A/N: If gore is something that bothers you, do not read. An exploration of the more disturbing aspects of rescue work from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old. Takes place in the 2004 movie-verse. Oh, how I wish I'd been able to explore everything that I could have, or wanted to, explore – but this just would've been too long, and it would not have flowed well. Please R&R! If this is a story you'd want to see more of, let me know in the review section – and let me know what you'd like to see explored further.

Alan was out of his seat and halfway across Thunderbird One's hangar before his oldest brother had even finished shutting the rocket down. He ignored Scott's questioning shouts. He knew he'd pay for it later, but for now he just needed to be alone.

The fourteen-year-old all but sprinted for his room, making it there and not quite managing to shut the door behind him as he dashed for his bed, dove to the other side of it, and sat against the wall, eyes screwed shut, hands wrapped around his midsection, breathing as deeply as he could.

He hadn't expected for there to be so much carnage. And really, that was the only word for it. Bodies lying here and there, blood spattered on the pavement: it was carnage. It was horrific. It was not what he was expecting.

He'd always wanted to be a Thunderbird, but, somehow, he had never stopped to realize what that meant – the things he'd have to see, and do, and that for every few people they saved, there was going to be one who didn't make it. Because this was rescue work, and rescue work is not pretty.

The teen sucked in a deep breath to dispel his sudden nausea when he remembered with horrified disgust the scene he'd come across in the bowels of the collapsed building.

The rubble. His own voice, calling out, asking if there was anyone who could hear him. He'd been forced to crawl, on his hands and knees, the framework for the ceiling above him having collapsed to barely the height of his waist. Technically, he was sure it wasn't even safe for him to be in there. But they were International Rescue, and this was what they did. They took risks so nobody else had to.

Alan had crawled along, with only the beam of light from his helmet to show him the way. Eventually he'd come to a dead end; for a moment he tugged experimentally at a piece of debris, to see if he could move it out of the way, but this brought dust and plaster raining down from what used to be the ceiling, and a deep groaning noise somewhere far above reminded him that if he shifted the debris too much, ten stories of hotel could come crashing down on him. He'd be flattened.

It was a sobering thought, and it brought with it a sense of claustrophobia such as he'd never felt before. For a moment he could forget that he was a Thunderbird – after all, he wasn't, really. This was only his second mission. A training mission, at that. He'd only been allowed into the building, at all, because his brothers had been tied up rescuing a group of survivors from the only section of the building still standing, and a police officer had rushed up to him, informing him and a handful of resting firefighters that someone had reported hearing shouts coming from beneath the rubble. The hole had been too small for any of the adults to climb through with their bulky coats and pants; but Alan, in his International Rescue flight suit, squeezed through with ease.

That he wore the flight suit, though, did not change the fact that he was fourteen years old. He wondered how the police and firefighters would feel about that, if they knew. But underneath his IR helmet, nobody could see his face. He supposed that, if the world found out one of their heroes was a kid, they'd be outraged. That thought made it almost easy for him to justify turning tail and crawling back out of the collapsed building as fast as possible.

But he'd fought that instinct. Because although Alan had heard nothing, someone had reported shouting coming from this very corridor, and, fourteen or not, he was a Thunderbird, and the Thunderbirds did not just leave people to die. So he stayed in the collapsed hallway, not recognizable as a hallway anymore, listening to the groaning and settling of the building growing more and more frequent. It was going to collapse further; that was inevitable. Even in his inexperience, he knew this by instinct.

Alan shouted a few more times, but nobody answered. As the ground shook beneath his hands and knees, the teenager had been forced to admit that there was nothing more that he could do. And just when he'd been about to turn around, he'd seen them: the fingers. The hand. The arm, buried in rubble up to the elbow. And he'd rushed forward.

He was no medic, but even he knew when there was no pulse in a victim's arteries. He tried to dig the body out, pulling away some of the smaller, free-standing pieces of debris, revealing the elbow, then finally part of the upper arm – and then he pulled the arm away entirely. It had been severed at the shoulder.

Alan had turned and thrown up. His way forward was blocked, anyway, and so he hastily retreated, not wanting to see any more. When his brothers had eagerly asked if he'd found anyone, all he could do was shake his head. They read in his eyes what he couldn't say out loud. Scott had called over the radio to the authorities, letting them know that there was another body, and where it could be found. Someone, Gordon, probably, had forced a bottle of water into the youngest Tracy's hands.

It was only his second rescue, and he knew he was still very, very inexperienced, but never in his worst nightmares could he have ever imagined that there'd be so much carnage. The word kept replaying itself in his mind, and he could come up with nothing better. Nothing worse. Nothing more appropriate.

He shook his head, swallowing back the bile that rose in his throat, taking another deep breath as he took in the familiar sight of his bedroom.

There was a knock at his door, unexpected, and he jumped.

"A-Alan?" his best friend called. "Are you in here?"

The teen inhaled shakily, clearing his throat.

"Hey, Fermat," he called, and only now that he was speaking out loud did he realized how out of breath he was. He cleared his throat again, hugging his arms slightly tighter around himself, breathing more deeply, suddenly not sure he was getting enough air.

"How w-was the rescue?" Fermat asked eagerly, making his way over to Alan's bed, following the sound of the blonde's voice. The younger boy's face broke into a frown as he came into Alan's line of sight. "Wh-what are you doing behind the b-b-bed?" he asked, confused. Alan sighed, but couldn't figure out a good reason for being where he was, so he shrugged.

The two boys surveyed each other, and Alan felt suddenly incredibly uncomfortable. Was that disgust on Fermat's face? Did he know about the body? Did his friend know that he had puked his guts up like a coward and left? Did he know that Alan hadn't tried harder to make sure –

Stop that thought right there, Alan Tracy, the teen scolded himself, but it was too late, and in a rush of adrenaline, he was suddenly on his knees, trying to stand, breathing faster at the exertion.

Alan hadn't tried harder to make sure that the owner of the arm had actually died. What if he – no, she, Alan corrected himself – hadn't bled to death, or been killed in the building collapse? What if she had been there the whole time, alive, on the other side of the debris, waiting for a rescue that was never going to come?

The room started to spin as Alan made his way around the bed, and Fermat actually reached out to grab his arm. It was only then that the teen realized he was swaying on his feet. Black spots erupted in his vision. He didn't care. He had to go back – he had to grab Scott, and get in Thunderbird One. They could be back to the accident zone in forty minutes – would that be enough time? Could he save the woman's life?

The house shook violently, signifying the landing of the massive green monster that was Thunderbird Two. His father was on that ship. He had to get to his father, to confess his mistake, to tell him what he'd done.

"Alan!" Fermat called, grabbing him by the arm again and holding him back as he started to wobble his way almost drunkenly toward his bedroom door. "Whoa! Alan! Calm down!"

"Fermat, I've got to go back," Alan said, trying desperately to explain to his friend. "There's a woman and she was dead but I don't think she really was and I've got to go back there. I left her!"

"Wait… Alan, you left a woman trapped?" Fermat asked, frowning.

"Yes. No! She wasn't… it wasn't her, she wasn't there, it was her arm, but she wasn't there, except I didn't look, and now maybe it's too late…" And suddenly the black spots overtook his vision. Alan felt sharp, intense pain as his knees collided solidly with the ground. He needed to get to the accident scene. He needed to get the woman out.

In his panic, he managed to get his legs tangled together, and he couldn't get off the floor. He started breathing faster, fighting desperately to get his legs working. And all he could see was the severed arm. His imagination ran wild, and suddenly the arm was moving, fingers beckoning him forward, towards the rubble that he had never checked. Bile rose again in his throat, and he couldn't swallow it back. There wasn't even room for embarrassment as he vomited all over his bedroom floor.

"Fermat to anyone who's listening," he heard his friend's words clearly, heard the urgency in his tone, and knew that the younger boy was speaking into his wrist-com. By now Alan had figured out how to get his legs working, and he was fighting to stand up, but he was sweating and way too warm in his flight suit and the adrenaline was making him shaky. He couldn't fight the restraining arm that the smaller boy placed on his shoulder, keeping him seated.

"Go ahead, Fermat," he recognized the voice of one of his older brothers – possibly Virgil, but most likely Scott.

"I n-need you in Alan's room, now," the young teen commanded in a tone that Alan had never heard Fermat use before. It was an order, not a request, and Alan felt himself responding to it, not quite realizing he was the topic of discussion. The blonde blinked his eyes, trying to clear his vision, trying to get to Fermat.

There was silence for a beat.

"On our way," Gordon's voice came back, and Alan heard fear in his immediate older brother's tone, and he somehow worked out that the fear was in response to Fermat's tone of voice. Gordon had obviously noticed it, too. "What's happened?" Alan had the inkling, from his brother's slight breathlessness and the muffled sound of a heard of elephants, that his brother was running, and that at least one other brother was on his heels. He wondered vaguely where the emergency was.

"…Alan's h-having some kind of b-b-breakdown," Fermat answered. Alan didn't hear a reply. Was he having a breakdown? He didn't know… He was just trying to get back to the accident scene. He had to rescue the woman. That was all that mattered. The woman, the woman whom he had left there, to die…

He struggled to get to his feet, but once again his best friend forced him to stay seated. Alan felt himself grow irritated. Why couldn't Fermat understand the seriousness of the situation? Didn't Fermat care that Alan had left someone to die?

"No!" he shouted, finally managing to wrestle himself from Fermat's grip on his shoulder. He crawled halfway to the door before he felt his legs pinned down by a weight. "Fermat, no!" he screamed, panting heavily as black spots appeared again in his vision. "Let me go!"

"A-Alan!" Fermat shouted back. "Calm down! You're going to hurt yourself!" But Alan didn't calm down, and Fermat was forced to wrestle him into a sitting position and hold him down by grabbing him firmly around the midsection from behind.

"Fermat, what's going on?" Alan thought he heard the muted words coming from the direction of his belly button, and looked down in confusion to see Fermat's watch glinting against the lighting of the room.

"Fermat, let me go!" he shouted again. "I need to back! I need to go back! I've gotta save her! I've gotta save her!"

"Alan! Stop fighting me!" Fermat shouted. Alan was so surprised at his friend's outburst that, for a moment, he did as he was told. Then he thought of the woman who he had left behind and his struggles began anew. At some point he was able to break free, and before Fermat had a chance to grab him again he was up, sprinting from his room and down the hall.

He heard Fermat chasing him, heard his friend frantically relaying this turn of events to his brothers, but he knew that he was faster than the smaller boy and that his brothers were coming from the direction of the silos, which were on the opposite side of the house. He knew he'd never be able to take one of the Thunderbirds, not without explaining things to his family, and explaining would take too much time, more time than the woman had left, so he opted for the next best thing – he was going to take Tracy One, one of their jet airplanes. It wasn't nearly as fast as Thunderbird One or even Thunderbird Two, but he could get to the jet without having to take that precious time to explain what he'd done. He could explain later, when he'd rescued the woman.

Alan made it down the stairs and started running in the direction of the jet hangar. He took a turn too fast as he sprinted through the corridor and he crashed into the wall; he barely felt it as he bounced off and fell on his rear. He was up again quickly, but the brief delay was enough for Fermat to catch up to him. The smaller boy made a diving grab, knowing that Alan was about to do something reckless but that he wasn't thinking straight. Fermat was an instant too late and Alan dodged, sprinting off down the hall.

"Fermat to John," the boy said, no sign of a stutter in his voice. Despite the distance that Alan had put between himself and his best friend, the blonde was still able to hear the words through his watch, and Alan realized in a distant part of his mind that Fermat had accidently keyed in the team frequency instead of John's personal line. Not that it really mattered. Everyone was chasing Alan, and the blonde knew it. This knowledge only served to panic him further – if he was caught before he had a chance to get Tracy One into the air, then the woman would certainly die. If she hasn't already, Alan thought before he could stop himself.

"Go ahead Fermat," the older blonde Tracy said, and Alan noted the frustration in his older brother's voice, frustration borne out of the knowledge that while he was sitting on Thunderbird Five, unable to help, Alan was very clearly falling apart at the seams.

"I know where Alan's going!" the young boy was breathless from the chase, and Alan put on a burst of speed, knowing he would soon lose Fermat entirely. "He- he's heading for the jets! John, you've got to stop him f-from being able to start the onboard computer! He can't fly without it!"

"FAB, Fermat," John said, and now Alan noted the sudden calm and sense of control in his brother's voice, as John realized that this was something he could fix – that he wasn't useless in this situation, up on Thunderbird Five.

