Chapter Text
Kayo had been in court plenty of times, but usually because she’d been subpoenaed as a witness. Only once had she been to an arraignment—her uncle’s—and that had been purely to gloat.
This was a very different vibe.
All the Tracys, plus her and Penelope, had piled in to the spectator benches and were waiting (some more patiently than others) as Judge Henderson worked her way through the docket. Dianne had gone off to meet Virgil in the courthouse cells before he was called up—privileges of counsel.
(Interestingly, there was no sign of Blackton’s wife or family. She supposed she could understand that—but if it’d been her, regardless of circumstance, she’d’ve wanted to look the man who killed her husband in the eye.)
She was getting pretty good at studiously ignoring the press at the back of the room.
“So how’s this work?” Alan asked at her side.
“The judge reads the charge,” she whispered back, “defence attorney responds with the plea, then they make arrangements for bail—if they’re willing to offer it—and set a trial date.”
“Will they offer bail?”
“I don’t know. If they don’t, Di could put up a good argument that he’s hardly a danger to society. But if they’re feeling petty, it wouldn’t help much.”
Alan hugged his arms to his chest. “And then he’d have to stay in prison until the trial?”
“Let’s hope,” Grandma said quietly, on Alan’s other side, “that it doesn’t come to that. Now hush.”
A few seconds later, the judge banged the gavel, and the bailiff led the current occupant of the defendant’s stand back towards the door to the courthouse cells. He was promptly replaced by Virgil—Kayo felt Alan stiffen next to her—with Di at his side, thankfully devoid of handcuffs. Much like during the arrest two days earlier, he wouldn't look at any of them: he kept his eyes firmly front, though he did respond to Di when she said something to him as they reached the desk.
Judge Amelia Henderson—according to the report EOS had presented Kayo, she had an impeccable record as a prosecutor prior to her appointment to the bench, two grown children, and one dachshund named Frank—looked down at her tablet, then over her glasses at the prosecution’s desk. “This is the charge the District Attorney’s office intends to bring?”
“Yes, Your Honour,” Williams said blandly.
She watched him for a second—and man, Kayo envied that poker face—then cleared her throat. “Virgil Benjamin Tracy, on November 18, 2065, you allegedly caused the death of Thomas Henry Blackton at the Rosewell copper mine near Anchorage, Alaska. How do you plead to the charge of murder in the first degree?”
Kayo was pretty sure there wasn't any air in the room right now. There certainly wasn't any entering her lungs.
And then she saw Di look swiftly sideways at Virgil—and her expression was neutral enough, but Kayo knew her well enough to see the emotion underneath—and she didn't look freaked, or upset. She looked delighted.
And then Kayo was able to breathe.
“My client wishes to enter a plea of ‘not guilty’, Your Honour.”
“Very well.” Henderson peered down at her tablet again. “Given the circumstances of the offence, I don't believe bail would be inappropriate—unless the People object?”
“No objection, Your Honour,” Williams said, still impassive. “But with the proviso that Mr Tracy remain on United States soil and receive explicit approval from the Global Defence Force prior to the commencement of any, ah, ‘professional duties’.”
Henderson lifted one eyebrow. “So noted. Defence counsel?”
“To clarify, Your Honour—do United States international territories count as US soil in the eyes of this court?”
“If you’re asking if the defendant is allowed to live on his family’s private island,” the judge replied dryly, “then yes.”
“Then my client agrees to the terms of bail, Your Honour.”
Henderson made a hmm noise. “Ten million dollars would be my typical figure for this offence—but given that bail is supposed to be at least somewhat punitive, I’m going to call it twenty in this instance. Though that’s probably still perfectly within means?”
“My client is capable of paying the stated amount, Your Honour,” Di replied evenly.
“Of course he is,” Henderson muttered. “The defendant, counsel, and prosecution will report to this courthouse for trial commencing Monday January 4.” She hit the gavel. “Bailiff, please make arrangements for bail and bring in the next defendant.”
Jeff, sitting on the end of the row, was up and out of his seat in a flash to meet Virgil and Di at the gate—a few signatures, and they were coming back down the aisle, father’s arm protectively around the son.
“Keep moving,” Di said under her breath, when it looked rather like grandmother and brothers were ready to swarm. “Disrupt proceedings and the judge’ll flip.”
