Alan's room was only a few degrees short of a certifiable biohazard, so Scott encouraged the kid to crash on the bed next to Virgil. Alan didn't take much convincing – after so long of keeping everyone at a distance, he now seemed reluctant to be on his own for longer than five minutes at any given time. He was in desperate need of a shower but that wasn't important. Besides, it was approaching four-thirty in the morning, and he could barely keep his eyes open. He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Scott stayed with him for a while. Logically, he should have gotten some sleep too. He was certainly tired enough to drift off easily if he allowed himself to lie down. But he forced himself to stay awake, splashing cold water over his face to wake himself up a bit. He wanted to catch John when his brother finally returned. He knew better than to give John the chance to come up with a plausible lie. Putting him on the spot was a more reliable strategy.

Time ticked on without any motion from the rest of the quarters.

Scott tugged off Alan's filthy socks and dumped them in the hamper although he suspected there was no saving them, not with those bloodstains. It took an embarrassing amount of effort to lift his brother in order to pull the duvet back and then tuck Alan underneath it, but then again the apocalypse would do that to anyone. Seriously though, Scott was sweating. It was a sad reminder of just how far he'd fallen. But that was a dangerous thought, so he distracted himself by tidying the bedroom.

Miraculously, Virgil was still asleep. God knew he needed it. It was a relief to see him actually resting for once. Scott could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen Virgil asleep over the past week. He stood in the doorway for a moment, just watching. Alan subconsciously sought comfort in his sleep, curling towards Virgil who rolled over and threw an arm over the kid, drawing him close.

Scott switched off the light and gently closed the door behind him. His feet carried him to the olive tree. Coincidentally, this was situated opposite the door to the rest of the bunker.

Unease prickled like static across his back. It seemed like another lifetime yet only yesterday all at once that he'd run out that door. Part of him wondered how differently things might have turned out if he'd never left. A larger part knew that there was no point in chasing that chain of thought any further. International Rescue had taught him that there was no space in life for what-ifs.

He sat on the edge of the planter. The olive tree leaves rustled in the flow of air. A glance sideways revealed that the canaries were watching him. One of them had been looking sickly lately, but it had perked up a little. He crooked a finger through the bars, unable to fight a smile as the songbirds fluttered closer.

He'd nearly fallen asleep by the time John appeared. The faint squeak of hinges jolted him out of the trance. He stood up, bracing himself against the planter as his balance wavered.

John said nothing. He was too exhausted to keep his emotions guarded and as such Scott could read every line of worry on his brother's face. They stood in silence for moment until John slowly pushed the door shut behind him and closed the distance to pull Scott into a fierce hug.

"I left my radio on mute because I'm a fucking idiot." The self-deprecation in John's voice sounded bitter. "I only picked up Theo's message five minutes ago." He sighed, dropping his head to Scott's shoulder for a moment. "I should have been here. Are you okay? Is Alan okay?"

"He's okay. I handled it."

John took a step back. "Where's Virg?"

"Asleep. He needs it so I didn't wake him up. I had it covered."

John was ever-so-slightly shaking.

"Relax, Johnny," Scott murmured. "Alan and I talked and we're both alright. It didn't knock me into any weird spirals. If anything, I think it was a conversation that we both needed to have." He caught John's gaze and held it. "I'm okay, really."

He let the settle silence for moment while John tried to calm his heartrate back down to a regular rhythm. When they looked at each other again words weren't really necessary, but Scott spoke anyway.

"We need to have a conversation of our own, don't we?"

John pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Yeah," he muttered, evidently reluctant. "We do. But I don't think now is the right time. Neither of us have slept and it's not going to be an easy discussion."

Scott was sorely tempted to demand that no, they would talk about it right this second thank-you-very-much. But John looked ready to fall asleep standing and Scott himself was probably too tired to make sense of anything until he'd slept for a couple of hours.

"Okay."

John frowned. "Really? You're not gonna argue?"

"Nah. It's been a long night and you look about five seconds away from collapsing."

John rolled his shoulders self-consciously. "I'm not that bad. It's just been a long night, like you said."

"Just… answer one question for me?"

"Ask it then."

Scott couldn't look at him for fear of the answer and so stared at the canaries instead. "Is Gordon…?"

"He's safe. He's getting better."

Relief triggered a new wave of exhaustion. Scott looped an arm around John's shoulders, fighting back a sigh as he asked, quietly, for:

"No more secrets, John."

John held his hands up in surrender. "No more secrets, I promise. I'll explain everything once we're no longer mildly delirious with exhaustion. Deal?"

"Deal."


Sleep wasn't a cure-all but it sure as hell helped. Scott crashed as soon as he hit the mattress and slept right around the clock until even coining his first meal of the day as brunch would have been a stretch.

