Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.

Prompt from thunderbird-one-ai: "Shielding the other with their body" with Scott and Jeff

Scott was many things. Jeff might have missed eight years of it, but his mind still overlapped that small, fragile bundle with bright blue eyes and a loud voice with the young man who stood tall and proud at the head of the pack, and all the stages in between.

Right now, Scott - tall, proud, brave adult Scott - was small and fragile against him, and Jeff's mind was short-circuiting as it tried to correlate the two ideas. How this had happened. Why it had happened.

Scott was heavy. Warm and solid but dangerously fragile as he slumped over him and Jeff was the only thing between him and collapse.

This shouldn't be happening. This shouldn't have happened, and Jeff knew he was trembling as his hands came up to his son. They gripped his shoulders, skipped down his arms, fluttered around his waist before slipping beneath his arms and wrapping around his back.

Warm back. Wet back, and Jeff had never been squeamish, but it was different when it was his son's blood. His child's blood, seeping across his fingers and trickling down his palm, across his wrists.

Scott shouldn't be bleeding. Scott shouldn't be here, shouldn't have thrown himself into the path of the shrapnel heading straight for Jeff. Scott shouldn't have sacrificed himself for his father.

His breath tickled Jeff's collarbone, a reassurance that he was still alive even though he was slumped over and not moving. Not pulling himself upright, not standing straight and proud and shrugging it all off as nothing. Jeff couldn't see his face; he had no idea if Scott was still conscious. Something told him he wasn't.

He hadn't hesitated to use himself as a shield, and that terrified Jeff. He'd always been proud of Scott's selflessness, the way he'd put others' needs before his own, but now the doubt started creeping in. Why was Scott so selfless? How many times had he risked himself to save someone else? Did he ever put himself first?

Did Scott even realise how precious he was?

There was some bias in Jeff's opinion, he knew that. He was his father, of course Scott was one of the most precious things in his world. But that changed nothing. Scott was irreplaceable, both in his family and to the world that owed him a debt he'd never acknowledge, and it was that irreplaceable young man that Jeff held in his arms, warm liquid trickling down his wrists and leaving lines of fire behind.

"Scott." His voice broke and his knees buckled. It was barely a controlled fall as he sank to his knees, eldest child a ragdoll in his arms. "No. Scott."

Once upon a time, Jeff had been a first responder, but there had been eight long years of solitude and as of yet, no recapped training. Instincts screamed at him to do something, but his mind had gone blank and all he could do was clutch his son to his chest as his own breath juddered with the promise of sobs.

"Why?" he asked, the word spilling from dry, clumsy lips. "For me- You- Scott." Scott had his whole life ahead of him. He shouldn't be discarding it so easily for a damaged man whose remaining years were numbered. Not for him.

Scott didn't respond. Jeff couldn't see his face, not when he was clutching him so tightly, but the breath on his skin was still there, still too slow and even for him to be conscious.

A hand landed on his shoulder. Firm, enough to bruise, and he knew without looking who it was. There was only one son that didn't treat him like he was made of glass.

"Dad, you have to let go." Virgil was there, too, fussing and trying to get him to relinquish his grip. "Dad, I can't stop the bleeding like this."

The hand on his shoulder lifted, and instead fingers were tugging at his, forcing him to let go. It hurt, but not as much as his heart did at the sight of Virgil manoeuvring his brother onto a stretcher, compression packs deployed to slow the bleeding as his middle son once again proved he'd inherited his grandmother's aptitude for healing.

Virgil wasn't paying him any attention; Jeff understood that. After all, it was Scott that was hurt, Scott who needed the help, and Scott who his brothers would always look to first.

That had been a bitter pill to swallow once he was home and realised his sons now listened to Scott over him.

The firm hands were back on his shoulder now, and he looked up at the other present son. Amber eyes were alight with familiar fire - for someone so attuned to water, his eyes could blaze like an inferno.

"You have to stop him." Another other son would be offering platitudes - not your fault, he's always like this, he'll be fine - but not Gordon. It wasn't the first time this topic had come up, but Jeff had always dismissed it. Scott had just been looking after his brothers like he always did; of course he worried about it, but Scott had always been that way and despite the near-misses, that had been what they were - misses.

Now on the receiving end of Scott's self-sacrificing nature himself, Gordon's demands that he get Scott to back off sounded less like a whining child complaining because big brother got in the way again and more like a true fear. Jeff hated himself for it; he'd forgotten Gordon was all grown up now and wouldn't be prone to dramatics just for the sake of attention.

How many times had Scott thrown himself in front of his brothers? How many times had his other sons been in his exact position, terrified that they'd just been the reason that beautiful, precious, young man had breathed his last?

"How?" he rasped. Scott had been selfless for as long as he could remember; how could some old man past his prime possibly get him to stand aside when he thought he could do something about it?

The raging inferno died down, leaving something a little sad in its place, and Gordon pulled him to his feet, an assistance that also felt like a message.

"You're his hero," he said, as though those words didn't pierce Jeff's already aching heart and twist it all around. "If anyone can get through to him, it's you."

There was desperation in the words, a plea for Jeff to save his biggest brother from himself. Jeff wondered how many times the boys had tried to convince Scott themselves. How many times they'd failed.

He wondered how many times they'd wished he was there to step in. He wondered if things would have got this bad - and it was bad, how had he never seen that before - if he hadn't been blasted to the Oort Cloud, leaving behind five traumatised sons.

There were no words he could offer - I'll talk to him seemed too small, too insignificant for the subject matter at hand - so he swallowed and nodded. It seemed to be good enough for Gordon.

With his blond son's help, he stumbled over to the stretcher, looking down at the limp body of his eldest child and reaching out with trembling fingers. "Oh, Scotty," he whispered, one hand lacing with Scott's while the other found dark brown hair stained with grey. There was no response.

If this feels familiar, it's probably because this used to be in my collection fic Behind The Scenes. I recently reorganised that collection and came to the decision to post anything 1000+ words independently, so some chapters have been removed from that and will be going up as individual works over the coming weeks.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari