Apr 18
But why does Tristan lay with his head *off* the pillow? Why?
seen from Russia
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from Netherlands
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from United Kingdom
seen from China
seen from China
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from China
But why does Tristan lay with his head *off* the pillow? Why?
At this point no one should be surprised
Upside-Down
(Issue no 51 - Whumpers-monthly)
(A Thunderbirds Are Go Virgil Tracy Whump)
“Huh-uh, huh-uh, huh-uh, huh-uh …Uhhhh!...”
I’m looking up at the ground, he thought.
“Shit,” he uttered, as the world went black.
Then, the world was bright again.
Too bright.
Virgil Tracy felt dizzy and sick to his stomach.
Because he was upside down.
“How in the hell… he mumbled to himself, "Ah. Right. Crashed the pod. Shit,”
He involuntarily gave in to the darkness once more.
The noise was deafening and it made his head pound harder as he came to.
“God, these jungle birds never stop squawking, do they?” he complained to no one. “Okay, Can’t stay like this. Can’t pass out again. Come on Virgil!”
He tilted his head towards his feet to see exactly what he was dealing with.
“Ah, for fuck’s sake,” he sighed, noting that his right ankle was twisted and tangled in a vine and is other leg was bent at the knee, hooked into a branch. Virgil’s stomach lurched and he tried to turn his head to prevent his vomit from spewing into his nostrils but he was only partially successful considering his dangling state.
“Uhhh,” he said, trying to keep his chin to his chest, “I’m fucked,”
The thought of seeing the tree branch through his leg made him heave once more but there was nothing left in his stomach to eject more than just a bit of bile and drool.
He felt around his chest for his comms only to discover that his baldric was cut to pieces, no doubt from the violence of the crash.
“Great,” he told himself. “Keeps getting better ‘n’ better,” but he did take solace in the fact that he had been in constant contact with John on this solo mission and his brothers would be on their way. But he also knew the serious consequences of hanging upside down for too long.
He couldn’t have them find him dead.
There were enough dead Tracy’s already.
He had to live – not just because he was too young to die and honestly was afraid that he would; he did not want to imagine his family’s pain.
“No dying here. Not today,”
He took the deepest, albeit most painful breath he could and tried to curl upwards toward his feet.
“Uuuurrrrhhh!” he screamed out in pain and strain. Instantly, some of his squawking avian companions flew off, startled by his bellowing – the sound of their wings echoing like thunderous clapping in the vast landscape as they took off.
“HOIST YOURSELF UP, MAN, COME ON!”
Virgil remembered his father’s words booming in his ears when he was just eleven years old.
Easier said than done, old man, he would think to himself back then.
“YOU ARE MY STRONGEST CHILD!”
Yeah, I’m a child...asshole, he would think as he glared scowling at his father. And then, the one thing he hated hearing him say came out of the man’s mouth,
“YOUR BROTHERS CAN DO IT AND THEY ARE SCRAWNIER THAN YOU! JUST A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE GORDON AND ALAN SUPASS YOU IN THIS! COME ON! PULL YOURSELF UP!”
Virgil cringed a little at the reminder of what those words did to him and to John and Scott who paled in comparison to him when it came to mass because they were taller. The words embarrassed and angered Virgil who hated the embarrassment it caused them. They were children for christsakes! Why was everything training and competition.
One minute he was too thick and stocky and the next they were too thin and weak in their father's eyes. He wanted to see them as men - or worse, as soldiers or machines and they were just boys.
There was no satisfying the man it seemed.
It was no secret to the other older two that he was not the biggest fan of their father. Virgil had many sides to his personality as did all the Tracy children, but he was the only one bold enough to show all of them, especially the softer sides of himself that tended to irk his tough and military trained father. Virgil wasn’t a pleaser like John and Scott who, being first took it upon himself to secure the man’s approval by emulating him.
Virgil loved his parents, of course, but he certainly did not idolize Jeff Tracy the way the world did. Virgil saw him for what he was – just a man as fallible as any other and he resented the pressure he placed upon their shoulders, especially after their mother’s passing. At least when she was alive she was there to buffer them from his urge to have them skip their childhood and rush headfirst into manhood.
And then, upon choosing heroism over fatherhood he blew into pieces before the eldest, raining down on him everything he was as patriarch to their family – rained them onto a nineteen-year-old who didn’t deserve to step into his father’s shoes and live his father’s life - under the cast of a big shadow, Scott was dissolving under, cell by cell, breath by breath, step by step as each year went by.
No, Jeff Tracy wasn’t Virgil’s hero but today, he needed to remember his father’s words so that Scott, John, Gordan and Alan wouldn’t have to crumble even further.
He must not die here.
He had to hoist himself up and NOW!
With each breath more difficult to take than the last, the paramedic in him knew his lungs were beginning to compress. His vision was graying as the blood was beginning to pool in his head as he struggled to keep it as upright as he could. The thumping of his heart in his ears was a clear indication that his blood pressure was getting higher. He felt drained and weak and listening to his raspy, gurgling intakes of air frightened him.
He had to move now before he blacked out again for what could be his last and fatal time.
“HOIST YOURSELF UP, MAN! THIS IS EMBARASSING AND PATHETIC FOR SOMEONE SO STRONG!”
He replayed his father’s angry words in his head to make himself angry enough to move upward to his caught foot.
After eight bone tiring attempts, Virgil, took a breath, painfully contracted his abdominal muscles and crunched himself upwards, the vision of his thinner and more agile brothers performing the task, replaying in time with his father’s critical words. The agonizing memories made the agonizing and impossible task achievable and with a loud grunt of exhaustion and pain, in two jerky movements, he managed to grab hold of his ankle.
Sweating profusely, huffing and puffing, he felt the corners of his mouth upturn, and he chuckled a little at the accomplishment,
“Heh…I…I did it…fuckin’ did it. Fuck you, Dad ..who’s the embarrassment now?”
Wriggling and carefully adjusting his arm to hook onto his leg, Virgil sighed, hoping that the vine would continue to support his weight. In spite of the wooziness from blood loss and shock and the gory sight of his left leg, he felt better being curled upright.
With all his might he hung on to his vine secured leg humming lightly to himself, trying to think of anything that would prevent his mind from shutting down and rendering him unconscious.
“Come on guys, where are you?” he attempted to say and like a miracle, he heard the engines of big brother’s craft approaching.
Time jumped forward from the moment he heard Thunderbird One’s engines roar when Scott was hovering beside him wearing his jetpack.
“There you are, he said gently moping his brow with a cold compress, “I need you to stay with me, Okay Virge?” Scott said with a smile that was failing to mask his concern.
“You've got yourself in quite a fix, here. And you know it's pretty bad and we’ve gotta cut the branch and we’ve gotta keep the impaled piece in place, yeah?”
“I …I know…s’okay. M’just hanging around,” he replied and tried to smile at Scott.
“Thunderbird Two is attempting humour, Thunderbird Five,”
“Copy that Thunderbird One. I heard it. Was pretty shabby too. How is he really?”
“Well, it's not great. He's in shock, blood loss, serious leg penetrating trauma and the scanner is pinging all over the place but now that I can see him in person, I think our strong man is tough. It won’t be long until Gordon and Alan cut him free from this tangle he’s got himself in,”
Virgil closed his eyes for a moment and flung them open when Scott tapped his cheek.
“No sleeping. Not just yet. As soon as you’re down and we’re in your ‘Bird, I’ll stabilize your electrolytes and hopefully your blood pressure will even off and I’ll give you something for the pain and some oxygen... take the stress off your lungs, yeah? Then and only then can you sleep. Deal?”
"Deal?”
Virgil nodded and tried his best to focus on Scott’s face while he was cut down.
“Here, let my hand go for just a second,” Scott told him, “I’m gonna lean you onto me. Alan is on the other side of you in his jetpack and we’re gonna hover you back to Tw0,”
“Hey Bro. Nice mess …but don’t worry we’ve got ya! You’re gonna be okay,”
Virgil chuckled a little at the youngest’s enthusiasm but was happier to hear Scott’s more reassuring tone.
“We’re gonna keep you steady while Gordon cuts the vine and then the branch. We 've got you. You're safe,”
Virgil nodded again.
“It’s gonna be a bitch so scream if you have to!”
“Really Alan?” Scott said with a hint of impatience and exasperation. “Tell me you don’t talk to our rescuees like this,”
“What? You’re always sayin’ try and lighten the mood,”
“Urgh…. How you doing Virge?” Scott redirected his attention to his severely injured brother.
