Chapter 7

Note: Just in case you should need them, I would get the tissues ready.

"Alan…Alan…," the voice carried like a soft breeze.

"Where am I?" Alan thought to himself. "Where is that voice coming from?"

Alan looked around, not quite believing what he was seeing.

He was in a meadow. A rainbow carpet of flowers spread out before him and the sun shone high in the cloudless sky warming his body, creating quite a contrast to the coldness he had felt on Mount Everest.

"Alan…," that voice again. "Alan look at me, sweetheart."

Sweetheart. She had called him sweetheart.

Turning around, Alan found himself face to face with the one woman in his life who he had heard so much about, but had never knew himself, due to how cruel the world could be sometimes.

"Mom?" Alan's voice was barely a whisper.

Lucille Tracy nodded sadly. "Yes sweetheart, it's me."

Alan took in his mom's beautiful features; her long chestnut hair, her sparkling brown eyes and rosy cheeks.

"She hasn't aged," Alan thought to himself. "I guess you don't when you're dead."

"How come I can see you?" Alan asked. "Am I dead too?"

Sadly, Lucille nodded. "Yes sweetheart, but you don't have to be. It's not your turn to go yet. Your father, your brothers, they still need you. You have to fight. You have to be brave, like I know you can be."

Alan had tears running down his cheeks. "I want to stay with you, I want to know you, I want to be with you."

Lucille reached out, stroking his cheek. "I know you do sweetheart, but like I said, it's not your turn. You have to fight, you have to wake up. I'm sorry I had to leave you so young, but you'll see me again one day, I'll be here waiting for you."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

Alan sniffed back the tears. "Ok Mom, I'll go back, I love you."

"I love you too, sweetheart."

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Jeff Tracy blinked, unable to come to terms with what Doctor Nam was asking. "What did you say?"

"Do you want me to carry on trying to revive Alan, Mr Tracy?"

Jeff looked through the clear glass, watching his youngest son lying deathly still on the operation table. Then he slowly looked around at Gordon who was stood beside him.

Gordon was as white as a sheet, but glistening tears were streaming down his cheeks, dripping off his chin and onto the tiled floor. He looked helplessly at his father.

"What do you want us to do, Mr Tracy?" Doctor Nam asked.

Jeff had never felt so helpless. What was he going to do? The last time he had had to make a decision like this was when Lucille died. "I don't know," he admitted sadly, collapsing against the wall, feeling his own tears coursing down his cheeks.

Gordon rounded on him, his puffy red eyes blazing in anger. "What! You don't know? He's asking if you want him to try and bring Alan back, and you don't know!"

"Gordon…." Jeff didn't know what to say.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!" Gordon shouted, taking off down the corridor. "I HATE YOU! AND I BET ALAN WILL HATE YOU TOO! YOU'RE GIVING UP ON HIM!"

Jeff watched his second son go. He was right. He was giving up on Alan.

Jeff turned to Doctor Nam. "Keep trying until I get back."

"But Mr Tracy…."

"Do it! You asked what I wanted to do, and this is it."

"Very well Mr Tracy, but his chances are extremely slim."

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Gordon ran into Scott' s room and collapsed in a ball against the wall. He grasped fistfuls of his auburn hair in anguish and began rocking back and forth, moaning. "No! No! No!"

John ran over and crouched beside him, Virgil came on the other side. "Gordon, what's wrong?"

Gordon looked up at his two older brothers, choking on every word that came out of his mouth. "Alan…heart…didn't know what to do…have to revive him….I hate Dad!"

"Gordon you're not making any sense."

Gordon tried to make his brothers understand. From his bed, Scott was slowly sitting up, in an attempt to see Gordon who was still on the floor. "Gordon? What is it? Is Alan ok?"

Slowly Gordon shook his head. "No, Alan's….." He couldn't bring himself to say the word, but it was true. Alan was dead. His heart had stopped, and that officially made him dead.

But he needn't have said anything. From where he was sitting, Scott slowly began to shake his head from side to side. "No, please no. Tell me he's not….."

Gordon could only nod, "I'm sorry guys."

Suddenly there was a loud bang as John angrily began kicking the wall, tears streaming down his face. "He can't be dead! He can't be!"

Virgil pulled his younger brother away from the wall, and into his arms. He slowly began stroking John's light blonde hair. As he did so, Virgil began to cry himself. He looked over at his older brother.

Scott was staring into space, as if in deep a trance. Tears were running slowly down his cheeks, but he didn't wipe them away. It was extremely rare to see Scott crying, and his brothers didn't know what to do.

Gordon, who had got up off the floor, slowly began to walk over to Scott's bedside. He sat on the bed and wrapped his arms around his oldest brother. It felt strange that he should be comforting Scott, it was usually the other way around.

Scott was mumbling something quietly, "I let him down. I promised I'd look after him, and I let him down."

