THUNDERBIRDS FIC: He Is, They Are (9b/10)

[thatgirlsix]

"If we're gonna do this, we have to make some changes," Scott said around a slurp of coffee. "And we do it together. I don't care what Dad says. This dictatorship just became a democracy, whether he likes it or not."

"Good luck with that one," John snickered.

"I have my ways with him."

"Such as?"

"Let's just say I have a couple long-standing deal-breakers with Dad, and he knows it. I get what I want or I walk. I guess that all depends on what we want then."

He didn't know why, but Virgil had this mental image of a ten-year-old Scott throwing one of his purportedly epic temper tantrums, except dressed in his adult IR uniform so that it was all bunched up around his knees and elbows, a big boy dressing up in Daddy's clothes. He saw his shrimpy big brother all red in the face, screaming at their father that if he didn't get to watch his cartoons, he absolutely would not take Thunderbird One out of the garage to wash her. While it was amusing - he might have to sketch it later, just for shits and giggles - that was hardly the way to get anything out of their father. The man ran his boardroom the way a BUD/S instructor runs Hell Week: brutal and meant to get only the top of the top results. More than a few grown men had walked out of Jeff Tracy's boardroom afraid to ever return unless they had the results he was looking for. As a father, he wasn't a scary guy at all. As a boss? Oh, hell yeah.

John pretty much thought the same thing because he couldn't stop himself from laughing in Scott's face.

"Hey, he owes me after yesterday. If I have to bust his balls about it to keep the rest of you safe," Scott's face bunched up, disgusted and tough like Robert DeNiro about to go nuclear with a baseball bat, "I don't care. It wouldn't be the first time."

"No." There was something about the way Virgil could have sworn he saw colors, black and furious, coming off his brother that wasn't Scott that made him look to the cement for cover. He shook his head slowly and twisted his can tight between both hands. "No. No, you're right. We do it together or not at all, and that includes dealing with Dad."

"The question, then, is what we want. Fuck all if I know what that is yet, but … "

John sighed. "Gordon needs to be part of this conversation before we decide anything."

"He's finishing up his scan of that sub before he goes down to see what he can salvage for scrap."

"And Alan." Ignoring the surprised looks on his brothers' faces, Virgil could hardly believe he was saying so himself, but he also knew it was right. Before either of them could argue with him, he said, "It's about his future, too, no matter how he decides. We can't take that option away from him. If Dad does, it's one thing, but we can't."

"I'm not sure how I feel about Alan carrying a gun right now," Scott cringed. So much for that brilliant plan, huh?

"This isn't about the right now for him. That's way down the road." Virgil reached over and slapped the back of Scott's unprotected head. "But now that you mention it, really? Guns?"

Scott reached for the hot area from the slap but apparently didn't want to give Virgil the satisfaction because he quickly got up out of his lounger and started to pace instead.

John asked, "Scott?"

"It isn't just the guns. It's everything security. I think we need to consider someone staying here from now on. A lot of what happened yesterday could have been avoided if we hadn't all automatically made the flight up to 'Five. Not that you could have paid me to stay behind, and I'm sure Dad would say the same thing, but the kids and Brains, none of them should have been left here alone. We almost orphaned Alan yesterday because we didn't plan ahead."

John looked at him in awe, already putting the pieces together. "You want to bench Dad?"

"Not bench necessarily, but he can run things from here. We already have you up in 'Five, sure, so it's not like he's bodily needed in command, but if he's here … I don't know. I guess I can't help thinking it wouldn't hurt to have a second wave back here." He weighted his hands, palms up, up and down like scales. "Mistakes, fresh eyes; someone a little more prepared for defense without computers here, extra body in the field right off the bat … "

Virgil inwardly cringed. "Brains didn't look the least bit incapable of protecting the island pointing that shotgun at us."

"He shouldn't have had to."

"None of us should have. Nice try to change the topic, by the way." Virgil kicked out at Scott's thigh but missed. "Seriously. Guns? Alan and guns? Any of us besides you and Dad with guns?"

"Abso-fuckin'-lutely."

"You honestly think any of this could have gone differently if you'd had a gun on you yesterday?"

