#bereznik aftermath

[idontknowreallywhy]

A thing I’m toying with - maybe as a sequel to Presence… but I’m not sure as I suspect hallucination Scotty was the best bit of that one and so now he’s been banished it might just be a bit pedestrian. Hmm. Ah well, let me know if you think it’s worth pursuing?

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Virgil pretended to be asleep until everyone had left and then quickly slipped out of bed and tiptoed the seven half-paces to the other bed in the room. This one was a more bulky structure and had many machines attached to it. He knew exactly what they all were and he did his utmost to ignore the readouts as the past few days had taught him that knowledge was not always power in his current situation.

He had never been so powerless, in fact. Nor so confused.

He both wanted to know and really REALLY didn’t want to know.

He perched on the chair his father had just vacated and rested his elbows on the fall-rail at the edge of the bed, propped his chin up on his hands and kept watch. From experience he knew his father wouldn’t be gone long. The man had probably just needed to use the facilities, hopefully have a shower. Virgil was fairly sure he hadn’t actually TOLD Dad how badly he needed to do that but wasn’t 100% certain… his face may have betrayed him at the end of that hug a short while ago.

There has been a lot of hugs from Dad since he’d moved up here. He was aware that the hospital staff weren’t happy about him being here but Dad had ranted in the hallway about duty of care and having the hospital administration hung out to dry over some security incident Virgil didn’t quite catch the details of.

The hugs had been good though. Dad had been there when Virgil woke disoriented and crying out for Scott and he’d held him so tight and stroked his hair and kissed him on the head. Then he’d helped Virgil over to sit in the chair by the other bed so he could hold his brother’s cannula-encumbered hand.

If only he knew why Scott wouldn’t wake up.

He knew he was sick, injured. He knew a lot of the technical details, the medical terms, the numbers… the statistics. He was trying to ignore all those.

What he didn’t know was WHY.

He felt like he should know, in fact he was sure he DID know, but the information floated just out of reach.

He was less fuzzy now. There had been another tense conversation between Dad and the staff about a stash of tablets inside a clock that Virgil wasn’t sure of the relevance of, but the upshot was he wasn’t being sedated anymore. One of the other tablets which they were weirdly insistent on checking he had swallowed was an antibiotic which he guessed was related to the nasty wound on his stomach… he couldn’t recall how he got that. Something to do with a window, they’d said but that made no sense as he’d snuck a look when they changed the dressing and it didn’t look like a glass cut at all. Nor would a glass cut require the tetanus booster he’d been given. So he must have misheard.

The others he knew to be two kinds of anti-psychotic medication. Which, he reasoned, was presumably why he was here. It would explain why his memory resembled a quilt of vividly oversaturated impressions, scattered thinly amongst an overwhelming palate of grey and fluffy interspersed with light-sucking heavyweight obsidian patches. When the doctor had raised an eyebrow at this description Virgil had sighed and summarised as “there are a lot of gaps” which had met with a sympathetic nod and some kind of reassuring nonsense. He hadn’t paid attention to said reassuring nonsense because he had been distracted by overhearing one of the nurses tending to his brother muttering to her colleague:

“Probably just as well”

Which was less than reassuring.

The only thing worse than worrying the voids in his memory were concealing something awful was knowing they definitely were.

Which brought Virgil back to why his brother was lying unresponsive and almost unrecognisable in front of him.

What if this was his fault?

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #scott tracy #virgil tracy #idontknowreallywhy fanfic #bereznik aftermath #Tw: hospital #Tw: mental health #Tw: section #Tw: psychosis #thunderangst

[idontknowreallywhy]

Contents post for Recrudesence & Estera

(Nothing to see here, just to avoid copying all the hyperlinks at the start of each chapter as that is getting cumbersome! Now I can just update this one!)

