💬 3 🔁 56 ❤️ 91 · sad boys in the rain inspired by this WIP by @idontknowreallywhy: Scott’s run had lasted just over 90 minutes and, accor
There are many things I’m proud of about this chapter (which is probably my favourite) - but the biggest one is that it somehow inspired this beautiful art by @lenle-g 🥰 you are the greatest Len, thank you so so much again!
(Explanation for the reposting spree and links to everything so far here)
Resurface (MIA Series Part 4)
Chapter 34 - Redux
The storm finally makes landfall, can either Earth or Sky come out the other side unchanged?
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Have you got a plan?
Scott’s run had lasted just over 135 minutes so far. According to EOS, he had achieved three new personal bests over some of the steeper segments of the Island’s well-worn tracks despite the relentless downfall making his footing treacherous. He laser-focussed on the familiar path ahead, compensating for the slip risk. He wasn’t a fool, well aware that he was likely to fall and turn an ankle or sprain a wrist or something similarly irritating if he didn’t concentrate and he didn’t have time for that. So he concentrated. Because stopping wasn’t an option. He couldn’t even ease up the pace yet. Because if he did, he’d have time to think and… and… no.
He couldn’t let that happen.
He’d let too much happen already today.
He hadn’t even tried.
Scott! Have you got a plan?
Not yet. But I will in a minute…
What if he’d said yes? What if he’d been quicker to think? Was there something he’d missed? Some way through…
Wait, Scott! We need more data. Wait?
If I can just get down there…
Please, Scott, listen?
He spluttered as a gust of wind blew the deluge directly into his face.
Could you listen?
He’d promised he would, so he had.
He had. He’d listened and he’d done nothing and…
Aaaaaaagh.
He growled, shook his head and pushed harder, trying to drown out the memory of his brother’s voice, of all the other desperate voices, with the harshness of his own breathing.
Just… run. Uciec.
Every life he’d failed to save since the very first, clawed at him from the sides of the track. So many of them now. He pressed on, trying not to step on their hands.
Listen!
Wait?
RUN. It was the only plan he had for now.
His pulse thundered in his head as, predictably, the brother he least wanted to see right now joined the trail just ahead of him and jogged easily alongside. The only surprise was that it had taken so long.
Scott pushed his speed up a notch and his quads screamed at him. Good. Focus on that. The rain provided enough white noise that he could almost ignore the sound of the second set of feet pounding along the track.
He counted his own steps under his breath:
Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight…
His pace slowed a little as the path sloped upwards more steeply, his breath little more than gasping now… nine-ten-eleven-twelve-thirteen. Thirteen. Thirteen families torn apart. He staggered a little and immediately noticed but ignored the hand brushing his elbow. He pushed on.
Fourteen-fifteen-sixteen-thirteen-thirteen-thirteen-thirteen-thirteen…
All those people had believed in International Rescue. Believing for a miracle in blue.
Believing in him.
And he’d stood there… waiting… USELESS… and then it had all come down and it was too late and they were gone.
He hadn’t even TRIED.
“Scott, slow down. Please?”
No.
Can’t.
Uciec…
“Did that already. Didn’t turn out so well.”
“I’m sorry. But can we…”
“I need a minute.”
“You’ve had plenty, Scott it’s been…”
“You know best of course.” He regretted the snarling tone as soon as it emerged but he’d just have to add ‘being a good brother’ to the list of other stuff he’d already failed at today.
And when Scott Tracy started failing he really went to town.
His breath caught painfully in the back of his throat and his eyes blurred in a way he couldn’t blame on the rain streaming down his forehead. All those people. He hadn’t even tried… he hadn’t even…
With a hiss he shook his head and tried to blot it out. Something twinged in his thigh and he weaved slightly as he tried to shake it out. Of course little brother would have seen but he didn’t mention it and Scott ploughed on. The path turned and began to climb the shoulder of the caldera. Thunder grumbled away in the distance but he hadn’t noticed any lightning amongst the deluge.
“You know I was right, Scott!”
“THEY DIED! THEY ALL DIED, VIRGIL! GONE! JUST LIKE THAT!”
“AND YOU WOULD HAVE TOO!”
The unexpected volume finally brought him up short. Virgil didn’t shout…
But Virgil’s expression wasn’t angry. Scott turned away again, unable to process the agony in his brother’s eyes just then.
