It was a long night. There was little sleep to be had on the island and Gordon was no exception to that. Time ticked on and on, seconds dragging out into centuries. The bedcovers were too heavy; the mattress felt like it was filled with rocks. Worst of all, the air was too thick to breathe, too hot and sweat-soaked.
Shoving the blankets aside, Gordon flung his feet around and planted them on the smooth floor. The wood was clammy beneath his feet.
He reached for his watch.
"Matt, are you awake?" he asked.
Within a few seconds, the other redhead's face appeared.
"Yeah, I'm awake."
The brightness of the watch face made a halo around Matthew's head. Sharp spirals of curls jutted out in all directions, suggesting that he had tried to sleep – but like Gordon, it had eluded him. There were dark crescent moons below his eyes.
"Mind if I call down?" Gordon asked. "I can't sleep."
"C'mon on down," Matthew said, his curious vernacular slipping through again. "I can't get a wink of sleep, either."
"Be there in five."
At that, Gordon clicked off the comm. and grabbed a nearby robe.
He was there in four.
When Matthew opened the door, Gordon reached out and drew him into a tight hug. The coolness of the night breeze blew around them, cooling the sweat of worry and fear. Matthew's freckled arms encircled Gordon's waist and for a moment they simply existed with one another, imbibing each other's strength.
After a while, they crept into the apartment and sank onto the couch, lying in a pile. It was some time before either of them spoke.
When Matthew did, his tone was softer than Gordon had ever heard it before. Usually, the extrovert twin was loud – sometimes even brash – and always seemed to have a mischievous glint in his eye. Now, though, he had his knees drawn up to his chin and was staring at the rug. His words were barely audible.
"I don't know what to do, Gordon," he said.
Shifting a little, Gordon leaned in and placed a hand on Matthew's shoulder.
"Neither do I. I don't know how we can even start to look for them."
Matthew turned, his green eyes liquid.
"That's not even what I mean," he said. There was a waver in his voice. "I just… We've always been together. Always. Even growing up the way we did, we were never apart. And now… I feel…" Gordon waited, though he knew how the sentence would end before the word was spoken: "lost."
It was as though a dam had broken. Not only did tears begin to slip down Matthew's pale cheeks, but words started tumbling out of his mouth like a maelstrom of emotion. Gordon held fast and rode the waves.
"I mean, people look at us and they think, 'Yeah, Matt's the strong one,'" Matthew said, sniffling. "They look at us and think that I'm the one who keeps us together. I'm the one who brings Eli out of himself. I'm the one who opens my fat trap and yammers on and on until people forget Eli is there so he can slip away, 'cuz he doesn't like crowds and people and stuff. And in some ways, that's true."
Matthew sat up, eyes blazing.
"But you know what? I'm nothing without him. Nothing. Eli is the one person who has always been here for me, no matter what I did. When I lashed out at school, he never judged me for it. He just listened to me and what I had to say. He's always been like a sponge, soaking up all my…vitriol and taking it away. Cleaning me up and standing me back on my feet and saying, 'It's okay. It's a new day today and you can start again.'
"When I ran away from home a thousand times? He was always there. He always went out to look for me – and…" His voice caught on a ragged edge of sorrow. Fat drops fell onto the couch leather. "And… What did he get for it? Nine years old and destroyed by one selfish bastard – make that two, because sure as hell, it was my fault!"
"Oh, Matt, no," Gordon said, reaching out to tilt Matthew's chin back up again. "You can't blame yourself for that."
"But if I hadn't run off, he wouldn't have –"
"No." Gordon surprised even himself with the firmness of his tone. "You can't blame yourself for the actions of other people. You had your own stuff going on and that's why you were running. Someone took advantage of Eli but that someone wasn't you. It. Wasn't. You."
At some point, his hands had made their way onto Matthew's face. Around his fingertips, Matt's skin was growing milky.
"I know," Matthew said, bringing his hands up to rest on top of Gordon's. "I know, but it still feels like it was my fault. Like all of everything ever is my fault."
Gordon leaned in and pressed his forehead to Matthew's.
"Well, you're wrong," he said.
Chuckling and sniffing against the last few tears, Matt closed his eyes.
"Yeah," he said. "But I still don't know what to do without Eli. I've got this horrible...burning sensation in the pit of my stomach. I just wish there was something I could do. Like, where are they? Where can they be?"
"I don't know," Gordon said, his voice soft. Too many memories of John's first disappearance were flooding back. "I just… I wish there had been something in the water – some scrap of a clue, even a solitary piece of debris that would have confirmed they went down. But there was nothing at all."
He had replayed the search over and over in his mind, reaching into the depths of his memory to see if something would flicker like light in the darkness, something perhaps that he had missed.
"W.A.S.P. confirmed that nothing went down in the area," he continued, sitting back. "But there's something strange about their whole involvement in this, anyway. They're not normally as territorial. Plenty of times before they've let me nose around a site where they're working. When the weird plane went down, I thought they were going to fire on us! And now this…"
Matthew reached up to run a thumb over the patches where Gordon's fingertips had been. He shook his head.
"I just… I hope that wherever they are – and they are somewhere, I know it – that they're okay. Eli and John and Lyra. They've got to be."
"Yeah," Gordon whispered. "They've just got to be."
~oOo~
It seemed to take an eternity for the room to swirl into focus. In fact, it never did. And then he remembered. Glasses.
Reaching out for the nightstand, John groped for his spectacles. But the nightstand wasn't there.
And he froze.
What the hell?
This was not his room. This was not his bed. He didn't even need eyes to sense that this was not his home.