Sleeping for so long left him groggy and it took a shower to knock his senses back into order. The rest of the room was empty, but the other side of the bed was still warm, proof that Virgil had only woken recently. Scott grabbed an abandoned sweater off the carpet and went in search of his brothers.

It didn't take a genius to know to check the kitchen first. Bingo. Virgil and John were sat around the table while Alan perched on a countertop, poking dubiously at a bowl of cereal. He was finally in clean clothes, hair still damp and drying in loose curls from the shower. He looked calmer than he had done the previous night, but red-rimmed eyes suggested that he'd finally faced that long overdue conversation with John. On the upside, it must have gone well because the kid was still here rather than bolting.

Finch's tail thudded against the floor, alerting them to Scott's presence. Virgil kicked out a chair while John slid a spare mug of coffee across the table. The silence was comfortable, so no one made any attempt to break it. The conversation could wait for a few more minutes. None of them were going anywhere.

Virgil scrolled through a data packet of various medical readouts. Scott tried to pick out information but Virgil was sitting opposite and so the writing was mirrored backwards. He gave up and returned to his coffee – instant but still very welcome – warming his hands in the rising steam. Finch flopped across his feet like a heated pair of socks. He reached down to pat her head, earning another tail thump.

Alan slid down from the counter with a light thud.

"Can we talk now? Because waiting is just making me more…" He twirled a hand vaguely. "You know?"

Virgil discarded the readouts with a tap of the holo-projector. "Sit down, Al. You're making me nervous."

"Nah, I need to stand. Too much energy. This way I can walk it off."

John chuckled tiredly. "You're taking after Scott." His gaze drifted to the bandages encasing Alan's hand. "Maybe a little too much sometimes."

Alan rocked forwards on his heels, practically bouncing with nervous energy. John shoved the kid into pacing back-and-forth across the kitchen. It was better than having him on the verge of launching into orbit.

"So," Scott prompted, tightening his grip around the mug to brace himself. Despite John's assurances that Gordon was safe, he still automatically expected bad news. He studied Virgil's expression for any hint as to the truth, but his brother looked away.

They all watched as Alan continued to pace across the space like a caged lion.

"So," John echoed, drawing himself back to the topic at hand. "Virgil seems to think you've put a few pieces together already, so why don't you tell me how much you know and then I'll fill in the blanks."

Scott glanced over at Alan and hesitated. "There was an altercation with the Hood. Gordon accidentally got caught in the, uh, crossfire. He's been in medical ever since."

He deliberately kept the details vague. In truth, he'd put together a much darker picture, but he was reluctant to describe it when Alan was within earshot. The kid was already wrestling with enough guilt. There was no need to add fuel to the fire. Even with the generalised description, Alan still winced, steps faltering as he wrapped his arms around himself.

John went to speak, then reconsidered.

For a moment, no one said anything.

"I hit him in the head with a baseball bat," Alan snapped, whirling on his heels to storm back across the room. "Just fucking say it, okay? Avoiding the subject isn't gonna change the fact that it happened." He flexed his hands at his sides. "It was an accident and I feel sick with guilt all the time and now Gordon's stuck in a medical ward."

"Not stuck," John amended quickly as Scott lost the ability to breathe. "It's not like that. He's still recovering from surgery, that's all."

"Oh, that's all? No biggie then. Just surgery." Alan's hysterical laugh fractured into tears. He slumped into the spare seat at Virgil's side. "I nearly killed him." He laid his head on the table, voice muffled. "If I'd hit him just a fraction higher it would have been fatal and I… I did that."

"But it wasn't," Virgil reminded him. "And Gordon's doing well. Really well. He's lucky."

Alan lifted his head from the table.

"Lucky, huh?" His voice wavered. "And when's our luck going to finally run out? Maybe we've used it all up now."

John caught Virgil's eye and wordlessly gestured towards the door, give us a few minutes? Virgil read between the lines and stood up, guiding Alan out of the room, ghosting a hand over Scott's shoulder on his way past. Alan mumbled faint complaints without making any real effort to drag his heels.

As soon as the door shut behind them, the atmosphere changed. Scott stared into the depths of his coffee as if it could offer him any answers. John reached over to grip his wrist, squeezing slightly until Scott glanced up.

"Level with me," Scott muttered.

"It wasn't great. Not at first." John retracted his hand to run his fingers through his hair. "Prognosis is close to a full recovery."

"But not completely."

John dropped his gaze to the tabletop, voice hushed as he admitted, "No. Not completely."

His shoulders hunched slightly. A shadow of grief darted across his face.

"Closed fracture. Linear, not depressed thank God, but CT scans revealed that there was still pressure on- So. Surgery. I- I had to sign off on it but without it… It was worth the risk, and it paid off. He's a stubborn bastard, I'll give him that – recovering a lot faster than predicted."

"But?" Scott prompted, faintly nauseous with all the new information. He couldn't fight the mental image of his little brother in a hospital bed and oh god, Gordon was terrified of hospitals. Not to mention the fact that John was clearly understating just how bad it had been.

John dug his thumbnail into the edge of a whorl in the tabletop.

"Reduced coordination," he said slowly, unable to meet Scott's gaze. "Impaired hearing. Dizzy spells. Chronic fatigue. Those last two will almost certainly clear up, but there's a chance that they'll stick."

Scott's words came out sort of strangled. "Impaired hearing? Is that…? What does that mean?"

"Not total hearing loss," John was quick to explain. "Gordon describes it as being underwater."

"Of course that's how he describes it," Scott remarked, albeit a little hysterically, because his mind was spinning as if he'd somehow stumbled onto a childhood fairground ride. "Christ, that's…"

"Everything's muted, I suppose." John's eyes were overly bright. His voice grew very small as he added, "Sometimes he says his ears are ringing. He thinks that's a good sign."

"And you don't?"

John screwed his hands into fists and finally looked up. "I can't get my hopes up. Not now. We've lost so much – too damn much – and I can't let myself believe in possibilities anymore, only in facts. I'd rather accept the worst-case scenario and be pleasantly surprised then hope for the best and get knocked down."

Denial was a beautiful thing. Scott reached for it desperately.

"But there's still a chance, isn't there? That all of this is only temporary? Part of the healing process? I mean, you already said that he's surpassing their expectations, so surely…?"

"Scott," John interrupted quietly, in the same voice he'd once used when explaining that it's too late, there's nothing more you can do, turn back Thunderbird One, I'm sorry- "Stop." He took a deep breath. "Please. You can discuss possibilities with Virgil, but not with me."

Silence settled. Finch crept out from under the table and sat by Scott's side to rest her chin on his knees. He petted her absently, only realising that he'd been panicking once his breathing slowed. He tangled his fingers in her fur to ground himself. Finch stared up at him with sorrowful eyes, tail sweeping the tiles as he bent down rest his forehead on the top of her head. She pawed at his arm with a tiny whine, clearly concerned.

"Scott?" John's chair squeaked as he stood up and moved to place a hand on Scott's back. "Hey. Talk to me. What's going on in your head right now?"

Too damn much was the honest answer.

Finch's bandana was lopsided. Scott twisted it back into place, smoothing the ruffled fur around the fabric and reminding himself to breathe as he did so. He partly wanted to shrug John off. Logic told him that he would only be punishing himself by doing so and he was trying to be better about that sort of thing. So.

"When can I see him?"

John hesitated. "Visitors are allowed at any time. There aren't any set hospital rules down here. But are you sure?"

"About seeing Gordon?"

They both knew that wasn't the real question.

"Yeah," Scott said after a moment. He sat back up, twisting to spy John's worried frown. "I'm ready. And if it gets too much, I'll tell you."

John studied him for any hint of a lie. "Promise me?"

"What, you want a pinkie promise or something?"

John ignored the sarcasm. He crossed his arms, clearly unwilling to let the matter drop until he got a real answer.

Scott relented with a sigh. "Yeah, Johnny. I promise."


In the end, stepping out of their quarters was a non-event. Scott had built it up in his head to be a grand terror, like a tripwire which could knock everything else off-kilter and destroy all his tentative steps towards getting better. But it was just a few steps over the threshold. The world kept turning and he kept breathing.

Nearly a month ago he had stood in this corridor and made one of the worst decisions of his entire life. This time, he was surrounded by people who loved him and would never give up on him. He'd call it a miracle, only he'd be promptly reminded that no, it was just what family did. Unconditional. Forever – or at least however long they had left.

Alan refused to come with. He claimed that he wanted to give Scott and Gordon a chance to catch up without interruption, but a glance at Virgil told Scott that the truth lay elsewhere. Apparently their youngest brother had been avoiding Gordon ever since he'd first woken up, checking in via radio but reluctant to visit in person.

"He's scared," Virgil diagnosed quietly.

Scott had come to the same conclusion. He wasn't naïve enough to believe that a single conversation had fixed everything which was so terribly wrong.

Alan was shouldering enough guilt to crush him if he didn't share the burden, but until Gordon made a full recovery – which he would simply because he had to – there would be no persuading him. He shifted between avoidance and clinginess at unpredictable intervals. The only consistency was his friendship with Theo and Jasmin and his dutiful care for Finch, ensuring she was fed on time and brushing tangles out of her fur.

The hospital wing was bright with artificial lights. It was enough to dazzle Scott's vision for a few seconds. The smell of antiseptic and bleach drew unwanted memories to the surface. He blinked away mental snapshots of IV lines and bruises and the ghost of chemical numbness. Virgil gently knocked their shoulders together to ground him.

Gordon was quiet. Scott halted in the doorway, unable to bring himself to step foot inside the room because the silence was so painfully wrong. Gordon might not have been part of the Six Foot Club but he'd always been larger than life, with the sort of presence which filled a room. Now, he seemed small, and it was such a cruel throwback to those dark days after his hydrofoil accident that it was almost unbearable.

Scott remained frozen, wait a second, brain rebooting… It would have hurt less if someone had taken hold of his heart and wrenched. His chest physically hurt. And wasn't this indirectly his fault? If he'd never run, never followed the Hood, never been so monumentally stupid, never-

"Stop that," John snapped, shoving Scott's shoulder. "I can practically see your thoughts. This isn't on you. Don't be an idiot." His voice softened. "Level with me. Are you still okay to be here? Because we can come back."

For a brief instant, Scott questioned why Gordon hadn't glanced up at the sound. John hadn't exactly tried to keep his voice down. Then recollection returned – impaired hearing – and Scott had to brace himself against the wave of instinctive self-blame.

John read it off his face. "Scott-"

"No, I'm okay." Scott hesitated. Honesty tasted strange. "Well, not okay. It'll probably hit me later. I'll let you know. But for now… I need to be here. Let me talk with him before you put me back on lockdown. Please."

"It's not lockdown," John muttered, sinking his hands into his pockets. "It's… surveillance. Monitoring. Keeping an eye on you because you're an idiot."

Virgil shook his head fondly. "You're not doing a particularly good job of making it sound any less creepy, John." He caught Scott's eye. "Seriously, is it healthy for you to be here right now?"

"Probably not," Scott admitted, "But I need to see Gordon and if that comes with consequences then we'll just have to deal with them if and when they hit me."

There was a slight pause.

"We," Virgil echoed with a tiny smile. "You said we'll deal with them. Finally gonna let us help, huh?"

Scott coughed. "Yeah, well. You know." He tore his gaze away. "Don't make a big deal out of it, Virg."

Virgil held his hands up, although his proud smile didn't dim. John's reaction was more subtle, but Scott knew him too well to miss it. For a minute, the warmth was enough to settle the anxiety writhing under his skin, to soothe ruffled feathers, to pretend that everything was still fixable.

Scott closed his eyes, took a breath, then turned back to face reality because as much as he longed to revel in that moment, his little brother needed him.


History had a not-so-funny habit of repeating itself. The human brain had a particular fondness for identifying patterns. These two facts weren't connected until suddenly they were.

For a brief instance Scott swore he was standing in a hospital room years earlier watching over the broken body of his little brother as his mind projected memory over his present reality. He wrapped a hand around his opposite wrist and squeezed slightly to draw himself out of the trance.

They had all dropped weight and muscle mass. It was a side effect of the apocalypse which no one – save for rich asshats in private shelters – could avoid. But they had spent all their time together and so these changes had gone mostly unnoticed, just as parents didn't register how tall their children had become until suddenly a visiting relative pointed it out. Scott hadn't seen Gordon in almost a month and so now the changes struck him so violently that he briefly lost his ability to breathe.

His feet seemed welded to the floor. He forced himself to take a step closer. Gordon either had yet to notice him or was pretending. Scott didn't know which option hurt less. His mind was spinning with observations which he longed to toss to the wind and never consider again.

Gordon had always slept on his front like a starfish, limbs sprawled everywhere as if it was his personal right to take up every scrap of space on the bed. Now, he curled in on himself, hands tightened to shaky fists around a pillow, determined to make himself as small as possible to present less of a target.

The position had pulled his baggy shirt taut against his back so that his spine made a mountain range from the fabric. One arm was tucked over his face to cover his ear with his elbow as if that could block out the constant ringing. Although, Scott realised a second later, it was far more likely an attempt to hide the injury from immediate view – another subconscious strategy to conceal vulnerability in a place which shunned it.

Half of his head was shaved, but the rest of his hair had grown longer again, tangled to throw shade across his face, pressed so closely to the mattress that the sheets had left creases on his cheek. He had his eyes screwed shut, but tensed muscles revealed that he was still awake. He pushed himself up on an elbow as Scott approached, either sensing another's presence or alerted by his uncanny ability to know whenever a brother was lurking nearby.

"Hey," Scott tried, voice cracking. He cleared his throat and repeated, stronger, "Hey."

Gordon sat upright properly.