Scott's jaw worked back and forth, grinding the answer away between his molars. His shoulders tightened, and his toes curled as he rocked back on his heels, hot and itching for an escape. There was something oddly defiant about the way he tensed, like he was both embarrassed and would defend his choice to the very end.

Next to him, John ran his hand over his hair, his eyes shifting between them. Virgil screwed his eyes back, questioning and concerned, but John mouthed Wait at him. When nervous habits were the only answer Scott offered, John said quietly (and a little deliberately, if Virgil was reading the tone right), "That's less about yesterday than other stuff."

"Don't," Scott warned.

"That sounds vaguely ominous." So did the drawn out bug serenade coming from the jungle since neither of them said anything to cover it up. Virgil felt that twinge he got sometimes in the back of his head. When all they did was stare at each other, that twinge became a sharp spark of So Not Good. "Forget I said 'vague'."

"If you truly think carrying is a good idea for everyone in the field, you need to give him the reason," John said a little more forcefully. "I can't always be there. I can tell him if you want, but he deserves to know." Scott still didn't move. "We had a deal, man."

"You … you better do it," Scott said, sitting down to study his laced fingers between his knees like he was on some really, really good drugs.

Fifteen minutes or so of hell later, Virgil swore to Mom, Grandpa, and any deity that might be out there listening that he would never give Scott grief about his attachment to his gun ever again. His overprotectiveness was still totally on the table, but the guns? Nope. He had too much respect for the man for that.

It wasn't much, but Virgil finally got what he'd been waiting for. For the first time in all of this, Scott looked a lot older than he should have. Gordon and Virgil had practically made waiting for it a game, particularly after the more difficult jobs. He'd seen some of the horrors they'd witnessed take years from Scott's life - and wasn't it always the good ones at the beginning instead of the crotchety old ones at the end? - that only a good long week of solitude down on the beach could recover, but even the light jobs usually left a crease or two around his eyes. It was too early to tell what kind of effect the last twenty-four hours would have on him. Still, if he was only now getting around to the exhaustion that punished his eyes, maybe he needed to give the man a little more credit.

And then the prick had to go and ruin it all by trying to change the subject to Virgil. "Your turn. Spill." Jackass.

"About?"

Scott latched on to the evasion with a full set of teeth, catching a tiger by the tail that gave him something else to do. "You aren't exactly you right now either. You seem to think you are, but I gotta tell you, man … None of us can tell when you're gonna explode on us, and frankly, I wish you would explode because at least then we'd have a clue what's going on. When even John and I can't tell?" He tipped his head to the side ruefully, his face finishing the unasked What's going on with you? for him.

"I'm fine."

"Then why did Gordon come to me last night about you? Gordon."

"Because Gordon would rather think we're all the basket cases and he's perfectly normal instead of dealing with the fact that - "

Scott smacked his thigh with a strict Hey, I'm talking here so shut up and listen. "He says you don't remember the last hour we were up there."

John sat up at that. "Wait, what?" Terrific. Let's all gang up on the supposed amnesiac now.

Scott plowed ahead. "He says you keep getting the details muddled and don't remember entire conversations. You're running around here like you're a reincarnate Mr. Clean." He stopped for a moment, blinking hard and swallowing around his Adam's apple like it decided to take a random detour into his mouth. The cough to get rid of it sounded more choked than oncoming cold, but after a good gag he recovered. "You killed your monitor over something you saw on the security tapes."

"I checked with Gordon," John offered because he had to be so damn helpful. "He said it looked like The Hood and Alan in 'One's silo."

Messes can be cleaned. "Like you don't want to kill something after the things he said." Things can be replaced.

"That's not the point."

"I'm fine. Nothing a Lost Weekend won't cure."

"You had Paint It Black on during your shower when we got back."

"It's the Stones."

"You only listen to that song when you're ticked off at the world and want to wring somebody's neck."

This whole I don't want to deal with yesterday for myself so I'm gonna gang up on whoever is closest thing was getting (only getting?) old. Yes, Virgil realized he was equally as guilty as the others for it, and yes, it was probably doing them all more good than they were willing to let on, but he definitely did not want to be the one in the spotlight right now. Didn't Gordon need cream on those burns or his feet right about now? Maybe if they took John to see Brains they could get that itchy sling off him? Hell, couldn't they all use about twenty hours straight of sleep? There had to be something better to do than pick on his (guilty, never clean, I wasn't ready for IR at all) brain.

