Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds

Spoilers for 3.22 "Buried Treasure"

Today, John mused as he carefully stayed quiet on the comms, had not been Scott's day. Even now, the rescue long finished, Scraps and her, well, scraps, deposited safely away from WRMs (and with promises to hit Gordon up first when she sold the outdated tech), the comms were full of nothing but frosty silence. The lack of anything at all from Thunderbird Two, when usually Gordon never shut up and Virgil despite his complaints enabled the noise rather than silencing it, was an indication that both brothers had yet to forgive Scott for the chaos that had been a successful yet unsuccessful mission.

The apologies from Thunderbird One had long since petered out into an awkward and slightly upset silence. It was unusual to say the least for Scott to seem unsure about anything, but even Thunderbird One wasn't quite flying right – an awkward speed somewhere between keeping pace with Two and leaving her behind. Their eldest brother couldn't work out if he needed to try and keep mending bridges, or let things settle first.

This wasn't going to be resolved by the time they got home. Muting his end of the channel with his flying brothers, John floated over to open a new channel directly to Alan. The youngest needed warning of the black cloud approaching at approximately Mach 2, if only to know to stay out of the way, or at least to not wind any of the brothers up more than they were already.

Truthfully, John didn't consider Scott at fault for anything that had happened. Not really, anyway. Maybe he should have listened to Gordon about not taking the mint condition figure out of the box, but the sink hole was more or less entirely the WRM's fault and, if he was honest, John's. Scott had been an unwilling passenger in what, for him, had been a disaster of a rescue through and through. The one who had told Gordon where to surface, and consequently where to lead the WRM, had been their very own Eye in the Sky, because John cared less about well-sculpted topiaries and more about his brothers not being munched by a mechanical monster.

It was telling how upset Gordon was about the figure that he hadn't pointed that out to Virgil, who was intent on taking out all of his artist's ire on their eldest and genuinely didn't know who had decided where they should surface. John had considered taking the heat off of Scott and admitting that himself, but while that might endear him to Scott, getting involved meant picking a side, willingly or not. It would do less to clear Scott's name and more to invoke a full on battle with the lines drawn at a fair two on two.

John didn't want a battle. Not now, when things were finally going right and Scott was somehow finding moments to be not stressed out of his mind. Virgil and Gordon might be fuming away at ruined antiques and foliage, but John couldn't get the image of Scott playing with the figure, even if it was just something as small as pulling the stretchy arms, out of his head. When was the last time Scott had played with anything? More than that, he'd gone out of his way to apologise to the gardener, attempted to stop Two from causing more damage, and refused to use the Mole Pod where it would wreck the lawn. The Scott of barely a week ago would never have done any of that, forging his way through with the mission and ignoring anything not directly relevant.

The old Scott, the one from when Dad was still around and he didn't have the weight of the world on his shoulders, had attempted to resurface. To John, that was worth a ruined collectable and destroyed bushes – and in a few hours, once they'd cooled off, he knew his brothers would agree.

Unfortunately, that wouldn't do anything for Scott's bad day in the meantime. Brains was rightfully delighted about his successful battle with the Hood, even if there was that one problematic issue amongst the otherwise perfect result, but John didn't think that would do anything towards sparing Scott the wrath of the engineer for the loss of yet another pod. Again, not his fault, but like Virgil and Gordon, Brains wasn't going to care that much about that. Then, Mechanic's bad news would probably shatter whatever remained of Scott's temporary stress-free mood and they'd be back to square one.

John didn't particularly care to see that too soon. He re-opened the line to Alan.

As far as my chaptered fics go, this has very short chapters. Then again it was supposed to be a drabble. Whoops.

I got feels from Scott's behaviour in today's episode okay.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari