Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing is that, even in the face of imminent danger and the end of the world, Dewey loves his brothers. He always has. He’s never fought with them in any way that matters, even when he did something so diabolical as not telling them about their mom when he first found out. Even when things have gone wrong, when he’s made a misstep, when they’ve been fractured and split over hundreds of things—he loves them, and they love him. They all feel for each other, deeply and without abandon.

And so, it’s with pain in his heart that he submits the application for St. Canard University and doesn’t tell them until he gets the acceptance (or denial—he really isn’t positive) letter two weeks after Christmas.

“Mostly standard for you, Mr. Scrooge.” Mrs. Beakley sets the letter in front of Dewey unassumingly. “And Dewey got a letter as well, it does seem.” She gives him a little smile. He smiles back nervously, pushing his toast away.

Webby leans over, encroaching on his space brightly. “Oooh, what is it?”

“Probably some letter from some dumb fan club,” Louie ribs, elbowing Huey. Huey laughs nervously.

And Dewey loves his brothers, so he knows that Huey already knows what it is by the insignia. His eyes don’t leave the letter, no matter how hard Dewey tries to cover it with his hand.

“Ha ha,” Huey says. “Yeah.”

“Go on, then, lad, who’s it from?” Uncle Scrooge says, leaning back in his seat. His most recent trip had left him with youth and a spark in his eye; it’s glinting now as he raises an eyebrow, gesturing with his cane and nearly tripping Mrs. Beakley. Mrs. Beakley tuts, stepping out of the way just in time so she doesn’t pour his tea all over him. “Ah—sorry, Twenty-Two—”

“Just a letter,” Dewey says quickly. “It’s nothing big, probably, I don’t need to—”

“If it’s just a letter,” Huey challenges, “then you can just open it. If it’s nothing big, you wouldn’t hide it.”

The accusation in his voice makes everyone stop for a moment, looking between the two brothers. Dewey’s face feels as red as Huey’s shirt.

“Right,” he says nervously. Huey won’t look him in the eye. “You’re right. You always are, Huey.”

“Open it,” Huey repeats.

So he does.

It has confetti in it, confetti that sort of accidentally explodes over his plate, covering his toast in purple stars and gold moons, and when he reads the words we are excited to offer you admission it feels like a weight lifts fully off his chest. Webby is close enough that she reads it first; when her breath catches, the weight returns.

“St. Canard University?” Webby says, and all the air is sucked out of the room. The smile is plastered on Dewey’s face and won’t leave, even as he feels every eye turn to him.

(Mom had told him about these—panic attacks. They’d only started recently, and only after they’d really stopped adventuring as seriously. He didn’t want to be seen as the weak one, so he never told anyone, so when the rest of the conversation sounds like it’s underwater none of them have any idea.)

He watches in slow motion as the letter is snatched from his hand by Louie from across the table, read aloud demeaningly, watches as Louie stares at him, confused.

People are talking. Distantly, he can hear Webby asking him questions. About Mouseton. About Loontown University. About Harbird, or Canadagoose Tech, or UCLAvian. About the places they’d all applied together, after hours of begging Louie and bribing him to even consider some kind of higher learning after high school. About places that would take Webby as a student, considering how long she’d been homeschooled.

He hears all of them faintly, and then he puts out his hand expectantly. Most of the noise dies.

“I didn’t get to finish reading it,” he says. His voice doesn’t shake, but it is weak. Louie stares at him, then slowly passes it over. “Thanks.”

“You got in,” Huey surmises.

“I know,” Dewey says. “But I applied for scholarships too. I want to know if—”

“Scholarships?” Uncle Scrooge bursts out. “Well, in all my years I never—we can pay for it, lad, if you’re so concerned—”

“You said you’d pay for Mouseton,” Dewey says. Now, his voice is flat. “This wasn’t in the agreement. I wanted to cover my bases. Good thing, too. Not quite as good as a full ride, but…”

They’ve offered him a number that, if he remembers right, is equal to about half tuition a year.

“I got in,” he says finally. There’s little joy to it. “I can’t believe I got in.”

The room is silent until Huey speaks up again. It’s always Huey, trying to keep them together. It’s always Huey fighting desperately to keep everyone on track, in line, with the plan. It’s Huey with the plans.

Plans that Dewey decimated, then hid from them.

“You applied to…the other places too,” Huey says slowly. “You did it with us.”

“I did,” he confirms. He can’t look away from the letter anymore. The words are starting to swim in his vision.

“So you’ll be getting more acceptance letters.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Huey says. The chair scoots back as he starts to stand. “Why’d this one come early?”

“I applied for early admission,” Dewey finally admits. “I just…wanted to see.”

It’s just a letter. It’s nothing big.

It’s just an admission. It’s nothing big.

It’s just the changing of our futures as we know it. It’s nothing big.

“I got in,” he repeats to himself again. “I can’t believe I got in.”

“I can’t believe you applied and didn’t tell us!” Louie shouts. “You do this every time—”

“He just wanted to see,” Huey says. He always sounds so…level now. Like nothing can get to him anymore.

(It can. Dewey knows it can. Dewey’s seen how many journals have been filled up every night, ravings of a madman, of someone trying so desperately to hold onto their sanity that they don’t know what else to do but write.)

“He’s not going to go,” Huey says finally, and there’s the kicker. “We have a plan, and the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook says—”

“Forget the Guidebook!” Louie hisses. “He applied somewhere else, early, so he didn’t have to go with us. We don’t have a plan, Huey—”

“I’m sure this is all just a big misunderstanding,” Webby tries to intervene.

“Kids—kids!” Mrs. Beakley interjects.

But none of them succeed, and everyone is shouting over each other, and Dewey got into a school he’s been dreaming about going to for years, and he doesn’t even get a chance to celebrate.

“Where would you even live?” Louie demands, slamming his hands on the table. Dewey still doesn’t look up. “The plan was for us all to live together—”

“I would assume on-campus housing,” Mrs. Beakley reasons.

“Launchpad,” Dewey says, and the room goes silent again. He keeps staring at that word—offer—like it will somehow tape this scene back on track and make things normal again.

“Launchpad,” Uncle Scrooge repeats.

“He lives up in St. Canard now,” Dewey explains. The letter says they’re excited to offer—

“So you’ve been planning this with Launchpad?” Louie screeches.

“No,” Dewey says slowly. “No, I just…”

But whatever he was going to say is lost in more of the hustle and bustle, and eventually Louie storms off, Webby steals Huey to go plan, and Uncle Scrooge leaves too, and Dewey has toast covered in confetti and no family left.

Well. Untrue. Mrs. Beakley comes to take the plate after a few minutes of silence. “For what it’s worth, Dewey,” she says quietly. “Congratulations. That is a very exciting prospect, whether you choose to take it or not.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles. He’s sunk so far down in the seat now that he doesn’t think it even counts as sitting in it.

She sits next to him slowly, in the seat Webby had been occupying before everything went wrong. “Truly. That admission is nothing to sneeze at.”

“Achoo,” Dewey says, lackluster. She smiles and touches his shoulder.

“I think they’re all just afraid,” she says quietly. “Because despite their…disappointing reactions, we all knew you could Dewey it.”

That finally gets him to look away from the paper, up at her, and crack the smallest of smile. She smiles back, ruffles his hair a little, and takes the plates with her when she leaves.

The biggest question in his mind now is how to tell his mom and his uncle Donald. He doesn’t remember what adventure they’re off on now, but it’s something ridiculous, probably. Either way, they’re due back on Sunday, which gives him approximately three days to figure out a script. He heads to his Dewey Dew-Nite set, now properly placed in the attic in its own space away from the rest of the house. The cameras Uncle Scrooge got him three years ago are covered in a thin layer of dust. He drags his finger along the camera as he passes, stares at the debris as it cascades off in a cloud of dust, and sits in his presenter’s chair with a slow sigh. His laptop is still on the desk. He hasn’t needed it since he submitted the application to SCU, since Huey wanted everyone to do the Mouseton applications from his computer—for who knows what reason, probably so he had some semblance of control—anyway, Dewey had obliged, and his secret had been locked away on set ever since.

And now, here he sits. He stares into the darkness. The room feels so much bigger without all the lights.

He doesn’t know how long he’s there, but when the door opens it jolts him out of his thoughts. “Who’s there?”

“Can I come in?”

He shrinks back, spinning the seat in a circle a few times. “Sure, Hue-man.”

Huey walks in with an air of…concern, or something. He doesn’t look happy, but he doesn’t look mad, which Dewey supposes is at least some kind of win. He takes a seat on the interviewee couch, leaning on the arm rest and looking at the camera.

“Kinda creepy in here.”

“Thanks,” Dewey says, pushing off the leg again for another spin. “I’m applying to the college of spooks next.”

He thinks the joke will fall flat, but he sees Huey smile, so he stops his spin to stare at his brother.

(His brother that he’s now two and a half inches taller than. His brother who’s three seconds older, who’s always tried the hardest out of the three of them, who’s smarter and better and kinder and would have told them if he applied—)

“I thought about applying too,” Huey says, and Dewey’s stomach drops. “I decided not to. I didn’t wanna leave everyone in a lurch.”

Dewey doesn’t say anything. He stares at his brother, then up at the ceiling.

“But I guess it didn’t matter, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” Dewey says quietly.

“I don’t think you are,” Huey says, but he holds up his hands in surrender when Dewey looks at him sharply. “It’s okay. Dewey, it’s okay.”

It’s not, Dewey thinks. But he gives Huey a chance, at least.

“This way,” Huey reasons, “everyone can do what they wanted in the first place. Webby and May and June can go to Mouseton with me, provided we get in. If not, we can try again next year. And Louie doesn’t have to go to college at all, which means he can start his internship, and you…” He frowns a little. “…you get to go off on your own big adventure out in the world. Away from here.”

Away from us. The implication hangs in the air for a minute.

“I haven’t decided if I’m going,” Dewey says eventually. Huey still hasn’t put his hands down, but he stares disbelievingly.

Dewey loves his brothers, and they love him, and they know him better than anyone. They both know that he made his decision by applying, and that he would be stupid not to accept.

“I haven’t,” he insists.

“Okay,” Huey says, finally lowering his hands so he can point at the laptop. “What’re you doing up here, then?”

Right. He realizes how this must look; Dewey looks up at the ceiling, taking a slow breath. “…trying to figure out how to tell Mom and Uncle Donald.”

Huey gives a sympathetic hiss. “Yikes.”

“They’re not going to care as much,” Dewey sighs. “It was you guys I was worried about. Louie and Webby specifically. And…and you. I thought I’d have more time, I guess.”

“It’s okay,” Huey says. “Why don’t we figure it out together?”

For a moment, it’s tempting. He can picture them, working together, coming up with some kind of presentation, all the facts laid out, a plan.

“I probably gotta get used to doing it on my own,” he says apologetically. “Gonna…be doing that a lot from here on out.”

Huey, to his credit, nods. He doesn’t scream or start throwing things. He doesn’t even look mad, which is the most fascinating part. If this had been Huey or Louie that had pulled this stunt, Dewey would have wanted to yank his feathers out and scream and throw things and maybe cry, even.

(Sometimes, he looks in the mirror, and for a moment he doesn’t see Dewford Duck, adventurer extraordinaire. He sees his Uncle Donald staring back, an angry twitch to his eye, a caring undertone to his smile, a desperate need to support his family and not lose any of them ever again. He gets mad sometimes and feels his face get red the same way his uncle’s does, and he wants to start swinging on anything that hurts his family, whether it be some kind of monster or a door or even each other. He wonders if he’ll turn out like Donald, then he wonders if that would be so bad, and then he wonders why he’s been staring in the mirror for so long, so he makes himself turn away.)

“Can I come up here and get some prep done for one of my classes at least?” Huey asks.

“Sure.”

“Okay,” Huey grins, standing. “I’ll be right back, okay? Don’t miss me too much.”

“Okay,” Dewey says, faking excitement that fades as soon as his brother is out of sight.

The next morning, breakfast is silent. Dewey hadn’t dragged himself away in time for dinner, which Huey had relayed was probably a bad idea. But it had already been done, and now the room might as well be an ice block with how frosty everyone is being. Louie keeps holding his hands out for things, then refusing to take them when Dewey is the one passing them; Webby looks anywhere but Dewey, and eventually she starts finding the napkins so fascinating that she forgets to keep eating; Uncle Scrooge is eating as if he’s the only one in the room, his newspaper held up so high nobody can see his face; the only people that will look at Dewey are Huey and Mrs. Beakley, and they keep giving him little encouraging smiles, though they don’t dare break the silence themselves.

Dewey can’t find it in him to break it either, so he finishes his plate, then takes it with him to the kitchen so Mrs. Beakley can finish her own food first.

As soon as the door shuts behind him, he hears noise explode.

“I can’t believe him!”

“Sit down, boy, you’re going to get that all over the discs—”

“He’s not even going to say good morning anymore? He’s not even going to—”

“He did say good morning, Louie, and you ignored him! He’s our brother, you can’t just—”

“He can’t either, and he did ! He’s leaving, Huey!”

“I’m with Louie. He should have told us—”

“Maybe this is what he was scared of!”

“Dewey isn’t scared of anything, Huey! Get real! He’s leaving, and he’s never gonna come back, and—and I hate him!”

Dewey slides down the door onto the floor, burying his head in between his knobby knees. The plate lands on the floor next to him with a little ding, and he hears the way everyone suddenly goes silent at the noise.

“I’m gonna go check on him,” he hears Huey say, but he can’t find the strength to move until he feels the door push from behind him. “Dewey? You in there?”

He makes a little noise, trying to scoot so the door can open. It works enough, and then Huey is on the floor next to him, putting his arm around his shoulder.

(Huey, his oldest brother. Huey, the smart one, the kind one, the one who’s been fighting to keep his family together for so long that it’s a miracle he hasn’t given up yet. Huey, who leans against him comfortingly, who starts breathing with him, who starts humming their mom’s lullaby to calm him down as Dewey starts to cry.)

(Huey, the brother Dewey hates disappointing, and yet.)

When he finally calms enough that he’s just hiccuping softly, he realizes that they aren’t alone, and that somehow Huey has finagled them to be sitting against the island in the middle of the kitchen instead. Huey hasn’t let go of him yet; on his other side sits someone else, warm and comforting, leaning against him to give him enough weight to ground himself. When he lifts his head, his beak still trembling a little, he sees a flash of green, and beyond that, purple.

“Dewey?” Webby says quietly, putting her hand out from in front of him. He stares at it, then rests his head on its side and stares off into the distance. “…Dewey? You okay?”

“Give him a minute,” Huey says gently. “He might need some water.”

“Probably,” he feels Louie mumble. “Crybabies always need water.” Huey reaches behind Dewey to smack Louie sharply in the back of the head. “Hey! Ugh, fine, whatever, I’ll get some.” And then the weight disappears as Louie drags his feet to the fridge.

“He isn’t a crybaby,” Huey insists. “He isn’t having a good time right now, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Louie grumbles. “Join the club. Ow!”

Dewey looks up enough to see Webby with a slingshot and a bag of marbles, already loading the second one. He grabs it from her sharply and watches as the marbles all go flying, watches how the red and green and purple ones go in one direction and the blue one rolls until it bounces off his foot. He stares at it as his face screws up, then takes the blue marble and throws it in the other direction, away from his family, away from the other marbles it had spent its whole life with, presumably—

“Hey!” Huey grabs his hand and Dewey starts trying to grab more marbles to throw. “Hey, hey, enough! Stop that!”

“Those were mine!” Webby complains weakly, ducking as Dewey starts trying to fight Huey to get to the rest of the marbles.

“They’re stupid!” Dewey hisses, his vision going blurry as his eyes start to water again. “They’re all stupid, and you aren’t allowed to hurt my brother with them—let me go—!”

“Calm down!”

“I am calm!” he shouts in Huey’s face, and it’s not until he sees Huey flinch that he realizes he’s acting—strange. (Acing like Uncle Donald, his mind supplies, and ice fills his chest.) He scrambles back, away from Huey and Webby and Louie behind them, until he hits the next cabinet, his chest heaving as his eyes dart around. Instinct takes over; when he hyperventilates, it’s because he’s in danger, so he just needs to find the danger now and vanquish it. That’s what all heroes do.

They don’t abandon their family. They don’t apply to a different university and not tell them, then consider accepting it before they even know if they’ve gotten in or not.

Dewey is no hero.

He bursts into tears again, but this time, they’re angry. As his eyes slam shut his mind takes a picture of the scene that he doesn’t think he’ll ever learn how to forget: Huey, hand outstretched after him, heartbroken; Webby, cowering on the floor, looking at him like he’s the monster; Louie, standing behind them both, a Pep in hand, utterly horrified.

Dewey lets out a cry, then bolts for the door blindly, and manages to make it all the way up to the attic and lock the door behind him before he stops remembering.

Webby knows how to get into every room in the mansion in minutes, so Dewey reasons the only reason she doesn’t come looking for him the entire rest of the day or the next day is because everyone else hates his guts and she’s plotting their greatest revenge plot yet. He wonders how she’ll kill him; she’d once told him about a book of the best assassinations in history, so she’s probably figured out a way to combine them all at once, or is charging some sort of magical item to bring him back to life so she can try all of them on him. He cowers in the corner of the room, rocking back and forth, intermittently sobbing and wishing his brothers were there, then remembering they hate him too and are probably coming after him as well, which only makes him cry harder. Every creak in the house makes him shrink further. When the door opens eventually (almost forty hours after he disappeared in here, not that he was counting at all—thirty nine hours, fifty two minutes and twelveish seconds), he’s hidden behind all his discarded set pieces, invisible from the door.

“…Dew?” someone asks—well, he thinks that’s what they say, anyway—and it’s only then that he realizes today was the day his mom and Uncle Donald came home and he didn’t plan a speech at all. Better to hide, isn’t it? He pushes himself further into the corner, cursing as one of the set pieces shifts against the weight. “Dewey? Are you in here?”

He doesn’t answer, but he hears someone come closer, and then Uncle Donald’s face peeks around the piece of wood obscuring him.

“Dewey?” Uncle Donald asks gently. “Are you okay?”

“Is he up there?”

That’s his mom’s voice; Dewey flinches, hiding his face.

“Oh,” Uncle Donald says softly, sitting in front of him. “It’s okay, Dewey. Are you hurt?”

It takes a moment, but Dewey shakes his head no.

“That’s good,” his uncle says. “Can I sit here for a bit?”

Dewey nods carefully, not looking up.

“Thanks.”

Another set of footsteps at the door. “Is he here?”

“Della, it’s okay. I’ve got this.”

“That’s my son,” Della says, with such conviction that Dewey finds himself flinching. A new story starts crafting itself in his head without his permission. “If he’s hurt, I need to be here for him.”

“I have it!”

Huey and Louie must have told her, his mind reasons. Be here is probably code for…for holding him down, likely, as Louie takes a bat to his face, or as Webby aims marbles down his throat to choke him so his mom can give him the Heimlich and Webby can kill him a different way quicker.

“Give him space!” Uncle Donald insists, standing so Della can’t quite see Dewey. “He’s having a bad time!”

“He hasn’t eaten,” comes another voice from the door, laced with worry. For a moment, the knowledge of the familiar voice escapes him, because it’s ridiculous. “I—I brought him some chips and stuff? Or Mrs. Beakley is making burgers and fries, I can get those—”

“Louie,” says another voice, which definitely belongs to Huey, which means Dewey did hear Louie’s voice, which means he was right the first time. “It’s okay.”

“This is my fault! I’m worried about him!”

“Everyone back up!” Donald says loudly, hopping in place a little. “Give him space! He’s in here really tight—”

“Maybe he’s stuck!” Della gasps.

“He hasn’t tried to get out yet!”

“He probably is stuck and it’s my fault—” Louie says, his voice closer now.

As everyone starts to get closer, Dewey finds himself scooting further and further behind the wood—no longer in the corner now, but fully between the flats and the wall, in a space that he barely would have fit into six years ago, much less now as an awkward, gangly teen. Still, he finds himself wiggling back, back, back, appreciating the way the weight of the wood grounds him and protects him.

(Grounds him much the way Louie had yesterday, leaning against him.)

(Dewey loves his family. He wishes he didn’t. It would make this all a lot simpler.)

Everyone’s starting to yell at each other again, various ideas and solutions and fights picking up, until Dewey can hear Uncle Scrooge too—“For the love of—let me see him, I’ll get him out of this room myself if I have to—” And Dewey keeps crawling back until there’s nowhere left to run, and he can only see the entrance he cowered through in front of him, and he can see Donald’s legs getting closer as everyone starts converging.

Only one thing will stop this, he realizes finally.

“Go away,” Dewey mumbles, and the room quiets finally.

“Dewey?” his mom says. He can see her try to lean towards the entrance, stopped by Donald’s hand. “Turbo, are you alright?”

“Go away,” he repeats.

“Lad, you’ve been up here for two days,” Uncle Scrooge says. “You need food, and a shower!”

“Go away.”

“He said to go away!” Donald repeats for him, hopping again. The angry lilt to his voice is back, making his words harder and harder to understand. “So go away!”

“That includes you,” Della hisses.

“Not Uncle Donald,” Dewey corrects. His voice must be echoing or amplified or something for everyone to still be able to hear him. “But everyone else, go away.”

“Dewey,” Della tries again unsuccessfully.

He watches the shadows as they all start to disperse until there’s only two. One is Donald, still standing watch; the other one he can’t place, until he sees a little bag of his favorite chips and a can of Pep being left at the sliver of light, then Louie’s shadow vanishes too and Dewey finally hears the door shut. Donald sighs, exhausted, and collapses back, but he doesn’t look into Dewey’s hidey hole.

“Phooey,” Dewey mumbles, and he watches Donald smile and suppress a laugh.

“You gotta put more oomph in it,” he corrects, then says it himself. “Oh, phooey.”

“Oh, phooey,” Dewey tries, and he smiles a little when Donald smiles again.

“There we go.”

He’s not sure how long they sit there, but eventually Dewey starts crawling forward until he can rest his head on his uncle’s shoulder carefully. Donald puts his head on top of Dewey’s, sighing a little.

“…you okay?”

“…I applied to St. Canard’s University,” he admits quietly. “I got in. And I didn’t tell anyone.”

“Dewey!” Donald says, then lowers his voice a little. “That’s great! That’s really fancy, right?”

“Yeah. Hard to get into. I didn’t know if I would.”

“But you did!”

“I did,” he says, for the first time feeling a little bit of relief. “I was really excited.”

“Was?”

His smile fades again. “…I didn’t tell anyone until they saw the letter. Everyone’s mad. I know we had a plan, and all of us were gonna go to the same place, but…”

“But you saw a chance,” Donald says gently. “And you took it.”

“And now everyone’s mad at me, and Louie hates me,” he says, hiding his face in Donald’s shoulder. “They ignored me at breakfast.”

“They might have just been hurt.”

“Probably,” Dewey admits. “But so am I. Nobody was even happy for me, except Mrs. Beakley.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Donald says. Dewey finally looks up, frowning. Donald looks at him sympathetically, putting his arm around Dewey’s shoulder. “I heard Uncle Scrooge and Huey were really excited for you.”

“It took Huey a minute to come around,” Dewey agrees, frowning. “I didn’t know about Uncle Scrooge.”

“Did you ask?”

“I didn’t get a chance.”

Donald laughs kindly, smiling. “Well, he told me so himself.”

Dewey sits for a minute in silence, then watches as Donald grabs the can of Pep and opens it for him to pass it over. “…thanks.”

“Did you eat?”

He shakes his head. “I thought Webby was going to come try to kill me,” he admits. “I’ve been bracing myself.”

Donald looks around at the untouched room. “How were you going to protect yourself?”

Dewey takes a little sip. “I wasn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I deserve it, probably. I messed up Huey’s whole plan.”

“I don’t think you did.”

“I did, and everyone knows it.” He stares at the can, then sets it down. “Uncle Donald, I really want to go to SCU.”

“Then you should,” Donald says. “I know everyone was shocked, because they told me that. But you didn’t do anything wrong by applying, and you didn’t do anything wrong by getting in, and you won’t do anything wrong by saying yes.”

“…you think so?” he mumbles.

“I know so.”

They sit there for a while longer, until finally Dewey asks how the adventure had gone, and he gets treated to a one man reenactment of the whole thing by his uncle. He finds himself actually laughing and smiling, more than he has in a few days, and it makes him feel a lot better. (Maybe the chips and Pep help too, but he tries not to think about that too much, or else his stomach will start growling so much he won’t be able to function.) Eventually, Uncle Donald convinces him to at least curl up on the couch and try to get some amount of sleep.

“Being awake that long isn’t good for you,” he says, finding a blanket in the corner and bringing it to lay over Dewey. “I can bring you up some lunch tomorrow.”

“Can you tell Huey and Louie I’m sorry?” Dewey asks, fighting a yawn even as his eyes close.

“I’ll tell them,” Donald promises, kissing Dewey’s head. “Sweet dreams, Dewey.”

“Goodnight…” Dewey starts, intending to say something else, but he’s off to sleep before he can finish the thought.

Embarrassingly, he wakes up to someone bringing food and setting it on the desk. He had a whole plan—he was going to get up, make the day normal, figure out a way to pretend everything was fine—but Donald places the food right next to the laptop and puts a little drink next to it just as Dewey sits up and rubs his eyes.

“Hey,” he mumbles. Donald yelps, then smoothes down his shirt.

“Good afternoon, Dewey.”

A creak at the door makes Dewey’s head spin quickly. He sees a flash of green disappear around the doorway and frowns.

“He wanted to see if you were okay,” Donald tells him quietly, sitting on the other end of the couch. “He was really worried.”

“He doesn’t have to be,” Dewey complains, pulling his knees to his chest.

“He is,” Donald says simply. “I brought you a burger, and some fries, and some ketchup. And some Pep, straight from the can and poured over ice. Fancy lunch for a fancy boy.”

Dewey ought to smile, but he turns his face away. “…he doesn’t have to be worried,” he says. “And neither do you.”

“I know,” says Louie almost immediately, then yelps and covers his mouth as he steps out of the doorframe again. He can hear him whispering with someone, presumably Huey, in the hallway. Dewey doesn’t bother to look this time. He just turns further away.

“Dewey,” Donald says gently. “What’s going on?”

“I was so excited,” Dewey says. “And now it sucks. I don’t even want to go anymore. I wish I hadn’t ever applied in the first place. I’d have been better off not knowing and spending the rest of my life wondering.”

Donald frowns, putting his hand between them. “You’re allowed to be excited.”

“I don’t care,” Dewey grumbles. “I’m not anymore. I wish the past few days could have never happened, and I wish I hadn’t applied in the first place, and I wish—”

“Dewey, we’re excited for you!” Huey says, finally coming in and dragging Louie with him. “We are! We just…needed some space to process it.”

“I’m sorry,” Louie says. His hoodie sleeves are almost covering his hands, but Dewey can see the way he’s holding onto Huey’s hand like he did when he was little—when they were kids. When things were simple. When they were simple, and Halloween was their greatest adventure, and everything was better. “I didn’t mean to ruin it for you.”

Dewey blows some air out of his mouth. The piece of hair that had fallen into his eyes flutters up, then back down. “Whatever.”

“Don’t go all ‘emo teen’ on us,” Huey says. He almost sounds like he’s trying to tell Dewey what to do. It nearly makes him laugh, which makes him want to cry, so…he does. He buries his face in his knees again, right into the blanket, and starts crying, curling up tighter. The couch dips a little as one of his brothers sits on the pillow with him. “Dewey, what’s going on?”

“Everything sucks,” Dewey mumbles. “And I ruined your plan, and Webby’s trying to kill me, and Louie hates me—”

“I don’t hate you,” Louie says, his voice small despite how close he’s sitting. “I don’t. I didn’t mean it, Dewey, I’m just gonna miss you. I didn’t know how to say that, and I was mad you didn’t tell us, and—”

“And you said you hate me,” Dewey says, slightly louder as he raises his voice. “And it’s fine, because I ruined everything, and—”

“We can still keep in touch,” Huey promises, kneeling next to them. “Just because you’re in a different city doesn’t mean we aren’t still brothers.” His hand touches Dewey’s carefully, his other landing on Louie’s knee. “It’s gonna be okay, Dew. We can, uh, Dewey it, right?”

“I don’t hate you,” Louie promises, sitting closer. “I really, really don’t. I just…got scared of losing you. But you aren’t going that far.”

Dewey looks up slowly, but not at either of his brothers—at his Uncle Donald. His uncle who smiles encouragingly, like he’s proud of them. It settles something for him, at least; so he looks back at his brothers, giving a small smile.

“…I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have.”

“It’s okay,” Huey says immediately. “If we were in your shoes, who said we would have either?”

“I wouldn’t have!” Louie says brightly. “I would have kept it to myself too.”

Dewey smiles a little. “No more secrets from here on out. I promise.”

“Promise,” Huey says, holding out a finger, and all of them lock pinkies. Donald smiles a little, throwing his arms around them in a little hug, and by all accounts it’s settled.

Dewey just has one last thing to take care of.

By dinner it’s done, and he joins his family with only a little trepidation. Uncle Scrooge smiles at him brightly, but he doesn’t comment; Louie kicks Webby out of her seat next to Dewey so he can sit there instead, with Huey on the other side. Della sits across from them, looking a little put out, but she does ruffle Dewey’s hair as she passes.

Conversation flows alright from there, but it has to come up eventually, so when Scrooge sighs and sits back a little Dewey steels himself.

“So, lad. SCU, huh? Pretty big news. Did a little research into it.”

“It’s a great school.”

“That’s our brother,” Louie grins, shaking Dewey’s shoulder. “Always knew you could do it, bro.”

“Hah. Thanks.”

“And, of course, you got your scholarship—”

“A scholarship!” Della says brightly. “Oh, Turbo, that’s amazing!” It’s a fond nickname; Dewey grins at her, ducking his head.

“Don’t get modest now,” Donald says, reaching over to tap the table in front of Dewey. “We’re really proud of you.”

“All of us are,” Mrs. Beakley agrees, standing behind Webby—Webby, who looks like she’s about to jump out of her seat if not for her grandmother holding her in it.

“—by the by, the rest of the tuition will still need to be paid, so you can just let me know how much it is and we’ll get the check written off. Might even get you a subsidiary, if I’m feeling generous enough.” Uncle Scrooge laughs good-naturedly, and everyone sort of chuckles along with him.

“Oh, thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Dewey says, and he senses the way Huey stiffens next to him.

“Another scholarship?” Della gasps. “My baby boy—one of—got a full ride to one of the best colleges in the country?”

Dewey laughs again, more forced this time. “Ah—no.”

“Another scholarship!” Louie shrieks. “Oh, he’s just being modest—my modest brother—!”

“Dewey,” Huey says warningly. Dewey is suddenly very interested in the tablecloth. “Why don’t you need Uncle Scrooge to help pay for SCU?”

“Well,” Dewey says, as casual as he can. “Probably because I turned them down.”

The room completely freezes. It’s worse than when he got the letter in the first place—everyone stops, staring at him in shock. Awe. Anger, maybe. Dewey won’t look up to find out.

“You…what?” Louie whispers.

“Turned them down?” Webby asks. “But…but St. Canard University was your dream, wasn’t it? According to your diary.”

“It used to be,” Dewey says. They’re all starting to sound like they’re underwater again. “But I’d rather be with my family at Mouseton, so I told SCU ‘no, thanks’.” The tablecloth has a years old bleach stain. It’s a little funny looking, when he stares at it for long enough. If it’s even there. His eyes might be playing tricks on him.

“Why would you do that?” Della asks quietly. “Dewey, SCU is a big deal.”

“And I decided I didn’t want to go.”

“You hid in an attic for two days,” Louie says.

“I regretted applying.”

“You didn’t tell anyone you applied!” Webby insists.

“I shouldn’t have in the first place,” Dewey says, starting to get impatient. “So I sent in my denial before dinner.”

“Oh, phooey,” Donald mumbles, dropping his head into his hands.

“You’re gonna regret that more,” Huey tells him, frowning hard.

“Seriously, Dewey, of all the bone-headed—” Uncle Scrooge starts, and then everyone starts talking over each other again, and Dewey stops hearing a single word of it. He just stares at the tablecloth. It’s a nice tablecloth.

(Maybe he’s a tablecloth. Maybe he’s pretty and fun to look at, but is sort of functionally impractical in everyday situations. Sure, on adventures he’s fantastic, but he messed up by applying to college, then messed up by withdrawing his application from college, and everyone’s mad at him for one or the other, and fixing things only makes things worse. The bleach stain on the tablecloth is never going to go away, no matter what they do. Even bleaching more would only make it bigger, and the stain in the first place probably couldn’t have been undone anyway.)

(He feels himself shrinking in the seat again, and not for the first time, he wishes he could just disappear.)

“Dewey,” someone says, finally cutting through with a hand on his shoulder. It’s Louie. He blinks up slowly. “Do they accept the denials?”

“Huh?”

“It’s a two way street, right?” Huey says quickly. “You applied, they accepted. You said no, they have to accept that too, right?”

“I…think so?”

“And today’s a holiday!” Donald says. Dewey isn’t sure when he stood up, but he’s starting to hop in place a little. “So they won’t be in office to accept it!”

“So if we break in,” Webby continues, vibrating. “Then we can reject that and give you the chance to be accepted again!”

“Guys,” Dewey says slowly. “I said no because I don’t want to go.”

“Yes, you do,” Huey says gently. “You wouldn’t have applied if you didn’t. And we aren’t letting you throw this away for some dumb plan I made up. Plans are stupid anyway.”

“I wish I had that recorded,” Louie bemoans. “Please, tell me someone recorded that. Webby?”

“I always record conversations with Scrooge!” she yells, throwing her hands up and nearly hitting Mrs. Beakley in the face.

“I’m making that my ringtone!”

“Dewey,” Huey says. “One last adventure before we send you off on your own. Let us do this for you, okay? You’re gonna do great at SCU, if you give yourself the shot.”

Dewey shrinks a little. “What if I’m not gonna do great?”

“Okay,” Huey shrugs. “But at least you’ll know, if the impossible does happen and you aren’t their perfect candidate.”

“I’ll get the plane,” Della says excitedly.

His family is a little too good at adventures, Dewey decides. The whole thing is a little ridiculous, especially when Webby starts talking about her portable mini circular saw she got as a Christmas gift from Gizmoduck and Huey starts teaching Louie and Donald knots in case they need to hog-tie someone. He tells everyone he’s going for a bathroom break, then steps as far to the back of the plane as he can and dials a familiar number.

“Best friend!” Launchpad greets. Dewey’s shoulders relax a little.

“Hi, LP. Look, I don’t have a lot of time right now—”

“Everything okay, little guy?”

“Sort of. No. Listen, we’re swinging by St. Canard University to break in—it’s a long story. Could you spare some time? I have something to ask you about.”

“Anything for you, you know that!”

“You’re the best, LP. See you in a bit.”

“Wait, how are you gonna get here?”

Dewey smiles instinctively. They have this conversation every time. “Mom can fly the plane.”

“Tell her to be careful when she crashes! Don’t want her to hurt anybody too bad.”

“Can do, Launchpad. See you in a bit.” He hangs up with a little beep, then nearly jumps out of his skin when he sees Uncle Scrooge leaning on the railing nearby. “Uncle Scrooge!”

“You didn’t ask him about going to SCU?” Scrooge asks, a little surprised, but he’s smiling.

“Well—no, I didn’t even know if I’d get in—”

“We both know that isn’t true,” he tells Dewey warmly. “You’re brilliant. And you got the McDuck name behind you.”

“That’s why I wasn’t sure,” Dewey admits. “They don’t like people trying to get in on notoriety. I read horror stories about people who tried to pull the ‘big, famous family’ card and got banned from the campus—from the city—for it!”

“Hogwash,” Scrooge says. “That’s ridiculous.”

“They want people who deserve to be there,” Dewey insists. “My entire application was about stuff I didn’t do with you guys. Just…normal people stories, and stories about how much I love my brothers. The ones I’d be abandoning if I went there. So I can’t go, and this whole quest is ridiculous! Why don’t we tell Mom to turn the plane around and we’ll go do a different adventure instead!” He grabs Scrooge’s shirt desperately. “We don’t have to do this!”

“We absolutely do!” Scrooge says. “Dewey, your whole life you’ve spent following the whims of others. Me, or Webby, or your brothers…or your uncle,” he says knowingly, placing a steady hand on Dewey’s shoulder. “If any of you lot deserve a chance to be your own person, I think it has to be you. I’m sorry we ruined your acceptance in the first place, lad. We’re incredibly proud of you, truly.”

“You don’t have to be proud of me!” Dewey hisses. “I ruined everything!”

“You gave Louie the confidence to tell me he doesn’t want to go to Mouseton either,” Scrooge says.

“Of course he doesn’t! He doesn’t want to go to school!”

“He wants to go to my Alma Mater,” Scrooge says, which makes Dewey come up short.

“…what?”

“Cranevard,” he says. “He’d like to go for business.”

Dewey stops, falling back onto his heels. “…I didn’t know that.”

“And he didn’t know you wanted to go to SCU,” Scrooge reminds him. “You three want different things now. It’s not a bad thing, Dewey. You were just the first one to make the leap, and we’re proud of you for it. So let us set it right. We didn’t mean to make you doubt yourself.”

Dewey stares for a minute longer, then looks across the plane at his brothers. Huey is helping Donald untie his fingers; in another seat, Louie holds up a rope proudly, then watches as it all falls apart into little bits onto the floor. Webby starts laughing next to him. It’s a pretty nice little scene, and it makes his heart warm a little—

(—it’s a trap he falls into a lot, where he sees his family without him and decides he needs to be included. His heart gets full and his brain starts telling him stupid things like how they all love him and he deserves to be there as much as they do. Most of the time he lets it run its course, but today he knows it’s idiotic, so he forces himself to look away—)

—and he looks at his Uncle Scrooge, who looks so damn proud of him it’s nauseating. Dewey decides staring at his feet is going to help, so he does.

“You’re a good kid,” Scrooge says softly. “Tougher than all the toughies out there, I’ll give you that. Including me. But you’ll only really find your footing if you go discover it for yourself. Every young adventurer needs to step out on their own sometime. And for you, that gets to be at St. Canard. We’ll only be a drive away if you need us.”

“There’s no busses,” Dewey says weakly.

“Then what if I use the rest of your college fund to get you a car, eh?”

“But that’s so much money,” he whispers. “And SCU is way more expensive than—”

“Dewey,” Scrooge says, patient as ever. “I only made you consider money’s worth all these years so I could save it for when it really matters. If I’d bought you that quad-story waterslide you asked for when you were a kid, I don’t know I would be able to afford this.”

“That was last Christmas,” he corrects.

“But,” Scrooge continues, as if he didn’t hear. “You three are the family’s pride and joy. If you got into a really good school and got a scholarship for it, of course I’m willing to pay my part and a little extra so you don’t feel so alone. As long as you still want to come home, I consider that one of the greatest riches of all.”

Dewey softens, then pulls his uncle in for a tight hug. Scrooge lets out a little oof, but he hugs back just as tightly.

“I love you, Uncle Scrooge,” he whispers.

“I love you too, kiddo,” Scrooge whispers back. “Let’s go set your future right.”

“There’s no way we’re going to be able to do this,” Louie decides as they stare up at the building.

It’s the administration building, according to the map. It had taken them some time to find it, and even longer to figure out where Launchpad had crashed his car, and by then they were all turned around—anyway, they found it after a traipse through the gift shop, where Scrooge left his business card and an invoice to pay for all the merch everyone had stocked up on. According to the schedule, both staff and students were off campus until Thursday, and classes started back on Monday, but since they were already here…

Webby, dressed in a sweatshirt two sizes too big, nods her head sharply until her night vision goggles cascade over her eyes. “We got this,” she decides, tugging out her grappling hook. “We just need to get inside, find the right computer, break into it, find Dewey’s email, delete it entirely, figure out a way to reverse it in the system, then let Dewey resend the email of acceptance, and get out without leaving a trace!”

“I probably could have just emailed them it was a mistake,” Dewey says, voice small.

“Unlikely they would have accepted that,” Huey counters. “They might have thought they were the second choice. This is the easier solution.”

“There’s no way this is easier!”

“Guys, I found an entrance!” Launchpad says brightly, pointing to the door.

“We can’t go in the front door, you idiot,” Della hisses. “The cameras are going to pick us up if we do that!”

“Well—“

“We have to sneak in the basement and trip the power breaker,” Della says, turning to Webby. “You got it, kiddo?”

“I’ve never been more ready for anything in my life,” Webby assures her, doing some gymnastics on her way to the basement window.

“We ought to all follow her,” Scrooge invites, pointing his cane. Huey and Louie start making their way with him and Della behind Webby in various states of spy mode.

And Dewey is left with Donald and Launchpad, who he hasn’t had a chance to talk to all day. Donald hesitates, looking at them, then decides to give them time alone with a solemn nod.

(Donald has been so gentle with him this whole situation, and Dewey hasn’t looked in a mirror since his uncle came home. Why would he need to, when his future is right there?)

Launchpad bounces on his feet for a second. “You, uh…said you had to ask me something?”

“I’m moving here,” Dewey says blankly, staring up at the building. “To the city, I mean. To go to school here.”

“Alright!” Launchpad grins, throwing a fist in the air, then hesitating. “Is this…a good thing?”

“Yeah,” he admits quietly. “A really good thing. I’m really excited, Launchpad. This place is great.”

“But…something’s wrong. You’re not doing your happy Dewey dance. And you don’t have your happy Dewey face on.”

He sighs. “I thought everyone was mad I wanted to go here, so I took it back, and now they’re mad I did that, which is why we’re here today. I just…I’m not gonna know anyone, so I just…wanted to know if you’d grab lunch with me sometimes, I guess. So I have a friend.”

(Dewey sounds more pathetic than he wants to, but the truth is he’s hanging on by a thread here. He has Launchpad—once he moves here for good, that’s virtually all he’ll have for immediate emergencies, and the prospect of being in a new city at a new school all by himself is daunting enough without risking being rejected by one of his best friends. And it’s almost more pathetic that Launchpad is one of his best friends, but he can’t deny it, so here he is, staring up at a building too daunting to scale with running the risk of ruining his entire future inside, asking someone who worked for his great-uncle to get lunch with him sometimes. If his life were a show, it would surely have to be a comedy, because if it were a tragedy it would just be too pathetic.)

“Dewey,” Launchpad says, sounding tearful, and then Dewey is swept up in one of the spine-cracking hugs Launchpad is so prone to giving. “Of course! Do you need a place to stay, too? I have a sweet pad on the far side of the city!”

Dewey laughs, relieved. “I’d love that, if I’m allowed,” he whispers, leaning into Launchpad’s shoulder.

“Oh, I can’t wait to tell Drake,” Launchpad whispers back, his hug turning a little more genuine than just excited. “Dewey, we’re gonna be roomies!”

“We’re gonna be roomies,” he agrees. “I can’t wait.”

They hug for a minute; when Launchpad puts him down finally, he doesn’t have to bend down as far as he used to, because Dewey nearly comes up to his shoulder now. Launchpad laughs good-naturedly, then sighs softly. “Hey, how long do you think I should let them mess around in there before I tell them the power’s already out?”

“Huh?”

He points at the building, and Dewey notices what he’s talking about—that the lights are all off, that the security systems are all blinking with an alert, that the front door is swinging open in the breeze and no alarm is sounding.

“Someone else is already breaking in,” Dewey whispers, and then he takes off running.

In the end, it’s pretty classic. Glomgold has decided to try to buy the university, planning to raise tuition until he can finally beat Scrooge in the race to be the richest duck in the world; he had a team break in, only to betray them at the last minute; Webby got to show off being a terrifying creature of the shadows in taking them down one by one, Scrooge and the twins got to pull some model moves in taking down the enemies, and the triplets and Launchpad got to all use their specialties to get everyone tied up in time for the police to show up.

And in classic fashion, of course, they forget why they’re there until one of the administrators and the Dean of the university arrive.

“Mr. McDuck, I must say, I’m surprised to see you here,” the man—Hummingboyd, his name is, Dewey thinks—says. “I hope this doesn’t have to do with—”

“It’s a big misunderstanding,” Webby says, and everyone starts talking over each other until Dewey breaks through the crew to the front, looking sheepish. Hummingboyd stares down at him, confused.

“Dean Humminboyd,” he says, voice shaking. “I just—I made a mistake and panic declined the acceptance, and everyone wanted to come try to backdoor my way in as if I never declined in the first place. I should have just emailed, I know, or called, or—I’m really sorry for all the trouble—”

“Dewford, is it?”

Dewey flinches, staring at the ground. “Yes, sir.”

“We get a few of these every year,” Hummingboyd assures him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It can be a bit daunting, especially moving from Duckburg all the way out here. We’d be happy to help reverse that, if you do mean to join us in the fall.”

Dewey hesitates, looking up. The man seems nice enough, and sincere, and for once he’s not looking past Dewey at his family lineage. He takes in a slow breath, then nods.

“I do. I’d love to, really.”

“Then I’ll make note,” he says, tugging out his phone. “We can override that on our end very easily. Welcome to St. Canard University, Dewey Duck. We’re glad to have you.”

“I’m glad to be here,” Dewey says, brightening, then blanches. “Ah—I did have one question—or request, I guess?”

“I’m listening.”

“Do freshman have to live on campus, if I have someone in the city I’d like to stay with?” Dewey asks quickly, pointing with his thumb behind him. He can picture Launchpad, tall and goofy, waving—or looking confused—one of the two—anyway, the Dean laughs.

“If you’d like to stay with someone off campus as a freshman, we do have a spot for that in the paperwork, yes.”

“Great,” Dewey sighs, relieved. “Thank you. I am sorry about all the trouble.”

“No trouble at all. I have a feeling you’ll do well here, Dewey.”

And when the Dean walks away, he can feel Huey and Louie slinging their arms around him and jumping in celebration.

“You’re going to SCU!” Della shouts, tackling all three of them for a hug, and as they hurtle towards the ground, Dewey finds it’s the first time he doesn’t have trouble breathing in a few days.

He ends up with a broken beak because of the way his mom fell on him, but he doesn’t mind so much when Huey and Louie have set up a massive pillow fort for them to stay in while Dewey recovers. They keep giving him soup through a straw and fighting over what kind of soup is best, until Webby introduces something so fantastic they all choose that instead; Huey and Webby end up in a fight over using pillows or blankets for any future fort extensions, and Louie starts charging everyone else admission, which properly puts Scrooge off the whole idea until he declares war on the pillow side of the fort since that’s the triplet’s invention. Dewey gets to laugh it all off, because at the end of the day he’s with his family, and no one’s mad, and he’s an SCU admit.

Later that night, when they find a way to get a view of the stars from the fort, Dewey finally lets it all hit him.

“I’m gonna miss you guys,” he mumbles.

“We’re gonna miss you too,” Huey promises. “But we aren’t gonna be too far. I’ll pick up whenever you call.”

“Try to schedule it with me,” Louie says, relaxing back. “I’m gonna be pretty busy, you know, going to Cranevard and all.”

“How did you manage to get into Cranevard?” Huey asks. “I didn’t even know you’d applied.”

“Oh, I haven’t yet. I thought we could save that for next month’s adventure.”

Dewey face palms, then mumbles a few choice words when it pains his beak. “No more college heists. You can apply normally, or just wait till next year and take a gap year—”

He doesn’t notice Huey giving him the DO NOT TELL HIM THAT signal until the words are already out. Louie snaps up excitedly.

“A gap year? Oh, Dewford, you’re a genius!”

“No I’m not!” he backtracks. “No no no, I’m not a genius, I’m—stupid! Gap years don’t exist!”

“Why did you say anything?” Huey hisses.

“I’m sorry!”

“A whole year of not doing anything!”

“Uncle Scrooge will probably put you to work shining his shoes,” Dewey says quickly. “And you won’t be able to get out of it.”

Louie makes a face. “Oh, ew, never mind. I’d rather just go to school.”

Huey and Dewey sigh in relief as Louie collapses back.

“And honestly,” Louie says quietly. “I’m a little excited to go. I wanna be just like Uncle Scrooge one day. He’s got a pretty good family, you know that?”

“He does,” Huey agrees. “And between the three of us, I bet there’s gonna be a bunch of cousins and extended family. Just try not to send one of us under the sea, okay?”

Dewey makes a little face, staring up. One day, he’ll probably mention to them that he’d rather be the eccentric uncle with no family. But not tonight, probably. One problem at a time.

“What happens when Scrooge doesn’t die?” he muses. “You’ll never inherit the business if he’s still alive.”

Louie shrugs. “Eh. I’ll figure something out. I always, ahem…Louie ooey do.”

All three of them groan, then laugh, and Dewey ends up falling asleep right there, with his brothers at his side.

Seven months later, he still oscillates between being super positive and feeling like he made a mistake. Louie had managed to apply for Cranevard, scooting in his applications with mere minutes to spare, and they threw a whole party when his acceptance letter came. Webby and Huey are leaving for Mouseton tomorrow, and Louie for Cranevard next week, but tonight is Dewey’s departure. He didn’t ask for anything big.

So of course, there’s a massive party being thrown, and Dewey’s having a hard time trying to figure out how to maneuver his car out of all the guests parked in their driveway.

“I knew it was a bad idea to take driving lessons from Launchpad,” he mumbles under his breath as he hits the brakes just a hair too close. He doesn’t crash, though; maybe he did learn something.

He finally makes it to the end of the driveway, and he chances one last look back at the mansion. The front doors are open, spilling a warm orange light onto the steps. He can see familiar shadows—his mom, and Uncle Scrooge with his top hat, waving then being guided back inside. (They’d had a little too much to drink, even before Dewey had popped out an hour ago, and it doesn’t seem like they’ve stopped.) Mrs. Beakley is the one turning them, and she waves one hand in goodbye too before she disappears into the light. Next he sees his brothers and Webby, all jumping and waving, and Dewey can tell Louie is still crying, the softie. (He can’t say much, because they were both blubbering messes that Webby had to snap them out of or else Dewey was never going to leave.) Webby is the last one of the kids to linger, waving goodbye for a moment longer than everyone else, and then she turns inside and vanishes.

One last person stands on the steps, and Dewey waves a hand in goodbye to Uncle Donald. He’d been the one to help pack the car, then double check everything, then give the longest hug goodbye. There’s a letter on the passenger seat that Dewey suspects is packed with spare cash in case something goes wrong, and a little sailor’s hat next to it—the only thing he’d passed down as legacy before the first of his nephews left, seemingly for good (or at least for the next four years on a semi-permanent basis).

Donald raises one hand slowly, then puts it on his heart, so Dewey does the same.

In the light, Dewey thinks for a moment that it almost looks like him. And then he smiles, and Donald doesn’t go inside, and Dewey drives off in the direction of St. Canard, and he’s learned enough lessons from Launchpad to not look back.

Chapter Text

Truthfully, Louie was expecting a little more…pizzaz when it came to going to college. He knew Uncle Scrooge had spent a lot of time adventuring in school, so he was picturing more than half his time being spent not having to write essays or wander around campus in drizzling rain. It’s the third semester in, and the fourth day this week that he’s had to try to get to class in a torrential downpour. He ducks into the doorway, staring out across the campus, watching the way other ducks like him dash across the quad and out of the rain as fast as they can. One of them trips; he laughs, then turns to see if Huey or Dewey is laughing with him—

They aren’t here. Right. His smile drops and he sighs, going inside the building.

(He seems to forget, more often than not, that he’s mostly alone here. Not entirely, of course—there’s a whole student body, plus some old familiar faces, but he doesn’t have his brothers. For someone who spent so long doing things in threes, adjusting to being a solo act has been…hard. Even a year and some weeks on he struggles. It’s like he can hear where their voices are supposed to go, but the script wasn’t finished; or like they’re all in the same scene, but in different places. Sometimes he has the urge to say something nonsensical and he wonders if it would make sense to Huey or Dewey, if he was able to say it to them. They always understood him better than he understood himself. And life is lonely sometimes, but Louie is strong. He’s fine. He’s been through worse; he can do this.)

(Every day, he has to remind himself of that.)

He had been running late and had forgotten to get his coffee this morning, so he slides into class and prepares himself to try to stay awake. Business school lectures are so boring; he finds himself doodling on the edges of his papers, pinching his eyelids to stay awake, trying almost anything to give him at least some semblance of focus. Several times, he picks up his phone and stares at his lack of notifications. Several times, he considers texting his brothers, or Webby or her sisters, or even his uncles.

He doesn’t. But at least he doesn’t fall asleep.

After class he has a stop to make, so he swings by one of the dorms and makes the walk up the familiar flight of stairs, then knocks on the designated door. Violet swings the door open, barely greeting him as she pushes her chair back to her spot at the desk.

“Hello, Llewellen.”

“Louie,” he corrects stiffly, shoving his hand in the front pocket of his hoodie. “I got the money you asked for.”

“Wasn’t so hard, was it?” Lena asks from her spot on Violet’s bed, twisting a rock above her with magic. “She does good work, she deserves payment.”

“I know,” he grumbles. “And I told you I had it, but I lost my wallet last week—”

“Yes,” Violet says blankly. “You’ve said. I’ve emailed the assignment to you.”

“What?” Lena asks, sitting up. “You haven’t even checked if he has enough!”

Louie sighs, making a point to count out seven bills, then handing them to Violet for her to count as well. “I included a tip. For the trouble.” He’s not happy to be the one on the other end of the swindling, but Violet had needed a lot of incentive for her to be willing to abandon her morals and do some of his work for him. They reached a compromise, since a thousand dollars an essay was unreasonable—he’d do the ground work, make the outline, and come up with the intro, then send it to her. She’d compile his thoughts exactly as written, including correct citations, and then he’d need to create the conclusion, but at least he wouldn’t have to muddle through writing flowery language that sounds like Ancient Greek to him. “A hundred for the compilation, forty on top since my lecture times are changing and I won’t be able to buy you dinner this semester. That’s one night of takeout, or a week and a half of groceries, on me.”

Violet looks at him, then smiles, seemingly a little impressed. “Thank you.”

“Triple count that,” Lena grumbles. Louie’s phone dings, and he sees the email from Violet has gone through.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, heading for the door.

“Are you alright, Llewellen?”

The question catches him off guard and he turns, tilting his head. Violet is staring with those same intense eyes she’s always had, but there’s empathy in them this time too.

“You don’t seem like yourself,” she continues. “Is something the matter lately?”

Louie stares at her, then down at his phone. The only notification is from her.

“I’m okay,” he promises, and then he ducks into the hallway without another word.

The truth is, Louie isn’t doing as well as he claims. He misses his brothers. Dewey is off in the big city living it up with Launchpad, probably doing boring school stuff, but at least he’s near action. Huey has Webby and her sisters and the rest of their family at Mouseton in Duckburg, and all of them still live at home with Scrooge and Mrs. Beakley and the rotating cast of family they have. And nobody comes to see Louie, or texts him, or calls him, or asks if he’s alright, except for Violet Sabrewing. Even Lena doesn’t care that much. It hurts.

Before he knows what he’s doing, Louie throws open the door to the outside, walks directly into the rain, and calls Huey.

“Louie! Oh—hold on a second—”

“Please make time,” Louie says, and he hates how desperate he sounds.

“I am, I promise—hey, are you okay?”

Louie sniffs a little in response, and he can hear Huey pause over the phone. “Please make time,” he repeats, voice quiet.

“You wanna video call?”

Twenty minutes later, Louie is wringing out his hoodie and watching Huey on the computer screen as he types furiously. The dorm is nice—a private suite. Uncle Scrooge really had gone all out to make sure Louie was comfortable, at least. There’s a bed that’s bunked high, so he can pretend his brothers are still underneath; there’s a desk, imported in, with the McDuck family crest burned into it with lots of flowers. (Laurels, as Huey would correct him.) Huey had promised a long conversation so long as he got to finish a project first, but Louie had bullied him into being on call while he did it, which brings them to now.

“I’m almost done, I swear.”

Louie doesn’t respond. He’s not wringing his hoodie into a bucket or anything with a drain, like a smart person would do. Instead, he’s doing it over a towel on the floor, almost already completely soaked through.

Huey finishes with a final flourish, then pulls the laptop screen closer. “Okay, sorry, sorry. What’s going on? Sucky day?”

“I miss you,” Louie complains pathetically, dropping the sopping fabric unceremoniously as he wheels back to the laptop to give Huey his full attention. The shirt he’s wearing is absolutely one of Dewey’s, but he doesn’t care. It made him feel better this morning. “Not a sucky day, a sucky life.”

Huey hums sympathetically. “I’m sorry. And for what it’s worth, I miss you too. A lot. You gonna come home at the end of the month like you said?”

“I wish,” he grumbles, dropping his chin into his hand. “But I’ve got like, four papers due.”

“How do you have so many?”

“I took too many hours! I wanted to get through school fast, but I forgot that meant I’d have to work twice as hard on the front end.” He throws his arms out in front of him dramatically. “I can’t do it, Huey. I’m not you.”

He thinks, for a second, that he can see Huey’s face drop, but it might just be a trick of the light. He never knows anymore. “You’re not. You’re better.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not a liar!”

“I miss you,” Louie repeats. “How’s everything at home?”

Huey frowns guiltily, but he doesn’t press it. “It’s…fine. May and June and Webby are out with Uncle Scrooge right now in one of the underground libraries. I wasn’t invited.”

“Liar,” Louie says again.

“Will you quit calling me that?” Huey says irritably. “I’m telling you the truth.”

“And how do I know I can trust that?”

“How do I know I can trust you?” his brother counters. “Maybe you’re lying about missing me.”

And Louie doesn’t lose his temper often, but he smacks the cup of pens off his desk with one twitch of his hand. “Why else would I have called you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re a secret spy,” Huey says, and it’s probably supposed to be a joke, but all Louie does in response is sulk back into his seat and stare out the window sullenly. “Louie? That was a joke, I swear.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

“Lou, what’s going on? Are you flunking out or something?”

“No.” It’s not a lie, at least, nor is it even something he’s worried about. “No, it’s not that. I just…you guys got to keep all your support system. I just wish I wasn’t so far away from you guys, I guess.”

Huey frowns, the feed glitching for a moment so he looks like nothing more than a mass of colors. Then he snaps back into focus. “Uncle Scrooge did say you could always come back, if you wanted.”

“Of course I want to, but…I dunno, this was the first time I ever really tried at something, and…feels stupid to turn tail the second things get tough.”

“…he’d probably agree with that, yeah.”

“I like it here,” he says, finally turning back to the screen. “I really do. I just wish it wasn’t…I wish you were here, I guess. I wish we could have all gone to Mouseton.”

“Me too,” Huey admits. “You heard from Dew-wop at all?”

“Texted him last week and still haven’t heard back. You?”

“He promised he’d call this weekend, but he never told me when.”

Louie frowns. “You don’t think something’s happened to him, right?”

“Launchpad would have called,” Huey says, but Louie can hear the doubt creeping in. “I mean…right?”

“Unless…unless he couldn’t.”

They pause in sync for all of ten seconds before he watches Huey start dialing someone as Louie does the same. Huey looks panicked as he doesn’t get a response, but Louie perks up when someone picks up on his end.

“Uncle Scrooge, we think Dewey is dead!”

“What’s all this now?”

“We can’t get ahold of him, and Launchpad isn’t answering!”

“I’m calling Gosalyn,” Huey says, the familiar twinge of anxiety lacing his voice.

“Dewey? Your brother? Ah, I’m sure he’s fine—”

“When was the last time you talked to him?” Louie demands. “Or Launchpad? I’m telling you, we gotta—come pick me up—”

“It was just this morning, lad!”

And Louie stops. On the screen, Huey pauses, then leans closer to the camera as if that would bring him into the same room. “What’d he say?”

“This morning?” Louie repeats. “You talked to Dewey this morning?”

“I sure did, and I’m sure it was him, as well. Look, could we pick this up in a bit? Nasty hoarde of zombies coming our way, and I need to make sure Webby doesn’t become their new monarch.”

“Right,” Louie says blankly, and then he hangs up. “Dewey talked to Uncle Scrooge this morning.”

Huey’s picture is still. “He’s sure?”

“He says so.” Louie waves at the camera. “Here, you try.”

So Huey does, and he puts it on speaker. It’s a horrible sound quality, but they both hear the familiar voice at the same time.

Dewmister here! Sorry I missed ya—leave a little message-a-roonie and I’ll Dew what I can to get back to you soon!

“It’s just us he doesn’t want to talk to,” Louie whispers. Huey looks utterly heartbroken, hanging up.

“I’m…I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Huey tries, but Louie can see even he thinks it’s a lost cause. “You try.”

It doesn’t even ring this time—straight to voicemail. Louie’s face screws up as he fights back tears.

“Hey—Louie, hey, listen—”

“I gotta go,” Louie says suddenly, hanging up and slamming his laptop shut. Then he’s alone again, in his stupid solo room, with no friends and no brothers and too many essays to write. The guilt starts to eat him alive almost immediately, so he texts Huey an apology that’s probably far too long, then climbs onto his bed and curls up under the covers.

He doesn’t move the rest of the night.

Louie knows better than to skip classes, so he drags himself out of bed the next day and stumbles through the pouring rain to sit and listen to some old quack ramble on about…something. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He records the lesson so he can go back and listen later, since Violet suggested that one time and it actually seemed to work. At some point yesterday, he’d put his phone on silent mode; when he checks it in between classes, he’s missed sixty calls and ninety-six texts from Huey. There are a few clear breaks—a two hour break in the middle of the night where he presumably fell asleep, and a few in the past hour or so when he must be in class, but other than that it’s pretty much standard for Hubert my-brothers-are-going-AWOL-and-I-have-to-check-on-them Duck. He feels a little guilty, so he turns the silent mode off and goes ahead and calls him.

Huey picks up instantaneously. “Louie!”

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“I—it’s okay! Are you okay? Are you hurt? I was gonna have mom fly us out there tonight if I hadn’t heard from you—”

“I’m okay. Just…needed a night to myself, then class this morning. You didn’t need to come out here.”

“You called me because you felt lonely, Louie. I’d fly out there right now if you asked—sorry, sorry, excuse me—”

“You—were you in the middle of class?”

“I can make it up later—”

“Huey!” he hisses. “Go back to class!”

“I thought something had happened to you!” Huey argues.

“Well, it didn’t!”

“Neither of my brothers were answering me, Louie! I got a little worried, sue me!”

The next quip dies on Louie’s tongue. Huey had a genuine reason to be worried; it would be a bit of a jerk move to make a joke about the Junior Woodchuck’s Guidebook, so he doesn’t, swallowing the instinct. “Right. Sorry.”

“You’re sure you’re alright? I can come up. Now. Today.”

“You have class.”

“I don’t need to go. This is a family emergency.”

Louie thinks for a moment, then sighs. “…why don’t you come up tomorrow and stay the weekend?” It’s as much a request as it is a plea, one that Huey seems all too eager to agree to.

“Brilliant! I’ll let everyone else know—”

“I don’t want to see anyone else,” he says, and he feels guiltier as the words come out of his mouth, but he doesn’t take them back. “I could have Uncle Scrooge send someone to come pick you up?”

“Okay, yeah, absolutely! I get out of class at, like, two fifteen.”

“I’ll let him know. I’ll be done with class by the time you get here. And I have toothbrushes and stuff, so you don’t have to worry about packing a bunch.”

“You’re prepared for visitors?”

“Just you.” And Dewey, he nearly says, but that’s why this is all happening in the first place, isn’t it?

The conversation with Uncle Scrooge goes better than expected, probably because he’s distracted by the zombies and their new living queen, but they arrange the ride. By five the next afternoon, Louie is launching himself at the family car and pulling Huey in for the tightest hug he’s ever given him. The one he gets in return is tight enough to feel like punishment, but Huey is also crying with glee, so. It’s probably a good thing.

“You want the grand tour?”

“Show me everything,” Huey whispers, his eyes glittering.

Louie smiles, then sighs. “…you just wanna see the nerd stuff, don’t you?”

“Show me the nerd things,” Huey whispers, even quieter, as he starts vibrating.

“I’ll get the guidebook,” Louie announces, wandering in the direction of the gift shop.

Huey has the guidebook annotated by the end of the second hour and is telling Louie fun facts about the campus he’s been on for several months now. Last Christmas, he’d brought home some souvenirs from Cranevard to pass out to everyone, but he knew Huey would only want the guidebook if he was actually here, so at least he had that pegged right. It’s endearing to watch the way he finds joy in the little things. Seeing Huey happy has lifted a weight he isn’t used to wearing; maybe all he really needed was some face-to-face time, that’s all.

They’ve finally made it back to the dorm. Huey had been so absorbed in the book by the time they made it that he’d barely commented on Louie’s decorations—or lack of. He had complimented the mattress, at least, when he hopped up on it. Louie’s taking selfies from the chair at his desk, making sure Huey is in the background, making stupid faces as he listens.

“…there’s fifteen hundred of the original bricks still in the architecture of the cafeteria,” Huey says, looking up just as Louie snaps another photo. “Have you been? Did you see the wall?”

“I see a bunch of original bricks in the walls all over the place,” Louie says, pulling the phone to himself so he can inspect the photo. “There’s a bunch of random spots on walls all over that aren’t painted. Let me guess, they had to tear down the wall and those are the only intact ones so they included them in the laying of the new building, then had them marked special so they didn’t get painted over?”

Huey looks up, frowning. “You’ve read the guide book?”

“No,” he says flippantly, deeming the photo well enough. “I’m sending this to Webby.”

“Okay—sorry, how did you know that, then? About the bricks?”

“Deductive reasoning,” Louie says, typing Webby’s name into the search bar of his messages and clicking the first one, captioning the photo with stole the nerd :P as he speaks. “I’m learning it in one of the pre-law classes I’m in. Well, it’s not specifically pre-law, I guess, but there’s a lot of future lawyers in there.”

“You’re taking pre-law?” Huey asks, astonished.

“I’m considering it. I want to be like Uncle Scrooge, but…” He sighs, setting his phone down. “I dunno, talking has always been my specialty. Why not get paid for it?”

“My brother,” Huey grins. “Louie the lawyer. I could see it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Huey’s phone dings then, and Louie is hit with a sudden ice in his chest. He thought he’d just sent the photo to Webby, but—but—

“Oh, you sent it to the group chat,” Huey says.

The implication takes a moment to hit both of them.

“Oh, no.”

Louie: Louie has sent a photo

>Webby has loved this photo

>May has liked this photo

Louie: stole the nerd :P

Webby: Aww, you guys went to Cranevard without me?

June: Aren’t you literally in charge of the zombies right now girl

>Huey has questioned this message

Webby: I can multitask!

>Louie has questioned this message

Huey: I am not a nerd

>Louie has laughed at this message

>Webby has loved this message

Louie: u absolutely are LOL

May: looks like fun!! invite us next time losers

>Dewey has liked this message

Louie stares at the reaction, his body close to frozen. He hears Huey take in a quiet breath, then fumble as he puts the guidebook down. The next thing Louie hears is the tell-tale sound of a phone dialing, and he watches as Huey holds the phone up to his ear with grim determination.

The room is quiet. He can also hear the second it goes to voicemail.

Huey’s eyes shut, and Louie is across the room and sitting next to him in seconds. “Hey, hey, Huey—”

“I don’t know what we did wrong,” he whispers. “I haven’t seen him in—in almost a year, and he won’t call us back, but he likes stupid messages about—”

“I’m sorry,” Louie says, taking the phone from Huey and putting it on the far side of the bed. “I’m sorry, I should have checked who I was sending it to. Huey—hey, look at me.”

Huey does, slowly. His eyes are watery already, so Louie gives him a tiny smile.

“You’re gonna be alright,” he promises. “We both are. I’m sure Dewey is just busy, right? He’ll get back to us soon. He’s still alive, at least. Maybe he and Launchpad are off on their own adventures or something. We’ll get to hear about it at Christmas.”

“Right,” Huey mumbles, leaning forward so his forehead is on Louie’s shoulder. “Right. Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, rule fifty four: always believe the best in people, even when it’s hard.”

Louie frowns to himself, thinking that that’s sort of a lousy rule, but he feels Huey relax a bit so he keeps his mouth shut. “Exactly. Rule fifty four.”

“I love you,” he says quietly, and Louie puts his head on top of his brother’s.

“Yeah, yeah, I love you too, you old lug. Wanna go raid the ice cream bar?”

Huey leaves on Sunday, and Louie feels a lot better Monday morning. He makes a point to message Huey to thank him for coming over; what he gets in return is several paragraphs about how much Huey loves him and being his brother. It’s nice.

He texts Dewey too, just to see.

Louie: missing you. call me soon?

Before he can see if there’s a response his mom calls him. Louie doesn’t really like Della much; now with perspective, he thinks she was too quick to jump at the experience to leave, but he’s kept his feelings to himself so he doesn’t upset anyone.

(Mostly Dewey. He doesn’t like upsetting Dewey, because for some reason their brother has never given up his starry eyed view of their mother despite how long she left them. Louie likes to consider himself a realist. Dewey has never had his head anywhere but the clouds. Huey rides the line between the two, able to see both sides of it. But when he isn’t mediating…well. Conversations can get quite heated.)

(Louie doesn’t see much sky beyond the clouds here.)

“Hey, Della,” Louie greets, his voice challenging the way it usually is. She doesn’t fight it anymore.

“Hi, Louie. Hope I wasn’t, uh, interrupting?”

“Nah. Just on the way to class right now.” He glances around, watching the way everyone scatters and laughs at themselves as the lighting crashes in the distance. “You got a big day today?”

Della laughs awkwardly. “Oh, no, no. I just wanted to check in. Huey’s in high spirits today, so I’m hoping the visit went well?”

“Sure did. At least in my book.” Absentmindedly, Louie takes the string to his hoodie and begins to softly chew on it. It’s a habit he’d kicked when he was really small, but apparently being in college has brought it back full force. “Is that…all?”

“It’s just been a while since you were home,” Della says, sounding…sad? Lonely? Louie frowns a little, letting the string drop from his beak. “Kinda missed seeing you, kid.”

“I’m gonna be home for the holidays,” he promises. “Won’t have to miss me so much then.”

“Good!” she says brightly. “Good, good, that’ll be—fantastic. Man, I can’t wait to see you. Huey mentioned you’re looking at pre-law?”

He groans. “I’m in one class, it’s not—”

But it is, isn’t it? It’s the only class he hasn’t missed, the only class he’s excited to do work for—he likes philosophy, and he likes being able to take what people say and break it down into its most basic parts to use fallacies and destroy what they think they believe in. It’s fun. It’s more fun than listening to someone talk about numbers forever or taking a class on how to be a good boss or something.

“—it’s not set in stone,” is what he lands on. “I’m still exploring my options. But…for now, I’m open to it.”

“Louie the lawyer,” Della sighs happily, sounding so much like Huey that Louie finds himself smiling again.

“Hey, actually, while I’ve got you here—”

“Well, I gotta get headed out to the hangar, I promised Donald I’d get the plane up and running before this weekend—”

“Della,” Louie insists, annoyed. “Have you heard from Dewey?”

“Dewey?” she asks, surprised. “Not really, why? Is he hurt?”

“I think he’s mad at me and Huey,” Louie says. He doesn’t mean to say it. But he thinks it might be true, too, so he doesn’t try to take it back. “I dunno. We haven’t heard from him in a while.”

“Maybe school’s treating him rough too, Rebel.”

Louie has to pull the phone away from his face for a second so the audible gag he gives might not be picked up by the microphone. He hates when she calls him that; it’s supposed to be endearing, the way she calls Dewey Turbo sometimes, but it makes him feel like even after all this time she still doesn’t know him at all. And she says it so fondly, as if he’s supposed to harbor any kind of gooey feelings about it, like he’s supposed to have forgiven her for leaving, like—

“It’s treating all of us rough,” he snaps. “He has enough time to talk to Uncle Scrooge and like our messages but he won’t text us back or answer any of our calls? Huey nearly skipped class to come see me, and I still make it home for the holidays. He just isn’t putting in effort.”

“Louie, cut that out.”

“I’m serious! I’d rather him just tell us he hates us—”

“You said you hated him once upon a time too and look where that got you!”

“He left!” Louie hisses. “He left, and he won’t come home. No wonder you’re the one defending him, huh, space girl?”

He hangs up without waiting for a response, slides down the nearest wall, and buries his face in his knees. This morning had been so good, and in one fell swoop—

Well. Louie doesn’t have time to wallow. He sets a timer, gives himself five minutes to sit and feel sorry for himself, then dusts himself off and isn’t even late for class.

He did get a response, he finds later. Sort of. The message he sent to Dewey is left decisively unread.

As the end of the semester approaches, he gets it worked out with Huey so that they can have a few days alone before they have to spend two weeks in the self-proclaimed mansion of chaos—Scrooge is going to need a tree, after all, and why not let the boys pick it out themselves? It’s probably stupid for them to save a spot for Dewey just in case, but it was either a potentially unclaimed seat in the car to go tree shopping or they go to St. Canard themselves to try to hunt him down, and it seemed like the more relaxing option to just wait and see if he shows then or for the Christmas break.

“We should have gone to find him,” Huey laments, turning out of the unsuccessful third row into the fourth. It’s started flurrying out; he keeps tugging his hat further down on his head so it doesn’t fly away and keeps the rest of his head warm. The scarf he got from Uncle Donald is tucked tightly around his neck; a matching one lays loosely around Louie’s shoulders, flapping in the breeze. It won’t fly away because of the hood—he hopes, anyway.

“We’ll just go find him at Christmas,” Louie promises. “He won’t miss Christmas. You know how he gets with holidays. Plus Della’s gonna be there.”

“Mom,” Huey corrects after a moment. 

Louie’s face sours. “Yeah, whatever. Her.”

“You should be nicer to her,” Huey says gently. “She’s doing her best.”

“I don’t cuss her out regularly,” Louie counters. “That’s me doing my best. I don’t—Uncle Donald raised us. He’s more our dad than she is our mom. Shouldn’t she know that by now?”

“Louie, stop that.”

“Great,” he grumbles, hopping over a sewer drain. “Now you’re starting to sound like her. Look, can we not—”

“She tried to get home,” Huey begs, grabbing Louie’s arm. “And I’m sure Dewey is too.”

“But we don’t know!” Louie says. “We don’t know what happened to him, or where he went, or—at least they knew she got lost somewhere, but she came back expecting things to be easy for her, and they aren’t.”

“You don’t think she knows that more than anyone? Uncle Scrooge—”

“Uncle Scrooge talked to us about it, I know,” he snaps. “I know I’m supposed to be nicer, but—I can’t, okay? And I don’t want to be. Not when Dewey left because of her.”

“You’re just making things up now,” Huey says, rolling his eyes.

“When we were kids, did you ever consider any of us spending the rest of our lives scattered to the wind?” Louie hisses. “Because I always pictured the three of us together. I never once—not once, Huey—wanted to spend my future away from you guys. It was supposed to be the three of us together, and that’s why I was gonna go to school with you guys, and then he changed the rules and now everything sucks! It sucks. I don’t like it.” He shrinks into his hoodie, ignoring the way the snow is swirling around them. “I miss him, and he doesn’t miss us at all. And it sucks so bad.”

“…yeah. It sucks,” Huey agrees, and for the first time in a while he doesn’t try to argue past that. He just pulls Louie into a tight hug.

If he can’t have both of his brothers, Louie reasons, maybe he can have just one.

The tree they find has a blue ribbon stuck to one of the branches. Louie tries not to see it as a sign.

Coming back to McDuck Manor shouldn’t feel like giving up. He isn’t. He’s got a full course load for spring semester, and a few more philosophy classes just to give it a try. He isn’t giving up.

He just…might want to.

(He doesn’t want to. Louie has found his footing out in the big world beyond, and he’s doing his best to get through it, it’s just—hard, knowing that there are so many unknowns out there. He thinks he hates it. He might not. He doesn’t know. Everything is a big question mark right now, but Louie keeps pushing on, because what else is he meant to do?)

Huey packed light, but he’s helping carry one of Louie’s bags in because he’s a good brother. Nobody greets them at the door, but they can hear the raucous sound of their family somewhere in the next few rooms over. Huey gives Louie a fond look; Louie returns it, exasperated, but happy to have the weight lifted off his shoulders, at least a little. The Manor is home.

Home is safe.

They tug the bags upstairs, then trot back down the stairs in comfortable silence. Really, it shouldn’t be any surprise that someone greets them at the bottom of the stairs.

Several someones.

“Boys!”

It’s Della’s voice he hears first, but Louie’s eyes don’t stop scanning until they find Uncle Donald. He’s at the front of the pack—where he belongs. Louie throws himself at his uncle for the tightest hug he can give, feeling Huey pass them to hug (presumably) Della first, then join the hug. Uncle Donald lets out one of his quiet little quacks that nearly sounds like a sob, squeezing Louie tighter. Then the hug shifts, and Huey’s in there too, and so is Della, and then Webby and the girls, then Uncle Scrooge and Mrs. Beakley, probably.

“My boys,” Donald says quietly.

There’s a version of Louie that protests, because it makes him sound like a kid still, which he isn’t—but for a moment, he lets the fantasy indulge, and he stops worrying about mysterious missing brothers and mothers who don’t understand boundaries and unclear futures. For a moment, he lets himself be a kid, holding onto his Uncle Donald.

“We’re home,” Louie replies, and he’s hugged only tighter in response.

For a while, all he gets to focus on is being the center of attention. Louie is the shining star of the evening, because he’s the one who’s been off galavanting, and that means he gets to answer the same question about fifty times between May and June and Uncle Donald and Della. There’s a lot of chatting while they get the tree inside, then decorate it; Louie finds himself gravitating to Uncle Donald’s side more often than not, asking little joke questions to get his uncle to laugh and noogie him and call him a jokester, and it’s nice and home. 

When the hype sort of dies down, he’s on the couch wedged between Huey and Webby. Webby is snoring loudly, her head lolling to the side until she’s completely slumped over the arm of the couch; Huey is flipping through his tattered copy of the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook aimlessly. Louie shifts and leans over, staring at the pages without reading them, and feels himself start to fall asleep.

“This is nice,” Huey says. Louie startles a little.

“Huh?”

“I said this is nice.” Huey isn’t looking up. He’s just smiling softly down at his stupid guidebook. Louie thinks for a moment, then smiles too as he puts his head back down. “I like getting to just hang out with you.”

“Yeah,” Louie agrees. “Me too.” His eyes drift to the mantle above the smoldering fireplace. The whole thing is decorated with photos from years and years past—some as recent as this summer, with Webby, May and June down at the pier; some a little further back, like their first days of high school and the party from the night Dewey left for college; several Halloween costume collections; and his eyes finally fall on a picture of him and his brothers from before they met Uncle Scrooge, when Donald was taking care of them on the houseboat, when things were simple and carefree. Louie’s heart breaks a little as he looks at it. Huey had so much light in his eyes without all the weathered tiredness of being an adventurer. Louie was still scrawny and lithe, his hoodie hanging off his frame with a little too much extra space, because Donald had bought it oversized so he could grow into it. And Dewey, unscarred and unafraid of the spotlight, hogging the camera in the center, looked…happy. All of them did. The pain in his heart gets bigger the longer he stares at it.

There’s a part of him that misses it. He wouldn’t give up what he’s got for the world—he loves being an adult, and he loves how much happier and less stressed Huey seems at Mouseton, and he’s reasonably certain Dewey’s happy too, but there was a certain charm to being able to go to bed at night knowing both his brothers were in the same room and all his family was within reach. The longer he thinks, the worse he feels. Silently, he shifts next to Huey so he can take his hand, the way he used to on long road trips. They weren’t born that far apart, but Huey is still his big brother, and sometimes when he’s upset all he wants to do is hide in his older brother’s shoulder and let Huey protect him. Huey is good at that.

Like now. He adjusts his hold on the Guidebook without question, interlocking their fingers, folding his arm so he can have Louie tucked in right behind him so if he falls asleep he won’t go anywhere.

“I love you,” Louie mumbles, letting his eyes slip shut.

“I love you too,” Huey says back, tilting his head on top of Louie’s. “You want me to wake you up in a bit to go upstairs?”

“Sure,” Louie says, yawning softly. “If Webby doesn’t kick me awake first.” He can feel her twitching next to him, her legs starting to jerk in little kicks as her dreams overtake her instincts. Huey laughs quietly.

“Yeah, yeah, alright. I’ll keep an eye on both of you, okay?”

“Thanks,” Louie mumbles, finally letting go of consciousness.

Huey wakes him up not too long later, and the entire trudge up to their room Louie is pensive. He hasn’t stopped thinking about that picture from downstairs, and he doesn’t know why.

Huey steps behind one of the closet doors to change. Louie doesn’t really get why, but whatever makes his brother more comfortable. He unfolds his sleep pants, lays them on the bed, and stares at them for a minute—a minute too long, it seems, because Huey is finished changing before he’s able to kick himself into gear.

“You okay?”

“Do you ever wish—” Louie starts, but then he bites his tongue and looks at the wall instead.

“…do I ever wish what?” Huey prompts after a few seconds, approaching the bunks with a frown.

“I don’t know,” Louie says, intending for that to be the end, but the next words come spilling out without his permission. “Do you ever wish things could go back the way they used to?”

Huey is standing very close. Louie doesn’t mind. It makes him feel less alone, at least. Wasn’t this room always bigger than them? Why do the walls feel so close now?

“When?”

“I don’t know. Before school.” Louie rubs the fabric of the pants between his fingers. “When we used to go on adventures all the time. When we were kids. It was simpler back then, right?”

“I guess,” Huey says, sounding more concerned than on board. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I don’t know,” Louie mumbles, snatching the pants. “Sorry. Never mind.”

“No, I didn’t mean—Louie, where is this coming from?” Huey asks, grabbing Louie’s arm. “I thought—”

“I miss being home,” Louie says quietly, pulling his arm back. “I miss being here, but I don’t want to leave—I just wish things hadn’t had to have changed in the first place.”

Huey is quiet for long enough that Louie is compelled to look up and make sure he’s still there. He is, looking…devastated. His hand is still outstretched; Louie finally takes it again, and he’s pulled into a hug that almost feels like it’s going to fix him.

“We’re still here for you,” Huey says quietly. “We’ll figure something out—if you wanna come home more often, or if it’s easier for me to come up, I can do that. I don’t want you to feel alone.”

“Thanks,” Louie says, muffled in his brother’s shoulder. “That would—be nice. Thank you.”

“I love you, okay?” Huey says, pulling back so he can look Louie in the face. “We’ll figure it out together.” He offers his pinkie. Louie takes it carefully, smiling.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles, as if the mere promise doesn’t make the pressure in his chest subside by at least 50%. “I love you too. Can I go get changed now?”

“Want me to start making a pillow fort?” Huey asks.

“Oooh, absolutely,” Louie grins. He reaches around Huey to offer his pillow from his bed. “The inaugural brick.”

“Big words,” Huey teases. “Who let you have a thesaurus?” But he takes it and clutches it to his chest, then ruffles Louie’s hair and pushes him towards the closet. “Hurry back. I’m gonna need help making supports.”

They get the girls in on it, and Pillowtown is born again. Louie tries to ignore the one pillow in the house that lays unused, sitting on a middle bunk, in a blue pillowcase. If he doesn’t look at it, and he doesn’t touch it, then it can’t hurt him, can it?

(It does.)

Chapter Text

A year and a half after Dewey leaves for college is the first Christmas he doesn’t come home.

Their first night home had been…eye opening, to say the least. Huey has finally stopped thinking of the Sit-Dew-Ation as a minor inconvenience and finally started looking at it for what it is: a problem. One that’s causing Louie significant distress, and might even be affecting his molting. In the first two days of them being back at Uncle Scrooge’s mansion, Huey’s found six separate hidden piles of little feathers with green fuzz in them.

So. Time to upgrade the whole thing to a new notebook.

He starts with the things he does know: Dewey’s at school in St. Canard, living with Launchpad, and he’s talking to Uncle Scrooge but…not really anyone else. (He puts several question marks next to that, because innocent until proven guilty, but it’s not looking good for him.) He reacts to texts and his phone doesn’t automatically always go to voicemail, so chances are he has the same number and it’s not completely broken. Also curious, but it could be attributed to being busy.

And maybe Huey would have been able to stop his mystery there, if Uncle Scrooge hadn’t gotten mail two days before Christmas.

“Ah, thank you, Mrs. Beakley,” he announces, smiling proudly. From his vantage point, Huey can barely make out the return address—it’s from SCU.

St. Canard University.

It must be something about Dewey, he reasons, already tugging out his notebook. It’s a small letter, so maybe just—

“Curse me kilts,” Uncle Scrooge mutters.

“What’s wrong?” Uncle Donald asks, leaning around Della to look at the head of the table. The bustle of noise dies down as everyone else turns the same way too.

“It was not a bloody donation,” he says, not noticing the room. “It was his tuition, for the love of all that’s—” And Uncle Scrooge stands from his chair, muttering to himself as he storms away to his office. “It wasn’t a bloody charity gift—!”

Huey’s eyes snap to Louie, who looks as though he’s on the verge of throwing up. And then Huey notices the haggis on Louie’s plate and just frowns.

“I didn’t know,” Louie whispers.

“You’re an idiot,” Huey whispers back, taking Louie’s arm and pulling him to the bathroom.

As his brother throws up into the toilet that’s more expensive than their tuitions combined, Huey starts putting more clues in his notebook. “Why would he have sent the money if it wasn’t going to the right place?” he muses aloud.

“Clerical error?” Louie rasps, throwing his head back into the toilet again. Huey tries not to focus on the splashes.

“That’s kind of unlike him. There would have been a portal for him to submit it through.”

“Maybe he sent it in solid gold,” Louie counters. “Or he sent it twice and forgot. He’s old.”

“He’s sharper than the sharpies,” Huey says flippantly.

“I think that’s you,” Louie says, finally slumping back against the under-sink counter.

Huey smiles to himself. He pulls his legs up onto the counter with him so he doesn’t risk kicking Louie in the head, then continues writing. “Something isn’t right here. If it had just been one or the other, maybe I could have excused it, but—”

“Something’s weird,” Louie agrees, pulling his hoodie over his face. “Very weird. Water?”

Huey passes down a water bottle without looking up. “You hate haggis.”

“It looked like potatoes.”

“You say that every time. It never does.”

“It did this time, I swear.”

“Then don’t trust the potatoes anymore.”

“I love Mrs. Beakley’s potatoes.”

“When has she ever made potatoes?”

Louie frowns up at him. “All the time.”

Huey raises one eyebrow. “I live here. She doesn’t make potatoes.”

“She used to,” Louie pouts, trying to sip his water bottle and spilling it all over himself instead. “Sh—”

“Isn’t Launchpad supposed to be getting in tonight?” Huey asks suddenly, sitting up straighter. “We can just ask them then.”

For the first time in a bit, Louie looks up with a spark in his eyes. “You think so?”

“Yeah!”

Launchpad arrives.

Dewey doesn’t.

Everyone has to fight to say hi to Launchpad first, but Huey and Louie run past the crowd out to the lawn, looking around, looking at Launchpad’s ratty car, looking in the passenger seat and under the backseat and in the trunk and under the hood and underneath it entirely. Not a sign of Dewey. Not even a pop of blue. They spend probably a little too long looking; by the time they give up, May is the only one on the steps waiting for them, her arms folded to her chest in worry.

“Is he there?” she asks.

Louie shakes his head. “…no.”

“I’m sure Launchpad has a very reasonable explanation,” Huey says, throwing his arms around both of them and leading them inside.

And maybe it’s true, that Launchpad could explain, but that’s only provided they actually get to speak to him at any point. To be fair, they try, but between June, Webby, and Mrs. Beakley asking for play-by-plays of Darkwing Duck’s latest heroics, and Uncle Scrooge asking if Launchpad has any girls or guys he’s got his eye on, and Della and Donald fighting to tell Launchpad about their own mysteries—well Launchpad has a lot to keep his attention busy, so they sort of stand off to the side talking amongst themselves until they realize Mrs. Beakley is sending everyone off to bed.

“We have a big day tomorrow, and I’m sure Launchpad is tired,” she says, escorting him out of the throng and towards the stairs. Huey’s eyes go wide with panic.

“Wait—wait, LP!”

“Huey!” Launchpad turns immediately, throwing his arms out. For a moment, he feels a bit like a kid again, throwing himself at Launchpad to be…well, launched. He and Louie pull him in for a tight hug, with May close behind getting her own, gentler hug. “Louie, May—man, it’s good to see you guys.”

“Where’s Dewey?” Louie asks quickly.

Huey watches his face very carefully—the way Launchpad’s eyes go wide with panic, then recognition, then panic again—the way his hand finds something in his jacket that he holds on to, like some kind of comfort—

Something’s wrong.

“Dewey is, uh, tied up with school work at the moment,” Launchpad says. It sounds stilted.

Rehearsed.

“He was not able to make it here with us this holiday season. I am very sorry and he passes on his…” Launchpad tugs a notecard out of his jacket to read, squinting, then shoves it back in. “…condewlences.”

“He isn’t here?” Louie asks quietly. Huey takes his hand, but Louie rips it back. “He didn’t come?”

“No,” Launchpad says, sounding much more genuine this time. “He wishes he could have.”

That’s probably all he was going to say, but it doesn’t matter even if it wasn’t; Louie runs off before Launchpad has even finished the sentence, and Huey gives him a sympathetic smile as he starts off after Louie.

“Welcome home, Launchpad,” Huey says quietly. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Launchpad raises one hand in goodbye, which Huey mirrors, and then he runs after his brother upstairs.

The room is already a mess by the time Huey gets the door open. “Louie, hey—”

“It’s stupid!” Louie shouts, tossing something else. It hits the ground with a quiet thump. “He’s stupid, and he’s the worst brother ever, and—”

“He sends his condewlences,” Huey echoes pathetically.

“If I had a gun,” Louie starts, and all Huey can think for a moment is Thank Zeus you don’t.

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation—”

“It’s always logical with you!” Louie shouts as he spins, and it’s enough to stun Huey into silence. “It’s always about logic and solutions, and plans, and—I miss him! And it sucks! And it hurts!” With a shock, Huey realizes Louie is crying. He’s got his face pinched like he’s trying not to, but it’s very clearly not working. “And I wish you’d be able to just acknowledge that. We can love Dewey and realize he doesn’t love us the same way anymore, and that hurts, and that’s allowed. Any of that program into your stupid little robot brain? Into your plan?”

“Louie,” Huey says, still in shock. “Louie—”

“Forget it,” he mumbles, turning away and pulling the hood over his head. “I always knew it was a lost cause with you.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t plan to.”

“Will you let me finish?”

“Will you leave me alone?”

“I miss you too!” Huey says, his voice wet. “And him! I have all these people and none of them are you guys, and it sucks and it hurts, and—that’s why I came to see you last month, and that’s why I get so worried—is it so hard to believe that the brother we grew up with wouldn’t abandon us?”

“He did.”

“That’s not the Dewey I know,” Huey protests.

“Then maybe you don’t remember how he kept finding Mom from us,” Louie spits. “Maybe you don’t remember how his whole future plan was to be a pilot, and it didn’t matter what we were going to do. He wasn’t ever going to stay. It is hard to believe he wouldn’t leave, because he’s proven over and over and over that he will! He made robots of us for prom, Huey.” Louie gestures at the window emphatically, where the snow is falling outside lightly. “He hired people to replace us for the talent show because he didn’t trust us.”

Huey remembers all too well. The talent show had been a point of contention for weeks at the time, with Dewey trying desperately to teach them dances in between papers and Uncle Scrooge and Mom, and Huey had lost his temper a few times—but not as many times as Louie. It was as if there was a wall between all the brothers and no one was listening to anyone else, and it had been something Huey had regretted ever since. But he had his decathlon, and he was helping out with Junior Woodchucks, and he needed to get everything together for everyone’s college applications—

(—the college applications that Dewey had proceeded to ignore, in favor of doing his own private plan—)

—and prom, another competition, and Huey didn’t have a date because Molly had turned him down and Louie had said he didn’t even want to go—

“We were busy,” Huey protests weakly.

“I made time!” Louie shouts. “I cancelled everything, and I showed up anyway, and I watched them perform and he thanked them for being the best brothers he’s ever had! I don’t care if it was just for the show. He left once, and he’ll keep leaving, and this time he isn’t coming back, and you need to get over it.”

Huey swallows hard. “I’m not the one having a meltdown in our room about it.”

“Because you’re still holding out hope!”

“I’d hold out hope if it were you,” he tries. His voice keeps getting smaller. Where is it going?

“I’m not Dewey,” Louie spits, turning away. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You left too,” Huey says, but his voice is so quiet he’s sure Louie doesn’t hear him. He keeps trying anyway. “You didn’t want to go to school, and then you found your passion somewhere else. You don’t get to say you aren’t leaving, because you left too.”

“I want to go to bed,” Louie grumbles.

“You always want to go to bed, you lazy quack,” Huey huffs. “You keep saying you’re not going anywhere but the second life gets hard you turn ducktail. You like to say you’re sooo different, but the only difference between you and Dewey is that you don’t have anywhere to go.”

He sees the way Louie’s shoulders stiffen. He knows he ought to stop.

He doesn’t.

“Dewey makes a place for himself in the world,” Huey continues. “If he leaves, it’s because he’s got an idea, or a plan, or—or whatever. He’s got a plan, but no plans to stay. I have plans and plans to stay. And you don’t have either of those! You don’t make plans, you just know you don’t want to be here, and then you blame us when it doesn’t work out for you!”

“I’ve found something I’m good at,” Louie says, voice low. He’s still facing away from Huey, so he can only imagine the rage on his face.

“And what are you gonna do with it? Wait till Uncle Scrooge gives you a handout to start your own firm that’s gonna crash and burn because you don’t know how to get customers? Wait for something to fall into your lap and expect to be brilliant at it? What happens when you lose your footing? What happens when things get hard? You’re good at it, but you aren’t perfect. How many more things are you going to find to be good at then give up when it gets hard?”

“You’re supposed to believe in me,” Louie says.

“And I do, but I also know you, Louie. You’re still the same kid who released harpies so someone else could do all the hard work and you could make the money.”

“Stop it.”

“Why do you think you’re so different from Dewey?” Huey demands. “Why don’t you see you two are nearly the same?”

And then, in the quiet of the room, Huey hears a sniff, and he watches the way Louie’s shoulders start shaking. Immediately guilt floods Huey from the top down, and he knows it might be a bad idea to risk getting a black eye the night before Christmas Eve but he makes his way over and pulls Louie in for a hug anyway.

Huey is the shortest of them now, no matter how much Louie insists they’re the same height. It’s only because he slouches. Still, Louie hides his face in Huey’s shoulder and holds on tight, because even when they fight, where else could he turn? Huey feels the same way. He rubs little circles into Louie’s back, as gentle and comforting as he can.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Hey, Lou, I’m sorry. I went too far.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles pathetically. “You did.”

“I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

“You better be,” Louie whispers, but there’s no heat to it. He finally settles into Huey’s touch. “I don’t want to go through life without you guys. You saw what it did to Uncle Donald.”

Uncle Donald didn’t do too badly for himself, Huey nearly replies, but he bites his tongue instead. “Right. I know.”

“You guys are important to me.”

“And you’re important to me too,” Huey promises, leaning back to look Louie in the eyes. There’s a pointed space in his words—not both of you or you guys, but you, as in the brother who’s here.

The brother who didn’t leave. His babiest brother, Louie. Huey swallows his guilt. It feels like knives in his chest.

“I’m sorry too,” Louie mumbles, dropping his eyes to the floor. “I just get…scared being so far sometimes.”

“I’m only ever a call away,” Huey promises, holding out his pinky. Louie smiles as he takes it. “Dewey may not be here, but I am.”

“You are.”

There’s a little knock at the door; both of them turn to see May, her arms still wrapped tightly around her middle, looking…concerned.

“Is Louie okay?”

“Better now,” Louie says. Huey hates how chipper he sounds suddenly. Louie has a shell he keeps up with most everyone else. He doesn’t need to introduce it to May too—but it’s too late, apparently. “Sorry. Had to, uh, unpack some stuff.”

May’s eyes scan the room, the piles of clothes and papers and generic mess on the floor. “Right. Well—Webby is demanding a sleepover.”

The boys share a knowing glance, then each grab a blanket.

There’s little to no sleeping done at the sleepover. Webby seems to be doing her best to keep everyone so occupied they don’t have time to focus on the missing sixth person. And it works, almost, except Huey has to keep nudging Louie to respond when people ask him questions. Louie keeps staring at a far corner of the room. It takes him a while to figure out why.

There’s a picture of the four of them from their first year here framed on one of the tables. Huey stares for a moment, then looks away.

He, of course, keeps having to get nudged out of his own reveries. The notebook made it to the sleepover with him, and he finds himself rereading each point to try to see what dots he isn’t connecting. May is the one to quietly close the cover every time, offering him thread for friendship bracelets, a small bowl of popcorn, gloves for the painting activity—anything to keep his mind from wandering, but it still manages to, and by the time Webby finally announces it’s time to sleep at nearly four in the morning Huey feels like it’s only been an hour maximum.

Sleep is short, because Christmas Eve breakfast is an event of epic proportions. Mrs. Beakley goes all out, with pastries and casseroles and biscuits and gravy and the smell of ham cooking in the kitchen. Huey’s so hungry he nearly misses the conversation at the far end of the table, even though he’s basically included in it.

“I think something’s going on,” Webby says, pointing her fork at all the kids. “And it sounds to me like we need a little Christmas Eve adventure.”

“For what?” June asks. Her plate is perfectly portioned out. Huey is stirring everything he could get his hands on together in the massive bowl in front of him; beside him, Louie is doing the same. Webby has only gotten casserole, and May is nibbling politely on a biscuit. Huey wishes they’d tear into the food with them, but then he remembers that Mrs. Beakley has been teaching them all portion control. He’s sure to hear about his decision soon, but in his defense, Louie started mixing things first and Huey isn’t going to let his brother act like an idiot about home-cooked food by himself.

“Dewey,” Webby says. Huey sees Louie perk up out of the corner of his eye.

“What’s the plan?”

“We need to go to SCU and see if he’s really tied up with school stuff.”

Huey hums thoughtfully, trying to finish chewing so he can speak. Everyone waits expectantly. It’s nice. “What if he’s dropped out?”

“Why would he drop out?” May asks, frowning.

“I don’t know, but don’t you find it strange that the tuition payment was considered a gift?” He pulls out the notebook, flipping to the full breakdown he’d created last night. “I’m with Webby. It isn’t adding up, but I don’t think it’s just him being busy.”

“Maybe he was trying to let us down gently,” June says. “Maybe he just didn’t want to come home.”

Louie stills next to Huey. He feels it; under the table, he reaches for his brother’s hand, but Louie sits back in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest in silent protest.

“Only one way to find out!” Webby says, standing up suddenly. “Grandma? We’ll be taking our breakfast to go!”

“Are you sure Mr. McDee said this would be okay?” Launchpad asks, slowing the limo down as it reaches the Duckburg limits. He looks back in the mirror at the five kids in the backseat.

“Of course,” Louie says easily, waving his hands. “Maybe it’s time to look at new starts for all of us. We just think today would be a great day to go see the campus.”

“Nobody’s going to be there,” Launchpad says. Huey watches him panic a little. “I mean, uh, except Dewey—”

“Even better!” Louie grins. “He can give us his own rundown!”

“I should call—” Launchpad starts, but Huey reaches through the divider to touch his shoulder.

“LP, listen, let it be a little Christmas surprise. Don’t worry, okay? We’re big kids. We know what we’re doing.”

Launchpad doesn’t look fully convinced, but he does hit the gas again, finally, and they’re on their way to SCU without further impediment. Everyone in the back relaxes, and even more when they finally roll up the divider. Webby keeps turning Launchpad’s phone over in her hands, turning it off when the calls start coming through.

It’s a stupid plan, probably. Going to campus on the day before a holiday, it really is going to be quiet, and all the information Huey could find about Dewey’s registration to SCU was from last spring semester anyway, but it’s a curious enough mystery as it is and he doesn’t think anything could stop them from looking into it if they tried.

June is staring out the window with eyes wide as the landscape passes. This isn’t the first time she’s been out of Duckburg, Huey’s pretty sure, but it is the first time she’s been to St. Canard, and Huey remembers all too well the wondrous feeling of going over the bridge for the first time and watching the water rush past below.

He wonders if Dewey had the same feeling when he left. When he drove across the bridge in the middle of the night, watching the towering cityscape fold into existence above him. Huey wonders if Dewey almost called, but held himself back, or if he’d already decided he wasn’t going to be coming home again.

(Dewey came home last Christmas, and he’d seemed fine. Nothing was wrong, at least not from what Huey could see. Is it a testament to how fast things changed? How good Dewey was at hiding things? How little Huey knew his brother at all?)

(It’s been a year and a half since Dewey left, and five months since they last saw him. What changed?)

Launchpad’s phone dings again and Webby curses under her breath, shoving it deep into her bag.

“Why don’t you just turn it off?” Louie asks, slouched in the corner on his phone. He looks up a little, but doesn’t move much now that they’re just waiting for the ride to end.

“If his phone is off, they’ll panic more,” Webby reasons. Huey nods. “But if it’s on and he’s not answering, well—that could be for any reason. Maybe he’s asleep.”

“What if they track his phone?” May asks, blinking pointedly. “That’s gonna be a lot harder to explain. We’re gonna get in trouble.”

“Shh!” Webby hisses, covering her mouth and glancing up front. “We’ll just explain when we get home and they can’t be mad!”

Huey makes a face, glances at Louie—Louie makes the same face back, gives a tiny nod, and starts typing something on his phone.

“Who are you texting?” May asks, trying to wiggle out from Webby’s grip. “Louie, who are you texting—?”

“Uncle Dee,” he says. “Never has his phone on him, but we send it now and when we get back we can say ‘hey, look, we did tell someone’, you know? Easy.” He puffs some air out of his beak as he sends it. “Bases covered. We’re gonna be fine.”

“Besides,” Huey adds, “if anyone’s going to understand what we’re doing, it’s Uncle Donald.”

“Really?” June asks, surprised. She turns around in her seat to frown at him. “He always seems so…what’s the word…”

“High-strung?” May says.

“That’s it!”

“He’s not,” Huey says defensively. “He can be unlucky, and he worries sometimes, but he trusts us to know what we’re doing.”

“Sounds like a mistake to me,” June mumbles, turning back to the window.

Huey’s eye starts to twitch, but before he can explode—or even take a deep breath to calm down—his brother cuts in instead.

“Will you shut up? We lived with him all our lives. You’ve known him for what, five years? You don’t get to pretend you understand him like we do!”

“O-kay,” Webby says, letting go of May and putting her hands out to stop them. “Maybe we should all take a deep—”

“No,” Louie spits. “No, because I’m sick of it! He was our uncle first!”

“Okay, fine, keep him!” June hisses back. “No feathers off our tails!”

“June,” May whispers, but it’s lost in the hubbub.

“Fine, maybe we will!” Louie slams back into his corner, his eyebrows scrunched in frustration. Huey watches a feather fly out of the bottom of his hoodie. He’s molting again. “Huey, drop out of school. We’re going back to the houseboat.”

“What a great lawyer you’ll be,” June says, as if she’s trying to say it under her breath but doesn’t know how. “Turning tail at the first sign of—”

“Okay, you know what—”

Louie launches across the car and Huey has to tackle him back. It would be helpful if that was all that needed to be done. It isn’t. May doesn’t quite grab June in time, and Webby can only do so much in the tiny space, so Huey gets kicked in the back of the head and has his head slammed into the console, and Louie is trying to tear into June, and May is doing her best to pull Louie out from the bottom of the pile for path of least resistance reasons, and Webby starts battle screeching as she tries to separate everyone—

Anyway. They don’t make it to St. Canard. Launchpad turns the limo around as soon as he realizes what’s going on. The ride back is mostly silent, safe for Louie’s little sniffs into Huey’s shoulder. At the very least, the girls all seem apologetic—or June does, because she won’t meet anyone’s eyes.

They pull up in front of the mansion slowly. Launchpad looks back at all of them, watching as one by one the kids climb out to face the adults on the steps, but he stops them when it’s just the two boys left.

“Hey, uh, guys?”

Huey turns, giving Launchpad a little smile. “Yeah?”

He won’t look at them directly, but he’s frowning. “I’m sorry. About Dewey. Not being able to to tell you, I mean.”

“Is he okay, Launchpad?” Louie asks pointedly. He sounds tired. All Huey wants to do is wrap him up in a blanket like Uncle Donald used to do—but Louie’s a big kid now. They all are. “Is he dead or something?”

“No,” Launchpad promises. Huey’s sure he means it. “No, he isn’t dead. And he’s…I don’t see him much anymore. But he’s doing good stuff. I know that.”

“You’ll talk to him before we do,” Huey says, not letting Launchpad interrupt him when he tries. “And when you do, tell him to call us. He’s not being a very good brother right now.”

Louie climbs out right behind him, and he makes a point to slam the door.

Surprisingly, they aren’t in that much trouble. Donald and Della had been more worried than anything, and Scrooge was just annoyed that the house was empty. The girls are the one to get in the most amount of trouble, but even then it’s not bad. So Huey relaxes, keeping as much to himself as possible until dinner. Louie seems to have the same idea; together, they find a nice window along the staircase to sit on and stare out of it in silence. The manor’s grounds are covered in a light dusting of snow. Huey wonders if Louie is thinking the same thing: that if Dewey were here, he’d be demanding snowmen and snowball fights and making a massive castle to fight in.

The Dewey they knew would ask for that, anyway. Huey curls up tighter in his seat.

Dinner is another event, but it should be standard. Mrs. Beakley goes all out again, though she makes it a point to tell everyone that the menu is smaller than it should be because she spent so much of the day worrying and lecturing. Still, it’s a pretty fantastic spread.

And then something curious happens.

“Uncle Scrooge?” May asks, sitting forward in her seat. She doesn’t have crumbs on her shirt, unlike the boys, who have been scarfing down everything they can get their hands on.

“Yes, lass?”

“I have a, uh, question.”

“By all means.”

“Well,” May says, tucking some hair behind her ear. Huey raises one eyebrow, shoving a massive bite into his mouth. “If, say, someone were to—I mean, not me, obviously—” (And obviously, it is for her, but she always likes to pretend to be unassuming—) “—wanted to join SHUSH like you or Mrs. Beakley, how would…one go about doing that?”

“Lass,” Uncle Scrooge laughs lightly. “If you want to be a SHUSH agent, you wouldn’t ask. You’d find the files yourself and sneak around to find the information without drawing attention to yourself.” He winks at her. “Someone already has, you know.”

A lightbulb starts to flicker in Huey’s head. His eyes snap to Louie; Louie has frozen too, his bite halfway to his beak, staring back at Huey with wide eyes. A glob of gravy slaps onto the plate. It sounds louder than it is.

“Oh no,” Huey says, suddenly stilted and strange. “Louie is sick. We must leave.”

Louie makes a choked sound as an approximation of sounding like he’s going to throw up, then drops the fork with a loud clank as Huey bodily drags him away and to the bathroom. He doesn’t give Louie a chance to stand up, just keeps dragging him like a lifeless doll by the arm, and as soon as they hit the bathroom they slam the door in unison and turn to each other.

“Dewey joined SHUSH!”

“I figured it out first,” Louie says, jumping.

“You did not!” Huey hisses. “I did!”

“Stop trying to steal my moment!” Louie smacks him arm.

“You’re stealing my moment, I figured it out first—”

“I knew when Uncle Scrooge said something about not asking—”

“—I was listening before then, when May started asking—”

“—I figured it out!—”

“—it was me!—”

They smack each other a few times, until Louie finally grabs Huey’s wrist and stops both of them. His eyes are glittering in the light.

“Dewey’s okay,” Louie says, laughing with relief. “He just had to go underground.”

“How’s he doing that and school?” Huey asks, sagging against the counter.

“He’s not! That’s why the tuition was counted as a donation! Don’t you see?”

Huey sighs, then grins, smacking Louie’s shoulder. “Look at you, being sharper than the sharpies.”

Louie preens a little, sticking his beak up in the air and puffing his chest out. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“So why didn’t he tell us?”

“Maybe he couldn’t.” Louie claps. “Maybe that’s what this whole thing has been about. He wants to come home, but duty calls, and he had to sever all ties to his family!”

“He’s really living the dream,” Huey says, meaning to sound joking, but instead he just sounds…kind of sad. Louie doesn’t respond immediately; they stare at each other for a while, then look away, the energy dissipating.

“He really left us,” Louie says finally.

“Good for him,” Huey replies. He tries to sound more upbeat. He feels like a kicked puppy instead. “Hope he’s doing well.”

Huey feels Louie look back up at him, but he can’t bring himself to look away from the baseboard. There’s a strange sort of emptiness settling in his chest—something unfamiliar. Painful. Abandonment?

Maybe that’s what it is. Abandonment.

It’s not a feeling he’s completely unfamiliar with. Growing up he was frequently left out of things for being the un-fun one; at college, with the girls, he’s the odd man out; even before he was born, his mother left, and he loves his mom with all his heart but sometimes he’s afraid the gap between them is larger than he wants it to be. Dewey was the one who insisted on Only Child Day. Dewey was the one who didn’t tell them about their mom until his hand was forced. Donald took Daisy, May, and June around the world during high school and barely ever made it home for the first two years. Even Louie left for college all on his lonesome, and though he claims he isn’t doing well, he hasn’t given up and come home yet—so how bad could it actually be? Huey really is stuck, in a way the others don’t seem to be, and as much as he tried to fake it being alright he’s finally found something that might kick him into the next stage of grief about it.

“He left us,” Huey echoes, slumping even further. “I can’t believe he left us.”

Something else echoes, across time—a familiar voice, and a familiar cadence.

I got in. I can’t believe I got in.

Did Dewey know even then? Were plans already set in motion? Is that why he’d tried to decline SCU in the first place, or was it all a cover, or—

“Huey?”

He blinks out of it. Louie is standing there, looking small. Scared.

“Are you okay?”

“Sorry,” Huey says belatedly. “Yeah. Just…thinking.”

“Well—stop that,” Louie says, and Huey loses his breath for a moment—he sounds scared.

Of losing Huey? He’d say it’s preposterous, but…

“We need a game plan,” Huey says, pushing from the counter. It isn’t much, but he’s closer to Louie, so. Maybe that helps. “If he won’t pick up our calls—will he pick up Launchpad’s?”

Getting Launchpad’s phone is no easy feat. Any time they come within five feet of him, he grins and gives them a hug, then ends up running off before they remember to try to search for it in his pockets. Huey tries twice; Louie tries three and a half times; they even get the girls in on it, and they manage to get close, but Launchpad’s phone stays firmly in his pocket.

They all agree to try one more time before Mrs. Beakley sends everyone to bed. Everyone’s in the living room, and all the kids have gathered around Launchpad—Webby on the arm next to him, perfect pocket-snatching placement, May and Huey on the floor to catch it if it falls, June on Launchpad’s other side to distract him or try to reach for his pocket, and Louie behind the couch trying to see if he can snatch it from above. Launchpad, of course, is none the wiser, and they honestly might have stood an alright chance if their mom hadn’t picked up on it.

“Kids,” she says, with that same motherly lilt that she’s trying to get used to using. “Why are you all crowding Launchpad like that?”

Launchpad looks up. “Oh, they’re not crowding me!”

“They’ve been trying to pickpocket you all night,” Mrs. Beakley says, not looking up from her crossword. “You haven’t noticed?”

“Who, me?” Launchpad frowns. “They have been more touchy than usual…”

“Huey,” Della says, and Huey freezes, staring directly at May. May offers no comfort, looking as freaked out as he feels. “What’s going on?”

He stares down at his knobby knees, trying to stave off whatever panic that’s being induced from the idea of getting in trouble with anyone. “…Dewey doesn’t pick up our calls. We just wanted to see if he’d pick up a call from Launchpad, that’s all.”

The room stills, and Huey doesn’t move until he feels Launchpad’s heavy hand on his shoulder. When he looks up, his eyes snap to Louie in the background, whose face has completely fallen. And then Launchpad leans further into view, his face open and apologetic.

“He won’t,” Launchpad promises. “Not this late, at least, but…he doesn’t really pick up my calls anymore either.”

“Does he text you?” Huey demands. “Or email, or—something? Do you even know he’s alive anymore?”

“Well, yeah,” Launchpad says, but he sounds unsure. “Of course I do.”

“Liar,” Louie snaps. “When was the last time you talked to him?”

“It’s…been a few weeks,” Launchpad admits, taking his hand off Huey’s shoulder. “At least, on the phone. We have this little photo frame that everyone can upload pictures to, and he added a few just the other day—”

“Where is our brother?” Louie demands. “You were supposed to be taking care of him, Launchpad, so where is he?”

“Dewey is a perfectly capable adult now,” Scrooge says, waving his cane. “You don’t need to baby him—”

“He doesn’t talk to us!” Huey protests, pushing to his feet. “We don’t hear from him unless it’s passive aggressive message liking, but—he doesn’t call, and our calls go to voicemail, and—he’s being a really bad brother, and it sucks!”

“Maybe he’s just busy!” Della protests, crossing her arms. “Being out of contact doesn’t make him a bad brother, or a bad kid.”

“Of course you’d say that,” Louie hisses, but Huey waves him off.

“He can talk to Scrooge,” Huey says, pointing. “He can send photos to Launchpad. He can drop out of school and not tell anyone, and you’re going to stand here and tell me that doesn’t hurt? He doesn’t call anyone!”

“He calls me!” Della says, then smacks a hand to her beak. The room goes silent for several agonizing seconds. “I—I mean—”

“He calls you,” Huey repeats blankly. He doesn’t even have it in him to be surprised anymore, or angry, or—he just feels numb. So achingly numb. “Well. He always did like you best.”

“He’s been trying to ignore the fact that he has brothers for years,” Louie adds, sounding as defeated as Huey does. “Since we were kids. Only Child Day wasn’t a joke, I guess.”

“Boys,” Della says, taking a small step towards them. “I didn’t mean to—it isn’t—”

“No,” Huey says, brushing off his shirt just so he doesn’t have to keep looking at her. “No, the point was made. It’s fine.”

“Huey—”

“Merry Christmas,” Huey mumbles, heading for the stairs. “In case we don’t see you tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother us,” Louie hisses, following Huey up the stairs step for step.

Nobody follows them.

The clock strikes midnight not too long later. Huey knows this, because he’s sitting there watching the clock as it ticks over, and the door stays shut and his phone gets no notifications and Louie is still crying softly on his bottom bunk and pretending he isn’t. Huey used to like deadlines. It made him feel like he was able to check something off, because he was always so ahead of the game—but now deadlines have become looming reminders of things he can’t control.

Christmas Day marks the first time Huey hasn’t heard from his brother in five months. Not that he was counting or anything.

July 25, Dewey had left McDuck Manor, waving goodbye with a pep in his step. Obsessively, Huey tries to remember anything out of the ordinary—anything wrong—he’d spent all summer with them, and he’d seemed fine. He said he was going back to school early to get a head start on some extra curriculars—but suddenly, Huey realizes he doesn’t even know what Dewey was majoring in. He can reasonably guess, in that case, that Dewey wasn’t actually going back to school, so for this whole semester that he’d been mostly AWOL it was because he’d been doing things for SHUSH.

Which means that when Dewey was home this summer, he was lying to all of their faces. Directly to them, not even second guessing it, talking about how excited he was for—

For the next chapter of his life.

Huey puts his face in his hands. Dewey had told them, in the most Dewey way possible. He hadn’t told them he was going back to school, just that he was trying a different thing during the fall semester, which—if he was going back to school, he would have told them. He would have said the words. And he didn’t.

Lying by omission. Huey feels sick for not having realized it before.

He opens the group chat with his brothers, staring. Louie was the last person to send something to them, and it was—what was that, October? A picture from before Halloween about some display in his town that offered Scrooge McDuck as a costume. Huey had meant to respond, but he’d forgotten, and Dewey had—infuriatingly—liked the picture, but never responded. Almost every message Huey had sent Dewey’s way was left ignored or only reacted to.

The last thing Dewey had said to them was that he loved them. Huey remembers it in perfect clarity.

Dewey was always the one to leave first, so he’d slid down the railing of the steps and waved, his backpack hanging off one shoulder, and he’d grinned so brightly. I’ll keep you updated, he’d promised. Talk when I can! Love you guys! 

Huey feels like an idiot. He finds his messages with Dewey alone, scrolls up, rereading everything. There’s no shift in messages. No indication that Dewey would be leaving or changing things, because he’d been talking around it the whole time, since day one. One day, Huey had two brothers.

The next, he only had Louie. And he never noticed.

He’s on his top bunk; it’s lonely, and it’s cold, and Huey’s pretty sure the bed wasn’t always this close to the fan but he’s scared that if he moves too much he’s going to become headless, so very carefully he starts climbing down the ladder. Louie shifts in his bunk, looking up to watch, wiping at his face.

“What’re you doing?”

“Move over,” Huey says simply. His voice is thicker than he expects, but it makes sense. Luckily, Louie doesn’t fight him; he simply rolls a little, so Huey has just enough room to lay on his side and share the pillow. They stare forward without looking at each other for a minute, then Huey finally gives up and closes his eyes, finding Louie’s hand in the dark. “Merry Christmas.”

“Yeah,” Louie mumbles. “You too.”

The next time they hear from someone it’s late the next morning, close to ten. The knock is timid, but they hear quiet bickering on the other side of the wood. Another knock, then someone finally calls, “Boys?”

“Della,” Louie grumbles, putting the pillow over his head. “Ugh.”

Huey, who normally defends their mom, sighs softly and stares up at the bottom of Dewey’s bunk. He can’t bring it in him to reply.

“What if they aren’t in there?” someone asks. He can’t quite place it, but he thinks it might be June.

“Where else could they be?”

“I don’t know—just open the door and find out!” That must be Scrooge, Huey decides, unless someone else has picked up a Scottish accent that thick in the past twelve hours.

Huey rolls over to his side and puts the pillow over his head too.

“We should have barricaded the door,” Louie mumbles.

“Agreed.”

Huey isn’t a defeatist, but for the first time, he can’t seem to find the bright or logical side to any of this. Maybe he’s allowed one day a year where he can be a pessimist, depressed, sad—and if that day is going to be any day, it should be allowed to be today, he decides. So when the door opens, he doesn’t emerge to say anything to the intruders, and he doesn’t apologize when he hears how disappointed they are, and he doesn’t look up and try to make amends when he hears them finally leave. Della leaves two plates of breakfast. Huey isn’t hungry.

Louie is. He waits two whole minutes, then climbs out of the bed to grab one. “It smells too good.”

“Okay,” Huey mumbles, his head still under the pillow. His minds is a million miles away; he’s content to let it wander, because getting focused is too much effort. He hears Louie munching, listens to him finish the plate, is acutely aware of the resounding silence after as Louie is presumably staring out the window.

Still. Huey checks. Louie is staring at him.

“Do you think we’ll hear from him today?” Louie asks. He’s leaning against the desk that had once upon a time been part of the set for Dewey Dew-Nite.

“I don’t know,” Huey says, putting the pillow under his head now. “I don’t know if it would be better or worse.”

“Are you gonna text him?”

“Are you?”

Louie lets out a slow breath. “I don’t know. Should we?”

“If I do, I’m not gonna be nice,” Huey says honestly.

“All we’ve been is nice to him,” Louie counters. “Maybe we need to try something else.”

Huey makes a non-committal noise, shutting his eyes again. “Leave me a biscuit.”

“I’m leaving you the whole plate. We have to eat sometime.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Don’t make me be the responsible one,” Louie complains, finally pushing away from the desk. “Do I have to make you get up and take care of yourself?”

Huey sighs, not looking—until he feels Louie drag him into a sitting position. He looks then, disgruntled.

“Don’t do this,” Louie says, uncharacteristically serious. “I don’t want to lose two brothers on Christmas. You can’t change too.”

Huey looks away, at the wonky floorboard in the corner, and thinks for a moment too long before he finally stands.

“Fine,” he mumbles finally. “I’ll eat. Wanna put on a movie?”

Louie sighs in relief. “Yes, please.”

They know they’re wanted downstairs, but they don’t ever go. They can open their presents another day. Huey does feel a little bad, but if Louie ends up taking his gifts back to Cranevard to open them there then it isn’t the end of the world. It’s less about protest and more just not wanting to ruin the mood. Huey glances out the window at one point and sees Webby flying around with a brand new set of jet sneakers from Fenton, having the time of her life.

She can tell him all about them later. He closes the curtains, just to be safe.

The day passes, into the evening. Louie is sitting at the foot of the bed; Huey is curled up in the same spot as this morning, staring out at the wall, feeling the most unmerry he’s ever felt, when he feels his phone buzz on the bed next to him.

At the same time as Louie’s phone.

They both go still, then check the notifications.

Dewey: happy christmas everyone! wish i was there :(

Huey hears Louie curse under his breath. The message came through the massive family group chat they all have—the boys, Donald, their mom, Scrooge and the girls and Beakley and Launchpad—a group message.

A group message.

“At least he’s alive,” Louie says stiffly, making a point to try not to sound bitter. (He fails.)

And then Huey watches another notification come through, to their little group chat with just the three of them.

Dewey: you two free?

Huey freezes, then nods at his phone as if that’s an answer.

Louie crawls across the bed, leaning over Huey’s shoulder. “Call him,” he hisses. “Right now.”

“Hold on,” Huey mumbles, fumbling with his phone.

Huey: Always are.

“Oooh,” Louie whispers. “Punctuation too? He’s in trouble…”

Dewey: give me like two minutes and we can video call?

Dewey: i miss you guys

Huey doesn’t bother responding. He just sits and waits, staring at his phone, until the call begins to come through.

Dewey looks…different to how Huey remembers him. His hair is parted strangely, hanging over his forehead like curtain bangs, but still dressed in his characteristic blue—suit? That’s definitely a button up. What happened to the letterman he always used to wear? The t-shirts? Isn’t Dewey supposed to be ready for adventure at a moment’s notice?  This isn’t like him. And where even is he? It’s not a dorm, and it isn’t an office, it just…looks like a blank wall behind him. He can’t even tell what kind of chair that is—gaming, or wooden, or— Huey stares at him blankly for a few seconds while the image loads, the connection strengthens—something is wrong. Something is—

“Dewey?” he asks suspiciously.

“Is it the hair?” Dewey asks, immediately trying to fluff it up. It collapses onto his forehead again, so he gives up. “I kept telling everyone it looks stupid like this, but I haven’t had time for a haircut—”

“What, with your whole secret agent schedule?” Louie challenges.

They watch Dewey freeze, panic, and fall back into old routine: he puts his fingers on his chin, stares off just past the camera, and nods several times as if he’s thinking. “Mm, mmm…”

“We know you joined SHUSH,” Huey says pointedly. “We aren’t stupid.”

And then Dewey drops the pretense, slumping over in front of his computer a little. “…how’d you figure it out?”

“Scrooge,” Louie says, narrowing his eyes. It’s sort of difficult to have both of them in frame at once, but Huey’s managing to make it work. His hand is starting to cramp, though. “He said someone had already busted into his stuff about it.”

“And you dropped out of school,” Huey says. “And you don’t call Launchpad.”

“But you call Della?” Louie demands. “Dude, what’s up with that? We’re your brothers!”

Dewey shrinks the further they lay into him, until he looks like a kid again. He looks scared—Huey wonders if something happened on a mission, if he’s hurt, if he’s been out of commission, if he even knows how much time has passed—something in him snaps finally, and he feels like a glow-stick coming to life as his big-brother instincts kick back in.

“Dewey,” he says, cutting Louie off. Dewey’s eyes move on screen, presumably to look at Huey. “Hey. It’s good to see you. Merry Christmas.”

Dewey smiles a little. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Louie echoes aggressively. “Now tell us all about how cool being a spy is!” Huey isn’t sure, but he thinks Louie sounds…jealous, almost?

Dewey lights up. “Really?”

“Yes!”

“If you don’t, I’ll find a way to track you down,” Huey threatens playfully.

“Good luck,” Dewey laughs. “I’m not even in the country anymore.”

“Aha!”

The three of them laugh, and eventually Huey switches the call to his laptop so he and Louie can stop sharing space so closely. Dewey talks around it for a while, trying to turn the conversation back to Louie and Huey, but they don’t bite. Eventually they get out of him that he wasn’t planning to join, but he’d been actively sought out and recruited by a current agent that he won’t give the name of.

“Is that your partner?” Louie demands.

“So how’s the whole pre-law thing going, LouLou?”

“Stop changing the subject!”

“I can’t talk about any of it,” Dewey says, at least sounding apologetic. “Honestly, I can’t! The fact that you even know is dangerous enough. You—you haven’t told anyone else, right?”

“No,” Huey promises. “But we’re your brothers—”

“And unfortunately, I’m bound to oath. I think they took my blood for it. I don’t remember for sure.”

Louie glances at Huey with concern. “You don’t…remember if they took your blood?”

Dewey shrugs noncommittally. “There were a lot of other things happening.”

“Like what?”

“I told you, I can’t talk about it!” Dewey looks away from the screen. “Look, if I could, I would. You know that.”

“Sorry,” Huey says quickly, cutting Louie off. “We just…it’s been a hard few months. We miss you.”

“We had to go Christmas tree shopping without you!”

“What?” Dewey’s head snaps back to the screen. “How could you!” He seems genuinely upset, so Huey only feels a little guilty when he replies.

“You wouldn’t pick up our phone calls or answer any of our texts,” he says blankly. “We saved a spot for you in the car. Not our fault you didn’t show.”

Dewey’s face falls.

“We miss you, man,” Louie says insistently. “You just vanished. You went off to school, and we stopped hearing from you as much, and then you went completely AWOL and didn’t even give us a heads up. We wouldn’t have known if you died, or if—”

“What Louie is trying to say is that we were worried,” Huey tries to cut in. Louie smacks the back of Huey’s head and he yelps a little, glaring.

“You don’t know what I’m trying to say!”

“Guys,” Dewey says patiently, but Huey must be more cranky than he realizes because he shoves at Louie, pushing him into the wall and almost off the bed.

“This might be the last time we speak to him, I don’t want you to be complaining about it the entire time!”

“It’s not gonna be—”

“He deserves to know that we’re upset, Hubert,” Louie hisses, shoving Huey back with the same intensity. Huey goes flying off the bed, hitting his head on the ladder as he goes, and he lands with a loud thump and a cry of pain. “Hue?”

“What was that for?” he demands, sitting up and holding his head. “I was trying to keep us from fighting!”

“Guys! Lou, Huey—”

“You always do this, Llewellyn,” Huey spits, pushing to his feet. “Haven’t you ever heard of compromise?”

“I’ve been getting in touch with my inner Louie,” Louie protests. “And I’m trying to make sure my feelings are known.”

“There’s a time and place for that kind of stuff!”

“Stop fighting!”

“Stay out of this,” Louie says sharply, trying to slam the laptop shut and turning back to Huey. The lid is mostly down, but not shut off all the way. “You aren’t the one who’s been alone—”

“I got left!” Huey shouts. “You two both left me! I love Webby, and May, and June, and everyone else! But they aren’t you! And you know what? You were having a bad time so I shut up about it. You came home, and I went to visit you, and I haven’t said a single word! There is a time and a place, and Dewey has a life that means he can’t be here, and that’s fine, Louie, but don’t make the first time we’ve talked to him in months about airing grievances! We can do that when he comes home!”

“Yeah, if he comes home,” Louie scoffs. “We may never speak to him again.” The laptop makes a little noise, but Huey pays it no mind.

“So you’re going to spend the whole time complaining and not just catching up? You’re so insistent this is the last time, so you want to make it a bad memory? Get real.” Huey snatches his laptop, jerking it out of the way when Louie tries to grab it from him. “If you’re not going to be nice about it, then I’m going somewhere else.”

“He’s my brother too!”

“Then stop finding things to get mad about!”

He pulls the laptop more open again, only to find that the call has ended. All the fight leaves his body as he stares.

“…Dewey?”

“Oh, what now?” Louie grumbles, but he too falls silent when he sees the screen. “…oh.”

Huey kneels in front of the bed and sets the laptop down, pulling up Dewey’s contact with a bit of finagling, and presses the button to video call. The camera previews the two of them staring despondently at the screen.

Uniquely, it also captures the moment their faces fall into despair when the call is declined.

A message from Dewey pops up in the corner of the screen. you two done fighting? Not sent to both of them—just Huey. It’s his laptop, after all.

Yes. he types back immediately. And so a video call comes through again.

Dewey looks hesitant on his side of the screen, frowning. Huey watches his eyes flicker between the two of them. “…you’re done?”

“Yeah,” Louie says immediately, stuffing his hands in his hoodie. “Done. Promise. Sorry.”

And for a moment, the three of them stare at each other. Once upon a time, they knew each other better than anyone else in the universe. Sometimes, Huey wishes they still did, but Dewey has a new haircut and looks like he’s calling from a prison cell, and Louie is leaving next week for another city again, and Huey has to go back to picking which of his brother’s beds he wants to sleep in because sometimes he’s just too lonely and misses them. (He usually picks Louie’s bed because it’s closest to the floor, but Dewey’s pillow because it’s the softest.) And Dewey—left. He got tired of them fighting, so he left the call, and he didn’t immediately call back.

All three of them are a million miles apart, and before Huey knows it, he’s breaking down in front of the laptop, putting his head into the bedspread and starting to cry.

“Huey?” Louie asks in alarm, on the floor next to him in seconds. “Hue? What’s wrong?”

“Huey?”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, sitting up and trying to wipe his face, but the tears are coming faster than he can wipe so his face is just getting covered in them. His hat has been gone from his head since before they came storming up here, so his head is cold, and Louie’s hands are weirdly warm, and the laptop is starting to do the whirring thing it does when it’s running too many things at once. “Sorry—”

“What did I say?” Dewey asks, getting closer to the camera. “I wasn’t—I’m not mad, about the fighting, I just—”

“Sh!” Louie hisses, glaring at the camera. His hands are on Huey’s forearm as he tries to coax Huey out of the ball he’s putting himself in. “Huey, look at me. It’s okay. What’s going on?”

“I miss you guys,” Huey mumbles pathetically. “I really, really miss you guys.”

Neither of them have anything to say to that.

The rest of the call is sort of awkward. Louie tries to play ball with Dewey, talking about insignificant things, but he keeps checking on Huey like he’s going to break at any second, so even their distractions aren’t working. Eventually, Dewey says he has to go, and Huey is both too embarrassed and too upset to say goodbye, so the call ends without much fanfare.

“Hey,” Louie says, trying to sound optimistic. “Hey, why don’t we go get some Christmas dinner, huh? And we can go open our presents too.”

“You go,” Huey mumbles, flopping onto his side and staring at the wall next to the bunk. “I’m not hungry.”

“Oh yes you are,” Louie says pointedly, grabbing Huey around the waist and heaving him up. “Come on. I’m not gonna let you wallow all night.”

“I like wallowing,” Huey mumbles, staying limp. “Let me wallow until the new year. Or the year after.”

“Absolutely not.” And it’s a struggle, but no one can say Louie isn’t stubborn, so he gets Huey downstairs into the kitchen for leftovers before too long. Mrs. Beakley finds them and helps out, mostly to prevent Louie from setting the kitchen on fire, and Uncle Donald finds them too, and that’s their Christmas. That’s it. Uncle Donald promises they waited for most of the gifts until the boys joined them again, and they tell him all about the phone call with Dewey, and he gives them a hug that might as well fix everything.

The next morning, Webby gives them practical demonstrations of her jet shoes, and May shows off her grappling hook (matching Webby’s, of course), and June produces an art kit that doubles as weapons, and the boys feel like they haven’t missed a thing.

Huey does consider texting Dewey an apology. He should, shouldn’t he? Probably.

He doesn’t. But he does think about it, for a long, long time.

Chapter Text

Dewey was really hoping the whole secret spy thing was going to end up with more action and less coffee-fetching, but maybe that’s what he gets for not clarifying the job expectations up front.

“Latte with caramel,” he says, placing the cup in front of the girl in the cubicle next to him. He doesn’t remember her name. She calls him Dan. It feels only fair. “Got you sugar too.”

“The caramel has sugar in it,” she snips back.

He decides to call her Kelly. She seems like a Kelly.

He takes the other two cups to his own desk—one is his, a basic black coffee (though it does sort of break his soul to drink it like that, he’s trying not to seem too froofy in front of his partner). And his partner’s drink—extra large, black, one sugar. He puts it towards the back of his desk so it doesn’t get knocked over and into his lap (again).

Luckily, today he doesn’t have to worry. Tim rounds the corner with a wide smile, holding his hand out. Dewey pauses, halfway into sitting, and decides he’d rather just sit down and pass it that way, so he does.

“Thanks, rookie.”

“Sure, Tim,” Dewey mumbles, pulling into his desk and throwing his laptop open. “I’m gonna finish researching the coordinates.”

“You’re not done?” Tim takes a sip, flinging himself back into his own chair behind Dewey. “That why you went for coffee?”

“The numbers were starting to swim in front of me,” Dewey says, gesturing with his hands. “Like a cosmos of a failed algebra class.”

Tim laughs. He doesn’t do that a lot; Dewey must be doing something right today, so he takes the win and quiets down with a proud little smile.

(Part of his brain, the part that sounds like Huey, pipes up and says that he doesn’t need to impress this guy. The part of his brain that sounds like Louie agrees, then starts listing different artifacts they could use to put Tim in his place. But Louie doesn’t actually know half those relics exist, and Huey would probably adore Tim Miller, so Dewey ignores both of them and the way his phone has started to burn hot in the pocket of his jacket.)

(It’s not actually burning. It just feels like it is. Louie had sent a picture of some matching sweaters Donald had gotten them, and he and Huey had been holding up Dewey’s in the center, and protocol would only let Dewey get away with liking the picture passively. He hates himself for it, and he hates his stupid job, and he hates that his brothers are mad at him, but this is the life he chose.)

(Even Louie would be a better partner than Tim Miller.)

“Hey, Dwight,” Tim says conversationally. That’s what he apparently thinks Dewey’s name is. He hasn’t bothered correcting him. “Why don’t you take a look at some of the field manuals and I’ll finish up the coordinate work, huh? You’re pretty close?”

What, so you can take all the credit? Dewey thinks sullenly, but he doesn’t say it aloud. “Sort of close, yeah. Got it triangulated to a fifty mile radius I think.” He turns in his chair, his eyes narrowed. “And I passed my field tests. I don’t need to go over anything again unless I’m finally getting to do something with the stuff I’m learning.”

Tim smiles wider and doesn’t say anything. The meaning doesn’t hit him for a few seconds, and then suddenly Tim is looking less like target practice and more like a benevolent god opening the door to Dewey’s future.

“I’m going out in the field?” he whispers.

“I’m hard on you,” Tim says, putting the coffee down and sitting more like a normal person for a moment. He’s uncharacteristically soft. “Because someone was hard on me when I started. I did desk work for two full years, and it felt like a nightmare, but you know what? I came out the other side better for it. And listen, Dwight, I don’t say this lightly—you’re better than I was. Give it two, maybe three successful missions, and we might get to send you down the senior track before the group ahead of yours gets there.” He smiles a little. “The work you’re doing? The fact that I made you do most of it yourself? I wanted to see if you could, and you did. What a way to prove yourself, I’ll give you that—I would have had to call a few other departments or ask for help from somewhere, but you sat there and figured it out down to fifty miles.”

“I could be wrong,” Dewey says, his throat dry. He’s not sure this conversation is actually happening. “I’m really bad at math, I wasn’t the—”

“—smart triplet, so I’ve heard,” Tim finishes for him. “But is the smart one here? Or the cunning one, or whatever you say he is?”

“Sharp,” Dewey corrects, his voice low. “Sharper than the sharpies.”

“Sure,” Tim says. “Is he here?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“What’s your point?”

“That whatever self worth you’re not assigning to yourself, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t think you’re sharp or smart or whatever, that doesn’t matter. Because you’re here, so someone thinks you are. And I’m not saying—” He holds up his hands to stave off Dewey’s protest. “—it’s not that you’re better than them or anything. You fit a specific need we wanted to fill. We could have gotten one of them, if we wanted. And we picked you. You’re supposed to be here, because the timing was right.”

Dewey’s not smiling anymore, but he thinks he gets the point, so he nods slowly. “…okay.”

“I’m gonna come with you on this,” Tim continues. “But this is your mission. You found the gem, you figured out what it does, and I’m gonna let you call the shots and see how you do. I won’t let you fail, because I don’t think you’re going to.”

Dewey sits back in his chair and glances at the map for a long minute. The relic in question, the gem, is something that had been on SHUSH’s back-burner for ages—something dangerous, that only opened itself to someone whose greatest wish was greater in value to them than anything else. Someone who walked up and would offer everything for a single altering event would be overwhelmed with desire, and the wish would be made, and the world would change for it—or so the myth goes. It’s true that nobody could ever truly verify that that was the case, simply because of the nature of it, but that made it all the more important to get it in the hands of SHUSH and locked away so it wouldn’t run the risk anymore without heavy levels of security being broken through.

“I can narrow it to twenty five,” Dewey says after a minute. “Then I can pass it over. My abilities really start failing there.”

“Okay,” Tim says easily. “Thought you didn’t like coffee, huh, rookie?”

“Not normally, no.” He spins to hunch over his laptop.

“Want me to grab you a loaded Pep?”

Dewey pauses, looking over his shoulder suspiciously. “You said energy drinks were bad for secret agents.”

He shrugs. “Need to have you at your best for this. You want one? My treat.”

Dewey thinks, then nods. “Yeah, sure. Thanks, Tim.”

“No problem, Dewey.” Tim smacks the edge of the cubicle as he steps out, and Dewey is left with a sort of hollow, proud feeling in his chest.

Dewey gets it to twenty five, and Tim gets it down to eight. He swears he couldn’t do it without Dewey, but Dewey has his doubts—anyway, he goes home that night to his tiny box apartment, alone, and sighs once the door is closed. He knew this would be the lonelier option, but he didn’t realize how much it would start to weigh on him. But things are turning around, he reasons. No reason he can’t get over the crushing loneliness sooner rather than later.

Still. He sits down on his couch with stiff springs and scratchy fabric, stares at his child-sized TV on the apple crate that holds more weapons than he’d ever thought he’d own in his entire life, and tugs out the notebook he keeps stashed between the cushions.

Dearest brothers, he begins, because that’s how he always begins these journals. He hopes one day that they’ll be able to read them, but he doesn’t know if that’s going to be an option. If he’s killed in the field, absolutely not; if he quits, he might die then too, so. He’d have to find a way to pass them over without revealing that they contain details he isn’t supposed to be writing down or sharing with anyone. And that…doesn’t seem like an option. Anyway, he addresses it to them anyway, because it makes him feel better.

Today was…sort of weird. Fun fact, T apparently thinks I’m the best of us for what they needed in a rookie. Sorry? Ha ha. We’re going on my first proper mission at the end of the week—I think I’ve tracked down the gem properly, so we’re gonna go see if I’m right. He thinks I could advance to the senior class soon, if this goes well. Do you know how exciting that is? Probably.

I feel bad about Christmas still. If you’ve burned my sweater I’ll understand. I’ll be hurt, of course, but I’ll understand. Just make sure Uncle Donald’s feelings aren’t hurt. Anyway, the picture you sent was adorable, and I’m SO jealous. I hope breakfast and dinner were divine on Christmas Eve. You didn’t actually tell me if Mrs. Beakley cooked haggis again. As disgusting as it is, I almost miss it, because it means I’d be home with you guys.

Do you remember how fun it was before we grew up? Those first few years were terrifying, and I know you hated it, Louie, but I think it was our peak and it’s only gone downhill from there. I miss sharing a room with you guys. Huey’s snoring was a great lullaby. Ha ha. Don’t tell me you don’t snore, big brother, because I know you do.

You didn’t get to tell me how school is going, so I’m going to hope it’s going well instead of what I’m afraid of. Sometimes I regret not sticking with Mouseton and our plan. Sorry for ruining that.

Dewey frowns at the page. He always ends up writing the same kind of monologue, about apologies and how he misses how things used to be, so instead of finishing it like normal he shuts the notebook and chucks it across the room instead. It leaves a little mark on the wall where the metal rings scuff the paint. It doesn’t matter. He’s probably never going to see his security deposit again anyway.

If he lives long enough for that to be a consideration.

He stares up at the ceiling, sighing dramatically at nothing. Tim had told him to start getting rest, because they’d surely need it, but he’s too wired to sleep.

Still. Against everything in his bones that tells him he needs to sneak out (of his own house, with no one watching him) and go find danger or comfort somewhere else, he heaves himself back to his shower, then into bed. Rest doesn’t come easy, but he tries.

Tuesday is the same way. They’re leaving early on Wednesday, so Tim had given him permission to take Tuesday off, which for Dewey just means he packs a bag in fifteen minutes and spends the rest of the day moping around his house. Eventually he decides to pull up his training module, not because Tim told him to, but because he’s genuinely reached that level of boredom that even the monotony of reading the best practices of being a spy is more entertaining than the single three channels he can pull up on his stupid TV.

It’s sort of funny, that this is the routine of his life. He has work, which up until now has been paperwork and tests and nothing exciting, and then after work he has…nothing. His TV, which has local news and some generic public education and some strange signal from a different country, or so he thinks. It’s in a language he’s learning but hasn’t mastered yet. Maybe that’s the point. He doesn’t get paid very much right now, so he lives off plain pasta and broth; and never before had he craved something as disgusting as haggis or other strange organs cooked to perfection by Mrs. Beakley, but after his seventh week in a row of straight fettuccine noodles with barely any butter, some sheep’s organs were sounding pretty good.

And under no circumstances, and they meant no circumstances whatsoever, was Dewey allowed to have constant contact with his family. It was never clear if or when he’d need to go off the grid, so they wanted to minimize the risk of people coming after him if he vanishes. Dewey was under stricter orders than most of his co-workers, mostly because the higher-ups know how Scrooge and the rest of his family can get. He’d fought and begged as much as he could, but the most he could swing was the ability to interact with their messages and never reply. While he’s waiting for his training module to load, he scrolls through all the messages from his family he can’t respond to.

(Okay, he’s allowed to talk to his mom. For some reason, SHUSH has a soft spot for mothers, and he’d erroneously claimed Launchpad as his dad at one point, so he can talk to his mom and Launchpad occasionally, but that’s it, and he can’t ask about anyone else or tell them how he’s doing. It’s a nightmare of epic proportions. Dewey misses his family.)

(The module loads. He locks his phone and puts it away. Maybe some reading will be good for him.)

SCOPE OF TRAINING, Doc 2, art. 7.6a

Before starting formal training, prospective operatives are generally put through a series of tests and observations to determine their aptitudes for SHUSH work…

Training for operatives begins with a basic course in secret intelligence. This course embraces, both in theory and in practice, such matters as security, cover, communications, recruiting and handling agents, police methods, battle order, effects of propaganda, public opinion testing, cipher, radio code, elementary map reading and sketching, use of the compass, demolitions, and weapons. Advanced training for the secret intelligence operatives is conducted at SHUSH finishing school. Here specialized instruction is given in secret intelligence techniques, and the operative, with assistance from the instructors and his desk head, develops his cover and otherwise prepares for his particular mission. The desk head can be of great help to the operative during this stage of highly individualized instruction and to that end should remain in as close touch with him as is consistent with security…

Until he leaves for the field, the operative continues to receive further special instruction, including special briefing and types of intelligence desired from the area where he will operate. Every assistance possible will be given by his desk head to that end. This training should be given to SHUSH operatives recruited and trained in the U.S. and will be supplemented in the theater. SHUSH operatives and agents selected in the theater will receive similar training and instructions under direction of the SHUSH section chief…

And on and on it goes, for pages and pages, until Dewey starts pulling feathers out of his temple out of sheer boredom. He scans forward to the section about being on missions, and only a few things seem to stand out—one, that whenever this was written (seventy years ago or whatever) they must have used this as a method of torture because of how painfully mind-numbing it is.

And two, that some of the advice seems bullshit to him. At least it seems more updated than the rest of the module.

When stuck in a situation where letting go of one’s partner would result in a better outcome, the choice must be taken to trust one’s partner to take care of themselves. Always have a backup meeting location set with a proper date and time and encoded using the methods laid out in Doc. 4 art. 34.2b. One of the most important things a SHUSH agent must learn is the ability to trust one’s partner intrinsically.

Dewey reads that paragraph a few times. For some reason, it doesn’t stick right with him. Let go of your partner? He can see why in theory it might be useful, but two heads are better than one, right? And anyway, he probably won’t even need to remember it, because the chances of them getting separated on this trip are low at best. They’re going into a cave or something. How hard could it be?

Very hard, as it turns out.

Tim is holding up the rock as best as he can to try to keep the water from flooding in, but it’s a losing fight and they both know it. He grunts and heaves it up higher for a moment, but his shoes start to slip.

“Dewey,” he calls, sounding vaguely annoyed. “Any time now!”

Dewey glances back at him, panicked, and nearly loses hold of the rock he’s clinging to. He only manages to keep hold because of the thick gloves he wears, but the bag on his hip—though empty—feels like it’s weighing him down. Dewey looks up. The hole is close enough that if he jumps—but then how could Tim get up there—?

“We need to go back,” Dewey says decisively, starting to let go and slide down.

“No!” Tim calls. “You go! You got the gloves and the pouch?”

“Yes,” Dewey calls uncertainly. “But—“

“I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point,” Tim says. The rock slips. He lets it. “Get in there, get the gem, and get out as fast as you can!”

Dewey stares at him. It goes against every bone in his body, but finally he looks up, takes a deep breath, and launches himself into the hole in the ceiling, listening to the sound of Tim turning tail behind him.

The room he finds himself in is…strange. Below him, he can vaguely hear the rushing of the water, but just looking around he feels…calm. The room isn’t big, but it feels that way—something about the dimensions in the walls make them seem like they stretch out forever.

They just…keep going.

Dewey takes one step, then another, trying to find the wall to touch, but every time he thinks he’s getting close he isn’t. Before he knows it, he can barely see the hole he jumped up through, and the yellow forever room is still stretching on, and on, and on…

He’s been in a room like this, once. With Louie. An infinite dimension room. Everywhere and nowhere all at once. Something roots in his heart for a moment—

I wish things were still that simple.

The room rumbles. Dewey yelps, but there’s nothing to fall back against, so he just kind of collapses as the infinite room contracts and expands and pops out—

A gem.

The gem, if his description is correct. He gasps a little, reaching for it on instinct—and it’s a good thing he’d had the foresight to put the gloves on before the room, because if this is really the gem, then he’d have been completely lost with how fast he grabs it. He turns it over in his hands a few times, watching the way the insides swirl like cosmos.

It needs to go in the bag, and he knows it. But…maybe he can watch it a little bit longer, hm?

Training kicks in eventually, and he places it delicately in the bag on his hip. He doesn’t know how long he’s been in here, thinking and staring and turning it over and over in his grip. It can’t have been that long, can it? The hole he came through is easy enough to find, and he drops down through it again.

The room is completely dry. Huh.

Not even vaguely moist, completely dry. He looks around a few times, frowning. Where is Tim? All the water? It had been flooded only a few minutes ago—

A few minutes ago. Right?

Dewey’s starting to feel seasick standing on dry land, in a dry room, unmoving. The gem is sitting in the bag, only getting heavier by the minute. Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Something’s wrong—something—

He heads out the way he came in and follows protocol to find Tim. Tim isn’t at the rendezvous point, which is…horrifying. And even more horrifying, Dewey’s phone is so dead.

Maybe they had a point with not letting people stay in contact. Clearly, Dewey has been gone for a long time.

“Five months,” Director Cursor says, placing the file down in front of Dewey. “Since you’ve checked in with anyone. Any explanation? Your partner couldn’t find you when he tried to look.”

“I fell into an inter-dimensional limitless pocket,” Dewey says, as simply as he can. “The room was flooding, I hopped into the hole in the ceiling, and—well, you know. Then it was five months later.”

The director doesn’t look impressed, raising a single eyebrow. “Did you at least find it?”

He nods. “I wouldn’t have come back if I hadn’t.”

Cursor holds out a hand expectantly; Dewey unhooks the bag from his belt loop and passes it over with only a little bit of concern. “Do you need the gloves?”

“That would be great. Thank you.”

Dewey hands the gloves over too, sitting back in his seat. He feels sort of weird, because he can’t quite figure out what the gem would be doing in an infinite dimension pocket, but at least he’d been right about the location. That, too, was curious—this whole breakdown is going to be. The director doesn’t seem upset with him, at least, but Dewey wonders if they’d told his family he’d gone missing in action or not. Probably not, he assumes. Not if it would set Uncle Scrooge off, which he’s reasonably sure it would.

He hasn’t gotten to check his phone yet. He’d found a payphone marked with the SHUSH signal and dialed the emergency code for immediate pickup, and they’d whisked him back to headquarters with only slightly concerned glances the whole plane ride back. Once they’d gotten there he had approximately three minutes to dump all unimportant things at his desk (which at least they’d saved for him) before being summoned here. So his phone is, presumably, still charging. In five months he’s sure Louie and Huey have cussed him out for no longer reacting to anything. He wonders if he can figure out a way to sneak another video call in. The one at Christmas had been risky at best, especially with how long it had run, but if anyone had caught on at least he’d still mostly followed protocol.

And he doesn’t think the director would be upset with what he’d said. Dewey had rejected him for weeks before he finally caved and agreed to give training a shot. This wasn’t his first choice for his future, that much was clear, and—

“Huh,” Director Cursor says, holding the gem up to the light. “Not as impressive as we’d hoped, I suppose.”

Dewey doesn’t look at it, the way it’s glinting, the shiny surface that he wants to run a finger across so badly—he’s been fighting the urge to touch it since he’d dropped out of the pocket in the first place, and now that he doesn’t have the gloves on the desire is only growing. So he keeps his eyes firmly planted on the back wall instead. “It’s more what it’s supposedly capable of that’s the impressive part, Director.”

“Of course,” he agrees smoothly. “An excellent job. I do wish we had a way to test it, but…”

Dewey swallows hard. He can feel the director looking at him. “I’m fairly certain,” he says, stiff.

“You are?” The gem goes back in the bag. Dewey finally remembers how to breathe. “How can you be sure? Wouldn’t we have to have someone test it?” It’s not quite a challenge. There’s concern laced in his voice.

“Because, sir,” Dewey continues, finally able to look at the director. “It preys on people’s deepest desires. The deeper the desire, the crazier it drives you. And let’s just say you oughta be glad I wasn’t the one driving the plane.”

The silence hangs heavy in the air as Cursor takes the words to heart. He nods slowly, then pulls the drawstring tight on the bag. “Well, in that case, I ought not to let you be the one putting it away, hm? I’ll let you handle the paperwork, and we’ll send someone else to put it in the archives.”

“Excellent idea,” Dewey says quietly. When was the last time he blinked? He blinks now, and his eyes sting with pain. No wonder the director had given him such a funny look; he’d probably been staring like a maniac at that back wall the whole time. “The cubicle is still mine?”

“Sure is,” Cursor says, putting the bag to the side. “I’ll go ahead and call your partner to let him know you’re back. He was devastated when you didn’t rendezvous, and the past few months he’s been an absolute wreck.”

“I’m flattered I meant that much to him.” The longer Dewey talks, the worse he feels, like someone else is speaking out of his mouth for him.

(It almost sounds like Huey.)

“Send him my way when he gets here?” he continues, standing up slowly.

“Can do. Thank you, Agent Two-One-Seven.”

Agent 217. Dewey smiles, then heads back through the office slowly, avoiding everyone’s eyes. Kelly isn’t in her cubicle today; none of her stuff is either. He pauses to look around it curiously, feeling a bit hollow when he notices the memorial plaque his hand lands on.

Victoria “Tori” Degas

He takes his hand off it, stares, and shakes his head. His own cubicle feels much safer now. He sits in his chair, staring at the dust that’s accumulated—

Not just dust. There’s a note too, pinned to the wall where he spent a lot of time staring and wishing death upon the person who invented math. He thinks he recognizes the handwriting as Tim’s.

Dewey,

Sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m gonna keep trying. Don’t you worry, rookie. I’ll bring you home.

TM, 154

Dewey smiles a little. He didn’t know Tim was so sentimental. This might be the first decoration in his apartment, if he still has one.

A few people make rounds and come over to say hi. He’s seen them at water coolers or in the break room before, but he doesn’t know many of their names. They sure seem to know him, though. He plasters a fake smile on his face for most of them, plays nice, nods and laughs along as they tell him stories about people he doesn’t know doing things he doesn’t care about during his absence.

The latest one, about some rando named Effy spilling coffee on the printer, is interrupted by someone physically picking Effy’s partner up and putting her to the side. Dewey’s on his feet immediately, relieved to see a familiar face.

“Tim!”

“Dwight,” Tim says, relieved, and picks Dewey up in a hug so tight it cracks his back in a few places. Dewey is about a foot shorter, so he’s fully lifted into the air by Tim’s embrace, but he doesn’t mind it. It reminds him of Launchpad. “You’re back!”

“You got sentimental on me,” Dewey accuses playfully, waving the note around. Tim puts him down and simply grins in response.

“I meant it. They had to put me on cubicle arrest to stop me from going back anymore. You vanished.”

“So I’ve heard,” Dewey grins, leaning against the edge of the cubicle casually. “You’re never gonna guess.”

“What?”

“Pocket dimension.”

Tim’s eyes go wide. “You’re joking.”

Dewey shakes his head, proud. “Not my first time in one, but this one clearly messed with time too. Infinite dimensions are one thing, but I wasn’t expecting five minutes to have made so much time pass outside of it.”

“Pocket dimension,” Tim says quietly, shaking his head in amazement. “You know, after you hopped up there, I’d tried to swim over and follow you but the hole was gone.”

“You turned around and swam out before the room completely flooded, right?” Dewey says immediately, his smile dropping. “That was—dangerous. I mean, thank you for checking on me, but—”

Tim smiles guiltily. “Would you believe I wasn’t too concerned with getting out if I couldn’t find you?”

“Idiot,” Dewey says fondly, smacking his arm. “You cared about me that much?”

“Come on, rookie, as if,” Tim teases. “All about the image, you know? Couldn’t get caught letting my rookie get lost on his first field mission.”

“And yet,” Dewey sighs dramatically, leaning back with a hand to his forehead. They both laugh. The other people had wandered off about the time Tim showed up. Dewey doesn’t miss them. “I’m home, though.”

“Glad for it,” Tim agrees, then looks around before leaning in. “Were you right?”

Dewey’s smile falters a little, but he nods. “I found the gem, if that’s what you mean.”

“And it’s…you know…”

“Without a doubt.”

“Where is it now?”

“Director Cursor has it.”

Tim nods, leaning back. “And you’re sure?”

“Sure as silver,” Dewey says. “It’s a good thing I had the gloves on, Tim, I’ll tell you that much.”

As he speaks, he realizes how fake he sounds. How two-dimensional. How cardboard. Like a script in a show, or—this isn’t Dewey. He’s supposed to be shouting and hollering, isn’t he? When did he give up his whole life for some stuffy office job that he’s never going to escape now that he’s gone and messed up his first ever mission out in the field—

Dewey stops listening to whatever Tim is saying, shaking his head. What is he thinking about? He likes this job, and—

Something’s wrong, he thinks. There’s a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that something is desperately, desperately wrong.

“Tim,” Dewey says, interrupting his partner. “Do you have an idea where they’re gonna put the gem in the artifacts?”

“No idea,” Tim says honestly. “Why?”

“Think you can find out before it’s locked away?”

“Why?”

“I wanna try to do some more research on it,” he admits quietly. “I don’t think it’s exactly what we thought it was.”

Tim raises an eyebrow. “…what are you talking about?”

“Please?” Dewey says, leaning closer. “I don’t ask for much. It can still go in the archives. I just want to be able to find it later, that’s all.”

Tim hesitates for a beat too long, then finally nods. “…I’ll see what I can do. Why don’t you go home and get some rest, huh, rookie?”

Dewey relaxes a little, running a hand through his hair. It isn’t any longer than it was before he jumped in the pocket, so that’s nice, at least. He still needs a haircut, though. He doesn’t like the way it hangs in his face. “Sounds like a good idea. If you don’t hear from me for a few days, I’m probably sleeping like the dead.”

“You deserve it. Why don’t we call it for the week and say we’ll put you back in action Monday morning?”

It’s Tuesday now. Dewey grins. “A mini vacation? Not a bad idea.”

“And why don’t we grab dinner Friday?” Tim says, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll figure out everything I need to catch you up on.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Dewey doesn’t make it to Friday night dinner. The longer he spends in the real world, the wearier his body gets, and he ends up sleeping for four days straight with barely enough energy to make it to the bathroom most of the time. Sunday, he calls Tim to apologize, and Tim assures him he was sort of expecting it. After the call, he takes the time to try to catch up on messages from his family.

All six.

Five whole months, and Dewey’s only gotten two texts from Webby, a text from Launchpad, a text from his mom, a text from Uncle Donald, and a single emoji from Louie that’s just the thumbs down emoji. He checks his call log too; Huey had tried to call him twice three months ago, but that was all. The texts from Webby are about birthday gifts she was considering; Launchpad wanted to share a picture of Drake; and Uncle Donald and his mom both wanted to say they were thinking about him.

And that’s all.

He decides to put his phone on do-not-disturb instead of focusing on it.

Monday morning, a single note is pinned to his cubicle wall.

217,

Took your advice. 14 apples is the perfect amount for the pie—and to think I’d only been using 4 this whole time. Butter crust was a great option too. Gonna be making 10 of them for next holiday—how many do you want? Better be careful though. Just between you and me.

154

Section 14, row 4, shelf b, spot 10. Dewey smiles and pockets the note to himself.

He gives it a few weeks before he goes searching. The job feels hollower the longer he works at it, especially with Tim treating him so fragile, but Dewey knows if he can just get his hand on the gem—well, inevitably something will work out, right? There’s something more to it, he just knows it.

He knows it.

The face he puts up is good—better than before. Model employee, that’s Dewey Duck, happy to do the paperwork and boring stuff and help out on rescue missions and all the things he’s supposed to do as a desk jockey being lightly retested for the field again.

Six months after he goes missing, and a month after he returned, Dewey takes a trip to the archives. The walls are taller than they have any right to be, with shelves stacked for almost the whole alphabet and hundreds of rows and spots and sections. But Dewey knows exactly where he’s headed, and he’s carrying some paperwork for good measure, so nobody stops him. A few other agents wave at him, and the shadows don’t consider him a threat so he isn’t psychologically warfare-d upon.

Section fourteen. Row four. Shelf B, up top, and spot ten. He slides the ladder into place, opening the little door, and sees the familiar bag that had sat on his hip for—well, not that long, actually. But long enough that it feels familiar. He thinks it was…velvet?

(It is not velvet. He picks it up, and it’s definitely leather. Or vinyl. Or something. The bag isn’t important, nor is the nearly identical one he puts next to it.)

What’s important is what’s inside the bag from the vault, and with excitement that’s been evading him the past few weeks, he tugs out the gem. Smart Dewey had planned on doing exactly this, so before he’d climbed the ladder he’d put a single, worn glove on, so he didn’t fully touch it. But it doesn’t stop him from being able to look, to twist it around, to watch the colors inside swirl and—

“Dwight?”

Dewey yelps a little and shoves the gem back into one of the bags, glancing down. Tim is frowning at him from the floor, arms crossed with concern.

“What’re you doing?”

“I told you,” Dewey starts, but his voice dies when Tim shakes his head.

“You did exactly as much research as I did,” Tim counters. “Maybe more. You know that thing will drive people crazy, and that’s exactly what’s happened, isn’t it?”

“…no,” Dewey says unconvincingly.

“Get down.”

Dewey sighs heavily, leaning back to stare at the ceiling, then grabs his bag and shuts the vault door.

“Leave the gem!”

“I did!” Dewey promises, shoving the bag in his pocket. He feels the weight of the second glove inside of it as he slides down the ladder, landing on the ground with a smoothness that he didn’t always possess. “I promise, it’s up there. I know you’re right.”

Tim holds out his hand expectantly, so Dewey produces the bag, making a point of pulling it open himself to show the other glove. He even shakes it around for good measure, then holds it still again. Tim stares inside for a moment, then waves his hand; Dewey drops the second glove in and pulls the drawstrings tight, putting it back in his pocket.

“I knew I shouldn’t have given you the coordinates,” Tim says, sort of sad. “You let it go for a little too long. I knew something was up.”

“You’re not even a little curious?” Dewey whines.

“Of course I am, but if you’re right—and the thing is, Dwight, I know you are—in the wrong hands, that thing could do a lot of damage. And I don’t think we could have gotten it without you, but I’m afraid you might be the wrong hands.”

Dewey looks away, sullen, feeling every bit the middle brother he is. It’s built into his bones to hate being told what to do, and this is no exception. “…yeah, I know.”

“We oughta move it,” Tim says.

“And don’t tell me where it is,” Dewey agrees, trying not to scuff his foot against the floor in protest. “There’s a second secret archive somewhere, isn’t there?”

Tim narrows his eyes. “You aren’t supposed to know about that.”

“Think Uncle Scrooge mentioned it a few times.”

“Huh. Well. If we move it, you can’t go looking for it.”

“I know.”

“Swear on your life?”

“My life, my badge, and my family,” Dewey says, finally looking Tim in the eyes again. “I shouldn’t have come looking, I know. So it needs to be kept all the way away from me.”

“Agreed.” Tim holds out his hand. Dewey shakes it, sighing.

“Sorry.”

“Happens to the best of us. Did I ever tell you about my experience with the Fleece?”

Dewey perks up as they start walking back to the entrance. “No, what happened there?” Tim starts to tell the story, and the gem stays in the vault, and that should be the end of it.

Oh, if only.

Dewey gets home later that night, shoves the bag in a drawer, and forgets about it. Life goes on. He doesn’t hear from his family anymore. They’ve all given up; he tries to convince himself it doesn’t sting, but it does, because how could it not? He finds himself scrolling through pictures of his family on his phone before he goes to bed every night; more than once, he falls asleep to watching videos of them all hanging out, back when things were good.

Not that they were always good. Dewey remembers trying to leave before he found reasons he wanted to stay. The talent show incident, which he knows Louie still harbors a grudge for—Dewey had seen him in the audience, but he’d really thought Louie wasn’t interested in learning the routine, so he’d tried giving up. Louie hadn’t let him. Of course Louie hadn’t let him. Louie had learned the whole thing, Dewey had come to find out, because he saw his baby brother marking the dance from where he stood at the back of the audience, and Dewey had been practicing his speech for so long that he’d forgotten to edit it, and he’d called the two kids from his drama class his brothers.

Sure, in a sense they were all family, but they were family he could ignore or forget, if he wanted. That didn’t make them his brothers, the way Louie and Huey are. Something had broken that day, and Dewey had watched it happen, and he could have found a way to fix things, thrown a band-aid on it all, but he hadn’t. He’d just let them all drift further apart.

And then, the prom incident—oh, prom. Dewey had gotten it in his head that it would be easier to go stag with Louie and Huey, but neither of them even wanted to go, so he’d convinced Fenton’s girlfriend to make him some robots to act as his entourage. In truth, there was someone at the time he’d thought he wanted to impress, and he’d been afraid dragging Louie and Huey into it would ruin his chances.

That was going on three years ago. Dewey doesn’t even remember who it was. He just remembers how loud the fight had gotten, and the way Webby had refused to pick sides, claiming they were all falling victim to the fallacy of man, and Dewey had submitted his application to SCU later that night. He didn’t start having second thoughts until he realized that even after all his mistakes, they still didn’t want him to leave.

And he left anyway. They helped him out the door. Now, it’s as if he doesn’t exist. Nobody tries to keep in touch anymore.

He chose this life. He keeps trying to remind himself, he chose this, he agreed to the life of a secret agent, and he knew it would change things, but all it’s done is ruin his life, if he’s being honest. He’d rather have stayed at SCU, found a major he was lukewarm about, stuck around with Launchpad and Darkwing and Gosalyn, given up and come home to Mouseton. Or even better, never applied to SCU in the first place, stuck with their plan, lived with his family until they all became even more seasoned adventurers and grown into adults their mom and uncles would be proud of.

Or even better beyond that, never grown up at all.

Dewey misses, with all of his heart, how simple things had been when they were kids. After Uncle Donald had introduced them to Scrooge, of course, and after their mom had come home—though before then was fun too, because Louie wasn’t so mad all the time, and all Dewey had to worry about was missing his mom, not knowing what happened to her, and whether or not Scrooge was going to take them somewhere more exciting than the day before. He misses Webby not knowing how to interact with the outside world; he misses Huey striving to get every Junior Woodchuck badge he could get his hands on, drawing them into more and more projects that were more fun than Dewey ever admitted; he misses Louie and his get-rich-quick schemes; he misses his Uncle Donald, worse for wear but fiercely protective over all of them. His heart aches so much when he thinks about it.

It aches so badly, in fact, that it rattles one of the drawers in his desk one night.

Dewey’s head shoots up in surprise. He doesn’t know what that could be—a rat? Oh, just his luck to end up with an infestation in his shoebox of an apartment—

He pulls the desk drawer open and sees the drawstring bag from—what is it now, two months ago? Eight months since they found the location, three from when he returned from space and time, and two from when he’d tried to visit it. The bag just has gloves in it, he’s sure of it.

And yet, clear as day, when he undoes the drawstrings, nestled right in the center of the gloves, sits the gem.

It’s beautiful. Even now it’s a creamy yellow color that nearly glows, and without thinking, Dewey picks it up with his bare hands.

He doesn’t quite know what happens next. He’s hit with an immediate wave of nostalgia, one that tastes like haggis of all things, smells like Uncle Donald’s houseboat and feels like wind whipping through his hair as the small plane his mom used to teach him to fly in started taking off. The apartment begins to swirl around him, not that Dewey has any idea. Dewey’s eyes are shut. He’s just focusing on that warm feeling. It feels like a hug from his brothers, like the satisfaction of finding a treasure, like—like—

Like the entire universe is shifting to give him exactly what he wants.

He has the thought for the briefest of seconds and panics, trying to let go of the gem, screaming “Wait, no, no, wait!” Because the last thing Dewey would ever want to do is ruin his brother’s lives by being selfish again. Huey is happy now, focusing on finding a new purpose in life more than just being an older brother to a set of ungrateful brats; Louie’s found his passion as a lawyer, or on the way to it. They’re happy now. He doesn’t want to take that from him.

But the thoughts are ripped from him faster than he can think them, and the floor vanishes underneath his feet, and all Dewey can think to do is shove the gem in his shirt’s pocket as everything explodes around him.

He wakes up to sun on his face and a sharp rap at the wooden door.

“Boys!” Another sharp tap. “Boys, up and at ‘em! Mrs. Beakley has breakfast, and then we need to get in the air. The Lost City isn’t going to find itself, you know!”

Louie groans from the bunk below. “Man, I hate having to wake up.”

Huey’s voice chimes in from across the room. “I don’t know how you two could sleep at all! I’ve been up packing for an hour.”

“Nerd,” Louie mumbles. The bunk shifts. “I’m going back to sleep. Wake me up when it’s time to leave.”

Dewey opens his eyes.

And he smiles.

Chapter Text

Louie feels—well, he’s never been drunk, seeing as he’s only a kid, so he doesn’t know what being hungover feels like but this is what he imagines it to be like. His limbs feel heavy; his head hurts like the Dickens; even his blanket, thin (because that’s all Scrooge would splurge for), feels like it’s made of cement. He doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want to get up and go find some lost city, and he doesn’t want to spend time on a plane, and—how are they even going to have time? He’s got to get back to—

—to get back to—

…to get back to…

Somewhere. Doesn’t he?

Huey comes over and shakes his arm. “Louie, come on.”

“I’m tired,” he complains. “I don’t wanna. Don’t we have—“

His voice peters out. There’s something they have to do that would interfere, he just knows it, but…what is it?

Huey’s hand doesn’t leave his arm. “I grabbed some granola bars. You slept through breakfast. I don’t want Webby to have to come drag you out of here with the grappling hook.”

“Don’t worry, dear Hubert,” someone says. Huey’s hand vanishes. “I’ve got this.”

And then the blanket is ripped away and Louie is thrown unceremoniously over someone’s shoulder. He starts squawking loudly in concern, kicking and screaming, until he sees Huey laughing and realizes he isn’t that far off the ground.

When Dewey sets him down, Louie feels his chest go a little bit…strange. Dewey’s his brother. They live together, they see each other every day—

Why does he feel like he hasn’t seen Dewey in years?

“Jerk,” he says, then pulls Dewey in for a very strange, very tight hug.

“Awww,” Dewey grins, hugging back just as tight. “Thanks, baby brother. Now come on, we have—“ He tries pulling away. Louie can’t make himself let go. “We have—Louie, we have plans, let go!”

“No,” Louie mumbles, holding on tighter. “I—“

I missed you.

There’s no reason to miss Dewey. He hasn’t gone anywhere. He sees the way Huey eyes him, and he hates it, but something is wrong. Why don’t they feel it too?

“Aw, LouLou, are you scared?” Dewey says, gentler now. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay!” He rubs Louie’s back carefully, his hand under the hood so it feels less superficial.

Louie pulls back, scratching the back of his head. “…maybe,” he says. That isn’t it, but he doesn’t know what it is instead, so. “I dunno.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Dewey promises. “Just a standard adventure.”

A standard adventure. When was the last time they went on one of those? It has to have been—

—well, yesterday?—

Louie’s head hurts worse, but he just nods. “Okay. Sorry, I’ll try to—not be a downer, I guess.”

Huey steps around Dewey so he can touch Louie’s arm carefully. “It’ll be okay. I can hang out with you so nothing happens to you, if you want.”

He perks up a little, smiling. “Yes, please.”

“I’ll play bodyguard!” Dewey says brightly, throwing his arms around both of his brothers shoulders. “Nothing will happen to either of you while I’m here. I swear it.”

So. Louie tries to shake the feeling as they all trudge downstairs. He keeps rubbing his eyes, trying to get rid of the sleepiness, but he feels like he didn’t get any sleep at all. Uncle Scrooge looks how he always does, smiling widely in the front foyer. “It’s about time.”

“Louie was having trouble getting up,” Huey says, tightening the straps on his official Junior Woodchuck knapsack. “Sorry.”

“Sorry,” Louie echoes. “Didn’t sleep well.”

“Too excited?” Webby says, bounding inside. “Like me?”

“And me,” Huey says, holding his hand up. Webby high fives him, then starts her secret handshake with Dewey. Louie stares past her, to the outside, where the plane is sitting on the front of the lawn. The rest of his family starts chatting idly, talking about the quest, but Louie—he can see someone at the plane. He thinks he knows who it’s supposed to be. But they look…taller? Or are they supposed to be shorter? The person’s image seems to sort of swim in place, like he’s looking through turbulent water, the view completely unclear—

“Louie?”

“Who’s flying?” he asks, rubbing his eyes. “I think my eyes are wrong.”

Dewey laughs, throwing an arm around his shoulder again. “What, you don’t recognize Launchpad?”

The person snaps into clarity. Louie blinks several times. A trick of the light? Is he really just that tired? Launchpad waves; he waves back slowly. “Sorry. I think I’m more tired than I thought.”

“You can always sleep on the plane,” Uncle Scrooge says, ushering them all the way outside. “We’ll plan on you doing that. Who’s your adventure buddy?”

“We both are,” Huey says brightly. “Dewey’s body guarding, and I’m gonna keep him on a leash.”

The words don’t register until he hears the click of something attaching to the back of his hoodie. He spins and glares at his brother accusingly. “Are you kidding me? I don’t need to be on a leash!”

“Come on, Lou,” Huey teases, reaching into the nearest pocket on his bag. “I have Pep I’ll give you when we’re seated.”

Louie hesitates, debating, then sighs and follows Huey dejectedly. “…you win this round.”

“That leaves you with me, lass,” Scrooge tells Webby behind them. He hears Webby shriek in delight. It all feels very—mundane. Classic, even. None of this should be a surprise.

He can’t shake the image of that smaller person standing where Launchpad appeared. Who was that? Shouldn’t he know? Weren’t they—wasn’t that—

But his head hurts when he thinks about it too hard, so he ends up falling asleep on Huey’s shoulder before the plane even manages to take off.

When he wakes up, he feels a little less discombobulated. Huey is humming, reading some nerd book, kicking his feet lightly so they swing. Louie doesn’t remember anyone buckling him in, but he assumes it was probably Donald or Huey. He shifts a little, rubbing his eyes as he slides back in his seat.

“Ooh, you’re up!”

He glances to his left. Dewey is grinning at him, bouncing in his seat. Louie smiles.

“I am.”

Dewey smiles at him wider. “Hi.”

“Hey.” Louie looks around for a second, then back at Dewey. The smile hasn’t faded. “…you good?”

“Just excited,” Dewey says. “They won’t tell us where we’re going, but I bet it’s gonna be great.”

“I hope it has food,” Louie mumbles. “I’m starved.”

A granola bar appears in his view. He glances at Huey, who hasn’t looked up from his book. “I thought you’d say that.”

“Stop reading my mind,” he mumbles. “It’s creepy.” But he’s smiling. “Why am I the only one who’s so tired?”

“I dunno,” Dewey muses, tilting his head onto Louie’s shoulder. “Did you have a bad dream or something?”

“I don’t think I had any dreams,” Louie says. He takes a bite of the granola bar, makes a face, considers for a second, makes a different face, and rewraps the bar. “This tastes weird.”

“It’s a new flavor. It has blueberries in it.”

“I don’t like blueberries.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Since when?”

Louie sticks his tongue out at Huey. “Since always. They’re healthy, right, Uncle Donald?” He looks around the ship; Uncle Donald is up front, talking with Uncle Scrooge quietly. He doesn’t turn around. Louie sinks back in his chair. “He said they were healthy one time. I don’t like them.”

“You’re such a baby,” Huey says, but it isn’t unkind. At least, Louie doesn’t think it is. “Let me finish this chapter and I’ll see what else I have in my bag.”

“Nothing with blueberries.”

“Would you accept strawberries?”

Louie narrows his eyes, then shrugs. “Sure.”

“Wow,” Dewey says, laughing uncomfortably. “Tell us who your favorite brother is, am I right?” He holds his hand up for a high five.

Louie pauses, staring at Dewey. Something is…strange. There’s almost an Uncanny Valley quality to him—like Louie is looking at someone’s rendition of Dewey, or some kind of AI version of his brother. But he’s acting the same. Or…close to the same, or something.

The longer he stares, the more fear invades Dewey’s face. “…I was joking, but you’re not saying anything, so I’m getting—”

“I love you both,” Louie says immediately, shaking his head. Maybe it was a dream he couldn’t remember. Why else would everything feel so weird? “Sorry, I think I forgot I was alive for a minute.”

He glances over just in time to watch Huey’s head turn to him slowly in incredulousness. “You what?”

“You’ve never done that?” Louie demands. “Just—zone out and forget how to be in the moment and that people are perceiving you?”

“I do that,” Dewey says, falling back into his own seat. “I understand you, LouLou.”

“Thank you, Dewdrop.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the way Dewey’s face lights up at the childhood nickname. Louie smiles to himself in solidarity, messing with the seatbelt.

“I hope we’re there soon,” Dewey mumbles. He keeps looking around. “I’m gonna go bother Launchpad.” He unbuckles his seatbelt and slips out of the chair, darting to the front of the ship.

Louie watches him go curiously, then turns to look at Huey. “What’re you reading?”

Huey opens his mouth to respond, then closes it, frowning. “I…don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

He looks over at the book, but startlingly, he also can’t quite make out the words. If it were just him, he’d think it was because he was still tired; but Huey looks positively baffled, holding it closer to his face, then further away.

“What am I reading?”

“Is it your Guidebook?”

The cover goes from an ambiguous shifting grey color to a leathery brown in a blink. “I…yeah. I guess so.” Huey shrugs, settling back down in his seat. “I made some really good additions. It’s pretty compelling.”

“Huey.”

“What?”

“What book did you think you were reading?”

Huey glances over, eyebrow raised. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, since I fell asleep, what did you think you’d been reading this whole time?”

“I don’t know.” His older brother shrugs, putting the book down in his lap. “I guess I know it so well I was reading it without thinking about it.”

“That doesn’t strike you as strange?”

“Louie,” Huey says kindly. “I think your bad sleep is getting to you. Why don’t you get some more rest, and when we get home we’ll check if you’re sick or something?”

“This whole day has felt weird,” Louie protests, sitting up further. “Launchpad looked weird earlier, and now your book, and—”

“Get some rest,” Huey repeats, turning back to his Guidebook. Clear as day now, Louie can read the title, and he can see Huey’s handwriting in the margin of the pages. “We’ll wake you up when we’re there.”

“They always tell us where we’re going. Why not this time?”

“We’re going to find the Lost City.”

“Okay, so. What do we know about it?”

“That it’s lost.”

Louie stares at him for a few seconds, waiting for the rest of it. Huey doesn’t say anything else.

“That’s all?”

This time, he shuts the book with some annoyance. “Louie, go back to sleep. You can quiz Uncle Scrooge when you get back up.”

Louie frowns, annoyed, and undoes his seatbelt. “No. I’m getting to the bottom of this now.”

“Louie!”

Louie has to struggle for a second to unhook the child leash from the back of his hoodie. But when he does, Huey doesn’t get out of his seat to follow him, so Louie beelines for Uncle Scrooge, who’s standing behind the co-pilot’s seat. Donald is keeping his hands very decidedly away from the controls, but he’s staring out the window with some level of interest. They both turn as Louie approaches, and they both look at least pleasantly surprised.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” Uncle Scrooge says, a bit smug. Louie narrows his eyes at him.

“What can you tell me about the Lost City?”

“Ohoho, taking an interest in adventure now, hm? Well—”

“Never mind,” Louie grumbles, putting his hand up and approaching Donald instead. “Uncle Donald, something’s wrong.”

“Ugh,” Dewey says loudly. He’s on the far side of Launchpad, climbing on the side of the chair to stare out the window with him. He leans back and in doing so, twists Launchpad, who doesn’t let go of the controls; the plane veers strangely for a few moments until he gets it back under control. Nobody even bats an eye. “You said you weren’t going to be a downer this trip.”

“Something’s wrong!” Louie insists. Donald seems to be the only one taking him seriously, so he directs the rest of his words to him. “Huey’s book didn’t make any sense, and Launchpad didn’t look like Launchpad earlier, and I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something—”

Donald frowns, putting a hand on Louie’s shoulder. “I know you don’t like adventuring much—”

“It’s more than that,” Louie hisses. “I know what that is. I’d be doing anything else to make sure we didn’t go on whatever trip this is if it was just that. But something’s weird, I’m telling you—”

Dewey gasps loudly, and they all look out the window to see a beautiful island just ahead. “Oh, cool,” Launchpad says. “That looks like a nice place.”

“That’s our stop,” Uncle Scrooge announces. “Launchpad, take us down gently—”

The plane immediately nosedives, and Uncle Scrooge grabs Louie and books it to the back of the plane so he can strap them in with seatbelts. He holds on tightly to Dewey’s abandoned seatbelt as the plane dives through a few near-misses; Louie can’t stop staring at the front of the plane. Uncle Donald is looking back at him with concern. He doesn’t know if that means Donald believes him or not. It’d be great to find out.

The second they’re off the plane, it’s time to hike. Huey snaps the leash back into its clip on Louie’s hoodie proudly. Louie swallows every urge to groan. Everyone’s already annoyed with him, so there’s no reason to make it worse.

(Dewey is doing what he always does, brushing off all the discomfort, not listening to Louie’s concerns. Huey is starting to do the same thing, and it’s driving him crazy. Aren’t they all supposed to support each other or something? Isn’t that what brothers do?)

(Louie thinks he can taste metal. Anyway.)

He stares down at the ground as they pick their way through the forest. Uncle Scrooge is telling them about what used to be on this island—it sounds like a story Dewey would have told, honestly, so Louie just focuses on putting his feet on flat ground with every step. A few times, he nearly trips. Huey always stops to check on him when he does. Louie stops reassuring him he’s fine after the third time.

“You’re really in a bad mood,” Huey observes eventually. The rest of the group is several feet ahead of them. Dewey is talking loudly to Uncle Donald. Webby keeps chiming in with her own additions. It’s making his head hurt. “I really do think you’re sick.”

“Where was Webby on the plane?”

Huey sighs. “Probably up front.”

“I went up front, Huey. She wasn’t there.” Louie is grumbling. He knows Huey won’t believe him. “Never mind. I just want to go home.”

“Fine, next time you can just stay home with Mrs. Beakley.”

“That’d be great.”

Huey is silent for a few beats too long. “You’d really want that?”

“Yeah,” Louie says, finally looking up. “I would. You know I’m not really made to be the adventuring type.”

Huey frowns at him softly. “It’s in our blood.”

“Then I want a transfusion!” Louie says, a little louder than he means to. “I’m not made for this like you guys are!”

“Boys?” He looks up to see Uncle Scrooge staring back at them critically, waving impatiently with his cane. “Come on. We don’t want to lose you on this island.”

“Louie’s throwing a tantrum,” Huey says simply. And embarrassingly, Louie stomps his foot in protest.

“I am not!”

“Why don’t I take Louie back to the plane?” Donald says suddenly. “You all go ahead, we’ll make sure nothing happens to it in the meantime.”

“Yeah, that works!” Launchpad says brightly. “Hey, if you guys get a chance to fix any of it, that’d be great.”

“Sure,” Donald says. He unhooks Louie from the stupid child leash and puts a hand on his back. “We can try.”

Louie doesn’t look at anyone as he turns away from them, but he can feel Dewey glaring holes into his back. It makes him feel way worse, but he’s going to be a lot happier to be away from everyone.

The walk back to the plane is mostly quiet. Donald doesn’t say anything until they’re inside, though he does clear his throat a few times like he’s considering it before then.

“Louie,” he says, sort of gently—as gently as he can, anyway. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Louie says. There’s dirt on his feet. He stares at them for a while; when Donald takes a breath to ask another question, Louie finds himself throwing himself into Donald’s chest and holding on tightly for a hug. His eyes are starting to sting. For once, he lets them, and Uncle Donald holds on just as tight as Louie starts to cry.

He gets calmed down enough to fall asleep not too long later; when he wakes up again, the plane is back home, and everyone else is talking excitedly about some map they found and their next excursion to a clue for the Lost City (that Louie doesn’t actually believe exists). Uncle Donald is sitting next to Louie and doesn’t seem inclined to move until Louie slowly pushes up from his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he says, yawning. “I didn’t mean to…”

“Do you want some help upstairs?” Donald asks.

“I think I got it. Uh, thanks. Sorry for, y’know. Stealing you from the adventure.”

“It’s okay,” Donald says, rubbing Louie’s back carefully. “I probably would have made it worse anyway.”

Louie twists his fingers in his lap for a second, dropping his head back to Uncle Donald’s shoulder. “…you don’t believe me, do you?”

Donald makes a small noise. “Something is strange. But I don’t think it’s as sinister as you’re making it out to be.”

Louie looks up at him, affronted. “I never said it was sinister!”

“Change is a good thing, Louie,” Donald tries.

“Change isn’t the problem!” Louie protests. “Everything feels too—familiar.” He slumps back, away from his uncle, curling up into the seat. “Things are supposed to be different. I don’t know why they aren’t.”

“It’s just a part of getting older,” Uncle Donald says. “Let’s go get you some dinner, okay? Maybe you’ll feel better then.”

Louie doesn’t feel better after dinner, or during the movie everyone wants to watch, or when he and his brothers head upstairs to get some sleep. He drags his feet up the staircase that manages to both go on forever and feel like it’s shorter than it’s ever been; his feet feel like cement, but it’s not because he’s tired.

“Man,” Dewey says brightly, throwing the door open. “What a great day, am I right?”

Louie knows Huey is about to make a smart comment, so he tugs his hood over his head and collapses on his mattress so hopefully he doesn’t have to hear it. It doesn’t work.

“It would have been better if Louie wasn’t sick.”

“Louie,” Dewey says, hopping onto the mattress with him. “You have to stop being sick.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” Huey says uncertainly.

Louie tugs the pillow over his head, rolling so he’s beak down. Maybe Dewey will take the—nope, he’s still talking.

“Sure it is! Being sick is a case of mind over matter. He just needs to believe he’s feeling better and he will!”

“That’s the biggest pile of nonsense I’ve ever heard,” Huey replies. The frame of their bunks shakes as he starts climbing to his own bed up top. “Maybe tomorrow he really should stay home.”

Finally, Louie sits up, looking horrified. “We’re going out again tomorrow?”

“Of course we are,” Dewey says, laughing uncertainly. In the shadow of the bunk, it’s hard to tell, but Louie thinks his face is falling. “We’re adventurers. We go out and do stuff every day.”

“I don’t,” Louie says. “And we haven’t always, we used to stay home—“

“But staying home is boring!”

“Not to me!”

Dewey finally frowns. “Quit being such a party pooper.”

“Leave me alone,” Louie mumbles, hiding his face again. “And I’m staying home tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Dewey spits, crawling off the mattress and slinging himself up into his own bed. “Be a loser, see if I care.”

“Obviously you care. I don’t. Goodnight.”

“I don’t care,” Dewey protests.

“Can someone get the lights?” Huey asks.

“You so care,” Louie presses, finally removing the pillow from his face so he can lean out of his bunk and glare up at Dewey’s. “It’s annoying how much you care.”

“I do not care!” Dewey insists, leaning over. There’s a vein throbbing in his forehead. It’s gross to look at. “If you want to be a loser, that’s all on you!”

“I’m not a loser for not wanting to adventure! I’m a normal kid!”

“The lights?” Huey tries again.

“Any normal kid would kill to be us and get to adventure every day,” Dewey hisses.

“What happened to Funzo’s?” Louie demands. “What happened to getting to hang out at the Money Bin with Uncle Scrooge, or hanging out with Uncle Donald? Adventuring every day makes it less exciting!”

“We are a family of adventurers! It’s what we’re made to do!”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Louie shifts, crawling to his knees so he can hold onto Dewey’s railing. The frame of the beds shakes awkwardly. “Even Uncle Scrooge didn’t adventure every day before we came along!”

“He didn’t adventure at all! We’re helping him. He’s gonna stay young forever!” Dewey’s face is a little too close, and his face is only getting redder. Louie’s sure his own face matches—they are identical, after all. And if Dewey is as mad about this as Louie is—

Huey starts slowly climbing down the ladder, tactfully avoiding both of their eyes. “I’ll get the lights myself, then.”

“Nobody can stay young forever, Dewey,” Louie says sharply. “We all have to grow up sometime. It isn’t our problem if you’re the only one who refuses to.”

Louie is close enough that he watches something crack in Dewey’s anger. He can’t tell what it is, only that it’s painful and it strikes something deep; Dewey sniffs suddenly, then throws himself away so his back is to Louie and doesn’t look back.

“I hope you really do get sick,” Dewey grumbles. “I hope you’re bedridden forever. I don’t want you to adventure with us ever again.”

The room is plunged into darkness. Louie’s grip slackens on the safety rail as he slowly lowers himself down to his own bunk again.

“Sorry,” Huey says, still over by the light switch. “Um, does one of you have a flashlight?”

Nobody responds for a moment. But after a second, Louie reaches under his mattress and pulls out a storm flashlight. It’s a leftover from living with Uncle Donald; it’s probably silly to have, but Louie’s not going to risk it. Sometimes the safe option is better. “Lemme charge it.”

“Okay.” Huey’s voice is closer now, as if he’s standing by the bed waiting to be able to see. They’re both quiet as Louie cranks the handle a few times, then clicks the button. “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Louie says, his voice dull as he watches his brother climb. “No problem.”

Huey pauses about halfway up, frowning down at Louie. He looks as though he wants to say something—but Dewey shifts on his bunk, so Huey frowns and finishes climbing up.

“Okay. Thanks.”

Louie clicks the light off and doesn’t respond.

The next morning, he feels…bad. Sort of sick, but not ill. It takes him a minute to figure out why.

Actually, it takes him until he recognizes Dewey humming on the far side of the room.

Louie hides under his blanket further.

Nobody bothers him, which is almost nice. Mrs. Beakley offers him lunch, eventually, after everyone has left for the day. They’re following some map that wasn’t the map from yesterday, but could be related, like an extension, or—truthfully, Louie doesn’t pay close enough attention to Mrs. Beakley’s explanation to follow it. He pushes the pasta around on his plate for a while, fakes a few bites, and eventually excuses himself to go wash his dish up for her since she isn’t done eating. Then he settles in the parlor for some entertainment until dinner, where the whole thing repeats itself. Everyone comes home later that night buzzing with some sort-of discovery about a new missing piece of mystery, and nobody asks Louie why he doesn’t join them for dinner, and nobody bothers Louie when they all eventually head to bed.

He sleeps in the parlor that night. The next morning, Louie wakes up to find a blanket draped over him and Huey and Dewey asleep on the far side of the couch.

So. Louie has a choice to make, and he debates it for a long time in the early light of the morning coming through the window. He can fake sleep, ignore them when they get up; he could leave, go up to his bed, leave them down here; or, a secret third option.

So he rolls over, lays across both of their laps, and goes back to sleep.

They wake him up for breakfast, and to Louie’s credit, he tries to care about this mysterious next piece of Lost City mystery. It’s…kind of vague, and he doesn’t understand the point, but everyone else is excited, so he tries to stop being such a downer. Huey brings granola bars with strawberries in them. Dewey doesn’t abandon them on the path. Louie doesn’t complain about the mud. Webby finds something interesting; Scrooge tells them to be careful; Dewey gets involved, which means Louie has to run for his life again. They head home for a nice home-cooked meal, and all is well. The boys go to sleep in their own bunks, and nobody fights.

The next day is almost the same.

And the next.

And the next.

They all sort of start running together. Louie feels a bit like he’s running on fumes, but nobody else seems to get tired of it, so a few times he tells them he’s not feeling well enough to go out to see if that will dissuade them from leaving. The only one who ever bites is Uncle Donald, which is…something, at least. He gets a relaxing day with his uncle.

(Those days come with perils of their own, but at least Mrs. Beakley is there to help them when things get dire enough. Louie ignores how hurt Dewey is at the end of those days, even though it’s pointed and painful for both of them. Huey decidedly stays out of it—at least, he doesn’t bother Louie for an explanation, and if he bothers Dewey for one Louie never hears about it.)

(Louie sometimes sees them in reflections of the plane or lakes or glass, and he’s hit with a kind of nostalgia he doesn’t recognize. How can he miss something he’s living? Why does this all feel like a façade, or a show? Why does it all feel so fake? Why does his smile feel painted on sometimes; why does the adventure feel like cardboard; why does Dewey, and everyone else, seem to be completely oblivious? Louie wonders if he’s broken some days, then if he’s lost his mind, then finds it easier to not wonder and let the universe take its course.)

(Louie keeps tasting metal. He never tells anyone.)

He wakes up one morning from a horrifying dream that he can’t remember, and the first word out of his mouth is “Hue!”

Huey’s across the room, going through his backpack again. Dewey is sitting at the desk with him. They both turn, concern etched in their faces (and pain on Dewey’s). “Louie?”

“What’s wrong?”

He can’t breathe. He doesn’t remember how, he doesn’t think. Or maybe it’s because he isn’t thinking. Anyway, something’s wrong, and Louie clutches his chest as he tries to get it under control. Both of his brothers are on the bed with him in an instant, grabbing his hands and rubbing his back the way Uncle Donald taught them.

“One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, one, two, three…” Huey’s steady counting helps eventually. It only takes a few minutes before he’s curled into Dewey’s lap, holding onto Huey’s hand tightly as his breathing finally settles.

“Wow, LouLou,” Dewey says. His voice has a strange sort of guilt to it. “I haven’t seen you that bad in…”

But he doesn’t finish the sentence. Louie sits up, rubbing at his eyes slowly so he doesn’t have to make eye contact.

“Sorry,” he says finally. “Bad dream. I don’t…”

“…remember?” Huey guesses.

“Yeah.”

“That’s okay.”

“Do you want some water?” Dewey asks, but Huey’s already gotten a bottle from somewhere and is unscrewing the cap. He pauses, staring at Dewey guiltily. “…never mind. Huey’s got it.”

Louie takes the bottle carefully. “…thanks.”

“You wanna stay home today?”

Louie takes a small sip, then fidgets with the label. “…no?”

“No?” Dewey repeats. “But—why not?”

“I don’t feel like being alone,” Louie confesses. He feels like a kid when he says it; he still won’t meet either of their eyes, too afraid to see them gearing up to call him a baby for it, or worse.

But they don’t.

“Well, that’s okay,” Huey says, shifting on the bed. “I can stay back with you today. I need to update my journal anyway, I’m days behind.”

“Oh,” Dewey says, sounding disappointed. “Well—I don’t want to go if you two aren’t—”

“You can,” Louie says quietly.

“Huh?”

“You can go, Dewey, we won’t judge you for it,” Huey agrees. “You love it. Sometimes we just need a day or two to rest. It doesn’t relax us like it relaxes you.”

“…are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

It does take a bit more convincing, but Dewey eventually agrees to go. Louie doesn’t ask—he doesn’t even consider it until Dewey’s gone at least, and breakfast is eaten and they’re on the couch in the parlor watching reruns of that old show Launchpad always talks about. Louie can’t make sense of the plot. He’s not sure there is one. Or that they’re even speaking the same language he does.

“Hey, Lou?”

“Hm?” He turns the volume down, glad to have his attention diverted. “Yes, Hubert?”

Huey cracks a small smile, then frowns again. “I’ve been thinking. About what you keep saying.”

“…about…?”

“How weird things have felt lately.” Huey shifts, tilting his journal more towards Louie so he can look. “I was trying to figure out how long it is until our birthday, but—look.”

Louie feels like he might be having a stroke when he tries to read the pages in front of him. The months go on and on, page after page, and he doesn’t know how many of them he actually recognizes. They sound right enough, but—how far away is Septober from April? November from Augtobery? He tries counting them, singing the months song in his head, but it’s lost its tune entirely. And Jerch? When is Jerch? What is Jerch?

“What is this?”

“I don’t remember how many months there are,” Huey says, like he’s ashamed. “But this feels like way too many. And I don’t have our birthday marked. I always have our birthday marked. I have special pens for it so I can think about what to get you guys as gifts.”

Louie looks up, momentarily charmed. “You sap.”

“I love my brothers,” Huey says, then points at the book again. “You’re right. Something is weird. I tried asking Dewey about it the other day, or like, last week—and he just started singing the calendar song but all of these were somehow included.”

Louie tries humming it again, but it gets lost about four months in and he looks at Huey helplessly. Huey just shrugs.

“Something’s weird,” Louie agrees. “Uncle Donald said I didn’t need to be afraid of change, but—”

“Nothing’s changing,” Huey agrees, leaning back against the couch. “Except somehow we’re supposed to go from August to Augtobery.”

“What month even is that?”

“Beats me.”

Louie sits up. “We could always ask Mrs. Beakley.”

“I did.”

He frowns. “When?”

“Last night, after dinner.” Huey shuts his journal. “And she said everything seemed alright to her.”

“I wish there was someone else we could ask,” Louie says, slumping next to Huey. “I wish Mom—”

The words die in his throat, and he can barely remember what he said after a second, but he looks over at Huey with panic. Huey is staring back at him with the same deeply-rooted concern.

“You wish…what?”

“Where’s Mom?” Louie asks. “We—don’t we know?”

“I…” Huey stares at the TV for a few seconds, frowning. “I…”

“Huey,” Louie says eventually. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”

The bad feeling lasts through the rest of the day, and through dinner once everyone is home. Dewey is thrilled to be able to share their exploits of the day with full reenactments, aided by Webby; he does not seem impressed when Louie yawns the first time, or the fourth, or the ninth, or the twenty-seventh, or any of the times in between either for that matter.

“Am I boring you, baby brother?”

Louie blinks one eye at a time intentionally, just to make Dewey mad. It works. He’s practically got steam coming out of his ears. “Where’s Uncle Donald?”

“Uncle Donald wouldn’t be able to tell you about the awesome kick-flips Dewey did in the chamber!” Webby says, throwing her hands up.

“I don’t care about the kick flips,” Louie says, bored. He pushes up from the couch, shuffling to the door. “I’m gonna go find Uncle D.”

“Loser!”

“So I’ve heard!”

“Louie,” Dewey says, and his voice dips into something more serious for a second. “Get back here! I wasn’t done!”

He pauses at the door, his hand on the doorframe. The world is just barely out of focus, and if he doesn’t focus hard enough he feels a bit like he can almost see—

Well. Whatever it is, it vanishes, so Louie sighs and turns back around. “You can’t show me in the morning?”

Dewey is glaring at him. Hard. Even Huey is giving Louie a look of warning, shaking his head softly.

“Dewey,” Louie says quietly. “I love you. I really, really do. But I’m not in the mood to hear about you being a big hero for the umpteenth time in a row. Just tell me tomorrow, okay?”

“Why do you always insist on ruining everything?” Dewey demands, grabbing his satchel. “Just forget it.”

Louie doesn’t feel anything as Dewey storms past him, running upstairs. Webby gives him a disappointed frown as she follows him, and then it’s Huey and Louie again, and neither of them speak for a while as they hear the sound of Webby’s bedroom door slamming closed.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Huey says nervously.

“What’s Jerch?” Louie reminds him, then turns and trudges off in the direction of their room.

The thing is, Louie does feel bad, so he gives it a few days of hiding and not adventuring before he forces himself out of bed when he hears Huey climbing down. His older brother pauses on the ladder, staring at him with concern. Louie just shrugs.

“I’m gonna try today.”

“Really?”

“Hey, nothing cooler than a secret spy island,” Louie tries, swinging his arm in a sort of gung-ho motion. It doesn’t have much energy to it, but it makes Huey smile. He reaches into the middle bunk and shakes their brother.

“Dewey, wake up!”

“What?” Dewey mumbles, pulling the pillow over his head.

“Louie’s excited to come with us today!”

There’s silence for a second, then Dewey throws himself over the edge of the bed to stare down at Louie with big, shining, sparkling eyes. “You are?”

“Isn’t there some kind of secret facility or something?” Louie says, leaning back against the ladder to look up at them. “I bet they have a safe somewhere of leftover gold. Might as well see if I can jumpstart the whole getting rich quick thing since Uncle Scrooge is too stingy.”

There’s a rap at the door—like someone hitting the doorframe with a piece of wood. They all turn to see Scrooge smirking at them with one raised eyebrow.

“Well, bless me bagpipes,” he teases. “We’ve managed to get you excited for today, hm?”

“Unless you feel like turning over your fortune to me a few years early?” Louie grins, holding out his hand jokingly.

“You mean a few centuries,” Dewey laughs, nearly falling over the edge. “Oh, man, LouLou, you really mean it?”

“I guess I just needed the right motivation,” he shrugs. “Are you gonna get started on your hair or what?”

“No time!” Scrooge declares. “We’ve got a long flight ahead of us. You can fix your little quiff on the flight, bairn. To adventure!”

Louie does his best to pay attention to the general rundown. Something something, there was a secret spy rocket or something or other on the island, and they’d been doing research on the Lost City until they got shut down, or had to forcibly evacuate, or something. Anyway, their computers should still have all the information they need, including the last known location of the Lost City.

(There seem to be several problems with this at the core of their assumptions, but Louie keeps his mouth shut about those. Nobody wants to hear about them.)

(Launchpad stays at the plane in case they need to make a quick getaway. For once, Louie doesn’t beg to stay with him instead.)

The island itself isn’t that big from above. Even standing on the beach Louie feels like he can see straight to the other side, which is…strange. Where are all the secret facilities?

“Where is everything?” Webby asks, echoing Louie’s own thoughts—and everyone else’s. “I thought this was supposed to be the center of all the research. Where’d it go?”

Louie yawns a little and leans on a nearby tree, then yelps as it depresses under him and starts to shake the ground. “Whoa, whoa whoa whoa—”

“A secret entrance!” Dewey breathes, jumping up and down. Scrooge even seems proud of him for it. “Oh, Louie, you did it!”

“Sorry!” Louie yelps, watching as the ground underneath him gives way to a staircase that clunks open as if it hasn’t been used in years.

“Don’t apologize for being the greatest,” Dewey grins, yanking Louie up out of the hole and giving him a back-popping hug. “I knew today was going to be great!”

“It’s in our blood,” Huey reminds him, patting his brothers’ heads.

“Let go of me,” Louie says, trying to wiggle away from the noogie Dewey is giving him, but he’s smiling. “It was an accident!”

“An accident on purpose!”

“That’s not how accidents work!”

They fight until the ground stops shaking, then everyone starts slowly climbing down, following Uncle Scrooge. Louie is sandwiched right between his brothers, holding onto the back of Dewey’s shirt and making sure he doesn’t test the limit of the child leash from Huey (that unfortunately, he’s sort of come to be fond of in moments like this). Dewey is staring at every wall and crevice, reading all the safety instructions, whispering things to Webby; behind him, Huey is documenting everything he can in his journal, spouting off weird nerd facts whenever they become relevant. Louie is just happy to be included for once, because he’s got a growing feeling of trepidation that he doesn’t think would be appreciated. As much as he was excited at the beginning of this, there’s a lot of safety instructions regarding rockets on the walls, and Louie doesn’t feel like being burnt to a crisp or being sent to the moon.

Sent to the moon. He stares back at Huey for a few seconds, trying to remember why that seems like a painful choice of words, but Dewey starts pulling him forward before he can catch Huey’s eye.

They eventually arrive in a massive underground facility. Everything is rusted and overgrown; Louie holds tighter to his brothers, up until Webby runs off with Scrooge and Dewey tries to follow her. Louie tugs the back of Dewey’s shirt until it yanks out of his hand and nearly trips Dewey. Dewey turns around to glare at him.

“What?”

“Don’t run off,” Louie says immediately, reaching again, but Dewey is just out of reach.

“Oh, come on,” Dewey laughs. “It’s an abandoned underground spy facility, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Death!” Louie insists. “Do you hear yourself? Death could happen! Don’t run off!”

Dewey’s face crumples into something more serious and annoyed. “Louie—”

“I’m with Louie,” Huey says, staring up at the skylight above them. Or—it might be a skylight, but it’s hard to tell. Either way, it’s magnifying the sun and everything seems to only be getting hotter. “This could be really dangerous. It’s better to stick together—where did everyone else go?”

“To go find the fun stuff, probably,” Dewey complains. He’s still standing just a little too far out of Louie’s reach. “And I’m stuck here with you. What happened to you being excited about this one?”

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt! Is that a crime now?” Louie demands.

“Quit being such a baby!”

Louie flinches. “I’m not—”

“You are! We always have to do everything in your safety parameters,” Dewey complains. “What happened to risks? Adventuring? Why are we having to play everything safe just because you want to?”

“I don’t want to adventure at all,” Louie says sharply. “But I let you go off and do that, and I sit around and hope I still have brothers at the end of the day.”

“Nothing is going to happen to us!”

“Until it does!”

“Guys?” Huey says. He’s still staring up at the skylight. “We should probably move.”

“Why?” Dewey demands. “Is the sun dangerous now?”

“I don’t think that’s a sun,” Huey says as a loud roaring begins to pick up around them. “I think it’s a rocket.”

“Oh, cool!”

“Someone started the rocket,” Huey clarifies. “We need to move.”

The wind begins to pick up. Louie isn’t braced well enough; he’s immediately pushed far enough away that the child leash snaps, nearly taking Huey down with him. “We need to get into—”

“There!” Dewey points where Webby and Scrooge had gone, down a set of parallel tunnels on the far side of the room. “See, if you’d just listened to me—”

“We don’t have time for this,” Louie hisses, pushing to his feet. “Which tunnel?”

“I don’t know—”

Another gust of wind topples all three of them into a pile, and Louie grabs his brother’s hands tightly. Huey’s grip is deathly as soon as he’s in reach. “Go, go, go—”

“Hey!” Dewey—well it’s silly to think he’s trying to get away from them, so Louie doesn’t even entertain the idea. He’s sure Dewey is just trying to help them get there faster. Huey beelines for the closest tunnel, and Louie is ready to follow him until—

Dewey goes down the other tunnel.

“Dewey!”

Louie slams into the wall between the two, face against the concrete, and he can feel his beak starting to bleed a little with the collision.

“We need to get to the switch!” Dewey yells. Louie can barely hear him. “At the back of the hallway, in the room! I don’t know which one it’s in, but I think it’s this one—”

The wind is blowing faster now. Louie, trapped in the middle, is holding onto both of his brother’s hands as tight as possible, but he just isn’t that strong—why isn’t he stronger? Huey is holding on for dear life, screaming at the top of his lungs, not that the sound makes it over the rushing wind. Louie tries bracing himself—

Dewey’s grip slackens.

He panics, looking over—what if Dewey is hurt? Did he get hit in the head with something? Is he even still there? But he is, and—bafflingly—he’s trying to force Louie’s grip off his wrist.

“Dew!” he shouts. “What are you—”

“Let go!”

“I’m not letting you go!” It’s not even a question. He tightens his grip as much as he can, and he doesn’t let go, not even when Dewey’s face sours. “I can—I can hold on to both of you—”

“I’m trained for this! You have to let go!”

“Trained?” Louie demands. “What do you mean, trained?”

There are a few things Louie knows without question. That if he loses grip of either of them, if one of them gets lost, they’ll stop at nothing to get each other back. But he also knows the guilt would weigh heavy on all of them (or at least on him). He has nightmares about it, sometimes—Huey getting kidnapped and Louie’s hand being just out of reach. Dewey going one way out an airplane and Louie another. Watching one of his brothers disappear into a whirlpool. A sliding stone door that falls from the ceiling. Quicksand. A pipe he can’t follow into; a machine designed to separate them; Louie, being left alone, knowing it’s all his fault. He doesn’t let go. He can’t.

Maybe Dewey got hit in the head by—well, he didn’t see any debris flying past, but maybe he just missed it. He musters up some strength and tugs Dewey. His brother moves closer by a few inches, but it seems to annoy Dewey more than anything else. The wind is close to deafening now, and Louie is trapped, feeling the wall he’s pressed against start to take his breath away since he has nowhere to go. Blood is flying past his face.

“Come on!”

Dewey rolls his eyes and—in a maneuver that seems a little too elegant for him—wheels up, finding a way to wedge himself on the wall next to Louie so he’s not going down the other hallway anymore. The change in weight makes Huey slip farther down his own hallway. His screams get louder. Louie thinks he’s screaming their names.

“You have to let go,” Dewey says, sounding somehow annoyed even over all the noise. “The off button is down that hallway, and we’ll never get Huey up here—”

“We can probably get to it from the other side!”

Dewey finally yanks his hand out of Louie’s grip. Louie panics harder, gripping onto Dewey’s arm this time, but it’s not very strong anymore.

“Let go of me!”

“I’m not leaving you!” Louie shouts. “I promise!”

“You have to trust me!”

Somewhere in the back of Louie’s mind, he can see the Dewey he thinks he knows saying the same words earnestly. A question of trust between brothers, of knowing if they get separated, they’ll find each other again. And if that’s how Dewey had said it, Louie might have been willing to let go.

But Dewey seems…angry. As if Louie is somehow impeding him in some mission he’s on. As if Dewey is trying to play the hero and not share the glory.

As if Dewey has already left and is angry that he’s back.

