#supermenau

Supermen!AU - Intro|One Thing|Superman
Number Four - Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|Part 4|Part 5|Part 6|Part 7 | Part 8

I wrote most of this today and the words flowed wonderfully. Happy Mum’s Day to me :D

As always, many thanks to all those who left comments, reblogged and liked the last bit. Also to the amazing @the-original-sineater​@onereyofstarlight​ and @katblu42​ for reading and amazing support ::hugs you all tight::

There is a big angst warning on this one. No one is in a good headspace in this at all.

I hope you enjoy it anyway.

-o-o-o-

Thunderbird Two was gentle and strong. That was what the news channels claimed. There had been many a documentary that discussed the International Rescue operatives and all the work they did, and each brother had been described to the best ability of those who had been rescued. There was almost a cult of grateful people out there and their commentary on Thunderbird Two was that he was gentle and strong.

At this moment, Virgil Tracy felt neither.

Grandma’s alarmed call had Virgil at Scott’s side within seconds. His big brother was unresponsive and all scans were screaming a decline of vitals steeper than their already ill little brother.

A bed was set up beside Gordon and they were all left helpless to watch Scott decline with him.

Grandma kicked every Kryptonian out of the infirmary for fear of infection.

She had arguments from both John and Virgil, but her word was law on this Island, hell, this planet, and they had no choice but to obey.

John returned to his determined search for a reason, poor Eos taking the brunt of his enquiries.

Virgil…

Virgil had his own determination and went over and over and over Gordon and Scott’s movements leading up to this hell.

He had never moved so fast in his life. Their computer network, already burdened by John’s efforts, struggled to keep up despite Eos’ ‘improvements’ over the years. It was when his carpet started smoking that Virgil broke.

Falling to his knees alone in the middle of his room, he felt the world falling around him. All his strength, all his knowledge, and he couldn’t stop it from happening.

All those years ago, it had been the same. For all he could do, he couldn’t save his grandfather. He could still see those blue lips as he broke ribs trying to revive him. They were as cold as the snow, the only warmth tingling as Virgil leant over desperately trying to breathe life into him.

But Grandpa was gone.

Gor.

Kal.

His plea was in a language not of this world.

Hunched on the floor, distracted by grief, he didn’t hear her approach, but Grandma’s hand on his shoulder was soft. “Virgil?”

Only years of habit restrained his reaction.

The worry for him in her eyes broke what little heart he had left and suddenly he was in her arms and crying on her shoulder.

It had been Grandma who he had to face after his failure to save Grandpa. Grandma who had held him when he didn’t deserve it. Grandma who told him he had done his best.

He didn’t have words.

Grandma’s strength was so much greater than his own.

She rubbed circles across his back just like she had then.

“They are still with us. There is still a chance.”

He pulled away gently and was caught by her blue gaze. Eyes that couldn’t produce heat and were limited to such a tiny fraction of the light spectrum, but somehow they saw deep into his soul.

Her hand reached up and cupped his wet cheek. “This isn’t your fault, honey.”

He closed his eyes. “I can’t…” But there was so much he couldn’t, he couldn’t put them into words. Dad’s words bounced about his brain, ‘You can’t save everyone’, but his brothers weren’t everyone. They were his brothers. Two of four refugees from a planet that no longer existed.

He couldn’t.

But suddenly on the other side of the house, John broke. There was the sound of furniture disintegrating followed by…Vir closed his eyes…a wall. There would be no keeping Jon on Earth if they lost their brothers. Not for some time at least. Alan, Dad, Grandma, Tanusha, Kyrano and Hiram. Family kept them grounded, but Jon always sought the stars. His brother was looking for something and had been all his life. Virgil wasn’t sure what it was, but something pulled at him.

The loss of Kal and Gor…

Virgil drew himself together. With Kal down, Vir was Eldest.

The thought hurt more than anything he had ever experienced. But as Eldest, John was Virgil’s responsibility, even if they barely remembered the culture that demanded it.

Virgil stepped back from his grandmother, her gaze following his every movement.

“We all love you, Virgil, don’t forget that.”

And he saw fear in her eyes. Fear of more loss.

He reached out and touched her cheek. “I know. We know. And we love you more than you can know.”

His face was wet again.

But he turned towards the door to his balcony. Half a blink and he was in the sky, chasing down his broken brother.