One look at John's face - the one that should have been a safe haven - said they were in it for the long haul. "Virg, I talked to Dad after you left. He told me to leave you alone on this one. More like warned, actually. What the hell is going on?"

Virgil didn't know if he wanted to kiss his father for sticking up for him or find the man right now and kill him for deliberately setting his two eldest bloodhounds on him. Never let it be said his father wasn't a sneaky sonofabitch.

Pinch the nose. Deep breath. Cannonball!

"I saw him."

"Saw who?"

"The Hood. In the mines. Dad isn't the one who left him there. I am."

Thud. Just like that. Thud.

Both men bleached of all color. Well, maybe except the blue of oxygen deprivation around their lips and purple of many sleepless nights to come around their eyes. John sank back into the lounger, his mouth fishing for air that probably wasn't going to come without a good shock to the system to make him breathe again. Scott's head dropped painfully low, supported only by his hands reaching into his hair to grip it good and hard. Virgil could hear him breathing - seriously, John needed to breathe over there - shaking wows of disappointment that couldn't possibly compare to the horror Virgil himself was living.

Did he know how to silence a room or what? For his next trick, he would make an entire room disappear while leaving only the priceless place settings and flowers on the table!

It was John who surprisingly recovered first, enough to ask, "Wow, really? Are you sure?"

"I didn't think so at first, but then he told Dad who he was and I knew. Yeah. It was him."

"That can't be right," Scott argued.

"Why? Because it's easier to think this guy tried to kill us because Dad messed up instead of me?"

"That's not what I - "

"I'm the one who saw him. I saw him and thought there was no way he could be alive. There was enough blood everywhere that he should have been dead. It was dark, and there was a hefty wall of debris between us and him. It would have taken us at least an hour to get through to him, but then, Scott, you called in with that pocket of survivors you found over in the back end of the grid. I didn't tell Dad about The Hood. If nothing else, we could get those other people out there, you know? I didn't see anyone else in there with him, and he wasn't moving. His eyes were open, but he didn't see me. I … I made the call that he was gone. I did. Dad didn't do it. This is on me."

"We've all had to make that kind of call. You did what you were supposed to do."

"And I was wrong. Some hero, huh? I wasn't supposed to be one of the kids anymore. I was supposed to be one of you. I looked down that passage for all of six seconds, and I blew it."

John cursed under his breath.

"So, what, we're supposed to now go back over every single job we've ever done and hope that no one else got left behind with a hard on for revenge because we assessed a situation and saved the most people we could? Correct me if I'm wrong, John, but we hadn't pulled anyone alive from the rubble in almost thirty-four hours, yes?" Scott didn't wait for John to nod, although Virgil saw it. "It wasn't an unreasonable call."

"It doesn't matter how long," Virgil started only to have Scott smack his knee. "Let me finish."

"No, you let me finish," Scott barked. "If I hadn't found that pocket, Dad and I had already decided we were pulling everyone out. We weren't going to leave yet, but we were pulling everyone in for a break. This is not your doing."

"It was my fault for clearing that passage. You're all dead if it hadn't been for the kids because I blew that call."

"And it was Dad's fault for agreeing."

Damn it. Because the mix wasn't mixy enough without Gordon in it, of course the cosmos had to send him to witness Virgil's mea culpa, too. He didn't bother to wonder how long the little eavesdropper had been standing there behind them. It didn't matter. Gordon had heard enough to think he could jump in with the second chorus of It's not your fault and It was only your second job and You're human and all the stupid excuses Virgil secretly gave himself alone in the dark until he realized that none of them were acceptable excuses when people's lives were involved. It just happened that this time theirs were the lives involved. Excuses, excmushes.

He felt Scott and John look up at the strangely sober voice, though. Let them. Go ahead. They could all gang up on him if they wanted. He wondered if it would take longer than six seconds. The slap on the backside of his head said Gordon had every intention of talking as long as he damned well pleased.

