Only on every day ending in y. Ha. We’re apocalyptic-level petty.
Scott has a tendency to be… Scott. John and Virg are much better at dealing with him. Virgil can talk him down and has the remarkable ability to make him see sense. John, you can’t actually argue with, he just raises an eyebrow and it’s game over (learnt that a long time ago).
Anyway, neither of those things happen when it’s the two of us. Because despite looking like entirely different ends of the gene pool, we’re unfortunately too alike not for things to get fiery (and petty). He freaks out, I get defensive. Both of us snap at each other. All hell breaks loose.
And it happens more frequently because we happen to live together… and work together… a lot of together…
So, y’know. Yeah. Petty, stubborn, chaotic and somehow, still brothers. Family isn’t neat. Neither are we.
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I done wrote a thing!! Thankyou @flashfictionfridayofficial for giving me a kick up the backside with this one. It's a bit introspective and possibly nonsense, but it's ideas I've had for a long time - I'm hoping that this might finally prove to be the start of me actually finishing Lone Star, but we'll see I guess... (I've made promises like that before. 😅)
Anyway, no particular warnings, just a lot of ponderous existential blah.
Or read it on AO3
Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go
Rating: Universal
Genre: angst
Warnings: none
Words: 945
------------------------
John gazed down at the planet below him, and blue seas and brown-green lands looked back at him. The slowly-revolving view was vast, taking up the entire fused quartz window, and yet with landscapes, vistas, mountains and lakes rendered almost indistinguishable by the sheer scale of it; the Earth writ large and incalculably small all at once.
Planet Earth.
Home.
To him that was a uniquely complicated word.
He took a sip of cocoa from his leak-proof mug. The world turned.
Of course, it never used to be that difficult a concept. Way back in the beginning home was actually very simple: wheat fields, a dirt track, a farmhouse painted blue. Roses in the yard, cookies warm from the oven, an apron-wrapped hug. Laughter, joy, love.
But that sense of home had disappeared far too quickly.
Home was somewhere else now. Right now his family were all safely back on Tracy Island, tucked up in their beds, rescues complete and flight hours exhausted for the next… - he checked his watch - ten hours at least. By that time the sun would be high in the sky over the villa, and the petrels would be chitting and charping up there with it. But for now there were only snores and the sound of breaking waves drifting softly in through the windows: the island’s own heartbeat.
By rights John should be asleep now too - he’d been up just as long as they had - but he couldn’t feel less like sleeping at the moment.
He took another sip of his cocoa, ignoring the small knot that grew in his chest every time he looked out of the window.
Instead he began idly calculating the exact distance between him and Tracy Island right now, incorporating the gap between Thunderbird Five and Earth of course, but also estimated distances from his current position above the Kaloo Desert back round to the South Pacific, reckoned both circumferentially and directly through the planet itself… Was that cheating? If a direct path wasn’t actually travelable, did it still count?
He frowned. Like so many things, how far he was from home was very much a matter of perspective. Miles and kilometers obviously, but also time. After all, the journey from Thunderbird Five to planetside took only twenty minutes by space elevator; fifteen at a push. Factor in the time it took to reposition Five and by that measure he really wasn't very far away at all.
The knot in his chest twisted.
It was never just a matter of measurement.
The fact was that despite the communications links, the regular care packages, the day-to-day check-ins and obviously the rescues, up here he was still a world away from everything down there. In every practical way he existed in an entirely different realm to the rest of his family, and the rest of humanity pretty much. He breathed a different atmosphere, he experienced a different gravity, night and day were rendered practically alien concepts to him. It wasn’t just a different landscape up here - there was no landscape!
When he’d first moved to Five he’d missed movement more than anything else. There was no cool morning breeze in space, nor the swish of leafy trees. There were no plants, no animals, no other living being of any description that wasn’t either computer-based or tin can-enclosed. Everything here was metal and glass; cold and sterile and still.
But even that didn’t fully describe it.
He sighed and set his half-drunk cocoa on the side table and sat back on his bunk, eyes closed.
The feeling of detachment was far more profound than the things he missed or the sensations that space lacked. It was more than just the distances. It wasn’t quantifiable. Wasn’t explainable. It was barely comprehensible. And it was all-encompassing.
Everything he was, everything that identified him as a person, as a human, was down there. His family, his history… Every concept of personhood, every aspect that had made him who he was and everyone whose existence in turn determined the shape of his own was now separate from him. The whole world - the whole of civilization past, present and future - could implode tomorrow into a single speck, and he would still remain, a final monument to the existence of the human race, drifting in his man-made cocoon until the end of time. Just him, alone, endlessly floating until the last star blinked out.
It was a lonely thought.
And yet…
He sat there for what seemed like an age, listening to the whirs and creaks and hums of Thunderbird Five, as familiar to him now as any home he’d ever known planetside. He knew every nut, every bolt, every corner and every cranny. He’d memorised the layout the same day Dad had first showed him the initial plans. He’d even personally had a hand in designing some of the systems. This was the sanctuary his father had custom-built just for him: his dreams made real in cahelium and silica.
He thought of Tracy Island once more, and all his family: seven people in one house, clattering and talking and bumping and tripping over each other, teasing each other, borrowing each other’s stuff, stubbed toes, hurt feelings, arguments, jokes, noise…
He loved his family. Of course he did. And he believed they loved him too.
And yet…
Home is somewhere you’re comfortable, right? Somewhere you belonged. Somewhere you wanted to be.
His chest ached.
What did he want? Where did he belong?
The world kept turning. His mind drifted.
One foot in one world and one in another, he thought just as sleep finally pulled on him, dragging him under.
In the timeline where your brother didn’t survive his hydrofoil crash, what was your plan for International Rescue? Would you have trained Alan as an aquanaut in his place and had John use Thunderbird 3? Or would you have trained?
I… I don’t quite understand how you think I’m going to answer this?
Like I was sat there at his bedside making contingency plans? “Oh no my future aquanaut might not be available let’s plan who to train as a replacement!”????????!!!!
Let me be quite clear: I cannot begin to imagine how that alternative timeline would be. Because in all that time not knowing, imagining the worst - everything I could imagine stopped at the point he did.
I cannot believe there would have been an International Rescue. How I could even suggest to the others we do it after that? I can’t even comprehend how IR could have come back after that… not because we’d lost our aquanaut but because we’d lost our brother. I can’t comprehend how I would have come back from that. I know people do but… i just… can’t… see how.
I’m sorry, but you have to understand that in the list of priorities in my life, IR is not at the top. It isn’t “IR must exist at all costs”.
My family is first.
Which means that all I can say is, whatever had happened and whatever will happen I’d have put my family first.
If Gordon had survived but needed lifelong care, then all other plans would have come second to providing that and to making his life as comfortable and joyful as possible. To spend as much time as a family as we could, so that he would always know how precious he was to us.
Luckily, we were spared a third heartbreak.
Luckily we could carry on and we were able to realise the dream and do our best to spare others from heartbreak too.
But you gotta know we are more than just the guys in blue suits… we’re a family.
This could have probably been an earlier chapter, but hey, better late than never! Alan and Gordon arrive home post-TB4-mission.
❤️💛 🚀
Alan let the warmth of the shower seep into his bones. He was sure his squid brother was secretly cold-blooded. Stepping into a shower after Gordon, was akin to performing the ice bucket challenge - the water barely more tepid than the sea itself. Alan, was the polar opposite - disassociating in the molten mist until he'd generated his very own steam room.
The teen grabbed a towel and headed for the lockers.
"Gordon, what the hell?"
He slammed the locker door shut.
Asshole had taken his spare clothes.
He searched through the other lockers. John's was empty, Virgil's; locked. He opened Scott's and pulled out a finely pressed shirt and jeans.
Gordon had better hope that Four had no further call outs today or he'd drown the fish himself.
The designer jeans were far too long in the leg. He had to fold the ends up twice to avoid tripping on the excess material as he waddled. The shirt was equally ridiculous. He looked like a child trying on their father's work clothes. It wasn't too far from the truth. But he was nineteen, not nine. And he loathed anything that could be used as ammunition by his brothers to remind him that yes... he was the baby of the family - he got it, alright?
He hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of Scott's jeans, desperate to protect himself from further embarrassment and shuffled his way back to his room. Brothers sucked ass.