They all obeyed, hurrying out into the hall; John, last out, had the presence of mind to shut the door firmly in the press’s face, and, fortunately, none of them quite had the nerve to open it again.
The moment they were sure they were alone, Dianne blew out a long sigh, face relaxing into a smile as she tucked under Scott’s arm. “That went way better than I feared.”
Her husband looked down at her dubiously. “Either I’m missing something or we were in different courtrooms.”
“They're overreaching,” Kayo said, grinning. “Aren't they?”
“Way overreaching,” Di confirmed. “I’d assumed they’d go for manslaughter, maybe murder two—and avoiding jail time would’ve been a seriously uphill battle. But willful murder with malice aforethought? Significantly harder for the prosecution to make that stick. Even the judge looked weirded out.”
“You're sure?” asked Jeff.
“Juries aren’t totally predictable , but—it puts us in a much better spot than we were twenty minutes ago.”
Virgil was still glued to Jeff’s side, face drained of colour. Grandma reached over and patted his cheek. “Glad to have you back, sweetheart. Now—I hope you didn’t think you were getting out of stuffing the turkey, did you?”
He smiled shakily. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“Good boy. The plan was to spend Thanksgiving with the team on the island, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t stick to it. Time to go home, I think, Jeff?”
“Agreed.” Jeff glanced around at the group. “I’ll take Virgil—otherwise, same planes you all came in. Please don’t make it a race.”
He received a chorus of nods and FABs in response, and they all turned and made their way down the hall towards the elevators. One reporter poked his nose out as they walked away, but Kayo shot him a look, and he retreated back inside.
“So,” Gordon said to Virgil. “You join any prison gangs?”
Scott smacked him on the back of the head.
2054
“Absolutely not.”
Kayo leaned forward, took a steadying breath. “Why not?”
“I doubt,” Jeff Tracy said wryly, still not taking his eyes off the paperwork strewn across his desk, “that you’ll accept ‘because I said so’ as a valid response.”
“You’re not wrong.”
Jeff sighed, straightened a pile of papers, and finally made eye contact. “You’re nineteen, Tanusha.”
“So’s John! And he’s been working for a year!”
“Running comms. Not in the field.”
“Virgil flew a mission at nineteen.”
“One mission, never leaving the cockpit, in an emergency.”
“They’re all emergencies.”
Jeff leaned back and folded his arms. “The rule is solo practice in the Thunderbirds at eighteen, missions at twenty. You know that. And you also know that what you’re asking isn’t just ordinary field work. You’re my friend’s daughter. How am I supposed to look your father in the eye if I say yes and something happens to you?”
“Would it be different,” she asked sourly, “if I was your friend’s son?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he replied quietly. “Your family circumstances make you a target, Kayo. You can’t deny that.”
Not for the first time, Kayo felt a surge of loathing for the half-uncle she hadn’t seen in years. “I’m willing to take the risk. You can’t deny that we need extra field security. Someone took a shot at Scott last week, for crying out loud!”
“In their defence, he was trespassing,” said a voice from across the room, and she whirled towards the hallway entrance to see Virgil enter with sheet music in one hand and a mug in the other. “I … get the sense I’m interrupting. I’ll come back—”
“No, wait—” Kayo gestured to Jeff. “Tell your father he’s being an overprotective mother hen.”
“Gordon jumped off a cliff this afternoon. He just watched and laughed. The overprotectiveness is highly situational.” Virgil looked between them and took a sip of his tea. “Lemme guess, you want to fly missions early.”
Jeff rubbed his forehead. “She wants to provide security on missions.”
“And outside of them,” Kayo added. “Dad said last week he’s taught me practically all he knows at this point. I’m capable—and we’re vulnerable. Part-time international agents aren’t enough if you guys and Scott and Dad and Captain Taylor are all focused on missions and someone decides the mysterious International Rescue makes a nice shiny target. Or tries to figure out who you are.”
Virgil tilted his head. “She does have a point, Dad.”
“I know she has a point,” Jeff grumbled. “I just don’t like it. Okay, fine. You can specialise in field security—”
Kayo punched the air triumphantly.
“—when you’re twenty.”
She groaned. Virgil laughed.
When Kayo finally turned twenty, Jeff Tracy wasn’t around to see it.
