"John Glenn Tracy. What in heaven's name have you done to your face?"

FAB1 is parked at the edge of what used to be Lake Mead, a high ridge overlooking the lake bed. It's not Lake Mead any longer, just like Vegas isn't really Vegas. The shape of it is the same, but what once was there is long since gone, empty and barren.

Hers is the first friendly face John's seen since he left Tracy Island, and she looks utterly appalled. John opens the door of his car and unfolds long limbs from where they've been, a little too close to the ground, for the last hour's worth of driving. Lady Penelope's expression is shaded by a parasol, helpfully held up by Parker against the late afternoon sun.

Penelope steps out from the shadow of the parasol and waves it away when Parker follows her. There are been a pair of sunglasses shading her blue eyes, and she removes these, the criticism in her eyes covering what might be mild alarm. "My god, John. It's barely been twenty-four hours, what on earth have you done to yourself? Is your hand broken?"

"You're meant to keep your thumb on the outside, Master John," Parker assesses, and demonstrates a balled up first, firm and solid.

"Thank you," John answers, with as much dignity as he can muster, "I've been told."

Parker, at least, is beaming from ear to ear, a rather friendlier face.

"Quite all right otherwise, Master John?" he inquires, and gestures with a gloved hand to his own beakish nose, "Cor blimey, if you don't send me right back to me own troubled youth, that sort of hardware. I quite like it. Suits you."

John shrugs, hyper-conscious of the two new piercings, the sting of the new tattoo, and how little they suit him, really. It had, admittedly, been a little impulsive. It had been a little bit the heady rush of an assumed identity. It had been how comfortable the strangers in the tattoo parlour had seemed in their own skins, bedecked as they were in ink and metal of their own choosing. On the one hand he'd told himself it was just practical—a sensible, reasonable way to hide his hardware in plain sight. On the other it had just been—John's not sure. It had just been necessary. He's not sure he would know how to explain that, so he deflects the comment, "They're just hardware peripherals. I just needed somewhere to keep a backup antenna, a few sensors."

Penelope frowns and her gaze is critical, traveling up and down. "It's distinctive. Really, John, it should be self-evident that the aim is not to give anyone anything to remember you by."

"I've got that covered," John answers, and he does. EOS is all he needs, really, as far as a false identity goes. She's already blurred his face in every piece of security footage that's caught him. She's already blotted out every trace of the digital paper trail he's left in his wake, from the rental car to the motel stay to the electronics store to the tattoo parlor. Justin Townsend is already a ghost, and John Tracy has nothing to worry about. "Is anyone looking for me?"

"You mean besides your terrified family, of course."

John blinks at her and there's a sudden creeping guilt playing up his spine. "You mean you haven't told them anything? I mean they—they have to know I'm okay, though. Right? You can't mean they don't know anything?"

Penelope's in a vaguely impatient mood and she sighs, exasperated. "No, John. You left Alan alone in a hotel room until he got panicky and called the island. Your GPS tag was found in the back of a garbage truck, clearly you'd gotten rid of it. None of your brothers know if you left or if you've been kidnapped, but they're all terrified either way."

Not for the first time, John needs to put up a wall between himself and the way his brothers must feel. He's long practiced at it, detachment, but it's a little harder when it's something he's done. Is doing. He's still fumbling with mental bricks and mortar when his voice escapes him, stricken and guilty, "Jesus. I never meant—"

"They think I'm looking for you. Kayo, too. I mean that Kayo's looking, not that I'm looking for Kayo. I know precisely where Kayo is. I told them I put her onto the same leads I was following, really I still have her shut up in the Tower of London. She would have interfered."

"When you first—back in London, when you first brought this up, and I thought—I thought you'd have something to tell them." John swallows, hard, mentally starts to smooth over the chinks and gaps in the cinder block barrier that walls off his empathy.

"Plausible deniability, darling. If I start lying about where you are, it's just more pieces that can fall apart. Beyond seeing you off for the last place I heard from your father, I'm really best served not to know where you are. I can't disappear to find Jeff Tracy, so you're going to have to."

Penelope is the coolest thing for miles around, in a softly flowered sundress, teased slightly by the breeze. She's oh so delicately English, with her perfect hair and a teacup pug in her arms, but she's still a force to be reckoned with, and John hasn't ever really reckoned with her. She's utterly unperturbed by anything she's done so far, and John has to remind himself that she doesn't work for International Rescue—hasn't ever worked for International Rescue. She works for his father.

Standing on the cliff-side in the late summer heat of the Mojave desert, John feels his father's shadow fall over him, and shudders away from the thought. "Do you think he's still alive? Do you think I can find him?"

"You asked me that in London. I told you I don't know."

Parker clears his throat, and once again, surprisingly, he's the more sympathetic of the partnership, the softer touch. "With respect, m'lady, that's not what Master John asked you."

And it's just the tip of the iceberg as far as what he wants to know, so he presses on with more questions, the sorts of things that have kept him up nights ever since Lady Penelope pulled him over the threshold of her biggest secret. "Why's he hiding? Why—how—would he fake his death? It doesn't make any sense, Penny, I've been tearing my brain apart trying to come up with a reason why he'd—"

"You can't know," Penelope cuts him off, shifting Sherbet in her arms as he whines and gives a squeaking little yip. "If you find him, then he's the one who'll tell you. If you don't find him, then you can't ever know, it's as simple as that."

That's possibly the most complicated proposition John's ever heard in his life, and he shakes his head, starts to protest, "But, Penelope—"

"Do you think your father would orphan his children lightly, John? Everything in the world that he gave up, do you think the reasons for that could possibly be simple? Do you honestly think it's something you could puzzle out in your head, lying awake at night?" Her voice is hard, cold. John can't quite get over how stern she sounds, how serious. He's always considered Penelope a good friend. He's realizing now that there's a side of her he's never seen before. "What he's done, he's done to protect your family, and you're going to have to do the same. They can't know where you are, and you mustn't try to reach out to them."

John's always been one to isolate himself. He's spent the past three years physically separated from his family, but he'd still at least spoken to them every day. Some days probably more than they'd spoken to each other. It's not disconnection John values, just distance. The idea of dropping out of the world, untethered, with his brothers—and Kayo and Grandma and Brains—all unaware what's even happened to him—it's starting to seem like it might be a bad idea. With doubt seeping into his thoughts, haltingly, John has to ask, "Am I….have…have I made a mistake, Penny? Do you really think I can do this?"

"Well, I can't. Honestly, John, you're the best hope I've had in a year." Penelope sighs and shakes her head. She softens and sighs, sets Sherbet down on the ground to totter around and chase eddies of dust along the rocky cliff-side. Parker ambles along after the little dog, seems to know when Penelope wants a private moment. He's out of earshot before she seems to decide what to say. Her arms cross, she rubs her hands up and down bare skin beneath the fluttering sleeves of her dress. Maybe John's not imagining the sudden chill in the air. "I don't know if you'll find him, John. I dearly hope you do. This was easier, at the beginning. It was never meant to go on this long. This last year has been—I've wanted nothing more than to tell your family the truth, even if the truth now is just—just what you thought it was in the beginning. I hope he's somewhere well and safe. I only hope you can forgive me for how long I've had to lie."

This strikes an unexpected chord and John's reminded of a conversation he wasn't part of, something that wouldn't have been discussed if he'd been sat at the same table as Virgil and Gordon. Everyone knows Penelope's a liar. Somehow they all manage to love her anyway. "If it's not your lie, does it really make you a liar?"

Penelope shrugs her slender shoulders and holds out an imploring hand. They've been friends for long enough that John knows to take it. Her fingers are small and cool against his and she squeezes briefly. "Has that been bothering you?" she questions.

John attempts a half-hearted grin. "It's on the list."

"Let me know if you work it out," she says softly, smiling a little in response, though it's sad and she pulls her hand away, folds her arms in again. "It's bothered me for a tremendously long time now."

These are the sorts of moments John's never been great with. The sorts of silences that fall after serious conversations, the sort that make him glad of distance. Usually he misses the transition between solemnity and awkwardness, usually he drops his gaze and finds something intensely interesting on the ground. There's a rather nicely shaped chunk of rock at the toe of his shoe, probably that's worth looking at.

» Give her a hug.

John blinks at that. He doesn't actually have a means of replying, his earpiece out and in his pocket. He glances up at Penny, looking out over the lake bed.

» Have you hugged her yet? A hug is a universally human gesture of support and affection, and is socially acceptable to exchange between friends in moments of high emotion.

As though he's any good at this, John takes a hesitant step forward and puts a hand on her shoulder. Penelope, mercifully, is a far better student of body language than John is of demonstrative affection, and she takes the hint, and steps the rest of the way into a brief, necessary embrace, a rare gesture for all their long friendship. Neither of them know how long he'll be gone, nor is John sure if he's up to the task she's set for him. "You still haven't said. If you think I can do this, if you think I'll find him."

Penelope sighs and leans back, but her hands remain, catch around his waist as she looks up, ever so slightly irked with him. "John Tracy. You're the smartest person I know and you've still been stupid enough to embed a super computer in your chest. Clearly there's no stopping you once you've set your mind to something, and on that strength alone, you're better suited to this than I am. Quite honestly, by this point I deserve answers, to say nothing of you and your brothers."

John supposes this is probably true, and Penny lets go, steps back and turns to look out over the lake bed again.

Lake Mead is empty, but it's only empty of water. In the absence of water, it's been filled with the United States' largest commercial spaceport. Out of the craggy, hollowed out shell of the lake, in the shadow of the defunct Hoover Dam, rockets roar skyward every night. A tourist shuttle will leave in just three hours, and John will be on it, with yet another identity, and a small digital dossier, everything Penelope knows about where his father's been for the past three years.

His heart, of its own volition, picks up in something that might be excitement, rather than straight fear, for the first time in ages. There are things about him that have been true for a long time, things that EOS brings out, things that Lady Penelope knows. Things like the fact that he doesn't know to keep his thumb in when he punches his family's arch-nemesis, or that he hates to be chased. That he's put a bar through his nose and pierced his ear in two places, and that he's done it to get closer to his heart of hearts, that secret place where he keeps his might-be soulmate. John lacks the words for a lot of these things.

Still, there's one thing that's very, very easy to say, and he says it. "Well," he starts, with a smile he can't help and his eyes lighting up, "I have always wanted to go to the Moon."

Author's Note

Aaaaaaaaand SCENE. To the moon, alice!

Well hey there, readership. guess what! you're caught up to the extent of Heavenward's completed parts! is this good news? No! Not really! Well! Sort of!

Here's the skinny: the fifth part of Heavenward is on-going and currently being posted over on my tumblr. This is the only place that will get active, chapter by chapter updates until such time as the full piece is completed. Once that happens, the full piece goes up on Ao3, while chapter by chapter updates happen on . Sorry ! For reasons of exposure over time, you are always last in the timeline. As of now there are 13k words worth of part five: optimal_pathing_algorithms available over at tb5-heavenward over on tumblr.

Thank you for reading thus far and I hope you've enjoyed it! You can expected a handful of smaller oneshots out of me in the meantime. Cheers!