Chapter Text
The spot wasn't difficult to locate: the clearing above the mine, Thunderbird 2 parked at a right angle to the entrance and control building, about as obvious as it was possible to get.
Kayo landed Shadow by the larger ‘bird and jumped out, rushing for the mine elevator, pulse pounding in her ears. Thankfully, Virgil was already above ground, slumped in the dirt and grass by the open door, uniform coated in soot. His helmet was off, tossed aside into the half-frozen mud.
She knelt down in front of him, moving cautiously so as not to startle him—but he didn't look up, staring down at his gloves, breath coming in shallow pants.
“Hey, Vee,” she murmured, reaching out and cupping the side of his face with one hand, guiding his gaze up. He allowed it; but his stare remained vacant; and she bit her lip. “Let's get you home. Can you stand?”
He could—he let her pull him upright, stumbling slightly, and moved obediently as she shepherded him up the ramp into Two—but resisted as she tried to direct him to the medbay. “‘m okay.”
“You sure you don't want to lie down?”
He shook his head; so they went to the cockpit instead, and he collapsed bonelessly into the pilot's seat, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. “I'm okay,” he repeated, in a whisper. “Not hurt.”
There was a little more to the definition of ‘okay’ than uninjured, but she let it slide with a squeeze of his shoulder. “Island or ranch?”
“Ranch,” he murmured. “Please.”
Kayo started the pre-flights—closing the pod, running checks, remembering they'd left his helmet outside and going back for it, slaving Shadow to her controls—then, finally, brought Thunderbird Two into the air and set course for Gran Roca.
“Thunderbird Five, this is Thunderbird Two,” she reported. “On route to mainland base, ETA 15 minutes.”
“FAB,” John replied, holo popping up. His brows were drawn low, lips still in the thin line they'd been in ever since he'd called Kayo and asked her to go collect his big brother. “Thought that would be the case. Dad and Grandma will be there approximately 1700 hours local. They're picking up Scott and Di on the way.”
“No,” Virgil protested weakly, the first time since she'd landed that he’d shown any significant expression at all. “They're on their honeymoon, I don't want to ruin—”
“You need a lawyer, Virgil,” John said flatly. “Now. And Scott would never forgive us if we kept this from him.”
Virgil looked like he wanted to object further; but he closed his mouth and looked down. His hands were shaking. Kayo reached over and squeezed one, and he gripped tightly back.
Gran Roca was largely unoccupied: Alan and Ridley were off in Three helping a stranded freighter, Gordon had taken Seven and Four to go get his sub licence renewed, and almost everyone else was island-based right now. It was just Adam and Karen holding the fort, and Adam who answered Kayo’s hail for landing permission.
“FAB, Two, you and Shadow are clear.” He hesitated. “Everything all right?”
Kayo glanced sideways at Virgil. His eyes were closed. “Could be better. Civvie jet’s coming in at five. Could you please give us some space? In the house, I mean.”
He nodded, the concern in his expression drawing tighter. “We’ll stay in the dorm unless we need to launch. Give us a holler if you need anything.”
“Thanks.” She closed the link and focused on landing. She couldn’t bring Shadow in slaved, not next to Two through the hangar roof, so she parked her cloaked out the front and then landed Two. The giant metal doors closed slowly over their heads.
“You good to walk inside?” she asked Virgil softly.
He nodded, jerkily, then hoisted himself to his feet. She planted her hand between his shoulder blades, like before, and moved beside him through the tunnel, to the lift, and finally out into the hall and then lounge of the ranch house. Virgil dropped onto the sofa, unfastening his bandolier with fumbling hands; she helped him to pull it over his head; and he sagged back into the cushions, staring unseeing out the front window to the desert beyond.
“Do you want to get changed?” Not that anyone would mind the soot on the furniture, under the circumstances, but he might be more comfortable out of uniform.
He shook his head.
“Something to drink? Tea, water?”
Another shake.
“Okay.” She sat down next to him, gingerly, watching for his reactions—or lack of them. The poor guy was so tense he was trembling. “How about a hug?”
Nothing, for a few seconds—then he nodded, and she put an arm around him—and he shuddered and turned and buried his face against her neck and shoulder—and she held him as tight as she could, one hand cupping his head and the other stroking his spine.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, when the stiffness didn’t ease. “You don’t have to be strong for me. I can take it.”
He inhaled shakily, once, twice—and then, thankfully, finally, he broke.
2048
“How the heck did you even get up here? The hatch is locked.”