2065
As was usual with Tracy Thanksgivings, the house was in a state of pure chaos—and this was their first year with the expanded team on site, which made it even worse. George, Adam, and Karen had gone to spend the holiday with their families, but everyone else had congregated on the island, with predictably cacophonous results.
Gordon, Penelope, Alan, and Tin-Tin (who’d flown in with Penny for the day) were down on the beach setting up (and arguing over) the decorations; Seymour and Brains were attempting, very patiently, to explain to Grandma why hacking the oven to triple the temperature would not improve the turkey situation; Jeff was silently observing that conversation with poorly concealed amusement; Scott and Di were at the dining table attempting to conquer their reoccurring nemesis (pie crust); and Kayo, John, Chan, and Ridley were working their way through the list of necessary sides.
Kayo hadn’t seen hide or hair of Virgil since he’d stuffed the turkeys, and that had been right after breakfast. Which he hadn’t touched.
The door slid open, hot tropical wind gusting in; and the guilty party, scientific name Gordon Cooper, marched in, arms held wide. “Guess who's in the doghouse again!”
Kayo groaned, slicing the tails off a stack of green beans. “What did you do this time?”
“Suggested throwing tea into the bay as an after-dinner activity to celebrate our majestic American freedoms.” He flopped down into the chair next to Di and swiped a fingerful of pastry, then made a disgusted face. “Back to the drawing board on this one, lovebirds.”
“You probably should have seen that reaction coming,” Di told him, moving the pastry board out of his reach. “And yes, we know.”
“Is tea safe to throw in the ocean?” questioned Grandma, momentarily distracted from her argument.
“Loose l-leaf, sure,” said Brains. “Biodegradable.”
“Surely that wasn't enough to get you into trouble with Lady Penelope?” Seymour asked curiously.
“Well, it might not’ve been that.” Gordon rubbed the back of his neck. “It might have been me saying her plan for the gallery opening in March is boring as heck.”
“Seriously?” John, peeling potatoes, narrowed his eyes at him. “She's been working on that for months. That is really not the sort of thing you joke about—”
“Oh, and you're such an expert on women?”
“Gordon,” Scott and Jeff said from opposite sides of the room, in perfect stereo.
“Yeah, yeah, fine, I get it, I'm the bad guy here.” Gordon got up and joined Kayo's group at the counter, gesturing to Chan's tablet. “What's this?”
Chan, scrolling through a recipe, shook her head with a swish of bangs. “Certifiable insanity.”
“Excuse me, Kwan,” Ridley said haughtily. “That's my old family sweet potato casserole recipe.”
“The timestamp on the site you sent me says 2062.”
“Details. My point being it's the food of kings.”
John glanced over at the screen and frowned. “Surely that belongs on the dessert list?”
“Nope,” Ridley replied gleefully. “It’s a side!”
“Then why are there marshmallows on it?” asked Kayo, craning her neck to see the ingredients list.
“Because sugar is yummy.”
Gordon high-fived Ridley. “I'm here for it, Riddles.”
John sighed tolerantly and returned to his potatoes; but, after a second, his fingers went to his ear as he listened to his comm; and then he moved closer to Kayo and murmured under his breath. “EOS doesn't like the look of Virgil’s biomonitor. You want to check on him, or shall I?”
Kayo deposited the last handful of beans into the bowl and tossed the bag into the trash. “I’ll go.” She checked her own comm; according to the hall camera logs, he was in his room. “I’ll take him some tea. Be back in a few.”
She didn’t keep her word. When she reached the door of Virgil's room and knocked, there was no response. She dithered on the doorstep for a moment, wondering whether to force the issue; and then she heard it: the telltale sounds of retching.
She shoved the door open—thankfully, he hadn't locked it—dumped the mug onto his desk, and made a dash for the en suite bathroom. Sure enough, Virgil was curled over the toilet. Only a second’s observation was enough to tell her that he was at the point where there wasn't actually anything in his stomach to genuinely vomit: he was just miserably dry-heaving, fingers wrapped white-knuckled around the edge of the bowl.
“Oh, Virgil—”
She crouched next to him and stroked soft circles along his spine; and he relaxed minutely, enough that he was able to choke out words between gags. “I'm okay. Not—sick, just—stressed.”
