DISCLAIMER - I do not own Thunderbirds, nor do I intend this story to make any profit from the characters, story, or setting of Thunderbirds. I'm just a poor college student trying to make my way through life - this story is for entertainment purposes only.
A Hurricane in Barbados
April 2011
A soft patter of rain drops fell at the gravesite, tumbling gently from the sky onto the cement walkways below. In the sky, the sun tried vainly to shine through a layer of floating fog. A soft wind blew the clouds about, and sent a fine mist of pollen dancing through the air.
Spring-time already, Jeff Tracy thought, wrapping his arms about his body though it was not the least bit cold outside. One spring that I never would have imagined spending without Lucy.
The man closed his eyes, and fell slowly to his knees. Embedded in the grass, a few scarce inches from his body, was a white granite stone. The block was covered in delicate symbols, and was topped with the calming figure of the Virgin Mary.
One part of Jeff condemned himself for not burying Lucy, for instead choosing to have her remains cremated and kept in the family home. The other part condemned him for building the large memorial in the first place. After all, no one else that had died in the crash had the money or time to erect something like this for their loved ones.
And a small part of Jeff, still swimming in the immense grief of the entire accident, couldn't care less about any of it.
He didn't stop the tears this time, as they pooled in his eyes and ran down his cheeks. It was the crying, more than the casual yet heartless prodding of his psychiatrist, that helped him the most.
He had come back three times a week, against the wishes of the professional that he was seeing, to simply sit at the memorial site and let the warm spring breezes whip through his hair. He had no idea why he even came out to the stone, why the graveyard gave him more peace than the ornamental pot that sat by his bedside.
It didn't matter if it rained, if it hailed, or if a hurricane itself rose from the tempest and battered him down; he was always there. Perhaps it was denial, as the shrink was always saying it was, but Jeff couldn't bring himself to let go.
"I tried to fix the problem," he said quietly, wondering in his heart if Lucy could hear him when he spoke to the stone. "I made sure of that."
And that was a promise, Jeff thought, that had been shattered a month later when the same thing had happened again, with a different train, a different city, and a different set of mothers and fathers coming back home from a day at work.
All of the money that he had spent on lawyers, the time that he had donated to try and right the initial flaw in the designs in the first place, had fallen on deaf ears. The lawyers had then tried to convince him to sue the monorail company, but what would that have accomplished?
Jeff wasn't out to bankrupt a company that - for the most part - provided people with a service that they needed. He was, however, willing to uncrease the creases in their programs and exponentially improve the survival factor of their ventures. Yet . . .
"You were right, Lucy," he whispered, looking up for a moment at the sun which had poked itself out of the clouds. "Money can't fix everything."
No one, not the heirs of Bill Gates or the failing sons of the other multi-billion dollar corporations, understood that better than Jeff Tracy did at that moment.
With a bank of billions at his disposal, he had tried to make things right. He had paid for the engineers that no one else could afford, he had turned his own company onto the problem, and in the end had discovered a solution that was now stopping him from putting the death of his wife to proper rest.
It was not that the second accident couldn't have been averted. The solution had been there, the money had been there, and the time had been there. In the end, more than anything else, they just hadn't cared.
And that was what hurt him the most. A humanist at heart, Jeff could not bring himself to accept the fact that there were those out there who had the resources available to fix a problem, yet chose not to.
There had been an accident, a deadly accident where twenty people - including Lucy - had been killed. The executives should have learned from the mistake, should have looked to the future, and should have taken every precaution to stop it from happening again.
Tell that to the new dead, Jeff thought, who died because someone somewhere didn't feel like reading a document, or couldn't care enough to take the time out to sign a contract. Tell that to those mothers and fathers who are left to explain to their children why it was their own parent that didn't survive that crash.
"Tell that to my sons!" screamed Jeff in anguish, the harshness of his own voice grating against his mind. "Explain that to my youngest, who's going to go to school this fall for the first time, who won't have a mom around to pack up his lunch for him!"
The words took everything from him, the words that he hadn't spoken in court and had held back when he had addressed the executive directors themselves.
He felt defeated, he felt lost, and he felt helpless - just as he had as the monorail had jumped, as he had looked Lucy in the eye the exact moment that the car had hit the ground.
