the man replaced the empty bottle on the shelf, and sat down heavily on the sofa, beside his brother. He rubbed his eyes, wearily.
"You shouldn't have done that."
"Shouldn't I? It's what you did, when Father started drinking all the time, after Ma died. Every drop of alcohol that you could find went down the kitchen sink."
"Yeah, and if you remember, that was the only time he ever hit me."
For a while, there was silence, and then Scott shook his head, looking mournfully at his hands.
"I was dreaming about it again."
His companion nodded in the darkness, neither of them having bothered to turn on the lights. "I know."
There was another pause, and Scott stood up, wandered over to the window, and stared out at the stars. It was a clear night, with not a cloud in the sky. The stars were so much clearer tonight – on the mission, there had been none visible at all. Too much smoke and ash. He felt, rather than saw, his brother moving to stand just next to him.
"I don't think I've ever had a worse feeling in my whole life, Virgil, not even when Ma died. When I pulled you out of that rubble. . . I thought you were dead. You were just so cold and pale, and so limp. I was so sure that you weren't breathing. What happened to you should have killed you."
"It nearly did."
"Should have killed Gordon, too."
"I'm not sure it didn't. He's hardly spoken a word since he woke up, and that was three weeks ago, now."
"I know."
There was another long pause, and then Scott began to walk away.
"Where are you going?"
"Bed."
"Don't lie, Scott."
Scott turned around and, for the first time since the hotel had collapsed, looked at his brother, properly. It was almost as though nothing about him had changed. Not when he was standing still, anyway, like he was now. When he walked, he still limped, having broken several bones, but Scott had not seen if there were any scars left. He could not bear to look. Virgil stared back defiantly, his honey coloured eyes burning with an intense anger that Scott had rarely encountered.
"If any of us should be hiding away, it's me or Gordon." Virgil's voice had raised an octave, reflecting the pent up emotions which were beginning to boil over.
"I'm not hiding, Virgil."
"Right. Sure. Talk to me, then!"
"I already have!"
"Not everything!" They were shouting now, standing on opposite sides of the room, fists clenched. Suddenly, Virgil turned away, and lurched towards his piano, leaning against it as if for support. "Fine," he whispered, "Keep it bottled up. Go back to bed, if that's where you really were going."
"Virgil?"
There was no reply, except the sound of the island bugs outside, chirruping away, oblivious to the tension. Inside, the room seemed to have become hotter by at least ten degrees.
"Virgil, I'm sorry. I didn't mean . . . it's just . . . you were dead, okay? You and Gordon both died, right in front of my eyes, and it was my fault."
"We didn't die, though."
"For those two days when you were buried under all that rubble, you may as well have been! We all . . . I mean . . ." He trailed off as his voice rose sharply, and waved his hands helplessly before continuing, slowly. "You were dead, Virgil. Both of you. For two days, you had died. Nobody thought for a second that you could possibly be alive. Not even when I was cradling you in my arms did I even think that you had survived! When you choked . . ." He opened the drinks cabinet again, as if in the hope that the bottle had filled itself up, but when he lifted it up, it was still empty. In a sudden burst of anger, the man threw it across the room, where it hit the opposite wall and splintered in to little shards, which went flying out over the floor.
Virgil ducked, flinching. "Scott! Stop it!"
"W's goin' on?" Startled, they both jumped around, to see a half asleep figure in the doorway. Gordon rubbed at his eyes, wearily, his voice slurring. "'S half one, guys. Go back to bed, 'n' let th' rest of us sleep. At least quit yellin', will ya?"
"Sorry, kid. We didn't realise we were being so loud. We'll be two minutes. You go back to bed. We promise not to disturb you, right Scott?"
Scott didn't say anything, still seething, but Gordon shrugged, his dressing gown slipping off his shoulder.
"'M up now. Any cookies left?"
"Yeah. I saw Onaha hide them behind the seasonings this afternoon. Get me one."
As Gordon rummaged around, he clumsily knocked over a few of the glass bottles containing herbs and spices. He looked back around at Scott and Virgil, and threw Virgil one of the precious cookies, not falling for the illusion of peace that his brothers – or at least, Virgil - were trying to create. He then sat down on the sofa with the brightly coloured tin in his lap, making a mess of chocolaty crumbs as he bit in to one, spraying them around himself in a meter radius.
