So, I didn't write this until after, didn't think of it until after, although this was the original summary for it's now partner work. They can be read alone, but they both tag along to the same threads.
I love the ending, don't get me wrong for a second, but I would have loved something a little… I don't want to say a conclusion, because Thunderbirds (as we have seen and know) is never going to end. So I suppose this is my way of making that family moment I felt (and I think others have as well) was missing.
This one is also closer to the length I had planned for its runaway counterpart!
Summary: They have their Dad back. It doesn't mean they have all the years he's been gone back as well. Prequel (of sorts) to 'Making up for Lost Time', but they can be read as completely separate works.
Since Dad's 'accident', 'death', however you wanted to put it, the years seemed to have passed by with an agonising slowness. Like the seconds were creeping along at a snail's pace with every intention of mocking them, of dragging out the time it could remind them, "Dad's dead. He's not coming back."
And yet, here Dad was. Alive. Back.
And eight years had passed by with agonising slowness to bring them to here. Dragging out every day at a snail's pace maybe because something out there in the cosmos knew this was where they were heading and wanted them to wait for whatever cruel reasons it had.
And now eight years had been and gone and suddenly here they were with a man whose missing years had been spent on a lump of rock and a group of boys whose years would fill the gaps had also been spent on a lump of rock. Just one billions and trillions of miles away.
It didn't really seem fair to have been so close and yet so far.
It didn't seem fair for those eight years to have stolen hours' worth of memories they could have made, moments they could have shared.
It didn't seem fair for the same blue uniform to praise them and haunt them. It didn't seem fair for time to overlook them, pass them by whilst it waited for that moment it had selected for them to collide again.
It didn't just seem unfair. It was unfair.
For somehow now they had to try and pick their lives back up, unpick and wove anew the threads they had woven long ago into something patchy and missing links. They had to make an allowance in them now for the extra line of fabric.
It could be done. With sewing. You could make something, and then, if you were careful enough you could back track and remake it with the appearance that nothing had been changed. People would still look at it and say it was a masterpiece and you'd wonder why you changed it.
It couldn't be done. With life, that was. You didn't get the chance to go back over anything. Once it was out there, once it was said or done it was too late. You could try and alter it; you could try and force yourself to remember it in a different way or skew your perceptions, but that didn't change anything. It just didn't really do anything, certainly not enough of anything.
They could pick their lives back up, they could try and find the path they had walked long ago. They might even manage to get back to it, to stay on it for the rest of their lives, however there would be still be that portion of the path they have walked that was jagged, and somewhere of there would always be the road left untravelled.
They could pick their lives back up, press resume and jump from that moment to this one… but they could never get those years back in the same way they'd lost them.
Re-entry was far from a new thing to him.
But Scott felt a little like his legs weren't really there. He felt a lot like he had after his first trip back from space, but of course, then, Dad had been there telling him all about the after-effects and the differences and throwing out reassurances and promises.
Right now, he was laying here wondering why he was bothering. Why wasn't he doing something?
Oh yes, because he didn't know what to do. There were too many options: he was stood at a crossroads and any junction could be the wrong one to take, and once he was on it, it would take time to get back to where he started before he could try and resume his life upon the right one.
Why wasn't life simple? He remembered thinking that as he grew from child into adult.
He still wasn't sure if he knew the answer, or believed any reasons he'd come up with.
One thing he did know was that he needed to do something now. Else he'd surely go mad.
Dad was back. He should do the thing he always used to and going running to Dad. But Dad had only just got back and was surely still readjusting for himself- heck he'd probably gone to bed already considering how much rest he must he overdue. Even so, it the right time to go bringing all his problems to Dad when he probably had plenty enough of his own to try and sort.
So, he went seeking John instead, just as he always had when Dad wasn't available – before and after Dad disappeared.
But John wasn't in his room. The door was open as usual, it only ever being shut when the younger was sleeping or didn't want to be bothered. More often than not it was open, even when he was away up on Five. But John wasn't in the room.
"John?"
The window was open.
The red head didn't usually leave that open. Scott headed over and poked his head out.
"John?"
"Scott?"
And looked up.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm thinking."
"On the roof?"
"Yes. Never did any harm."
"It can if you fall from it."
John huffed. "Well, I'm not planning on falling."