-o-o-o-

Time was a thing to be manipulated. It varied depending on the amount of energy applied. Thought adapted to speed and speed equated energy.

Slower speed enabled more time and thought could laze away. The faster he moved the faster he thought, so time was elastic, slowing to his exertions.

It took him the same length of time it would to cross his bedroom to reach Thunderbird Five. Despite his ability to locate the wandering satellite being far from as precise as that of his space brother, he still managed to lock onto it faster than Three ever could.

The satellite sat silent and calm, her lights bright in the darkness. He flew around her twice, wincing at the cold death of vacuum on his skin.

He finally found his brother sitting on the lip of Five’s gravity ring. It was slowly spinning and Virgil had to match its rotation to face his brother.

Hovering in front of John, Earth passed in a lazy circle around them as if they were the centre of the universe.

John was dressed in his usual cotton shirt and shorts, the material now burnt, brittle and leaking the last of its oils and moisture into the unforgiving vacuum around it. His brother was haloed in a barely visible comet’s tail of disintegrating cotton.

Virgil had no doubt he looked similar. Another reason to hate space. He should have changed his boots before leaving the atmosphere, they were his favourite pair.

Another reason was the lack of sound. Virgil had no doubt that was one of the reasons why John was outside his ‘bird rather than in it.

But although sound was as much as breath to Virgil, he did speak other languages.

He drifted closer and closer to his brother, wary of him skipping off into parts of space Virgil would have difficulty locating him in – the Moon was a definite hidey hole that Virgil despised.

And John knew it.

Perhaps this was the reason why he was on Five and not in some lunar cave like last time. John was here because he wanted company.

Maybe.

There was so much hurt of Virgil’s own, it was hard to see through it.

John looked up, aquamarine lit by the passing Earth in a rainbow of blues.

In space, there were no tears, no breath. Everything that made them appear human, fell away and only the Kryptonian remained. Hard-shelled, strong, resistant, fuelled by an adopted sun.

Virgil lifted his arm and part of his shirt disintegrated, floating away and leaving his bicep naked to space. He reached over and drew his brother into a gentle embrace.

John resisted at first, but it was little more than habit and he eventually let go, falling off his ‘bird into Virgil’s arms.

No longer connected to the force of Five, their trajectory drifted and they clung together slowly spinning away into the darkness.

John was holding him as much as Virgil was. There were no words, but the love was there.

It wasn’t until Virgil instinctively shifted their movement into a more terrestrial direction that John pulled away. He didn’t let go, but he forced Virgil to look at him and shook his head.

Virgil pressed his lips together. They were needed. Their time was limited. Letting go, Virgil signed in ASL. “We’re needed.”

John’s eyes flared as he signed back. “To do what?! There is nothing!”

Virgil’s heart stopped. His hands shook as he signed the truth. “Our family needs us.” A tremble. “I need you.”

John grabbed his hands and brought them to his bowed forehead. The motion was intimate, between family, and the grip John had on Virgil would likely have crushed human hands.

But he needed those hands to speak.

He slipped them carefully from his brother’s and made the signs he didn’t want to. “This is not like Before. This is Kal and Gor and we are loved.” The shake in his hands was back. “Not the same.”

John grabbed his hands again and Virgil let him. What they had experienced Before coming to Earth had affected them all differently. It had given Kal the urge to drop his name forever, and a defensive skin of so much depth Virgil feared he could not reach through it to his brother some days. Vir chose not to think of Before. Jon had no choice as nightmares continually reminded him. His age made him particularly vulnerable at the time. Gor claimed to barely remember, but Vir had comforted him in the night enough to know red light haunted his dreams as much as it did the rest of them.

The blues, greens and yellows of Earth were blessings on so many levels.

John was shaking his head again, his forehead rubbing erratically against Virgil’s knuckles.

Virgil was imprisoned by his environment, no sound, only light.

Pressing his lips together, he dragged them closer to Five. A flicker of red light and he etched his heart into the shell of his brother’s Thunderbird with his heat vision. “You are needed.” He wrote it in Kryptonian script. Only his family could read it.

Especially John.

John, whose eyes were wide, caught between outrage at the damage to his ‘bird and the risk taken…and the emotion in those words.