RECRUDESENCE by @sofasurf

[AO3]

1. The Beginning 2. Focus

3. Realisation 4. The Past

5. Flashes 6. Walking

7. Things Unseen 8. Words

9. Out of Depth 10. Thunderbird

11. Breaking 12. Burning

13. Drastic Measures 14. Coming Back

15. Handle With Care 16. Virgil Struggles

17. John 18. Nightmares&Needles

19. Morning 20. New Alliances

21. Patricia 22. Healing

Prologue - Stars are Only Visible in Darkness

ESTERA by @idontknowreallywhy and @sofasurf

[AO3]

1. Colour 2. Dinosaur

3. Shoes 4. Thunderbird

5. Lesson 6. Safe

7. Gull 8. Deliver

9. Coffee 10. Flight

11. Run 12. Fall

13. Trying 14. Hide

15. Wait 16. Distraction

17. Haunted 18. Falling

19. Calling 20. Thread

21. Consult 22. Assist

23. Jump 24. Drive

25. Cracks 26. Meet

27. Yarn 28. Routine

29. Bez 30. Introduce

31. Stories 32. Trust

33. Questions 33a. Questions epilogue

34. Anniversary 35. Ten

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #tb Estera #index post only please ignore #Estera #Scott Tracy #Tw: ptsd #bereznik aftermath #Tw: war #Recrudesence #sofasurf fiction #idontknowreallywhy fanfic #Scott has malaria #hurt/comfort #Actually quite fluffy despite all of the above

[idontknowreallywhy]

Resurface 14 - Revive

Previous bits here

It’s genuinely becoming a concern as to whether there are enough good words beginning with Re to get them through this… but they will, I promise.

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It was an unfortunate but inevitable side effect of their occupation: Every Tracy had spent far too much time waiting by the bedside of a brother, willing them to open their eyes and say something to prove they would be ok. Scott, due to being able to thrive perfectly well for several days on catnapping alone, probably held the record. Virgil likely came a close second, although he was much more adept at snoozing heavily while he waited.

Scott kept vigil as always.

This time, though, it felt different. The longing to see his brother’s eyes peer up at him had never been tinged with dread before. He had never been afraid of what would happen when a brother awoke before. Of what a newly awoken brother might say. That… was new.

John waited too. Aside from chivvying each other to visit the toilet occasionally, neither were keen to leave each other’s presence, or Virgil’s. The others wouldn’t return with Grandma for a couple of hours yet, and Kayo was working with Brains on a better failsafe for Shadow and the other birds. For now, it was just the three of them.

The sedative had been wearing off slowly. Really, really, really slowly.

Agonisingly slowly.

There were two signs - the occasional bumps in heart rate were the easiest to track and John monitored these with his usual precision, occasionally passing a quiet comment as to the length and volume of the spikes.

Scott was more focussed on the other - the tiniest of movements in Virgil’s hands which had been lying limp on top of the covers, and which Scott had gently arranged and rearranged to try to find the most natural position for muscles and ligaments to rest in. He watched and waited and pondered whether he should move his brother’s right thumb a little to the left - was the hand too curled up, or was it meant to be that way? He was aware that there were probably much bigger issues at play right now but he didn’t want his brother to end up with aches that might hinder his playing or drawing. And this… this he could do something about.

He sighed and adjusted the thumb minutely, then pretending he hadn’t noticed John pretending not to notice.

It occurred to him that he never really saw Virgil’s hands at rest. His brother was always either tinkering with something, gesticulating expressively as he conversed, or tapping out a rhythm on the biceps of his folded arms… his denim clad thighs… or whatever surface happened to be nearby. Scott’s shoulder was not exempt as a surface but he never mentioned it for fear Virgil would become self-conscious and less inclined to casually throw his arm around his big brother at every opportunity.

Scott could never adequately explain even to himself how much it meant when Virgil did that. Neither could he articulate how when the arm eventually lifted and they went their separate ways, Scott would sometimes feel as he couldn’t be properly warm again until his brother’s arm was back where it belonged… his fingers unconsciously sharing with his big brother whatever pulse had captured his soul at that moment.

As children it was always Scott’s inability to stay put that people noticed: ‘If only you could stay still like your brother, look he’s sitting so nicely.’ Even then Scott knew, as had their Mom, that they weren’t so very different. Scott’s need to move was expressed on the macro plane, Virgil’s was no less insistent but hidden from the inattentive on the micro level.

And so Scott waited and watched for the familiar movement to return. John’s comm pulsed and he stepped out of the room to answer the call.

A stronger twitch of the fingers was accompanied by the slightest hint of tension in Virgil’s jaw. Scott reached out and placed his hand over one of his brother’s, seeking connection with that flicker of life… then picked up his hand and held it close to his chest. He found himself leaning forwards so that he could feel his brother’s breath on his cheek, seeking reassurance that Virgil was in there and would come back to him.

This meant, of course, that Scott’s eardrum was in prime exploding distance when Virgil yelled his name.

“SCOTT!”