But Virgil could only manage a grunt.
“Almost there Gordon? He’s fading fast!” Scott called out.
“Yep….just a little more…yep! You’re all clear!”
The youngest and eldest gently carried their now too-pale brother to the med-bay in his craft and Scott, with Gordon took care of his injuries while Alan set about clearing up the tools and getting ready to fly Thunderbird One back to base.
John remote piloted the big green machine to the nearest hospital in Manaus, Brazil while the other two kept the patient stable.
“How did you do it, Virgil? How did you get yourself as upright as you did?”
“Dad…heard Dad…his muh..mocking…an’ fer... first t-time….it h-helped,” he whispered, before a long groaning sigh escaped his lips, his head lolling to the side.
“He’s out,” Scott mumbled, “I’m gonna put an o2 mask on him to help him breathe. He…he’s um...he's exhausted,”
Gordon noticed the change in Scott’s demeanor. The concern morphed into sadness and disappointment and perhaps even shame. He wanted to ask Scott what Virgil meant but Scott just sat beside Virgil’s bed and took his hand, eventually resting his head on it.
Moving into the cockpit, Gordon raised John,
“Hey, Virgil’s unconscious. Scott’s sitting with him so I can fly her if you want,”
“Sure, thanks Gordon,”
John sounded the way Scott looked and Gordon decided he needed to understand what was going on among the three elder brothers.
“John, what Virgil mean when he said…
“I heard what he said,”
“So, tell me, cause Scott’s sitting there like someone stole his puppy,”
“You don’t know any of this Gordon, you didn’t know that side of Dad, so you won’t understand. You were too young,”
“I’m an adult now, John, so try me,”
John audible sighed a long deep sigh that matched the aura of his other two brothers and began to explain,
“Dad used to make us get out of tricky situations he thought we could find ourselves in and some of them were easier for Scott and me to do but Virgil …Virgil has always ben strong but he wasn’t as fast or as agile as we were and he wasn’t the greatest climber and he had a more sensitive side that he dared to show…a side that we never dared to…not to Dad. And lots of the time, Dad would try and embarrass him into doing something he wasn’t good at or struggled with and he always compared us to each other. It was …it was tough … on all of us, especially Virgil. And…”
“And?”
“And” John continued, “I guess, it was kind of ironic and kinda sad that today it took those shitty moments to get him to find what he needed to help himself survive today. It’s just…it’s bittersweet, ya know?”
Gordon scrubbed his hands over his face and took a deep breath, and sat back in the pilot's seat, wide-eyed at the shock of what he'd been told.
“I get it. I kinda know he was brutally hard on the three of you. I remember some things but not enough that it clarified anything,” Gordon started. “But even though it was a shit time and a shit thing to do to you guys, I’m glad Dad was like that in a way,”
“Yeah? How so?” John asked,
“Well, if Dad wasn’t an asshole in that way and turned your worlds upside down back then, maybe we might have found our brother hanging upside down dead today. Doesn’t make what Dad did or said right but if we can take one good thing from it, is that it was enough to make Virgil find something inside himself to turn himself right side up until we got there. Out of a shitty thing, at least we got that and our lives weren’t tuned upside down again today cause today… we didn’t lose Bear and he’s gonna be okay. We all are,”
Upside-down fig tree in Bacoli, Italy.
"No one is quite sure how the tree ended up there or how it survived, but year after year it continues to grow downwards and bear figs."
Credit: ArchaeoHistories
Brains' Notebook
Upside Down
⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️
To-Do List:
Assess TB2 for damage
Check FAB 2's engine cells
Notes:
Whilst I'm glad the rescue was a succees, I hope we don't make a trend of piloting TB2 underwater. She really isn't made for that and always comes back with some sort of engine trouble.
I'm not sure I'm getting anywhere with the T-drive engine. I know I can't give up, but I'm becoming less and less sure that I can do this.
⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️
@thunderversary-rewatch-party
🩶💚🧡💛❤️ Check In Post!!! ❤️💛🧡💚🩶
Press ❤️ when you’ve (re)watched:
TAG - UPSIDE DOWN
Avalanche + Upside Down thoughts
@thunderversary-rewatch-party