The thought Lucy's face, however, gave him enough strength to push himself to his feet, to wipe the tears from his cheeks, and to turn from the stone and begin the slow walk home. It was the same every week, every month, and Jeff did not no what he could do to put his mind at rest for good.
All he could do, his mind thought bitterly, was to silently antagonise those responsible, and hope that something would change in the world in the future.
Closing the door of his home quietly behind him, Jeff pulled off his coat and hung it onto the ornamental rack that sat by the entrance. He walked carefully along the main hall, taking special care not to make any extra noise that could wake his sons up in the early hours of the morning.
He was, quite expectedly, surprised when he cracked open the door to the rec room only to find his second eldest sitting in front of a glowing television set. John Tracy, his stark blond hair plastered in a messy fashion about his face, let his head fall sleepily to the side as his eyes followed the action on the screen without blinking.
"What are you doing up so early? Was there a meteor shower tonight?" Jeff asked, to which John shrugged and didn't answer. "Well? Watching the morning cartoons?"
The younger Tracy turned around for a moment, and held his father's gaze with a pair of blue eyes that were identical to those of his mother. "There's a hurricane hitting Barbados right now. The weather men weren't expecting it to be so strong, and now the people are trying to get out while there's still time." With that, John turned his head back to the television screen and continued to watch as the action unfolded.
Slightly irritated by the cold reception that he was getting, Jeff walked forward and placed his hands on the back of the coach where John was sitting. "So why are you up? You know that you have school today, right? You don't want to be tired for that."
John's words, when they finally came, were so filled with bitterness that Jeff nearly took a step backwards. "I'm up because I care." He turned once again to his father, and Jeff could clearly see tears rimming the eyes of his twelve-year old. "I guess you wouldn't care if I was up stargazing, but for some reason you do just because I happen to be concerned about something that's not involving me."
The moment was so profound that Jeff found himself without any words for his son.
"You think that I don't care?" Jeff finally asked at length, struggling to keep his own voice calm. "Is that what you're saying?"
"I don't know what you think," replied John, his high boyish voice cracking under the strain. "I do know that you spend hours alone in your room, reading papers and trying to bring mom back to life when she's obviously dead. I know that three times a week you wake me up when you leave the house to go and stare at that awful memorial." John's eyes narrowed slightly, as a touch of anger entered his voice. "I hate that stupid thing."
Jeff almost brought up his hand and hit his son. He could even see in his mind the red mark blossoming across John's slender face. "Don't you ever talk about that place like that."
John was quiet for a long moment, save for a few hiccups that escaped his lips as he desperately tried to keep his tears under control. "I love mom just as much as you do, dad. But she's dead, and death is forever." He pointed a finger behind him at the video screen. "Want to know why I'm up? Because those people are going to die, some of them, and that bothers me."
"Your mother dying bothers me."
"And me!" John retorted quietly, the violence in his voice quickly replaced with pain. "I think about her all the time, dad." He turned his head back to the set and looked down at his hands. "I can't stop thinking about her. I dream about her over and over again. I can feel her grabbing my hand. And then, when I'm about to look at her, when I'm about to see her eyes, I wake up." From where he stood Jeff could easily hear John begin to cry. "I just know that she's not coming back. I wish it didn't have to be like this, but it is, and I can't change that. Not now, not ever."
"I just don't want to loose you too," John continued quietly from the couch. "I'm scared every time you leave the house that you're not going to come back. That you're going to forget about all of us. That you're going to forget about me."
It struck Jeff how mature his son sounded for his age, how, in many ways, he had a better grasp on life than even his older brother Scott did. It was funny how John of all people could manage to make even a simple observation profound. The boy spoke so little to everyone, but he always seemed - of any of the Tracy boys - to truly understand what was going on around him.
And it struck Jeff, right smack in the face, that his son was right.
Lucy was not coming back, it was true; but there were other people, important people, that were still alive.
Without speaking, Jeff walked around to the front of the couch, sat down, and took the weeping John protectively in his arms. In his mind, he let go of the hand of his wife for the last time, and took the tiny hand of his son instead. As if sensing Jeff's change of heart, John wrapped his own arms about his father and hugged him tight.
The two sat silently for many minutes, until Jeff finally found the words to speak. "If I could bring your mother back, I would in a moment."
Nodding, his eyes burnt red with tears, John let his face fall into his father's chest. "I know you would. I wish that you could. I still miss her."