The despair in that scream resonated through every cell of his body and Scott couldn’t do anything but wrap his brother in his arms and screw his eyes shut. Ear determinedly ringing, he felt the vibrations of Virgil’s pleading as clearly as he could hear them:

“Don’… pleee!! Sco…. I can’d w’ou… Da… NNN… Scoddy nnnnn…”

Scott hated waking from any kind of sedation - the sensation of being trapped, helpless between worlds, where the nightmares were stronger than reality. What kind of nightmare was Virgil experiencing? Or… Scott felt his throat constrict and buried his face in Virgil’s hair… was it worse than that? Was he, in fact, reliving emotions no brother should ever have to experience even the once?

“Sssshhh I’m here, I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here. I’m not leaving you Virgil, I promise. I’m here.”

John had come running at the shout and Scott felt rather than saw his presence in the doorway, radiating questions and concern. Scott glanced up and shook his head minutely.

Even that slight movement was too much - Virgil gasped and his fingers tightened in a vice grip around Scott’s biceps, his face pushed hard into his collarbone. Big brother kissed the top of his head and little brother relaxed a little, taking a long breath in through his nose before going limp in Scott’s arms, apparently unconscious again. Scott laid him back gently on to the pillow and gently stroked the hair from Virgil’s damp forehead.

The mattress dipped as John perched carefully on the side of the bed, taking hold of Virgil’s hand and resting his other lightly on Scott’s shoulder. He squeezed gently and Scott placed his free hand on top of John’s.

And they waited.

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#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #scott tracy #virgil tracy #john tracy #bereznik aftermath idontknowreallywhy fanfic #resurface fic

[idontknowreallywhy]

Resurface 3 - Realise

Heh ok I’m on a roll now… previous bit here.

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Scott raced through his bedroom door and vaguely acknowledged the squelching noise and the probably related damp sensation seeping through his socks. Later. He slammed the door and tore the coat off so hurriedly one of the buttons became detached and rolled somewhere out of sight. Later. Slinging the offending item over the back of the desk chair he turned his attention to the rest. Did he need to shed the shirt as well? Probably… he was never wearing any of this again anyway. It had been a terrible idea even to consider it.

He’d always intended to find out what Virgil’s deal had been in the aftermath of his capture. He knew about the others but there was nothing recorded about Virgil and the most he’d got out of his father was a hurriedly suppressed agonised expression and “He really missed you.” He was going to quiz John at some point but had never quite found the courage to ask. He knew it had been bad but nobody spoke of it.

All Scott knew was that Virgil had been there for him, his first clear memories of the hospital his brother’s eyes and his voice and he’d been singing and Scott knew he wasn’t in prison anymore because music had been banned in Bereznik. His little brother had been his rock, unfailing, unflinching… unmoving in the main. He had a vague recollection towards the end of his incarceration on the ward of nurses giving up and just working around the snoring figure hunched over his bedside.

But he had no idea what had gone on before. And he now realised he really should have made more effort to find out.

He crossed the room to where he’d left his civvies folded neatly and stumbled as he failed to get his left leg fully free of the narrow legged pants. Reflexes saved him, but not the photo frame he swiped off the bedside table with a rogue elbow. Broken glass joined the coffee in the chaos that was now his bedroom carpet. No matter just a photo frame. Dad’s photo frame though. He picked it up guiltily and then gasped as a sudden bolt of clarity hit him. As he suddenly realised when this framed photo of his past self had last seen the light of day. That Virgil probably hadn’t seen it since it graced the top of his empty coffin.

He flung it away from himself and bellowed a string of curses at the ceiling. How could he have been so STUPID?

Hands shaking, he wrestled with the buttons of his casual shirt and probably missed one or two. Later. Leaping over the wet patch and the glass he left his door swinging and ran for the lift before cursing again and hurrying back. As he struggled into his jeans he realised that this time he hadn’t avoided the glass and that at some point that was going to STING. Later.

The lift took 6.8 seconds to descend to the hangar and it was at least 6 seconds too slow. Snatching a spare jetpack from the store he ran past Two towards the pedestrian exit for her runway and she loomed over him. His brother’s ship was never cross, but right now he felt her disappointment. He silently promised her he’d fix this and fired up the pack as he slammed the door open with his already aching shoulder and shot into the sky.

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#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #idontknowreallywhy fanfic #earth & sky #thunderangst #bereznik Scott #Tw: hospital #Resurface fic