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Here was a fun fact about space: literally everything could kill you. You could train for every possibility, collect years of experience, think you’d conquered every scenario in the book, but then suddenly a new combination of errors would have you venting atmosphere or being crushed by artificial gravity or burning up in a white-hot inferno like some sort of cursed meteor. So, yes, anything could kill you and it would try its damn best to succeed.
In that regard, everything about Thunderbird Five unofficially freaked Scott the hell out. Not that he’d ever admit as much aloud. Mainly because Brains would take it as a personal criticism of his work, but also because he still couldn’t shake the sense that there were certain expectations of him as the eldest and that one of those expectations was to be strong and unafraid – which might have held an element of truth when Alan was younger and more impressionable and Scott hadn’t wanted to influence his brother’s opinion of space, but certainly didn’t apply nowadays. He just didn’t like confessing when he was scared, okay? It was a thing.
Anyway, given his mild dislike of space and the constant threats it posed – meteor showers, debris, solar storms, atmospheric fluctuations, mechanical error and so on and on and on – it was understandable that he spent a solid eight percent of his time worrying about John. This might have sounded like a relatively low percentage but given the catalogue of responsibilities he had to deal with on a daily or even hourly basis, it was actually a lot of time to dedicate to a single concern.
John did not help this matter by pulling dumb stunts such as going EVA without a tether or blocking calls to watch a meteor shower (particularly when aforementioned meteor shower was the reason why Scott was stressing to begin with, because all it would take was one freak strike, a piece of debris gone astray from the main cluster…) but hey. It was fine. Scott tried not to openly worry and if he slipped up then John would politely remind him that ‘I am, in fact, overqualified for this job, did you forget that?’ which would put him in his place until the next time.
John living on Five was actually the least of Scott’s concerns, because Brains produced the frickin’ EVA suit for short-range space rescues and oh god, suddenly John was in the middle of the hot zones like the rest of them and it turned out that this entire time John had been the safe one after all and Scott had been stressing for no reason, only now he did have a reason and-
Okay. Here was the thing that anyone who has ever loved an astronaut could tell you – when things went wrong (which was somewhat inevitable) there was absolutely nothing you could do about it except sit there and pray for the phone to ring whilst also dreading that call in case it was bad news. The helplessness was the worst part. It could be overwhelming. Suffocating. And Scott should have been used to it given he could recall Jeff’s missions during his childhood and then John left for the stars too and Alan launched into space almost every day and yet. Scott was not used to it. He doubted he ever would be.
Which was why he was freaking out right now. Because they had no comms working and while they knew exactly where Alan was – on Mars, having brought them an emergency spare part for one of their solar arrays, doubtlessly correcting Captain Taylor on his name every other second and slowly wishing he could just paint it onto his helmet to save his voice – John’s whereabouts remained unclear.
He’d taken that cursed EVA suit – which Scott would hate for the rest of time no matter how many new safety features Brains added with each upgrade because being in space was bad enough in a satellite or rocket but now John was out there without a damn ship and everything was still trying to kill him – and jetted over to a brave astronaut who’d gone EVA without a tether on purpose to get within radio range and call for help because her own ship was drifting without any power closer to the moon. John had taken her an oxygen refill and then accompanied her back to her ship in the hopes of either repairing it or staying put until Alan could stop by and give them both a ride home. Which sounded great in theory, only the ship’s last coordinates put it somewhere towards the dark side of the moon where radio signals were weak on a good day and now a solar storm had rolled in to wipe out both radios and any forms of life unfortunate enough to be caught in that sea of radiation.
All of this only served as further evidence to support Scott’s theory that all astronauts were batshit crazy. He included his brothers and his father in that. And also himself, although his own astronaut status was somewhat hazy, and he tried not to think about it.
Anyway, the point was that it was unclear as to whether John and his newly rescued astronaut friend had made it to the ship in time and now there was no way to know for sure until the solar storm passed on. Even then it would take several minutes to get their comms back up and running, because as fantastic as EOS was she couldn’t override the laws of physics.
EOS, who was also freaking out and ironically enough wasn’t as good at hiding it as Scott despite being an AI who some people might claim couldn’t feel emotions – that was just flat-out false, and Scott had been forced to sit through many of John’s rants on the matter. Apparently Brains harboured similar feelings on the subject and had once used it as his topic of choice on one of their slightly drunken family PowerPoint presentation nights – which had been Gordon’s idea and had produced some of the most chaotic evenings Scott had ever experienced.
Even the comm link between Five and Earth had become mildly degraded. It was a strong solar storm – one which had caused such concern that Scott had ordered Alan to delay his launch home from Mars. By the time they’d received warning John had already been two-thirds of the way to the moon and besides, they couldn’t leave that astronaut stranded in the middle of a radiation flare-up.
Scott knew the physics, but there was only so much comfort that logic could bring him, and right now that logic was actually serving to exacerbate his fears. He had never been so glad that Gordon was halfway across the world on another rescue because it meant that only Virgil was around to witness his silent freak-out as even EOS’s voice grew lost to static. Without contact with Five they were entirely helpless. Not that there was a lot they could do before, but, you know, at least that comm link to EOS meant that they would hear the second she regained contact with John. Now all they had was the disconcerting void.
Scott found himself listening to white noise until his ears threatened to bleed. He buried his head in his hands and braced his elbows against his knees until the ache in his chest loosened enough for him to take a breath. The static was ever-present, creeping into his thoughts and drowning out the background noise of waves against the beach. He knotted his hands in his hair and tried not to think which lasted approximately five seconds before the anxious energy beneath his skin exploded like a tiny firework storm and he had to pace back-and-forth across the kitchen.
“He’s fine,” Virgil was saying, as if he wasn’t stress-eating his way through Alan’s not-so-secret stash of chocolate chip cookies. “He had plenty of time to reach that ship. He could literally have detoured via Dad’s old base and still have had ten minutes to spare.”
“I know he’s fine,” Scott snapped, immediately overcome by a wave of guilt. He scuffed his shoes against the tiles. The silence was heavy and pressing. He turned on his heels and stalked back across the small space, aware of Virgil’s gaze on his back. “I just don’t like radio silence.”
“None of us like radio silence,” Virgil pointed out quietly. He crushed cookie crumbs under a thumb and tried to avoid looking at the countdown to predicted comm reconnections. Outside, the sky was murky with gathering storm clouds as if the weather reflected their current moods, and the dull light spread across the kitchen to infect it with further gloom. “John’s got more experience in space than the rest of us combined – and yes, I’m including Alan in that. This is hardly his first solar storm up there.”
“First solar storm in the open.”
Virgil flattened more cookie crumbs.
“Not in the open,” he corrected under his breath, without looking up. There was undeniable uncertainty in his voice this time and Scott repressed a shudder. “Because he made it to that ship.”
“Yeah, that’s- I meant-”
Virgil shot him a doubtful look. “Sit down. Take a breath. John’s okay and in fifteen minutes he can tell you that himself.” He brushed the crumbs onto the floor for an approaching cleaning bot to hoover up. “Seriously. You’re working yourself up for no reason.”
“I am completely fine.”
There was a short silence.
Virgil just looked at him.
“I’ll be back,” Scott muttered and fled before Virgil could start reading his mind which was a really handy ability some days but also happened to be incredibly inconvenient on others, such as when he was trying to have a breakdown in peace, like right now.
He half-expected Virgil to follow him, pleasantly surprised to be left alone. Logically, he knew John was probably fine. It was just that chance that he might not be, no matter how slim that percentage may be, that had Scott wanting to run a goddamn marathon just to rid himself of the anxious energy. He was a lightning bolt in human form. The electricity under his skin matched the speed of his thoughts – moving too quickly for him to grip onto any conscious idea, a dizzying fairground ride of fear and what-ifs.
He kicked the bathroom door shut behind him and tipped forwards to lean against the mirror. The glass was a shock of ice, but it still wasn’t enough to jolt him out of the panic. For an utterly disorientating moment, the room seemed to waver in-and-out of focus. He tightened his grip on the rim of the basin until his knuckles ached. Anxiety crept up his throat to steal his breath. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick.
Breathe, he reminded himself. Just breathe. You’re still in control.
And that… was part of the problem. Because the truth was that he wasn’t in control. Space was so far away and much of it remained beyond human comprehension - he couldn’t control what happened up there. Admittedly, much of what happened on Earth was also out of his control, but at least he could be there as soon as anything went wrong. But without Three, he was powerless. He hated it. Because don’t get him wrong, he was hopelessly proud of John and Alan and he always would be, but he also really, really wished they could have fallen in love with the sky or the sea instead of the stars. Up there, everything was a threat, and he couldn’t protect them from any of it.
His own pulse was thunderous. Louder than the static had been. He swore he could still hear EOS’s voice, pitched with panic as she sought through every possible frequency for even the weakest of radio signals only to come up empty-handed. There were thousands of miles between the moon and the Earth and Scott could almost feel that distance, as if some part of his soul was tethered to John’s and that link had been stretched to breaking point. He slid down to sit on the floor, ignoring the water seeping through his socks, tipping his head back to knock against the basin, focussing on the little coil of terror in his heart that had existed since he’d first seen Jeff’s rocket lift-off and using it to will John home.
The world was a whirlwind of white noise formed from radio static and wild thoughts and his own heartbeat. He pressed his forehead to his knees and closed his eyes until he could glimpse strange, unreal lights. His socks were now damp and cold, and he wanted to tug them off, maybe claw his own skin off in the process, just jump into another universe where everyone was safe and he could keep them that way. He had no power here. All he could do was hide in a bathroom trying not to suffocate under the weight of panic at the thought of losing someone else he loved.
It was sort of inevitable that he’d lose someone to space someday.
But not today.
Please, not today.
Later, when John joined them for a rare family night on Planet Earth – an impromptu visit which proved he had secretly been just as shaken by the radio silence as the rest of them – they’d escape Gordon’s nefarious schemes by taking a trip up to the lookout. Scott would shove his hands in his pockets and wonder at the night sky’s ability to strike ice into his soul no matter how many layers he wore, as opposed to John who always seemed to come alive under the stars.
“Space is terrifying,” Scott would murmur, unnerved by the constant death which lurked up there, always seeking yet another victim.
“True,” John would concede with one of those secret smiles. “But I love it.”
I hate it, Scott would think, faintly amused by the way they continued to balance one another.
But for now he simply sat with the chill from spilt water and the bathroom tiles and the ceramic against his back seeping through his jeans and shirt and tried to stamp out the fear before it could leave him trembling. He pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes and pretended his face wasn’t wet.
One more miracle. Please.