It's finally Tuesday and as promised here is the final part of Hero.

Many thanks to you all who read to story up to the end, double thanks to all those who reviewed and triple thanks to my beta, she knows who she is, who gave me some important pointers. And in case some mistakes where left behind, those are and always will be mine, unlike the characters in this story *sigh*

Lastly I wanted to mention (just in case) that I am neither a doctor or psychologist so I don't know John's condition is completely accurate, but I did base it off some things I've read about in the past.

Now: Enjoy!

When Scott woke, the first beams of daylight had already entered the room. If he hadn't been so confused as of where he was at first, he might have worried whether his father would kill him for leaving the house at night. Or most importantly: for not coming back.

His younger brothers were all still asleep in the same positions they had been in the night before. Scott was stiff from holding Alan, but didn't dare move in fear of waking the young boy.

John's eyes were open, though, making Scott wonder whether he had even closed them at all that night. Instead of out of the window, however, John was now staring downwards at Gordon, while stroking his red hair.

For a small moment, his nightmares of that night still fresh in his memories, Scott didn't notice. When he did, he suddenly got afraid he was imagining it, getting his hopes up for no reason.

Then, when John turned his head and their eyes locked, Scott let relieve flood him.

John's eyes contained life again. Not as much as they had before, but it was a great improvement against the all but dead stare from last night.

"John." He actually wanted to call out in happiness, but didn't get further than a soft sob.

"Hey." John replied. He sounded a little hesitant.

There was a little silence between them.

"Did he try to wake me up with the notebook?" John then asked, making the smallest gesture towards it, this way risking waking his little brothers with his movements.

"Yeah." Scott answered, not knowing what else to do in a situation like this. "He stole it back from the police."

"Oh."

"How are you feeling?" Scott whispered, before another silence could fall between them.

John shrugged. "Better, I think…"

Scott carefully waited for John to elaborate. His immediate younger brothers introvert personality made it so that the blond was easily over-screamed by his brothers, but if you gave him the chance to talk, he usually would. Whether you would be able to follow what he said, however, was another question.

"It's just… from the moment we pulled up again at school… everything went kind of mute. Which was a good thing, at first." John broke the eye contact en directed his attention back to stroking Gordon's hair. "I still did what the guy wanted me to do, but didn't feel scared anymore… I don't think I felt anything anymore. Then there was the… gunfight?... and it got even worse. It was like… I wasn't even there anymore. I remember… the kidnapper… using me as a hostage… to keep the police away, but…"

There was a short silence as Gordon stirred. Scott tried to hide how the way John was talking right now scared him. John always spoke in facts and the full sentences that came with them. Now he was speaking in broken ones, with a lot of pauses, not really thinking before he spoke. It was so unlike his oldest blond brother that it almost made him shiver. But he couldn't give in to that. John needed him now. And he needed his brother.

"I guess I really didn't care anymore. I mean… I think he placed a gun to my head, but it didn't matter to me whether I lived or died…" John continued when he was sure none of the kids had woken up and was therefor listening in. "I remember falling… and then voices… a lot of voices. They were screaming… and then talking to me. I heard them, but I couldn't really listen. Just like I saw, but couldn't really see either… I think it was like this mission-accomplished thing. I mean… Gordon was safe, so it didn't really matter what happened afterwards, right?"

"You matter to us too, John." Scott interrupted, though it wasn't really interrupting, since John had asked him a question. It only felt like that.

"I know." John said, still not looking up from his baby brother. "But Gordon mattered more to me."

There was nothing Scott could say to that. He always tended to put his brothers before himself as well.

"Was that what you meant, when you said you were being affected last time?"

"You heard?" Scott asked in surprise.

"Yeah."

Scott waited for an explanation, but when it became clear he wasn't getting one he countered with another question. "How much?"

John kept looking down. "All of it. It's like I told you… I heard, but I wasn't listening… But I do remember… I think my brain just stored it away something…"

"What else did you hear?"

"Dad, I think. And grandma. They tried to be strong all the time. They talked to me sometimes, …but mostly just sat with me after the first day. The doctors were the same…" John looked up for the first time in minutes. "Then I heard you. You all cried… that was the first thing that I actually heard… I think. Even you were crying. You never cry… So I had to come back, to protect you. It was just a lot harder than I thought…"

Scott felt his eyes water again. "I'm supposed to protect you…"

"The oldest protects the younger." John gave him a small smile that came close to the cheeky one he usually got, when he was about to correct someone or get the upper hand in a discussion. "You don't have an older brother, so that task falls to me."

"It shouldn't…"

"But it does." John cut him off. "And I can't leave it to Virgil yet."

A few seconds went by.

"You didn't answer my question."

"No." Scott shook his head. "It wasn't like that. I mean… I never got you away from them. We were taken and found together. I never 'accomplished' my mission."

"Was court really that bad?"

"It was the lawyers, mostly. The ones from the OM were nice. They gave me time to think about my answers and everything. The Defence… they asked trick questions and tried to make everyone think I was just a kid who was to young to testify. They made me doubt myself."

"Do you think I'll have to testify?"

Scott swallowed. This was a question he didn't want to answer, but he still did anyway. "I don't think there will be a trial."

"I know." John nodded. "I remember hearing the police talking too."

"I…"

"Scotty?" John sounded scared, younger than he had in years. "I don't think I'm okay this time…"

"Oh, Johnny." This time Scott didn't care if he woke his brothers. He got up, carefully placed Alan on the chair they had first shared, and hugged the younger boy as he started crying. He then whispered comforting words in his brother's ear.