"Hey," he echoed faintly, a smile bright enough to rival the sun slowly dawning on his face. He didn't say anything else for a long moment, staring at Scott as if fearing that his brother might vanish before his very eyes. "You're here."

"I'm here," Scott agreed, more quietly than he'd intended. It was all more overwhelming than he'd anticipated. His vocal chords seemed partly paralysed. He drew a chair close with one foot and sank into it heavily.

"Shit, Gordon." His eyes were burning. "Yeah, I'm here. Of course I am. I'm only sorry it took me so long."

Gordon frowned at him. "Dude. No. No apologies or any dumb self-blame. Also, can we uh…" He sighed. "Can you switch to signing? Because lip-reading gets hella tiring hella fast, y'know?"

Scott automatically went to speak, caught himself, then asked, "How are you feeling?"

"Uh…" Gordon forced a grin. "Kinda shitty. It's been a rough day. But hey. Tomorrow might be better."

Bruising escaped the edges of the gauze which protected his still-healing injury – yet another scar to add to the tally – and, based off the colours, Scott was willing to bet that kinda shitty was a major understatement.

Gordon shifted uncomfortably under his brother's inspection and was quick to offer a new question. It was hardly surprising. Whenever injured, Gordon never liked to dwell on the subject. His accident had left more scars than purely physical and the only way to fight his fear of hospitals was to think about literally anything else.

"Virgil's been giving me the PG version," he reported, stuffing a pillow behind his back. "John's given me a basic rundown, but it was still carefully curated. So. You wanna hit me with the real stuff?"

Scott winced. "Not particularly."

Gordon's gaze fell to the tiny scar on Scott's forearm. It was so small that it was almost unnoticeable. Scott had only registered its presence when he'd run his thumb over it while struggling into a sweatshirt, but Gordon picked it out almost instantly as if he'd known where to look. Which, Scott realised, he did because the last time Gordon had seen him had been in the Hood's quarters, still hooked up to as many needles as a lab rat.

The realisation was sobering. Jesus. No wonder Gordon seemed so overwhelmed to see him up and around. He propped his arms on the edge of the bed and instantly Gordon reached for him. Little Brother's touch was gentle, skimming across haunted skin where bruises had long since faded but ghosts remained in the forms of raised scar tissue.

Even all this time later, Scott still had to suck in a breath in the face of kind touches. It seemed ridiculous that mere days with the Hood could override a lifetime of known love and yet here he was, unnerved by sudden movements and the sight of IV pouches on a shelf in the corner.

Gordon traced a line down Scott's forearm, tracking his ulnar artery, coming to a stop above his pulse.

"I thought we were too late. And then when Virgil- I'd never heard him sound like that before and I never, ever, want to hear it again."

Alan had touched upon the same subject – 'Virgil screamed' – and Scott had a vague, blurred memory which had returned to him in a recent nightmare although his own mind couldn't be trusted to be truthful.

He hadn't mentioned it to Virgil and his brother hadn't broached the topic, but it sometimes seemed as if Virgil had never stopped calling for him, reliving that moment over-and-over in his head. It was obvious in the way he had practically become Scott's shadow, something painful in his eyes and frightened when he pressed a hand to his brother's back to check his breathing in the middle of the night when he believed Scott to be asleep already.

"Scott," Gordon whispered – or at least as quietly as he could manage, volume louder than intended thanks to the overcompensation for his impaired hearing – a little lost and fearful, "What happened?"

Scott couldn't look at him. It wasn't his little brother asking, but Gordon Tracy, one of the world's most skilled aquanauts, IR operative, hero in his own right and more than strong enough to handle the truth. In many ways, Scott considered, Gordon was braver than him. Not that he'd ever admit as much to his brother's face, but hey.

"It depends," he replied at last, "On which part you're asking about."

Gordon blinked, taken aback by the sincerity in Scott's eyes.

"I…" He took a breath to steel himself. "Were you trying to die?"

Whenever anyone asked which of the Tracy boys was the bluntest, minds instantly went to Scott or John. This wasn't necessarily wrong, but it wasn't the most accurate answer either. John used clever words where Scott used directness and the result was that while both of them could deliver honesty they still shied away from the hardest hitting questions – John because he already knew the answers and Scott because he was unwilling to accept them. But Gordon? Gordon would brace himself against the implications and then ask those questions anyway and it was to his credit.

"No."

Gordon's eyes widened slightly. "Why did you hesitate?"

"I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

Not even a baseball bat to the head could damage Gordon's observational skills apparently, as it took mere seconds for him to scrutinise Scott's body language and declare, "It happened after the Hood, didn't it?"

"Depends on what it is," Scott said vaguely, trying to hint around the subject rather than facing it head on.

Gordon was quiet for a minute. "I didn't want to give you a gun after we left the GDF bunker. John promised me that it would be okay. Which of us was right?"

"Both of you. Look, I…" Scott steadied his hands against the edge of the bed. "I was in a crap headspace, but I didn't try anything."

"But you wanted to?"

Scott faltered. "Not anymore."

Gordon flinched slightly as if the air had been knocked from his sails. He floundered for a moment, trying to find words which could never possibly even begin to convey everything which would go unsaid between them.

In the end, he settled for a simple, broken, "Shit, Scott."

For a moment, they sat in silence. Gordon's hand on Scott's wrist tightened, thumb pressed firmly to his brother's pulse, breathing in time with Scott's heartbeat. His eyes were blazing with the same protective fire that he had once carried with him on rescues. Scott loved him so much that it seemed impossible to have ever considered leaving him. He let Gordon grab his hand and held on tightly enough to hurt.

"Y'know," Gordon began in the sort of fake casualness which was usually the precursor to something shocking, "After my accident – the uh, ha, the first one… What the fuck is my life, man? – I got all up in my head because it didn't make sense why I got to live when the others didn't. I was the only one who made it out. Why me? Some smartass rich kid with the attention span of a goddamn goldfish when the others were all- Jesus, they were the future. And I felt so guilty. Sick with it.

But Dad… Dad said something to me, and it's stuck with me all these years. I thought about it when rescues went wrong and then, when everything went to shit, throughout all of the horrible things I've done in the name of survival… He sat me down and he told me, 'Listen kid, you are allowed to want to live and that is not something you should ever feel guilty about.'"


Scott had been warned that Gordon tired easily but he was still taken by surprise by how little time it took for his brother to start stifling yawns, blinking away blurriness and trying to keep hidden the pain which lined his face. Gordon was reluctant to let himself sleep. Dreams were now dark places plagued by terror, not to mention his fear of being vulnerable in a place which had haunted him for so long. It didn't matter how much time Gordon had spent in hospitals over the years, he still couldn't shake the unease.

Even with Scott's promise to stay, Gordon kept jolting himself awake. Every time sleep tried to settle, he shrugged it away again. No wonder the circles under his eyes were so dark. Sleep deprivation had to be playing hell with his body too. Rest was the best healer, yet he seemed intent on evading it. In his defence, it wasn't the sort of room which invited sleep – crisp, clinical linen and harsh lights which sapped the colour from everything – but there was more to it than mere discomfort.

"What's the deal?" Scott queried after twenty minutes of observing Gordon's attempts at fighting off sleep. It was almost painful to witness. He sort of wanted to wrap his brother up in a blanket, give him a mug of hot chocolate and tell him childhood stories but that trick hadn't worked since Gordon had been nine and besides, it was completely outside of the realm of possibility.

Gordon blinked slowly. "Say what?"

"You won't let yourself sleep despite the fact you very clearly need it." Scott kept an eye out for any of Gordon's obvious tells but so far the only clue he'd picked up on was the signs of a headache. Given the entire fractured skull situation, that was unsurprising. "Is it the place?"

"Hospitals suck," Gordon agreed, sitting on his hands to keep them from trembling. He stared at the creases in the bedsheets as if he could read his fortune within the lines like tea leaves. "But no. I mean, kinda? I don't like it here. Here as in the bunker, not just this med-bay. This whole place feels like one of those weird fairground mirrors, y'know? All the details are topsy turvy. I don't trust it. It doesn't seem so different from the GDF bunker."

He shivered. Scott moved to tuck a blanket around his shoulders. Gordon battered him away, clumsy like a young kitten, gaze flitting between the open doorway and his own hands. No wonder he refused to sleep – Scott had experienced enough paranoid nights to recognise the signs.

In an ideal world they'd have taken what they needed and left – a straight exchange. Reality was never so simple nor so easy. The thought had crossed his mind that perhaps not all of them would be walking out of this place and now it occurred to him again. He repressed a shiver. Gordon eyed him knowingly.

"You should rest," Scott signed after a pause. "Virgil thinks you'll be well enough to travel by late June, but if you keep pushing yourself you'll knock that into July and we both know it."

"Easier said than done."

"This sucks."

Talk about understatement of the century, Scotty, he thought to himself, but Gordon let out a surprised laugh.

"Fuck yeah it does. I hate this. Hey, where's the gremlin? Kid's got a worse guilt complex than you. Do me a favour? Knock some sense into his thick skull. It was an accident. No one's to blame, 'part from the Hood of course. Hell, it was about time one of us lost it. My money was on you kicking his sorry ass into orbit but hey, Alan's always been unpredictable, so I guess I shoulda seen that one coming."

"Gordon," Scot said aloud, catching his brother's shoulder.

Gordon trailed off. He glanced up, lost and young and fearful. Without any of the false bravado he seemed sort of deflated, as if all the fight had been drained from him to leave only the very basic measurements of human survival instinct and Tracy stubbornness.

"I'm scared, Scotty," he whispered, glancing around fervently as if the walls had ears.

Which, Scott realised, they might well have done. Once upon a time he'd been spooked by the idea of EOS having access to Tracy Island – now that fear seemed almost childish, laughable in comparison to new threats. His past self could never have believed just how much he would come to miss the AI. If they had access to EOS, he'd feel a lot more comfortable in this place. The current power distribution was not in their favour. No wonder Gordon's confession sounded like a secret – fear was a weapon which could very easily be used against you. God knew Scott had found that out the hard way.

It was a general, sweeping statement. Scared – of what, specifically? There were many possible answers. Gordon was probably referring to all of them at once. His grip on Scott's wrist was tight enough to betray that fear, anyway, so it was a good thing that Scott wasn't planning to leave anytime soon, not even if Virgil threatened to physically carry him out of the room. He had several cards up his sleeve and he was willing to play the one marked emotional manipulation if needs be.

It had been too long since he'd spent time with Gordon, and it seemed that both of them had come up with fanciful scenarios drenched in terror since then. Now, they were both going to cling onto each other until they could believe that no, they weren't about to be ripped apart again. Gordon closed his eyes and feared the past while Scott wrestled with the burden of facing the future. Maybe together they could find a survivable, sustainable middle-ground.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Gordon shrugged. His jaw tightened slightly, tension slinking into his shoulders in the face of pain which he wasn't as good at hiding as he cared to believe. He pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes with a long sigh which sapped the final dregs of strength from his muscles until he tipped sideways to lean against Scott's shoulder.

"You know, uh, when people… People say shit, right? And you tell yourself you don't believe it, but there's always a part of you that wonders what if. Maybe it's a tiny part of you. Only one percent, something like that, but it haunts you. Because…"

Gordon drew a shaky breath.

"Man, I've gotta believe that I'll make it through this. I beat the odds before, I can do it again, right? But they're telling me that some of this shit is permanent and- Scott, that's basically a death sentence now. Before? Fine. Brains could've figured out some aids, y'know? Cool genius stuff. But now… God, if this isn't fixable then I'm stuck here because on the surface I'd be too much of a liability."

"No." Scott shook his head vehemently. He found Gordon's hand and clung on, biting back a comment as he felt just how badly his brother was shaking. "That's not- It might take a while, but we'll figure it out."

Gordon was quiet. He held himself perfectly still, every breath calculated, trying to gauge the impact of his words before he vocalised them. There was no hiding from the truth. He didn't only look scared, but tired, when he confessed, "Scott, I have no idea what you just said. I can't hear you."

"Sorry," Scott said instinctively, then signed, "Sorry. I was just saying…"

"That we'll figure it out? Together?" Gordon guessed. He tilted his head instinctively as if it was mere water clogging his ears. "What if it gets worse? I could sort of hear you earlier but now it's just constant ringing. What if eventually it stays that way? What if-" He swallowed. "What if I can't put myself back together this time? It's not like it's just one major accident, it's not even the second, it's my third and third time's the charm, right? That's what everyone says. So, what if this is the universe saying hey, check it out, we finally got him."

"You don't believe that."

"Obviously not, but…" Gordon's voice wobbled. "Everything is so much. The world's dying. People we love are missing. And now I'm back here in another fucking hospital bed. It kinda seems like we can never win." He exhaled in a bitter laugh. "But we don't have a choice, right?"

"We have a choice," Scott corrected. "It's just about picking the one we can live with."

"Dammit," Gordon muttered. When he looked up, his eyes were bright with the embers of that old fire. "Yeah, okay, I get it. We could stay here but it would be quitting and that's not in our nature. Frickin' Tracy stubbornness. Ugh. Why does the right choice have to be so much hard work?"

"Do you really want an answer?"

"Not really." Gordon tipped his head back with a dull laugh. "Goddammit, we're doing it again – thinking too far ahead. We've got to remember to take this whole thing one step at a time. Worry about today and let tomorrow take care of itself because the future isn't a guarantee - never was even before, sure as hell isn't now."

Scott didn't have anything to say to that. His own exhaustion was beginning to set in like a dark fog rolling across the ocean until visibility was zero and the only action left was to sit tight and wait it out. He knew better than to mistake it for mere tiredness. Still, with Gordon against his side and the distant murmur of John's and Virgil's conversation beyond the propped-open door, it was easier to believe that it would pass. Being in the medical wing was bringing back unwanted memories but he could handle them with his brothers around him.

Gordon gingerly lowered himself back onto the mattress. His eyes were narrowed against a new onslaught of dizziness. He rolled onto his side, head propped in the crook of a folded arm, shivering slightly despite the room being set to a temperate level. His hair was a shock of blond against the clinical white of bandages, slightly darker now that it no longer faced daily bleaching by chlorine and tropical sun.

A new scar snaked around his left bicep from a close call with an infected during their trek across the countryside. It was yet another addition to the tally of incidents which had left their marks on his body, but Gordon wore them like trophies and Scott had no doubt that the headwound would be treated similarly. Gordon viewed them as proof that he'd survived. Scott could have done with a few pointers because while he had no issues with scars from rescues, he couldn't look at the marks left from rotter attacks or even his time with the Hood.

"Yo." Gordon snagged Scott's wrist and tugged him closer. "You should sleep too. You're paler than a frickin' ghost, dude."

"Thanks."

"A walking jump-scare," Gordon continued, covering up a shiver with a laugh. "Also, you can't complain because I literally cannot hear you."

There were no railings like on a hospital cot, which meant Scott could squeeze onto the edge of the mattress and indulge Gordon's octopus tendencies. Sure enough, Gordon latched onto him as if he were a lifeline, tucking himself under Scott's arm to rest his head above Scott's heart. His tight grip relaxed slightly at the steady rhythm. He was a shock of warmth and reality. Scott was scared to hold him too close for fear of hurting him.

Gordon socked him lightly on the arm. "I'm not gonna shatter, Scotty."

"You won't, but I might," Scott muttered, safe in the knowledge that Gordon couldn't hear him. Still, he dared to tighten his hold. For a while, he drifted in and out of sleep. John vanished but Virgil returned and stole Scott's abandoned chair, shuffling closer to examine the bruises flourishing around Gordon's bandages.

Time rolled on like waves – endless, dangerous if disrespected. Scott fell into a deeper sleep than he'd intended, lulled by warmth and the murmur of familiar voices. He woke to find a pair of amber eyes staring at him. Years of having weird little brothers kept him from jolting backwards. He blinked until Gordon's face came back into focus.

"What're you doing?" His voice was rough from sleep. He propped himself on an elbow to reach the bottle of water which someone had left on the now-empty chair. "Gords?"

"Nothing," Gordon mumbled, sounding remarkably like a chastised kid who'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Just… thinking."

More awake now, Scott sat up and switched back to signing. "That's dangerous."

Gordon sent him an unimpressed look. "Thanks."

"Thinking about what?"

"Nothing. It's dumb." Gordon took a deep breath. "Actually, it's not dumb at all. It's kind of important. But it sounds- ugh. I'm just- I'm really proud of you, okay?" He faked a shudder. "Ew, emotions. Just gotta say it in one go like ripping off a band-aid. Yuck. Anyway."

Scott took a moment to sort through the complicated web of emotions that he'd become tangled in. The confession had been entirely unexpected. He curled his healing hands over his knees to hide the scars. Gordon's eyes were wide and brimming with open honesty - Scott was oddly reminded of Finch.

"You're proud of me," he repeated slowly, and something twisted in his chest at the sight of Gordon's little head tilt as his brother tried to lipread. He remembered to sign. "Thanks, I guess? But I haven't done anything?"

Gordon's faint smile faded.

"Scott." His whisper was pained. "Are you kidding me? You're… There are so many reasons, but, like… You're still here. And sure, Virgil and John get credit for helping, but you did the hardest part. You're the one putting in the work. You went through Hell and kept walking, bro. No one's expecting you to be okay, but you're surviving, so fuck yeah I'm proud of you."

"Just surviving doesn't seem like something to be proud of."

"That's because you set dumb standards for yourself. Take it from someone who's hit their own rock bottom in the past – just surviving is a pretty big deal. It's definitely something to be proud of."

Scott shot him a fond smile. "When did you get so wise, squid?"

"Dunno." Gordon's grin took on an evil gleam. "Must've been when Alan hit me with a baseball bat. Probably knocked a few brain cells into place."

"Jesus Christ, Gords," Scott groaned. "No. We're not joking about that."

"It's my near-death experience; I can joke about it if I want."

"You're a little shit, you know that right?"

Gordon sniggered. "You love me."

"Yeah," Scott admitted, automatically going to tousle his brother's hair only to recall why that would be a monumentally stupid idea and so knocking their shoulders together instead. "I really do. Even though you're one of the leading contributors to my stress levels."

Gordon beamed at him. "Guilty as charged, but hey, at least I'm not boring."

There was a brief pause.

"One step at a time, huh?" Scott mused.

Gordon's smile softened. "FAB, Scooter."