*. *. *.
The astronaut's mood subsided a little on seeing that Grandma had been and spruced his room in his absence. His favourite green guitar top had been washed, ironed and laid out on the end of his bed.
Scooping up the casual wear; he buried his face into the soft fabric and inhaled its floral scent. Grandma was one of the few members who actually bothered to remember to add the softener to washes. He was so used to the Birds, bedrooms and gym smelling like...well, a gym; that it was a secret pleasure to enjoy the floral scent of cleanliness. Alan decided that it was the little things in life that brought the greatest pleasure.
He headed to his closet to grab his go-to shorts; pulling the tee over his head as he walked.
"FUCK!"
The floor beneath him shifted.
His room, the villa, maybe even the island shaking with a ferocity usually reserved to a Two Bird callout.
Alan was flung to the floor. He groaned. Where was his super-plush rug to cushion his fall-
His world suddenly tipped.
Blindly reaching out; somewhat encumbered in his half-dressed state, Alan managed to grasp the doorframe to his closet.
"GUYS! HELP!"
It sounded like a volcanic eruption...
His room roared like fracturing rock.
Steel screamed and splintered above him.
"Agh!" The sound was deafening, but he didn't dare let go.
Alan's thoughts were racing faster than Fireflash.
John. John would not have missed an impending eruption?
...Other than that one time with Professor Quentin Questa at Hrómundartinhurmindur.
No, this was nothing like a volcano. So what then?
His mind flitted through other possibilities. .
Earthquake? Landslide?
His room stopped shaking with one last feeble quiver.
Alan dared to pull his head through his top with a singular hand - the other still firmly glued to the doorframe.
The teen blinked; not trusting his eyes with the reality they presented him with.
Squirt stormed towards the changing rooms, that all too familiar crackle of the school speaker system echoing in their head over and over; Third?! They were third?!
Still dripping with pool water, they tore their goggles from their face and half heartedly threw them to the ground. Third place...
The shame was too much to bare, tears started streaming and the kid swiftly joined their discarded goggles, slumped up against the hard and unforgiving wall tiling. He's going to be so disappointed...
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I've been thinking about the Hood and how he treats the people who work for him.
Nothing they've ever done in an attempt to please him was ever good enough. Backstabbing, manipulation, verbal abuse and when he's done with them he tossed them aside ready to move on to his next victim.
Approaching hour two in the shower, and the blood, sweat and crushing disappointment of not doing a job well done is yet to budge.
There is always plenty of press comments about when rescues don’t go our way, but trust me; can’t say anything worse than we tell ourselves, because we know the outcome all too well, and know how much it hurts. We’re not perfectionists for the fun of it.
Warnings: Past loss on a rescue. Nothing shown, just the feelings.
Special thanks to @the-original-sineater for the read through and excellent advice as always.
A/N: When we hit FishTank week, I knew I wanted to do a spin on the crafty of the bunch, so I’ve been wanting to write this for awhile. Life. It gets away from you. But this is my very late take on “Arts and Sciences” day, plus Math!Scott makes an appearance for ya. :D
And since the timing aligns, this is also for @gumnut-logic, @knyee, and @astranite, as y'all have definitely been inspiring me lately with such lovely pieces to get me off my butt. I hope you don't mind the overlap, but I feel like this pairs well with gumnut’s take on Virgil painting on the floor here, inspired by knyee’s artwork here. And astranite’s lovely watercolors of Two and Four have been such lovely reminders of this idea that's been stirring at my brain. If any of you haven't yet, go give them some love first. This is for you, and for all of the crafty fam. You all are so incredibly talented, and I don’t know how I got so lucky finding a place in this fandom.
Read on Ao3 [this is my 50th work on the archive!!]
*****
Watercolors
Virgil awoke well-rested, but with the sudden memory that they’d lost people yesterday. It had been a comfort in his dreamless, beyond-exhaustion sleep to exist where that hadn’t happened, but while awake it was all too recent to forget. The itch on his scalp scolded him for crashing before removing what remained of the gel out of his hair, but at least he’d managed to change into something resembling sleepwear the night before.