"No you didn't, Scott. It wasn't your fault. Do you hear me?"

"But I promised I'd look after him."

"And you did. You didn't know what was going to happen."

At that moment their Grandma walked in. In his grief Gordon hadn't noticed her absence.

Ruth looked around at all her grandsons; crying. It didn't take a genius to work out what had happened.

"No," she sobbed. "Not Alan….please….not Alan."

John pulled himself away from Virgil, having calmed down a bit. He wrapped his arms around the elderly woman and hugged her tight. "I'm sorry Grandma." He could feel her body shaking with tears. "I'm so sorry."

"What are going to tell Tintin?"

Tintin! They'd forgotten all about her. She was going to be devastated; her and Alan were extremely close, all the family knew how they felt about each other.

"I don't know, Grandma," John answered truthfully. "I really don't know."

"Why Alan? Why him? What did he ever do?"

John honestly didn't have an answer to that. "And if I did," John thought to himself. "I'd probably be the cleverest man on earth, maybe I could even have saved Mom as well."

The door slowly opened and Jeff walked in, mentally bracing himself for what he was going to face.

Gordon leapt of the bed and ran towards his father. With a strength he didn't even know he had, Gordon threw him against the wall and pinned him there. He screamed into his father's face: I HATE YOU! YOU GAVE UP ON HIM!"

"Gordon…" Jeff tried to get through to his second youngest,-or was he the youngest now?

But Gordon didn't give him a chance. "HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO? HE'S YOUR SON! HE'S MY LITTLE BROTHER!"

"LISTEN TO ME!" Jeff shouted, momentarily stunning his son into silence. "The doctors are still trying to revive him, I've told them to keep going until I get back."

"So…So there's still a chance…he may come back?" Ruth wiped the tears out of her eyes, "that he may survive?"

Through eye's misted with tears, Jeff looked at his watch. "It's been nearly fifty minutes, his chances are slim Mother, we have to face that."

"What's going to happen if Alan's still…." Virgil couldn't get the words out, but his father knew what he was trying to say.

"I..I..I don't know son, we'll just have to accept the fact that Alan's……not coming back." As he said those words, Jeff began to sob harder. Images of Alan flashed through his mind; both as a child and as an adult: his first word-"Daddy"-, his first steps, his first day at school, his eighteenth birthday-that was a wild night, and a whole range of other images as well.

"Oh Jeff…." Ruth Tracy wrapped her arms around her only son, and held him tight.

"I want him back, Mother," he sobbed against her shoulder. "I want him back."

Around the room the four brothers watched as their father broke down. He was usually so strong and together, when you ran an organisation like International Rescue, toughness was adequate.

Scott felt a cloud of guilt descend over him. No matter what anyone said, he knew he would always blame himself for this.

Virgil began thinking about his little brother's reckless attitude. He had always thought-though he never told anyone- that the attitude would be the cause of Alan's death. How wrong he was. It was another guy's evil attitude that was-could-,Virgil tried to remember that, be the cause of his little brother's death.

John was thinking that he would have loved to have spent more time with Alan. They hardly saw each other, one of them was always on Thunderbird five.

Gordon was trying to contemplate what life would be like without his little brother. Who was he going to joke around, and pull pranks on his older brothers with? Who was he going to talk to when he was down? Gordon loved being a big brother; apart from anything to do with water, pulling pranks and operating Thunderbird four, it was one of the things he knew he was good at. How would he cope if that was taken away from him?

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Alan was lost, he didn't know how to get back.

"Where do I go?" He asked. He didn't want to be trapped with nowhere to go.

"Follow the light, honey," Lucille called after him. "Follow the light, they all want you back. Just follow the light."

Ahead of him, Alan saw a bright light. It seemed to rise over the horizon and hover towards him.

Taking a deep breath-though he didn't feel the breath come out-Alan stepped toward the light.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

"Charging 300, stand clear," Doctor Nam was keeping his promise to Jeff.

Nothing.

"Again. Charging 300, stand clear."

Nothing. The monitor remained the same.

beeeeeeeeeeep.

"Doctor, we have been trying for an hour now," one of the surgeons pointed out

"We will try once more," Doctor Nam replied. "Then we will call it a day, ok?"

The other surgeons agreed.

"Ok, lets take the voltage up, charging 350, stand clear." Doctor Nam pressed the defibrillators down on Alan's chest.

Beeeeeeeep..beep…beep…beep……

Doctor Nam's head snapped around to look at the monitor in amazement. "I do not believe it…….He's back."

Note: Aww…Did you really think I would kill Alan? I'm not that mean! Besides, I need him for my sequel. He has more torture to come then. Hmm….Maybe I am mean.

I hope you enjoyed that chapter. I would like to thank everyone who reviewed my latest chapters, and I apologise for the lack of a tissue warning, but I remembered it in this chapter!