Chapter Text
Goldie O’Gilt stormed through the halls of McDuck Manor, throat raw and eyes burning with all left unsaid (unshouted) between her and Scrooge. How could he- ? How could she-? She forced the tears back, snarling to herself as she scrubbed an arm across her eyes.
Left, Left, Right, down these stairs-
Well, this certainly wasn’t the main hall that led to the exit. Scrooge must have remodeled yet again after Magica and Glomgold blew another hole in his property. Goldie sighed to herself, wheeling around to get her bearings and find a way out of this sentimental hellhole.
That door led to a washroom, and that one with the purple doorknob only existed on Thursdays. There was a set of double doors that led to a paperwork storage room, one of several. Goldie walked slowly down the hallway, looking for a familiar route. Second floor balcony door, laundry room, communal study-
Aha! There was a familiar sight to her right, just shy of a winding staircase curling away into the house’s ether. A banged up door, riddled with knicks and scratches, that had clearly been repaired several times (like the miser would ever just replace a “perfectly fine door” that just needs a little “spit and shine”). Flags and stickers cascaded down it’s face, Junior Woodchuck event mementos, various luggage stickers from dozens of countries. And there, under the doorknob, a little laminated business card for “Louie’s Kids” had been taped up.
The triplet’s room was one she had navigated her way out from a couple of times now, and even broken into when she knew they wouldn’t be around. Bentina and Scrooge never thought to watch for her comings and goings from this particular window, and the boys had never seen her do it. Goldie pressed her ear to the door, careful not to let the old floorboards beneath her boots creak. She waited for a full two minutes, and when she hadn’t heard a single sound the whole time, she gently pushed her way into the room, scanning for company.
The triple bunk was empty, the top bed made neatly, the middle one drooling bedsheets and blankets all the way to the floor, and the bottom one lazily arranged in a ‘good enough’ fashion. No one was at the desk, bending over books and old journals and field guides in a search for answers. There was a toy chest against the far wall, stuffed with sports balls, toy dart guns, and tap shoes, but no one was rummaging in it. And there was no one lounging on the carpet, or upside down on a bed, watching TV on their phone or staring at the wall as they tried to concoct another “perfect scheme”.
Goldie felt out of place, and hurried across to the window. The room was uncomfortably silent without the three identical hellions and their defacto sister tearing through it, even if she only ever listened from a safe distance (the vents on her way to Scrooge’s room...or Scrooge’s room itself). She went to undo the latch, but saw it was already popped open, and the window she had previously thought was shut was just barely ajar.
Goldie grimaced, and briefly debated turning around and finding another exit. If one of Scrooge’s kids had been stolen, the last thing she wanted to get wrapped up in was a rescue mission. But for some godforsaken reason, she didn’t. Not wanting to dwell on the emotions swirling around in her chest, she pushed open the window and scanned her surroundings. No one in the yard, no one in the courtyard, the coast was clear and-
“Aunt Goldie?”
Shit.
Goldie sighed, and looked up. Two little webbed feet dangled over the roof of the window dormer, kicking to an unheard melody. A tuft of hair and the top of a green hoodie were all she could see from her position.
“Hey there, Sharpie,” Goldie leaned against the window frame in defeat. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Not really,” the boy mumbled. “It is, y’know, my room. In my house. Technically it’s fancy meeting you here on my roof.”
“I’m not on your roof.”
“Your loss. The stars are really nice tonight.”
Goldie let his claim hang in the night air between them, debating the best course of action. She could just wish the kid and his stars a good night and be on her way. She could do even less than that and just climb down the trellis to freedom. Or, she could let her curiosity for this odd situation (and certainly not her bleeding heart) get the better of her and push the matter further.
Hauling herself onto the window seat and dropping on leg over the edge, she leaned her back against the wall and revelled in the mild spring breeze. Summer was nearly here, she mused.
“So, kid, what brings you out here and away from your ever-larger and more convoluted family?”
There was the faint rustle of fabric on feathers as Louie presumably shrugged. “Dunno. Got tired, I guess.”
Goldie hummed. “Then why aren’t you asleep?”
There was an even longer pause, and for a while Goldie thought maybe her young pseudo-protege wouldn’t answer her. Didn’t bother her much, she’d find another angle sooner or later.
When the mumbled answer came, it was so quiet she nearly missed it. “Not that kind of tired.”
Goldie winced. She wasn’t equipped to deal with children and their emotions. Hell, she was barely equipped to deal with her own. She couldn’t really imagine what Louie was going through, what any of the kids were going through. They’d really had the rug yanked out from under them today, Pink more than anyone, sure, but the other kids weren’t to be discounted from that equation.
Near death (again), new family, the loss of what was and the confrontation of what is, and how different the night was from the morning you woke up to.
Goldie was struggling to comprehend it. And maybe that’s why she climbed the rest of the way out of the window and up onto the strip of flat roof Louie occupied. Because she was over a 120 years old, and had been running from the emotional tsunami of associating with Scrooge McDuck’s family nearly the whole time.
Not only was Louie only 12, he was a good portion of the reason she finally gave up the race. And even though she struggled to admit it to herself, and would rather eat glass before admitting it to Scrooge, the idea of letting Louie in on that little secret didn’t scare her as much as it did after Doofus’ party. Or even as much as it scared her four days ago, before she’d been abducted and thrown in a box along with everyone else Scrooge considered ‘family’.
Maybe she finally had nothing left to lose.
“Alright kid, spill it,” Goldie settled in next to Louie and jostled him with her shoulder. “We both know you didn’t leave the survival celebration party to come star gaze.”
Louie glared up at her, though his hoodie pushed his bangs into his eyes in a way that weakened its impact. Goldie waited, quirking her brow at him. The boy’s angry facade crumpled, giving way to exhaustion. The kind of exhaustion Goldie wouldn’t really expect to see on a kid.
“I don’t know, it’s just, like,” Louie struggled to find his words, and she waited while he grasped at his jumbled thoughts. Finally, he hung his head and shoved his hands in his pocket. “Everything’s gonna be different now. And I don’t really understand how to feel about that.”
Goldie nodded, an understanding and far too soft “ah” escaping her. She rested her left hand on Louie’s head, but kept her gaze staunchly on the stars above them. Louie lifted his head to look at her, and she played with the feathers of his bangs as she thought about what to say.
Louie wasn’t like the other kids. Goldie knew this, Scrooge knew this, but perhaps most importantly, Louie himself was all too aware of this. He was a different kind of smart, a different kind of tough. He wore his anxiety on his sleeve, but he didn’t let it control him. He looked before he leapt, he thought before he spoke. He was careful in adventuring, and even more cautious when dealing with people, no matter how aloof he thought he came across.
Goldie sometimes felt like she was looking in a tiny mirror. And maybe that’s why she didn’t ignore his sporadic texts, delete his number or block it entirely. Maybe that’s why the little golden idol she nicked from him wasn’t melted down or sold, but instead sat on a shelf of honor in her personal study. Maybe that’s why she was sitting here with him now.
They both knew Louie didn’t just reach for anyone when he was in need of comfort. He was too careful and calculated for that. The thought that he might be reaching for her now, that he might have been reaching for her every time her phone pinged at 3 am, damn near thawed the little bit of ice left around her husk of a heart. She knew she couldn’t offer him what his uncles could, or what his mother and brothers could, but she could give him this. An unbiased, similarly minded shoulder to lean on when it all got to be a bit Too Much.
Goldie cleared her throat softly. “How are you feeling right now?”
Louie shrugged again, snuggling further into his hoodie. “Dunno. Confused, mostly. Kinda lost?”
“Lost?” She began to press ever so gently, like when she was picking an old lock. “Lost how?”
He waved his hands in front of him, like he was trying to conjure an image she could see and understand. “Y’know like, lost! Like when you’re in the woods, and the trees are really tall, and it's getting dark, and you realize you're alone and you don’t know which way home is, Lost with a capital L.” He huffed, his tirade over, and returned his hands to his hoodie.
Goldie hummed. “Have you ever considered poetry?”
Louie rolled his eyes, flushing, while Goldie parsed through what she just heard.
“You feel alone?”
He shrugged yet again. “Doesn’t everyone sometimes?”
She nodded, conceding his point. “So not necessarily alone, but maybe alone in how you feel about how everything went down today?”
Louie grimaced. “Geez, you are sharp.”
“High compliment coming from you, Sharpie,” Goldie smirked, but it fell quickly. “So, you aren’t as over the moon about this new chapter as everyone else is?”
He looked away. “Please, don’t get me wrong. I love Webby like a sister, we all do. And I love Uncle Scrooge despite his, well, everything. They’re family. And family can be really great. But this, this is…”
She sighed. “A bit more complicated than they’re making it out to be?”
Louie nodded. He looked up at the stars, and Goldie ignored the way her heart squeezed at the tears pooling in his eyes.
“Am I a bad person?”
Goldie started, looking at him incredulously. Before she could talk, he kept going.
“I know I don’t do things fair and square like them, I’m not smart or tough as Huey and Dewey. But before all this that was okay. It was enough, y’know? I was enough. Now,” he sniffed. “I don’t really feel like enough.”
Goldie gently tugged his hoodie off his head, and fished around in her travel sack for her handkerchief. She pressed it into his grip before she asked, “Why?”
Louie looked at her quizzically. “Huh?”
“Why don’t you feel like enough, kid? Your uncle adores you, your mom and your dad think the world of you. Your family loves you a lot, you know. So why all the self doubt?”
He wouldn’t answer her for a long while this time, and she contented herself with running her fingers absently through his fluffy bangs and staring at the stars. The winter constellations had all but set, and her favorite, Ospreyan, was nothing much more than a winking shadow on the night’s horizon. After at least five minutes of silence, Goldie was about to change the subject entirely when he answered.
“I don’t understand what we’re supposed to be anymore. Before today, we were all Scrooge’s heirs- and no, this isn’t about the will. Before today, I knew who I was in this family. And I knew who everyone else was. And now that’s all gone. I feel like,” he lowered his eyes to his lap and turned away slightly, shame wreathing his features. “I feel like this whole time, we’ve just been placeholders in his life. Like, now that he has Webby, what’s the point of any of us? She’s tougher, smarter, and sharper than any of us. He doesn’t need us now.”
Goldie moved her hands to his shoulders, and turned him to face her. “Louie, you have to know that isn’t true. Not even in the slightest. Your Uncle Scrooge positively adores you, all three of you-”
He scowled. “Yeah because we’re Della’s kids. And she was like a daughter to him. And now he has the real thing and he doesn’t need us.”
Goldie scoffed. “Oh please. What makes Webby more real to him than any of you?”
Louie looked at her incredulously. “Did you miss the whole sharing DNA thing?”
“Kind of impossible to, but no, I didn’t.”
“She’s literally made of what he’s made of!” Goldie pushed away the vague feeling of nausea that hit her at that, focusing on Louie. “She’s the real McDuck deal! His blood heir! We couldn’t be more useless now.”
She gripped him tighter. “Louie. That isn’t true. You know that none of that matters to Scrooge. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about blood relations. He considers a half horse gargoyle to be his family, why would he draw the line here?”
He frowned. “I didn’t say we weren’t still family. I know that we are. But we’re not his kids. Not all of us. Not anymore.”
Goldie paused, unsure how to address that. Louie pressed on.
