A/N: So, I've been a Thunderbirds fan in a big way since I was eight, but I'd never really been part of the fandom until I started watching the new animated series. Now here we are. This was inspired in part by LenleG's Bring Our Starman Home, and if you've read that, you should have an idea of what you're getting yourself in for.

Also, for anyone who prefers the AO3 format, this story is crossposted there with the same title, but under the author username jontracy.

Enjoy!

"Are you sure there's no one who needs rescuing? A ship sinking somewhere? A collapsed mine? Please, John, I'll take a cat up a tree; I'm begging you here."

Gordon's eyes were wide and pleading, larger than life in the bluish tint of the hologram. But John hadn't been suckered by that look in years.

"You're the one who volunteered to be Parker's replacement for the day while he's on jury service," he reminded his brother without remorse. "In fact, I seem to remember you insisting that Lady Penelope not hire a temp, that you'd be thrilled to help her instead."

Gordon shot a nervous glance at something over his shoulder before leaning in closer to his communicator, scowling. John let himself drift back a little; he really didn't feel like counting his brother's nose hairs.

"I thought it was just gonna be driving her around a little, maybe going to tea, or whatever!" Gordon hissed. "But it's just shopping. All. Day. And most of these places don't even have comfy chairs! My feet feel like they're about to fall off. And like half the oxygen's been replaced with perfume! I'm probably gonna smell like Secret Seductive Flower Power or whatever until I die."

John suppressed a snort; encouraging Gordon's dramatics was a dangerous road.

"You still gonna try to tell me how great romance is?" he asked, contenting himself with a smug smirk.

Gordon pulled a face at him.

"I'm starting to think you might have the right idea after all, Space Ace," he said. "I asked Lady Penelope how many more stores she thought she might want to go to, and she just laughed."

John's smirk widened; he knew Penny was torturing Gordon on purpose. She liked to shop, sure, but even she rarely devoted whole days to it. She'd even invited Kayo along this time, ostensibly for some "girl time," but really to give her the opportunity for some payback. Gordon really should have known better than to mess with Kayo's shampoo. Women never forgot.

Before John could respond to his brother, a flashing alarm appeared on his console. The kind that meant someone else was in trouble, not the kind that meant he had five seconds to get his helmet on and hope for the best. He squinted at it, noting its designation and relative location.

"I've gotta go," he said.

Gordon brightened at once, like a Golden Retriever spotting a tennis ball.

"Is it a rescue?" he asked. "Do you need me? I can-"

"It's coming from space," John cut in. He wrestled his amused expression into a stern look. "You made your bed, and now it's time to lie in it. Give Lady Penelope my regards."

He cut Gordon's feed and focused on the alarm. It was indeed coming from space, not too far from where Thunderbird 5 was orbiting. A quick trace of the signal led to a manned satellite, a small model. There only appeared to be one crewman on board.

John patched through the audio.

"-yday, mayday! This is Stelair Satellite 2-1. I've been hit by an asteroid, and my life support systems are failing. Can anyone hear me? I repeat-"

"Stelair Satellite, this is International Rescue," John said calmly, his fingers flitting over his controls as he ran the usual scans. "I'm reading you loud and clear. Please give me the details of your situation."

"My satellite got clipped by an asteroid a minute ago. I thought maybe I'd gotten by without much damage, but I'm venting oxygen like mad! My supply will be completely gone in a few minutes!"

John thought it far more likely that the satellite had been struck by a meteoroid rather than its larger cousin the asteroid, but somehow he didn't think that the distinction would be of the utmost interest to the other astronaut just then.

"Stay calm," he advised. "We'll get you to safety."

He hacked - er, acquired access to - the satellite's internal computer systems. He pulled up a set of 3D schematics, and grimaced. That pilot hadn't been kidding when he said he only had a few minutes left. He muted the connection to the satellite, and called Tracy Island.

Scott was the only one in the main room, sitting on one of the couches and frowning down at a tablet in his lap, brow creased. It was the expression he got whenever he was dealing with a business problem that he couldn't blast out of his way, and John made a mental note to check with him later and make sure that nothing too catastrophic was plaguing their father's company. Now though, they had other priorities.

John always felt a little ridiculous addressing one person as International Rescue, so he just said, "we have a situation."