Physically refreshed but weary, Virgil took an additional twenty minutes to wash up and change, the steam from the shower lifting the world from his shoulders just that little bit – enough for his heart to accept that it was a new day. And it would be what he made of it.
He rolled his dirty clothes into his sheets and tore them from the mattress, placing them in a laundry basket he kept outside his bathroom. It was better to have them somewhere organized, just in case the machines down the hallway were already in use by someone else in the family. Luckily, they were not, and it wasn’t until he started his pile on the wash cycle that he realized he could hear the steady pitter-patter of rain on the less sound-proofed walls of the utility room.
His stomach dropped, realizing his co-pilot was cooped up without his usual outlets on a day like today. Though he wouldn’t put it past Gordon to still find solace outside in the rain if he was that determined to be among the water. Hopefully nowhere near the storm-raged sea; Gordon knew better. Four hadn’t been fast enough yesterday, and Gordon, for all his outward carefree nature, would be feeling the loss just as much as him. It was one thing to say they couldn’t save everyone; it was another thing all together when their ships weren’t fast enough. Or they weren’t enough.
Even John had thought they could make it.
Mother Nature – she provides, and she takes.
A quick check in with Scott over comms revealed he and Alan were actually already attending to their brother in the satellite station above Earth. John had wanted Scott to check on the probability calculations of yesterday’s program, not trusting his own analysis being so close to the problem. At Eos’ absolute offense, Scott was there to provide another set of eyes, he admitted to Virgil. Smart move bringing along Alan, Virgil thought. Not just because of Three, but because Alan was best at giving John a distraction, via one of their online games or “space talk” or both.
“What have you found?” Virgil asked curiously.
Scott grimaced, admitting he didn’t think he’d find anything wrong with the program. These things just happen. And, unfortunately, Virgil had to agree – he had the upmost faith in Scott’s math, John’s programs, and Eos’ quick computing.
“Hey, check in on the Squid when you can?” his brother asked, frowning at the numbers through a tirade from the AI. “I couldn’t find him earlier.”
His thoughts exactly.
He signed off with an FAB and sent a prayer off to the stars for his brother’s continued patience. For John’s sake. Despite the circumstances, it made him smile knowing Eos and Scott had gotten at least comfortable enough to argue math. John and Eos both were in good hands.
Gordon was in his.
Surprisingly, it didn’t take Virgil long to find him, and he hadn’t needed to start scouting the Island in the rain to do so. Gordon was safe inside, sitting at the kitchen table when Virgil entered to prepare his morning cup of coffee. The aquanaut was hunched over something – Virgil couldn’t quite see what since he had his back to him, but he recognized the poor posture of when Gordon was hyper-focused on whatever was in his hands.
He slid up to him and placed his hand gently on the curl of his spine between his shoulder blades. “Straighten up before you hurt yourself.” Virgil was guilty of it too at times, but with Gordon’s bad back, he obviously needed the reminder this time. Obediently, Gordon pressed his shoulders down and stretched his neck from side to side where he’d accidentally formed stress in his muscles.
“Oh, ow. I forgot,” he grinned sheepishly up at Virgil, who used the opportunity to glance down at the table for just what had taken Gordon’s attention so completely to forget the key guidelines for the health of his spine. He was usually so attentive to that.
Virgil raised his eyebrow at the familiar array of art supplies in chaos across the kitchen table – a paint palette or two, his watercolors, the cup he used for his paint water complete with a selection of brushes tucked inside.
“I’ll replace everything.” Gordon at least had the good sense not to mess with his top shelf brushes, and expensive paints. So that’s where he’d been then while Scott was looking for him: in his studio. Automatically he bristled at the realization Gordon had been through his stuff without his permission, and it showed on his face despite him trying to reel in the immediate annoyance. Gordon noticed, adding, “I didn’t want to wake you. I think I found the more basic stuff, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” Virgil grumbled, even though he didn’t often use his watercolors.
“Then go get some coffee so you’ll be less mad at me. Pot’s already made.”
Irritatingly, Gordon was right, and the aroma of fresh brewed coffee relaxed him while the caffeine surged through his system with a warm awareness. Feeling more himself, if not a bit more inspired by the rhythm of the rain against the closed glass despite the lack of sun, he sat across from him and grabbed one of the fresh postcard-sized, art-grade papers from the pile.
