Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds.

There was just something about the sky that called to Scott in a way none of his brothers could truly understand. Virgil, for all that he was a more than competent pilot, still preferred his feet on the stability of solid ground – steady and unyielding, just like the man himself. Gordon, also competent at the controls of an aircraft, might as well have been born with fins for how much he preferred the fluidity and unpredictability of the waves. John, even before gravity had been declared his nemesis, had always looked to the stars and beyond, and Alan had followed suit, awed by the immeasurable scale of the universe. Earth was always going to be too small to contain either of them.

Scott? He was born to fly.

The jokes about Gordon and fins weren't originals. Long before Gordon had been a thought – before Virgil even, although Scott couldn't remember before John to know for sure when exactly it had started – his parents had laughed that he should have been born with wings. He'd been a climber, not because he liked to sit up high but because he liked to jump off of whatever it was he'd managed to scramble his way to the top of, much to his parents' dismay.

That was how he'd broken his first bone. At the time, he knew his parents had been horrified and distraught as they'd rushed him to hospital before well and truly Scott-proofing anything he could possibly reach to climb or jump off of. When the story was retold years later, after four more children, it had become almost a point of fond amusement – "Scott showed us all the ways a toddler could hurt themselves so we were ready for his brothers".

Scott might have nursed a small bit of pride at the fact that, joke or not, none of his brothers had ever broken a bone as a toddler. Later, once they learnt the fine art of climbing trees and roofs, was a different story, but even that, Scott managed first.

After Gordon, he definitely held the record for number of broken bones.

His desire to be in the air hadn't lessened at all as he'd grown up. For as long as he could remember, he'd always wanted to be a pilot. While his peers ummed and ahhed about their future careers, some changing their minds as frequently as several times a day at their most indecisive, he'd always had that one, fixed goal.

Thunderbird One had been everything he'd ever dreamed of, and more. Fast, responsive, and even paving the way for his brothers to follow, there was never any doubt that she'd been built for him. If he was honest, every other craft he'd flown since her maiden flight – and there had been many, from his stint in the Air Force to the other Thunderbirds and even the myriad of civilian craft he'd had to take over during rescues – simply couldn't compare.

The point of amusement for his grandmother, however, had been the day Brains presented him with a jetpack. "It's a good thing you never had that toy as a child," she'd commented when she'd caught him training with it. "Your poor parents would never had had a moments' peace."

His parents might not have been around to complain about his new method of flight, but his brothers more than made up for it. Virgil, in particular, was sceptical at best and paranoid at worst at the idea he had another way to fly. If it wasn't made by Brains, Scott had no doubt it would have mysteriously vanished at some point, never to be seen again.

John and Virgil were both old enough to remember him throwing himself out of trees with only a homemade parachute to slow the descent. They also remembered the subsequent hospital trips.

As it was, even with the knowledge that it would be vital gear for International Rescue, he still found himself grilled relentlessly by his eldest little brothers about safety and appropriate use and only use it when necessary, Scott!

He understood their paranoia a little better after Brains gifted Alan the astroboards. Surprisingly, his brothers were more lenient with the youngest's joyriding – something to do with no gravity and no broken bones – than they ever were with him. Privately, he considered that a little unfair.

But no brotherly concern could keep him out of the skies, whether it be in Thunderbird One or jetpack-powered. The sky called to him in a way it didn't them – Space, Earth, Water and Space again – and it was a call he had always been powerless to resist.

More #fluffember, more Scott-centric because come on, 'sky'? Who else was I gonna use for that? Also more introspective character-study-ish because apparently that's all I can write at the moment.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari