There'd been so much chaos. So much running and fighting and…and then they'd decided to just give themselves up to The Hood's minions, because this version of International Rescue still worked on a secret-identity basis. So, they had to let The Hood get off the island. Other-Alan hadn't been happy about that, but The Hood hadn't killed any of them so…
So, they had had a chance to stop him.
And there'd been more chaos. More running. Flying. Rescuing. And…and, Alan's ribs hurt from where he'd been flung into a pillar. He'd caught Other-Alan and kept the younger version of himself from hitting the concrete; he had armor plating on his uniform, it kept him in mostly one piece. Bruises instead of broken bones.
He hadn't been much help against The Hood's mental powers. One flash of red eyes and he'd been down on the ground of the bank, his head splitting with pain. People from his world seemed to have no immunity to psychic attacks and blah blah blah, The Hood liked to monologue even when no one wanted to hear him talk.
Somehow, though, they were now in this situation. Where they'd—he and the Alan of this world—had been precariously hanging from a catwalk over an active Mole (which wasn't a Pod in this world? He didn't know how things worked here, really), and Tin-Tin had done her own psychic thing and now The Hood was the one dangling from the catwalk and Other-Alan was looking at him like he had all the answers.
"Your call, kid," Alan murmured, because, honestly, he couldn't care less if The Hood was killed. His eyes were trained on his brother, locked in the bank cell with Jeff and Penny. He hadn't moved since they had entered the room, sprawled where he'd been dropped by one of The Hood's minions.
"I don't want to save you," he heard Other-Alan say, and he dropped his eyes to the younger version of himself. "But it's what we do."
"You're a better man than me, then," Alan muttered with a distracted frown.
With a sigh, Alan helped Other-Alan pull The Hood out of the way of the Mole's drill. And Tin-Tin was running across the room to shut the machine down, and the Scott of this world, along with Other-Parker and Fermat were suddenly there. And it was chaos again.
Alan stopped in front of the vault door, eyeing the lock and then rolling his eyes. It was easy enough; John and Parker had both taught him how to handle these kinds of locks. And in a matter of moments, the door was swinging open and both he and Other-Alan were running in. Other-Alan, of course, was heading to give his father a relieved hug, but Alan headed straight for his brother.
Virgil still wasn't moving.
Alan bit back his panic, sucking in a breath and dropping to his knees. This was a rescue. Forget the fact that it was his big brother. Forget the fact that he wasn't even in his home world. Forget the fact that part of his brain had been screaming hysterically for the past what, four hours? This was a rescue, and he could handle rescues.
The computer on Alan's wrist was still connected to Virgil's suit, technically, so he didn't need to attach a bio-scanner to read his vitals. He just…pulled them up. The red was worrying, but it was mostly located around the broken arm, which Alan was already working to stabilize. The break wasn't the best, but according to the scans, it was clean enough that surgery wouldn't be needed. He'd keep the glove on for now—Brains had made the material to stiffen when breaks were discovered, so the glove was actually more of a help than a hindrance for now.
There were no obvious neck or spine injuries, which was a blessing. The head injuries were mostly superficial, and Alan was pretty sure that Virgil was unconscious due to The Hood's love of psychic attacks. The man had been muttering about how useless Virgil's mind was to him since he couldn't actually help him fly Two or drive the Mole or anything. Clearly Virgil had been under a lot of those attacks in the past few hours.
"Hey," a soft voice said next to him, and Alan looked up to meet worried blue eyes. "How can I help?"
Alan hesitated for just a second, and most wouldn't have noticed, but this was Scott. It wasn't his Scott, but this was still a Scott, and he was a big brother that could probably tell that Al was just a hair's breadth away from full on panicking. Alan rattled off the vital information and Other-Scott nodded, turning to yell over his shoulder for someone to grab the stretcher and medical equipment from the Mole. "You're good kid," Other-Scott murmured, running his hands over Virgil's neck, likely checking what the bio-readers had been saying because he didn't quite trust the equipment he didn't recognize. That was fine.