Understatement of the year, she thought. “I know. It's all right. Just breathe.”
He closed his eyes and obeyed; the spasms gradually eased; and, after a minute or so, he sat back and hugged his arms around himself. “Sorry.”
“Don't apologise.” She shifted so she could keep rubbing his back. “You're not alone, okay?”
“I don't—how—” His voice wavered, cracked, an alarmingly hysterical note creeping in. “I killed him in cold blood, ‘Nusha—an innocent man’s dead because of me, my whole job is to save people and I—how do I live with that?”
Kayo thought about the maybes. Yes, sometimes they kept her up at night. But she could always tell herself that each and every one of those guys put themselves in that situation—objectively speaking, they had no one to blame but themselves.
But she then thought about the Fireflash, about how she'd been willing to risk a plane full of strangers for the sake of Gordon and Alan. The exact opposite numerical calculation to what Virgil had made, but ultimately the same principle: deciding who, in the moment, she valued the life of most. Until now, she’d never let herself think too hard about the implications of that decision: shoved it out of mind as an irrelevancy, a hypothetical that never came to be—thanks to the man sitting next to her.
Could she have lived with herself, if she’d ended up going through with her plan to ditch the plane in the desert and some hadn’t walked away from it?
Or, on the other side of the coin—could she have lived with herself if she’d saved all the passengers at the cost of the occupants of the pods?
And now she felt sick to her stomach.
“Not on your own,” she repeated, once again forcing the thoughts firmly elsewhere, wriggling closer and putting her arm around him. “If it's easier to be by yourself sometimes, that's okay—but you start feeling like this, you call for help, all right? Please don't just sit here alone and tear yourself to bits.” She squeezed his shoulder. “Maybe you should talk to someone. Outside the team, I mean. A professional.”
(Yeah, okay, she was a hypocrite. But that didn’t make it a bad idea.)
He shook his head. “They wouldn't … get it.”
“They might—some therapists specialise in post-combat counselling, or—”
“It's not the same.” His fingers twitched restlessly against his leg. “I—I don't want to take it outside the family. I can't.”
She wanted to say why not, to force him to do the ‘sensible’ thing; but, unfortunately, she understood exactly what he meant. “Have you at least talked to your dad about it?”
“Yeah. He was pretty … frank, about some stuff. Things he did, in the war. Ways he coped. Some things he said helped, but …” He shrugged. “But I still feel like crap.” He leaned over, resting his head on her shoulder. “What helps you?”
“Moving, mostly. Training. Running.” She nudged him. “We need to get you using your hands, get you out of your head. You feel like playing?”
He shook his head. Very firmly.
“Drawing?”
“I tried—hand keeps shaking too much.”
“Something less detail-oriented, then.” She thought for a second. “You have the key to Brains’ supply closet, right? Did he hang on to all that leftover paint from the FAB1 refurb?”
“I think so?”
“Perfect. C’mon, big guy. Get your butt down to the hangar and help me pay back Gordon for that thing with the moth last month.”
A couple of hours later, they headed back up the gangway to the elevator, well-satisfied with their handiwork. Before Kayo could press the button, the doors opened to reveal Brains. The engineer eyed their paint-splattered clothes and hands levelly for a moment. “Thunderbird Four is p-pink now, isn't she?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Kayo said cheerfully.
“She's still fully functional,” added Virgil. “I ran all the diagnostics.”
Brains sighed, resigned. “As long as she's m-mission ready, you c-can paint a unicorn on her if you m-must. Grandma Tracy sent me to tell you dinner is n-nearly ready and to be on the beach in half an hour.”
Kayo nodded. “FAB. We'll get cleaned up and come down.”
Brains stepped out of the lift and passed them. “I’m g-going to go spray sand-proofer on MAX so he can help carry the food d-down. I expect you to vouch for m-my innocence to Gordon.”
“Of course,” said Virgil. “Thanks, Brains.” Sometime around the third can of paint, he'd started to sound a lot more like himself. But once they were in the lift, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. “What does it say about me that the only thing that makes me feel better is pranking my little brother?”
“It says you love him.” She echoed his posture and nudged his arm. “And the fact that you feel so awful right now says that you're a good man, Virgil Tracy.”
He didn't reply; but he did give her hand a tiny squeeze, and that was enough.