Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.

Post-episode tag for 1.13 "Heavy Metal"

"Are you okay?"

Scott shouldn't have jumped, should have expected this, but with everything else that had happened, the inevitable cornering had slipped his mind.

"I'm fine," he said, turning his head away from where he'd been staring at Thunderbird One as she refuelled to look at his approaching brother. He knew why Virgil was asking, but that didn't make him any more willing to talk about it.

"Uh huh." The disbelief was blatant as his younger brother came to stand next to him. "Want to try that again?"

No, he didn't. "Alan's hiding from Gordon," he said instead, and Virgil snorted.

"Not that it'll do him any good," he said. "Gordon knows as well as the rest of us he'll have to come out again eventually."

That was true. Scott had already seen the booby traps rigged around the youngest's bedroom door; Gordon hadn't taken lightly to being informed he'd shrunk. He'd been yammering on about it the entire flight home, to the point Scott had been tempted to mute the comms.

Gordon was also more worried about his 'bird than performing a stake-out, and after setting up the apparently-required ambush for his sole younger brother had relocated to the hangar to fuss over her with Brains until they were satisfied there was no damage from her little out-of-water adventure.

"Have you spoken to Alan yet?"

Virgil wasn't going to let it go, was he? Scott saw the new angle of attack and reformulated his defences accordingly.

"Of course I have," he said. "You know that." Virgil had been there; the question was entirely redundant except as a segue back around to the thing Virgil really wanted to talk about.

And the thing Scott would rather not.

"He's a good kid," he continued, knowing that if he let the pause linger long enough, Virgil would take that as permission to pounce. "Spending time at the collider was good for him."

"Today was terrifying for him," Virgil corrected, and Scott winced, realising that the bear had sunk he claws into the topic and would not be letting go again so easily. "You know he thought you were going to die." He did; they'd had that conversation already.

"Rescues are dangerous," Scott reminded Virgil, a last ditch attempt to fend his brother off. "That's not uncommon. It wasn't long ago that he had to rescue John after EOS'… misunderstanding." Just the memory of that made him go cold. Seeing John so lifeless, the responsibility for his survival entirely on Alan's shoulders…

Virgil chose that moment to rest a heavy, warm, hand on his shoulder. It was reassuring, pulling him out of that mental spiral before he could fall too far, but it also told him there would be no more dodging the question.

"You thought you were going to die." It was an observation, not a question. Virgil knew him too well not to have seen the signs.

"I trusted Alan," he retorted, one final attempt at avoiding admitting it.

"I know," Virgil agreed. The hand squeezed his shoulder. "You still took far too long to come back."

Scott didn't need to ask to know he'd checked the flight path. It was true; after escaping the almost certain death of the gravity well, it had taken him a moment or two to get his head back on straight. At the speeds he'd been travelling after the slingshot manoeuvre, he'd ended up halfway home – somewhere in India's airspace – before having the presence of mind to land on an abandoned airstrip and take a moment's breather.

The adrenaline crash after realising he hadn't died after all had been immense. It wasn't the first time – he'd faced life and death situations several times, and more than once they'd sent him reeling in the aftermath, once reality set in – but repeating the experience didn't make it less impactful.

"Scott?"

He'd been silent too long, it seemed. With a sigh, he turned his head back to face Thunderbird One.

"Yeah," he admitted quietly. "But I made it in time."

It had been the cry over the comms – Virgil's cry over the comms – about Thunderbird Two being caught that had knocked him back to reality. Told him where he was needed, where the red nose of his girl should be pointing as he punched it.

Virgil still wasn't satisfied, but Scott didn't want this conversation, wanted to shove the experience in a little box and pretend it never happened. He slid his arm around his brother's shoulders, pulling him into his hold gently, and felt powerful muscles lose some of the tension thrumming through them.

"I'm okay," he promised. Virgil sighed, and he amended the sentence. "I'll be okay."

His brother leaned into his side a little more; Alan wasn't the only little brother that had been terrified, and Scott pulled him tighter. Silence settled in the hangar as the conversation lulled.

There was nothing else to say; Scott had almost finished compartmentalising it and was quite content to shut the lid on that particular box and never worry about it again – and despite his coaxing, Virgil knew that.

Still, Scott mentally resigned himself to a few days of being watched more closely, until his brother was truly satisfied that he was as okay as he claimed. That was just how Virgil was, and no matter how much he said it wasn't necessary, he couldn't imagine things any differently.

He didn't want to.

Day Four of Earth&Sky Week on tumblr, using the prompt 'Unseen scene' aka a missing moment from an episode. Heavy Metal is my favourite episode, and the Alan&Scott moment is one of my favourite bits, so of course I played with it a bit for this!

Thanks for reading!
Tsari