"Sure, good, yeah," Al breathed. He ducked his head for a moment, content to know that his brother was in good hands and he could just…be…for just a second. To get his bearings or something. Anything, really, because plans were being made to head back to Tracy Island and Alan wasn't sure what was going to happen after that.
"Breathe Al," Other-Alan said as he came up beside them. "Everything's going to be fine."
"You're using my words against me," Alan responded, not bothering to open his eyes.
He could hear the relieved grin in Other-Alan's voice. "Yeah. And you were right. It's because of you that my family is safe. You and EOS and your Virgil." Because Virgil had taken out a lot of the minions on his own. He'd sabotaged Two so that she couldn't fly for a while—a trick that Fermat had mentioned wanting to do but had been too distracted to actually pull off. And he'd kept the Hood so out of sorts with those mind-attacks, that the man had been a lot weaker when Other-Alan and Alan had gone up against him. "So, we'll get you back to our place, and find a way to get you home. Everything's going to be fine."
Alan's breath hitched, just a little, but he swallowed the panic again and focused on the task at hand. Jeff and Other-Alan had brought the stretcher. They just needed to get Virgil on it, load him into the Mole and head back to Thunderbird Two. "Less pancakes, Virge," Alan grunted as he helped Other-Scott lift his brother. "Geez."
Other-Scott gave a grunt as well, keeping his tone light. "Whoa. How much muscle has he got?"
"Two hundred pounds of it," Alan responded, rolling his eyes. "We call him our biggest brother for a reason, even if Scott and John are taller." Other-Scott blinked at that, giving a nod. Yeah, he got it; this was beyond weird.
It was even weirder to see how this Scott deferred to Jeff. It made sense, really, but Alan hadn't seen Scott—his own Scott—ever defer to anybody except maybe Grandma or Virgil. And even that was rare, especially when it came to rescues. But then…this Scott still had a Jeff Tracy to defer to. He looked younger, less stressed. There wasn't any gray in his hair, like Al's own Scott. The weight of the entire world wasn't on his shoulders. It was…it was kind of sad, actually.
Alan let himself kind of blank out the rest of the trip back to Thunderbird Two. He felt he could allow himself to do so, since there was a Scott there to take care of Virgil. Scotts, no matter which world they were in, would always be there to big-brother their way around.
He startled, just a bit, at the hand that was on his shoulder, and the concerned voice trying to get his attention. A blink and a glance around showed the inside of Two, different from what he remembered, but still big and green and gray and impressive. A look down caught the worried brown eyes of this world's middle Tracy. "Hey kid," this Virgil Tracy said with a bit of a smile. "You okay? Can you tell me when you last had something to eat or drink?"
Alan blinked at him, chewing on his lip. He looked around again, this time focusing a bit more to find his brother. His Virgil had been transferred to a medical table here in Two and was being looked over by a redhead that could only be this world's Gordon what with the yellow striping on his uniform.
John was blond and older than Virgil. Virgil was short and slight but still with the faux-hawk. Gordon was a red-head.
Weird.
"Alan?" This Virgil asked, drawing his attention back. "Al? When did you last drink something?" Alan shrugged and Other-Virgil frowned, tightening his grip a little. "What were you doing before you ended up…here?" He waved a hand to probably indicate the entirety of the world, and not just the Thunderbird.
Someone was flying Two. Who was flying Two if Virgil—both Virgil's, his mind insisted—were back in the infirmary section with him? The hand on his shoulder shook him just a little. Right, there'd been a question. What was it?
"Al?" Other-Virgil was beginning to look rather worried now.
Alan swallowed, shaking away the odd distance he'd found himself in. Dissociation wasn't a thing that plagued him often, but he could recognize it for what it was. "Sorry. Sorry…I was…we were." He paused, frowning a bit and taking a deep breath. "There was a situation. We were evacuating a collapsed building."
"How long were you on that rescue?" Other-Virgil asked, not bothering to hide his frown. He was still crouching, looking up into Alan's face in a way that couldn't have been the most comfortable.
