Authors note: Okay, I admit, I'm taking liberties with both the characters in this chapter. Both boys might see a little OOC, but - the way I see it - if I kept them strictly IC, then they'd both behave like good little boy scouts all the time, and then where would the angst be? :-)

Thanks to everyone who informed me that Lex Shrapnel played John in the movie. This knowledge will certainly make it a lot easier for me to stalk him!

Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds or any of the associated characters. Kinda wish that I did though...

'A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity'

"It's for the best, Virg. You know that, right?"

The two Tracy boys were sitting side-by-side on the cold metal floor, so close that Scott could practically taste his brother's sweat. The flight deck was growing uncomfortably warm as the minutes trickled by, and a damp, musky smell seemed to saturate the very air that they breathed.

Scott held his brother's scuba-mask in his hands. He worked saliva around his arid mouth and then spat into the mask, smearing the watery mess around the plastic. It was a trick that Gordon had taught him to keep the lens from misting once it got underwater – he hadn't paid much attention at the time, but he was certainly glad that he remembered it now.

There was a short pause, then he continued: "I mean, I know that this is a bad situation, but at least if you make it out...well, then it won't be a complete loss, will it?"

Virgil stared blankly down at the oxygen tank in his lap, but said nothing. A single blotch of scarlet burned on either cheek – the only hint of colour in his otherwise bone grey face. In truth, he looked like he was going to be sick.

Scott looked across to him, but was unable to catch his eye. "You're doing the right thing," he told him steadily. "Really."

"Then why do I feel like such a coward?"

Scott's bare chest heaved weakly as he struggled to breathe, his fractures ribs burning with every breath he took. "I know that this can't be easy for you, but it's the only reasonable choice. There's nothing that you can do for me down here. The family needs you."

Virgil now occupied himself with checking the pressure-gauge on the oxygen tank, deliberately avoiding Scott's gaze. "Father will never forgive me, you know...if I live and you die. You were always his favourite."

"That's not true," Scott protested, "You know that's not true."

"Yes it is," the younger Tracy said, voice low and unnaturally tight, "You should see the expression on his face whenever he looks at you, Scott. He's always so...so proud." He felt his vision begin to blur, and he quickly ducked his head so that Scott wouldn't see. "You were always the smart one, the handsome one...everything that a Tracy boy should be. How can I face him knowing that I left you behind?"

Scott stared at his younger brother for a long moment. His leg made a jerking, convulsive movement, but he no longer paid it any attention. The pain had levelled into a plateau of constant agony, and – for some reason – he found that easier to endure...certainly easier to endure than what Virgil was putting him through, at any rate. He would quite gladly have every bone in his body broken if it meant that he would never again have to see his brother so emotionally torn.

He had always known that Virgil idolised him. But the truth was that, deep down, Scott had also known that he did not deserve his brother's devotion.

Scott sighed and looked away. His head fell back to rest against the smooth metal wall behind him, dark eyes hooded as he stared into the middle distance.

"...Did I ever tell you about Nancy Lucas?" he asked suddenly.

Virgil's forehead creased into a frown, evidently bewildered. "Who?"

"Nancy Lucas. She used to waitress in a bar next to the airbase in Texas." Scott smiled faintly and gave a quietly appreciative chuckle. "Her face wasn't anything special, but her legs...God, those legs just seemed to go on forever. We dated for a while...nothing serious. I used to take her to the drive-in on Fridays, go for a couple of drinks afterwards and then wind up back at my quarters. Not exactly the romance of the century, but we had a good time. She was a convenient distraction."

Virgil had no idea where Scott was going with this, but he decided to let the elder Tracy play it out.

"So what happened?"

"She got pregnant."

Virgil started and turned suddenly. "What?"

"Yeah. Called me up one day out of the blue and told me that she was late – just like that. Expected me to marry her for goodness sake!" He laughed again, but there was no pleasure in the sound. "I couldn't do that. I mean, I was twenty years old, still a kid myself...I had my future to think of. So I paid for her to go to a private clinic and have an abortion. Even drove her there myself." He frowned suddenly, and – for a moment at least – seemed to forget that Virgil was even there. "She cried all the way home afterwards. I couldn't get the damn bitch to stop crying."