“This wouldn’t change anything if everyone wasn’t already acting so different!” He scrubbed at his eyes. “Webby was always our sister, always family. Why does her being Scrooge’s clone daughter change everything? It’s literally not even the weirdest thing this family has handled.”
Goldie smiled sadly. “There are a lot of reasons, Louie. All of which your uncle would be better equipped to talk to you about if he would ever realize them himself.”
The boy tilted his head, confused. She sighed.
“In my less forgiving moments, I would say everything is different now because your uncle is an egomaniac. And having a literal Mini Scrooge to follow him around and continue his absurd legacy is a dream come true for him.”
Goldie frowned, looking down and away from Louie’s gaze. “But that wouldn’t be very fair of me, or completely honest, I guess.”
Louie snorted. “Since when has that ever bothered you?”
She cuffed him around the head gently, enjoying his small lift in spirits. “Watch it, mister. I’ll ground you.”
He rolled his eyes, but he was smiling again and Goldie privately counted it a victory. Since when had making kids smile begun to count as victories to her?
“This change, this new beginning for him and Pink, is very novel right now,” she reached up and brushed Louie’s disheveled bangs out of his eyes. “But I think, once the dust settles, you’ll find that not much has changed at all. She’s still your sister, and he’s still your uncle. He loves you today as much as he did yesterday, and he’ll probably love you even more tomorrow. That’s just who he is, kid.”
Louie looked at her with wide, uncertain eyes, and leaned into the hand she left resting on his cheek.
“Your uncle cares about his family more than anything else in this world. More than all the gold on earth and on the moon, as hard as that is to believe. He was going to give it all up so he could keep you all safe. That means more than any cloning mishap, right?”
He nodded, looking down and sniffling into the handkerchief. But when he looked up, his gaze was scrutinizing.
“Us all.”
“Excuse me?” Goldie wondered if the exhaustion was finally getting to him.
“Keep us all safe. You said ‘you all’ but you were there too, so it would be ‘us all’. Or did you forget that you were locked in a box with the rest of our extended family?”
Goldie flushed, looking away from the kid. She really didn’t want to get into her wealth of personal reservations and insecurities regarding her long time lover’s family system with a literal child. She settled for an obvious dodge, and hoped he would leave it alone.
“My mistake, Sharpie. It gets hard to keep track of where you stand with Scrooge after a hundred odd years.”
But Louie didn’t drop his scrutiny, and she felt him studying her closely. Goldie refused to let her annoyance get the better of her this time. For reasons she didn’t want to explore too closely, she didn’t want to snap at him, scare him off and away from her. Despite her best efforts, she liked this one of Scrooge’s infantile hangers-on.
“You don’t see yourself as family, do you?”
God, this kid was tap dancing on her most hidden nerves.
Goldie shrugged, feigning disinterest. “What’s it matter to you? I’ll be popping in and out to annoy your dear old uncle ‘til the end of time, why stick a label on it?”
Louie scowled. “So you give me this whole big speech about how loving and great my family is, and why I should trust them to love me for me, but then you don’t include yourself in any part of that equation? Man, Scrooge was right about you.”
Goldie glared at the kid, feeling much less magnanimous now. “And what, exactly, did old Scroogey say about me this time?”
He was smug as he looked up at her. “That you spend all your time looking so hard for angles, that you can never see what’s right in front of you. And that makes you not as sharp as you think you are.”
Goldie felt very much like going to find Scrooge and cursing him out violently, and then ignoring him and his insufferable family until the kids were in college.
But that would only prove his point.
“Look, kid, it’s nothing personal. I just don’t do this whole family thing. I haven’t for a very, very long time and I don’t really see the point in starting now.”
Hurt flashed across Louie’s face before he could hide it, and he yanked his hood back up. “No fun when there’s no angle to exploit, huh?”
She winced, and pushed away the guilt stirring in her chest. “Now, look, I didn’t mean-”
“Nah, it’s fine. I get it,” he mumbled, resting his head on his drawn up knees. “There are bigger and better cons out there. It really wouldn’t make sense for you to waste time pretending to care about any of us.”
