Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.

Characters: John, Scott (mentioned). Rating: T. Warnings: None

Drabble challenge from JanetM74: "Stabbed and Space Ship" with John.

Thunderbird Three. Of all the Thunderbirds, John privately thought that the big red rocket was their father's favourite. The TV-21 might have been his pride and joy, but the freedom to blast off into space, go wherever he wanted, see whatever he wanted… Jeff Tracy was a Colonel, a pilot, but he was also an astronaut, and once you were an astronaut, you were always an astronaut.

John couldn't imagine leaving space for the final time, stumbling back into Earth, with all its gravity and noise and people and knowing that he'd never leave again. Trapped.

It was bad enough that he was currently based on Earth, Alan still too young to take up the mantle no matter how much he tried the puppy dog eyes on Scott. Still too young to realise that the puppy dog eyes weren't always the way to get biggest brother wrapped around your little finger, and that while it might get him anything else from Scott, it wouldn't get him a red rocket. Alan's puppy dog eyes reminded Scott how young he was. How young they all were.

John remembered the arguments when Gordon forced his way in, fresh out of rehab and determined to make a difference with what was left of his life. Clashing with Scott, who wanted nothing more than to bundle him up in cotton wool and keep him safe, despite being the one that supported him into WASP in the first place. Or maybe because of it, some big brother guilt at play, because Scott was all too good at that.

That big brother guilt was going to make an appearance again very soon. John hadn't wanted to leave Five to pilot Three until Alan was ready. Had suggested Kayo, Scott himself, but Kayo was too young (her snarls when Gordon had barged his way into IR and she'd been left behind were one of the most terrifying noises John had ever heard - Scott in all his fearlessness had turned his back and walked away) and Scott couldn't leave Alan. Couldn't leave Gordon, couldn't quite put enough trust into Virgil because no matter how reliable he was, he was still a younger brother, young enough to be Protected, rather than Protector.

John was the only one he trusted to launch into space. John was the best and a compliment like that from Scott wasn't supposed to hurt so much. But it had, and it did, because it meant Dad's gone but also because it was an excuse.

Scott couldn't go because the last time he'd left them, head held high and proud, he'd come back broken. It had nothing to do with them, and everything to do with whatever he'd never said about Bereznik. About being alone. Scott smothered them not because they needed it, but because if he didn't aggressively keep them all under his wing, he'd shatter.

So here John was. The sacrifice, to keep his big brother together and Dad's dream alive, and he'd never felt more like one than now, because there was a knife through his suit and he was curled up in the zero-g of Thunderbird Three's cockpit, gasping for air after grappling his way back through the vacuum with a compromised suit and the age-old warning don't hold your breath or your lungs'll explode running through his head.

Alone. Scott on that blue and green marble, because he couldn't bring himself to leave the rest of his brothers so far behind, out of reach. Blood running down his leg, mission absolutely failed because he wasn't rescuing knife-wielding madmen who wanted him dead and hitting his family with another tragedy.

Scott was going to be beside himself. He might even pull out of space rescues, trap John on Earth where it was safe. John couldn't let that happen, couldn't imagine living out the rest of his life on that marble of gravity and noise and crowds.

But what was his alternative? Bleed to death out here? All alone, disappearing just like Dad because Thunderbird Three was their only space rocket? A space burial didn't sound so bad, never trapped on Earth ever again, and maybe one day John would choose that, but not today.

He grit his teeth, fastened a tourniquet around his leg, and dragged himself into the pilot seat to go home. Home, to a frantically terrified big brother who still needed him.

John in the firing line this time! And more knife prompts headed my way, as though Jane and Nutty don't know better than that...

Anyway… there was a stabbed? And a space ship? I have no idea what else this thing is doing through, and how it managed to end up kinda Scott-centric when he doesn't even appear once? Actually, this seems a little like my fic Phobos, maybe.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari