Spoilers for Tunnels of Time. All characters copyright ITV, Weta etc etc.

Fixing a Hole

I panicked. There's no other explanation for it- I panicked. That rat faced weasel was going to let them all die and walk away with his dirty little secret. For what? A pocket full of trinkets? That little speech of his... then trying to act all innocent. And what exactly was that crap about people being for a lifetime? Did he know what he was implying there? That my brother and our friends were nothing but obstacles in his way? Dammit, I should have … gaaah!

Scott grit his teeth so hard his face throbbed. He continued to pace his room. Up and down. Up and down. The soles of his shoes squeaked on the laminate flooring with every precise about turn. He ran his hands through thick, dark hair. Stroked his chin as he paced and thought, paced and thought, going over the day's events, or at least, his part in the day's events.

If it hadn't been for Virgil, I'd have flattened that shifty eyed sneak. I was this close... this close.

He swung his arms out, executed another about turn and paced back across the room. Thoughts whirled, his brain hurt with them. Why did I do it. Why didn't I do it?

Why am I so angry all the time?

He tried to think of the last time he wasn't wracked with worry or guilt over one of his brothers. The last time he felt truly relaxed. He was dismayed to find he couldn't think that far back. Was it before mom died? As long ago as that? Jesus, that's a helluva long time ago. There's got to be a time I wasn't freaking out over a bloody nose, a dislocated finger, a scraped elbow or a broken arm.

But try as he might, the eldest Tracy brother could only come up with all the times that he fretted over the welfare of his younger siblings, watched over them like a hawk, backed them up against potential bullies, made sure they were all safely home at night from whatever misadventures they'd gotten up to during the day. Acted as peacemaker when they squabbled among themselves. Gordon broke my best toy. Alan won't give me back my Squidward. Virgil's making fun of me. John won't let me use his telescope. There was always some deal that needed brokering, some emotional bribery thing going on, trying to be fair to everyone without being seen to take sides. It was ongoing, all the time, every day. Allie and Gordon, the Terrible Two. To think that they had actually calmed down since those days!

Scott glimpsed himself in the mirror as he reached the other end of the room. He stopped abruptly.

Holy crap, is that me?

He drew closer to the mirror. The eyes that looked back at him were not his own- suppressed anger boiled like a dangerous undercurrent in their ocean blue depths. His lips, normally smiling and full, were pressed tightly together in a grim line. His strong, defining eyebrows hung low over his eyes. He rubbed both hands over his dimpled cheeks, feeling the light, sandpapery stubble of a whole day's growth. He opened his mouth wide and cracked his jaw muscles. Rolled his head from side to side. His neck bones crackled. Emotion welled up in him from a place he thought he could control, had always been able to control, until today. Until that man, that … that …

Rat faced weasel...

"How dare he jeopardize my family and everything we've ever worked for! People are for a lifetime? People are for a lifetime?"

Virgil was in the kitchen looking for something to eat that wasn't burnt, frozen or raw, when he was jolted by a sudden shriek of rage coming from Scott's bedroom and a resonating bang that was loud enough to suggest that whatever his brother had done, it was not going to be pretty. His heart froze and lurched into his mouth. And then, to his utter relief, Scott himself appeared, his feet pounding down the hallway. Running towards Virgil but not seeing Virgil. Running to get away from something. Something bad.

"Scott! Whoa there, what's wrong, fella?" Virgil put his arm out as Scott approached, but once again Scott threw him off, pushing his stockier brother aside as if he weighed no more than a feather.

"Leave me be," Scott shouted. "I've got to get out of here. Got to breathe some air."

Virgil raised his hands, palms outwards. "Okay, Scott. You know best."

Scott had almost reached the patio doors when he suddenly stopped in his tracks. Virgil swallowed hard as his older brother whirled around like lightning.

"You better believe I know best," he said tightly, his eyes flashing. "You shouldn't have stopped me, Virgil. You should have let me deck that murdering freak!"

Virgil blinked. "Whoa!" he said again. "That's pretty strong. 'Murdering freak'? You mean the Professor? Scott, he didn't..."

"Oh, spare me, Virgil. I don't need to hear that I was better off turning the other cheek. I wanted to bust his nose wide open. I wanted to hear bones breaking." Scott walked up to Virgil and fixed the younger man with a hard stare that made Virgil visibly flinch. "He would have let them all die. That smarmy little speech of his was designed to fool everybody. Think of it, Virgil! We'd have been hoodwinked by that rat into believing he did all he could to save our brother, and all the while he'd be laughing behind our backs while they lay dead in that tomb. We'd have had to go in with the Mole to retrieve the bodies. No one else could have done it. And he would have attended the funerals..." Scott's voice cracked. His jaw shook. For one frightening moment, Virgil thought that his big brother was going to cry, but to his relief that didn't happen. Scott worked his jaw muscles, ground his teeth together, and the fire in his eyes extinguished any tears that might have been forming.

