A/N: I can't say thank you enough to the lovely people who have been supporting this story. You guys are the best!
It hadn't taken long for John to start flinching automatically whenever the cell door opened. Like Dad though, he'd taken to adopting an aloof mask whenever the guards came for him, not wanting anyone to know they were getting to him. Because they were getting to him. It had only been a few days since Barrett's three-day ultimatum had come and gone, but those days…
He never complained though. Sometimes he couldn't muster up the energy to say anything at all after a session with Barrett's men, but he always did his best to offer Dad reassuring looks, to stay awake as long as he could, to regulate his breathing. Anything to put up a strong front that would make it easier for his father to keep resisting.
Dad had to keep resisting.
John had never regretted his decision to join International Rescue. He'd loved the work he'd been doing before with NASA, and he missed it, but it had never made him feel essential, irreplaceable, like he was personally making a meaningful difference. He'd always known that a dozen other astronauts were waiting to replace him if he failed or quit, and the computer work he'd done was nothing a skilled team couldn't do without him. But when he joined International Rescue, he'd felt a sense of purpose that he'd never quite known before. He'd felt a connection, not just with his brothers, but with every single person who called for aid. He was their first point of contact, their beacon of hope, the one who told them help was on the way.
Much as John loved the work though, it had also cost him dearly. Perhaps not in the same way it had cost Scott, or Virgil, or Gordon, or Alan, for they'd all taken different paths and made different sacrifices, but dearly nonetheless.
John wasn't sure his brothers really understood everything that went into his job on Thunderbird 5. They knew he put in long hours and had to sort through an endless flood of incoming information for the few situations that truly needed International Rescue's specialized attention, knew he was essential for coordination and support. But they didn't appreciate, couldn't appreciate, all the information that never made its way to them.
John didn't dispatch his brothers for lost causes. He'd send them to the one in a million chances, the how-the-hell-are-we-gonna-pull-this-one-off situations, even to tow jobs in the arctic. But when John knew, with the terrible certainty of a genius who'd overseen hundreds of emergency situations, that there was truly no possibility of a positive outcome, Tracy Island never got a call. He knew what the cost of mission failures could be, knew the kind of guilt they caused even if there was simply nothing that could've been done. He didn't do that to his family, not when he knew there was no chance.
But he didn't grant himself the same mercy. When people called him for help, when they had no one else to turn to, he answered, no matter what. And even when he made the impossible decision not to dispatch his brothers, he never abandoned them. He stayed on the line with them for as long as it took, made sure they knew they weren't alone. He listened to their fears, their stories, and shared his own in return. His was the last voice they ever heard.
Seven people, all told, had met such ends. John remembered them all, their names, the sound of their voices, their last words. And even though he believed he'd made the right choice in sparing his brothers the same burden, he still couldn't help wondering if he could have done something different, something more.
Seven souls weighed on his, and that was seven too many. He would rather face a hundred years of torture than have one more added to that list. And if he or his father broke, if they supplied Barrett with the technology, the weaponry he was asking for, then there would be far more than one. John wouldn't let that happen.
So he willed himself to stay relaxed as three of the usual guards strode into the cell one morning. But they were accompanied by someone new this time, a woman in a white lab coat that looked out of place in this strange prison. She was wielding a syringe, and she approached John once the guards had grabbed him by the arms to immobilize him.
"Hey!" John shot a glance behind him to see Dad standing at the edge of the force field, wary eyes fixed on the needle that was poised over the crook of his arm. "What are you giving him?"
But it turned out they weren't giving him anything; they were taking.
John watched dark red blood gush into the waiting vial, a faint roaring in his ears. He'd never been particularly good with needles, something his twin had always teased him for. Virgil had loved going to the hospital with Mom, trailing behind her as she saw her patients. He'd always managed to leave smiles in his wake, and Mom had sworn up and down that the patients he visited had the best outcomes. John, on the other hand, had needed to be bribed with trips to the planetarium to even get him to his own doctor's appointments.
"What do you want with that?" John asked the woman as she pocketed the vial of blood and withdrew the needle from his arm. "Why do you need-?" he broke off with a gasp as one of the guards swung a kick at his ribs. He heard Dad shouting something, but he couldn't focus on the words for a long second.
By the time he could sit up again, the door had closed and Dad was kneeling at the edge of the force field. John sent him a bewildered look.
"I don't know," Dad said in answer to the unspoken question. "But they didn't take you today. Just focus on that."
John hoped it was that easy, but from what he'd been through, he couldn't help thinking that this was just the calm prelude to something even worse. Judging by the look of suppressed concern on Dad's face, he shared similar fears.