"It was, dumbass, and avoiding eye contact isn't going to change that. Dad agreed. And it's Scott's fault for finding that last pocket of survivors on the other side of the mine." Gordon's palm shot out to the side - Stop! In the Name of Love! - in Scott's general direction, but he kept talking over whatever their brother had to say about it. "And it's John's fault for doing whatever the hell it is he actually does up there in that rust bucket of his. It was my fault for backing up Brains over the maps back here when he said there were no other viable passages. I didn't have enough caffeine in me to be looking at a topographical anything, let alone one that didn't even remotely resemble what it looked like the day before because of the aftershocks. And it's my fault for not stocking 'Two's fridge with enough caffeine and energy bars to keep you guys awake enough to realize there might be a miniscule chance there was possibly a mostly dead body under all that rubble."

Virgil was fairly sure he heard John mutter under his breath, "He's only mostly dead." Because what else are you gonna do?

Gordon heard it, too, because he pointed a middle finger at John without looking away from Virgil. "Shut up, Johnny. I'm lecturing the guilt machine here, and I can't do that if I'm laughing at you." For extra measure, Gordon's salute to John made a detour to Scott (in case he got any bright ideas, probably) before becoming a full-fledged clowning upside Virgil's head. Again. "I blame the Earth for moving in that particular spot, like there couldn't have been an earthquake in some other mine? I blame Grandma. She's the one who gave birth to Dad in the first place. It was her damn genetics. If he hadn't come up with this whole cockamamie scheme in the first place, you wouldn't have been sweating your ass off in a Malaysian jungle for ninety-some hours straight to the point where you made a perfectly logical call to go where you knew the survivors were. God forbid you actually do that. The survivors might appreciate it or something."

"Who uses the word 'cockamamie'?" Scott chimed in only to have John shake his head.

"Shh, I think he's getting to his point." All John was missing was the tub of popcorn to go with his sarcastically riveted stage whisper.

"He has a point?"

"The point," Gordon interrupted, "brother mine, since you won't listen to the fact that you simply did your job and yesterday's backfire is completely incidental, is we all fucked up and some bad guy used it to his advantage, but we won anyway. We're still here, and damn it, I say we won. Anybody in the peanut gallery want to disagree?" Gordon's hand came over Virgil's mouth good and hard, moving his head side to side in time with Gordon's shaking head and exaggerated silent formation of No on his lips. "Nobody? Excellent. So we move on now, right?"

Virgil wrenched Gordon's hand away and flopped it around to indicate the destruction of the kitchen, patio, pool, and villa in general. "Not to be a pessimist or anything, but we do that how?"

"We go to bed." Scott shrugged, like it was the simplest thing in all the world. Maybe in his eyes, it was. "We all clean this mess up, we make Alan clean up the garage while we supervise, we eat dinner tonight, we get a full night's sleep, and then we wake up and do it all again tomorrow like we have after every rescue the last few years. After Paris, after Argentina, after Guam. Just like we did when we lost Mom and Grandpa. We relax and try to have a little fun instead of all this gloom and doom thing we've got going on. We remember that, yeah, life can be cruel and awful like it was yesterday, but then we look at each other and know that it's also beautiful and incredible. And one day, when we least expect it, this day will seem a little less hard than it did the day before."

Obviously, Scott had been watching sports movies again. Fucking Rudy.

Gordon snorted, guffawed, sputtered, and pretty much went through an entire range of laughter with the effort not to laugh. It looked like he truly tried, but it was a bit much for him. "Wow. That was … " He tried one last time for a somber face but lost that battle with one last snort. "That was deep."

"Eat me."

"Also? There's no crying in baseball," John deadpanned.

Virgil looked over at Gordon, figuring he'd head the smartass off at the pass, but when he got there, his brother was only smiling genuinely at him. There would be no Told You So or insert-sports-movie-of-choice-here speech about being heroes. It would have been so easy. He knew that. But Gordon was there with only a simple smile and a clap to the shoulder with a little extra grip tagged on to the end there. The squeeze was as much Are you okay? as it was Hell yeah, you're okay. Somewhere in this middle of this, amazingly, he was.

Gordon didn't look away, but he said to all of them, "Now, not that I want to feed Virg's bleach crack habit here or anything, but the Firefly is a helluva mess, and my sub needs a once over after the kids took it in the Thames." He feigned a disgusted shiver, although Virgil couldn't be sure if it was all that faked. It was the Thames. "Whatever happens next, the garage can't stay like that indefinitely. We can make Dad's decision easier if we know what we're working with. So let's go find out what's still good."