Virgil took the opportunity to take back control of his hands and sign vehemently. “I need you, Jon! I can’t do this without you!” And the wave of emotion he had been holding back threatened to crash down and destroy him, his hands shook so badly he could barely make out the words. “You are needed.”

-o-o-o-

Landing back on Tracy Island with his brother in his arms was far from any kind of victory. Barely decent, the remains of their clothes doing little to help after a determined re-entry Eos would be explaining away for the next week, Virgil stumbled off the balcony into the lounge and into the arms of their family.

Grandma wrapped him in cooling blanket as Dad took John from his arms and did the same. Murmured words in his Dad’s deep voice rumbled across the room as he led his brother away.

The air stank of ozone and burnt hopes.

“How are they?”

Grandma’s voice was quiet. “Still in decline.” She said nothing more, leading him to the showers and a clean set of clothes.

He didn’t waste time, held up only by the speed the water could fall on him. Clean, he donned another comfortable flannel shirt and jeans, leaving his feet bare in denial of the loss of his boots.

Grandma was waiting for him in the hall. He didn’t beat around the bush. “I want to be with them. There is nothing I can do out here.” He dipped his head. “I need to be with them.”

His grandmother straightened, a mixture of defiance and fear in her eyes. “We still don’t know what is causing this! Scott was with your brother when it took him. What if it takes you too?!”

The fear in her voice spiked and he instinctively gathered his hands around hers, holding them first close to his heart and then to his forehead, almost exactly like John had done to him earlier. “Grandma, I can’t sit around and do nothing while they die!”

“Virgil!”

“I love you, Grandma.” He held her hands to his forehead a solid moment before gently letting go, turning and walking off to the infirmary.

Perhaps it was foolish. Perhaps it was his form of fleeing to Five. Perhaps he had chased down John because Virgil knew he was going to have to do this. Perhaps he wanted to save at least one of them…in case… But he couldn’t sit apart from brothers who needed him.

Even if he couldn’t help them.

His ill brothers were exactly where he left them as he quietly closed the door. A glance at the monitors revealed that Scott was actually worse than Gordon.

Virgil sighed as he stepped in between the two beds and picked up the chair there. Sitting down, he eyed Gordon. His little brother’s pale skin was almost translucent. Virgil reached out and touched his cheek. His skin was cool to the touch and there was no reaction at all. Oxygen hissed through a cannula attached to his nose and he was being fed through an intravenous drip that a couple of days ago would have been impossible to install.

Then Virgil forced himself to look at Scott. And yes, his name was Scott, Kal was a dead name.

But Virgil couldn’t help but see his defiant leader of a brother, even here, pale and wan. He, too, had a nasal cannula and drip, put there by Virgil himself some hours ago.

He reached out to touch Scott and found him as cool as Gordon, and just as unresponsive. Both seemed determined to just slip away, never to return.

Never to smile again, never to laugh, never to sigh at the other’s joke or poke fun in return. Just gone…leaving Virgil behind when he had vowed to follow his brother anywhere he chose to lead.

The Before time, when his big brother had first confided their father’s plan to send Kal to another planet because this one was doomed.

Only Kal.

Kal had told only Virgil at first, his big brother’s immediate reaction one of defiance and argument, horrified that his three brothers were to be discarded and left to die.

It had been Virgil who suggested another way - contact one of the ancients, find out what was really happening before confronting their parents.

The ancients were a group of AIs developed long ago who had stepped away from their biological progenitors in favour of creating their own civilisation.

Their history was full of determination and conflict both within themselves, but also with their creators’ descendants. Currently the two species were at peace, but considering why Kal was contacting them, that was not likely to last.

What he didn’t expect was to find most of the intelligences gone. Only a few remained, enough to keep up appearances, along with a few who refused to leave.

Eos was a young ancient, one who knew what was happening, one who believed the biologicals deserved to survive despite the entire situation being their fault. It was she who revealed the truth to Kal, it was she who chose to help them, she who infected their family home and the capsule Jor was preparing. The calculations could only support one person and that person was to be Kal. Eos didn’t agree and neither did their firstborn.

What followed had rent their family apart and that capsule, altered beyond recognition was what had left Krypton that last day.

Eldest was his everything and he had Virgil’s everything in return. While he adored his Earth family and would protect them with his life, there was a bond between Virgil and Scott that defied even that.

So there was a small, ever so small, part of Virgil that hoped that whatever was taking his brothers, would take him too.

