Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.
IRRelief fic, using louthestarspeaker's prompt "A brother scared of the dark. (Bonus points if you include Jeff or Grandma Tracy)"
Looking out from Thunderbird Five, John's favourite view was watching the sunrise wash across the surface of the Earth. He had pinpointing the exact moment dawn broke on Tracy Island down to an art, even without technology to guide him (EOS had expressed surprise that any human was capable of such a thing, even if it was him). Thanks to the nature of the atmosphere, wisps of cloud trailing across various parts of the planet at any given time, it was an ever-changing vista and one he could truly never tire of.
The other view rarely changed – at least, not without looking through a telescope for the subtle shifts. Beyond Earth, past the red spark that was Mars and further, further away in the reaches of space that not even Alan had managed to reach, were the stars. Hung in the sky like a curtain of diamonds, they were the steady, silent guardians of memories.
When John wanted to think about the here and now, or the future, he looked to Earth and the tiny speck that was Tracy Island, where his family belonged. When John wanted to reminisce, he looked to the stars.
A favourite memory of his, and one that had run through his mind many, many, many times since he took up residence of the satellite, was also one of his earlier ones. It was sometime back when he didn't have four brothers – he could never quite remember if it was before or after Gordon graced them with his loud, obnoxious presence, but he was fairly sure Virgil had at least graduated to throwing paint where it should go instead of the walls and lalalaing in some sort of vaguely-comprehensible melody (much to his younger self's distress; he hadn't come to appreciate Virgil's voice until some years later, but that was a different memory). He might have been five, maybe six if Gordon existed, but the only thing that really mattered about it was that Dad was there.
Dad wasn't always there during his childhood. Lee – Uncle Lee, back then – would come along and regale them all with outlandish stories before whisking him away for months at a time. Mom raised them by herself for much of the time, with Scott leaping in to help at any opportunity (for all that Scott tried to emulate Dad and asked 'what would Dad do', John vividly remembered his older brother being a Mommy's boy as a kid. Then again, they all had been, except Alan).
But Dad had been there, this time. Mom had been in bed, Scott had been… somewhere, either in bed or dealing with Virgil, John couldn't recall, and John's little nightlight had died.
John was scared of the dark. Always had been, and probably always would be. He didn't do rescues in dark, dingy places unless he had a guaranteed light source, and Thunderbird Five's lights never turned off. It was one of the things that made her so perfect for him.
Dad had come in, a sixth sense telling him his second son was in distress even as John muffled tears of terror in his blankets and hugged a then not-too-tatty teddy bear close to his chest (the tales of the teddy bear were, again, another story). Jeff Tracy wasn't good at the whole comforting-crying-children thing, and was always the first to admit it, but that night he'd scooped John straight out of bed, blankets, teddy and all, and carried him to the window.
That was a night sky John would never forget.
The stars had shone brightly, their little pocket of Kansas far enough away from the conurbations of light that there was nothing to curb their glow. Dad had known each constellation, pointing them out to him in turn and telling him the stories behind them until John's tears stopped and wonder overtook him.
In subsequent nights, the stars became his friends, Orion standing guard over his dreams with Canis Major loyally at his heels. It might not have been a cure, but it was a comfort.
"The stars will always be there," Dad had told him, when he'd worked up the courage to ask how long they'd guard him for. "You might not always see them, but they're always there."
Now, of course, John knew better. Stars were balls of gas and had a life cycle of their own. They weren't heroes there to guard him in the night, bravely chasing away the fear of the dark. But their little pinpricks of light still stopped the dark from being all-encompassing, and he found comfort in them just the same.
IRRelief is an amazing idea and bless Gumnut for coming up with it! For those that don't know, it's a collection of prompts anyone can add to and use on tumblr, with a focus on fluff, to give us something to do while we're stuck indoors. Full details are on tumblr under the tags #irrelief and #irrelief2020
Thanks for reading!
Tsari