He’s not sure if it’s the lack of oxygen or the surely broken ribs he feels like he’s sporting, but he thinks he has flashes of—a talent show, from the audience, or Dewey at prom while Louie stares out the window waiting for him to get home. A million ways Dewey has left, or is leaving, or will leave. Something hurts his head. He doesn’t think it’s debris.

“You’re gonna get us all killed!” Dewey insists.

“I’m not leaving you,” Louie repeats, but he knows the sound of his voice doesn’t make it over the noise.

Dewey rolls his eyes again, then fully kicks Louie in the chest. He goes flying out into the middle of the passageway and the wind takes him off; he can only barely make out Dewey doing a backflip down the opposite hallway, off to go find—what was it? A mechanism to turn the rocket off? Something. Something he didn’t think they could find any other way, and he’d rather abandon his brothers to—

The thought gets cut off as he slams into the furthest wall at the end of the corridor, all the wind getting knocked out of him. Huey collides into his chest, but it doesn’t matter, because he couldn’t breathe anyway. Then the wall gives way behind him and he goes flying across a laboratory floor and hears the slamming of a door in the now deafening silence.

Louie can’t breathe. He tries, but he’s seeing stars, and he can’t get enough air in his lungs to even start crying.

“Louie!”

“Rebel!”

People are touching his face. It’s all too hot and too cold—the heat from the rocket, the cold of the room, the chill of the wind, the warmth of his family’s hands. Voices are echoing strangely, as if time itself has forgotten who’s there. He isn’t sure he knows either.

“Lou?”

He knows that voice. “Huey?”

“Louie!”

He’s tugged upwards into a hug that makes him cry out, but he doesn’t let go, even when Huey tries to pull away.

“Are you hurt?”

He can barely nod. His beak aches, and he feels like his ribs might be broken, and Dewey left them. Dewey left—and what if he’s hurt, or worse, and—

A door flies open on the far wall. “Is the button in here?” Dewey asks, running to the control panel and starting to hit things. “I don’t know how to turn it off!”

Louie doesn’t look up, but he hears a very decisive click of Scrooge’s cane hitting a button. The wind in the tunnel dies, along with the sound of the rocket.

“…oh.”

“Why did your brothers come through that door before you did?” Scrooge asks. “Where did you go?”

“I thought it was—in the other room!”

“They connect,” Huey says. His voice rumbles in his chest. It hurts Louie’s beak, but he doesn’t move; he simply buries his face further. “Dewey, they connect.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“Louie?” That’s Webby, her voice quiet and close. A soft hand, presumably hers, touches Louie’s shoulder. “Can I see how bad it is?”

He takes in a breath that burns, simply shifting so Huey doesn’t let him go. He’s glad Huey’s shirt is red. The blood blends in nicely. Louie shuts his eyes so he doesn’t have to see it. Webby sucks in some air between her teeth, then sits carefully and tugs out her first aid kit.

“This might hurt a little. I’m sorry.”

“Louie’s fine,” Dewey says from behind them. It’s as much reassurance as it is a plead. “Right? Someone tell me he’s fine.”

“No thanks to you!”

“Uncle Scrooge,” Huey says, but his voice dies. Louie hasn’t opened his eyes again.

“Lad, what you did was dangerous, and for that matter, selfish too!”

“I wasn’t trying to—”

“It doesn’t matter what you were or weren’t trying to do, the fact of the matter is you abandoned your brothers when they were hurt!”

“Louie wasn’t listening to me—”

“And look at him now!”

Louie flinches as Webby applies some kind of cream to the open wound on his beak. His breathing is ragged and loud in the silence of the room. Huey shifts to hold him tighter.

“I hate adventuring,” Louie mumbles. It still manages to echo. “I wanna go home.”

“I didn’t mean for him to get hurt,” Dewey whispers.

A shadow passes over Louie as someone approaches, then crouches in front of him. “Louie,” Uncle Scrooge says quietly. “Will it hurt too badly if I pick you up?”

Louie barely opens his eyes to look, but he does. “What about Huey?” he whispers.

Uncle Scrooge makes a face. “…what about him, lad?”

“He’s hurt too,” Louie mumbles. “I can walk, I don’t want Huey to—”

“Louie, you’re covered in blood,” Huey says quietly.

“So are you!”

“Yeah. Yours. I can walk. I’ll be fine.”

“You nearly died,” Uncle Scrooge insists.

“Huey would have, if I’d let him go,” Louie says. His voice is starting to shake, and he thinks he might be crying. “I tried really hard not to, but he still got—carry him, I’ll be okay, I can walk—”

“Alright,” Scrooge says, standing. “I’m not going to argue with you. Huey doesn’t want to be carried, neither do you. But if it starts hurting while we’re walking back, I’ll carry the first one of you to say something. Is that fair?”

Louie rubs at his beak, ignoring how it stings. “…yeah, I guess…”

“Up and at-em, boys.” He offers a hand. Huey takes it first, then helps Louie to his feet. The world spins in dazzling colors and stars for a moment. “Louie?”

“I might…” Louie whispers, then nearly falls onto his face. He doesn’t protest when he feels Uncle Scrooge pick him up, nor when he feels Huey place his hat delicately over his face.

“Guys?” Dewey’s voice echoes strangely like they’re leaving him behind. “What about the Lost City? The maps? The information?”

“Louie’s hurt,” Webby says simply. “We can come back later, if it’s that important.”

Louie doesn’t hear his brother say anything else. He hears Launchpad fuss over him like he’s underwater when they’re back at the plane; the ride home is silent, except for Huey occasionally checking on Louie to make sure he’s alright. It’s barely even two in the afternoon when they arrive back at McDuck Manor, and Louie isn’t awake long enough to hear Uncle Donald fuss over him. Once he knows he’s home safe, his body gives out, letting him finally rest.

They don’t adventure for the next two weeks—maybe longer, but Louie is in and out of consciousness the first week and doesn’t know how to keep track of time. They don’t take him inside the Manor, though. He sits firmly in his old bed on Uncle Donald’s houseboat. Most days, Huey comes to visit him and sit with him in silence and solidarity; some days, Louie’s feeling awake enough to even play some video games. Uncle Donald makes him food every day, and the meals he doesn’t cook are because Mrs. Beakley has brought down a package instead.

Dewey doesn’t come to visit him. Louie stops asking after the third day.

The problem is, as much as everyone’s mad at Dewey and claims it’s all his fault, Louie still wants to see him. They’re brothers. Louie doesn’t blame Dewey (though he knows other people do, and other people expect him to).

(Huey does.)

(Louie tastes metal.)

One day, Huey is writing in his journal. He keeps glancing up at Louie with a frown, then looking away when he notices Louie noticing.

“You’re being weird,” Louie says eventually.

“Sorry,” Huey says. “You’re gonna have a scar.”

Louie’s mouth twitches into a little smile. “You think so?”

“I know so. I can see it.” Huey reaches forward with the end of his pen and taps the edge of Louie’s beak. “Right there. You look pretty cool with it.”

“Huh,” Louie says, staring up at the ceiling. “Think Dew’s gonna be jealous?”

Huey goes quiet. He usually does now, when Louie brings their brother up. But for once he doesn’t stay quiet for long.

“He is. Jealous, I mean.”

“Really? Cause I got the near death experience and he didn’t?”

“Louie, it isn’t funny.” Huey puts the pen down to stare at him seriously. “He put you in a lot of danger.”

“He asked me to trust him and I didn’t,” Louie says, waving nonchalantly.

“You were hurt before he asked you that.”

Louie looks over. Huey is frowning deeply, fidgeting with the pen so much that Louie thinks it’s going to break.

“I—“ Louie doesn’t have a good response. He stares back up at the ceiling. “I’m fine now. It all worked out.”

“…if you say so,” Huey says, looking back down. And then, without looking, he punches Louie in the ribs, sending him into a coughing fit. “Oh no.” His voice is monotone that time.

“Rude,” Louie mumbles, curling around himself towards Huey. “That hurt.”

“But it all worked out,” Huey mocks under his breath.

“Stop being mean to me when I’m injured.”

“Just admit Dewey got you hurt.”

“I’m not going to do that,” Louie says irritably. “There’s no point.”

“There might be a point—”

“There isn’t.”

“Louie,” Huey says, suddenly more serious. “Have you considered why things feel strange lately?”

Louie stares at his brother for a moment. “What does that have to do with Dewey?”

Huey shuts his journal carefully, staring like he’s having trouble finding the words. “…Dewey likes this life. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“If it’s, you know—if there’s a world-altering option out there, maybe he would have taken it. Right? Just to keep this going forever?”

Louie frowns a little, but shrinks in his spot as he thinks about it. “What’s Jerch,” he mumbles to himself, then, “That’s kind of a wild accusation.”

“I’d apologize,” Huey says. “But I don’t think I can. I think I’m right.”

“You always think you’re right.”

“But this time—”

“Huey,” Louie says quietly. “I get it. I do. You might be right. But what could we even do if that’s what happened? If this didn’t change his mind, what will? Maybe we just learn to live like this.”

“What if you get hurt worse next time?”

Louie shrugs. “What if?”

“You’re not listening—”

“I’m listening,” Louie insists. “And I understand you perfectly, Huey. But if this is his reality or whatever, I’m not going to ever get completely put out of commission. I mean, look at me now.”

“I don’t think this is a bubble,” Huey says. “I think—”

But the door opens, and Uncle Donald waddles in with a tray of food, smiling brightly. “Who’s hungry, boys?”

“Starved,” Louie says, shutting his eyes.

Louie is released into the greater world a few days later. Huey is giving him the cold shoulder; everyone else is treating him like he’s still fragile, as if he’ll fall apart simply walking through a doorway. He wonders if they have a point, then decides that’s stupid, then wonders if that’s somehow rude, then gives up entirely and stops asking questions to nobody.

It takes him a while to track Dewey down. His brother is hiding from him, all too successfully. But Louie knows his brother, and he knows when Webby is lying, so it only takes one or two conversations before he’s confirmed where Dewey is hiding.

Webby’s room is locked. Nothing he can’t handle; he doesn’t remember learning to lockpick, but it comes (a little too) easily. Still, he doesn’t ask questions. He just pushes the door open.

Dewey is sitting on the floor, surrounded by paper. He’s staring mournfully at the chalkboard on the wall. Clearly something had been written on it at some point in great detail, but it’s been smeared and wiped away now. And that’s what Dewey is staring at—the smear of the chalk, the missing and bungled words, the crushed hopes and dreams of—

“The Lost City?” Louie guesses, leaning against the doorframe. Dewey doesn’t look at him.

“Yeah. So what? You didn’t wanna find it anyway.”

“I liked getting to hang out with my brothers when you were home.”

“You hated this from the beginning.”

“Stop putting words in my mouth.”

“You aren’t denying it.”

“You wouldn’t believe me anyway.” They go quiet, both staring at the board, the smeared letters, the way the chalk dust seems to somehow still linger. “That your doing?”

“And Webby’s!” Dewey protests, then sighs. “…I used her as an eraser.”

“Dude.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. I apologized.”

“To her.”

“Who else?”

Louie doesn’t respond. He stares at the board for a minute, then looks back at his brother. Dewey still isn’t looking at him. He doesn’t know how to broach the subject; he’s not even sure what subject he wants to broach, so he just stares in silence, finding it a little funny when their breaths sync up. It always happens like that, doesn’t it? When they aren’t even trying—no matter how long it’s been—

Time feels…weird at the moment. Realistically, Louie knows it’s only been—what, about a month? But somehow it feels like it’s been only a few days, or even longer—like years.

Their breaths stop syncing, because Louie forgets to breathe at all. When he notices, it’s with a big breath in, and that seems to break the magic over both of them. Dewey finally looks at him, frowning, curling around his knees as he pouts.

“What?” Louie asks.

“You got a scar from it,” Dewey mumbles. Then he turns away. “…I’m sorry.”

“For what?” The words come out as an accusation. Louie doesn’t bother to correct it.

“I asked you to trust me,” Dewey says. “But I didn’t trust you. You’d been so worried the whole time, and the least I could have done was—I should have listened to you. Or at least made it feel less…” He searches for the word for a few seconds, then shakes his head. “…I wasn’t a very good brother, much less a good protector. So I’m sorry.”

There are ways to end this sooner. Accept the apology. Promise to do better. Let things fall into place. Louie thinks about those, then he thinks about how Huey had punched him in the ribs the other day and how it had felt like a metaphor. He doesn’t like the hard option. He wants things to go back to being easy. Wouldn’t that make things better? Louie wouldn’t have to feel guilty. Dewey could stop being a ghost in their own house. Huey would come around, eventually, probably.

Louie sighs silently. “I don’t think you’re a bad brother.”

“You should.”

“Can you stop playing the whole ‘poor me’ bit, Dewey?” Louie says, sharper than he means to. Dewey flinches. “The whole thing was really messed up. You should have trusted me, and I should have trusted you, but that doesn’t make you a bad brother. We make mistakes. The important part is owning up to them and being honest, and then we can forgive and move on. I’m not mad at you anymore. I’m glad you’re okay. I’m sorry I messed up the search for the—” He gestures at the board. “—you know. Lost City or whatever. I’m sorry I wasn’t a good sport. I had a moment of doubt—”

“It wasn’t just a moment, Louie,” Dewey says, finally turning back to look at him. He looks very small in the center of the rug. “You’ve been worried this whole time, and the first time anything actually exciting happened, I chose that over you!”

“You’re always going to choose the excitement over me!” Louie says, throwing his arms up. “You’ll choose it over all of us, every day of your life! You keep leaving, Dewey! I don’t know if it’s some messed up hero complex, or—”

What happens when you lose your footing? What happens when things get hard? You’re good at it, but you aren’t perfect. How many more things are you going to find to be good at then give up when it gets hard?

Nobody says the words aloud. Louie doesn’t even know where he remembers them from. But he still flinches hard, back and away, as if Dewey has shot him in the chest. Dewey’s eyes go wide in panic, but Louie shakes his head before he can even ask.

“Whatever,” he mumbles. “When you want to actually talk about it and not pretend like it’s all about you, you know where to find me.” And then he spins and walks out.

He moseys his way down until he finds Uncle Donald outside by the houseboat, humming as he hangs up some laundry. “Louie!”

He almost eases into it, but Louie blows some hair out of his eye and stands at the end of the gangplank. “Where’s Mom?”

Donald squawks loudly, dropping a shirt into the pool and nearly taking the whole line with it. “What?”

“We found her, didn’t we?” He scratches behind his ear lazily. The less he seems like he cares, the easier the answer will come—at least, that’s what he hopes will happen. “Did she go back to…wherever it was that she was hiding so she didn’t have to take care of us?”

Donald’s face falls. “Louie, she didn’t—we don’t—”

“We know where she was,” Louie insists. “So did she go back, or…?”

“We don’t know,” Donald says. He’s standing on the other edge of the gangplank, wringing his hands nervously. “She left, and—”

“And she came back. And she left again. Is that what’s happened?” He stifles a yawn. “Okay, whatever. I guess I didn’t want to know what her birthday gift was gonna be for us this year. One less thing for me to worry about.”

He turns and starts to walk away. Nothing really happens; his uncle calls after him, of course, but Louie doesn’t turn around, and by the time he’s laying down to go to sleep later that night everything seems calm again. Louie is laying on his bunk; he watches Huey give him a small nod as he starts climbing up to the top bunk.

“I miss Mom,” Louie says into the darkness of the room. He makes it sound as pathetic as possible. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Huey agrees quietly. He pauses on the ladder, staring down at Louie for a minute. “Did you talk to Dewey?”

“I tried,” he says, but the sound of the door creaking open makes him pause. They both turn to watch as Dewey sticks his head in, holding his pillow pathetically to his chest.

“…room for one more?” Dewey asks quietly.

“It’s your bed,” Louie says, rolling and turning to face the wall. Nobody else says anything for a minute. Eventually, the mattress dips down by his feet.

“I am sorry,” Dewey says, pulling his feet onto Louie’s mattress with him. “About all of it. You were right, I made a mistake, but it doesn’t…define me.”

Huey slides down the ladder a little. It makes the beds shake. “…that’s really mature of you.”

“Took Louie yelling at me to realize it, but as per usual, he’s smarter than I am.” It sounds like Dewey is trying to put a positive spin on it. Louie smiles against his will, then forces a frown, then sighs and sits up. Dewey flinches a little.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Louie says, pulling his knees to his chest. “I just missed you. I don’t like fighting with you guys.”

“I missed you guys too,” Dewey whispers.

“I couldn’t have asked for better brothers,” Huey chimes in, and Louie and Dewey don’t have to do anything but smile at each other before they yank Huey onto the bed with them. “Hey—hey!”

“Aw, you’re such a sap,” Dewey grins, laying over Huey’s chest. Louie tugs them both closer, leaning onto both of them with all his body weight. “Our own little weighted blanket!”

“What else are baby brothers for?” Louie teases.

“Noogies,” Huey decides, pulling Louie in for one against his yell of protest.

“Let go—let me go!”

“Never!”

They laugh, wrestle, fight a little bit longer, and by the time their energy has dissipated they’re in a tangled mess on Louie’s bed. It’s surprisingly comfortable to have both his brothers using him like a pillow; in fact, it’s so comfortable that he almost misses the conversation they start having under their breath across him.

“Dew?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re…happy, like this. Right?”

“I mean, Louie’s gonna cut off the circulation to my leg by morning if we stay like this, but—”

“No, no, I mean—” Huey sighs softly. It blows the string to Louie’s hoodie a little. “Like, in life. You’re happy, right?”

“What…specifically, uh, are you getting at?” Dewey sounds a little nervous now. Louie shifts so he’s not cutting off the circulation to Dewey’s leg anymore. “Oh, thanks—”

“Well—” Huey shifts uncomfortably. “…things are, um. Weird, I think. I can’t remember all the months anymore, and I don’t know when our birthday is, and—”

“You’ve got head trauma?” Dewey sounds alarmed; he shifts, nearly shaking Louie off of him. Louie makes a noise of protest.

“What’s Jerch?” Louie mumbles.

“You both do?”

“It’s in Huey’s calendar,” Louie says, finally pulling his eyes open. “Jerch. It’s like, a month or something.”

Dewey goes quiet, settling back down. Huey pushes on. “Things are just…different, than they used to be. I think. I have a hard time remembering how things used to be, you know?”

“Maybe we do have head trauma,” Louie mumbles, throwing his arm over Huey and shutting his eyes. “Night night.”

A moment of peace passes.

“…well,” Dewey says.

Louie and Huey go stiff.

“You, um, might be. Sort of right. Maybe.”

“What do you mean?” Huey asks suspiciously. Every nerve in Louie has come to life, and he’s suddenly not tired at all anymore. He’s…scared, more than anything else.

“Jerch isn’t a month?” Dewey mumbles.

“We’d gathered,” Louie says tensely.

“And neither are most of the—okay, listen, if I tell you guys you have to promise not to be mad at me.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Huey says. He sits up; so does Dewey, which means Louie is sort of laying on the bed in between them, desperately missing how nice things were just a few minutes ago. But it’s like toothpaste. He can’t put it back into the bottle, no matter how much he tries. “What’s going on, Dewey?”

“Promise!”

“I can’t do that until you tell me what’s going on!”

“Then I can’t tell you!”

“I promise,” Louie says, just to get things moving. He is promptly ignored.

“What’s in your pocket?”

Louie’s eyes fly open. Dewey has his hand stuck in the side of his shirt, where a little pocket that normally remains unused sits. He’s clearly clutching something tightly in it right now. Slowly, Dewey starts backing off the bed, his eyes trained on their older brother as Huey crouches like an animal ready to pounce.

“Guys,” Louie says uncomfortably, but it’s too late. Huey launches, tackling Dewey to the ground, and they wrestle much harder than they had been just a few minutes ago. “Guys!”

“Give it to me!”

“Let go!”

Louie sits up just in time to watch Dewey kick Huey across the room, then do some kind of very impressive kick flip to land on the desk on the far side of their room. His hand is still in his pocket, clutching whatever it is, and for a moment Louie thinks Dewey looks—older. His hair is hanging strangely, down in his face, and his shirt looks different—but the moment passes, and it’s just his brother, crouching on a desk. Huey is coughing on the floor near the window.

“Dewey,” Louie says. His voice shakes. “What was that?”

We know you joined—

“You have to promise,” Dewey says seriously, slowly climbing off the desk. “Not to be mad at me.”

The gem is…kind of unassuming. The way Dewey had talked it up, Louie had been expecting something big and shiny—something that would have done numbers in an auction—but it’s just a yellow little thing, barely big enough to be considered a real rock over a pebble.

“So this rewrote reality?” Louie clarifies.

“Yes,” Dewey says patiently.

“How?” Huey whispers. He reaches for it, but Dewey snatches it back. “Hey!”

“You have to be careful!” Dewey hisses. “I didn’t even mean to, and I’m still—the problem is that it’s so hard to study because of the nature of it. I think I managed to get ahold of it just in time so it didn’t get lost, but most of the time—”

“And you learned any of this…how?” Louie interrupts.

Dewey sighs, as if he’s annoyed. “From SHUSH.”

“You broke into SHUSH?” Huey whispers.

“No!” Dewey whispers back. “I was an agent. It—it’s complicated, okay? I can try to explain it later. But I keep trying to fix things, and it won’t work.”

Louie frowns at it, watching the way Dewey keeps hold of it like a lifeline. Huey keeps asking questions that he can’t be bothered to listen to. Slowly, slowly, he’s starting to piece things together. His headaches, and the way the world keeps shifting—it’s connected to this. The way the world seems to be uniquely set up to give Dewey exactly what he wants. The way it’s shaped to exactly how Dewey would like things to be.

“You don’t want to,” he says suddenly. One of his brothers was speaking. He doesn’t know which one; his eyes flick up to meet Dewey’s, though. Dewey looks nearly horrified.

“What?”

“You don’t want to. That’s why it won’t work.” He gestures at the rock. “I mean, right? If it reshaped reality once—”

“Maybe it’s a one time thing,” Huey tries.

Louie waves him off. “Doubtful. He won’t let us touch it, and things are still going exactly his way. Dewey, if you wanted things to go back to normal, then maybe they would. But you don’t.” Dewey blinks at Louie, swallowing hard. He doesn’t say anything. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“…I want to want that,” Dewey whispers. Louie rolls his eyes and Huey tries to wrestle the gem from him again. “I do, I mean it, I do!”

“Then give it here!”

“I can’t!”

“What’s the future like?” Louie asks, kicking Huey off Dewey and pulling him back to lay against the pillow. “What are you so scared of? Does one of us die or something?”

“No,” Dewey says, crawling away from them slowly. “At least, I don’t think so—”

“Then what’s so scary?”

“I don’t see you guys anymore,” Dewey confesses quietly. He stares at the rock in his hands, then shuts his fingers around it as he closes his eyes. “The whole agent thing means I never get to come home anymore. Huey’s here, and he’s alone all the time—well, you know, he’s got Webby and her sisters, and—”

“Sisters?” Huey demands. Louie puts a hand over his mouth. Dewey isn’t stopping anyway. It’s like they’ve opened a dam.

“And Launchpad doesn’t work here anymore, because he’s in St. Canard with Drake and their—I think she’s their daughter, I don’t know how the custody thing works—and Louie’s gonna be a lawyer, and Huey’s alone all the time, and you’re both mad at me and I can’t come home. I have to spend all my time in a tiny box room with Tim until I retire, and you guys are so mad at me that I don’t think I even have a home to come back to. I—you’re right, okay, Louie? I want things to stay like this. I want our family to be close, and I want to wake up in the same room as you guys all the time, and I want to adventure and never have to worry about anything else ever again. No future, no changes, just—” He finally opens his eyes, staring at his brothers. Louie doesn’t know what Huey’s face looks like. He only knows that his own has fallen into something like pity. “I miss you guys. I don’t want to fight. I want things to be okay. I want things to stay, just like this, forever. So—so get used to Jerch, and—”

“What about Mom?” Louie says. Dewey’s voice catches, then falls completely silent.

“…what about her?” he whispers.

“Where does she fit into all of this?”

“I guess she doesn’t. She isn’t here, is she?” Dewey looks back down at his hands. “So she doesn’t fit.”

“I saw her,” Louie says, and it’s as much a declaration as it is a revelation. “The first day. Remember how I said Launchpad looked weird? That was—”

“Okay, so that was almost Mom, but I don’t know her the way I know you!”

Things are starting to flood back, slowly but surely. Louie sits up further, ignoring Dewey flinching away from him. “Uncle Donald met someone. What about her?”

“Would mess up the timeline,” Dewey whispers. “It happened after Mom—”

“Where is she?” Louie demands. “Where did you put her?”

“She’s just not here! She’s back on the—”

“The moon,” Huey whispers. Dewey’s face breaks into panic.

And the rock in his hand starts to glow.

“I’m not losing you guys,” Dewey says, his voice stronger now. “Stop it.”

“Hey, hey, Dew man,” Louie says, holding his hands out, but even as he does he knows it’s too late. He’s starting to feel very tired, and Dewey is climbing off the bed onto his own bunk without so much as a goodbye. When he turns, Huey is already knocked out on Louie’s pillow, so Louie has to climb over him to try to even attempt to get up to Dewey. It barely works—he’s so tired now—but he sticks his head over the bar and stares at Dewey, who’s desperately shoving the rock back into his pocket. “Dewey, did you ever consider we were so mad because we miss you too?”

“I know,” Dewey whispers, and it finally dawns on Louie that his brother is crying. “I know you guys do, Louie, and I wish I’d just made different choices—”

“We can go different ways,” Louie says. His eyes are shutting without his consent, and he can’t fight the yawn that interrupts him. “But you’re always gonna…be my brother, you know? We can…work through it. That’s…”

Whatever he was going to say, it must not be important. He climbs down to his own bed and curls up into Huey’s chest, the way he used to when they were little and he’d had a nightmare. It’s comfortable here. Cozy. Safe.

He’s awake just long enough to feel Dewey climb down and join them, and then he’s out.

“Boys, up and at ‘em! Mrs. Beakley has breakfast, and then we need to get in the air. The Lost City isn’t going to find itself, you know!”

Louie groans quietly, hiding his face under the blanket. “Man, I hate—”

“We’re not going!”

He pauses. Slowly, Louie sits up; the bed is shaking as Dewey violently climbs off it, then lands on the ground. He turns to look at Louie with a wide smile.

“Good morning, baby brother,” he says brightly.

“Where’s Huey?” Louie says immediately.

“Huh?” comes a voice from the top bunk.

“He’s in his bed,” Dewey says, cracking his knuckles. Someone knocks at the door again and Dewey glares at them. “We aren’t going!”

“What do ya mean, you aren’t going?”

“Yeah,” Louie says, confused. “What do you mean?”

“We have a different mystery to solve,” Dewey announces. His hand is stuffed deeply into his pocket. “What makes the best day ever?”

“Uh,” Louie says. He feels stupid, like he’s missed something. “Ice cream?”

“A great start!” Dewey claps, then climbs up the ladder in one jump and smacks Huey. Louie hears his eldest brother protest. “Wake up, sleepyhead! We’re going to get ice cream!”

“What do you mean?” Louie says, climbing off his own bunk. “Dewey, what’s going on?”

“If you knew,” Dewey says, leaning down to give Louie a strangely sad smile, “that today was going to be the last day you ever had like this, what would make it the perfect day?”

“I don’t know?” he mumbles. “Why? Is someone dying?”

“Just our childhood,” Dewey says, hopping down and pulling Louie in for a hug. He debates, then leans into it, holding onto Dewey like—like maybe this is the last time. “All I ask is for you to trust me, okay? Anything you guys want to do, all day. We have all the time in the world.”

“There’s only twenty-four—”

“What did I just say about trusting me?” Dewey laughs, leaning back to stare up at Huey. Huey is leaning over the side of the bed, looking as confused as Louie feels. “Come on, it’s only been a few minutes.”

“You’re acting weird,” Louie says, poking his brother in the chest. “What’s happening?”

“I just want to make today perfect,” Dewey insists. “In any and every way possible. Everything’s gonna change tomorrow, for the better. Just give me this, please.”

And Dewey’s face is so earnest that Louie feels sort of…strange. He shifts on his feet momentarily, then nods slowly.

“Well, first, the perfect day starts with, uh, Uncle Donald making breakfast,” he says slowly. Dewey lights up.

“Homemade pancakes?”

“Ooh, and syrup,” Huey adds, climbing down the ladder. “And sprinkles!”

“And whipped cream,” Louie tries. Dewey nods.

“An excellent start. Anything else before that?”

Louie debates for a second, but before he can say anything, Huey tugs at him. “I wanna wear Louie’s sweatshirt.”

“What?” he asks, alarmed. “Why?”

“It looks cozy!”

“Get your own!”

“But it won’t be yours if it’s mine.”

“Do you understand what he’s talking about?” Louie demands, turning back to Dewey, but Dewey is just staring at them with a very gentle look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Dewey says lightly, throwing his arms around both of their shoulders. “Louie, grab a different sweatshirt. You want one of mine?”

“…actually,” Louie says after a minute. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Great. And I can steal Huey’s polo.”

“Are we all gonna pretend to be each other today?” Louie jokes. His smile is timid, but it grows wider when Dewey jumps.

“We can! Just for a little bit.”

“Uncle Donald only makes those pancakes for our birthday,” Huey says suddenly. “And today is definitely not our birthday.”

“No, but I have a feeling if we ask really nicely, then he just might,” Dewey grins. He looks back at Louie; his eyes flicker to Louie’s beak and his smile falls a little, but he shakes it off. “Alright, come on! Let me find my sweater.” He bounds over to the dresser.

Louie turns to Huey while Dewey is distracted. “Is there something on my beak?” he whispers.

Huey frowns a little, tilting Louie’s head a bit. “…yeah. When did you get a scar?”

Louie opens his mouth to say that he doesn’t know, but a piece of fabric smacks him in the face. “Come on, come on, let’s get going!”

So what else can Louie do but follow?

(Louie tastes metal.)