Scott looked up and set his tablet aside at once, listening carefully as John outlined the problem.

"Sounds simple enough," he said. "Alan and Virgil just finished up that lunar shuttle mission; have them reroute to the satellite."

"No need." John switched Scott's projection to his wrist communicator and launched himself into a graceful glide across the control room to the exit. "This is close enough for me to deal with myself. And like you said, it should be fairly simple."

"How about we send Thunderbird 3 as backup anyway?" Scott said, eyebrow raised. "Save them from having to rush later when you get attacked by more killer robots."

"That was one time."

And what a time it had been. There had been the making of a new friend, brotherly…er, bonding, the rescue of self-proclaimed pirates, the accidental earning of a robot's wrath. The ghost scare, John could've done without.

"All right," he added to Scott as he entered the small launch bay for the exo-pod and felt it rumble to life around him. "Go ahead and call them for me. But I'm still gonna get a head start."

"Careful, John; your Tracy is showing."

The words were said teasingly, but they still made something in John swell with quiet pride. He'd never been the flashiest of the Tracy boys, didn't crave the hands-on action and excitement that the others seemed to, didn't always quite sync with the rest of them. It was nice to be reminded that he still belonged with them, that he was one of them, no matter how seemingly different.

And maybe there was a little rush of exhilaration in his veins as his flight suit assembled around him. Maybe something inside him did hum with anticipation at the thought of running his own rescue.

"Exo-pod is go," he said a moment later, and then he was flying through the stars.

God, but he would never get tired of this. He knew his brothers didn't quite understand how he could spend so much time up here in the cold solitude of space, how he could prefer it to being on Earth, but that was because no words could ever convey what this felt like. To be one with the cosmos, no noise or atmosphere or people separating him from the stars, from the fabric of the very universe.

But he didn't have time to bask in the experience just then.

"Stelair Satellite, are you still reading me?" he asked.

"Yeah, yes! I can hear you! Where are you? I'm running out of oxygen!"

John knew the feeling. He let the calm urgency of a rescue settle over him as he took the controls of the exo-pod. He'd had a little more practice since the first time he'd used this thing, and it felt natural and easy now to coax a burst of speed from the machine, to let it carry him toward his mission.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'm on my way."

Virgil wasn't too proud to admit that he was exhausted. He'd never been the biggest fan of space (read: he and space weren't even on speaking terms), but that hadn't much mattered when a shuttle full of tourists had suffered electrical problems and ended up nearly crashing on the dark side of the moon. It had taken all of his and Alan's combined skill to prevent the worst space tragedy in decades, and it had involved several close calls.

So he couldn't help being grateful when Scott called and told him that while there was a new rescue to be carried out, Thunderbird 5 would be taking point. Grateful, but not surprised, really. John always did seem to know how to look out for him, for all of them, in his own way.

"Docking at the satellite now," John reported.

Alan shot a glance over at Virgil, his eyebrow quirked in a mischievous expression that had his big brother bracing himself automatically. Alan punched his comm button.

"See any ghosts?" he asked.

"Very funny," John replied dryly. "Why don't you just focus on piloting?"

"Oh, I can multitask," Alan told him. But he did stop ribbing John, recognizing the need to let him concentrate on the rescue.

"There appears to be only minimal external damage," John said after a moment. "But it all depends on what got hit. I'll reestablish contact with the pilot and get a sit-rep."

"F.A.B. John," said Scott. "I'm monitoring you from Dad's old workstation. Not as fancy as the tech on Thunderbird 5, but it should do."

"Hey, I may be a bit of a tech snob, but if it was good enough for Dad, it's good enough for me. Stand by."

They waited as John tried to make contact with the astronaut, but there was no answer to his repeated hails.

"John, I'm not picking up any life signs," Scott reported after a tense pause.

"Then there must be something wrong with the old equipment after all, because the sensors in my pod are still picking up readings for one person. Maybe the oxygen leak was faster than I expected, and the pilot is unconscious."

John's tone had taken on an increased level of urgency, and Virgil could understand why. They took every rescue seriously, but John had a unique personal perspective on this one. He knew better than anyone what it was like to be stranded alone in space while his oxygen slowly ran out, not knowing if help would get to him in time.

"I've found the external access point. Going in now."

"Be careful, Thunderbird 5," Scott warned.

John didn't answer, but that was hardly unusual. They were all too used to Scott's worrywart tendencies by now to pay them much mind.

Virgil checked the nav system to see how far out Thunderbird 3 was. At their current speed, they'd reach the satellite in a little under ten minutes.

Huh. Make that seven. Virgil shot a glance over at Alan, who shrugged.

"If it's gonna be an interesting one, I don't want to miss it," he said shamelessly.

"Ugh." Virgil rolled his eyes with mock drama. "To be young and blessed with boundless energy. Not all of us are all fired up to go bouncing around space again."

"Oh right, my mistake. I forgot I'd been running a rescue with a Millennial."

"Hey now, I'm not that old-"

"Guys, something's wrong."

John's words and tone had Virgil dropping his theatrics and Alan increasing power to the thrusters at once.

"What is it?" Virgil asked when his brother didn't follow up on his alarming proclamation. "John?"

"Something about this pattern of damage…it's too- shit!"

The language alarmed Virgil worse than anything else so far. John was no shrinking violet, but he usually liked to keep things professional over the official comms, especially when Alan was part of the team. Old habits.

"John?" asked Scott's concerned voice.

"I don't have much time. I've got to find-"

His voice cut out with an abrupt crackle.

"John?!" It was impossible to distinguish one voice from the next as Virgil, Scott, and Alan all called out to their brother. But the response didn't come from him.

"There's been an explosion!" If it was possible for an automated voice to sound alarmed, EOS' did.

Thunderbird 3 shuddered slightly as Alan's hands jerked on the controls. Virgil was pressed back in his seat as Alan recovered and coaxed an extra burst of speed from the rocket.

"What do you mean?" he managed, a little breathless from the added pressure on his chest.

"She's- she's right," said Scott. "I'm picking up readings of a small explosion from the satellite's area, and the signal from the satellite itself just cut out."

"What about the signal from John?" Virgil demanded.

"I don't- I'm not- EOS, are you getting anything from him?"

"John's signal is…gone," EOS reported, her childlike voice sounding almost shocked. Numb. "I'm detecting no heat signatures or other signs of life."

"They're just being masked by the heat and radiation from the explosion," Alan said with complete, determined confidence. "Or his comms got fried. But you know how he's always saying Brains over-engineers everything. No way the exo-pod and his suit didn't protect him."

That sounded reasonable, didn't it? And surely Alan would know, as the second space expert of the family. John was fine, he had to be fine. He'd just damaged his comms, like Alan had said. It certainly wouldn't be the first time one of them-

Virgil's stomach turned quite abruptly to lead. He sat forward in his seat so quickly he bruised his shoulders against the unforgiving restraints, eyes straining to see the wreckage that was scattered before them.

A small explosion, Scott had said. Virgil couldn't fathom what reference frame he'd been using.

The debris field glittering before them was vast and spreading rapidly, the momentum from the explosion carrying it without resistance through the cold vacuum of space. It was utterly unrecognizable; what had apparently only moments ago been a damaged but mostly intact satellite, now nothing but so much twisted metal. None of the drifting scraps was larger than a car door, save for the warped, half-melted skeleton of what must have been the main body of the satellite, now about as spaceworthy as a cheese grater. Gaping holes yawned in its pitted surface, many of them going clear through to show the dark and unforgiving backdrop of space on the other side.

John had been inside that.

"Virgil?" Scott asked. "How bad is it?"

Virgil stared numbly at the wreckage. It felt almost like a dream, like if he concentrated hard enough, the horror before him would dissolve into a new scene. But no dream had ever left him so cold, feeling like he was teetering on the edge of an unfathomable chasm.

"Too bad," he heard himself whisper, feeling like the words were coming from someone else. "It-it's too bad, Scott. Scott, he- he couldn't've-"

"No!" Alan cried. "No, it just looks bad." He flipped a few switches on his console and then yanked off the restraints holding him in his seat. "Come on, Virgil, we have to help him!"

