There isn't a time when it won't be necessary for him to watch over his family. When it won't be something he does automatically, like breathing. There isn't a time when he'll just let Fate decide who lives and who dies, not as long as he's there to tell Fate to take a flying leap.

"I'm here," he tries to say, but finds there's no voice to accompany the words.

He hears them. Thinks he might even see them. But they don't see him, because the area around him is too hot. Their sophisticated scanners can't read the meager heat of a human body nestled into it. So hot it burns his flesh even through the protective suit he donned before getting this close to the volcano.

It's worth it, though. It's worth every scar the burns will leave because he got those school kids out alive.

I'm here, he thinks as loudly as he can, Virgil, Alan, I'm here!

But they can't hear his thoughts. Truth be told, he can barely hear them himself. This wasn't quite how he planned on going, burning to death too close to where the center of the Earth had broken through the crust, the mantle, forces greater than those of Thunderbird One propelling it to breach the surface.

He could try to tell Fate to take a flying leap again, but thinks as his suit melts into the rock at his back that Fate may actually win this time. Closing his eyes against the pain, he suddenly hopes he bursts into flame and becomes nothing but ash, so his brothers won't have to find him hideously cooked, macabre and grotesque.

Get out, he thinks, projecting it outward as hard as he can through the mindless whiteout his brain is engaging in, trying to send him unconscious so he no longer has to feel the heat. Wondering how close the lava is, yet not wanting to know.

Get out! He cries the words over and over, silently, begging and pleading for his brothers to somehow know. Even now, in his moment of death he knows only that he must protect them. Must save them. Because there isn't a time when his life will ever be more important than theirs.

When he hears his name on the lips of his youngest brother, he thinks he must be hallucinating.

When he hears his own scream as hands lift him, leaving fabric and flesh behind on jagged igneous rock, he thinks it couldn't be him because his voice stopped working long ago.

When he smells the unmistakable musk and sweat scent of three men he's lived with nearly the entirety of his life, he thinks this must be his reward for the good he's done in his forty-one years. This must be Heaven, staying in a place where shadows of his brothers reside.

And then at last Death overtakes him, and he thinks nothing anymore.

He feels like he's floating. There is no pain, no agony. There is nothing but harmony, light, colors. His eyelids flutter open and for a moment there's nothing at all but brilliance in his vision and he thinks maybe there's something after all to those childhood tales of Pearly Gates.

And then he hears a strange beep. Steady and sure, and he should know what that is.

Then something touches him and he looks all around but sees nothing.

The white light goes suddenly black and then it's like he's blind and he flails, panicked. Has he been judged and sent to Hell so quickly? What has he done so wrong, what evil did he live that's made him thrown far away from where he knows his mother must be?

He wants to cry out for her, thinking maybe she's his saving grace, but another voice invades his mind, his thoughts, too loudly, too insistently, like his Commanding Officer had once sounded as he barked in his face.

But it's not his CO. It's his father.

There are more hands and they soothe. Small sparks of pain erupt wherever the hands touch him, but it makes him realize that he's not dead. There's no Heaven or Hell here to be seen, or to claim ownership of his soul.

The beeps are a heart monitor. The hands are his father's and, he thinks, at least one of his brother's. He won't be meeting his mother today. Somehow, Fate has been cheated of her desire once again.

"Damn you, Scott," he hears a husky voice, thick with emotion, whisper into his ear. The breath against his flesh is almost as hot as the volcanic rock he thought he was going to die against, but this heat he leans into.

"Damn you," the voice repeats and he tries to smile because he'd know that voice anywhere. "Never again, Scott," the voice continues and Scott knows if it wasn't for the fact that his eyes were covered with gauze that he can now feel held down by tape; if it wasn't for the fact that his body was swathed in bandages and too many wires and tubes were hooked in everywhere…if it wasn't for all these things, Virgil would be giving him a tongue-lashing that would be putting Grandma to shame.

"There isn't a time when you will become expendable."

A fierce whisper, a hand fisted in his hair. A forehead resting against his temple in maybe the one place where Scott didn't get burned.

He feels that the gauze over his right eye soaks up the tear that escapes.

There isn't a time when it won't be necessary for him to watch over his family. But maybe now is the time for them to watch over him.

He turns his head the best he can until he feels his forehead flush with his brother's. And if he feels wetness dripping into the gauze covering his eyes, wetness he knows isn't from his eyes, he'll never speak of it.

Scott's hand curls around Virgil's wrist, desperate for the solid presence – the only thing that could ever ground him, more important now than ever as he returns to the land of the living.

Virgil's voice breaks, when he whispers his brother's name. And Scott just holds on.