Chapter 12: Fall Together Redux

Notes:

Once again, my deepest gratitude to my wonderful beta, Soleil-Lumiere.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Fall Together Redux
"Gordon-"

And Gordon is looking at him, impatient, full of wanting, needing, to just get on and do, and Virgil's asking him to stop, wait, take a moment, just a moment to be here and be safe and be his little brother.

And it's not enough.

"Virge, I gotta go. It's okay, it'll be okay."

A world of maybe, a perilous perhaps, but Gordon is smiling at him, not grinning, a real smile.

"Don't worry so much."

A quick squeeze of Virgil's forearm and he's gone, that fast, and Virgil is still working on the words that will hold him to his promise.

It'll be okay.

He's gone, and that means Virgil has to step the fuck up.

He can see how quick and smart Gordon is, how good he is at this stuff, running doubled-over across the hilly terrain. Bent so low he flows across the turf, and Virgil is torn between watching him and watching the anarchists with equal intensity, knowing that they have the power and the weapons to stop that flow in a heartbeat.

A last swell of the hill and Gordon is gone from his sight completely.

Alright. Okay. Time to focus.

It will take Gordon about twenty, twenty five minutes to get around the headland, at least. Virgil takes a second to recognise that he has absolute confidence that his brother can manage that, even in these high seas. All he has to do now is stay out of sight and watch. That's doable, if painful; the minutes crawl past as he witnesses the machine being fussed over by these deluded and dangerous idiots, as they work to stabilise the canopy that will hide them from others, from justice.

Well, not if the Tracy boys can help it.

He counts the minutes under his breath- an old trick, practised with Scott, getting the seconds exactly right so that his minute is perfect. The machine is set into a stand reconstructed on the spot as more of these people make it over from the submarine. Seven now, clustered near the weapon or coming up from the beach.

Virgil feels cold, even though his suit is proof he can't be. He feels urgency, and fear, but his act of courage is to wait motionless in the face of both until the time is right. His is the essential task, Gordon's the diversionary, pointless if there's not something to be diverted from.

The sea booms under the tiny land bridge to the west, louder than ever with these waves.

And almost lost in the boom, the crack of a firearm.

It's coming from Gully Beach, and it stirs up the seven men as if a celestial stick has been stuck into their terrestrial ants' nest. Five go running to the gully, two remain behind, first staring after their companions and then bending back to the machine, setting its deadly purpose into readiness. More planes to be plucked from the sky, more families to be devastated by their ruthless ideology.

Which is when Virgil grabs the metal rod, vaults the wall, and runs.

He's always been fast, even when lumbering under the weight of mechanical armour, his great strength propelling him across the ground in long, powerful strides. Now that strength is sending him with such speed towards the canopy and the men and the machine beneath it that he barely realises he's doing it.

One man looks up at the last second but Virgil is not stopping. His fist is ready and the man's head snaps backwards as if it's met a slap from God.

The other is so shocked by Virgil's sudden appearance that he fumbles for the pistol in his belt, not even shouting, mouth open but useless with the fact of Virgil's body slamming into his and sending him hard into the ground. One punch, two, and Virgil is getting to his feet, mind astonishingly clear, almost calm. His focus is now, his task is here, and he has always been a man who can summon his all for the needs of others.

An array of buttons and dials and relays meets him, but Virgil doesn't care. He doesn't need to understand this thing, he needs to destroy it. The antithesis of what he does instinctively, but that which destroys must be destroyed, and Virgil spends only a few seconds working the basics out before he raises the steel rod above his head and brings it down with every ounce of power he has, point first, into the dial marked 'Output'.

And again, and again. Sparks fly, delirious, and the steel brightens in their light, alive again after so long, bringing light once more to Rona. Each spark correlates in light with the popping sounds coming from the beach, short and bright and hard.

The fifth blow, and something goes beyond a spark into a brilliant burst of energy that knocks him backwards with its force onto one of the men already out on the floor.
Smoke, spurting and acrid, billowing from the machine as more sparks fly into the canopy and the rain, a miniature electrical storm rising from the ground in feeble imitation of what the Rona skies can bring.

There's no shout, no howl of outrage, because Gordon is good at what he does and he's keeping five men, more, busy down there in that small space, and he has to be because now Virgil's focus can shift that is a lot of noise he's hearing, shouts and firing and he needs to be there, now, this task is over and he needs to be there.

Except everything is suddenly quiet.

It takes him a moment, stunned by the explosion as he is, to realise. But it has definitely gone quiet in Gully Beach, and that might mean Gordon has won, but there's an instinct, raven-dark and vicious, that tells him different.

He drops into a crouch, watching, ready, and something in him spears like ice into his heart as he sees the first figure coming up from the beach and it's not blue, it's not blue.
The man is looking behind him, gesturing, shouting, and then there are three more people – and the one in the middle, helmet gone, blond hair darkened by rain, is fighting and struggling and oh god, he's alive. Gordon's alive.

No one's looking over towards the weapon, everyone's attention is being hijacked by his outrageous little brother who has of course been capturing the spotlight whenever he could, however he could, since he was two.

One of the men raises a gun and whips it across Gordon's head. Gordon sags, but comes back up, kicking outwards, and the man's knee pops sideways. Even a hundred yards away, Virgil can hear the scream.

Virgil stands up from the crouch, aware of how pointless it is, knowing that his part of the task is done and now he just has to get to Gordon. There's no cover between him and the four people by the gully, so there's no point in subtlety. One last glance at the still-spitting wreckage and he's turned to run towards his brother.

Which is when he sees the leading man raise his arm and hears a crack and sees Gordon jerk and sag but this time he doesn't come up, he hangs there, blue and yellow and red, and the man with a broken kneecap is still yelling but the other two reach for Gordon, take him, they take Gordon and they stand on the top of the small cliff and they swing him once, twice before swinging him the third time into the air and outwards off the cliff.

A small sound, a gasp of denial, but Virgil has no more energy to spare. Everything he has left is going into this thighs and lungs and heart, because he is running, and he's always been fast but never like this. There's a shout, and the man who shot Gordon, oh god he shot Gordon, is turning towards him and lifting his arm and Virgil doesn't hear the shots he knows are coming towards him but it doesn't matter. They can shoot him through the head, his heart would keep pounding, his legs keep working, until he found Gordon again.

Close enough now to see their expressions change to fear, because they can see his face. They know he has death in his eyes. Close enough now to barrel through the man with the gun, taking the two seconds as he does so to grab the man's head and wrench it around so hard the crack is like a gunshot. Another man, gibbering, backing away in terror, another on the ground, and that's good, that's all that is left, and Virgil doesn't care about them anymore.

The cliff edge rises slightly, tufts of grass flattened towards the sea by the wind whipping across the land, and Virgil keeps running, always been fast, keeps running, pounding against the ground until his feet meet nothing and he is falling, arms still pumping, down and down and down into the heaving sea.

The meeting is brutal, and he loses his breath and his sight, nothing but churning white water around and above him, and he'd panic only there's no time. Gordon is somewhere in this, and how can he find him?

Because he'll float. His suit, the buoyancy chambers embedded in there, he'll float, and he'll float with his face to the sky.

So Virgil needs to find the air.

And he does, graceless and floundering, but he finds the grayness of sky, and there, close and quiet and still, he finds his brother, too.

The little brother who is never quiet, never still, and now the only movement comes courtesy of the waves tossing them both.

Virgil says something, maybe his brother's name, maybe just a prayer without words, and then he is fighting the waves, bringing everything he has and is to the last, simplest task of his life.

To reach his brother, and hold him.

He can see Gordon facing upright, his eyes closed, his mouth a line, white, so white. But near enough, one last push and he's near enough for a hand to reach out and grab him, pull him close.

"I've got you," he says, his mantra. "Gordon. Gordon, don't you dare. Don't you dare."

And there must be magic in his voice, because he feels it, the moment Gordon stirs.

"That's it, that's it, little brother, come on." And Gordon raises a hand to clutch at Virgil's arm, but there's no strength there, nothing at all, and Virgil is afraid, so very afraid now.
Already they're thirty metres out from land, and the sea is sweeping them out further. Away from Rona and the strange peace they'd found there. Out into the wildness of water and sky, where nothing would be found except the last thing.

Gordon was saying something. Of course he was. Gordon would speak past the end, if he could.

"The sea," Gordon says.

"Yeah, we're in the sea," Virgil says. His brother mutters something, then sighs and seems to settle in Virgil's arms.

"Going home."

"Yeah, Gordy, yeah." Virgil holds him just a little tighter as they ride the next swell, as the land disappears further from their sight and the wind takes them away from the bloodshed, away from the world. "We're going home."

Notes:

This is where we leave Part One. Part Two is on its way. I do realise this is almost literally a cliff-hanger... I hope you'll come with me in Part Two, where we find out what has been happening with (most of) the rest of International Rescue.