Hide and Seek – Prompt #5
For the anon that sent me the following prompt: Brains feels guilty for Jeff's disappearance because he built the aircraft that crashed. He finds it difficult to walk amongst the boys for weeks after, believing that they must blame him for the crash.
Brains folded the last of his chosen shirts and placed it on top of the pile in the small suitcase. Of course he had decided to leave, it was his fault after all, or so he believed. Brains couldn't stand seeing the boys as he passed them in the corridors of the house, passing their closed doors knowing that behind them, they were crying for their father.
They had insisted to him many times that the crash wasn't his fault, but surely it was? It had faltered, its systems had failed, the systems that he had designed, it was all his designs. It was his job to cross-check and troubleshoot for whatever could possibly go wrong. Tests were meant to be room for failure; he wasn't supposed to fail when it mattered, not when someone's life really did matter. He had never failed like this before, and he couldn't deal with being responsible for Jeff's disappearance.
The grating sound of the suitcase zip clamoured against his ears and he sighed in defeat, he could leave tonight, leave the boys to their grieving. Not that they knew that Jeff was dead. Sure, no body had been found, but even they knew that in a wreck like that nobody could possibly survive.
Brains sat at the desk, having left only an old notepad a rather treasured pen of his out. It was better to leave a message personally rather than just on a holo-note for someone to pick up. After all, paper was far more gracious, and a well-regulated rarity in 2060, paper meant a real effort had been put the words that one chose to commit to it.
He had no particular plan of what he wanted to say, he just picked up the pen and painfully scrawled the pen across the white page.
My friends, he began,
I'm afraid I must leave you, I can't apologise enough for what I've done to you. The crash was my fault and I accept that, it was my job to make sure that your father would be safe and I have failed. I have no way of explaining myself; it is simply that I did not do my job, or anything that I promised to do; to keep people safe. It is better for you if you do not have to see me, hence my leaving.
The truth is, you all can find those who are better than me to continue to maintain the Thunderbirds, at this point it is fair that you do not trust me with aircrafts of such importance, let alone yourselves. I cannot be allowed to hold a life in the palm of my hand again, for I have already proven that I am not capable of doing what you ask of me. You are far more suited to such a paramount task, as the world so depends on you to be.
I know that you must despise me for the pain that I have caused and you have every right to do so, even if you do not outwardly say so, I know that you must blame me as I do.
I do not expect that we shall meet again any time soon, but I only ask you to carry on with what it is you do for as long as humanity needs you. You are good and powerful people; the world has its faith invested in you, and so do I.
Until we meet again, in this life or the next…
Brains.
That was worse than I thought it was going to be