No! Alan thought frantically. No! I need to go! It's the only way to save her!

Alan was nearing the hangar now, and he knew that as good a hacker as John was, Tracy One's onboard computer had been designed in part by Brains, and as such was nearly un-hackable. Brains himself might have been able to do it, but Brains wasn't on the island – he was currently in Brazil, attending a conference. If Alan could only get the jet's computer up and running before John managed to lock him out of it, then maybe he'd have a chance. John certainly would not risk doing anything that might harm Alan once the jet was in flight.

"Scott to Fermat, can you see him?" the eldest Tracy brother asked, also beginning to sound winded.

"N-negative, Scott, he's much faster than me."

"I'm going to head him off," Scott answered. "Fermat, double back and wait in the corridor near the silos, just in case he tries to run around the house and go that way instead."

"FAB," Fermat answered, and Alan cursed under his breath – Fermat may not have been able to catch him, but Scott was once captain of his track team, and that wasn't for no reason.

But Alan was already entering the hangar, and Scott was nowhere in sight. The blonde quickly boarded Tracy One. He burst into the cockpit and immediately began going through the start-up checklist. His hands were shaking badly and he fumbled as he reached for the buttons and knobs and switches, dropping the checklist on the floor twice. His heart stopped when he saw his eldest brother entering the hangar at a dead sprint.

"No!" he shouted. "No! I have to go! I left her!"

But despite his efforts, the jet wouldn't start.

"Alan," he heard John's voice through his watch, "Sprout, you're not going to be able to leave."

"No! I have to!" he shouted, not entirely sure whether John could hear him or not. There was no reply.

Alan didn't understand why John wouldn't let him take off; didn't understand why Fermat had made such a big deal of trying to stop him from leaving; didn't understand why Scott was now boarding the stairs to the aircraft two at a time. Didn't they know that Alan had left someone to die? Didn't they know that time was of the essence? Didn't they understand that if they left now, maybe, maybe they could get there in time to save her?

He was still frantically flipping switches, checklist abandoned now, just hoping for something to happen, when Scott made it into the cockpit. The jet, frustratingly, stayed quiet, the instrument panels dark.

Alan was aware of his Scott's presence behind him as the eldest of his brothers surveyed the situation.

"Alan," Scott commanded softly after a short pause. "Stop."

"No," Alan said, reaching for the throttles, stupidly thrusting them forward – forgetting that the engines weren't on. "No! Why won't this thing go anywhere? I have to go back! Scott, I have to go back!"

"Alan," Scott tried again, slightly more firmly. "Stop."

"No! Scott, she's still there! I left her! We have to go back! I can still save her!"

Abandoning the throttles, Alan turned his attention to the panels above his head, pressing every button his eyes alighted on. None of them had any effect.

"Scott to John," Alan heard his eldest brother murmur. "Did you secure the aircraft?"

"FAB, Scott," John answered quietly, and even through his panic, Alan thought he heard pain in his second-oldest brother's voice. Why did John sound that way? Had something happened to him? That was enough, for a moment, to get the young blonde to cease his frenzied movements. He glanced up at Scott, but Scott's face bore nothing but confusion. Yet when John spoke, it was with a tone of voice that somehow conveyed that he knew exactly what Alan's problem was. "He's not going to be able to start it up, let alone take it anywhere."

"No!" Alan shouted in response to John's words. He turned back to the dash in defeat, slamming his fist down once, twice, three times over the yoke. "No. Scott, please, I have to go."

Scott shimmied his way into the copilot's seat, and he deftly caught Alan's hands in his own as the teenager attempted once more to power up the jet. The eldest sibling held on firmly as the youngest fought to get out of his grip, but Alan was rapidly fatiguing, and Scott would wait him out.

"Al, stop fighting. You're going to hurt yourself."

"Alan," John tried again. "Bud, you're not going anywhere. I've got control of Tracy One, Sprout. She's not going to start up."

"But I have to go," Alan muttered, even as his body accepted what his mind would not, admitting defeat as his muscles relaxed. The young blonde fell backward against his seat, glancing up at Scott pleadingly. "I have to go. I left her. I left her. We could still save her. I have to go."

Comprehension dawned in Scott's expression, even as John sighed heavily through Alan's and Scott's wrist coms.