“Maybe I wouldn’t… there might have been something I could have done.”
“Sometimes there is nothing that can be done, Scott. Even by us. Even by you.” Virgil’s voice was small now. And it shook.
Scott keened quietly and hugged himself in an effort to control the muscle fatigue shivers that were beginning. He slowly shook his head from side to side, as if denial might yet change the outcome.
Virgil’s arms appeared around him and held on tight. The rain continued to slam into the earth around them.
“Sometimes there is nothing that can be done.” He repeated softly.
Scott had already parroted these exact words to the GDF officer who had, as usual, turned up too late to be of any use. His heart hadn’t been in them. Where his heart had been at that very moment was in the clenched fists of the woman he could see over the uniformed shoulder. Whose eyes had pleaded with him to make it untrue. The wife of one of the local first responders who had been trapped in the mine as it collapsed. The raw agony on her face as she hung limply over the linked arms of two friends and howled was too familiar.
A freak avalanche obliterated all in its path. A sabotaged fighter jet exploded on the runway. A prototype spaceship exploded into atoms.
The second solid hour of pushing past his limit wandered over and presented its bill and Scott folded at the knees.
Virgil caught him and held him up, like he always did. Even when Scott was unwilling to admit it was required.
“We can’t save everyone Scott… you know that. Dad always said so.”
“I didn’t even try.“
“You would have if there’d been a chance. So would we all. That’s why we flew all the way there. That matters!”
Scott blinked the sweat-rain-weakness out of his eyes and glared at a rock.
No, not weakness. She always said so.
He kicked at the rock and missed.
He wrestled back control of his limbs and straightened up and but continued to avoid Virgil’s eye which took some doing because his he could feel his brother eyeballing him as determinedly as the amply muscled arms were holding his torso hostage. Scott pretended to himself that this was why he was struggling to catch a breath. The rainfall increased in intensity and the sound of it filled his ears with fuzz.
“One of the wives… she just looked at me and I… I had nothing. Nothing to say to her. Nothing.” His thoughts sped away from his control even as his brother restrained his body from chasing them. “But what could I say? We’re supposed to stop it happening! I’m supposed to try… Can… can you even imagine…” he dragged in a breath and tried to stop his head swimming as the nausea rose “… how they feel when we fail? To know the person who made their life make sense… who they exist for, is gone? Just like that?”
“I don’t have to imagine.”
Virgil’s voice was quiet and flat, but cut through the air like a scythe.
Scott‘s racing mind ran smack into a wall. The chill of the rain was nothing compared to the ice that suddenly crystallised in every vein.
He swore, silently - he had no breath left to make a sound.
How could he have forgotten?
Already?
It hadn’t even been two months since he’d held his tormented and terrified brother in his arms and sworn he’d do anything. The reason he’d stopped today, for the promise he’d made was the knowledge of what he’d driven Virgil to. And yet somehow as soon as the path between he and the trapped ones had disappeared, the guilt had driven it from his mind. He’d lost his way. Again.
The thunder rolled more insistently. This time the flash was bright enough to penetrate his scrunched up eyelids.
Even if he had the breath he didn’t yet have the words. So he dragged an arm out of Virgil’s vice grip and hugged him hard. Virgil sagged into the embrace and Scott shifted the angle of one leg such that he was better able to support his larger brother’s weight. He had nothing left for anything more. The fury was gone, leaving only a gaping chasm where the pent up energy had been.
Scott’s breath deepened and slowed as they stood there, propping each other up. Even here, even like this, his brother’s presence was soothing. Grounding. It always was. It was why Scott had been avoiding him… he hadn’t felt he’d earned that comfort today.
The storm was right on top of them now, the roaring and the flashing almost synchronous. The palm trees creaked and groaned, the rain slammed into their skulls and gushed down the rocky track. The sea howled and tore itself apart on the shore.
And yet all Scott could hear was Mom’s song. Not with his ears, he heard it in his bones as Virgil hummed quietly into his chest. Suddenly he was in the deepest pit again, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to hold on to anything but his brother’s voice calling him home.
Only this time, he could answer.
And so Scott sung her lullaby to his little brother as the storm raged its way over their island and out across the Pacific:
You’ll soar through the sky
Or sail on the sea
And when you get home
That’s where I shall be
Go find your adventures
So fearless and free
I’ll wait for you always
As proud as can be
And if there is darkness
No hope you can see
My heart holds you safely
You’ll always have me
At the last line Virgil was gripping him so hard Scott could feel the skin bruising under his brother’s fingers.
