Gordon hated tornadoes. Since he was little, they had haunted his dreams. Stories from kids at school, news on the broadcasts and several mad scampers down into the storm shelter with his mother and a brother or two, absolutely terrified for the brothers who weren't with them, pretty much cemented in a decent wariness.

And the sound. Oh god, the sound. So loud and screeching.

There had been the one time it had only been him and his two eldest brothers. Mom had been with Johnny somewhere else. Gordon had been too young to remember where, but what he did remember was Virgil.

Scott had held Gordon while the wind blasted overhead and his brother's arms around him helped ever so much. But Virgil had been so jumpy and the emotion in his eyes had frightened Gordon enough that he never forgot it.

He had asked Virgil about it sometime after but his big brother had no idea what he was talking about. There were hugs and reassurance a-plenty, but Gordon was not convinced.

He was determined that Virgil liked tornadoes even less than Gordon.

So, it was with a familiar sense of apprehension that Gordon faced landing in a volatile tornado zone.

Two was equipped. Equipped to withstand almost anything. She was a tank. But there were plenty of things in a tornado zone that Brains might not have been able to predict.

If Gordon found himself eyeing the dark sky as Virgil secured his 'bird, literally clamping her to the ground with her grapples and drilling pitons deployed from her struts, he felt justified in his uneasiness. Virgil even muttered something about the type of rock he had landed on, probably to try and reassure his co-pilot.

It didn't work.

But Gordon was used to being afraid. It was healthy and just needed the respect it was due so he could work around it.

Today it was a factory and an unconfirmed number of people trapped beneath its collapsed structure.

They were both moving, down the hatch, and running over to do an initial site assessment before deploying a pod or two. Virgil had just reached the edge of the debris zone, Gordon a second behind him when John yelled in his ear and the world suddenly darkened.

That familiar and dreaded screeching wind leapt up and the earth roared as a twister hit dirt far too close to them and obviously unpredicted by anyone. It blanked out everything with torn up landscape.

John was still yelling in his ear.

It began to hail.

Huge chunks of ice that clamoured against his helmet and bruised through uniform.

The noise.

God, the noise.

Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed for Virgil's uniform only to glimpse a darker shadow in the chaos.

A split second later he was fighting the wind both to keep his feet and to move himself and his brother out of the way.

It was a combine harvester.

An airborne combine harvester. He had only a split second to recognise the shape before it was on them.

Gordon threw up an arm to protect himself as the machinery threatened to land on their heads.

It didn't.

It missed, bouncing just enough to fly over in a mess of screaming metal.

His arm snagged on something sharp, tearing his uniform, but he was so happy to not be dead that when the twister abruptly disappeared just as fast as it hit, he found himself collapsing to the ground as much as the falling debris around him.

The hail switched to rain.

Dirt turned to iceberged mud.

He still had his fist knotted in Virgil's baldric.

His brother was face down, helmet sinking into the sludge.

"Virgil!"

The rain petered off abruptly and the world around him fell silent bar the ominous rumble of the clouds and the soft splats of small pieces of debris returning to earth.

"Virgil!"

His brother did not respond.

But as Gordon reached over to assess him something twitched in his arm, a spurt of red forced him to clamp a hand down on a suddenly very serious injury.

Shit!

"Virgil!"

He nudged his brother with an elbow and prayed he wasn't seriously injured.

As if in answer, Virgil groaned and rolled over.

Gordon's eyes widened.

There was a huge chunk of metal sticking out of his brother's helmet.

Words failed him, absolute terror shaking him to his bones.

"VIRGIL!"

His brother groaned again, a hand wavering towards his broken visor.

"No, Virgil, stay still! Thunderbird Five, emergency, we need assistance, Virgil is down!"

"FAB. Help is already on the way. Scott is en route." His brother's voice was calm, familiar and professional, but the tension was there. "I've alerted local services, but they are overwhelmed." And there was the worry that echoed Gordon's. "I will do my best."

The aquanaut didn't bother to acknowledge that. He knew John would do everything.

Gordon edged closer to Virgil only to have to scuttle out of the way as his brother suddenly sat up, threw off his helmet and emptied his stomach onto the mud.

It was unpleasant but unfortunately not unfamiliar. Virgil groaned, an arm clutching at his gut and his other hand reaching for his head.

"Virgil!"

His brother looked over at him and Gordon was forced to swallow bile.

The right side of Virgil's head was matted in blood. His cheekbone was already beginning to swell and his eye with it. Brown eyes looked at him blearily a moment before blinking and focussing…

…on Gordon's arm.

"Gordon!"

It was like a switch had been hit and Virgil was moving reaching for Gordon's injury, medical concern his only focus. Eyes ascertained the extent of the damage and against Gordon's protests, Virgil soon had his fist around it stemming the bloodflow and wrapping it in a pressure bandage. Gordon knew time was limited and restricting his circulation was a bad thing, not to mention the lack of oxygen to particular parts of his body that artery actually fed, but the sight of blood dribbling down the side of his brother's head completely ignored as he smotherhenned over Gordon, was simply distressing.

And now he wanted to try and move them both to Two. What?!

"I'm fine! The bandage is secure. For Christ's sake, Virgil!"

But he was ignored and next Gordon, who despite a little dizziness due to blood loss, felt he was quite capable of walking on his own, found his brother's considerable shoulders under one arm and they were moving through the mud to the massive green 'bird fifty-odd metres away.

"Virgil!" God, please, don't do this to yourself.

Okay, vertical wasn't the best position and his head spun. Gordon had a sudden wish for his biggest brother to suddenly appear to save them all. As if hearing that thought, the world decided to make his life even worse and everything went sideways as Virgil went down like a ton of bricks.

Gordon went with him.

Mud kicked up and splashed all over them. Gordon fought to keep Virgil's head from dropping into the stuff. "Goddamnit, Virg!" He struggled to hold his brother and Gordon did not miss the red that appeared on his now muddy bandage. "Shit. Why don't you listen?!"

"Gordon, report!"

Scott's voice raked the air in his helmet as Gordon bit into his lip, desperately attempting to both run a vitals check on Virgil and to stop the world spinning.

"Working on it, Thunderbird One." His tone was sharp, but he didn't have the energy for niceties. "ETA?"

"Eleven minutes. Status?" There was more big brother than commander in that request and it hit exactly where Scott had planned it to. Gordon's shoulders relaxed just a micron and his breath came a little easier.

It was going to be a long eleven minutes.

The world spun again and he had to note that the pressure bandage was not doing everything it needed to do. There was more red than white and he still had eleven or more minutes to field.

Now his brother had been forced to stop moving, at least Gordon could examine his head injury. Unfortunately, up close, it was worse.

There was still metal in the wound. It reflected dully in the ominous lighting and if he hadn't seen Virgil awake and functioning he would be even more terrified than he already was.

But that didn't negate his brother throwing a bleed or some other nasty post initial injury.

Gordon shifted so he could support Virgil. He gently lowered his brother's head into his lap. This freed up Gordon's hands to grab at the engineer's kit and drag out the mediscanner he kept in his baldric.

A flash of yellow.

The readout that was thrown to his HUD chilled him to the bone. "John, tell Scott to hurry."

-o-o-o-