We all do, Jeff thought. You, and Scott and Gordon and Alan and Virgil and I; we'll all miss her for the rest of our lives.
"It's just that . . ." the words of the younger Tracy were left hanging in the air.
"Hmmm?" Jeff whispered, his arms still wrapped about his son.
"Not everyone dies in monorail accidents, dad."
"So you think that my effort to change the hearts of those company executives is futile."
"Maybe a bit," John admitted solemnly. "Because somewhere someone is probably dying from a car accident that's not caused by an executive. They're probably lying in a hospital bed while their family stands around them and watches them die." The boy's eyes, Jeff saw, carried a fleeting and haunted look to them, and he knew what John was thinking about.
"We can try and stop it from happening."
"But you can't save everyone, dad. There are too many people in trouble to save everyone. And who's fault is it in Barbados? No one, really, not even the meteorologists."
Jeff couldn't find anything to say to that either. As much as he wanted to believe that it was possible, as much as he wanted to have Lucy sitting next to him again - though he knew it were impossible and likely his own denial coming to the surface again - it wouldn't happen.
Accidents happened, and there was never any comfort found in them. People died, both because of human failure and by constants beyond their own control. Those who were left alive often found themselves bearing the wounds of death in their own hearts, eating away and killing them from the inside.
"You can try bear it, though," Jeff whispered, his own realizations now coming to the surface. "I think that's what your mom would want; for us to try our hardest, and do what we can even though we can't do everything." He sighed heavily, and gave John a reassuring pat on the back. "I'll throw the documents out tomorrow. They can have their company, they can keep their money. I'm through with them."
"You're giving up then?" John asked, a bit of shock in his voice as if he had not expected Jeff to give in that easily. "Completely? Just like that?"
"No," Jeff assured him, "not completely. I'll find another way, if I can, to make it all right. And we can't save everyone, John. You're right about that. Maybe I couldn't save your mother. But," and he looked John in the eye as he spoke, "I think that I can still save the rest of us, the rest of this family. Think mom would like that?"
John didn't even wait for Jeff to finish his sentence before he nodded and buried his head again in his father's shirt. "Yeah, I think she would."
A/N - I'm sorry that I've kept you guys waiting so long, but midterms are approaching and my homework has been a-calling. ;) Also, a huge thanks has to go out to Ariel - she beta reads stuff that many people I know refuse to, and she does a wonderful job of it! Thank you so much!
Anyways, though, something's been nagging at the back of my mind and I really feel that I should mention it. When I was writing The Winds of Advent, it seemed as though Lucy was speaking to me from somewhere. Normally my muse is active, but I can't explain why this scene happened the way it did - I have a really good guess, though. When I was 8 years old, I was stuck in the hospital for a month with a life-threatening illness. I was in a lot of pain, dopped up on medication, and subsequently didn't sleep much. I can honestly say, thinking back on that time, that I owe my life and sanity to two things - Thunderbirds and Power Rangers, which I watched incessently over and over again during my stay there. It kept me going when nothing else could. Coincidence? Maybe I have more in common with Lucy than I previously thought. ;)
Lilo Hawkins - I guess we're even, because every morning your stories never fail to make me laugh. ;) I don't think I've ever cackled so hard in my life as I did reading chapter four of your latest offering. They are so BAD, Gordon and Virgil. ;D
Kazza - Thanks, I'll have to check out some of your HP stuff in my spare time!
Leap of Fate - Annonymous reviews are finally turned on, lol. Thanks for pointing that out. ;) It's interesting, but the scene turned out very different from what I originally planned. The Christmas thing came out of nowhere, but it offered such wonderful imagery that I really couldn't cut it out. I just had this mental image of a ten year old Virgil playing (somewhat poorly) Christmas Carols for his mom, and it wouldn't leave my head alone.
Ariel - What can I even say? Everyone else, take note of the following - Ariel is the most dedicated and wonderful beta reader that a fanfic writer or professional author could ever wish for. I know this was hard for you to read, and your opinion means that much more to me because of that. Thanks, my friend. :)
Fran Lavery & Arashi no Baka - I'm not sure whether I should be happy or not that I've put everyone (including poor Lucy) through such misery. ;) Thanks for the kind words, and hopefully I won't disappoint.