Chapter Text
The video call had started off normal enough. Alan was asking John for help with some of his homework, and as there were no rescues to attend to, John was more than happy to help his youngest brother. The conversation had soon moved on from the homework to other mundane things, but then the alarms started. John had smiled, telling Alan not to worry as he checked the instruments in Thunderbird Five, that it was probably nothing, just a meteor shower getting a little too close, something he was protected from. But then John’s usual calm composure began to crumble as his fingers flew across his displays, his face becoming more and more panicked as he ran to grab his helmet. All the while, Alan was watching, rooted to his chair, too scared to speak up in case he distracted John, but needing to know what was happening up there in space to shake up John so badly.
Before he could open his mouth to ask, John was back on the screen, helmet shoved on and grabbing extra oxygen tanks. “Alan, I need you here, understand? I need you to get into Three and come and get me…”
“John, what’s happening? What’s going on?!”
“Alan, there’s no time to explain, please, just-” John was cut off and in the split second that his brother glanced up to look at him, pleading eyes begging for a rescue he knew would be too late, the hologram shook, the sounds of exploding machinery filling the air as Alan helplessly watched his brother be thrown out of view before it all went black, leaving behind a heavy silence.
He needed to move. Move move move, get to Thunderbird Three and go rescue John, he needed to bring him home, his oxygen wouldn’t last that long, and what if he was injured?! Alan stumbled his way to his launch, hands fisted tightly as he tried to keep himself together, and prayed to anything and everything that his brother was okay. He had to be okay… Why did this keep happening? It was bad enough when Five was blown up by the Hood, why did it have to happen again? What did the universe have against his brother? He couldn’t dwell on it right now, he needed to get to John. He had never completed pre-flight checks so quickly before, and it still hadn’t occurred to him that this was the first time he had flown Three completely alone, without his father or Gordon or Scott with him. That didn’t matter right now. All he could do was hope that he wasn’t too late.
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With Jeff on the mainland with Virgil picking up supplies for the island, Scott had been left in charge of International Rescue for a few days, which is why he was currently sitting in Jeff’s office, writing up mission reports and filing them with the correct authorities and countries. A small blip on his tablet drew his attention, and Scott frowned as the alert for Thunderbird Three launching popped up on his screen. He hadn’t been informed of a rescue? Checking for his messages and any alerts from John, Scott came up negative, which could only mean that Alan was for whatever reason, trying to take Thunderbird Three out for a joyride, since Gordon was currently in the pool.
Opening the comm line to Three, Scott tried to keep his anger in check as he demanded an answer from his youngest brother. “Alan, what the Hell do you think you are doing?” The stammering response filled with excuses that he expected never came, and Scott’s anger quickly turned to concern. “Alan?” Scott scrambled for the button to turn the comm link into a holocall, and a moment later, he had the video feed of his youngest brother. What he saw made his heart break, and he instantly felt guilty for assuming that Alan was taking Three out for a joyride. Alan looked awful, tear tracks running down his face, anguished eyes that weren’t quite seeing everything around him, and a determination that Scott had only seen a few times before. He wasn’t even dressed in his uniform.
“I…Have to get to John….” Alan’s strained reply brought a new round of tears, refreshing the tear tracks that Scott could already see and creating new ones. “John needs me, I need to get to John…”
“John’s fine, Alan, he’s okay-”
“No.” Alan shook his head so violently that Scott thought he would accidentally knock himself off course. “No, Thunderbird Five was hit, John needs me, needs us, have to get to John…” Ah, so that was it. Alan had had a nightmare, only it seemed that he hadn’t fully woken up from that. “Five was hit…she was hit, she was hit, I have to get John…. John said…. John told me… he needs me to bring him home…. I have to get John…”
“What do you mean Thunderbird Five was hit?!” Scott’s level of concern reached frightening new levels. Was this not a dream after all? Had their space dwelling brother in fact been injured up there, thousands of miles away from them? “Alan, what do you mean Thunderbird Five was hit?” When no answer was forthcoming from Alan, Scott decided to try and call John himself, who answered almost immediately, his hair stuck at awkward angles and yawning as though he had just been woken up.
“Scott? What’s going on?” Woo, okay, panic over, Scott could calm his heart rate down now as he sank back in his chair. “Scooter? You called me, remember, you really should be talking at this point.”
“Sorry, John, just…. You guys are giving me grey hairs, you know? Damn.”
“What? I was literally sleeping, I… Why is Thunderbird Three on approach? I wasn’t meant to be getting supplies today, was I?”
“I know we joke about Alan being able to pilot in his sleep, but he looks like he’s doing it for real right now.”
“What?” John’s confusion only seemed to grow as he was denied a direct answer.
“I don’t know myself, really.” Scott admitted, tuning in a little to Alan murmuring to himself about Thunderbird Five being hit and needing to get to John. “He… I got a notification about Three being launched, and when I confronted him about it over the comms, he told me Thunderbird Five had been hit and that he had to come and get you, that you said you needed him to come and get you. He hasn’t really said much other than that. But now he’s unresponsive to me, and just muttering about Five being hit and needing to get to you. So… look after him. I don’t know if he’s awake… and it’ll probably be a shock to his system when he does wake up and realises he is in space and not in bed where he should be.”
John’s heart sank somewhere deep near his stomach and lodged itself there. “Alan had a nightmare about me?”
“Seems like it.” Scott turned to look back at John. “Divert everything to the island and come back down on Three with him. I think we need to talk to him about this… maybe bring dad in too. This can’t happen again.”
“Diverting to the Island now. Let me know when you’re receiving.” A small silence before the office began to fill up with the monitored radio frequencies.
“Receiving, John.”
“Good.” John sighed and gathered a few things he wanted to bring home with him. “Dad isn’t going to be happy about this, you know? But you’re right, we need to talk about this, probably put some measures in place so he can’t sleep fly a goddamn rocketship.” John zipped up his bag and made his way to go and greet Alan at the airlock for his imminent arrival. “But we need to make sure Alan is okay too. If it’s gotten this bad that he is literally trapped in a nightmare right now, we need to talk to him, see if it’s stress or something else triggering it, or if it is just a one off incident…”
“I know. You just get him home, John. We’ll deal with the rest later.”
“FAB, Scott, I’ll see you soon.” Scott cut the feed after that, watching the video from Thunderbird Three long enough to see Alan stumble out of his seat and make his way through the airlock, presumably into John’s waiting arms, before he cut that feed too. John would call back when they were on their way home. Meanwhile, Scott now had to call their dad and bring him up to speed on what had happened.