“I am such a fool, Virg… I don’t deserve you.”
Virgil huffed a sigh.
“I’m sorry.”
“S’ok.”
“It’s not.”
“Was never gonna be easy. Thank you for stopping.”
“Thank you for asking me to.”
Virgil looked up at him, doing an impressive impression of a half-drowned puppy. But for once Scott’s heart didn’t melt at the sight of an adorable younger brother.
Instead it clenched with dread. Pale, heavily shadowed and his eyes dilated to almost black in the fast-fading light, Virgil seemed almost wraith-like.
This had to stop. He couldn’t keep doing this to them. He could see it so clearly now. The empty space in his chest where the hurt and the guilt and the rage and the despair and the fear had resided began to fill with a steely glow of determination:
He would burn the world to protect his family.
He’d do it without a second thought.
So why was he risking hurting them every time he tried to save it?
He kissed Virgil on the forehead then stepped out of the embrace to take his brother’s shoulders in his hands. Blue met brown and held them steady.
“I will get better at this. I promise. I… I don’t want to leave you guys. I swear it, Virg, please believe me. I never have. The only reason I didn’t give up and die back… back then was because I needed to get home to you. Because you called me home. I knew you were waiting for me. That hasn’t changed. It has never changed, not for a second.”
“Then… why?”
“I don’t knooow.” The bewildered schoolboy inside Scott betrayed his presence with a faint whine. “I don’t mean… It’s not… It’s just…” He took a shaky breath. “It’s hard for me to choose NOT to act. It’s hard to not TRY. It feels… I… I think I’m scared of the what if? What if I had done more… pushed a little harder and… it had turned out better? It’s hard to see the line where it isn’t worth the cost to try.”
“You can see it well enough when one of our lives are in the balance.”
“True… True. I guess because its the opposite? I’ve spent all my life worrying about how I can protect you all, so I have to restrain myself from stopping you going out there in the first place and… yes I know, I know…” Virgil’s single raised eyebrow said it all. “I’m the world’s biggest hypocrite.”
Scott sighed. Then shivered. His leg muscles sent a polite three-second warning.
“Could we sit down? I might have, um, overdone it a touch.”
“Who could possibly have predicted that?” There was a welcome undertone of humour in Virgil’s snort.
They landed inelegantly but side by side in the mud. Scott took his hand again and they rested a while, their clothes steaming gently in the warmer evening breeze that had pushed the storm ahead of it. A sprinkling of early stars peered through a gap in the diminishing cloud cover.
“I can see the line for you so I can learn to see it when it’s mine too. I’m going to keep listening, ok? Until you don’t need to tell me anymore.”
“Thank you.”
“But…”
Virgil stiffened.
“I need you to do something else for me too.”
“Anything.”
Scott considered his words carefully. He didn’t want to make the same mistake he had ten years prior and shackle his brother with an impossible vow.
“I need you to change your mission.”
“I don’t know what you mean?”
“The task you gave yourself when you were small… to show me that… that I’m worth more than I thought. You have Virg, you always have been doing that but now I see things more clearly… well… I have to take that one on myself.”
Virgil’s hand shifted in his as the younger brother sat up straighter, Scott could sense rather than see the shoulders being squared.
“That makes sense. I can’t be your self-esteem for you forever. But I will make damn sure you keep making progress on it. Weekly mission status updates, minimum!”
Scott laughed quietly at the grin in his brother’s voice. “I wouldn’t expect anything less. And you have your own task now too.”
“And what is that, Oh Great Commander?”
“If I’ve let Dad’s shadow shape me too much, you’ve let my… issues… shape you. I need you to find yourself again.”
Virgil tensed as if he was going to speak but no words came. Scott pressed on:
“You are so very much more than my keeper, Virg, but I’m worried you’ve pushed a lot of yourself to the side for me and I didn’t even see it happening. If I give you a break from being Scott’s 24/7 bodyguard and cheerleader, can you use it to give Virgil time to shine instead? I’d really love to see what might happen if you did.”
It was too dark to see his brother’s face but the happy relief in Virgil’s voice was light enough for both of them:
“I’ll see what I can do.”
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