A day late, but this is my addition to #virgiltracyweek Day 6: August 19th - 'Brothers'. My other contributions to this prompt-filled week can be found on my tumblr.

Disclaimer: I do not own Thunderbirds, in any incarnation; only the instances within which they occur in my stories. All rights and ownership go to the Gerry Anderson Estate, Carlton International, Granada Ventures, StudioCanal/Working Title/Universal and now, ITV, Pukeko and Weta Workshop. I am only borrowing them and I promise to return them when I'm finished.

"Jeff…" Lucy whispers at the door to the baby's bedroom as he walks down the hallway; her hand over her rounded stomach, the other pressed against the doorjamb. "You need to look at this…"

Jeff frowns, quickly crossing the small amount of space to peer over his wife's shoulder at what has captured her interest.

Their youngest son, nineteen-month-old Virgil is sitting on the floor at the window with his hand on the glass, looking through it at something on the sunshade on the outside of the window.

He's babbling quite happily to himself, and at first, Jeff smiles, thinking that Lucy is just showing him their son in one of his alone-moments, but then he realises that Virgil is looking at the glass, rather than through it, and from the little bit of inflection that he has in his voice, like he does when he's talking to his brothers, or Lucy and his father, the little boy seems to be addressing someone on the other side.

Virgil is just under two years old, and he's only just beginning to talk, a fact that concerned his parents, because both Scott and John were stringing words together before they were even twelve months old. Virgil certainly used the word 'na-no' enough when he didn't want something, but other than that his language was more or less incomprehensible.

That's why what Jeff's little sandy-haired boy says right that moment is so astonishing.

"L'k Vir'gie… Kent!" He lets out a little squeal of self-congratulations, and claps his small hands together, then taps the darkened glass and babbles inconsistently again.

Lucy and Jeff stare at each other with wide eyes. How does he know Kent's name? His twin brother died three days after the small boys were born, and aside from conversations that Lucy and Jeff have had without any of the boys present, they've not mentioned their deceased youngest boy since his funeral.

This is not out of any sense of not wanting their son to not have any knowledge of his birthmate, but on the flipside of the argument, it would not be fair for them to continually signpost the fact that he had a twin, with Virgil being a child who has every right and entitlement to develop and grow as his own person, undefined by an infant who did not survive any more than thirty-six hours.

It doesn't lessen the love that Jeff and Lucy have for their lost child, but they refuse to forsake the happiness of one son for the absence of another, but Jeff has to admit that he's somewhat emotional at the fact that Virgil does remember Kent somehow, especially considering the strong fraternal bond that Jeff has with his own twin, Will, and subsequently, their own youngest brother; Benjamin.

It is a well-known fact that Virgil has four brothers. At twenty-two years old, he's nearly lost almost every single one of them at least once, and then some. But what not many people know, is that not only is third Tracy son a twin, but that if it wasn't for a tragic, saddening twist of fate, he was once destined to have five brothers instead.

Their family doesn't really talk about Kent all that much, reasonable when it is said that one shouldn't live in the past, but Virgil grew up as the odd man out in his sibling set; with a pair before him in Scott and John, and Gordon and Alan after, he was not one of the older boys, or one of the younger, but rather existing in a small niche all his own.

Some part of him - undisclosed to anyone aside from his father, and that back when Virgil was still in his childhood - does occasionally wonder if he wouldn't feel like such a lone wolf in his family if he'd had the presence of the brother that he shared his birth with. He doesn't doubt that his siblings love him, but he can't help but feel left out sometimes either. He has nothing of Kent but a copy of the first and only photograph ever taken of the two of them, and the carbon-copy verbal iteration he used to beg his parents on his birthday every year, when they celebrate both boys, even if it hurts all of them more than not.

Scott and John just barely remember the first fourth Tracy son, as do Dad and Grandma, and when he does have cause to think of his twin, Virgil often finds himself feeling irrationally jealous that they do recall Kent, and he, the one who has the most right to claim some sort of more strengthened memory to him, doesn't remember him at all aside from a deep, unresolved yearning for the other boy.

Despite the fact that he has no choice but to be content with what he does possess, he still does, even now, continue to imagine what his brother would've grown up to be like. If that heart condition hadn't killed him, Virgil dares to allow himself to wonder what Kent's interests would've been. Would he have been a musician too, a mechanic or a literature buff? Would he have looked like Virgil; an identical twin, or if he would have been fraternal, like Dad and Uncle Will were? On occasion, Virgil ends up asking himself if Kent had lived long enough, would he have been able to become a part of International Rescue, and what form his participation would take.

Virgil knows that it's probably a bit ridiculous, but he has always been a dreamer, more so than any of his practical-minded brothers, though he has his own moments of overly-logistical, hyper-analytic exuberance, but Kent Slayton Tracy, though not existing in a physical manifestation on the earth, still resides in Virgil's family, even if they don't really say much about him. It's an unspoken rule, and an unofficial one at that, but Kent's still their brother, even if they never truly knew him.

Maybe that's why Virgil is such a bear about his brothers looking after themselves properly, getting the proper treatment for illnesses and wounds, and the appropriate medical attention, as protocol (and common sense) demands. As the one in training to be the field medic of International Rescue, and an assistant physician to Brains and his number of MD qualifications, he's a little like Dr Bones McCoy from the USS Enterprise in nagging his brothers for medical check ups and the like. That's not even regarding their father's stringent protocols for the matter in the first place, but with his siblings' litany of past and present physical and mental deficiencies that come back to haunt them in often the most brutal of ways, Virgil knows that it's probably reasonable to peg this instinct to protect and, illogical as it is, (because he absolutely hates it when the tables are turned back on him) on the fact that he has already lost one sibling, and he'll be damned if he loses another.

Especially when, even if they don't quite have the significance of the twin factor, Virgil still has all the emotional and physical bonds to his grown brothers, and he knows that it will hurt just as much, if not probably more to lose any of them than it does to not have Kent. He's already nearly lost all of them at least once; to a myriad and varying degree of absolutely effed-up situations, and there's just absolutely no way it's going to happen ever again. Not if he can help it. He won't be able to stand it, so it's just not going to happen. Not on his watch.

And if his brothers bitch at him for it, well that's not his prerogative, is it?

He'll deal.