"Oh, Sprout…" John's tone bore deep pain, and, Alan thought, empathy.

Alan expected his brothers and his father to be angry, but nobody yelled, though Alan could hear their footsteps echoing in the com system so he knew they could all hear him, too.

"Al," Scott said gently, still holding his youngest brother's hands gently. "Who did you leave?"

"The woman!" Alan shouted. Why didn't anyone understand?

"What woman?" Alan couldn't understand why Scott didn't sound more upset; why he wasn't as frantic to get back to the rescue zone as Alan was.

"The woman under the building!"

"Sprout," John asked through the wrist com, and his voice was calm, soothing. "Did you find a victim when you were in the building?" They all knew that Alan had; they'd seen it in his face, in his body language when he'd rejoined them at Command and Control.

"Yes!" Alan exclaimed, glad that finally someone understood. "We have to go back! We could still save her!"

"Alan," Scott asked, and the teenager looked to his brother's frowning face. Alan felt a hot flash of irritation surge through him when he noted the complete lack of urgency, and indeed the utter confusion, that he saw in Scott's expression. "Was the woman still alive?"

"No!" Alan shouted. The insinuation that he'd leave a living victim behind was beyond insulting; it was criminal. "I'm not an idiot, Scott! I wouldn't leave a live victim!"

This only seemed to confuse Scott further.

"I know you wouldn't, Sprout. You're far too good for that." Scott seemed to be telling the truth, and Alan relaxed a little bit. "Alan, bud… If she was already dead, then why do you keep saying you need to go back to save her?"

"I…"

He was no medic, but even he knew when there was no pulse in a victim's arteries. He tried to dig the body out, pulling away some of the smaller, free-standing pieces of debris, revealing the elbow, then finally part of the upper arm – and then he pulled the arm away entirely. It had been severed at the shoulder.

The scene came back to him in vivid clarity, and Alan retched, Scott barely managing to grab an air sickness bag in time to shove it under Alan's chin.

Alan thought of the weight of that arm. It was heavier than he would have thought an arm could be. And it was cool to the touch.

The thought brought another overwhelming wave of nausea, and Alan vomited so hard that tears began streaming from his eyes. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, smearing dirt and plaster and grime from the accident zone onto his face. The smell of that plaster was his undoing, the taste of it on his lips making him gag. And then he was sobbing, hysterical, hiccoughing sobs that did not let up no matter how hard he tried to rein them in. He hardly noticed when Scott leaned awkwardly toward him, pulling him in for an uncomfortable hug and holding on tight. All he could do was grip his brother's arms tightly and cry into his neck, not caring how loud he was being or that snot was now pooling on Scott's flight suit.

It took almost an hour for the young Thunderbird to cry himself out, but eventually he simply ran out of energy and tears and could cry no longer. He rested his forehead against Scott's shoulder, beginning to notice how cramped up he was in the small seat, and knowing that Scott must be even more uncomfortable. But the eldest never complained, holding Alan and murmuring into his ear that he was safe, that he was loved, that everything would be okay.

"It won't," Alan disagreed softly when he found his voice again. "It won't be okay. I left her to die." He wondered if there was any chance she was still alive; but he knew, rationally, that too much time had passed now, and the injury was too severe. He shook his head once. "It's too late now. She's dead. Why wouldn't you let me go back?"

"Sprout," a different voice called from behind them, and Alan turned, startled and surprised to see Virgil, Gordon, their father, and Fermat sitting in the front row of the jet on either side of the aisle. How long had they been there, watching his breakdown? He blushed a little at the thought.

"Al, explain to us what happened down under that building," Virgil requested gently. Alan sniffled.

"I was crawling along," he said shakily. "There was no room. And it was so dark. I came to a dead end; there was too much rubble, and I couldn't get any farther."

Alan's brothers nodded their understanding.

"Go on, Sprout," John prompted from Alan's wrist, and Alan jumped – he'd forgotten that John was on the line.

Alan took breath and blew it out in a gust.

"I… I tried to pull the debris out of the way, but… some of the ceiling started coming down on me, and all around me I heard the building settling. I knew that if I disturbed the scene too much, that I could be crushed. I didn't think I had very much time before the building collapsed, as it was."