Surprisingly, the younger three slept through the whole ordeal. It was only when John had stopped crying that Gordon started trashing around, like he always did before he woke. Scott untangled himself from John and settled on the side of the bed, only inches away from Virgil's head.

Gordon looked up and blinked his big eyes at John. "Johnny? That you?"

The tears on John's face hadn't entirely dried yet, but he put on a smile nonetheless. "Yeah, kiddo, it's me."

"Okay." The redhead mumbled, before snuggling back up to John again.

His older brothers chuckled. Same old Gordon.

Gordon's head shot back up in a second. "John!"

John gave him something closer to his signature grin, as he hugged the boy close. "Took you long enough."

"It worked! You're back! I told Alan it would work! Didn't I, Allie?" He looked around him to find his brother sleeping on the chair. "Alan!"

Virgil was the first to wake though. Gordon's screaming wasn't easy to sleep through. He was quick to realise the change in atmosphere too.

"John?" He asked, hope in his eyes.

"Hey Virge." John replied, as he was suddenly hugged from two sides now.

Alan was fully awake now too and trying to climb onto the bed, with little success due to his haste to get up there. Laughing, Scott lifted the pre-schooler to reach his objective; join into the group hug.

"Scotty!" Alan called out annoyed when Scott stood there watching his brothers hug with a smile on his face. "It's not a brother-hug without you!"

Virgil was the one to pull him in.

Scott didn't know how long they stayed that way, but it was Gordon who ended it, wiggling out of his brothers arms to tell John all about their nightly adventure.

"So you sneaked out?" John confirmed after a while. "Without dad, or Grandma, noticing? Then you got onto a bus and sneaked into the hospital, evading the nurses?"

"Uh-hu." Gordon nodded, a proud smile on his face.

John turned towards Scott. "You know it's after eight, right?"

Scott froze on the spot. And so did Virgil. Grandma always woke them for school at seven.

Scott cursed, was reprimanded by four different voices, and then cursed again.

Before he figured out what to do next, the door opened and his father and grandmother came running in.

They both breathed a sigh of relieve when they spotted the boys.

"Boys…" Their father panted, then the relief on his face was replaced with anger. "Do you have any idea what your grandmother and I…!"

"Hi dad."

"John…" Jeff Tracy breathed. It only took those two little words to make Jeff Tracy forget all about the lecture he had spent an entire car ride preparing for his sons. He all but ran up to his son and wrapped him in a strong hug. Grandma wasn't far behind.

Another unforgettable scene played out before Scott eyes and he made sure to picture it before joining in as well. Grandma and Jeff were hugging John, both from another side of the bed. Gordon was sandwiched between John and his father, protesting as hard as he could to avoid being squeezed. Alan was hanging on his grandmother's legs, his eyes closed and a happy smile on his face. Virgil, who had been sitting at Johns feet when the adults had come was now purged between the bodies his father and grandfather, almost making John disappear from view.

Once again Gordon was the one to break the silence, because he just had to tell the adults how he had healed John. The others let him.

Jeff even asked the doctors and nurses to stay away for a while, as they wanted to enjoy their time together a little longer. After all, their family was once again complete. As complete as possible anyway. But their mother was always with them in some way.

A little after nine, it became apparent how tired Alan actually was, so Grandma took him home to put him in bed. At that moment they also couldn't hold the doctors any longer and John was subjected to some tests. Scott, Virgil and Gordon were allowed to stay with him, but only until Jeff was done talking to the doctors and had filled in some forms. Virgil, who had always been interested in the medical side of things, had gone with their father, leaving Scott and Gordon alone with a very tired John, up until two nurses came to kick them out.

"I don't want to go." Gordon pouted. "I want to stay here with Johnny."

"Come on, kiddo." The first nurse told the redhead. "Your brother really needs to rest. He's still very weak."

"My brother is not weak." Gordon yelled out indignantly. "I healed him. He's a superhero."

"Why don't you tell me all about it?" She suggested cleverly, obviously knowing her way around stubborn children, using the distraction to lead him out of the room. "I'll bring you to your father and we'll talk on the way there, okay?"

"Okay." Gordon beamed happily, walking with her. "You see, he's got these superpowers. He can read you mind and stuff. He really can. He read my mind a few times. It's because he's actually half alien. He's the only one in our family who is. The rest of us don't have superpowers. Though Johnny says Scotty has big brother powers. But those are lame. They're so lame that when you would have a vote on the lamest powers in the entire world he would…"

When they could no longer hear Gordon's happy chatter in the hallway, the other nurse turned to Scott. "You too, young man."

Scott looked over to John, who was now fast asleep, reluctant to leave him by himself.

The nurse sighed. She seemed to be tired, making Scott wonder whether she had been part of the night shift. "So, what's your excuse going to be? Sure you're old enough to know your brother is not some kind of superhero…"

Scott, however, didn't laugh at the joke, like she might have expected him too.

"He saved our world." Scott told her, just before he turned to exit the room. "He is my hero."

The End.

Well, that was it. I hoped you enjoyed the story. I've never dared to ask before, but don't be afraid to tell me what you thought. I've really come to love reviews!

My beta pointed out I kind of left it at an open ending. I like to imagine the worst is over for John now and he will recover, although probably not as fast as he would have liked to. I'm not planning on writing a sequel however. I didn't have ideas on it as of yet and a sequel written just for it to be sequel usually turns out bad.

Also, I have too many other ideas lined up to work out. I have two stories almost finished, but they are very very different from each other. And I can't decide which one to finish first. I might just finish them both and cross-post them. That will take some time longer however.

Also, Also, school is starting again next week, severely limiting my writing time. Not that that ever stopped me though…

Anyway, hopefully I'll see you in another story :)

Greetings,

BiSi Louise.