The atmosphere on Tracy Island had changed drastically since Scott and Virgil's little misadventure in Antarctica. While there were still some raw nerves as a result of the deceit, there was also an air of hope that had been so devastatingly absent after the explosion. None of the Tracy brothers dealt well with inaction, with aimless grief, but now that there was something they could do, it made all the difference.
With all of them in the know, they were able to divide up tasks. Alan and Brains had been communicating with Eos, trying to help her piece together the mechanics of John's abduction from her observations that day and the evidence left behind. Kayo and Scott coordinated with the GDF, keeping them appraised of the situation and doing what they could to help the organization with its own investigation into the explosion. Virgil and Grandma pored over records of International Rescue's missions, looking for anything that might point to a motive for taking John.
Gordon did what he could to help with that, but he couldn't quite escape a feeling of uselessness. He was an action guy, the one who could turn a shitty situation around with a cocky grin and a flash of genius. He was the one who could make people laugh, put them at ease in the most stressful of situations. But he was no detective, and he wasn't built for an investigation like this. He wasn't suspicious by nature, didn't know how to look through years of reports for the few shady ones, how to look for potential enemies anywhere. He yearned for an objective that he could see, for something real he could do to help John.
"What do you think's happening to him?" he couldn't help asking a few days into their search, when he and his brothers were all gathered in the main room.
The others had been absorbed in their own tasks, but they looked up at Gordon when he spoke. He shifted uncomfortably under the weight of their gazes.
"Just, if someone has him, then it must be for a reason," he said. "Do you…do you think he's hurt?"
There was a long pause. Alan had gone pale.
"Gordon," Scott said at last, his expression strange. "You might be onto something."
Gordon flinched.
"So you do think-"
"Not about that, not him being hurt," Scott said quickly. "About there being a reason for the abduction. We've been trying to figure out who and how, but ever since we ruled out the Hood, we haven't been asking why. But maybe if we know that, we'll have a better idea of how to look for suspects."
"We know it's probably not for a ransom," Virgil said, sitting forward. "We would've gotten a demand by now. And if the idea had just been to hurt International Rescue, they would've just blown up Thunderbird 5 with John in it, instead of taking him. So they must've needed him for something."
"John is a world-class programmer," Scott said. "Before International Rescue, he was starting to build a reputation for himself. He still gets contacted every once in a while by people looking to hire him. Maybe someone didn't bother asking."
"In that case, he'd have access to a computer," Alan said, excitement sparking in his tone. "And even if he's being watched, he'd be able to figure out a way to send some kind of message, I know it. And who better to look for a hidden message in his programming than the most sophisticated program he ever created? I'll call Eos!"
Great. Something else Gordon couldn't help with.
Before Alan could contact the AI through the central communication system though, the holoprojector flashed with an incoming signal. For a second, Gordon wondered if Eos had been spying on them. When the projection resolved into the caller's image though, it was Colonel Casey.
"Evening," Scott greeted her. "We've just been discussing possible avenues of investigation. Has the GDF found anything new?"
Colonel Casey pursed her lips. She glanced around, taking in the number of people in the room.
"Scott…Perhaps it would be better if we talked alone."
Gordon grimaced; he knew what that meant. He was starting to develop a better sense of empathy for Alan than he'd ever really wanted to. He wasn't used to being one of the excluded ones.
He sighed, moving to get to his feet. He'd hated fighting with his brothers earlier, and didn't have the will to mount another protest just then. But then Scott held out a hand in his direction, and frowned at the projected image of Colonel Casey.
"Whatever you have to say to me, you can say it to my brothers," he said. "We're done with secrets in this family."
Pleasantly surprised, Gordon glanced at Alan and settled back in his seat. He supposed Scott did learn after all. Painfully slowly, but he learned.
Colonel Casey surveyed them all in silence for a moment, and Gordon was afraid she was going to insist. But then she just sighed.
"All right," she said. "The GDF has a recovery team for foreign objects that fall from space. It's led to some major scientific discoveries, minimized pollution…" She trailed off, shaking her head. "But that's not the point. Yesterday, the team recovered fragments of Stelair Satellite 2-1."
"That was the satellite that John…" Alan didn't finish the sentence, but he didn't need to. Colonel Casey looked at him.
"Yes," she said, her voice gentler than usual. "Which the recovery team knew. I left instructions to contact me immediately if any part of it ever turned up. I ordered extensive testing. If a member of International Rescue was missing, I wanted him found, for any number of reasons. John was an incredible asset."
"He's more than just an asset," Gordon snapped.
Colonel Casey turned her eyes on him.
"I know," she said. "And when the debris was found, I didn't want to get your hopes up until I got the results back on it."
"And what were the results?" Scott asked with a touch of impatience.
Colonel Casey looked at him, and suddenly each and every one of them knew it wasn't going to be good news. Alan paled and made a grab for Virgil's arm, but Gordon just went still.
"We found John's DNA, and part of his spacesuit. It had partially fused to-" she broke off, taking in their stricken faces. "Well, it was obvious why you missed it during your searches. It may even have been thrown clear of the main debris field before you started your first search. But I'm afraid it's quite conclusive."
Silence rang throughout the room for a long moment.
"If it was just his suit, that doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility of someone taking him," Scott said.
"Maybe not alone, but when I say that we found John's DNA with it, I mean we found…too much for him to live without."
The others flinched, but Gordon was oddly numb to the words. Oh, he knew what they meant. The GDF hadn't just found John's suit, they'd found pieces of John himself. Conclusive.
Colonel Casey kept talking at them, probably explaining the details of their discovery and its implications, but Gordon had stopped listening. He stood, and without a word to his family, he turned and strode from the room, down the steps to the ground floor and then out of the villa to the thin path that led through the jungle toward the beach. If any of his brothers called out to him, he didn't hear. And by the time the villa was out of sight, he was running.
It was stupid, he knew, to try to run from this, but he didn't care. He needed to be a moving target, harder for the universe to hit.
He was breathing hard by the time he reached the beach. He barely slowed, pausing only to shed his shirt and shoes before plunging into the cool ocean. He didn't pause, didn't take his usual moment to revel in the feeling of the water welcoming him home. He just pushed through it, hauling himself forward in sweeping, powerful strokes that carried him quickly away from the island that had once felt like a sanctuary.
It shouldn't have felt like John had died all over again. It shouldn't have felt like a fresh loss, like yet another hole ripped in his family. But it did.
He strained harder against the water, pushing himself. Swimming had always helped him clear his mind, focus on nothing but the burn of his muscles, the rhythm of his breaths. The water was his escape, his safe haven. Had been since he was eight years old and reeling from his mother's death.
He'd been acting out at school, yelling at his teachers, eventually landing himself in the principal's office. But it hadn't been Dad who'd arrived to pick him up, it had been Scott. And instead of lecturing his little brother, he'd just buckled him in the car and driven him to the secluded lake a few miles from their childhood home. It was where Gordon had first learned to swim, where Mom had strapped water wings onto his tiny arms and drawn him out into the water with her, showing him how to kick and laughing when he just ended up splashing them both. Scott just pointed at the water and then waited on the shore for hours while Gordon swam and swam, burning off the anger and hurt until he was too exhausted to feel much of anything.
From that day on, swimming had been more than just a hobby for him. It had been his channel for the hurt, his way to find peace in a life that would never be the same. And even once he'd found a new equilibrium after Mom's death, once Grandma Tracy had moved in with them and Dad had pulled himself together, he'd kept training, kept pushing himself. Because he'd found something he loved that could never be taken from him, something he was better at than any of his brothers, something that made Dad's eyes glow with pride as Gordon began winning meet after meet.
And for years, it had been great. He'd won his first Olympic gold at the age of fifteen, claiming fame for himself that had nothing to do with being Jeff Tracy's son. His brothers had descended from the stands in a shouting mass, flinging themselves on him the moment he was out of the pool despite the fact that he was still dripping wet and on live TV. Even quiet, reserved John had been as excited as the rest of them, beaming and yelling and proud. The pile of Tracy boys had made the front page the next day, in a photo that Gordon still kept on his wall. It had been the happiest moment of his life, a moment when he had everything, including whatever future he could ever want for himself.
But that had all changed, hadn't it? The water had reminded him that it didn't play favorites, and in one terrible hydrofoil accident it stole from him so much of what it'd once given. And once he'd finally gotten out of the hospital, International Rescue had been waiting for him.
He'd managed to cope with losing his career, his autonomy, because he'd had his family, and a new mission. But that family had crumbled around him, and he'd been helpless to stop it. All of that training, all of that raw talent and skill, and he still hadn't been able to help the people most important to him.
Gordon pushed himself harder still now, trying to leave those thoughts behind him. Thoughts of John, of Dad, of failure and loss. He pushed and pushed, and slowly, blissfully, it began to work. He lost himself in the physical activity, let his familiar sanctuary reclaim him. It was an imperfect escape, for he could never be rid of the knowledge of what awaited him when he stopped, but who said he had to stop?
His body did, as it turned out. It wasn't until his arms began to cramp like he had never quite experienced before that he realized how long he'd been swimming. He was jolted back to the present, and he finally stopped, treading water with his legs alone as his lungs heaved and he clutched his arms to his chest, trying to massage the cramps from both of them at once with hands that weren't in much better shape. For a minute, he had to focus on simply breathing, providing oxygen to muscles that were demanding it with a vengeance.
Finally he looked up, only then realizing with a jolt how dark it had gotten. The moon was a faint sliver overhead, its light reflecting only dimly over the gentle chop of the water surrounding him. He spun around, squinting hard.
His stomach dropped. He could see Tracy Island in the distance. In the very distant distance. He'd had no idea how far out he'd been going all this time. And he knew that as far away as Tracy Island looked, it was even more distant in reality.
"Well, shit."
His heart, already pounding from exertion, stuttered alarmingly. Instinct had him turning for home, forcing his exhausted limbs back into motion. Now that he was paying attention though, he was painfully aware of just how spent he was. Gordon swam every day, but he hadn't done endurance training in years, and he'd done nothing to prepare for this impromptu marathon. Each stroke felt like someone was trying to rip his arms off, and his body felt like it was made of lead.
It took less than half an hour of swimming towards the island for him to be confronted with the simple, certain truth: he didn't have it in him to make it back.
The realization should have had him reeling, panicking. Something. But instead he felt a unique calm settle over him. There was nothing he could do. Tracy Island was surrounded by protected waters; there would be no passing boats to hear any cries for help. He didn't have a scrap of technology on him, nothing for his brothers to track him with if they even noticed in time that he was missing.
He wasn't going to make it home.
He stopped moving abruptly, pulling in deep breaths. He stared at the dark shape of his home on the horizon, more than just his body aching. But he felt detached somehow, numb and distant. Nothing felt particularly urgent, or even real. It was a surprisingly peaceful feeling, liberating.
He stretched out on his back, letting himself float. Water flooded into his ears, dulling his hearing into a muted roar. The heavens stretched out above him, cold and vast and glittering, untainted by light pollution. Beautiful, Gordon supposed, in the cold, sterile way that marble statues and priceless jewelry were beautiful. Perhaps it was fitting that John had died up there though. He would've liked knowing that part of him would always be among the stars in which he'd made his home.
Gordon wasn't sure how long he floated there, thinking about nothing and everything. His eyes drifted shut eventually, his body rocked by the gentle ocean swells. It was so peaceful, and he was so very tired, physically and emotionally. Too tired to care when he felt himself sink below the surface, the water closing over him as he drifted down, down…
But then his diaphragm contracted, his lungs expanded, and he was breathing in water. He choked, reality crashing back to him in an icy rush. Fear kicked in at last, sharp and consuming. His eyes snapped open, but everything was black and suffocating. He began to struggle weakly for what he hoped was the surface, but his lungs were on fire, sapping his strength and his focus. His heart raced, thundering in his ears as it tried to pump oxygen that simply wasn't available. The water felt thick as gelatin around him, his arms and legs too weak to cut through it.
But then something moved above him, and slender fingers were grasping at his shoulders, sliding uselessly over his bare skin for a moment. An arm wrapped around his chest, and then they were rising at last. Gordon's lungs were burning, white spots flashing in his darkening vision, but he still tried to help, kicking his legs.
And then finally, his head broke the surface. He gagged and coughed, his body doing its best to expel the water he'd inhaled and replace it with something more useful. So focused was he on breathing that he didn't even notice that he was still being towed through the water, until he wasn't anymore. Instead he was being hauled onto the tiny deck of a jet ski, the small vehicle bobbing with the movement.
Gordon couldn't find the strength to lift his head, or really do much besides lie there with his legs still dangling in the water. Cold hands cupped his face, and he found himself meeting a pair of anxious blue eyes. He blinked up at Alan, whose shoulders sagged with relief.
"How the hell…?" Gordon croaked.
"Eos."
Of course. The AI had access to some of the best monitoring technology in the world. It would've been a simple matter for her to detect his heat signature.
Before Gordon had collected enough breath for a response, Alan's expression shifted, closed off. He sat back, slicking his dripping hair back from his face. He pulled off his soaked T-shirt and wrung it out, grimacing. It was hard to tell in the dark, but he appeared to be wearing pajamas.
"If I'd known you were gonna try to drown yourself, I would've brought Thunderbird 4," he said, his voice flat. "Would've kept me drier."
Gordon flinched.
"I wasn't trying to drown myself," he said honestly.
"Really? Then do you want to explain to me how an Olympic swimmer ends up halfway to the bottom of the ocean?"
"I went too far out and couldn't make it back."
Alan's mouth was a hard line. He shook his head.
"Whatever, Gordon."
Alan climbed onto the seat and looked down at his brother, still flopped on the deck with the water lapping at his body.
"You planning on riding back to the island down there?"
"Al…I don't think I can get up."
Every muscle felt like it was on fire, and any movement simply stoked the blaze. A shudder rippled through him painfully, and he grit his teeth, his eyes stinging. Alan's expression changed.
"Geez, Gordy, hang on," he muttered, spinning around on the seat and reaching down to grab his brother under the armpits. "All right, I've got you. On three. One, two…"
Gordon tried to help, he really did, but his legs felt like burning rubber, and Alan ended up doing most of the work. It was uncoordinated and undignified, but they finally managed to get Gordon sitting upright behind him. The upshot was that the by the end of it, Alan seemed to actually believe that Gordon hadn't been physically capable of keeping himself afloat.
"Just let me know if you start to lose your grip," he told Gordon over his shoulder as he took the jet ski's controls.
Gordon just nodded, utterly spent. He managed to hang onto his brother for the duration of the ride back to the island, although a few of the waves came close to dislodging him. The sky was lightening with the lavender glow of dawn by the time they docked in the rocky sea cavern that served as their boatshed, and Gordon realized just how long he must have been swimming. Alan helped him to his feet, and when it became clear that walking unassisted wasn't going to happen, he ducked under Gordon's arm, taking some of his weight.
"Do you need Virgil to check you over?" he asked as they made their slow way back to the villa.
"God, no," Gordon said at once. "Alan, he and Scott don't need to know about this."
Alan scowled at him. The effect was somewhat diminished by the fact that his drying hair was sticking up in unruly tufts like a baby cow's.
"Gordon, you almost-"
"I know what almost happened!" Gordon snapped. "But it was an accident, all right? I just- I needed to get away, for a little while, and I didn't realize how far I'd gotten until it was too far."
Alan looked like he was going to argue further, but then he just shook his head. They both knew how Scott would react to hearing about the incident, and no matter how annoyed he might have been, Alan apparently wasn't ready to subject Gordon to that.
They walked without speaking for several paces.
"What's happening to us?" Alan asked, so softly that Gordon was fairly certain he hadn't been meant to hear it. His throat tightened.
"I'm sorry," Gordon replied, almost as quiet. He'd never meant to put one more burden on his little brother's shoulders.
They were both silent for another moment. In that time, Alan must have decided to forgive his brother.
"If you think you're sorry now, wait till tomorrow," he said, deliberate lightness in his tone now. "You're gonna feel like you got hit by a bus."
"Oh believe me, I already do."
"Then you're gonna feel like you got hit by a planet."
"Can planets even hit people? I feel like at that point, it'd be the person hitting the planet."
"Not if the planet's the thing that's moving."
"But what if they're both moving?"
The meaningless debate carried them back to the house and up to Gordon's bedroom. Alan deposited his brother on the bed, and Gordon flopped down onto his pillows like a limp noodle, not caring that his shorts were still damp. He couldn't remember a time in his life when he'd felt this exhausted.
"I'll be back in a minute," Alan said. He raised an eyebrow "Don't go anywhere."
The little shit was gone before Gordon could come up with a sufficiently biting retort. Gordon sighed, settling more comfortably into the massive nest of pillows and stuffed animals he liked to sleep in, despite the occasional teasing it earned him. He let his eyes close, but it made him feel like he was still being tugged around by ocean currents, so he opened them again with a grimace.
He looked around the familiar mess of his room. There was his shelf stacked haphazardly with real paper books, collected because of the antiquated love of the printed word which half of Lucille Tracy's children had inherited from her and the other half utterly failed to comprehend or appreciate. There was the 40-gallon tank housing the school of luminous mechanical fish that Dad had asked Brains to create to keep the dark at bay when Gordon started having nightmares after his hydrofoil accident. There was the shelf of swimming trophies and medals that were in serious need of dusting, relics of a different time.
It wasn't long before his gaze settled on one of the pictures adorning his wall. There they were, the Tracy five, captured in a moment of sheer joy as they celebrated Gordon's Olympic victory. His brothers were all decked out in the embarrassing GO GORDON! T-shirts that Scott and Virgil had made for the occasion, while Gordon himself wore nothing but his star-spangled Team USA Speedo. Not that much of it could be seen under the heap of bodies on top of him.
They'd been invincible then, a team of their own. United against the world, untouchable and unstoppable.
Gordon found himself focusing on John, whose eyes were sparkling with pride as he cheered for his little brother.
"You know, sometimes I felt like I barely knew him?" he said softly a few minutes later, when Alan returned with a sports drink and a handful of protein bars.
Alan blinked, apparently startled.
"What do you mean?" he asked. He followed Gordon's line of sight to the photo. "John? Of course you knew him."
But Gordon just shook his head.
"Not like you did. Or Virgil or Scott. We just never really…clicked, I guess. Like, we were headed in different directions growing up, and then suddenly we were these people who worked together. And we got along fine, but we never had that…that connection he seemed to have with the rest of you."
He made a face at Alan.
"You know, I was talking to him when that rescue call came in. Just- just shooting the breeze, talking about nothing. I think I was complaining about my feet hurting. That was the last conversation I had with him."
Alan's blue eyes were magnified behind a film of tears now, but he didn't let them fall. He just crossed his arms, drawing closer to Gordon.
"And what exactly do you think he and I talked about on a regular basis, the meaning of life?" he demanded. "The last thing I did was tease him about ghosts. Ghosts, Gordon, can you believe that?"
Gordon stared at his brother for a moment. And then he snorted.
"That is absolutely fucking ridiculous," he said, covering his face with his hands.
"Isn't it?" Alan agreed, dropping onto the bed beside Gordon with a huff. "He's probably gonna come back and haunt Thunderbird 5 just to make a point."
He flopped backwards, sprawling over Gordon's legs. Both boys stared at the ceiling in silence for a while.
"What was his favorite food?" Alan asked abruptly.
Gordon didn't have to think about it.
"Cheeseburgers or bagels, depending on the time of day."
"Favorite color?"
"Lilac, but he thought it looked weird with his hair so he never wore it."
"What song drove him up the wall?"
"Defying Gravity, but only because Virgil and I rigged the intercom in his room to play it at random times for like two months after he got accepted to NASA."
"What movie did he know all the lines to?"
"The Voyage Home."
"And who was always willing to watch it with him, even after everyone else had gotten sick of it?"
"…Me."
"And who did he dedicate his second textbook to, the one about the science and implications of extra-terrestrial water?"
"Also me."
"Because who spent hours and hours helping with his research and throwing Skittles at him to distract him when he started getting frustrated?"
"Okay, you can't prove that last part-"
"You," Alan said, and there was a trace of a smile in his voice. "You knew him, Gordon. And he knew you. He knew you cared about him."
Gordon's eyes burned. That was what had really been bothering him, wasn't it? The fear that his brother hadn't known he was loved, fiercely and wholly.
"Yeah?" he whispered.
Alan rolled his eyes and nudged Gordon's side with his bony elbow.
"Of course, you idiot. He was your big brother."
A fist tightened around Gordon's throat, and the tears that had been blurring his eyes finally began to spill over. He let them fall for a minute or two, but then wiped them away with the back of his hand and propped himself up on his elbows to look at Alan.
"When did you get so wise?" he mused.
Alan sniffed. It was probably supposed to seem like a dramatic effect, but it sounded a little to full to be feigned.
"I'll have you know that I've always been this wise; you guys just fail to appreciate me."
"Yeah, says the guy who thinks that killer whales are actually whales."
Alan threw his hands in the air.
"Okay, it's right there in the name! Why would you call it a whale if it's not a goddamn whale?"
"I don't know, maybe because 'killer dolphin' didn't sound badass enough?"
"Hey, I'd be terrified of a killer dolphin. Because if you've pissed off a dolphin bad enough that it wants to kill you, you know it's not quitting till you're dead and everything you love is on fire."
Well, it was hard to argue with that logic. Of course, Gordon still didn't intend to let that stop him, but when he opened his mouth to issue a retort, he ended up yawning so widely he felt his jaw pop.
"I'll leave you to get some sleep," Alan said, standing. "If I stay in here any longer, I'm gonna need a hazmat suit."
"It's not that messy in here," Gordon protested. Alan looked pointedly at a half-drunk mug of tea that had several colonies of bacteria growing in it. "That's, uh, for science."
Alan just rolled his eyes.
"Well, I wouldn't want to stand in the way of science," he said. "You just go ahead and let me know when you get published in Nature. Until then, I'm out of here."
He uncapped the bottle he'd brought and handed it to Gordon, and then began to retreat.
"Hey." Gordon's call made Alan pause in the doorway and look back. "I never thanked you. For coming to get me."
Alan was silent for a moment, sobering. He frowned at the doorframe.
"Scott and Virgil told me you'd come back on your own," he said. "They said it was how you coped sometimes, by running, and that I should let you get it out of your system. I almost listened to them."
There really wasn't much to say to that, was there?
"I'm glad you didn't," Gordon finally offered. Alan looked at him.
"I'm glad you're glad," he said. "Because I can't do this again, Gordon. I really, really can't."
Gordon swallowed hard against the flash of guilt that hit him. He met his little brother's gaze steadily.
"You won't have to," he promised.
Alan stared back at him for a minute, before nodding.
"Good."
He left, but about two seconds after the door had closed behind him, it was opening again. Gordon stared in confusion as Alan marched towards him. His little brother began rummaging through the mounds of pillows and stuffed animals, until he finally extracted one and thrust it at Gordon.
"Didn't know him, my ass," he muttered under his breath as he turned and marched back to the door. "Drama queen."
The door shut behind him with a definitive click.
