Another massive thank you to each and every one of my gorgeous reviewers *hugs you all so much*. Also, to the Guest who commented that this is the best and funniest fan fiction they've ever read…you properly made me tear up XD.
-x-
Chapter 32.
John hated water.
It was wet, got everywhere, and was frequently a lot dirtier than it looked.
It was also incredibly dangerous.
Hence the redhead's displeasure when Lady Penelope sent him and his brothers the coordinates for Sydney Harbour, along with instructions to rendezvous with her and Kayo aboard FAB 2 for a private cruise that evening.
It had taken the combined efforts of both Virgil and Gordon to manhandle John into Thunderbird Two, plus the assistance of Alan to secure him into a seat. It was only after Scott broke out the tranquiliser pills yet again that the redhead felt calm enough to stop puffing into the paper bag Gordon had given him.
John's fear of water was well justified. His aversion wasn't the result of a lack of skill. Like the rest of his brothers, he was a competent swimmer. Granted, he hadn't enjoyed the after-school swim lessons their dad had forced them to take when they were young as much as Scott and Virgil had, but he was quite capable of getting himself safely out of a body of water if needed.
It was the fear of one of his brothers drowning that fuelled his aquaphobia. The fear of looking away for a second, only to turn back and see one of them floating face-down. He swore he lost half his bodyweight in sweat every time Thunderbird Four launched.
John's fear hadn't been born inside the four walls of his head. He'd had the misfortune of very nearly losing not one, but two of his brothers to the murky depths of aquatic oblivion.
It had been during the summer of fifty one, and the entire Tracy clan had been enjoying a brief vacation at their mother's ranch in Arizona. Jeff had been away at a NASA conference in Glasgow, and Grandma Tracy had been visiting some old friends in Phoenix. As the eldest and therefore the most responsible, Scott had been left in charge of the house and his brothers.
It had been a hot and sweaty day. Tempers had escalated in tandem with the thermometer, and Scott had quickly found himself with four irritable siblings on his hands.
"I need a drink," Virgil panted, fanning himself with the hem of his shirt, "It's too hot."
Gordon, who had already shed most of his clothing and was padding around in just his shorts, pouted and gazed out the window, "I want to go swimming! Why can't you take us swimming, Scotty?"
"I wanna go swimming too!" Alan cried, sipping angrily from a glass of juice, "You just don't want us to have any fun because Granny left you in charge."
Scott sighed and dragged his hands across his face. He had a bunch of reading to catch up on before the new semester started in three weeks, and back-to-back interruptions from his brothers had already thrown him way off schedule.
John was also busying himself with schoolwork, however not quite on Scott's level. While the eldest was reading for a degree in aeronautical engineering, John was preparing to graduate high school two years ahead of his peers. Virgil was sailing through the first year of a degree in aerospace engineering, however wasn't as preoccupied with studying as Scott and John were. As far as he was concerned, summer vacations were for resting, not working.
Gordon was in his second year of middle school and had zero intention of completing any of the homework his teachers had set him. Stacks of maths and history worksheets lay untouched in his schoolbag back on Tracy Island, along with the remains of a sandwich that had probably grown legs and wandered off by now.
Being in the middle of elementary school, Alan had bounded through what little homework he'd been assigned with some help from Scott. The youngest seemed unable (or unwilling) to understand why his older brothers spent so much time on schoolwork when they were on holiday. Surely they'd much rather play video games and watch TV with him?
"Scotty!" Gordon whined, snatching the book on astrodynamics his brother's nose was buried in and throwing it onto the floor, "Take us swimming! Take us swimming! Take us swimming!"
"Swimming! Swimming! Swimming!" Alan chanted, stamping his foot in time with Gordon's pleas.
Scott groaned and turned pathetically towards Virgil, his sapphire eyes wide and despairing, "Virg, could you take them outside and spray them with the hose?"
Virgil gave a sympathetic shake of his head, "Sorry bro, but I've got to be at the train station to meet Grandma in just over an hour."
"John?" Scott tried, desperately switching his gaze to the redhead.
John remained silent for a few seconds, mulling over his options. He'd have to slap on at least three layers of sunscreen to stop himself from burning to a crisp, however schoolwork was getting dull and the weather was nice…
"Fine," John capitulated, wincing when Gordon and Alan screamed in elation, "But only for an hour."
"Oh, thank you!" Scott gushed, seizing the redhead around the waist and yanking him in for an awkward hug, "You are my favourite person in the whole world right now."
John merely grunted.
-x-
It was the middle of the day by the time John, Gordon, and Alan arrived at their local swimming hole. Gordon had insisted that they go to the old flooded quarry on the perimeter of the ranch's land, arguing that their own pool was too boring.
John hadn't objected. Any plan that featured his brothers shutting up got his approval.
The sun's rays beat down on their heads and John cringed when he felt a bead of sweat run down his neck. After separately tackling both Gordon and Alan and smearing an appropriate amount of sunscreen across their faces and torsos, he'd dumped himself in the shade of an ironwood tree and returned to his essay on hydrostatics.
Gordon and Alan busied themselves over the next twenty minutes with swimming and cannonballing off every rock they could reach. Tuning out the excited screams and energetic splashing, John channelled all of his attention into the paragraph on Pascal's law he was in the middle of writing.