Someone else was coming down the hallway. Virgil tore his gaze away from Scott, backing up to see who it was.

"What in tarnation was that noise?" cried Grandma, her purple suited figure coming around the corner. "I thought the roof was caving in!"

"Oh yeah, that bang," said Virgil as Grandma came over to stand at his side. "What the hell happened, Scott?"

Now breathing heavily, Scott's expression softened and turned sheepish. "I punched the wall," he admitted. "Hard enough to make a hole."

"You did what?" Grandma made it sound like the worst accusation in the world, and yet at the same time, the most concerned. She darted across to Scott, ignoring his protests, reaching for his arm. "Show me, Scott. Stop being so darned stubborn- just like your father!"

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Virgil had to quickly suppress a snicker before Grandma heard him. But his chuckles soon died in his throat when he heard Grandma gasp out loud and saw the condition of Scott's hand. The bruised and bloody knuckles, the swollen fingers. The whole of Scott's right hand looked twice the size of his left one. Scott winced at the lightest of Grandma's touches. Virgil could see how ashamed his brother had suddenly become under the scrutiny of the Tracy matriarch.

"Why did you do it, Scott?" the elderly lady asked, softly. "Why?"

"Because he deserved it," said Scott, in the smallest voice Virgil had heard him use in a long time.

"The wall deserved it?"

Scott lowered his head. Said nothing more.

"Scott, dear god, I think you've broken it."

"No, it's not broken, see..." Scott wiggled his throbbing fingers, emitting a low moan of anguish at the resulting knife-like pain that shot through his knuckles. "I swear it's not broken. I'll be fine."

Grandma gently stroked her eldest grandson's fingers. As she did so, the tears finally came. Scott heaved a sob, a cry of pain that came from somewhere so deep inside him, a box that had been kept closed for so long, that it physically hurt his ribs as it left his body.

"Hey, Scott," said Virgil, awkwardly. "I'll just..." He motioned with his hand to indicate he was about to leave the room, but Scott shook his head.

"No, Virgil. Stay. I want you to stay. Please?"

"Well, okay. But..." The raven haired engineer felt his own voice catch in his throat. "Scott. I don't like seeing you like this. He isn't worth all this anger. Lady Penelope made sure he was punished for his actions. Punished in a legal way, a way that'll hurt him far more and for far longer than if you had socked him in the jaw."

"I was gonna break his nose," Scott muttered through gritted teeth. Meanwhile Grandma had pulled a bag of frozen vegetables from the freezer and placed it gently against Scott's injured hand.

Kayo appeared. No one even heard her stealthy approach until she was actually standing in the kitchen in front of them. She was perspiring slightly, sweat darkening the front of the scruffy old t-shirt she was wearing. Her legs were bare, her shorts streaked with dirt. Her long, dark hair had come loose from her ponytail and several long strands of it clung to her dampened neck and face. There was a graze on her left knee; a fresh bead of blood hung ready to spill down her shin.

"How do you even do that?" asked Virgil in no small measure of amazement.

"I fell over while running," she drawled, completely unconcerned about what she looked like.

"No, I mean... materialize out of thin air like that. Where did you come from, the sky?"

Kayo cocked her head and fixed Virgil with a silent 'judging you' look that she had no doubt picked up from John. Then she noticed Scott with the bag of frozen vegetables in his hand, the embarrassed look on his face, and Grandma hovering over him, clucking and fretting like the Mother of all Mother Hens.

"What happened?"

Scott smiled weakly. "I guess you could say the wall got in the way of my hand."

Kayo raised one eyebrow. Scott tried to maintain eye contact and found that he couldn't. He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.

"Gordon's alive. You do know that, don't you, Scott? Lady Penelope and Parker, they're alive, too. Despite what they went through, they weren't hurt. The only one who's hurting is you."

Grandma looked up sharply, but remained silent.

"Ah... I'm gonna go check up on the wall," said Virgil, finally deciding it was best if he leave the room; it was beginning to seem a little crowded now that Kayo was here with her zen philosophy. He would put himself to much better use by doing something practical in the meantime. He would fix the hole that Scott had made; fix it to look as good as new. Maybe after he'd fixed it he'd hang a painting over it. Virgil hadn't painted in a while. Maybe he would paint something especially for Scott. Something positive to look at. Thunderbird One soaring through the sky, scarlet nose cone pointing up, always up. A silver bird heading south, on to the next adventure, sunlight gleaming on her flanks. With their eldest brother at the helm, his gloved fingers, his gloved unbroken fingers, firmly clasped around the controls. Tough. Brave. Undaunted.

Fixing a hole in the wall was the easy part, Virgil told himself as he came to the doorway of Scott's room, stopping for a moment on the threshold. But fixing the hole in Scott, whilst not an impossible task, would take just that little bit longer.