But they were back in Virgil's wheelhouse now, to a degree. He might not have the nuances of space down, but he knew explosions. He'd grown up on a steady diet of Mythbusters reruns, had studied physics and engineering in college. He'd made a life out of the science of destruction, so that he could keep it at bay, could help protect others from it, aid them in its aftermath. He even harnessed it for himself sometimes, taking a private thrill in the power at his disposal, to be mastered like another instrument, like a piano or a paintbrush.

In that moment though, Virgil wished he knew nothing about explosions. He wished he didn't know that there wasn't a single chance in hell that the one whose aftermath he was staring at now was survivable. But he did. And not even the most desperate denial in the world could shield him from that brutal reality.

"Oh, God," Virgil whispered, his arms curling instinctively around his own torso in an utterly useless defensive gesture. "God, John." His voice broke on the name.

Virgil was a man of action; he tackled things head-on, powered through problems until they were problems no longer. He was rarely daunted by seemingly impossible circumstances, just took them as a personal challenge. It made him an optimist, an idealist; traits that were able to persist because the faith he had in himself, and more importantly, in his family, had never been misplaced. Those instincts were telling him now not to give up, that John was brilliant and resourceful and not to be underestimated.

But this time, his brain knew better.

While he sat frozen in his seat though, Alan did the opposite. He was a flurry of frantic movement, donning his EVA equipment and grabbing the emergency medical kit and scrambling for the airlock that would take him out into that desolate sea of twisted metal.

It was the sound of that airlock decompressing to allow his little brother to leave the safety of Thunderbird 3 that finally jolted Virgil out of his horrified stupor.

"Alan!" Virgil's entire world was on the verge of shuddering to pieces, but his concern for Alan ran deep. He grabbed his helmet and activated his personal comms. "Alan, get back here! He wouldn't want you to see-"

But his words failed him there, because the next ones had to be his body.

"Just come back!" he tried again, but it didn't matter. Alan wasn't listening, just speeding towards the main wreck on his hoverboard, the sounds of his rapid, panicked breathing echoing over the comms.

Virgil's heart contorted inside him, and he had to bite his lip hard as he fumbled at his restraints, freeing himself from the copilot seat and struggling towards the airlock. He'd always been the worst of the five of them at EVAs, feeling gangly and uncoordinated without the grounding stability of gravity, but that couldn't matter now.

"Virgil?"

Virgil's throat constricted at the sound of Scott's voice. It was small, scared and horrified and resigned, but there was still just the tiniest thread of hope running through it. Like it wasn't computing, what had happened to his little brother.

"Virgil, what's happening?"

"I'm going after Alan," Virgil reported as he locked a helmet into place over the spacesuit he was wearing and listened for the telltale hiss of pressurization that meant he'd made a solid connection. "He can't- I can't let him do this alone."

"Oh." Scott's voice sounded smaller than Virgil had ever heard it. There was a pause. "Isn't…Virgil isn't there anything you can…?"

"I've got to go after Alan," Virgil said. It was all he could offer.

Virgil may not have had a custom hoverboard like Alan did, but he'd trained on the jetpacks they kept stocked on Thunderbird 3. He strapped himself into one with reckless haste, activating the airlock before he even had it on all the way. He sent himself rocketing after Alan's shrinking figure, calling out to him again as he went.

Alan ignored him, but Virgil caught up to him just outside of the biggest piece of wreckage, the hollowed-out skeleton of what had once been the main body of the satellite. He caught Alan by the shoulders and engaged his reverse thrusters, dragging them both to an ungainly halt.

"Alan, wait!"

"Get off me, Virgil!" Alan snarled, so fiercely that Virgil almost did as he asked out of sheer surprise, but then he just adjusted his grip, wrapping an arm securely around his brother's chest.

"Together, Alan!" he called, and his voice didn't crack this time but it was a near thing. "I'm not trying to stop you; I'm telling you that we're doing this together."

It wasn't good enough - God, John would give him absolute hell for letting Alan in at all - but Virgil simply didn't have it in him to stop him. And more than that, he didn't have the strength to go in alone.

Alan stopped struggling in his arms, but he'd started shuddering, silent and uncontrollable, and that was almost worse. The cold comfort of his denial was clearly crumbling fast, and he wasn't prepared for what came after it. How could he be? Virgil sure as hell wasn't.

Virgil adjusted his grip on him until they were side by side, his arms around Alan's thin shoulders.

