#tsarinatorment

The intercom connected with a buzz.

“Who is it?” Percy’s voice demanded, crackling slightly through the technology.  Modern technology and demigods didn’t always mix well, although they persevered remarkably as society kept advancing and their choice was to keep up or turn luddite.

Apollo cleared his throat, an unnecessary action but one that helped announce his presence – and a long ingrained habit that Apollo wasn’t in any real hurry to shake.  He liked the way it brought everyone’s attention to him before he started speaking.

“It’s me,” he announced, the words falling away into a silence that Percy didn’t break, and after a few awkward moments, Apollo remembered that Percy couldn’t actually see him from his apartment.  “Apollo,” he added on belatedly, and a little awkwardly.

Percy’s silent judgement was impressive, given they were several floors apart and couldn’t actually see each other.  Clearly to the son of Poseidon that was a minor inconvenience that was easily ignored.

He also, more pressingly, wasn’t letting Apollo in.

“Paul invited me?”  The words weren’t supposed to come out as a question, because there was no question about it.  Paul Blofis had certainly invited Apollo into the humble Jackson-Blofis abode.  Although, one could argue that the question was actually asking whether or not Percy had been informed by his step father that Paul had invited a god over for an afternoon.

Those seemed to be the magic words, however, as with a put-upon sigh that made Percy’s thoughts on the matter of Apollo’s presence in his home crystal clear, he finally, finally pressed the button to open the front door of the apartment block and gave Apollo entry into the building.  Apollo did not waste the invitation, slipping in immediately and following the familiar route to Percy Jackson’s apartment – familiar, because while Lester’s memories as Apollo had been more full of holes than one of Britomartis’ nets, Apollo could recall everything he had experienced as Lester in pin-sharp clarity.  Many of those things he would rather forget, admittedly, but traipsing towards the front door of the Jackson-Blofis apartment had not been, inherently, full of uncomfortable trauma.

In fact, Sally Jackson had been incredibly welcoming to poor, unfortunate Lester, and Apollo was not afraid to admit that he was hoping to find some of her seven layer dip waiting for him – or some of her blue cookies, he supposed, but between the two it was the seven layer dip that had captured his heart.  Its inclusion of his cabin number certainly didn’t hurt.

He was not greeted by a seven layer dip, tragically.  Nor was he greeted by a plate of blue cookies, or Sally Jackson at all.  Paul Blofis was also summarily absent, which seemed a little rude given Apollo was here on the man’s invitation.

No, instead he was greeted by his demigod cousin, who looked no more pleased to see him now than he had been to see a mortal, beaten-up Lester and trash-covered street urchin Meg in the middle of one chilly January.  Percy was not alone, however.  Clinging to him, but staring out at Apollo with wide sea-green eyes that almost identically matched those of her big brother, was young Estelle.

There were not many things that unnerved Apollo – well, maybe there were a few, but most did not apply to this situation, or indeed most situations that he allowed himself to enter nowadays – but one Estelle Jackson-Blofis managed to do exactly that.  It was nothing the young girl had done – at scarcely a year old, there was very little she was capable of doing, beyond apparently chewing on her big brother’s hoodie string, which Percy had either given up discouraging, or hadn’t even noticed she was doing.  Indeed, to look at her, there was nothing untoward.

True, she had the exact same eye colour as her demigod brother, who had inherited Poseidon’s preferred appearance, which raised a few questions about her origins although Apollo could detect nothing as strong as demigodliness about her.  Strains of a distant legacy?  Yes, but the same strains ran through Sally Jackson, so that was to be expected.  Estelle was no demigod.

She was simply a young, mortal child, who coincidentally had the same eye colour as Apollo’s uncle, and his dark hair, too, but Paul also had the same dark hair, and Apollo had no difficulty in recognising her as being his biological daughter.

He almost, almost, wouldn’t have known any different than what he saw now.  Indeed, if he hadn’t seen her as a much younger child, before her original baby-fluff on the top of her head thinned away and grew back strong and dark, Apollo would have been as clueless as his father was – hoped his father was, and the lack of any world-ending lightning storms suggested that so far the king of the gods remained ignorant.

If he hadn’t seen the greys threading through her dark hair, salt-and-pepper, almost but not quite the same patterning as Griscelli syndrome, during his last visit as Lester, he would never have known that the girl was a ticking time bomb, a catalyst that could ignite at any moment.

The signal for Zeus to end the current age of humanity.  And Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men also when they come to have grey hair on the temples at their birth, Hesiod had written millennia ago.

The Fates had made an interesting choice, choosing the younger sister of one Perseus Jackson to be the herald, Apollo thought.  The loyalty of Percy to those he clung to – his loved ones, family and closest friends – was not something Apollo would’ve chosen to pit against the fall of humanity at the hands of his father, but he was not one of the Fates himself, and understood their workings only when they chose to reveal them.

Needless to say, they had not chosen to reveal their machinations surrounding Estelle to Apollo.  If anything, she was hiding in plain sight – nothing about her was Concealed from his sight.  If he Looked he could see the spiderweb of her lifetimes, the possibilities glimmering in the sun like gossamer spun silk stretching out towards infinity, the same as any other mortal.  The only reason Apollo knew what he was seeing was incomplete was because he’d seen the grey at her temples as a young baby; without that knowledge, he would never have noticed that not all the threads that should be there were there – and he knew his father did not see the threads the way he did.

If Apollo could not see any of her Fates where his father learned of her existence and chose to act upon it, then his father would not see them, either.

“I suppose you’d better come in,” Percy said, disrupting his musings and taking his active attention away from the young, innocent herald of destruction and onto her older brother instead.  He still didn’t sound happy to see Apollo, and certainly wasn’t eager to invite him into his home, but his irreverence for the gods didn’t seem to quite extend to slamming doors in their faces.  “Mom and Paul will be back soon, they had to go out for a few minutes…”  He trailed off, but Apollo could read the judgement in his face just fine: Did you have to pick when they were gone to arrive?

Somewhat embarrassingly, it hadn’t occurred to Apollo to check that his inviter was home when he’d arrived, although in his defence Paul Blofis had specified the afternoon in question, so surely it was common sense to assume that he would be around.

“That’s quite alright,” he said, stepping over the threshold now that he had the invitation and breezing into the apartment.  It certainly wasn’t the neatest place he had ever set foot in – nor was it the neatest he had ever seen this particular apartment, either.  Apollo’s eyes slid over to Estelle again, who still had the end of Percy’s hoodie string in her mouth and was now gripping at the rest of it with her chubby little fists, too.  Percy seemed to have finally realised what was happening to his clothes and was trying to get her to let go whilst kicking the front door shut with his foot.

Herald of destruction, indeed.  There was no doubt that most of the mess was the fault of young Estelle, given it was mostly a minefield of various age-appropriate toys scattered across the floor in a child-friendly version of caltrops.  At least Estelle had not yet been deemed old enough to be introduced to Lego; scattered Lego bricks were far more lethal than caltrops, even to the soles of godly feet.

As it was, combined with the tipped-over container hanging off the edge of a low table, Apollo got the impression the toys were freshly-scattered, just in time for his arrival.  There was the faintest tint of red in the tips of Percy’s ears as he looked away from Estelle and realised Apollo had noticed the mess.

“Uh, sorry about all that,” he said, before trying harder to reclaim the knotted end of the hoodie string from his sister’s mouth with no success.  It appeared that Estelle’s stubbornness easily rivalled that of her older brother – Apollo felt a flash of sympathy for Sally Jackson.  One headstrong child was already a lot of work.  Two of them…

He ignored the small thought that pointed out that both of them had been born with heavy destinies hanging over their heads, like thunderbolt-shaped guillotines.

“It’s fine.”  Apollo waved his hand dismissively.  “You have not seen Ares’ weapon collection.”  Admittedly that was a little misleading – Ares loved his weapons and would never leave his spears, swords or shields littered around like this.  However, Apollo’s first comparative thought had been caltrops for a reason.

“Can’t say I’m planning on seeing it, either,” Percy scoffed, which was a wise stance for any demigod to take.  Perhaps Ares’ own children might enjoy the experience, but most would find it to be not-so-pleasant.  For Percy, who did not get on with Ares in the slightest, it would no doubt be more frustrating than anything.  “Estelle, no.  Don’t eat that.”

The chubby little bundle that heralded the possible destruction of mankind giggled – not an innocent giggle, no.  The giggle of a mischievous child who knew they were misbehaving, and also knew no-one was going to do anything about it.  From Percy’s sigh and slumping shoulders, he also knew he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it.

Apollo gestured at the floor.  “Did you want a hand?” he offered, knowing better than to offer to hold the child herself – and not wanting to, not wanting to do anything that might get Zeus’ eyes on her more than they already would be by virtue of being related to Percy Jackson – but more than willing to help a long suffering older brother clean up his younger sibling’s mess.

It was a position he’d found himself in more than once, although his younger half-siblings tended to create messes of far more epic proportions than a single disrupted crate of children’s toys, and attempts to do anything about it were heavily dissuaded on Olympus.  Still, he’d cleaned up a few of Artemis’ messes over the years…

“Sure,” Percy said distractedly, perching on the edge of a couch so that his sister was now in his lap and not supported by his arm, thereby leaving him with twice the hands available to try and get Estelle’s destructive tendencies redirected towards something that wasn’t his clothes.  Apollo sincerely wished him luck with that endeavour.

For his part, with Percy’s permission granted, he knelt down and began to gather up Estelle’s impressive collection of toys, ruining their aspirations of being deadly caltrops by plucking them off the rug one by one and depositing them back in the crate, which he remembered to put upright after the first couple of toys spilled back out again.  Her collection truly betrayed her status as the beloved baby of the family – Apollo didn’t think he’d seen a child so young with quite so many toys, before.

All the better to cause chaos with, he supposed as he dropped a plushie satyr with one of his horns half torn off into the crate.

Millennia of being the centre of attention told Apollo when he was being watched, and the same prickle of awareness had him glancing back at Percy and Estelle, both of whom were staring at him with their identical sea-green eyes.  Estelle had yet to relinquish her hoodie-string snack, but Percy seemed to have forgotten that he was attempting to rescue it from her maw.

Apollo raised an eyebrow.  “Is… there something on my face?” he asked hesitantly, before a thought occurred to him and he craned his head around further.  “Or my back?  I swear, if Artemis put another of those kick me signs…”

“No!” Percy said, a little abruptly, before shaking his head.  “No, there’s nothing on your face.  Or your back..?”  He said the last bit like a question itself, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that some typical sibling shenanigans didn’t also occur to gods, even when the gods in question also happened to be twins.  “I just… didn’t expect you to clean up like that.”

Apollo sat back on his haunches, a well-chewed and still slightly damp hellhound plushie in one hand – oh the irony – and a slightly disturbing squishy skeleton in the other, and centred his attention more directly on Percy.  “Like what?” he asked.

“Like that,” Percy repeated, one hand abandoning the hoodie string rescue mission – not that it had been working on that quest for the past thirty seconds anyway – to gesture broadly at Apollo and the toys still to be cleared away.  “Instead of, I don’t know, just snapping your fingers or something?”

Apollo blinked, and looked back at Soggy-Hellhound and Squishy-Skelly.  He wanted to say that the thought hadn’t occurred to him, and it was true that it had barely occurred to him, a flicker of a thought dismissed before it could fully form, but in reality it boiled down to Estelle, again.  Bursts of godly power in the Jackson-Blofis apartment ran the risk of drawing his father’s eye, and Apollo was reasonably determined to minimise Zeus’ reasons for looking in their direction.

As it was, he was technically causing a risk by being there at all, but if he wasn’t being all godly while he was there, maybe Zeus wouldn’t look too closely.

There were some truths that were best off unspoken, though, and Apollo had no desire to speak into the world the danger that Estelle posed, to herself and humanity at large.  Percy would take it badly, no doubt, and Zeus would not miss such a declaration.

“I suppose some of my Lester habits haven’t quite left yet,” he said instead, which was true in its own way.  “Why, did you want me to?”  It was a dangerous question, because if Percy said yes…

But the son of Poseidon was already shaking his head, as Apollo had suspected he would.  “No, it’s fine,” he said.  “Maybe if she sees that it’s effort to clean up, even for a god, she’ll stop doing it.”  The look he sent his little sister was stern, but it was the sort of sternness that didn’t hold up to scrutiny and Apollo could easily see the bemusement behind the fake frown.

Privately, he thought the herald of destruction lurking behind the angelic face thrived on seeing others suffer through chores such as trying to stop her doing what she wanted, knowing they were doomed to fail.  The concept of hard work no doubt seemed fun to her, still safely in the stage of youth where everything she wanted fell neatly into place and only other people had to do boring and tedious things like cleaning up her messes.  Her tune would only change once it was her responsibility to clean up her own mess.

In Apollo’s experience – and he had a considerable amount of it, given the number of children he had had over the years, even if most of them he had been unable to pick up strewn toys for – most young children Estelle’s age enjoyed watching others clear up their trails of destruction.  He had no doubts that an infant Perseus Jackson had been the exact same way.

Still, he saw no reason to disillusion Percy on the topic.  Deep down, he suspected that Percy already knew the truth and was simply denying it for his own sanity, but in the short term it didn’t matter.  Estelle was still too young to tidy up after herself, and as she had a loving big brother wrapped around her little finger, Apollo knew it would be some time before she truly had to start finding her own feet and responsibilities in the world.

He didn’t envy her that.  If anything, he celebrated it.  Every day that Estelle was able to act like a loved baby sister with a doting family was a day that her existence went unacknowledged by Zeus, and if that could last her entire mortal lifetime, then Apollo would be ecstatic.

Soggy-Hellhound and Squishy-Skelly found themselves deposited in the crate on top of Torn-Horn-Satyr, and Apollo resumed tidying up, listening to the sounds of Percy renewing his attempts at rescuing his hoodie string with little success, and finding a smile creeping across his own lips.

Hyacinthus was not Apollo’s first, last or only love – far from any of them – but he was an intense one, whose passing left unusually deep marks of grief on the god.  Apollo has a reasonable handle on grief – he feels it, but he endures it and keeps going, keeps living for all those whose time came to an end – but there are a few mortals who get around his guard.

That might, Chiron suspects as he watches Apollo slip quietly into the throng of demigods around the fire, have some relevance to his unusual appearance now.  The shrouds they’re burning tonight are empty – marks of a successful quest, where the number of questers that came back alive was no less than the number that left – but one of them was sewn for one of Apollo’s own children.

This is the first time in years that a golden shroud has been burned at camp without a dead child to go with it.  It could so, so easily have gone differently.  By all rights, it should have done.  The Pit is not a place for mortals to venture, let alone survive and escape again, and the Primordial in question is no doubt furious beyond belief at yet another duo of demigods escaping his clutches, narrow though that escape had been.

Will is still a bundle of bandages and barely strong enough to get anywhere under his own power.  Nico is not quite as terribly off, physically, and he’s been scaring off anyone except the most stubborn of Apollo’s children whenever anyone else tries to assist Will even though he’s hardly in the state to act as a living walking stick either, but Chiron knows the mental wounds run deep.

Apollo has been floating around camp more often than not during their recovery, and they still have a long way to go but the shrouds need to be burned as soon as possible and they’re finally fit enough for the ceremony.  It doesn’t escape Chiron’s notice that Apollo has wormed his way into the heart of the throng of Cabin Seven Plus Nico and is sitting with his arm wrapped tightly around Will’s shoulders.  It’s a human need, Chiron thinks, to face the what-if of losing someone and cling to them all the tighter in reassurance that they’re still there.

Most gods would be incredibly offended at the word “human” being used to describe anything that they do, but Apollo’s not one of them.  Chiron still refrains from vocalising the thought, because other listening ears might have objections to it.

Other gods having issues with who and how Apollo loves has created tragedies.  Chiron is not eager to invite another.

He does not know all the details of the loss of Hyacinthus.  Likely, he never will.  Whether Apollo attended his funeral, if he was burned in a shroud and if so how it was decorated… those are details Chiron has not been made privy to.

He suspects, of course.  That Apollo was there, that the shroud was as beautiful as the man it embraced, that it stole a part of the god forever when it burned away to ashes.  It’s harder to believe that those suspicions might not be true, knowing Apollo as he does.

But Chiron doesn’t ask.

He celebrates with the campers as the golden and black shrouds go up in flames, devoid of any accompanying tragedy, and watches as Apollo tries to hand the floor to his children for the traditional songs only for Will to look at his father until he caves and sings for them.

Properly sings, which clearly surprises the campers who have heard tales of Apollo’s modern interest in less traditionally beautiful pieces and were preparing to grin and bear whatever he chose to come out with.

Another night, he might have done, but tonight, with the echoes of lost love and the reminder that more loss will come in time, as it always does, Apollo’s mind is clearly in one place, and one place only.  The song is not a sad one; on the surface, it sounds triumphant and jubilant.  There’s melancholy in the words, however, and a underlying reminder of what it means to be mortal.

It’s grief and celebration and life and death all mixed in together, and Chiron suspects he’s not the only one to hear that and more, but no-one acknowledges it out loud, not even when Apollo finishes his impromptu set and insists that it’s his children’s turn to shine, now.

Austin and Alice in particular need no more prompting, and soon Jerry is the only Apollo child left at Will’s side while the others pile onto the stage to continue leading the celebrations.

No longer the centre of attention, save for Chiron’s own musings, Apollo falls silent and unobtrusive.  More than once, his eyes drift to where the embers still cling to the ashes of the shroud, and the weight of four thousand and some years don’t quite stay hidden.

Scott's so busy not-wallowing and not-sulking that he misses the quiet sound of footsteps on varnished wooden floor, instead trying to force himself to focus on the bland whatever that's being projected from the tv.  It's a recommendation of Grandma's, and he wants to enjoy it, because it's pre-millennium and something she specifically picked out for him to watch, but his mind just can't grasp hold of what's going on, who's who, or anything else required for meaningful engagement.

It's only when the slender figure enters his periphery, all grace and poise as they pass lightly over the floor, that he realises he's not as alone as he thought.  Sprained ankle aside, he jumps embarrassingly high at the sudden realisation before identifying who it is.

"Is Grandma's old show really that fascinating to you?" John asks, eyebrow raised judgementally, as though he thinks Scott shouldn't be invested in it despite Grandma picking it out specially for him.  He's projecting everything he's subconsciously picked up from a long-term friendship - exposure, in his own words - from Lady Penelope today; Scott can only wonder how long it'll be before gravity tires of his posing and drags him unceremoniously down again.  Not long, probably.

"Aren't you supposed to be 'supervising' from Thunderbird Five?" he retaliates, deflecting the conversation away from Grandma's tv show.  It really isn't one of her best choices, he has to admit.

"EOS is still keeping an eye on the GDF," John shrugs.  Scott certainly wasn't implying that they were the ones John thought needed supervising, but he's also had little brothers quite long enough to know not to correct his brother.  He isn't exactly wrong that the GDF do, though.  "You vegetating on the sofa isn't good for anyone, on the other hand."

"Vegetating?" Scott demands, instinctively insulted at the implication that he's lazing around out of choice.

"And wallowing," John continues ruthlessly, "so I decided to change things before you get stuck."

Scott figures being confined to one place by a sprained ankle and unable to use crutches effectively because of a matching broken arm means being stuck is pretty par for the course, personally.

"Change things how?" he asks, more than a little suspicious.  Too many people look at quiet, introverted, John and think he wouldn't hurt a fly.  Scott's been his big brother for two and a half decades, and knows full well that he's just as bad as Gordon when he wants to be - or rather, that Gordon's just as bad as John, when it suits the ginger.

John doesn't give him a straight answer, because that would be too easy.  Instead, he holds out his hand in a clear invitation to stand up.

Normally, John's the last brother Scott will lean on physically for support, mostly because he's barely around in person, partially because John's not a fan of uninitiated physical contact, and crucially because despite his height, fresh down from orbit there's a fragility to John that isn't there in any of the rest of his siblings, including Gordon and his never-fully-healed back.  In a way, he thinks a little sombrely, John's still his last resort because the rest of them are off shopping.

Regardless, he trusts John with his life, if not necessarily his sanity, and knows that his brother would never offer to help him if he doesn't think he can.  Scott reaches out his unbroken arm and clasps John's forearm tightly, feeling long and slender fingers wrap around his own in return.  It takes a little shuffling until he's sitting upright, good ankle poised to take his weight.  John waits silently and patiently the whole time, never letting go of his arm.

