Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.
Tropetember Prompt 22: Gender Swap, with Scott (requested by tikatu)
WARNING: Severe body/gender dysphoria, implied depression
Scott was in his room, again. Once upon a time, that would have been strange – their big brother didn't like shutting himself away from them, because it meant he couldn't keep an eye on all of them in his smother hen way. Scott in his room meant something was wrong, that battle stations had to be called in order to determine the cause and find a solution so the world could return to normal.
Over the past month, it was rarer to see Scott out of his room. Where once bad days had been rare, now they were the norm, and it was a good day if they caught a glimpse of the ghost of their brother outside his haven of misery.
That wasn't to say they never saw Scott. Leaving him to shut himself away and wallow went against every ingrained instinct they had. John was in with him at the moment, the door shut as the eldest two conferred. At least, Virgil hoped they were talking.
Since The Incident, Scott had been mostly inclined to silence. Or shouting.
Virgil couldn't blame him. He was still trying to get his head around everything himself.
It had been a month since they'd found him. He'd only been missing a few hours, which somehow made it worse. A few hours had been enough. Too long. Haunted blue eyes appeared in his dreams, and Virgil knew it would be a long, long time – if ever – before he forgot the sight of his big brother when they'd found him again.
The cage had been bad enough, with straw lining the floor as though its inhabitant was an animal, not a person. The collar had sent Gordon flying into a fit, Virgil not far behind him. The defeated blue eyes had been worst of all.
It had only been a few hours. Scott should have been snarling and defiant, head held high and too stubborn to break. He'd burst into tears at the sight of them.
Virgil had wasted no time in getting him out. Out of that cage, free from the collar. Arms around his brother, at the time not sure what was wrong but knowing that it was bad.
Boggling turned out to be a better descriptor.
Hormone treatments had advanced dramatically over the past half a century, science coming along in leaps and bounds. But while Virgil knew he wasn't completely in the loop with that branch of medicine, having never needed to be, he hadn't heard of a way to near-instantaneously change someone's body.
In the right hands, in the right circumstances, that could be a life-changing marvel.
Apparently it existed. And it wasn't in the right hands.
Virgil had ended up carrying Scott out. His brother wasn't visibly injured, but he was different – and clearly in shock.
The naïve hope had been that once he was over the shock, once the hormones balanced out, he'd power through it. Treatments existed, after all. It would take time, but they'd all known they could get Scott back to his body. This would only be temporary.
Either they'd overestimated Scott's mental strength, or they'd underestimated the power of dysphoria. It may well have been a mixture of both.
It didn't really matter which one it was, when it came down to it. All that mattered was that Scott hated the sound of his voice, that even the sight of himself – in the mirror, reflected in the pool, in the shower – could throw him into a mental paralysis.
He could barely function. On his worst days, he couldn't even feed himself, the sight of just his hands off enough to throw him into the spiral.
Virgil had had to remove the mirror from his en-suite after the first sighting had triggered a major panic attack. It wasn't like he would be needing it to shave for the interim, after all. For the time being it sat propped up in the corner of his own room, waiting for the time Scott was back to himself again.
It would take some time. Brains had shown his versatility and thrown himself into tests, supported by Grandma, and Kayo had quickly reminded them that the Kyrano family had long held a reputation for abstract medical knowledge, but the agreement was that they couldn't do anything until they knew exactly what had been used in the first place. If the counter-treatment clashed, Scott could end up in an even worse state. They were making progress, they promised, but they weren't ready to submit Scott to fresh treatment yet.
Virgil knew Scott understood why they were delaying, but the knowledge hadn't helped his mental state in the slightest.
One hand holding a tray laden with food, Virgil knocked on the closed door. Family dinners around the table were – only for the moment, he hoped – a thing of the past, but instead had been replaced more often than not by gatherings around Scott's bed.
A beat passed before it opened. Virgil fully expected to see John, and was just the slightest bit disappointed when he was right. His ginger brother returned wordlessly to perch on the edge of Scott's bed, wrinkled sheets proving that he'd been there, rather than one of the chairs scattered around the room, most of the afternoon.
"Gordon cooked," Virgil announced, following him to the bed.
Scott was, at least, sitting up. That meant it wasn't one of the worst days, where he buried his head in his sheets, under a pillow, and shut the world out entirely. The covers were still drawn up over his chest, but his sleeved arms were exposed, shoulder brushing against John's as the astronaut settled again.