Tanusha pulled her knees closer to her chest, refusing to look around. The voice was Virgil’s: second-eldest of the Tracy boys, about a year older than her. He seemed nice, at least so far. Not as swoon-worthy as his big brother; but kind: he’d even learned to play her mother’s favourite song for her, just because she’d asked. She’d decided she liked him—liked all the Tracys, at least on the surface. She wasn’t hiding up here because of them.
He sat down on the roof tile next to her, stretching out one leg; in her peripheral vision, she could see him looking out across the valley before them. The sun was setting over the distant ocean, distant and vivid and warm and cold and sharp and so close they could touch it.
It wasn’t an unpleasant silence.
But, finally, he broke it. “You know your mom’s freaking out trying to find you, right?”
“She’s not my mother.” Sharp, quick, like a lash of claws. She’d been scratched by a stray kitten once, in the garden at school, as she’d tried to pick it up to bring it inside. Maybe this was how that little cat had felt: taut and angry and miserable.
“Sorry. Stepmom.” He leaned back, propping himself with both hands. “You really don’t like her, huh?”
Tanusha drew her lip between her teeth. The problem with hating Nurin was that it was very hard to maintain: she was good-natured, she was clever, she was surprisingly supportive of Tanusha’s weirder hobbies. And she was Tin-Tin’s mum, which was a massive point in her favour. If she’d been anyone else’s stepmother—
But she wasn’t.
“If your dad,” she said, still not looking at Virgil, “packed you and your brothers off to boarding school on the other side of the world, married someone else, had another kid, left you in school for a couple more years, then dragged you to a new city and expected you to be ready to play happy families—how would you feel?”
“I … see your point.” Virgil shifted, turning towards her. “But he does care about you, ‘Nusha. Sometimes—sometimes dads can be crap at showing it, but that doesn’t mean the love isn’t there.”
She huffed, chewed her lip again. “Four more years, and I can do what I want. Join the GDF, see the world, live under a bridge, whatever. I don’t need him.”
“You trying to convince me or yourself?”
“Who are you, my shrink?”
“Someone’s gotta be.”
She curled her fingers tighter around her legs, digging into her jeans; blinked, rapidly, four or five times.
“Hey.” Virgil pressed her shoulder, brief and gentle. “It’s okay. Don’t feel like you’ve gotta keep it together for my sake. I can take it.”
They sat, silent, for a couple of seconds—then she twisted impulsively and shoved herself against his shirt. Warm arms wrapped firmly around her, squeezing her close. He’d been painting: she could smell the tang of the acrylics in the fabric.
The tears felt good. Strange: they usually, on the rare occasion she let herself crumble under the covers, hurt. But it was different, better, being held. Actually brought relief .
Like when she’d eventually managed to wrap the hissing kitten in her scarf and take it inside and rub under its chin, and it had finally purred.
2065
Eventually, Virgil drifted off, head in her lap. Kayo let him sleep, hand resting protectively in sweat-matted hair; until, just after five, she heard the roar of the jet coming in, and nudged him gently back to consciousness.
“Sorry,” she said as he squeezed his eyes shut again with a small grimace. “Your dad and Scott are here.”
He grunted and shoved himself into a sitting position, then propped his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face with both hands. It did nothing to hide the evidence of his earlier breakdown. But crying, as she'd hoped, seemed to have helped: the glazed look had left his eyes, and his voice, though far from normal, was steady enough. “Thank you.”
She patted his back. “Let's put the kettle on and get some liquids into you.”
He acquiesced, following her into the kitchen, and accepted the glass of water she handed him before slumping into a chair. She started a pot of tea and a pot of coffee; both were still brewing when the hall door slammed and Scott charged into the room. “Virgil—”
Virgil stood, and his big brother enveloped him into a bear hug, and continued to hold on as their father, and grandmother, and Scott’s wife Dianne, trickled in behind him.
Kayo made eye contact with Jeff first, and winced internally: he didn't look much less shell-shocked than his son.
After a minute or so, Scott released his brother, and Grandma took over—but only for a few seconds, before shepherding him back to a chair and, despite his quiet protest, conducting a medical examination.
Dianne joined Kayo by the counter. “What happened?” she whispered. “Jeff’s only given us the headline.”
Kayo checked the tea, then started pouring into cups. “I don't know the specifics either—John just gave me the bare essentials, and he—” She glanced over her shoulder at Virgil. “—hasn't really been in a state to talk about it.”