"Hmm."
No one ever planned on a great many of things.
Scott doubted Dad planned to get blown into outer space with no direct way to contact them and let him know he wasn't dead and no way to return to them without them coming to get him first, which of course led to the endless circle of him waiting for them to get his message whilst they thought he was dead and didn't know or have a way to receive such message and- Scott took a breath.
Thinking was clearly not for him right now.
Action, that was his thing, on the flip side.
So he swung his leg over the windowsill, grabbing the sides of the building and pulling himself up. John's green eyes tracked every single movement and Scott was sure if he was about to make a mistake the younger would have corrected him long before. Alan was right: John did have eyes on everything. Even down here on Earth.
Finally he was up, sat beside his direct younger brother and looking at precisely nothing really, other than the rocky peaks of the island and the rapidly darkening sky.
"And you have to think up here rather than down there for what reason?"
"Really, Scott? Further away from gravity."
"A smidge."
"A smidge is a smidge, no matter how small."
For a moment he was flabbergasted. Absolutely flummoxed.
"John, did you really just quote 'Horton Hears a Who' at me?"
"Technically Dr. Seuss for he said it long before Jim Carrey did." For a moment the red head was thoughtful. "Or wrote it rather."
"Just don't let Gordon hear that you're talking about it. He loves that film old as it is."
"I won't say a word, Scott. But you know he'll still choose it for movie night."
"Dad gets first choice on our next movie night."
"You can explain that to the youngest pair. I'm not risking life and limb."
"I wouldn't ask you to."
The sky had already darkened considerably and they surely couldn't have been sat here for too long? But then, time definitely did fly by quickly when it wanted to. If Dad was still lost in the vacuum somewhere, Scott was sure these moments would be dragging at twice the length. But now Dad was back and time was ready to rob them of every precious second.
"So what did you come up here to think about. I won't argue the parameters of gravity with you, because we both know I'll lose."
"And we both know how much you hate losing."
"Quite."
"I just wanted some space I suppose. The house seems a little small after where we've been."
"Yeah."
Scott never wanted to go back there, beautiful as it may have been. He hadn't really admired much of the scenery whilst they were there though of course. And to think they nearly got stranded there, reunited family or no. It wasn't his plan for any of them to die yet – and even if dying together might have been the best way, he wasn't planning on that for years, not when Dad had only just returned from the dead.
"Yeah." He repeated, more to himself than anything.
"Was there something you needed, Scott, or..?"
Oh yeah… why had he come here? He'd been looking for an escape from his thoughts? Looking for his brothers to see if they were pulled into the same predicament? Looking for some kind of… consolation? No, he didn't know why. He just knew that he'd allowed his feet to do.
John nodded.
Nodded, for goodness sake, he hadn't even said anything! How did the younger get to know what he was thinking when he was left clueless? How was that fair? It's the sort of thing Dad used to be able to do – to walk into a room and take one look at you and somehow know exactly what was wrong or what he needed to say or do to fix it all and make everything right, and it had always annoyed him that that was something in life he had to accept allowing others to do for him sometimes because hell he could never do it for himself and- Scott took a breath.
It wasn't that he minded – in so many words – needing to allow his family to help him from time to time. It was more what. Really, he should be able to word his thoughts for himself, to control them. But really, in retrospect, he never had. Mum and Dad had always been there doing that, and then there had been John.
There still was John. And now, there still was Dad.
It felt weird to think of it like that. Still Dad. After all this time, the still had a Dad, after so long spent thinking they didn't- couldn't anymore.
John nudged him.
Green eyes met blue.
Scott shrugged.
"I guess I'm just trying to get my head around everything." John nodded, and waited. So he continued, "I mean, we lost Dad. We grieved and we looked after each other and made adjustments and lived eight years of our lives thinking he was dead. Never coming back. And then after all that… I don't know how, how he can just come back into our lives. Is that fair to say? I want him back, and I'm glad he's back, but there's eight years out there somewhere where we have no clue how the other lived."
"Dad lived on a planetoid." John remarked, slowly and softly, and Scott chuckled, chuckled before he felt like he would cry else.
"Yeah." That was true. They had some idea how their Dad lived he supposed. "Yeah. He did. And we lived here. Doing… Doing everything we could to fill in the gaps, and it never worked. And now we have an even bigger gap to fill in and I don't know where to start."