"You were right about that," Gordon muttered. Indeed, Alan had still been steadily sipping away at the water his brothers had forced him to drink at the scene when the remaining section of the building collapsed in a tidal wave of dust.

"I kept shouting for anyone who might be able to hear me, but nobody ever answered. I was just about to leave when I saw an arm. It was a woman's arm."

"What happened next, Sprout?" Virgil prompted, and Alan looked down at his hands.

"At first I expected her to be alive, but… she didn't have a pulse. And then…"

"Go on, son," the Tracy patriarch prompted when Alan paused, swallowing thickly.

"I… I couldn't just… she was buried, in the rubble, you know? And I knew I didn't have time, and I knew I wouldn't be able to drag her body out by myself, but I couldn't just leave her buried like that. I thought that… I figured if I could just uncover her, just free her from the debris, that…" But Alan trailed off.

"I understand, son," their father nodded once, closing his eyes in sorrow. "Go on."

"So… I did. I was careful not to touch the bigger pieces of debris, the ones that looked like they were holding up other pieces, because I didn't want to cause a cave-in. But the smaller pieces I could pull off. And I dug her out. But it wasn't…"

Alan retched again as he remembered the way the arm had pulled free of the concrete and plaster and dirt; the way, for a moment, he'd held the dismembered limb in his hands, not fully understanding what he was seeing. Scott reached over and rubbed his back as Alan spat into the air sickness bag. Everyone waited in tense silence.

"What did you see, Alan?" Scott asked, and everyone heard the dread in his tone. Alan wondered if Scott somehow already knew the answer.

"It wasn't her. It was just her arm. It had been torn off at the shoulder. Just… torn off. And I held it in my hands for a moment, and it was cold, and I just… I couldn't stay in there any longer!" The teenager wailed, desperate. Despite his physical and emotional exhaustion, more sobs somehow made their way to the surface.

"Oh, son. I'm so sorry you had to see that," Jeff sighed, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. Alan shook his head violently.

"No!" he shouted again, his panic renewed as he thought of what he'd done. "No, you don't understand, Dad. I left! What if she was still alive, under all that rubble? What if she survived having her arm torn off, and she was just waiting on the other side of that collapsed ceiling, waiting for me to come through and dig her out? What if she was just a few feet away from me the whole time, alive, waiting for a rescue that would never come?"

Silence reigned for a long moment. Everyone looked at each other, nobody quite sure how to assuage the youngest Tracy's fears.

"Alan," John finally said. "You said that when you tried to dig into the rubble, that some of the ceiling started to collapse on you, right?"

"Yeah," Alan grunted.

"Well, it sounds to me like if you'd tried to dig any further without special equipment, the whole building would've collapsed – not just on you, but on the woman, too. Even if she were still alive, Sprout, you couldn't have gotten to her. It would've killed you both."

"But I could've told you, and you could've saved her!"

"Honestly, son, I doubt it," Jeff answered sadly. "You hadn't been out of the building more than ten minutes when it collapsed. Even if you'd said something, even if we'd started to get our equipment together, we couldn't have gotten it into that small hallway – not without digging, and aside from taking forever, digging would've just made the whole thing even more unstable. It would've collapsed with our equipment in it. We all would've been stuck in the debris. And the woman probably would've been crushed, too, in the meantime."

"But I left her to die alone," Alan murmured in a small voice, tears pooling at the corners of his eyes before running down his cheeks.

"I really doubt that, too," Virgil murmured thoughtfully, and Alan looked up at his middle brother. "Having a limb traumatically amputated like that would cause severe bleeding, for one thing. Shock sets in pretty quickly. And I can only imagine the degree of damage that the rest of her body would've sustained, buried in the rubble as she probably was. There was probably severe head trauma, and I'd bet on internal bleeding, too. Sprout, she was probably dead long before you even got into that corridor."

"But the police reported someone shouting for help."

All of the International Rescue members, save for Alan, shrugged.

"You wouldn't believe how common it is, for people to mistakenly report hearing calls for help at an accident zone. It's not that they're lying. It's just… who knows. Sometimes there's really someone there, and sometimes there never was. I think sometimes people hear what they want to hear. And I think, sometimes, people hear a genuine call for help from another section of a building, and they misinterpret where it's coming from," Virgil explained.

