The tea tray weighs nearly ten pounds, because it's solid silver. And then it weighs at least that again with all the food she's stacked up on it, two helpings of shepherd's pie and a loaf of crusty bread and a crock of butter, and a carafe full of water. She's sent the cook down to the wine cellar to find something half decent to go with the meal, though she's not sure if Gordon's in the mood for a proper drink. She's not sure if Gordon's going to stay upright long enough to eat at all.
She's not sure she's ever seen Gordon this tired before.
Actually, she's not sure if anyone's ever seen Gordon this tired before, because she'd heard it first from Virgil, and then she'd heard it from Scott, and when her compact had chimed a third time, somehow she'd known even before answering it that she was going to hear it again from John.
So, they're worried.
It's a bit of a hard switch from the usual refrain of "Don't worry about Gordon" over to "All right, maybe worry a little about Gordon". And if anything, Penelope's irritated with them for not having the sense to worry sooner—for not knowing about just how much effort goes into being cheerful and positive and summery bright, and knowing when other people expect you to smile and nod and carry on, and then doing so, without fault or fail.
Penelope's only ever had to smile through the adversity of tedious state dinners and charity galas, through the company of boorish ambassadors or the boredom of keeping company with the aristocracy. She's seen Gordon smile in the face of hurricanes and earthquakes and forest fires that tower into the sky and pour black smoke across cerulean blue, just the same way ash smudges black over his uniform. She's seen him work, alongside his brothers, and she's seen Scott's jaw go all taut and Virgil's shoulders set like stone. She's seen John's eyes get sad, even as the rest of him remains disconnected and dispassionate in dispatch. She's seen Alan, looking far, far too young for the sort of things they ask of him.
And she's seen Gordon, looking around at the rest of them and cracking that sunshine grin, even when the world around him is going all to pieces, and his brothers along with it, because hey, someone has to be that guy.
So, really, "look after him" is the very least Virgil could have asked her to do. A part of Penelope is reformatting that request, making additions and addenda. Look after him. Take care of him. Be kind to him. Don't let us have him back, because we know exactly what he is and we all bloody well take advantage.
That last bit may not have been the way Virgil would have put it, strictly speaking, but Penelope's angry and she doesn't care.
Keeps her mind off the weight of the tray, anyway, and gives her that much more power and purpose as she storms to the top of the stairs. Anger is good, anyway. Anger is energy that she can redirect, so often so many of her own smiles are fueled by a core of pure, molten fury.
Penelope reaches the top of the stairs with a sigh that vents her frustration. She straightens her back and sets her shoulders, and swathes her anger up in kindness and softness and gentle care. Lets it be the place where the warmth bleeds from, rather than using it to call up John or Scott and scorch one or the other or the both of them with searing, blistering rhetoric, for pushing their brother as hard as they do.
Although, she knows Gordon well enough to know that it's at least partially his own stupid fault, for letting them; for not letting them know when he's worn out and exhausted, right up until the very last minute, when it becomes obvious that he's just barely still standing.
The reasons don't really matter as much as the reality, which is that he's here and he's exhausted and it's fallen to her to help fix that.
So she pushes her bedroom door open and carries her tray over to the intimate little corner of the room, by the window overlooking the grounds. There's a table and two chairs and a fresh bouquet of flowers, bright roses cut from the greenhouse in shades of deep red and autumn gold, to brighten the dreary English November. The sunset outside the window is just beginning to soften the blue of the sky, and they can watch it together. She can still hear the shower running in the bathroom, but it's not until she turns that she notices the water, seeping beneath the bathroom doors.
It's the sort of curious wrongness that doesn't immediately spark into fear. It's just something strange and out of place, right at first, something she doesn't expect and can't immediately explain. She's puzzled, perhaps a little concerned, as she crosses the room and pushes open one of the doors to her bathroom.
There's the slightest resistance against the shallow spread of water covering the floor, and the swing of the door sends a wave cresting across the surface, ripples through the room.
Puzzled bemusement cedes to confusion, and to then that single permissible second of heartstopping terror, before years' worth of hardwired training take over, and situational awareness takes in the room at a glance.
Water on the floor, going all muddy gray where it laps against the blue uniform in the middle of the room. Water, icy at her feet, soaking through the bottoms of her socks as she steps inside. Water, still running, falling like rain and freezing cold, blocked from draining away by the body crumpled on the tile floor of the shower, overflowing the hard marble tile at the edges of the shower pan. Water, with red threading through it, blooming like the roses on the table in the room behind her, and staining his golden-blond hair where it bleeds from his scalp.
Gordon's always telling her; you don't need more than an inch or so of water, in the right circumstances, to drown.
And for a moment she loses all her careful, measured control, because for a moment she's certain that he's dead. Just dead. She stepped away for what seems like barely any time at all, and she's come back to find him gone. For the space of a moment she blames herself, knows too late that she never should have left him. As weak and weary as he was, she should have known to stay. Should have added up all the little cues; the glassiness of his eyes and the heaviness of his limbs and the tears she'd pretended not to see. Instead it had all added up to an excuse she'd given herself to step away for a little while, to give him time to pull himself back together and clean himself up, because if there's one thing Gordon hates, it's when people see him break.
Only, why else would he be here, if not because it's somewhere safe to fall apart? Who is she, if not the person who's meant to be there when he does; the person he trusts to know when he can't go any further, needs someone else to help him hold all the pieces together?
And why the hell hasn't she been able to do anything but shriek and collapse to her knees, when it's not useful in the least; when he's clearly hurt and endangered and certainly supposed to be harder to kill than this.
She's watched him smile into the teeth of screaming wind and roaring fire and the full, towering force of the sea unleashed; Gordon Cooper Tracy is absolutely not dead, nor is he going to die on the floor of her bathroom in the north of England, after having spent the past eighteen hours saving lives on the other side of the globe.
It's the sheer absurdity of it all that galvanizes her back into motion, pulls her back to her feet and the rest of the way across the room to haul the shower door open, her heart in her throat as she drops to her knees on the flooded shower floor. She can't tell if she's shaking with fear or the cold, as her hands slip against Gordon's skin, shoving him off his chest and onto his side, and clear of the shower drain. In the same moment that there's a guttering, hollow sputter of suction of water into the drain, she hears him cough, feels him shift slightly and stir.
And Penelope just about crumbles with relief, even as Parker appears in the doorway.