Title: Thunderbird X
Author: Gumnut
16 Feb 2020
Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS
Rating: Teen
Summary: He survived.
Word count: 2252
Spoilers & warnings: SPOILERS FOR SEASON 3 EPISODE 25
Timeline: Episode Tag
Author's note: This one is for scribbles97 tracybirds and thunderstorm-bay for being wonderfully supportive people. Many thanks to onereyofstarlight for the read through and answering my scream for physics help.
Disclaimer: Mine? You've got to be kidding. Money? Don't have any, don't bother.
-o-o-o-
It became routine. Each 'morning' by the clock, he would patrol the perimeter, check the transmitter, check the seals and go over all the jury rigging that kept him alive.
He would explore from time to time, but ever aware of the fragility of his existence, he was restricted as to how far he was willing to go.
As time grew, so did his needs. He discovered ice and greedily harvested it for the three things it could give him – water, fuel and oxygen. He slapped together a tin can with a couple of thrusters scrounged from the doomed Zero-X and slapped a call sign on it. Thunderbird X wasn't much, but it got him what he needed, darting between the nearby lumps of solar system garbage that ranged from frozen chunks of hydrogen, right up the elemental chain to the absurdity of the lump of gold that threatened to puncture X simply due to the velocity it was travelling at.
So, he managed. He found what he needed and he built. He logged. He explored to keep himself sane and he discovered.
But most of all, he longed.
He had left so much behind, so far away.
At times he would picture his sons in his mind's eye, just to keep their images fresh.
Little Allie with that dash of golden hair and innocent blue eyes. He counted his schooling years wondering at the report cards he wasn't seeing, but knowing he was bright, ever so bright, taking after his lovely Lucille.
Thoughts of his wife kept him company to the point that he often wondered if she was there with him, watching over him, keeping him safe.
The time Thunderbird X's starboard thruster exploded on his return run, sending her into a deadly roll that almost ended in a final farewell to his existence…she was there while his leg mended. There through the pain of resetting and the ache that followed for weeks.
She was in his dreams.
She whispered in the long silences.
But his boys.
Young Gordon, so determined to go to the Olympics, more fish than teenager, he wondered if he had made it. If his brothers and his mother had been able to watch him stand on that podium and represent his country.
He daydreamed he did.
And even if he didn't, god, he missed his smile. His second youngest son was a ball of mischievous sunshine, even when Jeff had found sand poured into his boots and the time the little brat filled his shower head with blue dye.
When he needed to smile, he thought of his little Gordy.
He harvested what he could from the Zero-X. The ship was never going to fly again, crippled by its unintended plummet into deep space. He had done his best to stabilise her flight as she appeared suddenly surrounded by debris and icy rock. As it was, he had barely managed to set down on the planetoid. The more correct word would have been 'crashed' but he had a Lee Taylor drawling in the back of his mind about any landing he could walk away from, yada, yada.
He missed his space buddy and his dry wit like he would miss a limb. It had always been the two of them against the unknown. They'd been there and back, but now, so far away, he wasn't with him.
But despite that, he forged on.
He tore that pile of scrap metal apart and, from it, made a place to survive.
He could call it a home, but he refused.
Home was an island with his family so many thousands of AU away.
He built.
He crafted.
He survived.
Communications was a priority. He knew the distance. He knew the chances of reaching that tiny blue dot so, so far away.
The transmitter was easy. Most of that equipment had survived intact, but the technology was nowhere near the level of International Rescue. He wrangled what he could out of it and sent a repeating signal.
A vain hope, but hope nonetheless. His boys had the best technology on the planet.
And then he remembered the flight plan of the Calypso.
It didn't take him long to put together another signal, a hack into Brains' robot. It was a long shot, but if it worked, his boys could hear him sooner.
So, checking the transmitters became part of the routine. Every day.
Power levels.
He had harnessed the great engines of the ship. She couldn't fly, but she could generate enough electricity and more for his needs. Thank god.
It was with hope he built the receiver.
This he crafted from scratch with his own knowledge. Between Shadow Alpha, his own training and introducing John to his first radio at age five, he had the skill set.
It was fond memories of his middle boy that accompanied the exercise.
Red hair and turquoise eyes that absorbed every smidgen of information Jeff had been willing to impart. He was the eldest of his boys aiming high enough to follow Jeff into space. Of course, John's interests were different, drifting in more Lucille's direction of applied physics and the creation of new systems. John took to digital technologies like Gordon took to water. His longing for space simply led to communications and astro-specialities. Where Jeff was closer to the traditional NASA test pilot type who jumped into a tin can and crossed his fingers that the labcoats knew what they were doing, John was a little of both. Made sense since his mother was one of those labcoats.
Lucille had sent Lee and Jeff to Mars only to welcome him back with a little red-haired boy to carry both of their legacies.
So, when he flicked the on switch on his receiver, it shouldn't have surprised him that John's voice was the first sound he heard.
"Calling Zero-X from Thunderbird Five, Colonel Jeff Tracy, do you copy? Please respond."
It was a recording, repeating over and over, sweeping the universe looking for him. It faded in and out, some times riddled with static, always days out of date, but it was his son.
Some nights he cried.
It didn't stop as the years passed. It became reassurance that at least part of his legacy still survived, that his sons were still running International Rescue. It got bad enough that at one point he built a second receiver just so he didn't have to turn that one off to change frequencies.