It was an hour before he realised that was what was likely going to happen.

He had been resting his head on Gordon’s bedside – he had been taking turns sitting with both of them, talking, humming, once even singing a Kryptonian lullaby in the vague hope he might get a response. Grandma had obviously decided to let him have this time by himself, though no doubt Eos was in the servers watching like a hawk. The AI did love all of them in her own way. She was just as Kryptonian, even if no longer in flesh.

But lifting his head was suddenly so much harder than it should be. He persisted despite the sudden realisation that this was likely it.

He looked up at Gordon, loving him as much now as ever, despite the screaming in Virgil’s head. A glance over at Scott, his brother was exactly as he had been moments before.

Virgil turned back to Gordon. Still pale, still unresponsive, still far too quiet. Hell, the only sound in the room beyond the faint breathing of his brothers, was the scratching of the two crabs in their glass bowl.

Virgil blinked. When was the last time those two had been fed?

Gordon would kill him if his pets suffered while he was ill.

Discarding the obvious idiocy of that statement considering his own sudden condition, Virgil pushed himself to his feet. Nothing responded as it should. Everything was slow and weak, including his thought processes. He couldn’t recall if these crabs needed daily feeding or less. Gordon would not be impressed. But considering they were agitated, a little food wouldn’t hurt, would it?

He cursed his sudden infirmity.

Regardless, he stumbled over to the bowl. A small jar of food sat beside it and Virgil frowned at the instructions. He squeezed his eyes shut as they blurred repeatedly, shifting between the visible spectrum and those outside it.

His heart thudded in his chest.

He dropped a few food pellets into the water. A shaft of sunlight had caught the edge of the bowl refracting through the glass and bouncing off the ornamental rock at its centre. Concerned the light wasn’t good for the marine crabs, Virgil leant over to move the bowl a little.

A wave of weakness washed over him and the bowl didn’t budge.

The green rock flickered at him in the sunlight as if to taunt him.

He frowned even more as that rock faded in and out of spectral range. What the-?

He reached into the bowl and grabbed the rock out of the water. Holding it up to the sunlight, he struggled to focus at the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. In the visible spectrum it was little more than a spotty rock. In ultraviolet light it glowed a sickly green, its crystalline interior so much more than what it appeared.

Virgil didn’t know what the hell it was. Nothing like this existed in all his mineralogy experience.

Another wave of weakness washed up his arm and over his body.

Oh god, was this it? Was this what was making them all ill?

As if in answer, Virgil’s legs folded under him, throwing him to a floor harder than it had ever been. He narrowly missed hitting his head and barely kept his grip on the damned rock.

If this was what was causing this, there was something he could do. Finally something he could do.

He pushed himself up onto an elbow and grabbing the chair from this side of Gordon’s bed, dragged himself to his feet.

The door, he had to get to the door, and get whatever this was away from his brothers.

It fought him.

Where earlier he had flown into orbit at the speed he could cross his room, the distance to the infirmary door seemed more distant than the stars themselves.

But he could feel the illness radiating out from the rock. Green, sickly, and life-sucking.

He stumbled into the wall and found it was all that was keeping him on his feet.

Water dripped from his hand to the floor as if teasing him to follow.

He pushed on the door handle.

And he was falling through the door.

He landed hard and took out a side table as he fell, a vase crashing on top of him, blue shards of glass flying everywhere.

An alarm went off, but all Virgil could feel was the pulsing heat of the rock in his hand matching his heartbeat.

He had to get it away from his brothers.

Falling onto his side he pulled himself along the floor. Pain spiked in his hands, his knees, it was a frightening sensation that took him back to his childhood and Before. Red rock and crystal shards. “I’m sorry, mother, so sorry.” He had to keep going. Kal was depending on him, his little brothers needed him. Little Gor-El was only small, Jon-El not much bigger, they needed him.

“Virgil!”

And John was there. “No! No, get away!” He attempted to push Jon away. He needed to be protected, he shouldn’t be here, it wasn’t safe.

Strong arms, ever so strong, grabbed his wrists, far too tight. Something snapped and the rock fell, clattering across the hardwood floor.

Virgil groaned collapsing into those arms as they caught him. The rock flickered green as it rolled away, taking him with it into darkness.

-o-o-o-

TBC