Once Scott's ready, he tenses his arm and good leg in preparation for the movement.  John must feel it through his grip, because his own fingers tighten in answer before his brother's heaving Scott to his feet.  Despite the handicap of two limbs more or less out of commission, he's upright in a single fluid motion, balancing in a way that could well be considered precariously on his good leg.

"Now what?" he asks, wondering if John's more inclined to talk now that he's more or less committed to whatever's running through his brother's mind.

There's no reply for a moment as the ginger apparently busies himself with stabilising Scott.  His good arm is pulled across John's shoulders, leaving it draped semi-awkwardly around his neck and hyper aware of how tall his immediate brother is.  The hand that had been wrapping itself around Scott's wrist to hold him in place finds his waist and grips on tightly there, instead.  It's a lot more physical contact than John usually initiates, but it's left Scott undeniably stable, even with only one leg to support any of his own weight.

"Remember what we used to do before the shopping trip tradition began?" his brother finally asks, shifting in place until both of them are comfortable.  A slight pressure from the arm looped around his back has Scott shuffling forwards in some awkward hobble, most of his weight falling on his brother with the motion.  John bears it easily, and Scott wonders how long he's actually been down on Earth to be this stable.

His brother's question has him probing the recesses of his memories.  The shopping trip's been a thing since Gordon was a kid, initiated a few years before Alan was born when Mom realised that getting four boys out shopping for each other independently was more hassle than it was worth and turned the whole thing into a family expedition instead.  It's one of the few that survived the loss of both parents, in spirit if not practicality.

Scott had been nine the first time, which leaves him with eight years of pre-shopping tradition.  Six years with John, and when he thinks about that - about him, John, and Mom, on cold winter days leading up to Christmas - the memories sprout easily.

Before they lost Mom, home-baked gingerbread was a constant companion every Christmas.  Unlike Grandma's love-filled failures, Mom was a fantastic baker at the best of times; for Christmas she went all out.  Not with complexity - although some of the shapes she cut them into were beyond anyone else's artistic skill save perhaps Dad and Virgil - but the best, warmest taste she could muster.

They haven't had them since the avalanche.  In the first few years afterwards, Scott had been too busy looking after his family to spend time trying to figure out the recipe, and then life had happened, with college and then military and now International Rescue and TI eating up anything resembling free time.  Scott's never been the best baker, either - better than Grandma, although that's hardly a distinction worth mentioning, but nothing to boast about.  In the back of his mind, he wonders if he let the Christmas baking fall away because of the memories attached, too.

How Mom's gingerbread had tasted so good when she had two or three young sons in the kitchen with her, interfering more than helping - most of Scott's memories include mess and flour-white hair - he has no idea.

Part of him doesn't want to try and make them, because he doesn't want to mar those memories with Mom - or the memory of how fantastic that gingerbread tasted.

"I remember," he says out loud after a few moments.  John's guided him over to the elevator while he was lost in recollection, and he half-hops into it, bracing himself on John's shoulder.  His brother doesn't waver and Scott's unsurprised when he presses the icon to go downstairs.

He supposes that if there is one of them who might be able to replicate Mom's Christmas gingerbread, it's John, the one who inherited her knack for baking.  Scott, on the other hand, is certainly not a baker of the required calibre, and hesitates a little at the idea of being the one to ruin them.

Ruin his memories.

"If they go wrong, no-one ever needs to know," John tells him quietly, as capable of reading him as ever.  Scott's given up wondering what particular tic he's broadcasting at any one time when John reads him like a book more often than not.  "I found the recipe a few years ago," he continues, still quiet despite the fact they're home alone and encased in what might as well be a faraday cage as the elevator takes them down.  A small, quiet confession.  "Practiced making it a few times, but there's always been something missing."

"What?" Scott asks, curious and a little confused because John's always been able to follow recipes precisely.  At worst it only takes him two attempts to get something right, but even if he's not giving a precise number, 'a few' is more than two.

He feels John's shrug rather than sees it, the arm hooked over his brother's equally tall shoulders rising sharply and a little awkwardly with the motion.

"I'm not sure," the ginger verbalises.  "I thought maybe if I made them with you, like when we were kids, I'd figure it out."

Scott's not sure he remembers anything about the process beyond how much mess they invariably made, if he's honest, but as the elevator comes to a halt and the doors slide open, he can't help but push aside any misgivings about the whole thing at the sight of John giving him an ever-so-slightly pleading puppy face.  That's not to say that John does the big, innocent eyes their youngest brothers will pull out at the slightest hint that things aren't going their way, but he's still Scott's little brother, and he's still capable of twisting Scott right around his little finger with nothing more than a look.

"I don't think I'll be much help," Scott warns in surrender, "but we can see what happens."

The puppy dog eyes transform into a slightly relieved look, and John takes it as a clear invitation to help Scott limp across the floor until they're in the kitchen.

A stool is ready and waiting near the counter, where a stool doesn't normally lurk.  It's positioned near an array of familiar-looking ingredients, and it's immediately apparent that John made sure to set everything up before coming to fetch him.  When Scott thinks about it, it's not particularly surprising; after all, John does like things planned out and organised where possible.