Gordon blinked bemusedly at the stuffed animal in his hands. It was a blue squid, its anatomically unlikely fur soft and worn with age. A baseball-sized lump appeared in Gordon's throat, but he smiled. Squiddy was an old friend of his, won for him years ago in a little restaurant arcade in Kansas. He remembered splaying his tiny hands against the glass of the claw machine, holding his breath as he watched John guiding the joystick with the utmost care, expression twisted in concentration as if winning a two dollar toy for his little brother were the most important thing he'd ever done.
With the reminder of John clutched securely to his chest, Gordon finally allowed himself to stop running, to close his eyes and simply miss his brother. And it hurt, a lot, but it was a cathartic kind of hurt, far more so than swimming had been.
While Alan was fishing his brother out of the ocean, Scott was staring at the door to Virgil's studio, locked in an internal debate. He'd been intending to give Virgil space after the impossible conversation they'd had with Grandma and Kayo and Brains, sharing Colonel Casey's grim news, but as he'd been passing the studio, a clattering crash had caught his attention. Now, as the sounds of destruction continued, he was debating the relative merits of leaving Virgil to work through this new loss in peace versus acting on the hope that he would actually be allowed to help this time.
It was when the noise stopped altogether and was replaced by unsettling silence that Scott could no longer restrain himself. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The studio was normally one of his favorite places to visit on the island. High-ceilinged and airy, it had been built directly into the mountain, so the back wall was rough-hewn rock and the front was nothing but windows overlooking the jungle. It was usually a place of light and peace, where Virgil went to clear his head and any of the others were welcome so long as they agreed to be quiet.
It didn't appear to have brought Virgil much peace this time though. Easels were overturned, cans of paintbrushes and sticks of charcoal had been scattered across the floor, palates of paint had been flung here and there. It was a display of the kind of loss of control that Virgil so rarely fell victim to.
Scott looked around the ruined workshop, feeling his heart break just a little bit more.
"Oh, Virgil," he murmured.
His brother looked up at him from where he was sitting in the middle of a swath of destruction. Paint flecked his cheeks, streaked his hair. There was a loud splash of red across his shirt that made Scott's gut curl even though he knew intellectually that it was nothing but acrylic.
"I don't know how the hell I keep managing to get my hopes up," Virgil said. "I didn't think I was this stupid."
Guilt punched Scott in the gut. He'd been the one to push this, to get his brothers hoping for a miracle. He may not have been responsible for what happened to John, but this new grief was on him.
And yet, even with the way things turned out, he knew that he couldn't have lived with himself if he hadn't tried. So even though he felt like he'd been sucker-punched, he couldn't regret what they'd done. It meant he had some serious damage control to do now though.
"Hope isn't stupid, bro," he said, stepping over shreds of ruined canvasses and crouching down beside his brother. He prayed he wasn't about to make things worse. Virgil had always been better at this kind of thing. "It's what keeps us going. Without it, we wouldn't be able to do what we do."
"And what is it that we do, Scott?" Virgil demanded. "I mean what, exactly, did John die for?"
Scott blinked, and gave the automatic answer. "We save people."
"Yeah. We move heaven and earth to save a few, while thousands of others die from disease and hunger and crime. I sure feel useful, don't you?"
Scott stared at his brother, stunned. He realized with a lurch that he was looking at a Virgil without optimism. It was a foreign sight, more so than he could have realized, and it left him with an icy pit in his stomach. He swallowed hard and settled a hand on Virgil's knee.
"You remember that story Dad used to tell, about the starfish on the beach?" he asked.
Virgil sighed.
"Sure. Thousands and thousands of starfish got stranded by low tide, and a little kid started picking them up and throwing them back in the ocean one by one. And when someone told him that there were too many for him to make a difference, he just threw another in and said 'it made a difference to that one.' And I know where you're going with this, Scott, but-"
"But you're right, sometimes it doesn't feel like enough," Scott allowed. "I get that, really. But you know what we do, Virgil? We save other families from this." He gestured between them to encompass the grief that was crushing them. "Maybe not all of them - maybe not even most - but we make a difference to them, and I have to believe that's worth it."
He paused, sighed. Pain was still etched on Virgil's face, and it cut into him.
"I don't know how to make this better, Virg," he admitted, his voice little more than a whisper. "But I need you, okay? We all do. You're our rock, you know. If you go off the rails, we're all coming with you."
Virgil bowed his head, curling in on himself. Scott watched dark spots appear on the drop cloth below him as tears struck it.
"I know," he murmured, his voice thick. "I know, I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry." Scott inched closer and wrapped his arm around Virgil. He let his cheek settle on his little brother's soft hair, and just held him tight. "Don't be sorry."
They sat like that for a long while, processing this new grief, learning the weight of it, this pain they would spend the rest of their lives carrying. Finally Scott held Virgil tighter for just a moment before letting him go and getting to his feet.
"Come on," he said, reaching a hand down to his brother. "Let's get this place cleaned up."