Virgil stared at his brother incredulously, hardly daring to breathe.

"Scott...you didn't...I mean, you didn't go through with it, did you?"

Scott blinked, forcibly reengaging himself with his surroundings. He turned to look at Virgil with cool, level eyes. "It was the best one-thousand dollars that I ever spent," he replied evenly.

Virgil couldn't speak. His head reeled, as though struck by a physical blow. He had always thought that he knew his brother better than anyone else in the world. There were never any secrets between them, never any lies...and now Scott had just admitted aborting his baby almost ten years previously. He felt as though his whole universe were collapsing around him.

"And you want to know something else?" Scott continued, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead, "I never spoke to her again after that. No flowers, no phone-calls, nothing. As far as I was concerned, Nancy Lucas didn't even exist." He gave a trembling smile of self-loathing and hung his head. "So now you know. Your 'perfect' older brother paid to have his unborn child killed. What does that tell you about the kind of guy I am, hm?"

The younger Tracy felt the bile rise in the back of his throat. He didn't want to hear this.

"Why are you telling me this?" he murmured weakly, "Why now?"

There was a moment of hesitancy...a moment of fear. Then Scott slowly handed the scuba-mask back to his brother. "Because I...I didn't want you to leave here thinking that I was something that I wasn't. You were always the better man, Virgil. Always. I just wanted you to know that."

He trailed off into silence, unable – and unwilling – to finish what he had started.

Virgil stared down at the offered mask, his dark eyes raking up to the stranger who held it. For one split second, he hardly recognised Scott at all. All his life he had held the elder Tracy up as an idol – a perfect brother who could do no wrong. Now he looked at Scott...really looked at Scott...and saw for the first time all the flaws that he had been previously too blinded by devotion to notice.

...He quickly looked away, not wanting to see any more.

Wordlessly, he accepted the scuba-mask and turned it over in his hands. The lens was warm and wet with saliva, but the head-strap felt oddly cold. He quickly up it on - resting the mask on his forehead in readiness for his imminent swim - then strapped the oxygen tank to his back and tied Gordon's weight-belt to his waist. Finally, he was ready.

He felt Scott watching him, but could not bring himself to look back, too afraid of what he might see.

Scott stirred quietly beside him. "Tell the fellas that I was thinking of them, okay? And tell father..." he stopped and sighed, "Tell father that I chose this. Tell him that it wasn't your fault."

A sudden tightness formed across Virgil's throat, and he felt a by-now familiar heat begin to prickle at the back of his eyes...

"You take care of yourself, okay Virg?"

Virgil swallowed and turned to look at his older brother, not knowing what to say...

...Then, suddenly, Scott reached forward and threw him one good arm around Virgil's neck, grasping him tightly in a fierce embrace.

The gesture was so unexpected – so shockingly intimate – that, for a moment, Virgil was too stunned to react. Then, hesitantly, he leant into the hug. His trembling hands came to rest across Scott's naked back, his head fitting neatly into the curve of his brother's shoulder. Scott gave a hiss of pain but did not attempt to pull away, and Virgil closed his eyes and inhaled, trying desperately to imprint this final contact into his memory. Scott smelt like new blood, old sweat, and burnt skin...all underpinned by the subtle tang of the aftershave that he wore.

But then – all too soon it seemed to Virgil – the embrace was over. Scott pushed him roughly away, turning his head back to the shadows to hide any emotion that his face might betray. He felt grotesque to himself...a stranger.

"You'd better get going, Virgil. You'll only have about four hours of daylight left once you get topside, and you'll need to make the most of them."

Virgil drew in a shuddering breath and raised his eyes heavenward. He suddenly realised with terrible, gut-wrenching certainty that this was the probably the last time that he was ever going to see his brother alive...

...There were so many things that he wanted to tell Scott at that moment. He wanted to tell him that it didn't matter about his mistakes...that he didn't blame him for what had happened in the past...that he understood and forgave him. He wanted to tell Scott all the little secrets that he himself had kept over the years. Dark secrets - ones that he had never told anyone. But most of all - more than anything else in the world - he wanted to tell Scott that he loved him...

...That he'd loved him for as long as he could remember...

...That he would always love him...

...That he was sorry that things had ended this way.

