A day that Gordon remembered
There was a day that he remembered clear as a bell from years ago, when the surgical scars were still broad red lines marking out his own personal road map of pain and he was still in the hoverchair. Virgil had shown up at his door one evening with a cooler bag in hand, thrown him over one shoulder and carried him down to one of the innumerable little coves on the sheltered inner side of the island.
He'd protested the entire way, starting with 'what the hell do you think you're doing?!' and his language rapidly deteriorated from there, giving a full demonstration on why the phrase 'swearing like a sailor' existed, only to be dumped on his backside on one of the few sandy beaches they had. Virgil had plunked himself down next to him as a brilliant crimson sunset stained the clouds and shoved a beer into his hand, interrupting Gordon's tirade mid-flow.
"You," Virgil told him as he took out a beer for himself, "really need to stop being The Squid right now."
"What are you talking about?" Gordon snarled, belatedly realising that Virgil was more than a little tipsy already. Virgil rarely drank, even less now that he was in training to fly the big green 'Bird, and any amount of booze hit him like a brick in a sock. "I'm not a squid, I'm not in WASP anymore." Oh that statement had hurt to verbalise. He'd liked it there, he had friends, a purpose and adventures and he'd just gotten to the point where he could do the interesting things, to really stretch his fins and show the brass what he was capable of.
"I'm not talking about being a Squid," Virgil clarified, referring to the in-service nickname the submariners would use sometimes, "I'm talking about The Squid."
"You're not making any sense." He knocked back a gulp of the beer since it was in his hand and Scott wasn't here to fuss at him about it possibly interacting with his meds.
"You're always going to be a Squid." Virgil said, pointing to where the finely etched outline of a Colossal Squid was draped over his left shoulder. The tattoo he'd gotten in celebration of his first posting was now riven with scars, one tentacle and three arms twisted out of alignment and its mantle cut in two. "Just like you're always going to be our Fish. No one's going to take that from you." Virgil told him. "But you've gotta stop being The Squid, all grasping arms and hook suckers and tearing beak and scary donut brain that doesn't mammal think and stuff. You're scaring Alan." He concluded and downed the rest of his beer.
Drunk Virgil was more poetic than Sober Virgil, but Gordon had to reluctantly admit to himself that drunk or sober, Virgil had a point.
He put the beer down to pick up his right leg and shift it off an oyster shell that'd been digging into a particularly sensitive spot. That task complete, he stared out at the waves lapping at the crushed coral sand for several long minutes and finally acknowledged a crushing, shameful, uncomfortable truth that he'd not wanted to even go near: Dad would have been so disappointed in him with the way he'd been behaving and the way he'd been treating his family.
Right now all he wanted was to hide, to sink into the depths like a squid, lurk in the darkness or in a cloud of his own making. And he was angry. Like, really angry. The walls of his room and the infirmary bore mute testament to the dozen or more times he'd lashed out and thrown something. He was reacting, not acting, cut adrift from what he thought would have been a great career, something he could have made his, like Scott's Air Force career and the medals and ribbons on Scott's dress blues that still hung in his wardrobe in a garment bag.
Scott… Gordon made a rueful face. Scott had borne the brunt of his foul temper, getting hit with words that were just as sharp as the shards of the plate that he'd flung the other day when his catheter had to be changed and he'd snapped with the frustration and shame of not being able to get up and take care of even the simplest bodily functions by himself.
He remembered hearing angry, sharp words out of Scott once upon a time, when the jagged scars on Scott's back and chest were the same angry red as his. At the time Dad had borne the brunt of Scott's temper with the same quiet manner that Scott was showing to him now.
That their Dad would respond so meekly like that had surprised him at the time. Dad could out-roar anyone when his temper broke, like a thunderclap booming directly overhead, loud enough to make the windows rattle in their frames. But no matter how loudly Scott screamed at him, no matter how he swore and cursed and raged, their father had stood like a mountain and weathered the storm until the fury was spent and he could gather their broken elder brother into his arms, sit him down and just hold him until he'd pulled enough of himself back together again to let them help him find his way home.
"Hey Virg?" Gordon ventured after a long silence, the crimson skies above fading into purplish twilight
"Yeah?"
"I'm gonna get another tattoo." He'd been nursing this dream ever since he'd understood what it was about. For a while it had run side by side with WASP, a way to achieve two goals at once. But now that the distraction of WASP was out of the way he could focus on this, bend his will and effort towards it and make his mark on the world just like his older brothers had, before shirking the attention of the world and donning the anonymity of the blue uniform Dad had worn, Scott and John now wore and Virgil was almost ready to wear.
"What's the tattoo?" Virgil asked. He considered the other beers in the cooler bag for a moment, but flipped it closed.
"I'm going to get it right here." Gordon tapped the right side of his chest. "Olympic rings."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Gordon nodded. "I was hitting the butterfly qualifying times in the pool before." WASP had a policy of having anyone with Olympic potential continue their training and attend the Games, it was great for the recruitment posters. "And the butterfly leans more towards core and arms, I've still got most of those muscles."
Virgil smiled. "That sounds like a plan to me."