John wasn't looking, but Virgil saw Scott's finger point emphatically at Gordon's feet, even if his voice held no judgment. "And you decided to grow a brain when now?"

"When you set me up, jackass."

Gordon had to duck and duck fast as Scott tried to right hook that smirk right off his face. He danced (or tried with his feet all jacked up) backwards without looking, jerking his thumb over his shoulder with an even bigger smile. "Let's work the problem, boys!"

Chasing Gordon to the office wasn't so much a chase as it was a breeze cleaning the halls of too much thick spring fog. He barely made it up the stairs before he had to walk, but it didn't matter. They walked together, somehow lighter, even if Gordon and Scott were fighting over who got control of the music. Gordon was good at that. He was a total rat bastard for running his mouth off to Scott, but he did know how to light a fire under this household when it was needed.

Little brothers - who knew?

"I still owe you for the Danger Zone," Scott growled as they rounded the corner into the office.

Gordon merely saluted him with a middle finger as he ducked into Scott's lift down to the silos. Eloquent, that brother of theirs - especially when Scott slipped in fast enough to beat the door down so that they could get nice and cozy on the ride down together. The last Virgil saw, Scott's hands went around Gordon's throat.

"They needed some brother bonding time," he said when John sidled in just behind his shoulder.

"It's the caring and sharing that keeps us together." John nodded solemnly. "Think they'll both survive the ride down?"

"Seventy-thirty Scott throws Gordo overboard, and I'm definitely not cleaning that up."

John clapped him on the back and led him toward his own rarely used lift. "Dibs on the Hot Dog's room. He's got the better windows."

Virgil merely yawned and scrubbed his face good and hard with both hands. He was too damn tired to care. Damn nightmares. It was gonna be a long, long day.

He expected to hear the sounds of quality fratricide (the good natured kind, anyway) the closer they got to the floor, but it was too quiet for that. Wow, Scott was fast, or Gordon managed to get the drop on him … Or they got caught up in the shiny of Brains's work bench. Okay, that wasn't what Virgil expected at all, but there they were, staring over the man's shoulder as he handed Scott a new toy with a proud grin.

"Have you guys seen this yet?" Scott asked as he and John joined them.

In his hands was a beautiful diving watch, something along the lines of the Tag Heuers that Gordon preferred. The face glowed with a flickering light like a television makes in the middle of the night. They all stared at it, mesmerized, as the face was replaced with Brains's waving, smiley image.

"C-can you see me now?"

"Yowza," Gordon whistled. He was the only one able to do even that much.

Frowning, Brains moved away from the camera on his laptop to reach over and turn the watch toward himself. Nodding with satisfaction at what he saw, he turned it back toward them. "Go ahead and a-a-answer me." He scooped up an identical watch of his own and walked off a good twenty feet with his back to them. "B-boys?"

"Here, Brains," Scott said loudly.

"Into the w-watch, Scott."

"It's two-way?"

"A day late, but-but-yes. We meant to test them in the f-field next month."

Gordon tried to take the watch away from Scott, only to have it yanked right back. "Get your own," Scott teased. "Mine."

"Will I be able to monitor them from 'Five then?" John asked, his brain clearly in Oh, shiny gadget! mode. Scott had to slap his hand away, too.

Virgil made sure to keep his hands to himself.

Brains came back to the table and plucked the watch away from Scott with a nod. "And us b-back here. I-I-I'm s-still messing a-around with it."

Gordon reached for the steel wig stand and the wired cap on top of it, which Brains happily slapped his hand away from without even looking. "This is awesome, Brains. Um, what is it?"

The man took a square of blue fabric from the table the size of a baby blanket and threw it over the domed head. "N-n-noth - forget you s-saw that. F-f-failed experiment. You, um, you b-b-boys have a lot of work to do down h-here." Brains started fumbling around distractedly, patting the pockets of his coat and looking over the gadgets on his table like he'd lost his car keys. "I should ch-che-ch-look in on the k-kids."

They all watched their friend high tail it out of the garage, the lost look on his face quickly replaced by relief when he was far enough away from them to be unable to drag him back.

"What did I say?" Gordon asked quietly, fingering the fabric.