“Louie, that’s not fair-”
“Why not? Because I’m right? Because I know that tomorrow morning, you’ll be long gone, and I’ll be alone to deal with everything happening, again?”
Goldie was silent, regretting ever opening her mouth- no, climbing up on this roof. She decided that leaving before she hurt the kid anymore would be the best course of action-
Ah, shit. He was definitely crying.
Goldie sighed, looking towards the heavens for some deity or another to give her the strength and patience to get through this intact. And more important, get him through this intact.
“Hey, Sharpie, c’mere,” she wrapped her arm around his small shoulders and pulled him into her side. Gods, but he was tiny. He had such a personality, was such a force in day to day life, she really had no idea he was still so small. “Why does the thought of me not being a part of this traveling circus bother you so much? I stole millions from you, literally. Any duck with common sense wouldn’t exactly seek out the company of a swindling thief.”
Louie sniffled, burrowing further into her side, resting his disproportionately large head on her chest. “I dunno.”
Goldie snorted, rubbing her hand up and down his arm. It was getting chilly. “I think you do.”
He groaned, frustrated with having to say it. “Because Dewey has Mom, Huey has Uncle Donald, and now Webby has Scrooge. I don’t have anyone who gets me like that, except you. Even though you did steal the gift bags, you also stopped a robot from bashing my head in. And you saw my potential, where everyone else just saw a lazy cheat.”
Something warm and sharp was gripping her heart, and vaguely she wondered if she was about to finally have a heart attack. “Kid…I’m really not family material.” She protested weakly.
“Says who?” He was always so contrary. It was more endearing when it wasn’t directed at her.
“Well, your Uncle for one, and I can’t imagine your Mom and Donnie would be too thrilled about me sticking around.”
“Since when do you care what anyone else thinks? I thought you were Goldie O’Gilt, and no one could tell you to do anything you didn’t want to.”
Goldie smirked. “And what makes you think I want to be here?”
“I mean, you fell for the Crocodile Waterworks so I think you care a little more than you’re telling yourself.”
Sure enough, when she looked down, his eyes had dried, and he was smiling at her smugly. She almost let herself get angry at being played, before she deflated and began laughing.
“Well played, Sharpie, well played.”
He grinned at her, but made no move to extract himself from her side. If anything, he leaned in closer, resting all of his slight weight on her. It was nearing 1 am by her calculations, but the noise from the first floor of the mansion assured her the party was still going strong. She wondered if all the kids had passed out by now, or if it was just Louie that was utterly drained after his own personal emotional rollercoaster ride. She ran her fingers through his hair, fluffing up his bangs, content in the silence they’d fallen into.
“Hey, Goldie?”
“Hm?”
“Why did you come back to the mansion with everyone if you weren’t going to stick around?”
There was no suspicion in his voice, just genuine curiosity. Goldie was tired of talking circles, so she decided to give it up for now.
“Your uncle wanted to talk to me, that’s all.”
Louie hummed, shifting so his head fell into her lap. He was almost nearly asleep. “Was it important? Or was it about adult stuff we’re not supposed to ask about?”
Goldie chuckled. “He uh, he just wanted to ask me something. No big deal.”
“Ooo, do I hear wedding bells?” He teased. Goldie gentle flicked his head.
“Don’t even joke, kid.”
“Was he writing you into the will?”
“Oh please, like a piece of paper is gonna determine what I get after he croaks.”
Louie snickered. “You’re avoiding the question, Aunt Goldie.” He singsonged.
And therein was the rub of it. She sighed, resting her hand on the side of the duckling’s head. She debated just letting him fall asleep without an answer, but something in her, some force of emotion she had no name for, pushed the truth out of her before she could think twice.
“He asked me to move in.”
Louie stiffened. She was certain he was wide awake now. When he spoke, she could heard the desperate hope he tried to keep out of his voice. “Oh, did he now?”
She smiled sadly, not that he could see. “Yeah. Really made a mess of it, too.”
He snorted. “At least Uncle Scrooge is consistent in his emotional dumbassery.”
“Language.” She chided mildly, then wondered why she did. Louie took little notice.
“So that’s that, then,” he sighed. “You’re leaving for good?”
Goldie could all but see the crossroads laid before her. One path was worn, the same tracks and ruts that she’d always followed leading her down the road of familiar solitude. It was small, lonely, but laden with gold and comfort. The other was fresh and new, no footprints to be seen, but it flourished with ethereal riches, wreathed in a deep love the other had always lacked, but she had never seen. Thrown into contrast, she idly wondered why she had ever picked the first path to begin with.
She took a breath, and took a step.
“I didn’t say that, Sharpie.”
Louie sat upright, looking at her incredulously. She smiled at him, and ruffled his hair. “You mean you...really?”
She shrugged. “I can’t promise I’ll always be around. Or that I’ll fully move in like that old sourdough wants me to. But, I can stay tonight. And we can go from there.”
Louie smiled, and it reached his eyes in a way she hadn’t seen ever directed at her. He lunged at her, wrapping his arms around her waist and staying there. Gingerly, Goldie draped her arms around him in a loose hug, and let the feeling of correctness settle over her.
“Thanks, Aunt Goldie.”
“For what?”
“For not leaving me alone.”
She had no response to that, so she just held him a little tighter. Things weren’t going to magically get better for either of them. The polarity of their worlds had shifted, and the unknown was no longer just outside their door, but making its home with them. Goldie knew he would have bad days. And even more, she knew she would have worse ones. Days where Scrooge said the wrong thing, or didn’t do the right one. Days where all the children got on every single last nerve she had, and she would flee the mansion for her own company. There would be missed birthdays, arguments, fights about the most benign of things. All the reasons she had avoided family would finally catch up to her. And it would make her or break her.
Maybe Scrooge was right, when he waxed on about family being the greatest adventure of all.
She’d climbed mountains in parallel dimensions, sailed on oceans made of fine jewels. She had bestest demons, monsters, and gods alike. She had been tangling with the greatest adventurer in the world for nearly 130 years, in more ways than one, and had repeatedly come out on top. But this? This was standing on the precipice of a cliff, knowing she had to jump, all while her parachute depended on her more than she did on it.
Was she ready to do this?
A snore interrupted her spiraling thoughts. She looked down to see Louie had fallen asleep, his head plopped soundly on her chest again. She smiled, and brushed his bangs back. He would need a haircut soon. A cold gust of wind cut through her layers, and she shivered. They should get inside or they’d be sick by morning.
She nudged Louie, but he didn’t stir. She shook him, and he snored louder. Goldie sighed, and decided that yes, they were going to have to do this the hard way.
She lifted the duckling into her arms, settling him on her hip as if he were much younger. She shifted, making sure he was stabilized, and carefully swung down for the roof. She let go of the ledge once her boots were firmly on the windowsill, and she could carefully step down into the bedroom. She glanced at the bunks, relieved the green one was on the bottom.
Goldie pulled back the comforter, settling Louie on the mattress before loosely tucking in the blanket around him. She rose and crossed to the window, making sure it was firmly latched shut and sealed properly. That done, she made her way back to Louie, who was curled up in a ball, sound asleep. She smiled to herself, and leaned down the brush her beak very slightly against his head.
“Goodnight, Sharpie.”
Goldie was at the door, handle on the knob, before she heard a response.
“Night, Aunt Goldie,” he mumbled. “See you tomorrow.”
She sighed, closing the door behind her. She supposed he would. Goldie turned, determined to find Scrooge and have an actual conversation for once in their long, long lives, instead of a screaming match.
It wasn’t the fresh start she’d pictured for them, but maybe that was for the best.