He's led straight to the stool and eased onto it, perched high enough that his sprained ankle can dangle loosely without being forced to press against the floor for balance.  Scott lets it do what it wants as his healthy foot finds the bar around the stool's support and hooks around it to keep his balance.  Only once he's settled properly does John's grip fall away, although his brother barely moves a single step away from him before turning on the faucet to wash his hands.  The sink's in Scott's reach, too, he realises, and quickly follows suit, echoes of Mom's gentle chiding about washing hands before preparing food ringing in his ears.

It's been longer than he likes to admit since he last felt this close to her memory, and they haven't even started baking yet.  Not that Scott expects to be doing much of the work; John's a bit of a control freak at times, and the better baker.  Scott might have been persuaded to provide assistance, but he's under no illusions regarding how much assisting he'll be permitted to do.

He can't say he minds that; he's happy just not being alone on a day where it had felt inevitable.  The fact that it's John, the brother he sees in person the least what with the ginger's preference for space habitation, just increases the endorphins.  It's a thought that crosses his mind frequently, but he really doesn't spend enough time with John anymore.  Freely offered time like this is precious.

A set of scales is nudged into his reach, followed by the flour.  The required weight has already been set - or so Scott assumes, given that the likelihood of John handing him a set of scales and weights that haven't already been calibrated by his brother is more or less zero - so it's just a case of pouring out the cloud of white stuff into the dish until the scales are perfectly balanced.  In his periphery, he can see John is measuring out the rest of the ingredients next to him.

It's a surprisingly stressful moment.  Baking isn't like cooking, where approximations and pinches of this and that will do.  Baking isn't an art, it's a science, where the slightest mistake can have devastating consequences on the end result.  It's why John's so good at it, and why Scott's so thrown by the fact that his brother hasn't managed to perfect this particular delicacy yet.

There's a pressure to make sure the weight of the flour is exact that he hasn't felt before, and it takes several rounds of tipping small spoonfuls of flour in and out of the dish before he has to admit that he can't get it any more exact with a kitchen scale.  Raiding one from the labs would probably be a step too far - although he wouldn't put it past John to have already tried that.

Resigned, if not satisfied, with the final measurement, he slides the dish across the counter to join where John's meticulously shaving slices of butter in much the same fashion, before looking around the kitchen to see what else he can do while John finishes up with his own self-allocated prep.

Unsurprisingly, his brother has left nothing to chance, and everything they'll need is set out already, from the ingredients to the utensils.  There's nothing left to get out, or to prep, so Scott decides that he should tidy things away instead.  John won't be needing the scales he measured out the flour with - they have multiple scales in the kitchen, for the rare occasions when more than one person is working in there at the same time - so Scott reaches forward to grasp hold of it, putting his foot down for stability as he leans away from the support of the stool and forgetting for an instant which foot he's stepping down onto.

The moment Scott's weight presses down on his sprained ankle, pain shoots up through his leg and it folds beneath him, sending him crashing down from the stool and yanking his other foot away from the bar it had been hooked around.

"Scott!" John lunges for him, but gravity finally decides that his brother's evaded it for long enough and his attempt to catch Scott ends up with both of them on the floor, John partially beneath Scott and thankfully shielding his broken arm from a collision with the tiles.  For a heartbeat, neither of them move, the world frozen, but then the moment passes and a solid exhale forces its way out of Scott's mouth.

He turns his head slightly to look for John's, mouth already opening to check if he's hurt himself in the fall - Scott knows he's not light, and they went down in a pretty awkward tangle of limbs - only for all thoughts of concern to be banished to the recesses of his mind.

Apparently, John had been holding the dish of flour when he'd attempted to catch Scott.  Maybe he forgot to let go of it entirely, or maybe he forgot about gravity and the fact that the dish doesn't float if released in mid-air.  It doesn't really matter, when it comes down to it.

Ginger hair is no longer ginger.  Instead, it's covered in a thick dusting of white, looking almost like John has his own personal snow cloud, which decided to deposit its entire stock at once.  Some rebellious strands of ginger have persevered, but for the most part, John suddenly looks as though he's aged by at least half a century.  His already naturally-pale skin is sprinkled with alabaster, making what little colour his cheeks have stand out dramatically where they've escaped the covering.  In amongst the whitewashed features, his turquoise eyes stand out like the bright mineral the colour draws its name from.

The sensible reaction to falling, already injured and then landing on top of his brothers, should be concern.  Scott's vaguely aware of this in the back of his mind, but it's not the emotion that's rising to the fore right now, despite being the first thing to flit across his mind.  Instead, the memories are piling up - memories of being children, throwing at least as much flour around as ended up in the mix, smearing it on each other's faces, in their hair, even defacing their clothes.  Mom, never getting mad, just laughing until she shone, hair as radiant as the summer sun despite it being winter.

Unbidden, mirth bubbles up in his throat.  Beneath him, John's twisting, making noises of concern and trying to at least sit up despite the weight of big brother pinning him down, but Scott doesn't think about any of that.  All he's seeing is the way the flour's poured itself all over John in a deluge, turning vibrant hair white and leaving him looking more than a little ridiculous, in Scott's opinion - especially with those flashes of ginger somehow escaping the blanket of white.

