Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.
Whumptober Day 9: "Presumed Dead" and "Tears"; FlashFictionFriday #121 "Cold Body"
It wasn't an avalanche. Avalanches weren't the only cold, white, deadly things on the planet; they were just the famous one, probably because their occurrence frequently coincided with human activity.
Collapsing glacial shelves were just a dangerous. People just tended not to be near them when they happened.
Gordon wished that had been true this time. The Arctic was a gorgeous landscape, unique with its ice floes and glaciers and the fact that the entire thing was a mass of floating ice with no land anywhere remotely nearby. It was also alluring, drawing in visitors who wanted to see its magnificence with their own eyes, and maybe find the North Pole for themselves.
He understood the appeal of trying to calculate it personally, rather than relying on GPS to tell them where they were, bringing them in with a helicopter and flying them out again the same way, but as a rescuer, he really didn't condone it.
This wasn't even near the North Pole. While they were well within the Arctic Circle, they were still a long way south of that, on the precarious edges of recovering glaciers. Inexperienced, poorly equipped explorers had got into trouble, and International Rescue had responded. Far above them, on the other end of their comms, John had been insistent that they work fast because the glacial shelf was unstable. They'd done their best.
Their best hadn't been good enough.
The whole thing cascaded down to an accompaniment of thunder, easily as loud as a Thunderbird as the ice came crashing down.
It looked like death.
Scott had been in its path, one final rescuee to pull to safety.
They hadn't made it.
There had been screaming. The explorers, mostly, but Gordon had found himself on his knees as John's broken his life signs stopped filtered through his ear, throat raw.
An avalanche had stolen Mom. Nightmare overlapped with reality as a glacier stole Scott.
A heavy, heavy hand crashed down onto his shoulder and clamped tightly. He looked up to see Virgil's face set like stone, streaks of moisture cutting down his cheeks and jaw set hard enough to ache.
"We're not leaving without him," his brother said, his voice like fragile stone. International Rescue didn't do search and retrieval, just search and rescue. No more life signs meant their job was done, but Virgil was right.
They couldn't leave without him.
Arctic glaciers crashed into the frigid ocean. The ocean was Gordon's domain.
He swallowed and hauled himself to his feet. Thunderbird Four had been brought along just in case, but she hadn't been needed for the rescue.
She was needed now.
The clear Arctic waters held none of the usual instinctive wonder as he ducked below them, his movements stilted in determination and old grief brought back up to the surface. Above him, Virgil was stuck with equally distraught explorers, unable to come down no matter what he wanted and leaving Gordon to search alone.
On the other end of the comms, he could hear John muttering to himself with an unstable voice, façade of calm and collected space monitor shattered as he tried to find a reason why Scott's suit would suddenly register no life signs when everything else was broadcasting just fine.
The blue locator beacon rang out like a hollow call. Here he is, it said, uncaring that there were no life signs to go with it. Telemetry said I've taken damage, temperature said I'm too cold, and pulse, respiratory, and cardio all said nothing to record.
Gordon hurtled towards them in Thunderbird Four, dodging Thunderbird Two sized chunks of broken ice and similar shrapnel, until he could see two limp figures where the blue beacon promised.
The rescuee's head was caved in, so much of a pulp that they were unrecognisable. Scott's helmet was smashed and blood matted his hair, but his head was still head-shaped. Brittle fingers wrapped around a wrist, locked in place, and gloved fingers likewise returned the dead man's grip.
Gordon hauled both of them back into his Thunderbird, dismissing the dead rescuee with a bitter guilt that he felt glad he didn't have to make a choice. He was only one person. He couldn't resuscitate two people.
The rescuee was beyond all saving. Despite lacking any life signs, if – for once – luck was on their side, Scott might still have an immeasurably small fraction of a chance.
The cold body of his brother was stripped of anything that might get in the way – broken helmet, baldric, zip yanked down and neoprene pulled away from a blue throat – and Gordon launched into CPR.
Scott was like ice under his mouth, under his locked palms, contrasting with the hot trail of tears springing unbidden from his eyes as he did his level best to haul him back from Mom and the mirrored icy fate.
There was no time for words, but John was talking for him, muttering come back on loop like a broken record as he thrust and breathed and thrust again. Beneath his knees, his Thunderbird was moving, rising to the surface, and then the bright blinding light of ice flooded in through the opened airlock.
In his periphery, Virgil bustled around. Gordon didn't know what he was doing and didn't have the mental capacity to care, either. Not with Scott cold and blue underneath him, closer to Mom than them.
Thrusts, breaths, thrusts. Repeat. Again, and again, and again, the actions of his body mechanical while his mind screamed and tears spilled down his cheeks.
Come back, John was still saying – begging – from all the way in space, each iteration more choked up than the last. Come back.
"Gordon, stop!" Virgil was ignored; Gordon would stop when his body gave out and not a single iota before.
"Gordon, stop!" John's mantra broke. Gordon ignored that, too.
Thrusts, breaths, thrusts.
Searing hot hands pushed him back, powerful yet dismissive all at once. Gordon fought them, until Virgil spoke again.
"He's got a pulse!"
This was hard to work with, in one sense, but also really easy to pull together in another.
Uploading schedule should now resume as normal!
Thanks for reading!
Tsari