"Come on," he said softly, and they lurched forward as Alan triggered the thrusters on his hoverboard.

Virgil had never quite been able to get used to the silence of space. It had always felt ominous and foreboding somehow, lonely and uncaring. But never had it felt this quiet, like the universe itself was holding its breath.

Virgil kept himself slightly in front of Alan as they began to search the wreck, needing to be some semblance of a buffer for him, to pretend that he still had a chance of shielding him. His heart clenched and his stomach dropped with each new compartment or crevice they came across, both hoping to find John and dreading it more than anything. And maybe some tiny, desperate, part of him was expecting John to poke his head around the next corner, to give his brothers a mildly disgruntled look and start complaining about everyone who wasn't Brains being a shoddy engineer.

But the longer they searched, the more it became clear that there was nothing at all to find. The satellite simply hadn't been that big, and it didn't take long to check all of the places big enough to hold a body. One that was intact, at least.

"EOS, can you hear me?" Virgil asked.

A quiet, pitched humming filled his ears, piercing his skull and setting his teeth on edge. There were no words in it, but it felt like despair somehow, and Virgil realized that the AI was in distress too. But at least it - she; John had always referred to her as a she - could hear him.

"EOS, can you scan the wreckage?" The humming stopped, but no words replaced it. Virgil could almost feel the sullen suspicion radiating through the connection. "Please, I don't see him, EOS. I can't find him. Even after an explosion like this, there should be- there should be something."

He had to swallow down bile at the thought of just what that something might be. He didn't know if he had it in him to collect the charred, scattered hunks of flesh that had once been his brother. But he did know he didn't have it in him to leave John behind.

"I need your help. John needs your help, one…one last time."

There was another moment of silence, but then a thin voice reached him.

"Scanning."

Virgil didn't distract her with a thank-you, just waited. He closed his eyes against the devastation around him, let the silence of space wash over him for a moment. He still didn't find peace in it the way John had always seemed to.

"I'm not detecting appreciable amounts of organic material."

Virgil's eyes snapped open at the sound of EOS' voice. Some of the grief was gone, having been replaced by surprise and frustration.

"What do you mean?" he asked the AI.

"I read you and Alan. Nothing else in that debris field contains organic material."

Virgil's heart pounded loudly in his ears, even as his brain was struggling to catch up.

"But that's- that's not-" He shook his head.

"Does that mean he could've been thrown clear?" The hope in Alan's voice was almost too much, and Virgil had to swallow hard. "Maybe his comms got damaged, and we just aren't picking up his signal!"

"Virgil?" The hope was just as strong in Scott's voice, and twice as desperate. "Is that possible? Could John still be…?"

"It's possible he got thrown clear," Virgil admitted, his throat aching as he watched Alan's face light up. "But this place is a mess. The explosion that did this-"

"Could've been survivable," Alan cut in, stubbornness overtaking his features.

"Alan-"

"It could have, Virgil! You know how carefully Brains designs everything; he made John's spacesuit as close to indestructible as humanly possible. Didn't you, Brains?"

Virgil had tuned out the sounds of Brains' arrival while he and Alan were searching, unable to listen to Scott breaking the news. But he focused on the scientist now.

"T-t-technically, yes," Brains said. "After the incident with EOS, I m-modified his suits to withstand extreme pressures. B-but that's not the same as-"

But it didn't matter what the rest of that sentence was, what qualification had been about to follow, because Alan wasn't listening anymore. He just snagged Virgil by the arm and started rocketing through the debris, back out into emptier space. Virgil's stomach roiled as he bumped along behind his brother, his body twisting weightlessly as Alan towed him toward Thunderbird 3 at full speed.

"Alan-"

"He's still out here, Virg!" Alan cried. "We just have to find him!"

Virgil knew he should put a stop to this, should force Alan to start accepting reality now so that it wouldn't hurt even worse later. But he couldn't help it; hope of his own was starting to flare. It was born of desperate denial, of the incomprehensibility of living in a world without John, and it refused to be curtailed by the cold voice of reason.

So he said nothing as they boarded Thunderbird 3, just strapped himself into his seat and made sure that Alan did the same before taking them shooting off on their last desperate attempt at the most important rescue of their lives.