John's voice sung in tune to Lucille's in his head.
The day he discovered the coded entries in the repeating signal, he nearly lost it completely.
His middle son was truly brilliant. Laced into the repetition was a code, an IR code with John's unique identifier that only his family knew and with the computing power Jeff had salvaged from the wreck, he had just enough to uncover what his boy was sending him.
Words.
Photos.
Stories.
His family in tiny snippets looped into that repeating signal.
"Dad, we know you're out there somewhere. We miss you. Please know we won't stop looking and we will find you."
So stranded millions of miles away from home, every now and again, he would receive a care package from home. Sometimes the signal shattered beyond repair, sometimes interference was so bad John's voice barely made it. Sometimes the signal went completely dead and Jeff would fret as the solar system realigned itself enough to let that signal through again.
But his blessed John sent such a lifeline that he knew he may not have survived without it.
He even sent his brother's piano music.
Only a fragment survived the distance, but Jeff clung to the sound of Virgil's fingers on his mother's piano.
Thoughts of his second eldest, his gentle artistic soul who bore so much of his beloved Lucille that he hadn't been able to look at the boy for some time after losing her.
He had so much regret, so much he wanted to make up to his boys. His priorities had seemed so obvious, so clear and so right at the time. But now, stranded with so much time to think, he could only think of what else he could have done.
Perhaps he could have been there for Virgil more. Been there for all of them. He lost his youngest's teen years, he was becoming a man without his father or his mother.
Virgil had been older. Such a strong boy despite his sensitivities. He had his art and his music, yet he was so determined, the young man had presented his father with his pilot's license, his engineering degree and stepped into his role in International Rescue without a blink.
He'd seen that expression on Lucy's face the day she told him she was pregnant with their first. He had immediately flared protectively, claiming she needed to step back on the Mars project.
She had such fire in her eyes when she told him clearly and at length where he could stick it.
Virgil had that same stubborn streak along side his music. He was as tough as the 'bird he flew.
And when it came to Jeff's food sources, stubborn had been the key.
The Zero-X had been a prototype. She wasn't stocked for a long-term mission; her supplies had been minimal and hunger had become a constant companion. There were limits out here as to what could be found, what could be considered edible.
He had done things he never wanted to think about again.
He had daydreamed about his mother's cooking.
There were times that this one lack of supply nearly did him in.
He had tricks they had used on Mars and on the Moon, but ultimately the human body was tied to Earth's ecosystem and there were so many limits as to what he could do to emulate it.
The ship's empty hydroponic racks mocked him, but the daylight lamps were enough to save him.
So, he managed an existence. Meagre and sometimes painful, but stubborn kept him going and the voices from so far away kept him in hope.
And hope was named Scott Tracy. He knew his eldest. Where Virgil was stubborn, Scott was driven. The man would not stop.
Those vivid blue eyes that had at first looked up at him with admiration, and later faced him down with determination and sometimes anger, ever the staunch field commander of International Rescue. Scott was his second. He knew he had depended on him far too much, even from early on after Lucille passed, but the boy had shouldered it all.
He had no doubt Scott was still shouldering it. The boy had such a capacity to love and to bear what he needed to, to get the job done. Scott was the one who had stepped in when Jeff had been unable to be there for whatever reason.
His mother had made a point of making sure Jeff knew exactly what he was putting his children through. Loudly and in detail.
Jeff knew his failures.
And ultimately, he had failed his boys completely and ended up stranded out here.
With his regrets for company.
He existed.
He survived.
He clung to hope.
And then after an eternity the messages changed. John's voice stopped its loop and switched to direct communication. Everything Thunderbird Five had threw his son's voice across the void. Where Jeff only had the little transmission power he had, his son's 'bird knew how to yell.
His boys had received his SOS.
He cried tears when all five spoke to him from so far away. He couldn't answer, but god, could he listen. After all those years of Scott yelling at him to listen, his mother yelling the same, he finally was so grateful to hear their voices.
Alan's had deepened and sounded so confident and sure. Gordon's smile floated across space and warmed his heart, John, his lifeline, had tears in his voice and Virgil's deep baritone was sweeter than his music.
And Scott.
The fire in his voice lit up the small confined space Jeff lived in. That determination was there, strong and ever so driven.
His sons were coming to get him.
Hope became reality.
And all he could do was weep.
The care packages increased in frequency and often had a variety of brothers telling him of their progress. The stories varied, but the mission updates all came from Scott, delivered in sharp military terms.
Scott didn't send stories.
Launch Day was scheduled, but due to the time delay, he found out about the plan at almost the same time his proximity network started screaming at him.
And of course, fate chose that day for his planetoid to fall apart. He had tempted luck too far and it was finally calling due.
His boys moved faster than he expected and he was in Thunderbird X when they arrived. He could not believe he almost missed them…after waiting so, so long.
When he saw Scott fall, his mind stopped and he just moved.
The hand he caught was the first he had touched in over eight years.
Those blue eyes, the same eyes that accused him in the darkness when sleep failed him, now looked up at him in astonishment, widening ever so much.
So full of love that his heart shattered.
His boy.
"Dad?"
"I've got you, son." Hold it together. "Now, what do you say we get out of here?"
-o-o-o-
FIN.