“Poor guy.” Di reached for the milk and sugar and began spooning and stirring. “I can't even imagine how he must feel—I know there’ve been fatalities before, but …”
Kayo sighed and reached for the coffee pot. “This is different.”
Di nodded.
They distributed the cups—coffee for Jeff and Scott, tea for everyone else—and took seats around the kitchen table. Jeff sat next to Virgil, one hand on his son's shoulder; he took a gulp of coffee before addressing Dianne. “So. Now what?”
Di was holding Scott’s hand; she glanced up at him for a split-second before replying. “First of all, I should point out that my legal specialities are decidedly civil and corporate. I haven't touched criminal defence since I passed the bar. If it comes to it, we should seriously consider retaining additional counsel.”
“Surely it won't?” asked Grandma. “Colonel Casey understands that rescues go wrong sometimes—she’s never held us responsible before.”
“It's not Kim’s call,” Jeff explained. “The investigation’s her jurisdiction, but any decision to prosecute would be made by Alaskan law enforcement.”
“Di’s enough,” Virgil said. “I don't want anyone else.”
“We can come back to that.” Dianne tapped at her comm. “Virgil, we should have a recorded copy of your account, as close to the event as possible. Are you up to that right now?”
“I think so.”
She set the recording going, and Kayo watched silently as Virgil answered the questions, filled in the gaps she'd had for the past few hours: copper mine near Anchorage, fire raging through the shafts—five miners trapped in a broken tunneler beneath the flames—and one service engineer, Thomas Blackton, hiding in the sealed emergency ventilation system.
“I couldn't get down to any of them—the fire was blocking off the whole top of the mine, and the ground was too unstable for a Mole pod.” Virgil inhaled, slowly, shifting unconsciously closer to his father. “But some of the system controls were still online—not much, but—the one remotely useful thing I could do to keep the fire away from the five miners was …” Jeff patted his back. He swallowed and continued. “I could redirect it, into the secondary ventilation system.”
Kayo envied the lack of emotion in Di’s response. “Where Blackton was sheltered?”
He nodded.
“I'm sorry, Virgil, I need you to respond verbally.”
“Yes.”
“I see. How certain were you of the status of the five miners?”
Virgil tensed.
“Simms,” Scott protested.
“I have to ask. Everyone else will.”
Virgil’s fingers curled tight around his cup. “John had been in contact with them previously, they're the ones who called, but—by the time I'd figured out my options, it’d been a couple of minutes since we'd been able to raise them.”
“Life sign scans?”
“Too much heat to know either way. We—Dad and John and I—ran the numbers, tried to guess how much oxygen they'd have, the temperature level, figure out if they were still … It was pretty much fifty-fifty at that moment. Odds decreasing every second. And at that point we couldn't contact Tom, either—we were pretty sure he was still safe, but there was too much interference to talk to him. But we knew it was almost certain survival of one versus coin flip on five.”
“And then?” Di pressed, very gently, when he didn't continue.
“I made the call,” Virgil blurted, then sucked in a breath. “Neither Dad or John tried to influence me either way. They’re not culpable. It was my decision alone.”
“I understand. Decision to do what?”
“I used the mine vent control system to force the fire away from the tunnelers and into the shaft network where Tom was. And then I went down into the burnt-own zone and found the five others, and—it was too late. They were dead. I murdered Thomas Blackton for nothing.”
Grandma made a faintly strangled noise. Dianne tapped her comm, ending the recording. Jeff moved to put his arm around his son, but Virgil flinched away, bowstring-tense.
“It wasn’t murder, kiddo,” Jeff said softly.
“I killed him. Knowingly. On purpose. How is that not murder?”
Kayo could see the muscle in Jeff’s jaw working. “Would it have been easier if I’d ordered you to do it? Instead of giving you the choice?”
“You think I want to foist off the blame?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Would you do it again?”
The words, coming out of her own mouth, surprised Kayo as much as anyone else. She swallowed as five sets of eyes turned to her. “If you were to go on another rescue, right now, and be faced with the same dilemma—sacrifice one for the chance of saving many—or let the many die without putting up any kind of fight—no other options—would you do it again?”
Virgil opened his mouth, closed it—hugged his arms around himself—then nodded.
“Scott?” Kayo asked, without taking her eyes off Virgil.
Scott took a second to respond. “I’d do it too.”
“Jeff?”
The older man cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
Kayo leaned forward and placed her hand on the table in front of Virgil. “And so would I. A bad outcome doesn’t mean it was a bad decision, Vee.”
Virgil hesitated; then, slowly, unfolded his arms, took her hand, and squeezed it.