"Um…two hours?" Alan responded faintly. He couldn't quite remember. It felt so long ago but had only been this morning. "It was…it was a few hours after I got back from an easy-tow in Three. Virge grounded Gordon after his back went out so he took me along instead. Scott had a rescue in Taiwan he was busy with." He rattled off the information without thinking too much about it.
"How long since you've had something to drink?" Other-Virgil responded, eyes narrowing a bit. "Not since you've come to this world, right?"
"Unless you count being dunked in ocean water," Alan countered, feeling a little bit of life come back to him. Other-Virgil's eyes narrowed more at the answer, and he frowned harder, his forehead crunching in a rather familiar way as he shook his head. The man turned, shuffling through a low shelf and handed Al a Gatorade. Alan frowned at it but opened it with shaky hands. When had his hands started shaking?
Other-Virgil turned back to Other-Gordon, pressing more Gatorades into the younger's hands and sending him off towards the cockpit of the ship.
Alan downed half the Gatorade in one sitting and then took a deep breath, gathering himself. Enough being spacy, there was work to be done. Other-Virgil looked like he wanted to set his Virgil up with an IV, which was probably a good choice, but didn't know how to work out the blue uniform. Alan got to his feet, wondering slightly how he'd come to be sitting on Two in the first place, and headed over.
"EOS?" he said as he started working on removing the green baldric. Virgil's was always the hardest one to remove, what with all the extra straps and buckles, but Al made quick work of it. "Any progress on returning us home?"
"Your brothers have called in Professor Moffet and Doctor Reeves. They are confident that between me, them, Brains and my John we can figure out a way to return you to our home," EOS replied, her voice echoing softly from the green computer. Alan took a breath to ask another question, fiddling with the straps of Virgil's glove on the arm that wasn't broken. But EOS beat him to it. "I will likely need to cut contact for a while, Alan, as I confer with our family. The connection is…unstable when I am in two places at once."
Alan nodded. "That's fine, EOS," he said. "Keep the bio-readouts up for Scotty, will ya?"
"I will," EOS said, and the connection fell silent. Alan busied himself with finally removing that bulky glove and then using a slight laser penlight to cut through the fabric of Virgil's sleeve. It was easier than trying to remove his arm from the uniform, after all, and the bio-readers would still be active in the rest of the suit. The Virgil of this world was quick to clean an area of skin on the inside of Virgil's elbow and insert an IV.
Virgil groaned suddenly, tossing his head a bit, and Al stilled. He whistled a soft tone, glancing at Other-Virgil when he suddenly froze in his ministrations of the IV, but returned his gaze to his brother. Like he'd expected, Virgil had quieted at the sound of the whistle and had relaxed completely. Alan sighed, letting the sound drop and then leaned forward to run shaky fingers through Virgil's hair. "I got ya, big brother. We're good and steady."
"Scott," the larger man breathed without opening his eyes.
"Is back home probably being a worry wart," Alan responded softly. At the responding frown, Alan let out a soft smile and ran his hand through Virgil's hair again. "I know. It wasn't fair of me to use his whistle, but I didn't want you hurting yourself more. I promise not to teach it to the Fish."
"Better not," Virgil mumbled, struggling to open his eyes. "You good?"
"I'm fine and dandy," Alan replied, ignoring the way Other-Virgil frowned at him. "Go back to sleep, Virge," he whispered, stroking a finger down the bride of Virgil's nose. "We'll be okay." Virgil clearly wanted to fight him on that, but the exhaustion had caught up to him and he was down for the count. Other-Virgil watched him for a moment before giving a nod and turning his attention to Other-John, all bundled up on another medical bed. Alan hadn't even noticed him there, to be honest.
He sat down next to his Virgil and finished off the Gatorade, watching silently as Other-Virgil tended to his older brother. And then Other-Virgil headed for the cockpit and Thunderbird Two's infirmary section fell into silence. Alan breathed out a sigh and leaned his head back, letting his eyes fall shut.
It had been a very long day.