"I don't think there's a big selection of help out there for it. Most people die and… you don't hear about people coming back."
"Unless you're International Rescue and something of a hero family, right?"
"Right."
It shouldn't be funny. It shouldn't be remotely amusing and yet here they were falling into fits of chuckles at the prospect. But it really felt like the truth. It was exactly the sort of thing which happened to them, what with their constant belief in the impossible and pushing the limits.
It should have been so easy to believe in the impossible now, so why was he struggling so much? Oh yes, because no matter how often they did manage the impossible… the impossible task lay before them now.
"We have him, John, but we can never have those eight years again. Alan will always remember growing up without a Dad, and me, you and Virgil we… we can't go back and suddenly pretend we're not grown-ups or that we didn't grow up too fast because of it. And Gordon- he can't make those missed dreams a reality. You know what he could have done John, he had every chance of gold and… instead he's got what?"
"A family? A home? He's still got loads, Scott, we all have."
"But not those eight years. We'll never have those."
John looked away from him swiftly, so much so that the eldest wondered if there were tears in the corners of those eyes or if it was the speed of the movement blurring his vision. The younger stared at the sky and fixated his gaze on the stars for some time. Scott looked downward for once.
His chest felt empty now; like someone had opened it up and hollowed the cavity of all it's vital contents. After all this time and all the elation of finding Dad… he'd got what had really been bothering him off his chest.
And it didn't feel right.
It didn't feel like a victory and it didn't make anything feel better to have shared the problem.
It made everything ten thousand times worse.
Because when it was still in his head, trapped in his heart and constricting his lungs, he could push on. He could keep going and try to ignore just as he'd done the moment they lost Dad. But once it was said, once it was out there and free… there was no going back, there was no holding it in. It was like opening the flood gates and waiting… waiting for the next wave to come with naught to hold back its powerful onslaught.
The ground wasn't remotely interesting; but it was better than the inside of his head.
Sound scuffled on the slates of the roof beside him.
"Come on, Scott."
"Come on where?" It was a valid question he thought, because John was climbing past him and heading back towards the window. "What are we doing?"
"We're getting back some of those years."
"Did you invent time travel?" Scott knew he probably didn't need to remind the younger that it wasn't scientifically possible. Yet.
John smiled. "Next best thing." He answered before ducking back through the window. Scott followed, taking far speedier a journey than he had to get up here.
"What's the next best thing?"
"Do you think Grandma's asleep by now?"
He nodded. She always would be unless her boys were out, flying around the world trying to save someone. John was pulling a stack of blankets down from above his wardrobe.
"You can grab the pillows."
"For what?"
"Scott, do you really think any of us are going to sleep tonight?"
Well… it was quiet, but not sleeping quiet. Having returned home at all hours in the past, Scott had learned to tell the subtle signs which indicated who was awake and who had crossed over to sleep. It was quiet, but dimmed lights were still illuminating the gloom of the night.
"I suppose not."
"And if we can't, there's no point trying."
"Defeatist."
"Or pragmatist."
He couldn't argue with that.
"So blankets and pillows?"
"Don't worry, I'll make the hot chocolates."
"I would expect nothing less." They both knew he'd only destroy what remained of their taste buds if he tried again. Heck, Scott didn't think he was allowed anywhere near the making process of hot chocolates after that last time. "Although I still don't see how this is going to make up for anything?"
"I can't." John did it again, answering in that way that was serious and sad, and yet hopeful. "Not really, but we can make it feel like it."
"We can try." International Rescue always tried. Which meant the boys beneath it always did too. John smiled.
"Get the pillows then."
He smiled for himself this time. He had a different thought come to him.
"I'm checking Grandma isn't lurking downstairs first."
"Scott!"
"See you down there, little brother."
For the first time this evening, he didn't need to think. This was practised, this was tradition and this he could do blindfolded. He didn't need to think. He could just do and try and see where he got to. And after so much time had passed them, maybe that was all they could do.
Getting back the years you've lost wasn't easy. It was far easier to not lose them in the first place.
Of course, in their case (and in many cases only the river of life), it was never that simple.
Getting back the years you've lost wasn't easy. That didn't mean they weren't going to try.