"Lasagne?" It was a stranger's voice, sharing only the barest hints with the voice Virgil remembered. Still, it was Scott talking, and Virgil let a relieved smile spread across his face.
"Lasagne," he confirmed, offering the tray. Fingers, just slightly more slender than they used to be, accepted it. "Gordon'll bring ours up in a few," he added to John, who nodded in acknowledgement. They all knew he was waiting in case Scott kicked them out, deciding he didn't want company. It wouldn't be the first time.
Thankfully, today wasn't one of those days, and Virgil watched in relief as his biggest brother fell upon the portion with gusto. No appetite problems today, it seemed.
Five minutes later, Gordon and Alan appeared, bearing the rest of the lasagne.
Food trumped conversation, which was a good thing when, despite the fact that it had been a month, the elephant in the room hung heavily over them all. What little conversation there was stayed light – Gordon, reliable Gordon, danced around topics like Buddy and Ellie and a new deep ocean fish that had been discovered.
The situations weren't comparable, really, but it was painfully obvious that Gordon knew enough about what it was like to have a body that didn't feel like it was yours, anymore. They'd realised early on that it was safest to let him lead.
Like Gordon had, they had every faith that eventually Scott would get his body back. Some of the best minds in the world were on it, helped dramatically by a raid earlier that day by the GDF that had turned up the manufacturing plant. Kayo had already brought a sample back to analyse.
Virgil wondered if John had told Scott about that. Their big brother still wasn't smiling, hadn't cracked a single smile since The Incident, but Virgil could feel something just a little bit lighter about him as he interrupted Gordon to ask a question about the new fish.
The news was delivered two days later, on a good day where Scott had shuffled silently into the lounge, wearing a plaid shirt that had been baggy on him even in his normal body. While no shorter, and not much slimmer – dramatic hormone shifts didn't negate hard-earned muscle mass, it seemed – Virgil's stolen shirt swamped his torso enough that at a glance it was high impossible to notice that Scott's body wasn't the shape it should be. Drawstring pants were equally ambiguous; slightly slimmer hands and multiple minute differences to his face were the only visible signs of his ongoing ordeal.
A blanket was still kept in reach, and reflective surfaces were carefully covered, but curled up on the sofa with a book, Scott was out of his room and that was the important part. John was with him, own book in hand, while Alan and Gordon squabbled over a pillow fort they were constructing out of the other sofas. For his part, Virgil was content at the piano, providing a backdrop of music for his brother's activities and delighting in having all of them in his immediate vicinity.
The near tranquillity was shattered as Kayo charged into the room, hair dishevelled and bags under her eyes that said she hadn't bothered to stop to sleep in the last few days. Wrinkled clothes and a smudge of ink across her cheek added to the impression, but her eyes were vibrant and her smile bright.
"Scott!" she called, skidding to a halt at the top of the steps that led down to the sunken circle.
Blue eyes snapped to her, dismissing the book instantly and failing to hide the eager hope that lit up.
Kayo didn't disappoint. "We've got it," she announced.
Virgil's fingers trailed away from the keys as John set his own book down and the duo of blonds dropped the cushions they were holding.
Scott's eyes got brighter. "You mean..?"
"We've fully analysed the concoction and devised a treatment plan that'll work around it," Kayo confirmed, taking the three steps down. "It'll take a while to transition back, but it'll work." She held a hand out to him. "We're ready when you are."
Virgil wasn't surprised in the slightest when Scott's hand instantly flashed out to grip hers. He wasn't particularly surprised when his big brother shot to his feet and had to be steadied when he forgot about his different centre of gravity, either.
"Thank you." Scott's voice, still more unfamiliar than familiar, was heavy with emotion. Even sat on the piano stool, Virgil could see moisture glistening in his eyes and the faintest ghost of a much-missed smile on his lips.
Kayo wrapped her arm around his shoulders tightly. "You're our big brother," she reminded him, even as she started steering him in the direction of the infirmary. Wordlessly, Virgil and the others followed. "Of course we were going to find a way."
This was hard. I've been interested in this trope for a long time, but as it overlaps with some very sensitive irl topics, I've never dared actually write one before.
Tropetember has made its way onto my radar, so I'm accepting prompts for that as well at the moment - any character/fandom is fine, but I'm picky with ships so feel to inquire about those before submitting one. As always, prompt information can be found on my tumblr, as well as the tropetember tumblr.
Thanks for reading!
Tsari