Scott remembers being a child, remembers Mom giggling along with them, and the laughter draws itself effortlessly from his mouth.

John stills suddenly.  Scott can feel the rise and fall of his chest from where he's sprawled across it, so he knows he's still breathing, but his brother's bid for freedom has been abruptly stymied.

"Scott?"  There's some confused concern in his voice, which quickly turns to exasperation when John no doubt realises that Scott's fine.  "What's so funny?"  Hands find his arms and run down them, so maybe John doesn't believe he's fine after all and is checking for himself, but any gravity in the situation - pun not intended - is ruined by the fact that his brother was holding the flour immediately prior to their fall.  Scott can see just enough of his shoulder when he turns his head to see white streaks running down the fabric of his shirt, and all it does is trigger more laughter.

He senses, more than sees, John following his line of sight.  The realisation is signalled in fond resignation; beneath Scott, he can feel John's shoulders slump as he puts two and two together and, being the genius he is, ends up with four.

"How much of the stuff am I covered in?" he asks, and Scott does his best to tame the laughter long enough to answer.

He's not particularly successful, and he can feel the large, goofy grin on his face as he tilts his head back to meet John's eyes again.  "Really bad - hah - dandruff," he gets out between pulses of mirth.  Something prickles in the corner of his eye, and is he really laughing so hard he's crying?

John's reaction is an unimpressed one, formerly-ginger eyebrow raising judgementally and lips forming a thin, flat line.  Scott can pick up the broadcasted which one of us is the older brother, again? with no difficulty at all.  He can also feel the shifting muscle group beneath him as John's arm moves, and knows his not-so straight-laced brother well enough to know exactly what's coming.

A broken arm and sprained ankle are irritatingly effective at stopping him from escaping and he barely manages to shuffle sideways a little before a hand collides with his head, covered in something soft and dry that puffs up into a white cloud around him.  His laughter dissolves into a brief spurt of coughing as some of the particles tickle his airways, but it's not long before his chest settles again.

He meets John's eyes once more, his brother still holding tightly onto his unimpressed poker face, and Scott matches it with his own, raising an eyebrow in a what was that for? indignation.

Both of them have impressive poker faces.  John's is natural, and Scott's has been learned over years of media spotlight.  Both of them could hold it all day and all night if they had to, but they don't.

Scott feels his lip twitch, at the same time there's a minute flinch in the corner of John's eye.  From there, it's all downhill, attempts at holding their otherwise killer poker faces futile.  If you ask Scott, it's John whose façade breaks first; he's under no illusions about the fact that asking John will get the opposite answer.  It simultaneously matters - because they're brothers and petty little competitions like this are the ones with the most weight - and doesn't matter at all, because one moment they're staring each other down, both refusing to break first, and the next there's a chorus of laughter ringing out through the villa.

John doesn't laugh very much, not like this.  Scott's not sure when the last time he laughed like this was, either, but he's not thinking too hard about that because John's chest is vibrating underneath him, his brother's hand is still pressed against his hair, fingers tangling in with the strands and completely ruining his hard work in front of the mirror that morning, and Scott feels nearly two decades younger than he is.

Carefully measuring out the ingredients had been one thing, a fraught tightrope between the past and the present as they tried too hard to get it right.  This, surrounded by mess that would give Grandma an aneurysm and collapsed on the floor in a way that would have both family medics clucking frantically, is another thing altogether.  This is right, on an instinctual level, one that has the memories flooding in through open floodgates.

Scott can almost see Mom leaning over them, laughter dancing across her own mouth as she lightly scolds them for playing around in the kitchen before pulling them to their feet, only to then smear a cheeky dash of flour across both of their cheeks, lights twinkling in her eyes.

He misses her.  It's been almost half his life since he lost her, a dull hole that's never quite healed, never quite stopped aching, but as he lays here, half on top of John with flour all around them and laughter echoing in his ears, it feels like less of a grief and more a celebration of her memory.

***

Gordon’s squidsense was tingling. He re-checked that everything and everyone was secured before Thunderbird Two could take off on the way to get the injured to hospital. Everything was as it should be but the tingling lingered in the back of his mind.

“Good to go back here, Virgil,” he relayed to his pilot over comms.

“FAB,” was the reply, simultaneous with the roar of VTOL as the giant aircraft began her ascent. “But something’s bothering you. Spill.”

“Squidsense is tingling.”

Having made sure the injured remained settled through take-off, Gordon made his way to his co-pilot seat. He’d barely sat down before contacting John.

“Hey, Thunderbird Five, give me a quick check in on Alan and Scott. I need to shift this uneasy feeling.”

He didn’t miss the concerned look Virgil shot across at him, but any comments he might have made were averted when the space above the dash lit up with John’s hologram.

“Funny you should ask that.” The furrow in John’s brow suggested nothing funny at all. “Alan’s fine, however I had some odd readings on Scott’s vitals, but now there’s nothing, and I can’t raise him on comms. His Security detail haven’t seen him since he returned to the apartment almost three hours ago. Eos is trying to track his phone, but it seems to be turned off.”