"But we take them all seriously, because it's our job to save whoever we can," Jeff added.

"I guess… I just didn't expect to see so much… carnage," Alan admitted, the word again ringing through his head like an echo. Carnage, carnage, carnage…

"This was a really tough rescue, Al," Gordon sighed. "A really tough one. They're not all like this. Sometimes we save everyone. Sometimes we save most. But sometimes, like today, we get there too late to prevent death, and we hardly save anyone. It's the good rescues that keep you going, but it's the bad rescues that keep you up at night."

"How do you deal with it?" the teenager asked desperately. He didn't fully believe, despite his family's words, that he hadn't left the woman to die – and he knew that he'd carry that with him forever. There was a pause, and then, to Alan's amazement, a chitter of amusement went around the aircraft.

"I swim," Gordon answered. "Or I put dye in your shower head."

"I play my piano," Virgil smiled softly. "Or I'll paint. On the really bad days, I'll sit on my balcony, listening to music, watching the ocean – just trying not to think at all."

"Or he pulls his Smother Hen routine," Gordon muttered nastily, to which everyone erupted in laughter. Even Jeff ignored the crude hand gesture that Virgil send the aquanaut's way.

"I read," John answered through the com when the laughter had died down. "Or I eat. I've always been a stress eater."

"I train," Scott answered thoughtfully. "If I'm not running on the beach, then I'm in the gym. And if I'm not in the gym, I'm in the simulators."

"I worry," Jeff admitted. "I worry about all of you. And I spend my time trying to come up with ideas for safer procedures, better equipment, more durable machinery. And I invest my time in my work, because it's the only way I know to make sure you boys are taken care of."

"And you do a great job of it, Dad," John murmured.

"But no matter what, Sprout," Scott said, reaching out and squeezing Alan's shoulder, "we stick together. We talk to each other. We vent to each other. We roughhouse in the pool, we steal each other's leftovers, we argue over video games – we interact with each other, and we depend on each other, and we stick together as a family. Because that's why we went into this business, and it's the only thing that keeps us strong."

"I'm sorry you had to experience something like that on your second rescue, Al," Virgil sighed heavily, shaking his head. "I'm not used to it, and I've been doing this for years. I wish I could say that it gets easier, but it doesn't. All we can do is cope in the best way we can, and be ready for the klaxon to ring again. Because it always does. There are always more people who need saving."

Alan frowned, voicing the thought that had slowly been forming in his mind since they'd left the accident scene.

"I'm not sure I'm ready for this," he admitted. He was ashamed to say so. For years he'd been begging his family to include him in the family business, and now that they had, he was forced to admit that maybe they'd been right to keep him away.

But Scott smiled.

"None of us are," he informed his youngest sibling. Alan started. "No, I'm serious. But when you save someone… that makes it worth it. Just knowing that you made a difference, however small."

"If you truly don't feel like you want to be a Thunderbird yet, then we won't force you to, Sprout," John promised.

"But we're here for you. We believe in you. And we want you on the team, if you want to stay," Gordon added.

"…I think I need to take a little time," Alan admitted. "I want to train on the simulators. I want to observe rescues but not actively participate. Maybe run Command and Control, or join John up on Thunderbird Five for a while. I want to be a part of the team, but I'm not sure I'm ready to leave people behind in collapsed buildings."

"I hope you're never ready for that, son," Jeff stated. "But I totally understand what you're saying. And that's okay with me. You'll be a great Thunderbird, when you're ready – but you're fourteen years old. There's no reason for you to rush into this. I'm happy to have you learn Command and Control. And I'm sure John would love the company up there – goodness knows we could do with another space monitor."

"Absolutely," John agreed cheerfully.

"We'll get through this, Al," Virgil promised. "You'll get through this. It'll take some time, but with experience and with training, you'll come to understand that we just can't save everyone. That's a hard lesson to learn, but it's true. And it sucks."

Later that night, Alan's nightmare was interrupted when someone shook him awake. As Alan once again buried himself against his eldest brother and drifted back into a restless sleep, Scott watched over him, tortured beyond belief that he couldn't save his brother – not from the horror of the day's rescue, or from the pain of his own thoughts, or from the terror of his nightmares. But they would get through this, together, as they always had, and always would.

And Alan slowly but surely began to find a spark of hope within the carnage.