Scott reached over and pushed the incredibly soft square down and out of Gordon's fingers. "Don't worry about it. He'll let you play when he's ready."

John yanked the back of Scott's t-shirt, drawing him away from the table himself. "No toys for either of you. Out."

"But shiny!" Gordon protested, reaching out with both arms and wiggling his fingers, ready to pick pocket everything on the table.

And they were worried about Alan's maturity or lack thereof?

Virgil drew his arm good and tight around Gordon's neck, leaving little room for discussion or breathing. "C'mon, brat. You're the one who wants the Firefly all to himself. Your toy needs a good scrubbing."

"I'm giving the keys to Alan."

"It's that or help me with the lifts."

It was supposed to be a threat. Other than a little residual, there didn't seem to be that much scrubbing actually needed on the Firefly. It would need some systems checks, and who knew whether the kids had left the transmission somewhere on the other side of the garage, but for the most part, it should need an hour of work or so before Gordon could move on. Easy peasy. Which was why Gordon's "Let's just get started on the lifts then" had Virgil blinking. Wow.

But Gordon didn't say anything more about it. He walked over to the base of Virgil's tube, which had the most damage, looked it up and down, and disappeared into the cabinetry under the scaffolds for cleaning supplies for the intensive part of the job. "You gonna get the hose or what?" he asked when Virgil only stood there.

Right. Hose. No big deal.

They hosed the majority of the remaining foam away, watching it swirl down the drain traps in the floor with a certain amount of amusement. Somewhere between jokes about the Wicked Witch melting and plain old frustration that the kids couldn't keep this stuff even a smidge contained, Virgil lost track of Scott and John, but he figured they needed to be off doing their own thing anyway. He and Gordon fell into a warm silence when they started going at the rest of the mess with towels, scrub brushes, and spit and vinegar. Virgil found himself suddenly grateful that he never had to be around for the cleanup after some of their rescues. The stuff smelled nasty and tasted like regurgitated cod liver oil.

When Gordon's favorite Beatles song came on, their brushes fell into a synchronized back and forth of revolution and back and forth. Yep. It's gonna be all right. Just as soon as they get this mess cleaned up.

"Virg?"

He looked up, even though Gordon was concentrating and scrubbing fairly hard at the crease between the lift and its bumper. When Gordon didn't see him or continue, he asked, "Hmm?"

"That statue at the Louvre? The one when you're heading up those stairs. What's that one called again?"

"Nike? The Winged Victory of Samothrace. Why?"

"Just thinking about it, I guess. We should go there again one of these days. I can't remember the last time we took a vacation. You'd like the Louvre again, right?"

First Alan, and now Gordon? Either twenty was the new fifty and he looked like shit, or they weren't even being subtle in their desire for Virgil to take a vacation. Or maybe IR's future should be in question. Either way, though, his answer was a solid "Sure".

"I mean, you didn't get to see all of it the last time, and that was even with spending twelve hours there."

"We'll go, Gords. Even if it's just you and me, we'll go."

This time Gordon did look up with a beaming smile. Virgil couldn't believe how he'd taken that smile for granted lately. He'd taken a lot of things about his family for granted lately. "Alan wants us to take a road trip, too."

"You always said you wanted to do the backpacking through Europe thing. We could stay in hostels."

There was a sneaky gleam of Wouldn't Dad just love that? in his voice when he answered, "Europe, it is."

Gordon set back to work with the towels at the sticky, dried crust of foam. Quietly, like it was meant to be only for himself, he said, "I like that statue."

The last time they'd been to the Louvre as a family, Alan and Gordon had been relatively small. They'd had to take breaks in nearly every room to keep Alan on his feet and hydrated. Gordon had quickly become bored until he became one of those kids who liked seeing the guards come to the rescue every time he set off alarms while trying to decipher the hieroglyphs with his fingers in the Egyptian wing. Virgil tried to imagine his brother in the Louvre as an adult, wondering if he would truly enjoy it, or if he would be there only to make Virgil happy.

But then, maybe that was the point.

On Alan's road trip, they were going to follow the Royals until they hit every stadium in the American league. On the Europe trip, Scott would like to see RAF Molesworth, where Grandpa Tracy was stationed before going back home to farm with his own dad - probably some of the other bases, too. And maybe Normandy, too, since they'd be in the area. Johnny? He'd … Well, he'd be happy doing all of that, wouldn't he? As long as they were all together, he wouldn't care.