On one of Virgil’s palette trays, Gordon had mixed yellow and vermillion, forming a warmer shade of golden light for the shadows, and for the first time, Virgil inspected the artwork of Gordon’s piece, the confident movements of the brushstrokes, and the well-portioned ratio of water to paints. It was no work of a beginner.
“Wait, you’ve done this before!”
Gordon flicked his eyes upward to meet his gaze, “It’s been awhile. Nowhere near like you. This is all the product of tutorials.”
“Still - Wow, since when?” He had no idea Gordon had tried anything similar to his own passions for art.
“There’s nothing to do in a bathyscaphe, but what there’s a lot of is water.” Gordon’s gaze darkened for just a moment, the brushed poised over the paper. “Water is life.” He shrugged, quickly rotating his shoulders back into a better position on his own before Virgil could mention it. “Art worked for you, so I figured why not.”
That gave him pause, imagining that it must’ve gotten old quickly - the appeal of living in a bathyscaphe for an extended period of time, that is. How many little habits and hobbies had Gordon tried on his own? It seemed quite a lonely assignment to Virgil, but Gordon had been so excited to go. After, Gordon had raved about all he’d had the chance to research, the impact he’d been able to make on marine farming, and the possibilities for solving world hunger, though he’d also been equally excited about being back upon his return. As fulfilled as Gordon was during that time, Virgil remembered the first time Gordon had had the chance to skip through the rain after his deployment down below and what was probably the worst burn of Gordon’s life when the sun came out after.
Through his own tight embrace of his little brother’s return, perhaps he’d missed just how hard Gordon had returned the hug, blinded by the initial excited science babble.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Virgil knew the others sometimes dabbled in music, and it already broke him to know they often hid it away, embarrassed about their skill in comparison to Virgil’s. Though, they feared a lecture that would never come. It was unlike him to compare, and more than anything he wanted the world to know art was for everybody, in whatever capacity it inspired. For him, it was as important as air, and the main difference was that he’d given himself the time to develop his skills. He loved those brief moments where Scott would play Heart and Soul with him, and when John would grace them with his singing voice around the holiday season.
But it was Gordon that played his uke with all the confidence of a maestro. And he loved that for him. Gordon was always unapologetic about the things he enjoyed; it was a rare and special characteristic of his younger brother to be himself so fully and authentically. So, the idea that art was something he’d potentially hidden away, made him shrink in himself just slightly.
He suddenly cared a lot less about Gordon taking his supplies for this.
“Hadn’t come up,” Gordon quipped, not in the slightest affected by the swirl of thoughts in Virgil’s brain. “I just wanted to make some flowers in their memory, so I brushed off an old hobby.” He emphasized the statement with a flick of the paint brush, his eyes laughing at his own pun, despite the solemnity of what he’d just said.
When he caught Virgil’s expression, his smile faltered, and eyes widened. “What?”
Virgil shook his head, feeling light, and he swallowed his sadness. “I just can’t believe I had someone to talk art with all this time and didn’t know it.”
“Don’t get excited. I’m still not going to an art museum with you. It’s just flowers. The same ones I’ve done a thousand times at that.”
“They’re very good flowers.” He wondered where the other ones were, and if one day, Gordon would ever show them to him. If he even still had them…
“Really?” Pleased, Gordon squinted at the drying yellow petals, layered on a bed of green connected to stems that trailed down below the postcard.
Virgil nodded, finally finding his subject.
If he were among his paints without his brother here, he would want to channel every horrible thing about yesterday into his art, using the watercolors for the grey and dreary. He’s done it many times, and he would find himself there again. His art wasn’t always beautiful.
With Gordon sharing the load, as he’d done for them all so many times, Virgil found his creative self reaching for the same color of yellow. It felt just so Gordon to reach for the magnificence of what water could create to reconcile the parts that were awful. In the depths of the sea, that yellow - the first color to be swallowed by the ocean - must have been a beacon for his lonely soul, and with it Gordon's art created joy when light reserves were dim.
And so, he found himself inspired by his brother’s yellow.
Since the sky didn’t want them to have any sunlight, Virgil would make them some.