It wasn't until the splashing ceased that John glanced up, only to see the quarry empty and the water's surface perfectly still.
Mild panic began to set in as John climbed to his feet and peered down the bank, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gordon's bright green trunks or Alan's blond head beneath the surface of the pond.
After being thwarted by the murkiness of the water, John switched his focus to scouring the nearby rock formations, hoping that his brothers had ditched their paddling in favour of an impromptu game of hide and seek.
A lone bubble breaking the pond's surface dashed that plan in a second.
John had never thought of himself as a particularly brave person, however the boldness with which he threw himself into the quarry would have stunned even Captain Casey. Without waiting for his eyes to adjust after crashing through the surface, he swooped down towards the bottom of the pond, his long legs making short work of the journey. Panic turned to dread when he realised that the water was a lot deeper than he'd originally thought.
As he neared the bottom of what had once been a limestone mine, John began to make out some vague shapes that differed from the uneven outlines of the rocks that were complicating his descent. As he got nearer, the shapes became clearer. Arms, legs, hair, and faces came into focus to form a sight that would go on to haunt him for the rest of his life.
Gordon's leg was ensnared by a submerged section of wire, most likely from a discarded piece of machinery. Alan was tugging on his brother's arm in a futile attempt to free him, however was expelling an alarming number of bubbles, a sure sign that he was losing control over what little air remained in his lungs.
Reacting purely on instinct, John seized Alan's arm in a steel grip and began to drag the youngest towards the surface. He glanced down briefly to motion to Gordon that he'd be right back and instantly wished he hadn't.
The look of despair in Gordon's eyes as he watched John disappear with just Alan in tow was an image the redhead would take to his grave. It was the raw panic of a child who'd been left to die so that its more helpless younger sibling could be saved instead.
It was a look of anguished rejection.
After surfacing and dumping a coughing Alan onto the first rock he could find, John dove back down to find Gordon limp and unconcious.
Unlike Alan's uncoordinated approach, it took the redhead's strategic mind only fifteen seconds to disentangle his brother's leg from the wire ensnaring it. Chillingly, he knew from his own first aid training that it only took twenty for an exhausted child to drown.
The ascent with Gordon was much harder than the one with Alan, but John knew his own fatigue was mostly to blame. His lungs burned, and the strain of propelling two bodies up to the surface was hard on his legs.
Alan was sat on the rock John had left him on. He was white from shock and had several nasty looking cuts on his hands, no doubt from trying to remove the wire, however seemed otherwise stable.
Gordon was blue and unresponsive. John could feel a cry of dread building inside his lungs as he lay his brother down on the shore and began performing rescue breaths.
Alan started to cry.
"Come on you idiot!" John screamed as he surfaced for air, slapping Gordon across the face before starting a series of chest compressions, "Breathe! Goddamnit! Breathe!"
Gordon didn't stir.
John felt some otherworldly emotion consume him as he resumed the rescue breaths and chest compressions, barely flinching when Gordon's sternum cracked under the pressure from his palms.
After ten more gut-wrenching seconds of CPR, Gordon suddenly exploded back to life. John felt himself sag as his brother violently vomited up the water he'd inhaled, his torso spasming in panic.
"Is he okay?" Alan asked, tears dripping off his chin.
John barely heard his youngest brother. His vision was blurring as the adrenalin in his system began to wear off and shock began to set in. In the distance, he could just about make out the forms of Scott and Virgil sprinting in their direction, their yells fading to white noise as his drenched head hit the ground.
Two seconds later, everything went black.
-x-
"We'll all wear lifejackets, so try not to panic too much," Scott soothed as John planted himself like a mule in the doorway of Thunderbird Two, "Lady Penelope's yacht also has a state of the art drowning detection system, so we'll be as safe as if we were on dry land."
John scowled and refused to budge. Scott hadn't seen that air bubble. Or Gordon's face when he thought he'd been left to a watery grave.
"C'mon John," Virgil waded in behind Scott, "We've all had a rough week. Don't you think you deserve a little pampering? Surely you want to get rid of the nasty aftertaste left over from your date with Kayo?"
John's face flushed red, but he still refused to move. He felt a sudden affinity for cats and their aversion to water. Screw the joke about him being a ginger giraffe, he was a ginger tabby all the way.
"Ten seconds," Scott sighed, raising his eyebrows in impatience, "I'm giving you ten seconds to move and let us pass, otherwise I'm locking you below deck with Celery."
John's eyes widened accusingly, "You brought the dog?"
"Of course," Scott replied, motioning to a pet carrier that was stashed in the back corner of the cockpit, "We couldn't leave her back home with just Grandma and Brains for company. She might get blown up. Or be made to sample Grandma's liver casserole."
John scowled, suddenly aware of his nose twitching in irritation.
It didn't matter. Dog or no dog, he wasn't about to willingly let any of them near water that wasn't contained in either a shower cubicle or a bathtub.
Ten minutes later, the redhead found himself imprisoned beneath the swanky deck of FAB 2 while the others cast off. Celery sat obediently at his feet, gazing up at him with an expression of ardent worship.
Next to Celery, Sherbert yapped loudly, thrilled at finally having another doggy friend to play with. The tiny pug launched himself at Celery's face, disturbing a large plume of fur when his claws playfully caught the mutt under her chin.
John groaned before sneezing loudly.