“It’s not like Scott to turn his phone off,” Virgil commented. “Could be a flat battery.”

“You’re not fooling anyone, Virge. You’re thinking exactly what I’m thinking – something’s wrong.” Gordon was certain it was Scott that had sent his uncanny knack for sensing trouble into overdrive, and he was formulating a plan of action. “John, send his head of security up to check on him. Since we’re headed to New York with our injured passengers anyway, I’m gonna pay Scott a visit. Virgil can drop me off on the way past.”

Virgil had some thoughts on that, but when John came back to them with word from the head of Tracy Industries Security that Scott was not in his apartment all argument ceased.

They reached NYC in minutes. Rain began to fall as Thunderbird Two hovered above the apartment building long enough for a zipline to be deployed, Gordon to slide down, and the cable to be retrieved. Then, with a quick flare of her rear engines the great green beast was on her way to the hospital. By the time the roar of her engines had faded Gordon was already running down the stairs, heading for the penthouse.

***

Rain was falling. A heavy downpour, pelting the pavement. Scott was aware of the sound, and the sensation of drops falling on his face, and the fact that half his face was lying in water. And pain. A great deal of pain. He breathed out and water bubbled against his lips and nostrils. He tried to move his hand, to push himself up off the ground, but searing pain lanced through his head and for a second had no sense of where up was. Then he blacked out again.

***

Inside Scott’s apartment Gordon searched for something that might tell him what had happened to his big brother. The security officer there with him was nervous and apologetic, but Gordon had no time for any of that. The other five officers that made up Scott’s night-time detail had headed out to search the immediate area, but no-one knew how long Scott had been gone so it was difficult to define how large an are they should search.

“John, I could really use some info right about now.”

“Eos has found his phone. Signal is pinging off towers in Long Island.”

“That’s nowhere near here, and Scott would have no reason to be there this late at night.” Gordon was finding it difficult to keep the looming panic out of his voice.

“Security Chief Anderson is sending TI officers out there now, and local law enforcement are looking into it as well.”

“You don’t think Scott’s there either.” It was not a question. Gordon’s mind was racing. He was missing something. A thought was trying to form somewhere in the back of his mind, but he wasn’t calm enough to give it time to voice itself.

“No,” John replied, still trying to work through what they knew and find answers too. “Anderson says they didn’t see him leave the apartment after 9pm. Eos is still screening CCTV footage, but there’s been no sign of Scott leaving or anyone else entering until we sent Anderson up here to investigate.”

“Wait, John, check the footage of for the rear of the building. I think I know why no one saw him leave.”

It had finally twigged. The thing Gordon was missing. The thing that was missing from the room, the reason Scott would leave the apartment late at night – coffee and pastry. Gordon was one of the few people who knew about Scott’s sneaky visits to the café. He exited the penthouse at a run, heading for the express elevator that would take him to the building’s parking lot and rear exit. He needed to follow Scott’s route, and he was prepared to leave no stone unturned in the search for any clue as to what had happened to Scott.

Once he was outside the rain pummelled his shoulders and began plastering his hair to his head as he hurried along the street towards the corner coffee shop. He couldn’t go too fast, scared he’d miss something as he swept his gaze from left to right, scanning every shadow, every nook and cranny. He came to the entrance of the narrow, dark ally and his squidsense became so active it almost hurt.

Entering the ally cautiously, still scanning everything in sight, Gordon found he needed more light and reached into his baldric for a glowstick, thankful he still had some left after the earlier rescue. Snapping it and holding it ahead of him to cast it’s green glow, he made his way past a couple of large, dirty dumpsters and then stopped short at the sight that greeted him. There was Scott, lying face down on the uneven ground, his face in a pothole, blood slowly oozing down the back of his neck from a nasty headwound and staining his sodden blue shirt.

Gordon forced himself to step forward through the initial paralysis of shock and hit his comm to call John as he knelt beside his brother. Fingers searching for a pulse on a wrist bereft of watch or comms with one hand while the other gently lifted Scott’s head from the puddle.

“I’ve got him, John!” There was a pulse, but Scott wasn’t breathing. “Shit, Scott! John, I’ve got a weak pulse but he’s not breathing. I’m administering CPR”

Gordon checked the airway was clear and rolled Scott onto his back to administer the necessary rescue breaths as he spoke.

“FAB.” The reply was clipped, emotionless in tone, which told Gordon exactly how John felt at that moment. “Virgil should be with you in less than two minutes.”

To Gordon’s great relief it took less than a minute for his brother to give a cough that expelled dirty water from blue-tinged lips. He rolled Scott into the recovery position and sat beside him, panting. One hand rested gently just above his brother’s hip feeling the rise and fall of the ribcage with every shallow breath, the other hand gently brushing limp, wet hair from his face. He took a moment to process the lack of jacket, and the absence of phone or wallet in the pockets of Scott’s pants. A mugging? Scott knew how to defend himself against a single attacker, this had to have been an ambush of some kind.

Gordon had questions, but for now he was just relieved his brother was breathing. His fingers gently brushed Scott’s forehead again and eyelids flickered open revealing blue eyes searching for the source of the touch. There was a shaky, deep inhale.

“Gordy?” Barely more than a croak.