"You're awake," a voice said.
Something broad and red and black swirled before him. John blinked a few times, trying to force his damaged eyes to focus – but to no avail. There was something familiar about the timbre of that voice, deep and soft but with an edge of authority. And yet it wasn't quite the same.
"Where am I?" John asked, sitting up.
The blanket fell away and as he moved, an almighty crack of pain seared through his ribs – and he couldn't help but cry out. It felt like he was on fire.
There were hands on him then, calloused and yet gentle, urging him to lie back down again.
"Easy now, easy," the voice said. "Just lie back. You've got several cracked ribs and a few broken fingers." The man chuckled and again, the sound was so familiar. "All in all, I think you got off pretty lightly after taking a nose dive in that bucket of bolts."
Bucket of bolts? John thought. But then more pressing matters threw themselves to the front of his mind and he tried to rise again.
"Where's Lyra?" he asked. "Where's my daughter? And Eli? Where is he?"
"Shh, now," the man said, settling him back in the bed again. "They're here. Your daughter's sleeping and Elijah… I assume that's the other gentleman here? He's still out. He's got a broken arm and a lot of bruising but his vitals are good. He'll come around."
His rising panic quelled a little, John didn't try to rise again. The throbbing of his ribs and his head kept time to his growing confusion.
"Where am I?" he asked again. "You sound familiar but… I don't think we've ever met."
The man chuckled.
"No, we haven't," he said. "But I feel as if I know you."
"And I feel like I know you…" John squinted his blurry eyes. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were my brother Virgil – with dyed hair and a new wardrobe." He reached out to grasp the man's sleeve. "Is that flannel?"
Chuckling, the other man brought his arm closer so John could confirm his suspicions about the material.
"Yeah, it is," he said. "Funny, your daughter mentioned about the hair colour, too."
John withdrew his hand. His brows knotted together.
"What did she say?"
"She said I looked like her Uncle Virgil," the man said. His tone softened. "I take that as a compliment."
"It is one," John said, recalling his brother's soft brown eyes. Then he tried to seek out the eyes of the man in front of him – but they were lost in the swirl of his vision. "Who are you? And for the third time, where am I?"
There was a pause, slow and deliberate. Then the man spoke again.
"I don't know how much I should or shouldn't tell you," he said. Then he chuckled, a deep rumble that struck a chord deep within John's chest. "Then again, I guess you shouldn't know less than your daughter."
"Just tell me," John ground out, trying to sit up again but relenting at the knives in his chest.
"Well," the man said. "I have to tell you that my name is Virgil Tracy – and you're the spitting image of my brother John."
"What?" John reached up to poke a finger into his ear, because that could not have been what the man actually said. "Would you mind repeating yourself? I think I heard you wrong."
Chuckling again, this time the sound softer, the man nodded.
"You heard me right," he said. "My name is Virgil – and my brothers are Gordon, Scott, Alan and John. Just like your name is John, and you have the same brothers - or so your daughter tells us. She's a cute kid."
Had he been a lesser person, John might have swooned then. It occurred to him that it would have been the easier option – to fall unconscious, to refuse delivery of the impossible words that were coming at him like bullets.
But John Tracy hadn't been through hell in a handbasket twice just to faint away at the first sign of the impossible. Instead, he sat up in spite of the pain – and reached out a bandaged hand.
Ribs screaming, he settled his splinted fingers on the blurry face in front of him. The man – Virgil – stiffened at his touch but didn't draw away. John passed his hands over the smooth plains of the man's face, ran his finger over the sharp cheekbone, and traced the strong line of his jaw. The chord struck louder in John's chest.
"Virgil?" he whispered.
"Yeah," Virgil said, "I guess so. Sort of." He brought his hand up to rest on top of John's spindly fingers. "I don't really know what's going on. None of us do. We were hoping that you might be able to shed some light on the subject. Lyra's been pretty good but there are a lot of details that she just can't fill in – not that she isn't a smart kid."
John drew his hand back and nodded.
"She is," he said.
Virgil – or at least, the man who claimed to be Virgil – cleared his throat and sat forward.
"Not to ask too personal a question, but I guess I have to. May I ask, are you blind? Because you don't seem to be able to see me very well."
Letting out a sharp laugh, John shook his head.
"No, I'm not blind. But my eyesight was badly damaged in an…uh, accident, several years ago. I need glasses to see properly but I assume they were lost in the crash. We did crash, right? I… I don't really remember much."
Virgil leaned forward and laid a hand on John's shoulder for a moment.
"Don't worry," he said. "I'm sure Brains can whip you up a new pair of specs with his fabricator – goodness knows how many times he's had to do that for himself."
"Brains?" John asked. "There's a Brains here, too?"
"The one and only," Virgil said. Then he grunted. "Or not the one and only, as it seems."
When he withdrew his hand, John couldn't help but feel a little bereft. The blur looked a bit like Virgil – and the face certainly felt like Virgil's. There was an undying tenderness in the man's touch that was absolutely reminiscent of his brother's hands.
"I'll go and see what he can do. He'll need to take a scan of your eyes, I'd say. Or something like that. He'll know." The blur stood. "Will you be okay here until I come back?"
John nodded, feeling a lump grow in his throat.
"Yes," he said. "May I see my daughter? I just… I need to see her."
"Oh course," Virgil said. "I'll bring her back with me – if she's awake, that is."
"Thank you."
As Virgil disappeared, John turned his head to the right to take in the sight of the redheaded blob lying in the bed across from his.
"Eli," he whispered, reaching out into the empty air between them. "Wake up, please. I need you to help me figure out what the hell is going on here…"