"Scott..."

"I always hated good-byes," Scott interrupted suddenly, seemingly knowing what Virgil was about to say and not wanting to hear it. "You'd probably best just go."

Virgil stared wordlessly at his brother, then down at his diver's weight-belt. He gave a short nod of agreement. Neither said anything as Virgil crossed the darkened flight-deck and made his way towards the door at the far end. There he hesitated, and turned back to look at Scott. Blue eyes met brown as a look of unspoken grief passed intangibly between them, both men looking as lost and as helpless as each other.

...There could be no going back after this...no turning back the clock. Either one died or both. There was no third choice...

His heart thudding in his chest, Virgil opened the door.

The corridor beyond was – as Scott had guessed – flooded. The ice-cold waters of the Atlantic rushed onto the flight-deck in a frothing wave, the force of the impact almost knocking Virgil clean off his feet. Quickly regaining his balance, he forced his way through though the onslaught and stepped into the hallway, wrestling the door closed before the flight-deck become flooded too. The hollow metal clang of its closure resounded through the flight-deck, echoed dully for a moment, and then there was only silence.

...Silence...

Scott stared into the shadows where Virgil had last stood, and felt something inside him slowly wither and die. He shrank away from the lonely darkness, moaning and afraid, and trying desperately hard not to cry.

Tracy men never cried.

"T-there may be fairies, there may be elves, but God o-only helps those who help themselves."

Waist deep in salt water, Virgil wadded slowly forwards, blind and claustrophobic in the surrounding gloom. The air was thick and clammy and tasted vaguely stale. A wave of nausea rippled through his gut and he paused for a moment, reaching a hand out to steady himself against a nearby wall. His head swam with stars and his legs felt like they had been reduced to a boneless jelly.

...To keep himself from falling apart, he recited the verse that his grandmother had taught him as a child.

"There m-may be fairies, there may be elves, but God only helps those who help themselves."

A cold, slick sweat broke out across his shoulders. He felt a bitter slime rise at the back of his mouth and leaned forward, readying himself for the oncoming sickness. Nothing happened. After a few seconds of dry heaving, he straightened and ran a trembling hand through his hair. He could still smell his Scott's aftershave on his uniform, and his aqua-mask was slick with his brother's spit.

Scott.

He could hardly believe that he was doing this. He had just left Scott – the brother who he looked up to both as friend and protector – to die alone.

What kind of a person did that make him?

Scott had taken care of him so many times in the past. Had Virgil ever done the same for him? At the time he had thought that he had...but now, looking back on it, Virgil realised that he hadn't. Not really. Not when it counted. After all, Scott had just admitted aborting his unborn child almost ten years previously...a secret that he had kept to himself for an entire decade. Where had Virgil been when that was happening? Why hadn't Scott been able to talk to him about it? Was their relationship really so one-sided?

No, he decided, it wasn't. If Scott had spoken to him, Virgil would have done everything in his power to help his brother out.

...Wouldn't he?

Virgil swayed slightly as he considered the question. His hazel eyes stared unseeingly into the darkness before him, hearing nothing but the dull thud of his own heartbeat.

...Wouldn't he?

After all, here he was, ten years after the abortion incident...a grown man, a Tracy man...and he was about to walk out and abandon his brother to a certain death.

"I'm sorry Scott," he moaned softly to the echoing dark. "Oh God, I'm so sorry."

The phone-call had come in the small hours of the morning. Virgil's eyes had snapped open at the insistent ringing, his breath hitching in his throat at the shock of being awake. For a few confused seconds, he did not recognise where he was...then the cobwebs began to clear from his memory, and he remembered. He was in his dormitory at university, not at home with his brothers snoring in the next room.

It still felt strange, even after all these months.

The phone continued to ring, and - after a few minutes of blind fumbling on his bedside stand - he picked up the receiver, holding it to his ear.

"Hello?" he mumbled groggily.

"Virgil?"

"Scott?" Virgil frowned at the sound of his brother's voice, swinging his legs over the side of the bed to sit up. "What's going on? Has one of the boys been hurt?"

"No, no...nothing like that. I just wanted to talk, that's all."

Virgil massaged his sleep-blurred eyes with a thumb and forefinger. When he looked again, his vision had cleared somewhat, and he was able to glance down at the digital display on his wrist watch. 3:25 am. He groaned inwardly – he had an exam first thing in the morning. Why did Scott have to call tonight of all nights?

"Scott," he murmured tiredly, "It's almost three-thirty in the morning."

"Is it?" Scott sounded genuinely surprised by this information. "Sorry Virgil, I...I didn't realise."

Virgil heard the soft slur to his brother's voice and instantly deduced that he was drunk. It was then that the first tendrils of worry began to pull at the back of his mind. Scott wasn't much of a drinker, social or otherwise, and when he did hit the bottle, it was usually for a good reason.

"Are you okay?" he asked, growing more awake with each second that passed. "You sound upset."

"Me? Oh, I'm alright. Just lonely I guess." Scott made a short sound on the other end of the line – a sigh, perhaps? A sob? "Virgil?"

"Hm?"

"Tell me that I'm not a bad person."

"What?" The younger Tracy frowned into the darkness, utterly thrown by his brother's request. "No, of course you're not a bad person. Why would you even say that?"

"Sometimes I wonder." There was a pause on the other end of the line and Virgil guessed – quite correctly, as it happened – that Scott had taken another swig from whatever bottle he was drinking. "Sometimes I look at myself if the mirror and hardly recognise myself. Do you ever get that?" He didn't bother to wait for Virgil to answer. "No, no of course you don't. Not you. One of the benefits of a clear conscious I suppose."

Virgil had no idea what was going on here. Although they were both dancing around the issue, it was quite clear that something was playing on Scott's mind...though Virgil was damned if he knew what it was. Ever since he had been stationed in Texas, Scott had been going through strange mood swings...jovial one day, low the next. Virgil wondered if the rest of his family had noticed. Probably not, he realised. Scott was good at hiding things.

All the Tracy boys were.

"Scott, you know if there's anything that you want to talk about..." He trailed into silence, not certain what to say.

There was a short silence, and Virgil could almost hear Scott staring into space. "I know." Another noise at the end of the line - this time unmistakably a sigh. "God, I miss you, Virg."

Now Virgil knew that his brother was drunk. He was never that emotional when he was sober.

"I know. I miss you too, Scott. Now go sleep it off, okay? We'll talk in the morning."

...But they hadn't talked the following morning. In fact, neither of them had ever even mentioned the strange phone-call after that. And it was only now that Virgil realised why. The simple truth was, neither of them had wanted to rock the boat.

Life was just so much easier when everybody minded their own business.

Scott was still huddled at the opposite end of the flight-deck when Virgil returned.

He heard the clank of the door opening and closing...felt the cold blast of salt-spray that rushed in from the flooded corridor...sensed rather than saw his younger brother standing over him. He would not – could not – look up. He already knew what must have happened, and it broke his heart. Virgil would not be trying to escape. He had decided to stay.

...Stay for him.

...Stay and die.

"Scott?"

Scott looked up at him then - eyes blood-shot and glittering against the surrounding gloom - and did something that he had sworn he would never to do:

Scott Tracy cried.

Virgil could not remember having seen his brother cry before. Even at their mother's funeral, back when they were just kids, Scott had held himself with stubborn solemnity, staunchly refusing to shed a single tear. Now he was a grown man of thirty, and the fury of his grief was frightening to watch. He covered his face with his hands and gave a low wail of despair, his entire body racked with great, undignified sobs. His bruised shoulders heaved with each breath that he took.

...Anybody else would have been shocked at such a display, but Virgil took it all in his stride.

The younger Tracy watched him silently for a short moment, then crossed the room to sit quietly beside him. For a long time he said nothing. Eventually - after what felt like hours, but could have only been a matter of minutes - Scott's cries turned to moans, and from there to a tired whimper. Finally, Virgil stirred.

"Please don't be mad at me, Scott," he whispered.

Scott lowered his hands away from his face and turned to stare at his younger brother. His sickly white cheeks were now blotched with red, salt-water streams running down from his eyes to his blood-smeared jaw.

"How can I be mad at you?" he asked incredulously, voice thick and strangled by tears. "You're my brother. I love you. I just wish that you wern't such a stubborn ass, thats all."

Tbc...