"So what were you arguing about?"
"The mission."
The aquanaut froze, the second cookie half way to his mouth, and then he spluttered, crumbs spitting everywhere.
"'M going back to bed. See you in the morning." He made a hurried exit for the door, leaving the tin of cookies on the sofa. Virgil, still holding his own cookie, frowned at Scott.
"Nice, Scott. Real nice. He'll be avoiding you for the rest of the week, now."
Scott shrugged, ruefully.
"I didn't think."
"Just apologise to him in the morning, won't you? Want a cookie?"
Scott shook his head, but sat down on the sofa again anyway, not bothering to brush away any of the crumbs. Virgil padded over anyway to sit beside him, but Scott looked away, his brother's limp making him uncomfortable.
"Scott? It wasn't your fault, you know. Sure, being trapped in that hole until I passed out, stuck with those two dead women and Gordon in agony was definitely one of the worst experiences I've ever had, but if somebody gave the option between leaving International Rescue and being safe, or going through that again, you know what? I would choose the latter. So would Gordon. No two ways about it. What's happened has happened. It's in the past. You told us to hurry up, but we stayed there. We disobeyed orders. None of it was your fault."
"I should have . . ."
"Don't, Scotty. Please."
"How did you manage it?"
"Huh?" The sudden change in direction of the conversation made Virgil blink in surprise.
"Surviving."
Virgil shrugged, uneasily, and looked away. Shifting position, he pulled his feet up on to the sofa, curling up in to a little ball.
"It's all thanks to Gordon, really. If he hadn't been in so much pain, I would probably have just given up and gone to sleep."
"You don't mean that."
"You weren't there, Scott. I almost did. Give up, that is. The only reason I knew I was alive was because of the pain. I couldn't tell if I was facing up or down, or even if I was in one piece. Everything just hurt so much, I shut my eyes, and I wished more than anything that it would all just go away. I didn't see how it was possible for Gordon to be alive, and all there was, was darkness and pain. I couldn't see a thing, but then . . . then . . . I guess I heard him whimpering, or something. It was awful. I couldn't just leave him there, so I had to find some way to help him, but I couldn't reach him, so I had to keep talking. He passed out not long after, but I only let myself go once I heard you guys digging away above me. I figured he would be okay, by then, if he was still alive."
"'Okay' is hardly the word I would use to describe him."
Virgil gave a short, bitter snort of laughter, remembering seeing Gordon lying in a coma five minutes after he himself had woken up, and then took another cookie from the discarded tin. He looked at it for a moment, and then threw it back, making it break in to two crumbly pieces.
"Not in the mood for cookies."
"Me neither."
"Are you going to stop avoiding us all, then?" the younger brother asked, after a short pause
"Mm."
The younger man picked up the cookie tin again, and bit in to one, half-heartedly.
"Thought you said you weren't in the mood for cookies?"
"I'm not, but they'll only get eaten by Alan and Gordon, otherwise. Shame to waste them."
Again, the room passed in to silence, but this time, it was much more comfortable, as though the air had cleared after a storm. Scott shifted position, so that he was leaning against Virgil's shoulder, and felt his eyelids drooping.
"Thanks," he whispered.
"Hm?"
"For making me talk. For listening."
"That's what I'm here for, bro."
Scott smiled as he shut his eyes, unable to find the energy to go back to bed. Besides, Virgil's shoulder was just so comfy. . .
In the morning, when Jeff Tracy strode in to the room holding a mug of steaming coffee, he smiled when he noticed the two sleeping forms of his sons. They were curled up, half on and half off the sofa, as though each was trying to protect the other. Seeing the empty tin that Onaha used to keep cookies in on its side on the floor, Jeff walked over quietly, and picked it up. No need to upset Onaha. He wondered briefly what they were doing there, and then noticed the smashed glass on the other side of the room, and the empty bottles that still stood in the cabinet, and put two and two together. Good. They'd both needed to talk. Now, perhaps things would be able to return to normal. Smiling softly to himself, Jeff headed for his office.
No need to disturb the boys just yet. They'd earned their rest.