Yeah, that was the point.

With more than a little disgust, Virgil rolled his eyes up toward the speakers a while later when the song crossfaded into one of those annoying club mixes Alan liked these days (but at least it wasn't that angsty travesty he'd come home with over Christmas). He started violently, nearly falling off his heels before he realized the solid body looming over them from the scaffolds was their father.

Dad didn't notice him as he watched Scott and John laughing easily over by the laser cutter (he refused to call it the name Alan had given it). He felt the mischief gods smile down on Gordon, their anointed ambassador to the Tracy family, and deliberately scooted one wide step to the side. Gordon got up, real clandestine-like, and circled around behind them with what Virgil hoped was a fresh bucket of water. He watched his father track Gordon's progress with a growing smile that brought some of the man's color back in time with each step. By the time Scott caught Gords in the act just quick enough to duck out of the way and leave John the sole victim, Dad looked more relaxed than Virgil thought he'd ever see the man be again. His knuckles were white around the steel bars, but from the pinch around his eyes, it was to keep from laughing.

Virgil had to hop to his feet and out of the way as first Gords and then John zipped by. Gordon's sneakers screeched as he tried to round the corner behind Dad's Mustang, only to find himself trapped by John on the other side. They eyed each other menacingly over the roof of the car, feinting left and right, both equidistant to Gordon's escape route. In Do-or-Die mode, Gords made the break for it, trying to run backwards until he could make the turn and take cover behind Scott - except Scott wasn't about to shelter anyone.

Scott had the hose.

Nope, he couldn't look.

Instead, Virgil found his father again. Whatever it was the man was thinking, he nodded down at the insanity below. It was sharp and decisive and in complete contradiction to the fatherly joy in his eyes. A second nod was gentler, kinder, and reinforced whatever decision he must have made. Virgil would have loved to ask him, but he melted back into the shadows, leaving his sons to their playful oblivion.

"Hey, kiddo." John popped up behind him, soaking wet hand squeezing his shoulder. "Thinking too much again?"

"It's what we're good at, right?"

"Not today. Scott has declared the rest of today thought free. I'm not in the mood to fight him on it." John's eyebrows went up pointedly as he said "Check it out, man, ten-thirty-three" with such a tone that if Virgil didn't get what he was trying to say, he was obviously an idiot.

He did get it. It was the accepting part that was the problem, but maybe the next twenty-four hours would be better for working on that part, or maybe the twenty-four after that. Right now, he was just glad they'd made it these first twenty-four.

John held up his good hand and counted off six, mouthing off each digit until he closed his fist on the last. Six seconds. A lot could happen in six seconds, even if it was simply a dopey big brother with a lopsided grin being a major smart ass. Okay, yes, he got it. No need to drop an anvil on his head or anything.

"Well, they're buildin' a gallows outside my cell," Virgil sang tentatively, his eyes locked on John's. The nervous crack in his voice - which could easily have been him singing in character - was enough to put a smile on his brother's face. "And I've got twenty-five minutes to go. And the whole town's waiting just to hear me yell. I got twenty-four minutes go."

By the time ol' Johnny had nine minutes to go - But this ain't the movies, so forget about me! - they were all warbling so damn loud, it was a miracle the whole house didn't come down.

Forget International Rescue. The Tracy family was back in business.

(End Chapter Nine)

Things To Credit (that aren't already explained in the text):

- The song Virgil is referring to when he getts off (no comment) is "Gett Off" by Prince & NPG. No, that isn't a spelling error.

- BUD/S is the course that people go through to become US Navy SEALs. According to several friends, yes, it's just as hellish as they say. Lucky them!

- Since there are varying answers to the joke about the meaning of life, I'm paraphrasing the Peanuts Gang version by Charles M Schultz: "I know the answer. The answer lies within the heart of man. The answer is twelve? I'm in the wrong building." I think Grandma loved reading the funnies in the Sunday paper with the kids.

As always, thank you for taking the time, whether I hear about it or not. This has been such an adventure for me. I hope you've had as much fun with it as I have. One more to go, guys!