Wow! Chapter Ten! The first time any of my stories have reached double digit chapters! :) Thank you so much for your support and reviews, and for favouriting and following me! It wouldn't be any fun without you guys!
Okay, warning time. To celebrate my double digit chapter there is extra angst. Tissues are probably required here, sorry in advance. I don't quite know where this came from.
Alan blinked. He was back sitting on the beach with Tin and Fermat, and entirely uncertain as to had he had got there from the other 'future'.
"Do you understand now?" Tin Tin asked.
Alan could see the cracks in the illusion. He nodded. He carefully climbed to his feet.
"C'mon." He said.
The three walked back to the villa where Tin Tin immediately loaded up the security footage. Alan watched. This series of events was in keeping with the way he remembered things. He was conscious of the way Tin Tin was staring at him. He could feel her urging him on to work it out. He got the feeling that he was still missing something but couldn't put his finger on what. He took the keyboard from Tin Tin and loaded up the footage from Thunderbird Five.
The footage was similar but the conversation continued past what it had in the other 'future'. Alan forced his strung out stomach to cooperate. He wasn't sure whether this was on the other footage and he hadn't stayed long enough to watch it or if that it had stopped at that point. Alan could taste the bile in the back of his throat.
"All that matters is that he will grow up. At least he isn't up here too." John said quietly wiping a stray tear.
There was a few minutes silence.
"Do you remember when he was a kid and used to cling on to us like a limpet?" John eventually said.
"I'd forgotten all about that!" Gordon said smiling.
"Well you were still pretty young too, Gordo." Virgil said with a laugh.
"I remember that he used to come in and curl up on the end of your bed when he had a nightmare." Scott said looking at Gordon.
"Yeah, and then I had to coerce him into actually lying alongside me." Gordon said smiling although his voice cracked. "He only grew out of it a couple of years ago. He stopped doing it after my accident."
Scott and Gordon exchanged fond glances. John stared at his feet and Virgil the ceiling.
"What?" Gordon asked looking between them.
"He stopped curling up on your bed because he was scared he would hurt you. He started sleeping on my bed." John said quietly. "He begged me not to tell you. He thought it would hurt your feelings. Besides, he had bruises from where you were such a fidgety sleeper."
"Well, what about when you are up here?" Scott asked.
John looked at Virgil.
"For ages I didn't even realise that kid was doing it." Admitted the heavy sleeper. "He always left before I woke up. I had a nightmare and woke up and there he was curled up but wide awake at the foot of my bed. He told me that he was scared of being alone."
There was a hard silence at that, where the tension was so thick that you could have cut it with that pipe wrench.
"The Kyranos and Hackenbackers will look after him." Jeff said. "And I made arrangements that Lady P would be his legal guardian if something happened to all of us."
There was a second of quiet before Gordon giggled. The sound was so unusual coming from the Olympian that the rest of the family just stared.
"Well Ferm and Alan are roommates right? So, Alan is probably comfortable enough with Fermat being there, but somehow I can't picture Alan curling up at the end of Fermat's bed." The rest of the family also smiled at that mental image. "Nor is he likely to curl up on the end of Brain's bed and not a chance in hell is he going to sleep on Onaha and Kyrano's bed."
John outright snorted at that.
"So, you're thinking that Alan is going sneak to Tin's room!" Scott finished laughing.
"Well, until Kyrano finds out about it." Virgil said.
"The Sprout's fast but do you reckon he could out run Kyrano?" Gordon said laughing.
There was nothing but laughter for several seconds. Before the conversation could continue there was a shrill beeping that lasted for 30 seconds. The brothers all looked at John.
"That was the oxygen alarm." He said sighing. "That's it now. The only oxygen we have is now in the room."
There was a sombre silence.
"I miss watching you try and wrestle him into having a bath, back when he was three." Virgil said trying to keep the conversation light.
"Yeah, thank god when he got to an age where he could bathe himself!" Scott said smiling.
The conversation continued in this vain for several minutes.
Each Tracy mentioned their favourite memory of their youngest which brought about much laughter with the renewal of old or forgotten memories. This in turn brought other memories to light.
Each Tracy seemed to find it easier that way. There was no more mention of the things that they wouldn't live to see but the despair was kept at bay by reminding themselves of the joys of their close knit family.
No one noticed John slowly drift into the land of sleep.
"When he used to deliberately hide out when we were shopping in department stores!" Scott said in frustration. "The little bugger would be wetting his pants with laughter watching us tear around the store looking for him! All I could think was that he couldn't talk and if he had been snatched he wouldn't be able to say anything! And then we would find him hyperventilating with laughter."
Virgil and Gordon laughed.
"John?" Jeff asked noticing his quiet.
Virgil pushed himself off the floor and walked over to John. He shook his brother gently and then checked his pulse. After several seconds he withdrew his hand and shook his head. He took out a foil blanket from his med kit and gently tucked his brother in.
"Sleep well, Johnny. Dream of the stars." He said his voice breaking as tears streamed down his face.
Each of the others stepped forward and kissed John's forehead, which was gradually becoming cold despite the ever rising temperature in the satellite.
The conversation was continued but seemed a bit more forced. One by one each of the brothers fell asleep until only Jeff was still alive. Nobody would see him tuck each of his precious children in, brush the hair back from their foreheads and kiss their hot brows.
"Sleep well. I love you." He told each of them quietly. "I'll see you on the other side."
The Tracy patriarch forced the blinds on one of the windows open and stared at the stars. Suddenly he jumped and spun around.
"Lucy." He all but whispered stretching out a hand towards something that only he could see. "Finally. I missed you. I knew you would find me."
His eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed onto the floor with a hollow thud.
Not even thirty seconds after that:
"Thunderbird Five, come in."
So there we go. Please review! I like knowing what you guys think! :)