They worked in silence for several minutes. Scott was grateful to find that most of Virgil's canvases had been covered, shielding them from the paintstorm. The windows hadn't been quite so lucky, but that was an easier fix.
"I just keep thinking, you know, about how much this job has taken from us."
Scott looked over to see Virgil staring down at a canvas in his hands. It was one of the smaller ones in the studio, and from the style, Scott would guess that it was one of his earlier works. The subject matter wasn't something that he'd expect to evoke a particularly strong response, just a bushy-tailed squirrel perched on a picnic table and gnawing on a half-eaten cupcake with a candle in it.
Virgil looked up from it to meet his brother's gaze.
"Not just John and Dad," he said. "I mean, does it ever get to you, Scott?"
There was no need to ask what he meant.
Scott had known that he would one day take his place in the organization he was helping his father to create. He'd allowed himself a short Air Force career, a few girlfriends, an idle daydream or two, but he hadn't let himself get attached to any of it.
But Virgil hadn't appreciated the reality of International Rescue quite so fully. He'd been starting to build a life for himself, had been thinking about a future that didn't include life on a secluded island with no one but his family for company. He'd answered Dad's summons when it came, but it had involved sacrifice he hadn't quite been prepared for.
"I called Akil the night John died, after you and I got back from looking for his body," Virgil said quietly, his gaze dropping back to the painting. "Just…I guess I don't know why, exactly. It was the first time in years, but I think I needed someone who wasn't a part of all this."
Scott sighed. He'd liked Akil, Virgil's college boyfriend. The young man had been whip-smart and kind-hearted, pursuing a degree in public health. Virgil had always seemed so content around him, quicker to smile or laugh. They'd been in love, real love, Scott thought, although he didn't think he'd ever experienced that for himself. Dad would never have done anything like ask Virgil to break up with his boyfriend once International Rescue was up and running, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that there wasn't much of a future for a relationship in which one of the involved parties lived on an island in the middle of nowhere and the other wanted to run a medical clinic.
"How is he?" Scott asked.
"Happy." Virgil set the canvas aside with a sigh, avoiding Scott's gaze. "Married."
"Ah." Scott wished he could think of something more helpful to say. "I'm sorry."
"No, it's what he deserves. And he was still really good to me; he listened and then just rambled on about nothing when he could tell I just needed a friendly voice, even though it'd been years since we'd spoken. But I just…he has this life now, and that's something I'd wanted to be a part of, but somehow I ended up here, and it's like I've got everyone else's life but my own…" He shook his head. "I'm not explaining this well."
Maybe not, but he didn't have to. Scott may not have walked away from the love of his life, but he did know how daunting, how exhausting it was to be part of a team that watched over the entire world, always on call. It was a precious duty, one that Scott knew Virgil treasured, but it was also one that could be crushing, suffocating at times.
And Scott had just dumped responsibility for the rest of them onto his shoulders.
He sighed and set aside the rag he'd been using to wipe paint from the windows. He went to his brother's side and rested a hand on his back.
"Virgil…" Scott took a deep breath, his eyes stinging. "If you want to leave-"
"No! No, I…" Virgil groaned and dropped his head into his hands, tightening his fingers in his dark hair. "I don't. I swear I don't, Scott. You were right, about what we do being important, and I'd never abandon the rest of you. I just wish…"
"You wish you didn't feel like you have to stay," Scott surmised. Virgil gave him a startled look, and he smiled wryly. "Hey, don't think I haven't been there. When Mom died, Dad kind of lost the plot for a while. And suddenly, it was like I was all you guys had, and you were relying on me for so much and I was barely holding it together myself and I had no clue what I was doing, half the time. It felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, and some days, it nearly crushed me. I never wanted that for you."
Virgil was silent for a moment. He and Scott studied each other.
"You shouldn't have had to deal with that either," Virgil said at last.
Scott shrugged.
"And Mom shouldn't have died, and hurricanes shouldn't happen, and sugar shouldn't be bad for you. It's life, Virgil, and it sucks sometimes. But I've never regretted looking after you guys. You gave me something to be proud of."
They'd given him more than that, but this conversation had already gotten sappy enough. At last, Virgil smiled. It was small and sad, but genuine.
"We were lucky to have you, Scott. Really."
Scott considered a number of possible responses to that. Looking at Virgil though, he knew that they'd both already said what they needed to. So he adopted a long-suffering look, propping himself up against his brother and wiping imaginary sweat from his brow.
"Don't I know it."
A/N: I swear I never meant for this chapter to get so monstrously long. Gordon just turned out to have a lot more feelings than I was expecting, and then of course Virgil had to go and break down, and then we were 8k into this thing.
The stories of Squiddy and the brothers celebrating Gordon's Olympic victory were inspired by artwork of lenle-g's over on tumblr, which you should check out because it's amazing.